Last Kiss (19 page)

‘Is there anything else about Pierre rocking your boat?’

‘Apart from his age, he wasn’t professionally successful or flush with money. Alongside the other variants in my report, he does stand out. Depending on what we discover in Paris, he could be particularly important.’

‘Go on.’

‘I doubt he’s the first victim. His killing has all the hallmarks of having been carried out by someone who had killed before, but there’s a chance he might have been the first serious adult relationship our killer experienced. After that, her choice of victim looks like it changed in age and profile.’

‘Why do you think that was?’

‘I have a theory, but it’s no more than that.’

‘Tell me anyhow.’

‘Perhaps, despite Pierre’s status, he was no longer needy
enough for her. Rich, successful men, those with partners, even children, are perceived to have it all, but many are still looking for more, and in some ways, because of their drive, are needier than most.’

‘But in your report you said the killings are emotionally based, and obsessional.’

‘They are, but the needier the victims, the more dependent they are on her. It’s a game of balance and control. She seeks them out, men ripe for manipulation and control.’

‘What’s id, ego and super-ego?’

‘Freudian theory.’

‘Which is what?’

‘The id is the unorganised part of the personality, which contains our basic instinctual drives and is present from birth. As humans, if we were to depend on the id alone, we wouldn’t be able to operate as social animals. If you’re hungry, for example, walk into a room and see someone else eating, you simply take their food. The ego is the one in the centre. It seeks to please the id, but in a way that will be beneficial in the long term, rather than bring grief in the short term. It acts as a mediator between the id and the super-ego.’

‘Kate, I’m still lost.’

‘Let’s say you need to urinate.’

He looked at the queue for the toilet cubicle. ‘I wish you hadn’t mentioned that.’

‘If you were relying on the id, you would urinate here, just as a baby would wet their nappy, responding to the desires and needs of id. But you’re not a baby. You have learned through your super-ego that socially you should urinate in a bathroom.
The super-ego knows this, but the id still wants to urinate. The ego acts as a mediator between the two. It tells the id to wait. Are you with me so far?’

‘I think so, but my id is getting impatient. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’ He stood up to take his place in the toilet queue.

While he was gone, Kate turned to look out of the window again, the blue sky bright above the clouds. Her mind drifted to past holidays with Declan and Charlie. An unexpected pang of sadness hit her hard. Perhaps it was a good thing, going away for a couple of days, leaving the normal structures and routines of life. Her mother used to say everything happened for a reason – a constant willingness on her part to accept certain things without question. Kate saw things differently: she invariably wanted to know
why
, and there wasn’t always an easy answer. She was relieved to see Adam return to his seat beside her.

‘You were talking about Mr Freud.’

‘Glad you’re still interested!’

‘I’m like a sponge, Kate. I love learning new stuff.’

She laughed, but continued, ‘I guess you could say the super-ego reflects the internalisation of cultural rules, mainly taught by parents, the father, according to Freud, but it also takes on the influence of non-parental figures, educators, teachers, people we see as role models.’

‘All good so far.’

‘Anyhow, things have moved on since Freud’s theory of division. The id, the ego and the super-ego are still relevant today, but the model has been updated and revised, incorporating other elements, such as neurobiology, early attachment and environmental data.’

‘You’re getting a bit technical for me. How is this relevant to our killer?’

‘Within neurobiology, we know the brain develops at a massive rate from babyhood to fully developed maturity at the age of twenty-five, and certain stages are identified. We have the development of our use of language, helping our role as social animals, and also the progression of the frontal lobes, providing higher functions, giving us the ability to plan, to hold off being impulsive, and, interestingly, the area of the brain known as the temporal gyrus.’

‘What does that do?’

‘It stores autobiographical memory. Negative interference, severe trauma in childhood, can adversely affect how the mind develops. If a child experiences trauma at an early point, the temporal gyrus doesn’t develop as it should, and the child will have difficulty establishing a coherent sense of self.’

‘They get fucked up.’

‘Not a term I would use but yes, and if the damage occurs very early on, it can be devastating. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of Tronick’s Still Face experiment?’

‘No, but I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me about it.’

‘It illustrates how young babies are extremely responsive to emotions and reactions, and the social interactions they get from the world. During the experiment, a mother sits down face to face with her baby, who is about twelve months old. She plays with the baby, who is safely strapped in a high chair, engaging with her, giving positive facial and other physical expressions when the child smiles, points to objects in the room, and also makes signs and sounds to greet her, with the baby giving
greetings back. What’s happening is that parent and child are working together to co-ordinate their emotions and intentions. The positive feedback and interaction is what the baby is used to. Dr Tronick gets the mother to turn away from the baby, and when she turns back, she keeps her face perfectly still, showing no emotion. The baby girl quickly picks up on this, then uses all of her abilities to get the mother’s attention back, smiling and pointing, because she’s used to the mother looking where she points to, and reacting positively when she smiles. The baby also makes oral sounds, putting both hands up, but still the mother doesn’t react. The baby then fires herself back in the high chair, scrunching her face, visibly upset, almost asking, “What’s happening?” Very quickly, she lets out the screechy high-pitched sound we’re all familiar with babies making, and keeps on doing it to the point of utter distress. The whole thing happens over a couple of minutes, but even in that time, you can see how the lack of response from the parent causes the baby great anxiety.’

‘It sounds cruel to me.’

‘Maybe, but what happens next is vital. The baby is feeling the stress of the situation, waving her arms about, her head completely turned away from the mother, and at this point, she loses control of her posture. The little girl has essentially turned away from the world as she knows it.’

‘Jesus.’

‘The mother comforts the baby, and soon everything is back to normal.’

‘That’s a pretty shitty experiment.’

‘But it tells us that babies will adapt their behaviour and emotional development according to attachment and their
environment. From a child’s emotional development, what you have is the good, the bad and the ugly. The good is positive reinforcement from and interaction with a parent or parental figure, the normal stuff most parents do with their children. The bad is what the baby in the experiment receives, but that infant soon overcomes it when the mother adjusts her behaviour back to the norm. The ugly is when you don’t give the child any chance to get back to the good, and they become permanently stuck in the ugly situation. The damage is done, and the only means of helping an individual move on is prolonged psychological assistance.’

‘And you think, Kate, this is what happened to our killer?’

‘The level of violence, destruction and emotional damage evident in the killing of Rick Shevlin and Pierre Laurent is acute. Behaviour like that is always gradual. It is the end result of many years of dysfunctional, negative and damaging elements, primarily childhood-trauma-based. If our killer was in her mid-twenties when she met Pierre Laurent, she would have become, in neurobiology terms, a developed adult – damaged, but developed. We have potential indicators as to how she has moved on since. What we don’t have is the before, the baby to child, and the child to adult. Therein are the answers to the
why
.’

‘In the meantime, we have a killer capable of killing again.’

‘Yes, and despite her suffering in early development, including probably sexual abuse, and possibly physical and mental abuse, she is utterly dangerous. She is capable of carrying out extreme acts of violence, up to and including death, especially if someone doesn’t behave as she wants them to, or attempts to stand in her way.’

TODAY THE SHADOW is different. Today the shadow belongs to me. It had felt like an age since I took a self-portrait. They are part of my identity now. Concrete proof that I exist, that I’m real. There are times I doubt it, which is partly why I grab life with such force, no time for trivia or small-minded people.

I find looking through the lens puts things in perspective. People are very trusting of photographers. They don’t mind if you stop in the middle of a busy street, or look up to the sky, or sit in hotels, or outside cafés, hiding behind your camera lens. It was in a park that I took the image. Trees remind me of my start in life. I find the woods seductive. It was lucky the sun was shining. If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have seen the gleam of the
silver drawer handle discarded on the grass, left in the park like unwanted litter. You need the eye to recognise how something small can be central to a perfect picture.

In the centre of the handle, there was an exquisite mirror. It was tiny, but it caught the sunlight, splintering the beams into a display of colour. Picking it up, I polished it clean. I knew straight away what I was going to do with it. I could see the photograph before it happened. I laid the handle on the grass facing upwards. When I leaned over, I saw my miniature self reflected in the mirror, a tiny person. I had my back to the sun, with my shadow looming like a giant, the miniature me caught inside the handle.

I am good with details. My memory is better than most, mainly because I’m prepared to face up to things, including the dark and ugly parts of life. Some people don’t believe babies can remember things. I don’t agree. I recall the first time the witch stuck the nappy pin into me, stabbing it into my upper leg. I imagine my young leg was nice and fat. I remember the sharp pain, and my wail. If I looked shocked, she would have liked that. She took joy from my pain, my reactions, part of her pleasure. Sometimes I was my own worst enemy, deciding not to show my weakness, withstanding the suffering with barely a grimace. The more I did that, the more she persevered. I soon switched tactics, screaming like a lunatic, giving her all the satisfaction she needed.

There are some parts I don’t recall, but those I’ve lost are re-created in my mind’s eye. The imagination is a powerful tool, often better than memory. While imagining, you can slow things down, look around and see who else is watching. When I
imagine the witch plucking me from my mother’s arms, before burning her, I see him there too. He is standing back, lurking. I was the witch’s gift to him. A replacement for the girl left burning in the woods.

The witch said she followed my mother alone, that he had no part in it. He would have wanted her to think that way. I was groomed for his sexual satisfaction, so I knew him better than she did.

In the Grimms’ tale of Hansel and Gretel, the witch helps the boy put meat on his bones, nourishing him to be devoured. That’s how I see my early life, like the caged Hansel, being fed for someone else’s needs. Some say the stepmother and the witch in the fairy-tale were one and the same, but in both roles she was evil, first in the abandonment, convincing her husband to leave the children in the forest, and second, in her cannibalistic desire to eat the boy.

In my case, he took me before the witch thought I was ready. He smelt the release of pubescent blood. She didn’t like that, blaming me for encouraging him. She called me a slut, like my mother, too attractive for my own good, kicking me out of the bloodied bed.

The witch could change like the weather, and, like the pain she inflicted, I became suspicious of her kindness, the side of her that drew you in with false flattery. Once she had you hooked, she ripped you apart. A sick game, mocking my stupidity for thinking that somewhere among the horror, she occasionally cared.

ONCE THEY LANDED at Charles de Gaulle airport, Kate rang Charlie and was relieved to hear him happy at the other end of the phone. A part of her felt guilty about being away, not because of the work but because she knew she had other reasons for being there.

Walking towards the taxi rank at the airport, they discussed Ian Morrison’s opinion on the depth, trajectory and intensity of the wounds found on the bodies of Rick Shevlin and Pierre Laurent.

‘I can understand his difficulty connecting the two, Kate, especially basing his comparisons on visual images.’

‘But at least he said there was a strong possibility of the same type of knife being used.’

‘It’s building up a picture, I guess, and not a pretty one.’

Soon they were speeding away from the airport, through the suburbs and industrial areas on the outskirts of Paris. Kate had been to the city a number of times, but it was Adam’s first visit. The drive into the centre would take them at least half an hour. Initially, she was happy to keep her silence, watching the Parisian world race by, but finally she said, ‘I can’t believe you haven’t been to Paris before.’

‘I doubt I’ll get much of a chance to turn into a tourist.’

‘You have a packed agenda for us, and I’m assuming it doesn’t include sightseeing.’

‘You assume right, Kate. We’ll be meeting Inspector Girardot at the Hôtel du Maurier, where Pierre Laurent’s body was found –’ he looked at his phone ‘– in less than an hour, then on to Police Headquarters for a review of the case files. After that, we’ll call at the art college where Pierre was a student. There’s a teacher who knew him well. That should be interesting. Sometimes people give information more freely with the passing of time. They don’t feel as threatened.’