Chapter 40
There was a buzz in the operations room.
With the developments of the past twenty-four hours, it felt like we were closing in.
That, at least, was the feeling amongst the officers present, and they were giving it their all – putting in an extra few hours now at the end of a long, complex task, convinced that it might be all it took to get it done.
I understood the attitude, but didn’t share it.
Partly it was just a hangover from the press conference, which had continued the trend of increasing belligerence from the media. But it was also the feeling that, despite recent developments, we were still a long way from ending this.
We’d moved fast. Officers had already interviewed all the kids that Carl Johnson had named as being in attendance at Killer Hill that evening, along with others who might have been there other nights.
None of them had been able to help us much.
The ones who’d been there on the evening in question remembered it, of course, but, just like Carl, none of them knew who ‘Jimmy’ was.
So we’d widened the net, tracking down older teenagers at schools within the general vicinity of the incident.
They’d given us other possible names, and so on.
Nothing concrete so far. It felt like we’d interviewed every kid who’d ever been at one of those outdoor parties, and the guy who’d killed the cat was a stranger to all of them.
So all we really had was a first name – one that might not even be real.
In terms of IT, DS Renton was keeping us updated on their findings, and we kept passing them on to the search teams. We had officers trawling the north-east areas of the city, the country lanes out in the sticks where the video had most likely been shot.
But what we still had amounted to hundreds of miles of winding, intertwining country roads to search.
And then there was Franklin.
He’d arrived sometime while we were out interviewing Carl at his home, and been present ever since, kept here by the activity: the sense that we were on the verge of some kind of breakthrough.
I’d spoken to him a few times already, and each time I imagined he was looking at me more curiously than he should have been.
Do I know you?
Have we met somewhere before?
We have, haven’t we. But where?
He drifted around the operations room drinking coffee. Although I did my best not to look at him, I could feel him looking at me. The whole time. Like a painted portrait, wherever he was in the room his eyes seemed to be on me.
I knew it was only a matter of time.
‘Okay,’ Laura said. ‘For a moment, let’s forget about how he chooses them.’
‘All right.’
I put Franklin out of my mind, and tried to concentrate on the matter at hand. The pattern. I still kept oscillating between believing there was one and being convinced there was not. Whichever was true, however many times we looked over the data ourselves, there appeared to be nothing to see.
‘All right,’ I said again. ‘What else, then?’
‘How does he kill them?’
‘We know that.’
‘Yes, but step back from it a pace. His victims so far have tended to be fully-grown adults, and some of them have been male. Look at John Kramer, for God’s sake. Not only was he handy in himself, he was armed when he was attacked.’
I saw what she was getting at.
‘You mean, how does he get into a position where he can kill them? He has to overpower them somehow. Or else take them by surprise. I guess that must have been what happened with Kramer.’
‘What about the others, though? The ones we’ve not found yet.’
I thought about that. Obviously we didn’t have any evidence from the bodies themselves to work with, but we had the evidence in the video. Six bodies. All of them in a spot so isolated we’d so far failed to find it.
‘How did he get them there?’ Laura held up a still from the video he’d sent us; it flapped slightly in her hand.
‘We know he films the murders – or this one, at least, but it seems likely he films them all for some reason. He did with the cats. But the point is, we know the victim in the video was killed at that location.’
‘And so the question is –’
‘If the spot is so isolated, how did he get the victim there?’
‘And not just him,’ I said. ‘The others too. Whether he killed them there or not.’
We were both silent for a moment.
There were two possibilities, as far as I could see.
The killer could have subdued the man in the video – and presumably the other victims – at a different location and then taken them to his nest in the woods.
That would involve a hell of a lot of risk and effort, but it was possible.
Alternatively, it could be similar to the crime scene on the edge of the Garth Estate: that he simply waited patiently somewhere out on those isolated country roads.
Not finding a victim so much as waiting for the next victim to find him.
Either way, it implied the location was important to him. If there was a pattern to his crimes, it had to have some kind of geographical basis.
I said, ‘We know he doesn’t leave anything to chance.’
‘No.’
‘So he has to know this place, doesn’t he? It’s isolated enough to allow him to do what he does. Either he can take them there without being disturbed. Or else …’
Laura waited. I was thinking about the way he’d worked at the Garth Estate. And the way he’d messed up in Buxton while killing Katie Barrett. He hadn’t wanted to be seen. Quite the opposite: it was out in the middle of nowhere, and he hadn’t counted on being spotted.
‘Or else,’ I said, ‘it means the place is quiet, but still busy enough to supply him with victims.’
Laura stared at me for a moment, not saying anything.
‘He’s waiting there,’ she said finally.
‘Yes.’
‘So it’s a place where people go.’
‘No, it’s not.’
I looked at the map, with its networks of roads. I’d been out there myself. The country lanes were narrow and quiet, edged by green fields and woodland. Little copses. Traffic was sparse. There wasn’t much out there. Nowhere that would people would actually go. It was more a place to pass through.
‘He waits by the roadside,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘He waits by the roadside. Flags down cars for help. Maybe knocks cyclists over.’
I stared at the map.
I was sure of it.