Die With Me (10 page)

‘A chunk of hair has been removed,’ she said, still holding his gaze. ‘It’s been cut off cleanly with a sharp blade, exactly like the other girl.’

‘Islington, Wandsworth, Streatham, Richmond, Chiswick and Ealing.’ Tartaglia pointed with a pen at the large map of Greater London that Wightman had fixed to the white board in the main office, the locations marked with drawing pins. ‘That’s where Laura, Ellie and Gemma lived and died. Marion Spear also lived and died in Ealing. Is there any connection we can make at this point?’

There was a long pause before Wightman replied: ‘The scale of the map makes the locations look quite close together but it’s actually an enormous area. Doesn’t make much sense to me.’

‘Me neither,’ Donovan added. ‘Laura from Islington ends up dead in Richmond; Ellie, from Wandsworth, in Chiswick; and Gemma, from Streatham, in Ealing. Apart from the fact that he’s killing the girls a good few miles from where they each live, I can’t see any pattern either.’

The only response from Dickenson was a loud, throaty sigh. It was late afternoon and Donovan and Wightman were perched on a bank of empty desks near the board. Dickenson sat to one side on a chair, feet stretched out in front of her, toes resting on the rail of another chair. Her hands were clasped awkwardly over her stomach and she looked as if she had only had a few hours of sleep, eyes struggling to focus, yawning intermittently. Tartaglia wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to send her home, although he knew she’d bite his head off if he suggested any such thing.

All his team’s efforts so far had concentrated on researching the victimology of the three girls, trying to find a link between them, be it their schools, clubs, doctors, dentists, and suchlike. It was early days, but so far they had uncovered nothing to suggest that the three girls’ paths had crossed during the previous two years. There had to be a link but they were missing it.

‘Have any of you come across geographical profiling?’ Tartagalia asked.

‘We used a profiler once for a rape case when I was in Lewisham,’ Dickenson said, stifling another yawn. ‘He had some really interesting things to say.’

‘You mean, like Cracker, sir?’ Wightman asked.

Tartaglia shook his head. ‘You’re talking about psychological profiling. Geographical profiling is totally different.’ He tapped the map with his pen. ‘This isn’t anything like the real thing. Nowadays it’s all done on a computer and you need a minimum of five locations for proper analysis. But it’s still worth visualising where the victims lived and where they died, in case something leaps out. Also, the location of a crime’s a hard fact. It’s not open to interpretation and it tells us a lot about the criminal.’

‘You mean why Tom chose the places he killed the three girls?’ Donovan asked. ‘Local knowledge, that sort of thing?’

‘Exactly. All three murders took place in the general west London area. The churches were all pretty disused and perfect for his purpose. Given what we know of him from the emails, the places weren’t chosen at random. Which means he either knows them or spent time finding them.’

‘For what it’s worth, the churches are all close to tube stations on the District Line,’ Dickenson said. ‘Perhaps that’s how he’s getting around.’

Tartaglia nodded. ‘Maybe. Another thing that’s interesting is that all three killings happened during the week, in the mid to late afternoon. This also applies to Marion Spear’s death. Our killer must be somebody who is either unemployed or who has a relatively flexible working arrangement. He can take time off without it being noticed. It’s possible he avoids the weekend because he himself has commitments, a family maybe.’

‘Or else, because there are fewer people around on weekday afternoons,’ Wightman said.

Donovan nodded. ‘And the girls are less likely to be missed by their families. They were all supposed to be at school when they went to the churches.’

‘What about the fact that all three crime scenes are churches?’ Wightman asked. ‘Maybe the whole church thing turns him on.’

Tartaglia shrugged. ‘The church is certainly part of the whole theatrical ritual which he used to lure the girls to him. But at this stage, I’m not reading anything more into it.’

‘You don’t think the churches mean something special to him?’ Dickenson asked, looking surprised.

‘Anything’s possible,’ he replied, with a shrug. ‘But sitting here, how can we possibly tell? If we start wondering about his psychological motivation, we get into the realms of fairytales. Anyway, even if churches have some sort of special significance for him, how does it help us find him?’

‘You don’t have much time for psychological profiling, then?’ Dickenson asked, looking sceptical.

‘As far as I’m concerned it’s an arcane art and its predictions are about as scientific as a tabloid horoscope.’ He gazed at her tired face for a moment, feeling a combination of frustration and sympathy for her. ‘We’d all like to have a magic bullet and I wish I could tell you that it worked. But you only have to look at the screw-ups that have taken place in some well-known cases to see that it can be very misleading.’

‘Won’t you be consulting a psychological profiler?’ Donovan asked, with a wry glance in Dickenson’s direction.

‘At some point, maybe,’ he said, noncommittally. He knew he would probably be forced to bring one on board eventually, if only to satisfy his superiors that he’d ticked all the right boxes. But as far as he was concerned, any decent, experienced detective could add as much value as a psychological profiler, although it wasn’t fashionable to say so.

‘But surely they can help in narrowing the field of focus,’ Dickenson said, irritably, refusing to give up.

‘That’s the theory. But like everything, it depends on the quality of the input. Garbage in, garbage out.’

Tartaglia sighed, wishing that Dickenson hadn’t pushed him. But he might as well be honest, even if word of his heresy somehow filtered back to Cornish, who was a staunch believer. ‘Look, I’ll give you a perfect example. The bloke we used on the North London Strangler case was worse than useless, even though he’s got a list of degrees the length of your arm and is reckoned to be one of the top profilers in this country. He…’

‘But there’ve been some fantastic books on profiling,’ Dickenson interrupted. ‘Surely, they can’t all be rubbish.’

‘I’m not saying they are, although many of the case studies have been rewritten with the benefit of hindsight. My point is that we don’t need the distraction. Going back to the North London Strangler case, the profiler, or Behavioural Investigative Analyst, as we’re supposed to call them now, as if it makes them sound more scientific, was way off the mark. He wasted a lot of our time. He told us that the man we were looking for – a violent rapist-turned-murderer – was in his early to mid-twenties, sexually dysfunctional, lived alone and had difficulty making friends. In fact, Michael Barton was in his late thirties, popular with his mates and a right Jack-the-Lad with the ladies. His wife was so happy with his performance in the sack that she didn’t question what he got up to late at night, when he supposedly took the dog out for a walk.’

‘But you caught him,’ Donovan said.

‘No thanks to the profiler. If we’d followed his advice, we’d still be looking for the murderer and, no doubt, there would have been further victims.’

‘How did you get him, then?’ Wightman asked.

‘The area of the attacks was very small, which was striking. Most murderers don’t have unlimited time. They need to feel comfortable with the territory, know where’s safe, where they’re unlikely to be disturbed and how to make a quick getaway. With Barton, we drew our own conclusions, based on common sense. We focused on all locals, irrespective of age and background, with previous convictions for assault, particularly of a sexual nature. Barton popped up on the radar screen as he had been arrested several years before on two separate charges of attempted rape, although both victims refused to go to court and the charges were dropped, which was why there was no record of his DNA. It was before the change in the law.’

Dickenson still looked doubtful. ‘But Gemma Kramer, Ellie Best and Laura Benedetti are all under twenty. Surely, that tells us something about the killer?’

Tartaglia shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. Tom may be targeting all sorts of women. But the only ones he’s successful in luring to their deaths happen to be in that age group. Perhaps they’re self-selecting.’

‘You mean because they’re young, naïve and easily suggestible,’ Donovan added, appearing to agree with what he had said. ‘They were also in a vulnerable state of mind. We know that all three were being bullied at school and one was on Prozac. People like that aren’t thinking straight. How else can he con them into believing that they should go and top themselves with him?’

Tartaglia nodded. ‘Maybe we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. For every victim, how many failures, and what’s the profile of each of the failures? Maybe he goes after older women too but they don’t buy his story. It’s too early to jump to conclusions, we don’t have enough information yet, which is why I’m keeping an open mind on Marion Spear.’

‘A woman in her late twenties or early thirties, like Marion Spear, wouldn’t fall for his crap. And she’d be more likely to report him,’ Dickenson said emphatically, shifting in her chair and folding her arms tightly across her chest. ‘Why would he take the risk?’

Donovan shook her head. ‘We know nothing about her yet. Maybe there’s a reason.’

‘But the way Marion Spear died is different to the other three,’ Dickenson said sharply. ‘And there was no suicide note. The verdict was accidental death.’

‘I agree,’ Tartaglia said. ‘But she fell to her death from a high place and lived and died in Ealing, only a few blocks away from where Gemma was killed. Personally, I find that interesting. Certainly worth a closer look.’

As he spoke, he knew it sounded flimsy. But it was impossible to explain gut feeling to most people. All he had to pin it on were a couple of lines in one of the emails to Gemma that kept niggling at him. Tom had asked Gemma if she found high places exciting, if she got a thrill looking down from a tall building or a cliff. Still trying to justify to himself why he felt Marion Spear’s death worth looking into, Tartaglia had re-read the email earlier that morning after coming back from the cemetery.

Do you feel the attraction of the void? Do you feel the pull as you look over the edge of a high place, knowing that you’re only a second away from death if you choose?

‘Are you going to exhume Marion Spear?’ Wightman asked, interrupting Tartaglia’s train of thought.

He shook his head. ‘We need to find out a lot more about her background. For now, let’s concentrate on the three confirmed victims. What about where the girls lived?’ He glanced over at Donovan. ‘Sam, any thoughts?’

She stared at the board for a moment, ruffling her hair with her fingers. ‘Well, Gemma only lived a couple of miles away from Ellie, which is a coincidence. But I can’t see any link with Islington.’

‘Maybe he has a job where he travels around London,’ Wightman said.

‘Or maybe he met them over the internet and where they live is irrelevant,’ Dickenson added, still sticking doggedly to her original theory.

‘But I told you, he didn’t meet Gemma over the internet,’ Donovan replied, with an exasperated look in Dickenson’s direction. ‘At least not according to what was on her computer. There was some other connection, wasn’t there? I mean, what holds true for her, may also hold true for the others.’

‘We’ll know for sure once we get the results back from the analysis of Laura and Ellie’s computers,’ Tartaglia said, just as Cornish’s tall, slim figure appeared in the doorway. He was carrying a shiny black leather briefcase, which Tartaglia had never seen before, and looked sleek as a Savile Row tailor’s dummy in a well-cut, silver-grey suit.

‘Mark, sorry to interrupt. I need a word.’

Cornish’s manner was tense. He rarely made the trip from Hendon down to Barnes and Tartaglia felt instantly wary. Leaving the group still speculating about possible interpretations of the locations, Tartaglia followed Cornish out of the room and down the corridor to Clarke’s office.

Cornish shut the door behind them and gestured towards Clarke’s chair. ‘Have a seat.’

‘I’m fine here,’ Tartaglia replied, feeling even more suspicious. ‘You take the chair. They’re like gold-dust in this office.’

He rolled the chair over towards Cornish and perched himself on the edge of the desk. Cornish studied it with distaste before brushing the seat with his hand and sitting down gingerly. He opened the briefcase and thrust a folded copy of the
Evening
Standard
at Tartaglia. ‘You’d better read that.’

As Tartaglia unfolded it and saw the front-page headline, he felt his stomach knot. ‘Metropolitan Police Hunt Serial Killer’. How on earth had they found out so quickly? It was incredible how journalists managed to worm their foul tentacles into the most unlikely places. Spite and jealousy often played a part and some people would do anything for a bung or a free lunch. But it would be almost impossible to trace the source. Wherever the truth lay, for the press to have most of the details at such an early stage was very bad news.

‘I’m sure the leak’s not from here,’ he said, quickly scanning the first few paragraphs. ‘None of the team would…’

‘Of course not,’ Cornish snapped, although his expression was less than convincing. ‘But it’s definitely someone on the inside. They’ve got all the bloody details.’

Tartaglia searched down the page again. ‘Except for the lock of hair and the GHB.’

‘That’s something, I suppose,’ Cornish said bitterly. He snatched back the paper, shoved it in his briefcase and flipped the locks several times, as though he was securing a top-secret document. Dumping the case down on the floor, he stood up and started to pace the small room, hands stuffed in his trouser pockets. ‘But they know about the rings and the fake marriage ceremony. That’s far too much, in my book.’ He turned back momentarily to Tartaglia with a pained look. ‘And they’ve given him a bloody moniker. “The Bridegroom”, I ask you.’

‘That’s how the killer signed himself in the final email.’