Val McDermid 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Mermaids Singing, The Wire in the Blood, The Last Temptation

‘Keep me posted, lover boy,’ Penny said softly to his retreating back. Before he even reached the doors, her intro was taking shape. Oh yes, she could see it now.

Bradfield police are devoting new resources to the hunt for the serial killer who has claimed four victims and placed men in jeopardy as never before.

But the extra officers will not be joining the search for the monstrous Queer Killer. Their job will be to police the police themselves.

Top brass in the force are so alarmed by the accuracy of the Sentinel Times’s stories on the killings that they have set up a full-scale mole hunt to uncover the source of our stories. Instead of catching the killer, the mole-catchers will be tracking down fellow officers who subscribe to the view that the terrified public have a right to know what’s going on.

Carol opened the door to the outer office and said, ‘I’m all done. Can we talk?’

Tony looked up from the computer screen absently, held up one finger and said, ‘Yeah, sure, give me a minute,’ and finished what he was doing.

Carol retreated and took a deep breath. No matter how professional she tried to be, she couldn’t help the surge of attraction she felt for this man. Ignoring it was easier said than done. Moments later, Tony joined her. He perched on the edge of his desk, his hair standing on end like Dennis the Menace from thrusting his fingers through it while he concentrated. ‘So,’ he said. ‘What’s the verdict?’

‘I’m impressed,’ she said. ‘It really pulls everything together. There were a couple of things, though.’

‘Only a couple?’ Tony asked, his voice close to a chuckle.

‘You talk a lot about how he must be strong, to overpower his victims and move them around. Also, you speculate about how he gets them into a vulnerable position in the first place. I was wondering if maybe there were two of them.’

‘Go on,’ Tony said, no hint of frost in his voice.

‘I don’t mean two men. I mean a man and someone else who appears vulnerable. Maybe an adolescent boy or, more likely, a woman. I don’t know, maybe even a person in a wheelchair. A partner in crime. Like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.’ Carol shuffled the papers, putting them back in order. Still Tony said nothing. After a few moments watching his expressionless face, she added, ‘I know you’ve probably thought about it already, I just wondered if it was a possibility we should still bear in mind.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to look like I was ignoring you,’ Tony said hurriedly. ‘I was reviewing the thought, weighing it against what we know and against the profile. One of the first things I considered was whether or not it was a solo. On the balance of overwhelming probability, I decided it was. Cases like the Moors Murders where you have two people acting in tandem to carry out atrocities are incredibly rare, for a kick off. Also, I’d expect to find more variation in the methodology and the pathology if there were two people involved; it’s hard to believe their fantasies would coincide so exactly. But it’s interesting that you’ve come up with it. You’re right in one respect. If he’s working with a woman it does explain how he gets close to his victims without them putting up a fight.’ Tony sat staring straight ahead, brows lowered in thought.

Carol stayed motionless in her seat. Eventually, Tony turned to face her and said, ‘I’m going to stick with my soloist. Yours is an interesting idea, but I can’t see evidence that convinces me I should shift from the most highly probable scenario.’

‘OK, point taken,’ Carol said calmly. ‘Moving on from that, have you considered the possibility of a transvestite? Like you just said, a woman could get close without them putting up a fight. What about if the woman was a man in drag? Wouldn’t that have the same effect?’

Tony looked startled for a moment. ‘Maybe you should think about applying to join the national task force when it’s set up,’ he stalled.

Carol grinned. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’

‘I mean it. I think you’ve got what it takes to do this kind of work. You see, I’m not infallible. I hadn’t actually considered a transvestite. Now, why did I ignore that possibility?’ he mused, thinking aloud. ‘There must be some subconscious reason why I rejected it before it even got to the front of my mind …’ Carol opened her mouth to speak, but he said, ‘No, wait a minute, please, let me work this out.’ His hands ran through his hair again, rearranging the dark spikes.

She subsided, telling herself he was just as arrogant as all the rest, unable to accept he might just have missed something. Stop kidding yourself he’s different, she told herself sternly.

‘Right,’ Tony said, his voice rich with satisfaction. ‘We’re dealing with a sexual sadist, agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘Sado-masochism is the power trip of sexual fetishes. But transvestism is the diametric opposite of that. TVs want to assume the supposedly weaker role that women have in society. What underpins transvestism is the belief that women have a subtle power, the power of their gender. It couldn’t be further removed from the brute transaction of pain and power that sado-masochists crave. That’s not part of a TV’s fantasy at all. To convince the victims that they’re dealing with a woman and not a man in drag, the killer would have to be an accomplished cross-dresser. But, uniquely in my experience of clinical psychology, he’d also have to be a sexual sadist. The two just don’t go together,’ Tony explained with an air of finality. ‘The same goes for a transsexual. Probably more so, in fact, because of the counselling they have to go through before they’re accepted for treatment.’

‘So you’re ruling it out, then,’ Carol said, feeling unreasonably crushed.

‘I never rule anything out. That’s asking to make a fool of yourself in this game. What I think is that it’s so unlikely that I would be loath to include it in a profile because its very inclusion might push people in the wrong direction. But by all means keep it in mind. You’re thinking along the right lines.’ He smiled, unexpectedly, taking the sting of patronage out of his words. ‘Like I said at the start, Carol, together we can crack it.’

‘And you’re absolutely convinced that it isn’t a woman?’ she asked.

‘The psychology’s all wrong. Taking the most obvious point, this killer’s an obsessive, and that tends to be a male trait. How many women do you know who hang about station platforms in the rain in anoraks writing down train numbers?’

‘But what about that syndrome, what’s it called, where people get obsessed with someone else to the point where they make their lives a misery? I thought it was mainly women who suffer from that?’

‘De Clerambault’s Syndrome,’ Tony said. ‘And yes, it is principally women who suffer from it. But they only focus on one person, and the only person who’s likely to get dead as a result is the sufferer, who sometimes commits suicide. The thing is that women’s obsessions and compulsions are different from men’s. Men’s obsessions are about control; they collect stamps and catalogue them, they collect a pair of knickers from every woman they’ve slept with. They need trophies. Women’s obsessions are about submission; in eating disorders, it’s the obsession that takes them over and controls them rather than the other way about. A sufferer from de Clerambault’s Syndrome who married the object of her desire would probably be the chauvinist’s ideal of the perfect wife. That pattern doesn’t fit our killer.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Carol said, loath to give up the one fresh idea she felt she’d contributed to the profiling process.

‘Add to that the sheer physical strength involved here,’ Tony continued, seeing her reluctance. ‘You’re fit. You’re probably quite strong for your height. I’m only a couple of inches taller than you. But how far do you think you could carry me? How long would it take you to pick my body up from the boot of a car and dump it over a wall? Could you throw me over your shoulder and carry me through Carlton Park to the shrubbery? Now bear in mind that all the victims have been taller and heavier than me.’

Carol gave a rueful smile. ‘OK, you win. I’m convinced. There was one other thing that occurred to me.’

‘Let’s hear it.’

‘Reading your profile, it seems to me that the reason you advance for the maintenance of the gaps between the killings just isn’t strong enough,’ she started tentatively.

‘You noticed that too,’ he said wryly. ‘It didn’t convince me either. But I couldn’t think of anything else to explain it. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it, either face to face or in the literature. All the serial offenders I know about go through escalation.’

‘I’ve got a theory that might cover the problem,’ Carol said.

Tony leaned forward, his expression absorbed. ‘Speak to me, Carol,’ he said.

Feeling like a goldfish in a bowl, Carol took a deep breath. She’d wanted his attention, but she wasn’t quite sure if she liked it now she had it. ‘I remember what you said to me a couple of days ago about the intervals.’ She closed her eyes and recited, ‘“With most serial killers, the gap between the killings tends to decrease quite dramatically. It’s their fantasies that trigger off the killings in the first place, and the reality never quite matches up to the fantasy, no matter how much they refine their killing procedures. But the more extreme they get, the more blunted their sensibilities become and the more stimulus they need to get the sexual buzz that killing provides. So the kills have to become more frequent. Shakespeare said it. ‘As if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on.’” Am I right?’

‘Remarkable,’ Tony breathed. ‘Can you do that with visuals as well, or is it only auditory?’

Exasperated, Carol cast her eyes upwards. ‘Auditory only, I’m afraid. Anyway, when I read the bit in the profile where you suggest he might work with computers, something clicked. The question you didn’t actually put but is obviously bothering you is, why isn’t he getting desensitized to the videos faster as time goes by?’

Tony nodded. The point she’d raised was powerful, and it was precisely what was troubling him. He searched to find an answer that would satisfy them both. Groping for the solution as he went along, he said, ‘Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the first video had the potential to keep him stable for twelve weeks. But he’d already set in train the process of capturing his second victim, and the opportune moment came along before he was actually compelled to kill again. He just couldn’t resist the chance when it presented itself so perfectly. Afterwards, he realizes he’s left eight weeks between the killings and he decides that eight weeks is going to be his pattern. So far, the videos have allowed him to maintain that. Maybe that is going to change now.’

Carol shook her head. ‘It’s plausible, but I’m not convinced.’

Tony grinned. ‘Thank God for that. Neither am I. There’s got to be a better explanation, but I don’t know what it is.’

‘How much do you know about computers?’ she asked.

‘I know where the on/off switch is and I know how to use the software I need to work with. Other than that, I’m a moron.’

‘Well, that makes two of us. My brother, however, is a computer whizz kid. He’s a partner in a games software house. The stuff he works on is leading-edge technology. Right now, he and his partner are developing a low-cost system that will allow games players to put images of themselves in the games that they’re playing. In other words, instead of it being Arnie kicking the shit out of the bad guys on the screen in Terminator 2, it would be Tony Hill. Or Carol Jordan. The point is that there’s already the hardware and software around that allows you to scan video tape and import the images into a computer. I think they call it digitized images. Anyway, once you’ve got that into the computer, you can manipulate it exactly how you want to. You can incorporate still photographs, or bits from other videos. You can superimpose things. When they first got the original hardware about six months ago, Michael showed me this sequence he’d made up himself. He’d taped some of the Tory Party conference and he’d also imported a video sex guide. He’d selected all these government ministers’ faces while they were giving their speeches and superimposed them on the sex video.’ Carol snorted with laughter at the memory. ‘It was a bit choppy, but believe me, you’ve never seen John Major and Margaret Thatcher getting on so well! It gave a whole new meaning to the word “gobbledegook”!’

Tony stared at Carol in stunned silence. ‘You’re kidding me,’ he said.

‘It’s the perfect explanation of why the videos manage to keep him under control.’

‘Wouldn’t that mean he’d have to be a real boffin, like your brother?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Carol said. ‘From what I gathered, the actual techniques involved are fairly simple. But the software and the peripherals that you need to do it are incredibly expensive. You could be talking two or three grand just for one piece of software. So he’s either working for a company where he has that sort of equipment on tap and the privacy to work on his own stuff, or else he’s a computer hobbyist with a lot of disposable income.’

‘Or a thief,’ Tony added, only half joking.