White corridor (21 page)

‘What form do these indications take?’ asked Bryant.

‘There is a dark vibration in the air that can be read with a mind trained to such fluctuations of the spirit,’ said Maggie. ‘Maureen and I have both felt it very strongly. It could mean that someone has died as the result of being trapped in these freezing temperatures,’ said Maggie, ‘but I don’t think so. Different types of death elicit different readings. The quiet ebbing away of a life force is very different from the sensations created by an act of violence. One might compare these feelings to seismic readings, the former a series of gently undulating waves, the latter jagged and tightly packed. I should have known you were here. The signs always grow stronger in your presence, Arthur. Your life is so often at risk. Now they will read the signs for you.’

At the centre of the circle, perched beside a folding card table and preparing for the impromptu séance, sat Maureen, a fleshy, sallow young woman in a brown roll-neck sweater and jeans. Her right hand rested lightly on a ballpoint pen, at the centre of a dozen sheets of foolscap. Her head had fallen forward and was partly obscured by a curtain of lank brown hair. She might have been asleep. The pen moved with almost imperceptible slowness, but picked up speed as Bryant approached. As neat letters formed—too neat to have been drawn freehand with one’s head bowed—the coven members read aloud. The intense concentration of the group would have impressed the most staunch nonbeliever.

The woman’s pale hand drifted across the sheet, leaving behind a letter C. The pen jumped, forming an R, then an O. Bryant felt the tiny white hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle.

‘Crow,’ said Wendy.

‘Crotch,’ said Stanley Olthwaite.

‘Cormorant,’ said Maggie.

‘Crossroads, she’s trying to write crossroads,’ said Dame Maud. ‘The unholy spot where the guilty were jeered by the mob, then hanged and buried alive in punishment for their sins.’

Another O appeared on the paper.

‘Or perhaps she’s missed an episode of
Coronation Street,
’ said Dame Maud.

‘No, it’s corridors,’ said Stanley softly, as if deciphering a crossword clue that had been eluding him. The pen moved again, but no ink appeared. With head still bowed, the spirit writer suddenly jabbed the tip into her left palm until it bled. Using the tiny pool of blood as a reservoir, she continued to scrawl in an unbroken flow. Not a word this time but a drawing, childlike and unfocussed, caused by the difficulty of writing without ink.

The face which formed was thin and young, with high cheekbones and sunken eyes where the blood spread into hollows, but it could have been anyone. Now Wendy had rocked back on her knees and was chanting something too softly for Bryant to catch beneath the moaning of the wind.

At that moment, the gusting stopped and the air became silent and still, revealing her whispered words. ‘Four pathways, two leading directly to death and two leading to salvation. Between God and Mephisto stand the white corridors.’ She fell forward, and was caught by Olthwaite, who gently set her on a stack of pillows.

‘White corridors always spell danger because they represent conduits through which evil can pass,’ whispered Maggie. ‘Do you have any way of interpreting this, Arthur?’

‘I think I may be able to shed some light,’ said Bryant, catching his partner’s eye. ‘We are looking for a murderer who has struck among the passengers trapped here. I think you’ll find that the first white corridor is right outside, the snowbound roadway on which we find ourselves marooned. The second is the corridor leading to the London mortuary where our friend Oswald Finch has been found dead, a crime we are equally prevented from solving.’

‘Then what are the other two?’ asked May. For once he felt no desire to ridicule Maggie and her colleagues.

‘The readings are not always literal.’ Maggie watched her friend as she wiped her bloodstained hand with a cloth and fumbled with her hair band, as disoriented as a patient emerging from anesthetic. ‘You have to look beyond the corporeal to find another interpretation. These corridors might represent states of mind. They are perhaps intended for you to find a path through disorder. Or they may serve to remind you of something only half remembered, some signifying event that you have tried long and hard to bury deep within your subconscious. There are other times and places than those our bodies lead us to.’

Outside the army truck, the freezing brightness of the snow and the glaring white sky broke the spell that had held May for the past few minutes. Blinking in the light he felt foolish, ashamed that age and doubt had led him to believe the things he had ridiculed in his youth.

‘There is help on the way, but your lives will be endangered before it can arrive,’ Maggie called. ‘Pass safely. The message was personal, and directed at you both. We shouldn’t leave the truck now that Wendy has cast her circle of protection around us. But we’ll be here if you should need spiritual help.’

She watched them totter off through the snow arm in arm, and worried for their safety. Removed from the protection of the PCU, they looked so small and frail. ‘You must understand the meaning of all the corridors in your life, not just this one,’ she shouted after them, pointing to the obliterated road with its cars marooned like fishing boats in a frozen tide. ‘You must look into your hearts. Only then can we help you further.’ But her anxious words of warning were lost in the rising wind.

She knew the ways of men, knew that anger was clouding his mind in a raging fire. He would shove on through the snow, smashing his fists against the vehicles that imprisoned him here, scattering shards of ice across the road. She had hidden his new passport, his disgusting photographs. He would be looking in the fields and on the road, but would have sensed that neither Madeline nor her son were to be found outside, which meant they were sheltering in another vehicle. He was thinking that the roads were still impassable, so she had to be here within reach. All this she knew about him.

He would become more systematic in his hunt for her. He’d told her he had once gone hunting with his grandfather, and had killed a mountain boar from the safety of a hide. That was what he needed now, a vantage point from which he could watch their movements.

Madeline felt a kinship with her hunter. She knew he would find an abandoned truck and climb up onto its roof, lying on his elbows, where he could watch the entire column of cars. They had taken the food from the emergency blanket. Tracks led forward from it, towards the head of the traffic jam. He would count the vehicles in which she might have taken shelter, and check them one by one. Then, armed with a stolen weapon, he would slip down from the truck roof and make his way inexorably towards them…

‘The motorway and the mortuary I can understand, but where are the third and fourth corridors?’ asked Bryant, struggling through a particularly deep drift. ‘My toes feel like they belong to someone else. Is that frostbite, do you think, or are my boots too tight?’

‘We’re not meant to take any of that literally,’ said May. ‘Why is it that oracles are always so lacking in specific details?’

‘How quickly you become a doubter again,’ Bryant sighed. ‘A return to brightness is all it takes to dispel the shadows created by belief.’

‘You have to admit, it’s pretty far-fetched that a bunch of tree-hugging spirit-chasing madrigal-chanters in the back of a truck can locate a murderer.’

‘They didn’t say they could do that, only that they could provide psychological signposts. You discuss cases with fellow officers who are barely qualified to hold all the facts of an investigation in their heads, men and women for whom anything but the most logical and direct progression of thought is anathema. Here, you are doing the opposite. Those people in the truck spend much of their lives in a dream state.’

‘You’re just confirming my worst fears by saying that, Arthur.’

‘But don’t you see, it qualifies them to aid us in other ways. They can restore the logic of childhood with simple symbolism we must learn to read.’

‘All right, I’ll try,’ said May, struggling with the idea. ‘Perhaps the third corridor lies in the house where the killer grew up. Perhaps it is the key to his aberrant behaviour.’

‘And the fourth?’

‘I have an idea about that, too. But it’s not one I wish to entertain at the present.’

In all the time they had worked together, there had been few subjects that May had proven unwilling to discuss, but Bryant now felt he had stumbled onto one of them. He sensed a sudden veil of secrecy descending between them.

As the detectives made their way back around the road to Alma’s stranded Bedford van, they saw two hunched figures weaving and hopping through the drifts towards them.

‘Thank God,’ Madeline gasped. ‘We thought there was no-one else out here. Can you help us?’

37

INEXPLICABLE

Madeline told them the full story, omitting no detail. There was something about these elderly gentlemen that encouraged her to do so without hesitation. She felt safe in their company, although she could see that they would hardly be able to provide protection against Johann. Everything tumbled out as she sought to end the burden of her secret. The tall elegant one scribbled notes as she talked, asking her to expand on details, while the elderly gentleman squatted on a roll of bubble wrap with his hands buried deep in his pockets and his wrinkled head all but consumed by his gargantuan overcoat. They, in turn, saw a nervous thin blonde with large eyes and a graceful neck, who was clearly in a state of distress.

‘When he killed his mother, he said a shaft of sunlight opened to Heaven, and he showed his defiance to God. It’s what he still watches for whenever he kills, a corridor through the clouds to God. I know it sounds insane—’

‘And this Johann—’

‘That’s not his real name; I think it’s the name of one of his victims, but I have nothing else to call him—’

‘But you’re saying he behaved normally towards you until you confronted him at the villa?’

‘That’s right. I trusted him. He was very charming. Ask Ryan.’

‘You liked him as well?’ May asked the boy.

‘He was nice. And he had a great car. Like my dad.’ Ryan was more intent on examining the interior of the van, which smelled of leather, rust and peppermints.

‘You think he followed you here for no other purpose than to prevent you from exposing him?’ asked May. ‘May I see your evidence?’

‘I have it in an envelope, or rather I’ve put it somewhere safe, in the car we rented—I can go back and get it for you.’ She tried to set her handbag on the dashboard but it slid off, her book and purse falling out on the floor. Bryant shovelled everything back in and handed it to her. As he did so, he studied her eyes for clues to her state of mind, and saw a mother determined to show strength for the sake of her child.

‘Perhaps we should get it later. Tell us about the contents of the envelope—’

‘The passport of one of the men he murdered, and a set of photographs, terrible photographs—’ She pressed a hand to her face, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘Women whose faces he’d disfigured with some kind of tool; he takes their picture afterwards and keeps them on him. Why would a man do something like that? I had no idea how dangerous he was, until—he moves about in the snow like an animal, and I think he carries a hunting knife. He chased us through the village, and came to find us when we got off the ferry to hire a car. We were barely able to escape with our lives.’

‘The issue-point of the passport could give us some idea of the trail he’s leaving,’ said May. ‘There have been killers operating in Europe who have assumed the identity of each of their victims before moving on. It’s not difficult to do when you’re crossing so many borders and states.’

‘I took something from the envelope, just to carry with me.’ She handed the detectives a single sheet of paper.

May unfolded the page and examined the names scribbled on it. ‘What’s this?’ He read:
Pascal Favier, Patrice Bezard, Johann Bellocq, Edward Winthrop, Paulo Escobar, Pierre Castel
.

‘I think they’re names he’s copied from other passports, people whose identities he has assumed,’ said Madeline.

‘And you say one of these names belongs to the old man you saw lying dead in the villa he took you to?’

‘That’s right, but I didn’t see him dead, I just thought I did. Johann told me he had left the owner upstairs, dead.’

‘And he insisted that his name was Johann Bellocq, so perhaps he had taken the identity of this latest victim. Which means you have no idea what his real name might be.’ May glanced up at the frozen woman and her son. ‘Look, we have food in the cabin. Make yourself at home while John and I think this through.’

‘Why?’ said Madeline. ‘He just needs to be stopped, can’t you see that?’

‘Yes, but it’s not the way we work,’ said May apologetically.

‘We need to know where the sequence of victims begins.’ Bryant studied the page of names. ‘I have some people I can contact.’

‘I hope they’re in the Sûreté,’ said May.

‘Not exactly. Do you remember the members of the Panic Site?’

‘That website set up by Dr Harold Masters, the academic who runs the Insomnia Squad? Arthur, they’re all completely loopy.’

‘Obsessives perhaps, but occasionally quite brilliant.’ Masters’s group of rogue intellectuals stayed on-line through the night to argue about everything from Quakerism to corn deities before returning bleary-eyed to their jobs in the capital’s museums and art galleries. ‘They’re affiliated to a bunch of expatriate crime fans based in Nice, most of whom are former coppers. Janice put the number in my speed dial.’

‘Can you give them a call?’

‘I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea how to use that particular function,’ Bryant admitted.

‘Give me your mobile. You think they’ll know someone who can run a check on these names?’

‘Bound to, old sock. I told you we were looking for someone from a mountain region. Mrs Gilby is right, he’s probably adept at moving about in extreme weather conditions. If he’s a tracker, he’ll run a sweep from car to car, narrowing down the search until he finds her—and us.’

It was too cold to remain outside for another minute. They settled Madeline and Ryan in the rear of the van and locked them inside, then returned to the cabin to call Dan Banbury, who was better positioned to find out the status of the rescue services. ‘They’re waiting to try again with the chopper,’ he told them, ‘but it looks like there’s one more really big squall on the way. It should hit you in the next hour or so. After that, you’ll have to hope that the northeasterly wind drops and makes way for rising temperatures. The Devon and Cornwall police say there’s little chance of the snowploughs breaking through until daybreak tomorrow. Part of the road outside Totnes has collapsed, and there have been avalanches large enough to block nearly all of the major routes.’

‘Then we really are alone,’ said May, dismayed. ‘Except for a few frozen salesmen, a terrified woman, a handful of practising pagans and a murderer.’

‘Who are you calling now?’ asked Bryant.

‘A friend of mine at the International Bureau of Investigation. Before you start trying with Harold Masters, let me run the list of names past them. We need to see if any of these have been reported. If we can place them in the right order, starting in the French Alps and plotting a path to Dover, they might give us a clue to his real identity. Don’t worry, I’ll fall back on your friend Dr Masters if I have to.’
And all normal paths of investigation fail first,
he caught himself thinking.

‘Edward Winthrop,’ said Bryant, tapping his dashboard. ‘The name rings a bell. It sticks out from all the others on that list. I’ve definitely heard it before.’ He dug a battered alligator-skin address book from his overcoat and flicked through it.

‘What have you got in there?’

‘Missing persons, murder victims, suspects, Alma’s shopping lists, key witnesses and people who have generally annoyed me,’ said Bryant. ‘It runs into several notebooks, as you can imagine, especially the last category. Here we are. Edward Winthrop, a London lawyer murdered in Marseilles in 2004.’

‘Why would he be of interest to you?’

‘Because he was killed in a police station,’ said Bryant with some satisfaction, ‘by the young man he had come to represent. It was in all the papers, sparked an extraordinary court case. You have your starting point, I think.’

May connected his laptop to his mobile and began composing e-mails. ‘I know nothing about the movements and motives of serial killers,’ he admitted. ‘So many other terrible crimes go unreported, it seems they get a disproportionate amount of publicity through books, films and television, yet there are only really a handful.’

‘A handful who get caught,’ Bryant corrected. ‘We have no way of knowing how many others are cunning or merely lucky enough to get away with their crimes. Roberto Succo terrorised the South of France in the 1980s, slaughtering anyone who got in his way. He was a twenty-five-year-old Italian who’d been locked in a mental institution for stabbing his parents to death. A supreme egotist—nothing mattered to him, not life or death. He saw himself as already dead, and was so confident that he operated right under the noses of the police. How do you catch someone like that? Andrei Romanovic Chikatilo killed over fifty women and children in Russia. He showed no remorse or even any understanding of his cruelties.’ He settled himself into his seat. ‘Most of the murderers we’ve faced have been desperate men and women who’ve killed to cover their own weaknesses, not murdered indiscriminately. I’ve done a bit of reading in this area and have some statistics here somewhere.’ He pulled a handful of black leather notebooks from his pocket and blew the fluff from them.

‘Hang on,’ said May, ‘exactly how many of those do you own?’

‘Forty-six,’ Bryant answered matter-of-factly. ‘I was going to quote from a few during my convention speech.’ He riffled the pages. ‘Ah, listen to this. Did you know that seventy-seven percent of all serial killers are American citizens, and only sixteen percent are European? Eighty-four percent are white, sixteen percent are black. Ninety percent are male heterosexuals. Sixty-five percent of the victims are female, and ninety percent of all victims are white. A quarter start killing when they’re teenaged, half start in their twenties, the remaining quarter begin in their thirties. But then we have the anomalies, like the elderly Dr Harold Shipman, the world’s worst serial killer, with at least four hundred attributable deaths to his name, who injected lethal doses of Pethidine into vulnerable English ladies who loved and trusted him. He fitted the pattern of being arrogant and violent-tempered, but many of his crimes remained undiscovered for decades. His wife Primrose supposedly never guessed the truth. Dozens of questions about him remain unanswered, and the authorities are still not sure if they’ve found all the victims.

‘A lot of serial killers are boring, mentally subnormal and inadequate as human beings, which rather mitigates against the image of the superior intellectual usually portrayed in films. We’ve never really dealt with psychopathic brutality before. My wits can’t protect me against such an opponent, and this hostile environment makes me realise how vulnerable I’ve become. How do you find, let alone stop, someone like this? The PCU isn’t equipped to locate such people. There are special units to deal with them, I remember, because I took Alma to see
The Silence of the Lambs.
If I were to speculate on how such people are created, I’d guess that geography plays a part, just as much as family upbringing and rogue chromosomes. Europe can be just as lonely as America. Think of all the desolate landscapes that are barely populated for most of the year, places where no-one remembers you.’

‘But the same things happen in cities, where alienation and hardship are just as rife,’ argued May. ‘Look at London, and how conducive its society has been to cruel practises. Children are raised in a paradoxical environment of decadence and restriction. How many of them truly learn to think and behave like rational adults? What are we breeding in our schools and on our streets now that traditional society has been so radically transformed?’

‘For once I must agree with you,’ said Bryant. ‘I think the science of rationality is being pushed aside to make way for new superstitions. Look at the move to teach the mysteries of God’s will beside Darwinism under the term “intelligent design,” or the reliance on discredited homeopathic drugs to treat cancers we know to be caused by poor diet and cigarettes, or the rise of pyramid-selling religions sold under the guise of lifestyle-improving courses, the blurring of boundaries between greed and honesty. It’s obvious when you think about it. Through the proliferation of deliberately obscuring clutter, our access to hard information is being radically reduced. If you take away knowledge you create myth, not the old myths that help to underpin and elucidate the human condition, but ones with the more sinister purpose of increasing commercial gain.’

May shook his head sadly. ‘I thought the Internet would transform the world, but it’s fast proving to be just another method of spreading disinformation. This isn’t our field, Arthur. Look how the Highwayman had us fooled, simply because we refused to believe the truth that was right in front of us.’

‘Some changes in society are too painful to accept easily,’ Bryant admitted, his eyes downcast. ‘The power of the human mind remains inexplicable.’ He was thinking of May’s guarded reaction to the spirit writing. ‘Where does that leave us now?’

‘We may be isolated in a hostile environment, but we have a world of help at our fingertips. He’s just one man working alone in a limited space, and we will catch him. Now, you call Harold Masters, and I’ll call the Bureau.’