Absolution (21 page)

The room was as silent as a church full of mourners.

He stood there for a minute, both hands thrust into the back pockets of his jeans. ‘Can I take it we’ve all seen
The Silence of the Lambs?’

A wave of irony rippled its way round the incident room, a gentle laugh that said,
so fucking easy in the movies.

‘Ten Rillington Place? The Boston Strangler?
So now we can forget the shite and forget the hype, we’ve eaten the pie and thrown up on the T-shirt. We are all experts in our own way; the only problem is’ – he paused – ‘we haven’t caught the bastard yet, and he won’t stop until we do.’

He pointed at the line of photographs behind him, pictures of women with life taken from them as easily as pinching the flame of a candle. They were lined up, their names written by Costello in her loopy feminine handwriting:
Lynzi, Elizabeth Jane, Arlene.

‘We
haven’t caught him yet because he’s difficult to catch. Normal rules do not apply. This guy is in a class of his own. I’ve written this.’ He held up a single piece of paper. ‘A rough guide to Christopher Robin. Why Christopher Robin?’

‘Christopher the Crucifier?’ Mulholland guessed.

‘Good but no coconut.’ Batten held up a copy of the
Daily Record,
then the
Sun
and the
Evening Times.
‘“The Crucifixion Killer”,’ he said. ‘I won’t have the newspapers demonizing him, giving him superhuman powers he simply doesn’t possess. This guy eats and shits and sleeps.’ He paused to let that point sink in. ‘So let’s call him after Winnie-the-Pooh’s wee pal. I am going to give you a psychological idea of what this man is, an image to build on. Irvine has been photocopying it. It’s a tick-box system, like you used to do in school. Every man you come across in the investigation gets put in here.
Everybody.
We will then slant the investigation towards somebody who ticks more boxes than most. Mr McTiernan, for instance. These three women were pre-selected victims. Christopher Robin will have his next victim already lined up. Time is a luxury we don’t have.’

Littlewood looked at the ceiling as if he had better things to do than to listen to this crap.

‘It’s important that we understand this. He is an ordinary man but with an extraordinary past.’

‘So it is a man?’ Vik Mulholland asked. ‘We have no evidence of that.’

‘It is a man. And I think he works alone to kill, though
he may have a female accomplice to lure. The trust these women place in him is remarkable.’ Batten nodded at Anderson, who nodded back, giving way to the expert. ‘I know there is a lack of sexual interference, but this killer is a man. He may be getting his sexual kicks from the compliant female accomplice. If she does exist, he will have bonded with her, though he’ll still have trouble with other women. If she doesn’t exist, and he works alone, then I’d say he was a man brought up under the influence of a domineering mother. The dominance might have been benign, but it was there, and was maybe extreme. In simple terms, ask any suspect what they did on Mother’s Day and watch the response you get.’ Batten’s eyes were twinkling, and Costello noticed that the whole team was listening with rapt attention.

‘Sorry, I don’t follow,’ said Mulholland. ‘How can it work both ways?’

Batten nodded his head. ‘Young Christopher Robin might habitually take her side in a fight, try to protect her, but be too small to do it. So he’d feel guilty, and grow up fixated and inadequate. If he idolized her, other women who don’t match up are in trouble. Or maybe she punished him by ignoring him, abandoning him or locking him in a cellar, and he’s been punishing her and other women like her ever since. Whichever way you look at it, he has a huge emotional mother fixation.’ Batten grinned. ‘But what guy hasn’t?’

The squad laughed. The mood had lifted; confidence was being restored.

‘Is he escalating, though, as serial killers do?’ asked Mulholland.

‘He is not escalating,’ said Batten, pulling his hair back into a ponytail. ‘The violence to Arlene was greater, but he is still very controlled.’ They looked at each other, eyes locked. ‘Name me one mistake?’ asked Batten. He easily
endured the silence that followed, still folding his ponytail into an elastic band. ‘In fact, he did make a mistake. He let the knife get close to bone. This is a job for instinct. This man feels he can neither love, nor be loved by, the object of his desire. So – any ideas? Any ideas at all? I’ll be in the DCI’s office if you need me.’

Costello took the sheet of paper that was handed to her, with points listed in double-spaced Times New Roman. On the back was a grid system, with boxes for letters, so it could be scanned by computer. She was impressed. Most of the squad had taken their papers, moving downstairs to the café like a herd to a waterhole. Only she, Batten, McAlpine and Anderson stayed in the room. Mulholland had got up to leave but changed his mind, got some water from the cooler and sat back down again. Batten stayed sitting on top of the desk at the front, swinging his legs back and forth, looking like an expectant father.

Costello pulled another chair over and put her feet up on it, reading the first line:
This profile was compiled in no particular order of priority.

– He knows the victims.

– He’s sympathetic to them; he anaesthetizes them. He kills them quickly and efficiently. No torture.

– He is lucid. He sees perfect sense in what he is doing.

– He murders in the same frame of mind as he shops in Tesco’s.

– He is executing these women. He will have grown up fixated on execution, the elimination of evildoers.

– These killings are not the result of a spontaneous urge; he has been working up to this all his life.

– The geographical profile is small. He lives here. He travels on foot between incidents. He knows the area well.

– We have spoken to him; he is already in the system.

– 
His job takes him out and about at odd hours.

– He is inconspicuous.

– Women can’t relate to him, yet cautious women trust him (or his accomplice). Is he disabled, or disfigured in some way, so that they feel safe with him?

– As a witness, he will have been helpful and cooperative.

– His upbringing was dominated by a woman.

– There was loss in childhood.

– His age is between twenty five and forty.

– He doesn’t see us as a threat to his liberty.

– He is well educated but not necessarily formally so.

– He is very intelligent.

– He has a religious belief of a kind. It might be an organised religion; it might not.

– He won’t drink to excess. He won’t swear to excess. But he might amend his behaviour to blend with that of his peers.

– He regards women as Madonna-mothers or whores, nothing in between. Note the deliberate pose, in particular the crossing of the legs; he hates women but wants to respect them.

– There is no interaction between Christopher Robin and the victims, no sexual assault. There is no emotional involvement with them; they are almost non-people. They represent what he wants to destroy, and he is the instrument of their destruction.

– He has been sparked by a recent incident. Recently divorced? Has his girlfriend aborted his child?

– He is selecting these girls. From people he knows.

– He is in the shadows, but he is there.

– We will find him.

Costello reread the list.
He is already in the system.
She sighed. ‘So, Dr Batten, we tick the boxes and arrest the one with the most ticks, is that it?’

‘Some hope,’ said the psychologist. ‘I’m nipping out for chips. Anybody want any?’

‘I’d love some,’ Costello sighed. ‘I need fortifying for a date with the Boss.’

McAlpine lifted a pile of papers from his chair and flicked through them. ‘Irvine?’ he shouted through the open door. ‘We need to wake up Costello. Coffee, please.’

‘I wonder why I look tired. It’s only been a sixteen-hour day. Do I have any chance of getting home before it’s Tuesday?’ Costello licked the salt from her fingertips and wished she had asked for a bigger portion of chips.

‘Not a hope in hell,’ McAlpine answered.

‘Well, tea, for me, if it’s going.’

‘Right, sit down. My face is lowpin.’

‘I have some paracetamol, if you want,’ offered Costello.

‘Not allowed anything till eight. Fucking doctors, what do they know?’ McAlpine touched his jaw cautiously, as if expecting the bone to crumble under his fingertips.

Costello sat down on the edge of the seat, notebook in hand, like a secretary in her first week, hoping this meeting would not take long. Her hunger was sated, but she still longed for a bath.

‘Kick the door shut, will you?’

Biting her tongue, she got up, closed the door and sat back down again.

‘I want you to track down Davy Nicholson, ex-DI, would have retired about four years ago, from Stewart Street.’

‘I remember
him.
’ Costello tutted. ‘Not the most inspirational boss I’ve ever had.’ She pushed her hair back with her pencil, realizing she had the one with the Winnie-the-Pooh rubber on the end. She stuck it behind her ear.

‘Is that a compliment?’ said McAlpine, ruffling through some papers.

‘No,’ Costello said airily. ‘Are you looking for something, sir?’

He didn’t answer, but instead asked, Would you walk up a dark lane with Christopher Robin?’

‘I might, if I knew him as somebody else. Last night – this morning, I should say – I walked up Whistler’s Lane four times, with four different men. That was Batten’s point. Trust.’

‘But you have half a brain cell. On a good day.’ McAlpine scribbled something down. ‘I want you to track down Sean McTiernan, get the details from the record office. Davy Nicholson did the donkey work; he’ll fill you in. You’ll need to go back three, four years. There was something about that case… might be something, might be nothing. But I don’t want this public until we have something concrete to move on.’

Costello shifted uneasily in her seat. ‘Is that wise?’

‘Bear with me. McTiernan is very clever. I want you to dance round him discreetly; I don’t want the likes of Irvine and Mulholland marching in with their size tens. It was Nicholson’s collar, and I’m not going to question that publicly.’

‘Until we have a reason to.’

McAlpine nodded, slowly pressing his hand to his face, confining the pain. ‘Sean McTiernan might have ended up serving three for a culp. hom. when it was actually a premeditated murder.’

‘I didn’t work the case, but I don’t remember any great argument about it.’

‘I don’t think any officer on that case was going to argue. Malkie Steele had walked about Glasgow thirty years, putting
knitting needles up people’s noses and fucking non-consenting little boys, and always protected by Laing. We couldn’t get near him.’

‘Oh,’ said Costello.

‘Exactly. So imagine our delight when an unknown squirt appears from nowhere and takes him out of the game.’ McAlpine stopped rubbing his face, suddenly deep in thought. ‘Maybe it was mental sleight of hand –
I’m showing you this to stop you looking at that.
Review his case in light of what Batten was gibbering on about,’ said McAlpine. ‘There was something about that case that didn’t add up, something about that lad that didn’t add up. Sniff around him, have a good root around. And always remember that Sean McTiernan is one bright cookie.’

Costello heard the door behind her open. Irvine came in with two coffees, dumping them down on the desk and leaving. Costello, a tea drinker, left hers untouched.

‘Find McTiernan, but don’t go near him. You are the most senior female on the team. He won’t fool you. I hope.’

‘What was your version of events?’ Costello prompted with a glance at her watch, still hopeful of a bath.

‘Well, McTiernan phoned himself in, saying he’d had a fight and he thought the guy was dead. He had called the ambulance first of course.’ McAlpine sipped his coffee delicately and cursed at the pain it provoked in his jaw.

‘Hardly the act of a guilty man.’

‘Or exactly the act of a guilty man. It was in Whistler’s Lane; I don’t know if that has any significance at all.’ McAlpine’s eyes scanned past Costello to the map on the wall. ‘Might be significant to Arlene’s murder.’

‘Might just be he was up there with a girl. There aren’t many private places left round here with the smoking ban and everything.’

McAlpine nodded. ‘Keep it to yourself for the moment. If he is Christopher Robin, we’ll have to tread carefully or he’ll run for his lawyer and then we’ll get bugger all.’

Costello realized what McAlpine had given her: the main lead in the biggest murder inquiry of the decade.

McAlpine was talking. ‘… and then McTiernan said a scout from Partick Thistle asked to meet him for a drink because he had seen him play and wanted to offer a trial. He went along, but the Whistler’s Pub gets very noisy, so they went outside and casually walked up the lane. McTiernan went thinking the lane led somewhere. He said Steele made a pass at him, there was a scuffle, McTiernan got away. He walked towards Byres Road and heard Steele coming up behind him. He lashed out like some kind of Ninja and kicked Steele twice – once backward and once on a spinning turn. Forensic examination of the shoe print proved it: McTiernan was indeed walking away. Steele was hit with some accuracy, once in the stomach, once in the face. Malkie was a hard drinker, his liver sustained too much damage from the assault. Without the pre-existing condition, he might have pulled through, but who knows.’

‘Dead with two kicks?’ Costello was incredulous.

‘Martial arts, don’t know which one. It’ll be in the trial transcript; an expert turned up and explained how an eleven-stone man can take on an eighteen-stone guy and win.’

‘So far I’m convinced,’ said Costello. ‘You said Steele was a known homosexual, with a passion for clean-living thin little boys… legal, but only just?’

‘Yes, but it would be obvious within two minutes of conversation that Malkie was no more a scout for Partick Thistle than I am for the Royal Ballet. McTiernan was young but too old to be a bright young talent. McTiernan cut his hand and cancelled the first meeting at a game in Ayr. He
grew up at the Good Shepherd Orphanage, so he would have known damn well the lane went nowhere, but that wasn’t mentioned at the trial. He had been training hard… practising… getting fit. Glasgow hard man taken out of the game. He serves three years. What way round do you want it?’