Chapter 15
‘So,’ Young said. ‘This letter.’
Laura and I were sitting across from him in his fifth-floor office.
We might have relocated to the main operations room downstairs, but Young certainly hadn’t.
I didn’t like being taken away from the heart of the investigation, even momentarily, but the flipside was it at least enabled us to run our own ship.
Young was big on that. While he needed and wanted to know of every development, he wasn’t bothered about being seen to be.
For all his hardass reputation, he was a good boss.
The letter was the first item on the agenda.
Laura said, ‘I think Hicks wrote it, sir.’
‘Ha ha,’ I said.
‘Seriously, sir – his prints will be all over it.’
I leaned forward. ‘As I’ve said a hundred times, I could hardly have discovered this potential crime scene without contaminating it, could I?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Give it up you two.’ Young sniffed. ‘Other prints?’
‘Ongoing, sir.’ I leaned back. ‘But so far we’ve got standard, cheap eighty-weight paper that appears to have been untouched by human hands. Other than my own. There’s a load on the envelope, but that’s to be expected. They’re being processed now anyway.’
He nodded. ‘Okay. On a practical level, what else?’
There are plenty of traps people can fall into when sending things to the police. Dropping a letter into a post box might feel like an anonymous, unobserved act, but there are hundreds of potential mistakes we can look into.
We caught a blackmailer once who included a print-out of a Streetview map to show where he wanted the money dropped.
In terms of prints and DNA, it was totally clean, and he was probably congratulating himself right up to the moment we knocked on his door.
How did we find him? Because to print the map you had to access it online, and his was the only ISP address to look at that particular page in years. People rarely think of everything.
‘Prints aside,’ Laura said, ‘the envelope was sticker-sealed, so we won’t get DNA from that. We’ve already followed up the post-marks though.’
That was normally one of our best chances: that it was possible to trace the path of the letter back through time and space.
We already knew the letterbox it had been posted in and the collection batch.
That gave us a window of time in which our man had definitely been at a specific location – another cross on the map, albeit a much more tentative one this time.
‘It’s a box on Main Street, old town,’ Laura said. ‘CCTV only gives an oblique view. It’s probably not good enough for any kind of pre-arrest identification. Maybe useful afterwards though.’
Young frowned again – more of a scowl this time. I felt the same way. After an arrest was all well and good. What we needed, more than anything else right now, was something to help us find the guy in the first place.
‘And the timing?’
I said, ‘It was sent yesterday afternoon, between the lunchtime and evening collections. A five-hour period. The IT people are already pulling images for us. I don’t know how many we’ll end up with.
Obviously, it’s a busy area and he posted at a busy time.
We’ll get something though. It’ll be fuzzy, but one of those people will be him. ’
Scant consolation, but still true. We would have a photograph of the person who’d sent the letter – even if we wouldn’t know for sure which of the people he was.
Young tapped a pen on his desk absently.
‘He posted it after the murders of Gibson and Evans.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do we think it’s genuine?’
‘I don’t,’ Laura said. ‘Hicks isn’t sure.’
Young looked at me. I shrugged.
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing in there that couldn’t have been gleaned from the news reports. But at the same, if it’s someone pranking us, there’s also a whole lot less.’
Young nodded. ‘That’s what’s giving me pause too.’
‘I mean, he doesn’t even describe the victims, when he could have done. If it’s just some nut looking to troll us, he could have made it much more convincing.’
‘But if it’s real … ?’
‘If it’s real, the contents still don’t make any sense. He claims to have written the letter before the first killing. He’s even pre-printed it and written my name on by hand. I don’t know how to explain that.’
‘Well try, Hicks.’
‘The only thing I can think is that he wanted to emphasise the … randomness. Because it’s a challenge, isn’t it? The way it reads, he wants to test us. So perhaps it’s important to him that we’re in on it from the very beginning. That we know he was planning it long before he started killing.’
‘And that he genuinely doesn’t know who his first victim will be.’ Young rubbed his chin, considering it.
Laura leaned in. ‘Assuming this is him, I’d add that it’s very worrying. There’s every indication that he intends to continue. It’s not clear what exactly he’s planning to do next, but he seems confident that we’re not going to catch him.’
‘That is why it will work.’ Young nodded. ‘A code even you won’t be able to crack. But why?’
He looked at me again.
‘I can’t work out what it means,’ I said. ‘Presumably he’s bragging that he can get away with the murders, and challenging us to stop him. But it’s like he has some reason above and beyond the killings themselves. The way it reads, they’re almost secondary to him.’
‘Yes. There’s certainly a degree of intellectual egotism there, isn’t there?’ Young was still looking at me. ‘Do you know what that means, Hicks?’
‘I do, sir. Thank you.’
‘I thought you would. Forget the letter for the moment. Do we have any indication of how he’s choosing his victims?’
‘Right now,’ I said, ‘it seems more like they’re choosing him. He plots up somewhere isolated and waits. We haven’t found a single connection between any of the victims. Or the places themselves. So far. It seems …’
‘Random.’ Young nodded to himself, then sighed heavily.
I knew from experience that this meant a conclusion was imminent.
Sure enough, a moment later, he placed his hands flat down on the desk.
‘We sit on the letter for now. Right? Let’s see what prints come back.
In the meantime, we keep it between ourselves. No press mention.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Just briefly, how do you feel about it, Hicks?’
‘Sir?’
‘Are you okay, is what I’m asking. Beneath all that irritating bluster?’
I blinked at him for a second – and then realised what he was talking about. If the letter was from the killer, he’d addressed it to me personally. Which meant he had my name. Perhaps he saw himself as communicating with me directly.
‘I’m fine, sir. Obviously, I very much appreciate your concern.’
‘It’s not concern. Just watch yourself. If he’s interested in you for some unknown reason then there’s a chance he might try to establish contact some other way. Keep an eye out, is what I’m saying.’
‘I will, sir. And, for the record, I’m happy to consider myself as bait.’
‘We all are. Now go.’
Outside, Laura and I waited for the lift
‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
I thought there was another question below the surface. Because you’ve been a bit weird recently, haven’t you, Hicks? Like this investigation is getting to you a bit.
And yet actually, in an odd way, the letter had put me back on steadier ground.
It didn’t make sense right now, but if it was real it at least indicated that the guy had a motive.
A basement one, perhaps – and a fucking odd one at that – but a motive nonetheless.
There was something vaguely settling about that.
And if he wanted an intellectual game then he was going to lose.
Not because I personally was smarter than him, but because, collectively, we all were.
There were too many things for him to think of and he only had to get one of them wrong: just like Mr Streetview, he’d mess something up eventually.
Maybe he already had and we just needed to figure out what.
A code even you won’t be able to crack.
Yeah, well. We’d see about that.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Sure?’
‘I’m all over it.’ The elevator pinged to announce its arrival. ‘I’m just getting started.’