Cold Killing: A Novel (39 page)

“But if that’s so, how come he outsmarted you in the end? He’s probably already setting himself up with a new life of privilege and luxury, while you’re sitting here with us, preparing to spend the rest of your life rotting in some prison hellhole. So tell me, Sebastian, who’s the smart one now?”

Sean studied Gibran’s reaction, watching as his smile fell away, his lips narrowing and growing pale, his once relaxed fingers beginning to curl into claws. At last Sean had found a way to peel Gibran’s facade away.

“I mean, Hellier practically handed me your head on a plate. He read you like a cheap novel, predicted your every move, and when the time was right he served you to me on a platter.”

Sean watched Gibran’s breathing grow shallow and then accelerate.
Keep pushing him. Push him until he explodes and fills the room with shrapnel fragments of undeniable truth.

“He made a fool out of you,” Sean stabbed at him. “He’s made you look like a damn fool. A predictable idiot, and there’s nothing you can do about it. He’s won.”

Sean waited for the eruption, certain he had done enough to provoke the truth out of him. But no arrogant rant of self-importance came; no declaration of the genius of his crimes spilled forth. Instead, to Sean’s horror, the smile returned to Gibran’s face.

“That’s very presumptuous of you, Inspector, to declare the winner before the game’s even over,” Gibran replied, calm now.

“This is no game,” Sean answered, “but it is over. For you, everything is over.”

Sean knew he was wasting his time. All he was doing was providing Gibran with a stage to perform on. Tired of listening to him talking in riddles, he decided to end the interview.

“Mr. Gibran, is there anything you want to tell me? Anything at all?”

“I know what you are,” Gibran said without warning.

“Excuse me?” Sean asked.

“I smell it on you the way I smelled it on James. You can hide it from others, but not me. You were made what you are by circumstance, just like James. Only you’re not like him. He controlled his nature, his unacceptable instincts, but you suppress yours. You live in fear of your true nature, never embracing it. Such a waste.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“They trained you like a wild animal in captivity,” Gibran continued, his voice aggressive now, assertive but still controlled. “Taught you to conform, beat you into submission with endless counseling and behavior-suppressing drugs. You could have been so much more than you are.”

“You know nothing about me,” Sean snarled.

“I know that every time you look at your children, you think of your own childhood. It was your father, wasn’t it? Your abuser. It was your father who touched you in those special places, who told you it was a special secret only you and he shared. And as you grew older and didn’t want to be touched, it was your father who forced himself on you, who beat you when you said no.”

Sean could feel the blood draining from his face. How did Gibran know? How did he know?

“You’re finished.” He spat the words at Gibran.

“I was born the way I am,” Gibran snapped back. “You were made by circumstances, but made you were. How long can you deny your nature? How long before your own hands reach out toward your children? How long before you and they share a special secret they must never tell Mummy? That’s why you were able to see James for what he was, because every time you look in the mirror you see James Hellier, and all the other so-called killers you’ve locked away, staring back at you. But you never saw me, did you? You and he are mere reflections of each other, whereas I am something you could never begin to comprehend.”

Sean tried to jump to his feet, his hand already clenched into a fist. He felt a heavy arm across his chest. Donnelly eased him back into his chair.

“Play your games, if you like,” Sean said, back in control of himself. “But it’ll take more than games to stop you from going away for a very long time.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Your arrogance is your undoing,” Sean told him. “You didn’t think you could make mistakes, but you have. DS Jones is alive and she will recover. And when she does, she’ll confirm it was you who attacked her. Why? Because she saw your face. You wanted her to see it was you. You wanted her to see her killer. You wanted them all to see your face. Wanted it to be the last thing they ever saw. You were too proud of yourself to hide behind a mask. The moment you allowed DS Jones to escape, it was over for you.”

“I doubt DS Jones had more than a fleeting glimpse of her attacker,” Gibran argued. “And I understand the attack was at night, probably in poor light. How could she be sure of anything? Her identification would be useless.”

“And there’ll be security tapes from the underground,” Sean continued. “Tapes that will show you following Linda Kotler. Now that we know who to look for, it’ll be only a matter of time before we find you on those tapes.”

“So maybe you can prove I was in the area. Hardly enough to convict a man of murder.”

“There’ll be tapes from the club Daniel Graydon was in the night he died. And what about the bouncers there? What if they can pick you out of an identification parade?”

“What if they can, Inspector?” Gibran smirked. “You have nothing.”

“You’re forgetting about the visit you paid DS Jones in Intensive Care. The police constable you killed there. You were still wearing his uniform when you were arrested. Mistakes, Sebastian. Too many mistakes. Too much evidence to explain away. Not to mention the syringe taped to your chest.”

“A harmless, empty syringe,” Gibran explained.

“We’ve already spoken to the medical staff. If you’d injected air into Sally’s bloodstream it would almost certainly have caused a heart attack or stroke. She would have died and nobody would have known it was murder. With DS Jones dead, you could have melted into the background, leaving Hellier to take the fall.”

“Theories and hopes, Inspector. That’s all you have.”

“And the uniform you were wearing?”

“Then charge me with impersonating a police officer.”

“You killed a man and took his uniform.”

“Prove that, can you? That I killed him? Do you really have indisputable evidence of that? My fingerprints on the murder weapon? My DNA on his body? Maybe CCTV of me in the act, so to speak? But you don’t, do you?”

Sean sat silently considering how best to play his final trump card, trying to guess how Gibran would react. Would he grow angry and reveal his true self? Would he be humbled and confess? Would he continue his calm ambiguous denials? Slowly, deliberately, he pulled a transparent evidence bag from the pocket of his jacket, hanging over the back of his chair. He casually tossed the bag containing Sally’s bloodied identification across the table.

Sean saw Gibran glance down at the bag. For the first time he thought he saw a hint of confusion in his face.

“DS Jones’s identification,” he said. “Found hidden under the lining of a desk drawer in your home. How did her ID find its way into your house?”

Gibran lifted the evidence bag and studied the contents. “It appears I’ve underestimated your determination,” he said.

“How did it get there?” Sean repeated the question he knew Gibran couldn’t answer.

“We both know that’s not important,” Gibran answered. “You will try and convince a court that I took it as a trophy. That I took it because of a need to maintain a connection to my victim. That I used it to help relive the night when she should have died. They may believe you. They may not.”

“And what will you tell the court?” Sean asked. “What will you tell them to convince them you’re not what I say you are?”

Gibran leaned forward, smiling confidently. Sean thought he could begin to smell the same animal musk leaking from Gibran he’d smelled on Hellier.

“For that, Inspector,” Gibran said smugly, “we’ll all have to wait and see. Won’t we?”

D
onnelly joined Sean in his office, where the pair of them sat listening to the recording of Gibran’s interview. When it concluded, Donnelly was first to speak.

“He told us fuck all.”

“He was never going to talk,” Sean said. “But I needed to be near him for a while. To watch him. Listen to him.”

“And?” Donnelly asked.

“He’s our man. No doubts this time. Hellier was nothing more than his pawn.”

“Jesus,” Donnelly said. “He must have spent years planning this. What sort of man spends years planning to kill strangers?”

“One who never wants to stop,” Sean answered. “He knew we would catch him eventually, unless we weren’t looking for him, and we’d only stop looking for him once we had someone locked up. Someone we were convinced was guilty of the murders. It nearly worked too. I took the bait like a fool. Let my feelings toward Hellier blind my judgment. I almost sent the wrong man to prison.”

“No one would have cried too much for Hellier,” said Donnelly.

Sean shook his head. “That’s not what bothers me,” he said. “The only safe place for Hellier is behind bars, but I almost missed Gibran, almost handed him the whole game. If Sally hadn’t survived, who knows? Maybe we would never have caught him.”

“But we did catch him,” Donnelly reminded him. “
You
caught him.”

“I know, but how many people would still be alive if I hadn’t wasted so much time chasing Hellier?”

“None of them,” Donnelly answered unwaveringly. “Gibran was a bolt of lightning. He came from nowhere. We couldn’t have caught him any sooner. It wasn’t possible. We did what we always do. We followed the evidence, concentrated on the most likely suspect. We shook trees and waited to see what would fall out. And eventually the right man did.

“If it had been anyone else in charge of the case, Gibran would still be out there and Sally would be dead. You need to know that.”

“All the same, this doesn’t feel like a success.”

“Does it ever?” Donnelly asked.

“No. I suppose not.”

“By the way, Steven Paramore turned up.”

“Who?” Sean asked, the name wiped from his memory.

“Remember, the guy recently released after serving eight for the attempted murder of a gay bloke?”

“Yes. Sorry. I remember now.”

“Immigration nicked him coming back into the country on a false passport. He’d been enjoying the pleasures of Bangkok for a couple of weeks. Another suspect eliminated—not that you ever thought he was, right?” Sean didn’t answer. “How did you know, by the way? How did you know Gibran went after Sally?”

“Something Hellier said, that it could only be one man. Only one man knew so much about him. Then I remembered Sally telling me about her meeting with Gibran, the things he’d said about Hellier, deliberately feeding our suspicions. It suddenly became so clear to me. Clear who the killer was and even clearer that he would have to get to Sally, even if it meant revealing that Hellier wasn’t the real killer. At least he’d have stopped us discovering it was him. You know, if Sally hadn’t survived the night she was attacked, Gibran would still be out there and we wouldn’t have a bloody clue. Sally getting out alive collapsed the foundations of everything Gibran had built.”

“Why do you think he chose Hellier?” Donnelly asked.

“Somehow he knew what Hellier was. The moment he met Hellier, he knew. There was no way he could have pinned his crimes on some clean-living man on the street. He needed someone we would believe in. Hellier was perfect. Maybe he even found out about Hellier’s real past. Who knows? But once he found him, he showed his patience, his control. He spent years watching him, learning all he could about him. Even made sure he was employed by Butler and Mason so he could keep him close. And Hellier never suspected a thing, not until right at the end.

“I can’t prove it yet, but I’m pretty damn sure Hellier’s solicitor will turn out to be a company man too. Butler and Mason would have been picking up his tab, not Hellier. No doubt he was all too happy to keep Gibran informed of the investigation’s progress.”

“That would have been useful,” Donnelly said.

“Very,” Sean agreed. “All we have to do is try to prove it, somehow.” He shook the doubts away, for now at least.

“The hairs from Linda Kotler’s flat?” he asked. “I’m still waiting for someone to explain how Hellier’s hairs found their way into the crime scene.”

“Aye,” Donnelly said sheepishly. “I was meaning to tell you about that. Remember when we met Hellier at Belgravia?”

“Of course.”

“We took his body samples . . .”

“I’m listening.”

“Including some head hair . . .”

“Oh dear,” Sean said with a wry smile. “Whose idea was that?”

“Mine. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep a couple of hairs for ourselves, leave them at an appropriate scene if things started getting desperate.”

“So you planted them at the Kotler scene for Dr. Canning to find? Very nice.”

“No,” Donnelly said, “not me. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t convinced about Hellier, so I held them back, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I gave them to Paulo to look after, just until we needed them . . .”

“And Paulo was convinced about Hellier and decided not to wait?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“He told you all this?”

“Aye. Once you nailed Gibran, Paulo ’fessed up. No need to panic, though—I’ve already made it look like an administrative balls-up. As far as anyone will ever know, Paulo accidentally sent the wrong samples to the lab. He mistook the samples taken from Hellier for hairs gathered from the Kotler scene, so no surprise they found a match. But it’s covered. Trust me.”

“I take it he understands he’ll have to explain this administrative balls-up in court at the trial?”

“Aye,” Donnelly answered. “He doesn’t really have much choice.”

“Has he learned his lesson?”

Donnelly knew what he meant. “He was trying to do the right thing, but he won’t do it again, not without checking first.”

“Fine,” Sean said. “I’ll deal with it myself, before anyone has a chance to make more of it. I’ll make sure he knows when to and when not to give an investigation a helping hand.”

“I owe you one,” said Donnelly.