The Advent Killer (3 page)

Oblivious to the elegant living room around them, Hawkins peered into the gaping cavity that had, until the previous morning, contained Jessica Anderton’s heart. It looked as though a small volcano had erupted inside the young woman’s chest, leaving folds of tattered skin splayed back on themselves all around the wound’s edge. The blood pooled in the bottom of the hole had long since formed a crust.

The body was naked from the waist up. The only visible form of restraint that had been used was the black, heavy-duty tape, several layers of which were wound tightly around the victim’s head, covering her mouth.

Hawkins inhaled without thinking and caught a lungful of death through her paper facemask. A deceased human starts to smell pretty bad pretty fast, and the intense odour of shit emanating from this one meant the killer had probably ruptured his victim’s intestine.

She grimaced and moved back, adjusting her feet in their clumsy overshoes mid-step to avoid the spattered blood patterns on the floorboards.

She stumbled. ‘Bollocks.’

Why hadn’t she gone with flat heels?

‘Careful.’ Connor crouched opposite her. ‘This is a goddamn work of art. You OK?’

‘Yeah.’ She rubbed her neck through the crinkly anti-contamination romper suit. ‘Tip top.’

Hawkins wasn’t the squeamish type, having become immune to the gore of murder scenes early in her career. It was imagining how the event had unfolded that she could never relax with.

And, more importantly, how she was going to prevent the next.

The muted clamour of half a dozen Scenes of Crime officers efficiently dissecting the lavish room around them had faded the moment she and Connor had seen what occupied centre stage. She was glad they’d left Barclay in the other room with the cleaning lady who found the body. He’d looked about ready to puke after seeing Tess Underwood. And next to this, the previous two incidents had been nothing more than tender warm-up acts.

She swore quietly at the damaged corpse, wishing herself away.

Anywhere but here
.

‘He must have three hands or something, assuming it’s just one guy,’ Connor continued. ‘Hardly spilled a drop.’ He motioned to the cup and two large saucepans full of blood on the floor. ‘Must have used the mug to scoop the blood out of the chest cavity as he worked. Think it’s the same killer?’

‘Yep, and I’m beginning to think it might be better for everyone that way. One person doing stuff like this is plenty, if you ask me.’

‘Too right.’

Hawkins shook her head, asking under her breath, ‘but why remove the heart?’

Connor shrugged, ‘Who knows with sick bastards like this? It’s probably in a jar in his basement so he can sing to it every night before he has sex with his dog. Did we get much from the first two scenes?’

Hawkins snorted mock amusement, ‘Fuck-all forensically, although that’s not surprising. These days, anyone who watches enough detective drama on TV has a reasonable grip of basic anti-contamination. We’ve got some low-res CCTV of a single male leaving the first scene, but he knows what he’s doing there, too. Plain, dark clothing and a baseball cap. Keeps his head down, avoids streetlamps. It could be Prince Charles and we wouldn’t be able to tell.’

Connor frowned. ‘Weapons?’

‘No. Whatever he used on the first two he brought and took with him. If he’s left anything here, I’ll be mighty surprised.’

The Irishman had run out of questions for now, and returned to studying the corpse as nonchalantly as if it were a part-finished jigsaw puzzle, fingers pinching at the neatly trimmed clump of hair beneath his lower lip.

Hawkins’ attention also shifted back to the body as she observed, ‘you’re clearly used to appraising this type of masterpiece.’

Connor didn’t look up, ‘worked homicide in Belfast for six years before moving to London. But this is the tidiest hack-job I’ve ever seen.’

‘He’s no professional, but his techniques are well considered and highly effective.’

Hawkins would have known that adenoidal voice anywhere. She turned to see Gerald Pritchard, the Home Office pathologist, dressed, as ever, the only way she ever pictured him: anti-contamination overalls zipped down just enough to display the top of an immaculately pressed shirt and tie. The combination of nasal tone and conservative dress-sense had long since earned him the nickname Mr Bean.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Detective,’ Pritchard waved his mobile phone at her, ‘I just stepped out to prime the lab for our pending arrival. But I bumped into your young constable out in the corridor, and he mentioned you’d arrived.’

Hawkins nodded, acknowledging Barclay’s atypically composed presence at Pritchard’s shoulder, before introducing the Pathologist to Connor.

‘These morning conferences are beginning to feel uncomfortably familiar,’ she said. ‘Any revelations so far?’

‘Nothing yet,’ Pritchard replied, ‘although that only reinforces the notion that we’re dealing with the same individual.’ He gestured at the corpse. ‘As you can see, the lower half of the body is still clothed, and I suspect forensic examination will demonstrate that, as with the previous two victims, there was no sexual assault or molestation. Also as before, there are no signs of forced entry to the residence itself, indicating either that Mrs Anderton knew her attacker, or that he’s capable of bypassing modern security mechanisms, such as they are.’

Connor wore a lop-sided grin. ‘Well, at least if we don’t get him soon, he’ll be enough of a celebrity that
Heat
magazine will track him down for an interview.’

Pritchard ignored the joke, but turned to face the DS. ‘Let me show you something.’ He crouched beside the body, indicating a particular spot on the torso with a nitrile-gloved finger. ‘See the discolouration?’

The mark he referred to looked like a small love-bite, almost hidden against the purple-grey remains of Jessica’s chest.

‘Do you recognize this?’ Pritchard looked up at Connor. ‘Sergeant?’

The Irishman stayed silent.

‘You should.’ Pritchard teased back a flap of skin at the edge of the cavity, moving it into what would have been its original position. ‘How about now?’

They all leaned in, staring at the newly exposed detail.

A second mark.

‘Jesus.’ Connor got it. ‘A Taser.’

Hawkins nodded. It was merely confirmation of the fact that: in the last three weeks, serial killing had received a twenty-first-century make-over. Somehow, their quarry had obtained an electrostatic stun gun, currently legal only in the hands of qualified firearms officers like Connor.

The marks denoted points where the Taser’s twin projectile electrodes had lodged close to the skin before delivering a massive electric shock, temporarily shutting down the target’s central nervous system. Similar marks had been present on Glenis Ward’s back: one of the details that had come to light once she’d been removed from the bathwater, and that had led to the revelation she hadn’t killed herself after all.

The Taser connection hadn’t been established until
now, however, because similar marks found on Tess Underwood’s corpse had been rendered inconclusive by the horrific destruction of the skin’s surface caused during her sustained beating. But the ones here on Jessica Anderton’s chest vastly increased the chances that the same weapon had been deployed on all three.

‘Why the excess charring?’ Barclay asked.

‘Good question.’ Pritchard cast an avuncular glance in the trainee’s direction before addressing the group. ‘Mr Barclay has shrewdly observed auxiliary cauterization around the contact points, exceeding the levels observed on the first victim.’

There were blank stares.

Pritchard indicated the blackened edge of the first mark with a finger. ‘This could suggest the use of a more powerful Taser weapon than before, but even in that case I wouldn’t expect to see such distinct carbon residue. Standard Tasers have built-in five-second timers, purely to protect the target from overexposure, but many have the option to override.’ He stood. ‘My professional opinion is that this victim was subjected to a vastly extended electric shock, sufficient to incapacitate for fifteen or twenty minutes; also increasing the risk of heart attack by about forty per cent, incidentally.’

Hawkins swallowed, the nightmare scenario forming itself in her mind. She opened her mouth to speak, but Pritchard continued, his tone solemn.

‘Yes, Detective, I believe that Mrs Anderton was cut open while she was not only alive, but conscious as well.’

The silence that followed Pritchard’s statement stretched as they all stood looking down at Jessica Anderton’s mutilated form.

At that moment, the pathologist was called away by one of the SOCOs, who was on all fours by an ornate marble fireplace. Pritchard made his apologies and moved off.

Hawkins took the opportunity to make some notes, glad to see Connor and Barclay doing the same thing. At least this murder focused their investigation by confirming the consistencies between the first two.

At the top of her page in capitals she wrote SUNDAY MORNING and TASER. Hawkins’ knowledge of such things wasn’t extensive, but she could recognize a body in the stage between rigor mortis, which abated around three hours after death, and bacterial growth that started turning the skin on a dead body green after about three days. Which put this murder into the right time bracket.

In all likelihood Jessica would have died at the same time as the others: One a.m. They’d know more after the post mortem, of course, but if confirmed this would show the killer had put effort into synchronizing all three deaths. So the time itself obviously held some significance for him, while the source of something as arcane as a Taser might be traceable.

Then she began sketching the room. The forensic scene manager would provide detailed assessments of the crime scene, but Hawkins always found her own rough drawings of more use. There was something clinical and cold about the snow-white, inch-perfect printouts provided by forensics, which somehow made it easier to overlook things that may have seemed obvious in the flesh; things that might be rendered more apparent six weeks down the line by a small detail like, for example, being underlined.

She glanced towards the door, just as a man she didn’t recognize entered. He looked vaguely Italian, the wrong side of forty, with wire-rimmed glasses and a black shock of a haircut, most of which was stuffed into a mobcap. She watched his gloved hands searching the outside of his anti-contamination suit for pockets rendered temporarily inaccessible, before settling on being clasped together behind his back.

But those details weren’t what drew Hawkins towards him, or what made her suspect he wasn’t meant to be there.

He wasn’t wearing a crime-scene tag.

She strode over, placing herself between him and Jessica Anderton, cutting off his view. ‘Who are you?’

He squinted at her from behind his glasses. ‘Who’s asking?’

‘This is my crime scene. How did you get in here without ID?’

‘Oh.’ He unzipped his anti-contamination suit, reaching inside. ‘You mean this thing?’ He handed her a worn plastic sheath. ‘Damned clip fell off ages ago, but all the
SOCO guys know me, so I don’t usually need it. You’re acting DCI Antonia Hawkins?’

Hawkins looked at the tag.

She’d just accosted Simon Hunter, one of the Met’s top criminologists, a man she’d never met before because, while he was a regular at high-profile crime scenes like this one, she wasn’t.

He should have been asking
her
for credentials.

‘Oh.’ She handed back the tag. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s OK, really.’ Hunter replaced the tag inside his suit. ‘You have an eye for detail. In this line of work, that’s never a bad thing.’ He held out his hand. ‘Simon Hunter – I’ll be your psychological profiler.’

She shook it, noticing that despite a voice like gravel and crow’s feet like crazy paving, he had the demeanour of a much younger man.

Hunter moved into the room, glancing around at the beautifully co-ordinated seasonal decorations, before shuffling aside to allow a team of six to heave the immense Christmas tree past them and out into the hall. Then he resumed his silent assessment, taking in the corpse before them.

A few seconds later his eyebrows twitched, as if he’d reached whatever conclusion he had been looking for.

‘So.’ He turned to Hawkins. ‘Who else am I talking to here?’

She called Connor and Barclay over and introduced them.

‘Hunter,’ Connor commented, ‘I know that name. You were involved in taking down the Boom Crew gang in Birmingham last year, right?’

Hunter said yes, and they chatted for a few moments about backgrounds and mutual colleagues. The profiler definitely had pedigree.

His profession was largely derided among the Met’s ranks as nonsense that earned a disproportionate wage for those sufficiently flagrant to peddle it. But with a strike rate like Hunter’s, you had to wonder. He was modest, but Hawkins was already familiar with rumours about the pivotal roles he’d played in several high-profile cases.

‘I’ve been reading the case notes,’ Hunter said afterwards, using fingertips to adjust his glasses on his nose. ‘Mrs Anderton’s demise gives us a bona-fide serial killer which means, I’m afraid, that you get me.’

‘Any help gratefully received.’ Hawkins nodded towards Jessica’s sullied form. ‘What do you make of our lunatic?’

‘Well,’ Hunter replied, his enthusiasm going up a notch. ‘Killers like this man are rare, but they do pop up from time to time, and there tend to be common themes within their particular psychological range. Often they choose their victims at random, but there’ll be a unifying thread there, somewhere. Most tend to have a specific focus or obsession: it can be anything from religious extremism to emulation of prolific, real-life psychopaths like Hindley or West. This guy hasn’t really nailed his colours to the mast yet, but each murder so far seems to have been considerably more violent than its predecessor.’

Connor leaned in. ‘What does that tell us?’

‘I call it “the gore escalator”,’ Hunter said, matter of fact. ‘It’s not the behaviour of your average practising psychopath, but it does happen. So, say you ride the world’s fifth largest roller coaster. You probably wouldn’t
then bother riding the sixth or seventh largest, because after the fifth they’d disappoint. The only way you can replicate the thrill is by riding the fourth biggest, then the third, and so on.’ Hunter’s glasses caught the light as he looked round at them all. ‘Well, the same principle can apply to serial murder, and it looks like this guy agrees. What was probably his first time involved placing someone in mortal danger, then simply standing back and watching her drown. He didn’t physically
take
that life; he just chose, at the crucial moment, not to save it. For number two he wants a more visceral experience, hence the increased physical nature of his next attack. Unfortunately for number three here, he’s progressing quickly. Anyway, however detached and merciless his actions, you have to admit that his impulses are still undeniably human. We all need a thrill from time to time.’

‘Endearing,’ Hawkins wasn’t convinced. ‘but I still don’t understand the need for this variety in how he kills them? Why risk changing methods every time, when he could just stick to one?’

The profiler cocked his head, ‘Have you considered that he might be experimenting to keep himself interested?’

‘What?’

‘I’ve got this friend who’s an actor,’ Hunter said pensively, ‘does theatre. Goes on stage every single night, repeats the same actions time and again. But each day he finds some way to change his performance, just enough to stop himself from going mad. The outcome is always the same, but the intricate details are unique. I know our killer’s an extreme example, but I think the comparison stands.’

‘Okay,’ Hawkins considered his answer briefly, ‘but what bothers me is that it’s all so
precise
. Why remove somebody’s heart, why use the Taser; why such a definite time? Surely the details mean
something
.’

Hunter frowned, ‘they’ll have significance, of course they will, but you have to remember the type of mind you’re dealing with here. Importance is such a personal thing; it’s like trying to fathom someone’s superstitions. An obsessive compulsive disorder can make a person switch the light on and off any number of times when they leave a room, but the fear they have of what’ll happen if they don’t is entirely their own. I don’t doubt he does these things because they make sense to
him
, but those explanations wouldn’t necessarily translate to you or me. One a.m. might be the time he lost his virginity, or the moment he found God.’

‘So what are you saying: don’t bother with specifics?’

‘Not at all. I’m saying that we need to find a starting point; a solid piece of information about this man beyond his actions. Something
factual
. Everything will grow from there; but until we have that, we’re drifting.’

Hawkins looked around at the others, realizing that she now appeared to be hounding the man.

She opted to move on, ‘So how do we catch the bastard?’

‘Let’s look at that.’ Hunter cast an arm at the room. ‘You’re finding zero traces at the scenes. That doesn’t happen by accident. Also, each murder appears to have been flawlessly planned and – if you’ll excuse the phrase – executed. That means you’re dealing with an intelligent individual who knows his surroundings. He
feels comfortable and confident here, so I’d restrict your search to London, initially at least. And the lack of an obvious connection between the victims doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t one. Very few people kill without what they consider to be a damn good reason, no matter how detached from reality their motives might be. So my advice would be to find that reason. Then you’ll have a better chance of finding your killer.’

‘What do you mean by
reason
?’ Connor asked.

‘You need to work out why he’s doing this.’ Hunter responded, ‘Are his victims random – irrelevant except as some sort of message to the rest of us – or does he have a list of specific people he wants to kill? Put simply, what’s his problem? Until you find out, it’ll be impossible to call his rationale.’

Connor stared at him, ‘and then?’

‘Then we communicate.’

‘
Communicate,
’ Connor repeated playfully, ‘how? Look for bumper stickers with a mobile number and a message that says “
How’s my murdering?
”’

Hunter laughed without conviction. ‘Not exactly. Granted he won’t be in the phonebook, but I promise you he’s watching the news. I don’t think our friend is finished killing yet and, if he wants to maintain the freedom to carry on, he’ll be keeping a very close eye on you detective types. His main source of information will almost certainly be the media, thereby giving you, detective Connor, an open line of communication.’

‘OK.’ Hawkins cut in, hiding her relief that Connor had asked the question before she had, ‘Let’s say you’re a genius. Tell us why he went for these particular women.
Even if they are random, he’s choosing them somehow. And how about predicting the next?’

Hunter didn’t bite, except to catch her look and return it. ‘I’m here to speculate on
how
, rather than
what
your killer might be thinking, and to predict behaviour given precise future circumstances. As for specifics, Detective, surely that’s your department.’

There were uncomfortable seconds of silence as they traded intent.

‘Touché,’ Hawkins submitted eventually, deciding it was best not to fall out with the profiler on their first meeting.

‘Sorry about that,’ Pritchard re-joined them, greeting Hunter with the nod of a familiar and respectful colleague.

Hawkins addressed the pathologist: ‘Found something?’

‘Unfortunately not.’ He frowned over at the line of SOCOs slowly disappearing behind the sofa. ‘We still haven’t established DNA or prints common to both previous scenes, so there’s no reason to expect anything different here. We’ll keep looking, of course, but none of the genetic evidence so far matches anything on record. So until you can provide us with a suspect, its use is limited.’

‘Thanks for the reminder.’ Hawkins was well aware that while modern DNA identification could link someone to a crime scene using even the most miniscule trace, you still needed a host to match it with.

She scanned the Andertons’ front room. As usual, the place had changed dramatically since Scenes of Crime
had arrived. It looked like a second-rate TV make-over show had invaded: great chunks of wallpaper had been torn away, plastic markers had been used to section off search zones, while small pipes protruded through the wooden floorboards, identifying the former positions of two small radiators.

If the killer had left any trace at all, these people would find it.

Connor asked, ‘So what are the chances he’s just some burn-out we’ll find next week in a bed-sit somewhere, having topped himself?’

‘Sorry, Sergeant.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘His mental state appears quite stable. Anyone who can create three scenes like this without leaving traces or getting caught in the process is no candidate for an impending schizophrenic episode.’ He brightened. ‘But, like I said, once you find that reason …’

Hawkins wished she could share his enthusiasm.

After a few minutes discussing the more tedious aspects of investigative bureaucracy, their meeting had finished. Hunter asked for copies of the updated case notes once they were ready, and left, handing out cards on the way. Connor moved across and began talking to his friend from SOC, while Barclay went outside to start doorstepping the neighbours for contact details. Hopefully one of them would know the whereabouts of the victim’s husband. So far their attempts to contact the politician had failed. His mobile was unobtainable; his Westminster office unmanned. At least they should be able to get an answer now that business hours had resumed. If the couple’s affectionate public image was genuine, he’d be
distraught, so they needed to find him before news of his wife’s death leaked through other channels. Or before he had too great a head-start.

Hawkins thanked Pritchard, watching him retreat towards a huddle of his colleagues in the far corner. She recognized some of them, like the scientific support officer whose name escaped her, and Pete Munford, one of their regular crime scene photographers. A third man was probably the new public relations official.

Pritchard positioned himself on the far side of the group and glanced over at her.

Hawkins’ anti-contamination suit was two sizes too large and hardly flattering, but at least it would prevent Pritchard from indulging his regular habit of staring at her legs. She smiled to herself, resisting the urge to go over and expose his lecherous tendencies in front of his peers. Instead, she turned and walked over to the tall bay window, staring down at an ever-expanding crowd of hacks, neighbours and passers-by drawn like flies to dog shit by the SOCO van blocking the road. She glanced at the sky, annoyed that for the first time that day the downpour had stopped.