Death Watch (24 page)

‘Yes.'

‘That Dr Shastri might have been right when she suggested that the post-mortem injuries were part of a predetermined ritual.'

‘But if
I'm
right, an' he killed her before he was intendin' to, what could have been the reason for it?' Woodend persisted.

‘He may have suddenly lost his temper with the girl, and killed her without actually meaning to.'

‘An' what would have made him do that?'

‘The first thing you must train yourself to understand is that, to him, the girl is not important in herself,' Stevenson said.

‘I understand that already,' Woodend replied.

Stevenson frowned. ‘I'm not sure you do,' he said. ‘At least, not fully. To get a clear picture of what the predator is like, it's necessary to go back to what he probably did in childhood.'

‘All right,' Woodend agreed.

‘There are a number of documented cases of killers who started to torture when they were no more than children themselves,' Stevenson continued. ‘They typically began with ants and flies. They'd burn the ants by holding a magnifying glass between them and the sun, and they'd pull the wings of flies and watch, fascinated, as the fly spun around and around, totally helpless.'

‘I knew kids at my school who did that,' Woodend said.

‘Yes, it is remarkable how much cruelty lurks in even the most benign of us,' the doctor said. ‘There is a difference, however, between the boys you knew and the man who eventually became our predator. He will have graduated from insects to small creatures like frogs and birds, and then to domestic animals – dogs and cats. And though he might have gained greater pleasure from killing the bigger creatures – mainly because they were better able to make clear to him their awareness of what was being done to them – his attitude to all the creatures he tormented would have been essentially the same.'

‘Jesus!' Woodend said.

‘The reason it will have remained the same is that they were all nothing but objects to be used for his pleasure. And his attitude will not have changed when he progressed to human victims. That is why he could do things to Angela which would have turned any normal person's stomach.'

Woodend shuddered. ‘You're right, I don't think I did quite understand before,' he admitted. ‘But I'm certainly gettin' the picture now.'

‘But if the girl in herself is unimportant, the killer's
perception
of what she is – or what she represents, which is often the same thing – is vital,' Stevenson continued. ‘He wants her to react in a particular way. He
expects
her to react in a particular way. And if she doesn't, he is very likely to view it as her wilful attempt to spoil his fun. That is when he may lose his temper to such an extent that he kills her before he planned to.'

‘But Angela was smothered,' Woodend pointed out. ‘That doesn't seem like the act of an angry man.'

‘He may have seen smothering her as a disciplinary measure,' Stevenson said. ‘Taking her to the brink of death and then pulling her back, as a way of teaching her a lesson. But the problem with going to such extremes is that it is easy to get it wrong. And that could be what happened. He may simply have misjudged it.' The doctor paused for a moment. ‘This is all pure speculation on my part, you realize. I would need to study the man before I could say more.'

‘Now that you know exactly what was done to Angela, do you still think that the image he presents of himself to the outside world will be of a perfectly normal, well-balanced man?' Woodend asked.

‘Oh yes,' Stevenson replied. ‘What he did to Angela only
reinforces
my original impression. He is a man wearing a mask, you see. But detecting the mask is made more complicated for you by the fact that at least part of the mask is
real
.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘He doesn't just
act
normal – he
is
normal in many respects. But deep inside, he is a wounded animal, who suffered a trauma – or series of traumas – during the course of his childhood from which he has never recovered.'

There was one more question that Woodend was finding it difficult to ask, though he knew that he must.

He swallowed deeply, and said, ‘How much time have we got?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘How long will it be before he kills Mary Thomas?'

Dr Stevenson pressed his fingertips of his right hand against the fingertips of his left, and the expression on his face said that he was finding it as difficult to answer the question as it had been for Woodend to ask it.

‘Even if you're wrong about Angela's death occurring earlier than was intended – even if he killed exactly when he planned to – I don't think it will be as quick this time,' he said finally.

‘Could you explain to me
why
you think that?'

‘Tell me, Chief Inspector, do you remember the first time you made love to a woman?'

‘Of course I do! It's not somethin' you're likely to forget, is it?'

‘It was all over very quickly, wasn't it?'

‘Well, I suppose you could say …'

‘You were so eager, now that you were finally getting what you'd wanted for so long – what you'd dreamed about for so long – that you rushed blindly into it, and found yourself ejaculating almost before you'd got started. Am I right?'

‘Close enough,' Woodend said uncomfortably.

‘The second time was much better for you, wasn't it? You had more idea of what to expect, and forced yourself to take it much slower – to really relish the experience. Yes?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's what I think our killer will be doing with his second victim. Taking his time. Relishing the experience.'

T
he moment Rutter walked through the main entrance of the Pendleton Clinic, he felt that something was wrong. At first he could not pin down the source of the feeling, because, on the surface at least, the clinic looked to him to be perfectly fine. And then he put his finger squarely on the problem. It was not that the place looked
perfectly fine
– it was that it looked
perfect
!

There was no sign of wear and tear in the foyer. Nothing seemed used. It was almost as if the building had only opened its door for business the second before he had arrived.

And the people were perfect, too. The nurses crossing the foyer in their tailored uniforms could have been modelling them on the catwalk. The doctors had the clean-cut muscular look of Olympic athletes.

All in all, the clinic did not resemble any working hospital Rutter had ever seen. Rather, it presented itself as an almost Hollywood-inspired picture of how a top-flight hospital
should
look – and if Dr Kildare had suddenly walked into the foyer, he would have been only slightly surprised.

Rutter showed his warrant card at the reception desk, and said he'd like to talk to whoever was in charge.

The almost-too-pretty receptionist who was manning the desk favoured him with a radiant smile, picked up the phone, chatted briefly to someone called Sonia, and then pressed a button in front of her.

A good-looking porter in a smart blue uniform appeared at the desk almost immediately.

‘Take this gentleman to the administration suite, please,' the receptionist said. ‘I've just made him an appointment with Mr Derbyshire.'

The porter led Rutter down a long corridor which was as new and shining as the rest of the hospital seemed to be.

‘Are you ex-job?' Rutter asked.

‘I beg your pardon,' the porter said.

‘A lot of people involved in this kind of security work are ex-bobbies,' Rutter explained.

The porter laughed. ‘Not me,' he said. ‘I'm an actor. I'm just resting at the moment.'

‘“Resting”?'

‘Between roles.'

Now why aren't I surprised? Rutter asked himself.

The director of the clinic was called Lawrence Derbyshire. He was a roundish, pinkish man with a shiny bald head and a complacent expression which stretched all the way from his chubby forehead to his double chin. When they shook hands on the threshold of Derbyshire's plush and fussy office, Rutter suspected he wasn't going to like the man, and after five minutes of listening to him drone on about how wonderful the clinic was, that first impression had been more than confirmed.

‘Here at the Pendleton Clinic, we try to cater for the better class of patient,' the director was saying at that moment.

Rutter wondered what Woodend would have replied to that. Probably something like, ‘The better class of patient, eh? What does that mean, exactly? That they have more exclusive illnesses?'

But he was not Cloggin'-it Charlie, and so contented himself with saying, ‘In other words, fee-paying patients.'

‘Well, of course,' the director agreed, sounding surprised that such a clarification was even needed. ‘It is quite enough for our patients to have to deal with their illnesses. The last thing they need is to find themselves trapped in an environment with people who do not aspire to the same tastes or attitudes. That is why we engender an atmosphere here which is both comforting and familiar, stable and—'

‘Very impressive. I must remember to put my name down on your waiting list,' Rutter interrupted. ‘But the reason I'm here at the moment is to check on your security.'

‘There is no need for that,' the director said. ‘Our security is perfect. It has to be. Some of our patients are quite famous, you know.' He turned to indicate an array of photographs of people on the wall behind him, some of whom Rutter vaguely recognized. ‘
Really
quite famous,' he added for emphasis. ‘And if they thought that we were lax enough to allow every grubby little pressman with a camera to come sneaking in here whenever he—'

‘How secure are your drugs?' Rutter asked.

The director blinked. ‘Our drugs? Who mentioned drugs?'

‘I did. Just now,' Rutter said. ‘Why do you ask? Has anyone mentioned them before?'

‘No, of course not. Our control system has always been second to none. In fact, we've recently improved it.'

‘If it's second to none, why did you
need
to improve it,' Rutter wondered aloud.

The director had started to sweat, and the globules of moisture were beginning to roll down his fat cheeks.

‘We are constantly striving to improve our already excellent standards,' he said.

‘So you've had no drugs go missing in … shall we say … the last six or seven months?'

‘No,' the director croaked.

Lying toad! Rutter thought.

The man sitting opposite DCI Mortlake and DS Stevenson in Interview Room Three was wearing a brown suit and a tie with horses' heads on it.

‘It says here that you're a mechanic, Mainwearing,' Mortlake said, looking down at his notes.

The big bugger who pulled me in last time might have been rough with me, but at least he had the courtesy to put a ‘mister' in front of my name, Peter Mainwearing thought. ‘I
am
a mechanic,' he said aloud.

‘You know, it's a couple of months since I last took my car into a garage, but I could have sworn that when I did, the mechanics were all wearing overalls,' Mortlake said.

‘That's how I remember it, the last time I was there, too,' Rosemary Stevenson agreed.

‘Yet here we have a man, picked up from his
place of work
, dressed in a suit that wouldn't look out of place at a wedding. Strange, isn't it?'

‘Very strange,' Rosemary Stevenson said. ‘I wonder what the explanation could be. Perhaps he's such a bad mechanic that nobody sends him cars to work on any more.'

‘I've got plenty of work on,' Mainwearing said. ‘I just saw no point in starting it today.'

‘I see,' Stevenson said. ‘That explains the lack of overalls. But what it
doesn't
explain is why, when the officers arrived to bring you in, they found you all dressed up with nowhere to go.'

‘I had somewhere to go,' Mainwearing said.

‘Where?'

‘Here. I knew you'd bring me in for questioning. That's why I saw no point in starting work. And since I wasn't going to be working, I saw no point in putting on my overalls, either.'

‘Now that is interesting,' Mortlake said.

‘Very interesting,' Stevenson agreed.

‘What made you so sure we'd pull you in?' Mortlake demanded. ‘Was it because you knew we'd already talked to witnesses who'd seen you in the act of kidnapping the girl?'

‘There are no witnesses to it,' Mainwearing said.

‘That's what
you
think,' Mortlake told him. ‘But you're wrong. Three people saw you. Get that, Mainwearing? Three!'

‘There are no witnesses because I didn't do it.'

‘Says he didn't do it,' Mortlake told Stevenson.

‘Well, he would, wouldn't he?' Stevenson replied.

‘Where's the girl?' Mortlake shouted.

‘I don't know.'

‘Do you have an alibi for yesterday afternoon?'

‘Yes.'

‘Let me be quite clear on what I mean by that, Mainwearing,' Mortlake said. ‘When I ask if you've got an alibi, I don't expect you to produce one which involves any of your perverted, seedy friends. If you're to convince me it's genuine, the people who vouch for you will have to be of unquestionable respectability – and I'll expect there to be at least three of them.'

‘Like the three witnesses who saw me snatch the girl?' Mainwearing asked, with an amused smile on his lip. ‘Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there aren't three. In fact, there's only one.'

‘How very convenient for you! Who is he? Your bookmaker? A limp-wristed barman of your acquaintance?'

‘My probation officer.'