Unlucky For Some (25 page)

“I take it that neither of you will have a problem with that? I do hope I’m right, because I argued very persuasively that you wouldn’t, and that we would be making a little bit of history in a good cause.”

“No problem whatsoever,” said Lloyd.

“No,” said Judy. “No problem. I just hope I can justify your faith in me.”

“No one’s expecting miracles, Judy,” said Yardley. “One would be nice, though.”

“So what happens if I beat someone up in the cells?” asked Lloyd. “Or sexually harass a WPC?”

“The complaint will be dealt with by a senior officer to whom you’re not married,” said the ACC.

That seemed sensible, Lloyd supposed.

“I expect you’ll want a few minutes to get used to the idea—I’ve asked Dr. Castle to meet with you in fifteen minutes.”

“So how do you feel about it?” Lloyd asked, as they got back to their office, having walked the short distance in silence.

“Guilty.”

Lloyd frowned, and sat on the corner of her desk. “Why?”

“Because I know you’re having a hard time with it, however much you pretend you’re not. And because it’s all very well having a Chief Constable who wants more women in the senior ranks, but I seem to be the only woman he ever wants there. He keeps handing things to me on a plate.”

Lloyd snorted. “For one thing, it’s pretty obvious that it was the ACC who pushed this through, despite the Chief Constable’s reservations. And for another, what he’s handed to you on a plate is one very hot potato.”

“Do you think he’s setting me up to fail?”

“No—that isn’t what I meant at all! I’m just pointing out that he isn’t handing you this chance because you’re the token female—it’s because he thinks you’ll get things done and say all the right things to the media at one and the same time.” He grinned. “Even though you are the token female,” he added, and got hit.

“Get off my desk,” she said. “That’s an order.”

Lloyd smiled, and went back to his own desk.

“So how hard a time
are
you having with it?” she asked.

In a way, he was having a harder time with his reaction to it than to the situation itself. Some rogue gene passed down through generations of male dominance made him feel emasculated because Judy was going to be his boss, and that made him feel ashamed. He had found himself hoping that the press didn’t find out that they were husband and wife, which they hadn’t, so far, but as the ACC had said, they would be making a little bit of history, so he didn’t suppose it would be too long before they did find out.

“I’ll get used to it.”

“I’m hoping you don’t have time to get used to it.”

Keith sat on the edge of the sofa, his fists clenched as if holding reins, as the runners and riders streaked past the camera.

It turned out that Michelle had indeed arranged for them to go away this weekend, and she had been anything but pleased when he told her he’d agreed to work on the Monday. And he’d no sooner smoothed things over with her about the day lost from their weekend break than he’d seen the runners and riders for this race. It had seemed like too good an opportunity to let pass, so now their holiday money was galloping toward the finish, and he was wondering why he wanted to live so very dangerously.

“And it’s Mayday from Baby’s Done It, with One More Time coming up fast on the outside. Still Mayday from Baby’s Done It, Mayday from Baby’s Done It . . . One More Time is challenging hard for second, and it’s Mayday from One More Time now, with Baby’s Done It beginning to lose ground to Jumpandjive. It’s still Mayday, holding off a strong challenge from One More Time, as Jumpandjive moves into third, with Baby’s Done It continuing to lose ground, being caught now by Between the Sticks. And, at the line, it’s the appropriately named favorite Mayday who wins the seventeenth Heaven’s Gate Maiden Handicap, followed by One More Time second, Jumpandjive third, with Between the Sticks just overtaking Baby’s Done It to get fourth place. The favorite, Was She Worth It, is just crossing the line now, in a disappointing sixth place, with Strive'n'strive and When I’m Sixty-Four bringing up the rear. So, to recap, first, Mayday, ridden by . . .”

Keith smiled, and sat back, his hands behind his head. Perhaps it was an omen, because he was gambling on May Day in more ways than one.

Tom had been told about Yardley’s departure, and Judy’s promotion, and had passed the news on to the small executive team. Now, he sat round the table with Judy, Lloyd and the profiler, thinking of all the things he could be doing with his time instead of listening to the pedantic Dr. Castle. Like finding out how Lloyd had taken it, for one.

“I have to stress,” Castle began, “that anything I say now could be contradicted by something that I discover tomorrow. Profiles are arrived at by analyzing the type of crime committed, the method, the areas in which the crimes take place, the actions of the criminal himself, the observations of witnesses and victims, the physical evidence and so on. I have only had time to make what I would hardly dignify by calling even a rough analysis.”

“That’s understood, Dr. Castle,” said Judy. “But even the roughest analysis could point us in the right direction.”

“And it could point you in entirely the wrong direction,” warned Castle. “Arriving at a profile without an in-depth scrutiny of all the available data is the next worst thing to simply jumping to conclusions.”

“I think,” said Lloyd, his face entirely serious, “that at the moment, we would simply like your theoretical input to add to our own empirical data. A sociopsychological overview, if you will.”

Tom didn’t dare catch Judy’s eye. Lloyd would have been in trouble with her for that before she was his boss.

“Very well,” said Castle, entirely unaware of Lloyd’s mockery. “If we can look, in the first instance, at where the crimes have taken place, we see that in each case they occurred in an area where commercial businesses operate in the evening. And in each case, one or more of those businesses is owned by Waterman Entertainment. That suggests, on the face of it, that the perpetrator may have some connection with Waterman Entertainment.”

“Do you think he’s more likely to work for Waterman than to be a customer?” asked Tom.

“There is little data from which to extrapolate a possible socioeconomic group for the perpetrator, and it seems that Waterman Entertainment prides itself on appealing to all strata of society, so the status of the perpetrator is fluid.”

Heaven help us, Tom thought, sneaking a look at his watch. I only asked a simple question.

“But I tend to think it’s an employee for the simple reason that people usually go out in couples or groups for an evening’s entertainment. I think that the perpetrator would find it difficult to explain an absence to a companion, whereas absences from work, while more difficult to achieve, could be more easily explained. However, the dinner jacket—unless it was worn to confuse us—does seem to suggest a customer rather than an employee. But the whole thing is highly speculative, as Waterman Entertainment outlets seem ubiquitous in Bartonshire, and their proximity could be mere coincidence.”

If Tom had followed that, then it was nothing more than they had arrived at themselves without using so many syllables to do it. Lloyd made a business of noting something down, and looked with feigned, deeply concerned interest at Castle, as he continued. Judy would kill him if he kept this up.

“But it’s also the case that this person has an intimate knowledge of the areas in which the murders occurred—the avoidance of any surveillance cameras, the knowledge of his victim’s habits, and so on, shows that. Now, either this is as a result of having worked in those areas for some time and getting to know them and their inhabitants, or of careful and lengthy reconnaissance by someone not connected with these areas. The latter would require the perpetrator to be away for very long periods of time, and if that is the case, he is, I suspect, answerable only to himself.”

Oh, here we go. He’s a loner with a chip on his shoulder. Well, you could knock me down with a feather, squire, honest you could. How do you boffins do it? Tom knew exactly how Lloyd felt.

“But even so,” Castle went on, “to acquire such intimate knowledge of every single one of the factors involved in avoiding detection would be a very tall order. I tend to come down on the side of its being someone who has personal and detailed knowledge of the area already, and who only has to pick his victim, as it were. Which again points to someone who works or has worked in all three areas, in the evenings.”

“A Waterman employee,” said Judy.

“Possibly, but there are other interpretations, even at this early stage. The perpetrator is a man, I think, partly as a result of the witness to the first murder saying that he saw and heard a man, partly because the tone of the letters suggests a male writer, but more in view of the pathologist’s reports on the second and third murders. In the second murder, he noted that a woman would be unlikely to have the necessary strength to disable a healthy, fit man quickly enough to prevent his fighting back, and there is no physical suggestion that he did. And he was of the opinion that a man—a right-handed man—was likely to have inflicted the stab wound on the third victim.”

“What about the fact that he’s used a different method of killing each time?” asked Judy.

“Ah—now that is very unusual indeed, and of course makes my job more difficult, because the method is one of the pointers to the personality of the perpetrator. I think he’s adopting what we might call a best-practice policy.”

Yardley certainly might call it that, thought Tom. He doubted that Judy would. But maybe it was some sort of infection that got you once you reached the higher ranks. Still—she was just an Acting Superintendent. Perhaps she was immune. He hoped so.

“He is asking himself what the best way to kill this particular person would be. A man reaching back into his car for the bag of money he intends depositing in a night safe puts himself in a perfect position to be strangled from behind. A man lying semi-conscious, leaning against railings, would have to be handled in order to be strangled—his head would have to be lifted, or he would have to be strangled manually. Either way, it would require direct contact, and he could wake up, bite, fight back. Even if he didn’t, handling him directly means that traces could be left at the scene, and on the perpetrator’s clothing. Much simpler, quicker and easier just to stab him.”

“You’re making him sound like a professional killer,” Judy said.

Castle nodded. “I think in a manner of speaking, he could be. You’ve been asking people about their hobbies, I believe, and there are those whose hobbies include killing. Look at the physical evidence—the fishing knife used in the third murder, and the choke-collar used in the second. The knife speaks for itself and the choke-chain could suggest a familiarity with training dogs—something a huntsman might well use to train foxhounds. Of course, anyone could buy the items used, but not everyone intent on murder would make those their weapons of choice.”

Tom was very glad that young Stephen Halliday had finally been cleared of suspicion, because that would have been another nail in his coffin. He dispatched animals. But not rabbits that ran out in front of his motorbike. And anyway, everyone seemed to shoot in Stoke Weston. “Waterman employs a lot of people from the village he lives in,” he said. “And that’s real hunting, fishing and shooting territory. Farming, too.” Despite himself, Tom was growing genuinely interested in what this man had to say, and he could see from his face that so was Lloyd. “So there’s no shortage of candidates there.”

“The victims seem random,” Dr. Castle went on. “Male and female, no sexual assault, no theft. That, and the circumstances surrounding the murders, suggests that they are chosen purely for ease of killing, which in turn suggests that the murders themselves are almost incidental. They are like moves in a game. And that leads us to the letters.”

“What do you make of them?” asked Judy. “Psychologically?”

“What they say is unimportant, I think. The most significant point is that they are addressed not to the police, but to a man who came to prominence by solving a series of murders for which the wrong man had been arrested, tried and convicted. We have to ask ourselves who might want to challenge him to this sort of duel.”

“He did witness the first murder,” said Tom. “Couldn’t that be what prompted the duel?”

“It could. But I believe you have entertained the idea of the first murder having been engineered in order that he might witness it. If that is the case, we would be looking for someone who perhaps had a score to settle in the first place.”

“We’ve eliminated the possibility of anyone connected with Challenger,” said Judy.

“Have you looked at any of the police officers connected with the original inquiry? Could one of them be working here now?”

There was a silence as they digested the possibility that one of their own was murdering these people. Tom wondered briefly about Yardley himself, but no—he hadn’t worked on the south coast. Had he? He’d read his profile when he’d been appointed, but he couldn’t be sure. Was there more to his stepping down from this inquiry than they thought?

“No,” said Judy. “We haven’t.”

“It’s something you might want to check. If this man transferred, he could have worked in Bartonshire for almost twenty years, walking the beat, perhaps, in those towns. He would know forensic procedures, and how to avoid them. He would have the theoretical knowledge at least of how best to kill with the least likelihood of detection, and he could well harbor resentment for having been made to look foolish. Given that we are dealing with a disturbed personality—when he heard that Mr. Baker was here, he might have devised this plan to get his own back.”

They all looked at one another, all, Tom knew, trying desperately to think if any of their long-time colleagues had worked down south at any time.

“But while it’s worth checking out, I think it’s probably fanciful,” added Castle. “For one thing, I seriously doubt that the first murder was part of this challenge, or I think a letter would have preceded it. The fact that the first letter came
after
that murder suggests, as DI Finch said, that Mr. Baker’s presence at the scene prompted what followed. I offer it merely as a line of inquiry that you might want to check out.”