Believe No One (36 page)

‘Your witnesses were right that your killer is from back East,' he said. ‘He is. Way,
way
east. We're talking this side of the pond.'

‘Our man is from the UK?' Dunlap said.

‘Oh, I can do better than that,' Dr Moran said. ‘The pronunciation is overlaid with Midwestern USA, but he pronounces the letter “r” with the tongue slightly more to the front of the mouth than you would expect in a true American. It's typical of Scottish English. The Scots are rhotic speakers – they pronounce every “r”, even in words like “iron”, vibrating the tongue against the hard palate.' He paused. ‘Let me demonstrate.'

He played a short section of the audio: ‘I do
everything
to make it work.'

‘Hear that?
Wur-uk,
like there are two syllables in “work”.'

Ellis tugged his ear, Valance shrugged, but Simms thought she caught it.

‘It's subtle,' Dr Moran said, ‘but it's there. Now Josh, who did the transcript, got stuck on something the killer says; he thought your guy said something about a “clay pit” and “full”. He
actually
said, “I'm a glaikit gull”. It's Scottish dialect meaning someone who's easily fooled. Comes from the Borders – a place called Haweek.'

Fennimore sat bolt upright. ‘Can you spell that?'

‘H.A.W.I.C.K.'

‘Hawick is the nearest town to Alemoor Loch,' Fennimore said.

‘Interesting, isn't it?' Dr Moran said. ‘Just to be sure, I played that section of the audio to a friend of mine – Douglas Scott. We were at Cambridge together, and he wrote a book on the Hawick dialect. He agreed with me – your guy is from Hawick.'

They thanked Dr Moran for his assistance and got straight to work.

‘I'll get on to Police Scotland,' Simms said. ‘See if they have anything like this on record.'

Dr Detmeyer said, ‘Sadistic killers like these don't suddenly emerge like a moth from a chrysalis – metamorphosing from normal child to predatory killer. Their strange obsessions and cruelty would be evident in childhood – at least, to anyone who paid attention.'

‘We're talking about the usual – cruelty to pets, arson, sexual assaults on other children?'

He nodded. ‘And a few others – I'll compile a list.'

‘Okay,' she said. ‘But I'd better tell you upfront, I can ask, but juvenile records are sealed. This could be a non-starter.'

‘I'll get Josh to search local news archives for anything that might fit,' Fennimore said.

The search party trailed into the meeting room a half-hour later, looking hot and dirty and despondent.

‘No trace of Riley?' Simms asked.

‘He was there, all right.' Launer had lost his freshly starched crispness, and Simms felt almost sorry for him. ‘Dogs found a kid's den, torn up and kicked about. They lost him for a bit, but picked up a faint trail further in, took us to what looked like a pot grow, but the weed was gone. Dogs went crazy, whining and circling and backtracking. Then one of 'em stopped and dropped on a dirt track next to the clearing.'

‘The boy was taken away in a car?' Dunlap asked.

‘Looks like.'

‘Tyre tracks?' Fennimore said.

He shook his head. ‘Someone dragged a landscape rake along the trail.'

‘We'll need to process the den,' CSI Roper said.

‘You're welcome to it,' Launer said. ‘What's left of it.'

‘I have the coordinates,' the Team Adam consultant said.

‘Take Deputy Hicks with you,' Launer said. ‘I'm going home to shower.'

Two hours later, Fennimore took a call. Instantly alerted by the sharpness of his tone, Simms looked up. Ashen-faced, he said a few words, thanked the caller and hung up.

‘That was SCAS.'

The Serious Crime Analysis Section had helped the St Louis Task Force with crime-scene analysis on their review cases. They looked at all serious crimes in the UK, providing a statistical breakdown to investigators, as well as descriptive comparisons of behaviours.

‘They think there are enough common factors between Rachel and Suzie and the Hawick victim for a closer look.'

‘You must have been expecting this, Nick,' Simms said, gently. Rachel was thirty-two when she disappeared. The Hawick victim was aged thirty-two. Her daughter was ten years old, like Suzie. Rachel was found in water, like the Hawick victim.

‘Are you okay?'

‘Fine,' he said, but it sounded metallic, false.

He stood abruptly, knocking the edge of the table with his knees and sending pens and papers skittering across the melamine.

‘Professor?' Dunlap said.

Fennimore started walking, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. Dunlap looked to Simms, but she frowned, shaking her head and, tactfully, he looked away.

‘Nick—'

He splayed his fingers, gesturing for her to stay where she was. ‘Five minutes,' he said. ‘Give me five minutes.'

She watched him cross the room and almost fall through the fire door onto the fire escape. She left it three minutes. He was standing with his hands on the rail, the scream of the cicadas a barrage of sound in the searing heat.

Simms stood next to him and leaned on the rail, her tanned arm next to his. Almost, but not quite, touching.

Gradually, he relaxed a little and looked into her eyes.

‘For six years I've wished for something like this, Kate,' he said. ‘Thinking it would bring us closer to catching Rachel's killer.'

She squeezed his hand, but he broke free. ‘I watched that man put out Sharla Jane Patterson's eyes and bleed her to death … I wished that on a woman, on all those women.'

‘Nick, this isn't your fault.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘I know that. But what if this monster did take Rachel and Suzie?'

‘By some kind of weird logic, you would have wished it on them? Is that what you mean?' He didn't answer and she said, ‘Look, we don't know that there's even a link yet. This is just a routine check.'

‘I'm going to go to my room,' he said. ‘I need to think.'

He held onto the fire-escape rails all the way down as if it swayed like a rope bridge.

That context is crucial is a truism, but no less true for all that.

N
ICK
F
ENNIMORE

The Crime Analysis Section was reviewing Rachel and Suzie's disappearance as a matter of routine, Kate had said. But it didn't feel like routine. At the back of Fennimore's mind, like the constant kettle-whistle scream of cicadas, was the fear of what was happening to his daughter.

He pictured the girl in the photograph, walking alongside the older man, and his dream came to him sharp and clear. A warm breeze, the scent of flowers and a whiff of river water. The off-key police siren. The girl turning, stumbling.
Faux pas
– false step. And what was that scent? Roses? No, not roses, foxgloves. Paulownia – the foxglove tree.

Suddenly, he had it. The year they went as a family to Paris, the paulownia trees were in bloom on Île de la Cité. He'd been looking so closely at the girl, he hadn't analysed the context.

Heart hammering, he opened his laptop and pulled up the image. The wall was in deep shadow, but he thought he could just make out regular lines in the structure. The paving on which the man and girl walked was made up of flat stone setts. Was that a slight distortion, or were the cobbles actually curved? He clicked through a few auto-correction options, brightening the picture and altering the contrast; in seconds he was sure – the wall was stonework, and the setts really were curved, in a repeating fan.

He Googled paving: historic road setts; conservation; traditional paving; a few others. In half an hour he'd discovered that the setts were not laid out in a fan pattern, as he thought, but as ‘bogens' – a series of stacked and interlocking arcs. He now knew that this type of pattern was typically European.

He zoomed out of the picture and looked again at the entire scene. The green metal dome attached to a swan-necked bracket was a street lamp, as he'd thought; he'd seen that type of bracket on lamps above the riverside walkways beside the Seine. That's what his dreams had been trying to tell him. The picture had been taken in Paris.

It was all about context. And in this new context, the white box van took on a new meaning. He enlarged it. The scribble of black paint might be something more. He increased the contrast and sharpened that section. Yes, those could be symbols or letters scrawled at the top of the roller door. He picked up the laptop and headed out. He needed to talk to Kate Simms.

His mobile phone rang as he picked up his room keys. He answered it, juggling his computer to his left hand.

‘You missed your flight.'

He checked the screen. ‘Ollie?' Ollie Roskopff was his publisher in the United States. ‘What flight? What are you talking about?'

‘You were expected on United Airlines flight 6443 arriving into Chicago O'Hare at twelve after midday. You weren't on it.'

Chicago?
He struggled to make sense of what Roskopff was saying, but his mind was still on the dream and Paris, and getting to Simms to ask for her help.

‘You being on a tight schedule, I asked the area sales director to meet you off the plane.'

A thud of recognition. ‘The Chicago gig,' Fennimore said.

‘The Chicago gig,' the publisher said, ‘yeah. That, and the interview with
That's Entertainment!
Which you missed.'

Bloody hell …

‘Ollie, I'm sorry, it's this investigation.'

‘Well, yes, I could see that you might be a little … distracted. It's a big story; it made the networks even here in New York. But when John – that's the rep – called you on your cell, he got bounced straight to voicemail.' The publisher's voice remained even, but the gaps between his words and the tension in his voice told another story.

‘I lost track of time,' Fennimore said. ‘I thought the Chicago trip wasn't for another few days—'

But Roskopff wasn't finished. ‘I walked out of an important commissioning meeting to talk to a very pissed-off journalist at
That's Entertainment!
You know why?' He didn't wait for Fennimore to speculate. ‘Because a feature in
That's Entertainment!
can be as good as a hundred thousand of publicity spend. It can boost rankings and generate reviews; it can put you on the must-have list for TV interviews, guest appearances on chat shows. One of our authors got his book on to Oprah's Book Club selection after a feature in
That's Entertainment!
In short: you do
not
piss off
That's Entertainment!
'

‘Okay,' Fennimore said. ‘We're clear on that.'

‘That's just … dandy,' Roskopff said, breathing hard. ‘You're booked on UA flight 5510. It leaves Tulsa at five fifty-five.' He paused and then repeated: ‘Fifty-five ten, at five fifty-five – should be easy to remember, even in your current state of mind.'

‘Wait a minute,' Fennimore said. ‘I can't
leave.
'

‘Sure you can. Your ticket will be at the check-in desk.'

‘Ollie, listen, there's been a development,' he said. ‘I need to stay close to the case.'

‘This is the technological age, Nick,' Roskopff said. ‘You can stay in virtual contact a dozen different ways. But your physical presence is required in Chicago in front of a live audience, all of whom have paid fifteen dollars a ticket to see you. That,' he said, ‘is where you “need” to be.'

As Fennimore recalled it, the reader event in Chicago was just the beginning; there was a bookstore signing, a seminar at the University of Illinois and a library reading the following day.

‘No, Ollie, you don't—'

‘Don't tell me I don't get it,' Roskopff said. ‘Do you know what a no-show will cost? We hired a theatre. We sold twelve hundred tickets for this event alone. So you'd better haul ass over here or I
will
sue – for lost book sales, for every ticket sold, for disappointment to your readers, for staff hours spent in setting this up, for the fucking
heart attack
you're giving me right now!'

A no-show would put Fennimore in breach of contract. He'd done well from sales of
Crapshoots and Bad Stats,
but he couldn't afford a lawsuit, or the damage it would do to his professional reputation.

‘UA flight 5510, Tulsa airport,' he said.

‘Arriving into O'Hare at seven forty-five. I laid on a limo, so look out for the driver.' Roskopff reverted to his usual calm and urbane manner, as though the threat of litigation had never been made. ‘It's a thirty-minute drive downtown, but you'll just have to be fashionably late. The venue has your technical requirements, all you need is your presentation ready on a USB stick for the techs to plug into the system.'

‘Okay,' Fennimore said, already picking, his laptop and checking that the memory stick he needed was in the zip pocket.

‘I told the reporter you were hung up on this serial-killer thing, and I was able to negotiate new terms.'

New terms
… Fennimore waited for the hammer to fall.

‘I told him you'd take him somewhere nice for dinner after the event this evening.'

‘No problem,' he said, relieved.

‘
And
he gets an exclusive on your role in the investigation.'

‘That's two conditions – and I can't give
anyone
an exclusive – the investigation is ongoing.'

‘Nobody's asking you to give away any secrets – just tell him how you got involved, your contribution to the Task Force. Come on, Professor – I'm asking you to BS him a little; you can do that, can't you?'

‘Like a publisher at a book fair,' Fennimore said. He hung up and checked his watch – he had just enough time to email Josh, shower, change and talk to Kate Simms.