Broken Dolls (A Jefferson Winter Thriller) (22 page)

The second she stepped through the door, she ripped off the wig and threw it on the floor, tore off the hairnet, shook her blonde hair free, then tied it back in the most severe ponytail I’d ever seen. She unbuttoned her jacket, shook herself out of it, then dumped it on a chair.

‘Give me a cigarette. Now!’

She snatched my pack from me, lit a cigarette, took a long drag. Her hand was shaking. For once Hatcher kept his mouth shut.

‘You did good,’ I said. ‘Real good.’

‘Don’t, Winter. I was awful. Worse than awful, I was useless.’

‘Winter’s right,’ said Hatcher. ‘You did a good job.’

Templeton opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell, but common sense kicked in and she closed it again. Telling your boss to go to hell did nothing to improve your career prospects. I knew all about that one. Templeton took another drag and when she exhaled all the stress she’d been holding on to drifted away on a cloud of smoke.

She glared at Hatcher. ‘Don’t ever make me do anything like that again.’

Templeton looked around for somewhere to lose her cigarette, but couldn’t see anywhere. She gave me a dirty look then dropped the butt into my coffee. The cigarette went out with a sizzle and a hiss. Without another word, she turned and stomped from the room.

‘She’ll calm down eventually,’ said Hatcher.

‘I hope so.’ I was staring down at the cigarette butt floating in my cup and wishing she hadn’t done that. The coffee had been really good. Just the right amount of bean, just the right strength, and it hadn’t been stewing in the pot too long.

‘You realise how many holes there are in this little illusion of yours, Winter? If anyone talks to Amanda Curtis then it’s game over.’

‘That’s why Amanda Curtis is currently staying at a luxury spa hotel under a fake name. You guys are paying, by the way.’

‘And what about the staff at Dunscombe House? Are we going to send them all off to a luxury spa, too?’

‘The illusion doesn’t have to hold up for ever. It just has to hold up long enough for the submissive partner to think one of her dolls is dead.’

‘When the media work out we’ve been using them, they’re going to crucify me. You realise that, don’t you?’

‘Not if we catch the unsubs. Then you’re a hero.’ I grinned. ‘You know something, Hatcher, you worry too much.’

‘And you don’t worry enough. So what now?’

My grin disappeared and my face turned serious. ‘Now we wait.’

43

Nobody gave me a second look when I walked into the incident room because everyone was too busy with the telephones. One-sided conversations came at me from all sides. Lots of yes sirs and yes madams, interspersed with the occasional ‘can you tell me exactly what you saw?’ The downside of the press conference was that there were plenty of members of the public coming forward with information, and almost all of it would turn out to be useless.

At the front of the room was a gallery of photographs pinned to a board. Five women smiled happy carefree smiles on the top row, four stared blankly from the bottom row.

Someone had replaced the photographs I’d taken with identical copies of the originals. Everything was the same. The swollen eyes, the slack faces, the bleached look that had as much to do with the subjects as it had to do with the way the police photographer had shot them. My eye was drawn to the blank space beneath Rachel Morris’s picture. I could imagine what she was going through right now. The agony, the terror, the uncertainty. The uncertainty was the real killer, not knowing what was going to happen next.

People use patterns and routine and familiarity to help them get through the day and when those routines are removed the end result is chaos. Everything Rachel had held as solid and true had been taken away and replaced by a new world order she had no control over. Every aspect of her life would now be dictated by her captors. When she slept, when she ate, what she did, what she wore. The elements that made Rachel who she was would be stripped away until all that was left was a broken doll. It was the psychological equivalent of a lobotomy.

Sarah Flight, victim number one, had been held for four months.

Margaret Smith, victim two, had been held for two months.

Caroline Brant, victim three, had been held for three months.

And Patricia Maynard was held for three and a half months.

The amount of time the victims were held bothered me because it appeared random. When dealing with organised offenders, there was no such thing as random.

The first victim should have been held for the shortest length of time. There was a logical reason for this. With the first victim, the unsub would finally be acting out fantasies he’d been developing for years. He would be making things up as he went along and invariably things would get messy and mistakes would be made. It was common for an element of panic to come into play. He would hurry and dump the victim sooner than he’d like. He would do a lot of things wrong, and when he’d cooled down he would promise himself that next time he would get it right.

Because the one thing you could be certain of was that there would definitely be a next time. Now that he’d crossed the line there was no turning back. As the unsub gained in confidence, as the fantasies progressed and evolved, as techniques were perfected, the amount of time the victims were held for increased. The unsub would want to take his time, he would want to disappear into his fantasy and stay there for as long as possible.

In this case the first victim was held longest. Even factoring in my belief that there were earlier practice victims didn’t help. There was no pattern. But something needed to happen to make the unsub decide it was time to lobotomise his victims and dump them. There needed to be some sort of trigger. There was a reason behind everything an organised offender did, an underlying logic. The trick was understanding that logic.

Broken dolls.

I thought about this. It was possible the dominant unsub held on to his victims until he had broken their spirits. Once that had happened they would be no use to him. The dominant was a sadist and if he didn’t get the reaction he craved it would be time to move on to the next victim. The theory was a good one. It didn’t explain why he lobotomised the victims, but it accounted for the variations in the amount of time he held his victims. Everyone had a different pain threshold. It also explained why Sarah Flight was kept the longest. The unsub wouldn’t have been so sure of himself back then. He would have held back. He would have pulled his punches.

I moved along the wall to the map of London and stared at it, trying to find patterns but not seeing any. The green pins indicated the last known location of the victims and the red pins indicated where they were dumped. The single red pin in St Albans stood out because it was an anomaly. My relationship with anomalies was a love/hate one. Love them because it means the unsub has stepped outside his comfort zone. Hate them for the same reason. That anomaly was only useful if you could figure out why the unsub had stepped outside his comfort zone.

One of the green pins had been moved since the profile meeting. Hatcher’s people had been visiting bars in London’s more upscale areas, showing pictures and talking to staff. They’d got one hit so far. Sarah Flight was last seen in a bar in Chelsea. The pictures had jogged the memory of a barman. He remembered she’d been on her own and his impression was that she’d been stood up. Just like Rachel Morris. This was good news since it meant the abduction MO was holding up. On the downside, there was still no sign of the unsubs’ practice victims, and, although there were plenty of people who’d been kicked out of med school, Hatcher’s people had yet to come across anyone who matched the profile.

I was so engrossed in the map I didn’t hear Templeton sneak up behind me. It was her perfume that gave her away. The uniform was gone and she was dressed casually in jeans and a blouse. Her expression was neutral. She had a great poker face. She intrigued me because I had no idea what she was thinking.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

Her voice was as neutral as her expression. There were no clues in her tone, no tells to indicate her mood. ‘We’ve hit the lull,’ I replied.

‘The lull?’

‘It happens in every investigation. Everything that can be done has either been done or is being done. All the bases have been covered.’

‘There’s always something else we can do.’

I nodded to the map and the pictures, to the whiteboards covered with scribblings in a variety of handwriting. ‘If you can see something I’ve missed, I’d like to hear it.’

Templeton studied the boards for a while then shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Not a single thing.’

I stared at the map a little longer, but still couldn’t discern any patterns. The idea that we’d missed something nagged at me. The lull was always accompanied by doubt. Had we done everything that could be done? Had we actually covered all the bases? Inaction always made me uneasy. In a perfect universe Hatcher would have unlimited resources and everything would happen that much faster. But this wasn’t a perfect universe, and the reality was that every investigation hit a lull, often more than one.

‘You’ll have to forgive me eventually,’ I said to Templeton.

‘I already have.’

I looked at her. ‘Your lips are saying one thing, but your body language is telling a different story.’

‘I’ll admit it, I was pissed off with you, Winter, but I’ve got over it. The press conference was a good idea.’

‘It’s only a good idea if we get a result. Otherwise, it’s a dumb idea.’

We went back to staring at the boards.

One minute.

Two minutes.

‘We don’t talk much about the subservient partner,’ Templeton said eventually.

‘So talk,’ I said.

‘It’s like she’s the invisible woman. Like she doesn’t exist.’

‘She exists,’ I assured her. ‘But the fact you’ve brought this up means you’ve been thinking about it. So, let’s hear what’s on your mind.’

‘Cutting Jack is a control freak, right?’ She looked at me for validation and I nodded for her to go on. ‘He has her emotionally locked down to the point where she’s scared to breathe. He belittles her at every opportunity, calls her names, bullies her. Basically, he’s waging a psychological war, and she’s the enemy. She learnt long ago to keep her opinions to herself because anything she says is met with ridicule and hostility. The fact is that she barely talks at all these days because she’s too terrified to speak.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the only person she has contact with is Cutting Jack. He won’t let her see anyone else.’

‘That’s pretty much how I see it,’ I said. ‘Okay, here’s something else for you to think about. Did she end up like this because of her relationship with the unsub? Or was she already like this before they met?’

Templeton smiled. ‘The fact you’ve brought this up means you’ve been thinking about it. So, let’s hear it.’

‘My money’s on the latter. I’m betting she suffered similar abuse as a kid, most likely from her father. That’s why she was attracted to the unsub in the first place. Unresolved daddy issues. We’re talking moths and flames here. When the unsub walked into her life she didn’t stand a chance.’

The door suddenly clattered open and we both looked over to see Sumati Chatterjee burst in carrying a laptop. Her face was flushed and she was breathing hard. Whatever had got her agitated was urgent enough for her to choose to sprint up the stairs rather than wait for an elevator. She spotted me at the front of the room and made her way over.

‘I’ve got a name for you,’ she said. ‘Tesla.’

44

Rachel heard Adam’s footsteps on the stairs, slow, measured footfalls softened by the carpet. This was someone with time on their side, someone who had total confidence in how things were going to play out. Rachel dropped the telephone receiver and it hit the wooden floor with a plastic clatter. She scrambled to her feet and sprinted to the front door, grabbed the knob and twisted hard. The door wouldn’t open. She tried again and again, twisting and pulling and banging her fist against the wood. Adam was calling out ‘Number Five, Number Five’ in a sing-song voice. He reached the landing of the first flight then slowly descended the stairs to the hall.

She looked around, desperate for a way out, saw a corridor off to her right and ran down it. Every door she passed, she tried. All of them were locked. Adam was getting closer. She could hear his footsteps behind her. Rachel reached the door at the end of the corridor. This one was locked, too. She was trapped. Nowhere left to run. Rachel thumped a fist against the door and howled her frustration. She kicked it with her bare feet. Adam was right behind her now. She smelled his aftershave, heard his breathing.

‘Number Five will turn around.’

Rachel didn’t move. She stood there with her palms flat against the door and her forehead resting on the wood, completely defeated. The sharp pain in her side was so sudden it stole her breath away. She collapsed to the ground, her nerve endings buzzing and sparking. Somehow she managed to turn her head. She saw Adam hovering over her, saw the cattle prod in his right hand. Rachel curled into a ball and shut her eyes. She just wanted to die and for all this to be over. She’d never wanted anything so badly.

Adam used the cattle prod again, keeping it pushed into her stomach until her screams turned to sobs. Rachel bucked and thrashed, pain coursing through her body. She tried to suck in a breath, but her lungs wouldn’t work. The more she tried to get air, the more her chest tightened. The world turned grey around the edges, grey slowly fading to black. Rachel felt herself slipping towards unconsciousness and did nothing to stop the slide.

The first thing she saw when she regained consciousness was Adam’s smile.

‘Number Five will get up and go back to the basement.’

Rachel struggled to her feet. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, a major test of endurance, like climbing a mountain or running a marathon. She stumbled slowly back along the corridor. More than once she almost fell, but the walls helped her stay upright. She kept going, one uncertain footstep after the other. She didn’t trust her legs to hold her up. The electricity had upset her brain chemistry, causing her to twitch involuntarily, violent spasms that took her breath away.