CHAPTER NINE
He had failed again.
Four tries. Four failures.
His best had been nineteen days. Not even three weeks whereas the Masters had achieved more than a month he knew.
The worst was merely hours. Not days. Hours.
How on earth had they done it? What was he doing wrong?
This last one had not lasted a full week, in spite of the extraordinary care he had taken.
He had even cheated twice to ensure it was prolonged.
But still he failed.
This time big time.
He had to try again. He could not wait as long as he had before between attempts.
Something he was doing was not right.
What?
What was it?
He must try again.
Don’t waste time.
Now.
He must try again right now while everything was fresh in his mind.
Tonight.
He would go out and get another one tonight.
*
“Right, ladies and gentlemen. We know what the position is. We know what we have to do. This is how we are going to go about it.”
The problem, Detective Senior Superintendent Alasdair Ford had explained, was that four women had been brutally murdered by an unknown serial killer or serial killers, possibly all in the capital, and then their bodies dumped in widely diverse areas. What the police had to do, the dour Scot also explained in simple language, was ask every possible question, investigate every possible and impossible answer, and correlate all information gathered.
“Now,” he said to the two dozen faces before him, “this is how we are going to go about it.”
Detective Inspector David Maguire squirmed on his plastic seat but did not take his eyes of the superintendent at the front of the room.
Ford had a reputation for slicing through red tape, sometimes at personal cost, and avoiding unnecessary verbiage often leading listeners to think him rude. He always spoke succinctly and when angry his voice slowed and his Edinburgh antecedents became more pronounced. For the next three hours the police strategy was drawn up.
The city was divided into four areas only, determined by compass points. Team heads were named and then told to pick their squads from their own areas. Each squad was to have no more than six officers. He wanted it to be a lean and hungry and quick investigation and apprehension, Ford told his men and women. He did not want it to be a cumbersome drawn out enquiry which enabled the popular tabloid press to latch onto loose ends and cause more panic than there was already.
Records of every known suspect would be taken apart, examined thoroughly, put back together, and then re-evaluated. A small team of just three profilers would then examine the shortlist, pruning it down to a “top ten”.
“This is England,” said Ford. “Not America where they could be expected to draw up a list of a score of red hot favourites in probably each of a dozen or more cities. Dangerously evil people. Here, I am confident we will have no more than ten. If that.”
There was a soft murmur through the room. Nobody could disagree with the assessment but the thought that there could be as many as even ten crazy killers out there, stalking victims and then doing to them what they all had been told and shown in graphic colour pictures, was numbing.
Only a handful of people in the room had been aware for some time of the magnitude of the case and the nature of the killings. The others had been briefed over the last twenty-four hours. It had been a frightful realisation for them all. The junior Minister from the Home Office who had turned the public spotlight on the cases had been right. Whoever was responsible for the murders was not human. It was a predator of a kind unimagined before.
Ford picked up his briefcase and stuffed a sheaf of papers inside. He lifted his head and thrust his jaw forward. “I want him, or them, badly. We need to apprehend him, or them, quickly. If we do not do this speedily, I fear for what will happen.”
When he left the room, for a full minute there was quiet. Every police officer present knew what he meant. Then there was a great deal of movement and talk.
The hunt was on.
Without prejudice.
*
Maguire and Walden were assigned to watch a known criminal with tendencies towards GBH. Tendencies? More like a passion for violence, a fetish about seeing someone else bleed. Preferably someone he himself had caused to bleed though he also enjoyed just watching suffering. The pleasure was in watching a person’s humiliation and anguish.
Denis Quilter had just a year ago completed time for killing his wife, but had served only five years because he had been convicted of manslaughter. It would have been murder and a much longer stretch except for the fact that when he smashed open her skull with the handle of a pick Mrs Quilter allegedly had been threatening him with a nine inch kitchen knife. He had the testimony of a friend who claimed to have witnessed the incident and said Mrs Quilter had been the aggressor. The jury suspected they knew why the poor woman had armed herself with a knife but suspicion was not sufficient.
While inside Quilter had told a cellmate on repeated occasions that he intended to get even with all women on whom he blamed his incarceration. He was not at fault. The trouble was the women he came into contact with simply would not understand their role in society. His society as he saw it. All women needed a good slapping from time to time, Quilter believed. In fact, more than occasionally they needed to be taught a really good lesson which was why at least half a dozen of Quilter’s female friends over the years had been knocked about with such force they were hospitalised. All complained to the police Quilter had beaten them. All claimed he had acted like a crazy man. And all told the investigating officers at the time that he had threatened to slash their faces or cause some other disfigurement. All also withdrew their complaints after being visited in hospital by Quilter.
Since his release from prison, there had been rumours that Quilter was back to his old ways with the women he kept company with. There was even a rumour that during one of his drinking sessions at his local pub he had said that he could understand what drove the serial killer making the headlines. The pub landlord had told his local bobby that Quilter had smiled and winked, and said to take it from him, he understood, he knew exactly how the killer felt. It was scary said the landlord. It was like Quilter was saying he knew because .... well maybe because he was the killer. The beat policeman reported the incident at the end of his shift and Quilter’s name was added to the list being examined by the profilers. After careful deliberation it was decided he should be watched.
So Maguire and Walden were assigned to him and now propped up the bar of the Red Lion freehouse in Camden. Quilter sat at a table with three friends five meters away arguing noisily about a football match which had been played the night before.
“He’s crazy enough,” Walden said. “A right psycho if you ask me.”
“Right,” answered Maguire. “But he just doesn’t fit. It’s just not right.”
Walden shrugged slightly. “What do we know anyway? Leave that to the profilers, the doctors. They’re the experts.”
Maguire grunted acknowledgement. They were the experts alright. They knew a great deal more about whackos than he ever would. But he felt Quilter did not fit this bill. He was too obviously wild. Too bent on lashing out at his victims. Random brutality.
The killer they were hunting was an entirely different animal. He was not vicious like Quilter and his ilk. He was not a noisy thug. He thought in silence and worked quietly.
Maguire believed the killer he sought was likely to be a thinker, someone you would walk by in the street or see at a gathering and note nothing remarkable, yet under that was the mind of someone without compassion, without feeling. A person who was dead inside. After all, what sort of person could do what he had done.