Lastnight (9 page)

‘You can’t assume that,’ said Nightingale. ‘These days they probably give the job to some Community Support Officer and they’re as much use as a chocolate teapot. But yeah, once the information is in HOLMES, the computer should throw up any links.’

‘I had a bit more luck on Facebook, but unfortunately again no direct links,’ said Jenny. ‘For instance Stella Walsh and Abbie Greene both liked the page Gothic And Amazing, and they both posted pictures on it. But there are more than 15,000 likes for that page so it’s not necessarily significant. And four of them liked the Cure’s page, but that page has about six million likes.’

‘Which four?’

‘The only one who didn’t was Daryl, and he doesn’t have a Facebook page.’

‘And there was no direct communication between the other four?’

‘Not that I can see. Between the four of them there are twelve pages in common, mainly music-related. But the only other page that all four liked was the Crypt. What I’m doing at the moment is working through all the photographs they’ve posted and checking faces. But so far I can’t see any indication that the five ever met each other or spoke to each other.’

‘But they all went to the Crypt?’

‘Four of them liked the Crypt page. That doesn’t mean that they went to the club. And we don’t know about Daryl Heaton.’

‘I’m going around to his place tomorrow.’

‘Has he got family?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘There’s an ex-wife somewhere. But the cops couldn’t find his parents.’

‘So who identified the body?’

‘His dentist.’ Nightingale shrugged. ‘That’s sad, right. The only person they could find who could identify him was the guy who worked on his teeth. I’m going to talk to his neighbours, see if they know where he hung out.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yeah, I’ll do all three. Heaton lived in Kilburn, Stella Walsh in Islington and Luke Aitken was staying with his parents in Hampstead.’

‘And how did it go today?’

‘Make me a coffee and I’ll tell you.’ Jenny opened her mouth to argue but Nightingale showed her the palm of his hand. ‘You lost the race, remember.’

9

N
ightingale had his feet up on his desk and he was staring at the whiteboard when Jenny walked in with two coffee mugs. She put one of them on his desk, by his feet. ‘Cheats never prosper,’ she said.

‘Says the girl who’ll be making the coffee for the foreseeable future.’ He picked up his mug and put it to his lips but stopped when he saw her smile. ‘What?’ he said.

‘What, what?’

‘You’re smiling.’

‘I’m a very happy person.’

Nightingale sniffed his coffee. ‘Did you put something in this?’

‘Coffee. Milk. Sugar.’ She grinned. ‘What, do you think I put something else in?’

‘Well, did you?’

She snorted dismissively. ‘What sort of person would play a childish trick like that, Jack?’ she said. Her face went suddenly serious. ‘I suppose the sort of person who thinks cheating is acceptable, I suppose that sort of person might think it funny to put something disgusting in another person’s coffee.’

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her for several seconds, then he slowly smiled. ‘Nah, you’re too nice a person.’

‘I am,’ agreed Jenny. ‘I’m as nice as pie.’ She smiled brightly but Nightingale didn’t like the twinkle in her eyes.

He sipped his coffee and then smacked his lips. ‘Tastes good.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

He narrowed his eyes again. ‘Did you put something in it?’

‘Of course not.’ She smiled angelically and put her finger cutely against her cheek.

‘Maybe I’ll make the coffee next time.’

‘That would be nice,’ she said. She turned to look at the whiteboard. ‘Now how did it go today?’

Nightingale took another sip of his coffee. ‘I didn’t get much, to be honest,’ he said. ‘But neither of the Goths seemed to be the victim type.’

She turned to look at him, a look of confusion on her face. ‘What do you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘If I was looking for Goths to kill, neither of them would be my first choice. Gabe Patterson was very outgoing, his wife said he’d talk to anybody and was always well aware of what was going on around him. Abbie Greene was suspicious of strangers and carried a flick-knife.’

‘You think that’s important?’

‘It comes down to motive,’ said Nightingale. ‘There has to be a reason why the person or persons doing the killing chose them.’

‘If it’s a hate crime then the fact that they were Goths would be enough to set them off.’

‘Yes, but if you want to kill Goths, wouldn’t you choose the easy option? Like lions when they hunt? They don’t go after the biggest and fastest antelopes, they take down the old and the sick. The easy targets.’

‘That’s based on research, or your gut feeling?’

‘It’s the way of the world, kid,’ said Nightingale. ‘You hear a lot of the cops doing profiling. They look at the way the victims are killed and from that they deduce the profile of the killer. More often than not they come up with something like a white middle-aged male who wet his bed and tortured animals when he was a child. But in fact it’s the serial killers who are the best profilers. They can look at a group of people and work out who will go without a struggle, who they can overpower, who they can talk into going off with them. They’re skilled at spotting people’s weaknesses. Paedophiles are the same. They can look at a group of kids and know which are the vulnerable ones.’

‘So you’re saying that neither of them were defenceless?’

Nightingale nodded. ‘Gabe was quite a big guy and looks like he could take care of himself. Abbie had a knife. But both ended up dead so it seems to me that they weren’t confronted.’ He swung his feet off the desk and went over to join her at the whiteboard. ‘They had to have been caught by surprise.’

‘Both of them were hit on the head, right?’

Nightingale nodded again. ‘From behind. But I can’t see that could have happened out in the open, in the street or in a public place. I can’t see that either of them could have been snatched off the street.’

‘So they knew their attackers?’

‘Either that or they didn’t see them as a threat.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Somehow the killers got close to all five of them,’ said Nightingale.

‘Serial killers are charming, right?’

‘Charming or at least give off a non-threatening vibe,’ said Nightingale. ‘But that doesn’t square with these being hate crimes. People who carry out hate crimes aren’t usually in the least bit charming or non-threatening.’

‘Which means that these killers hide their hatred, until it’s too late.’

Nightingale stared at the photograph of Abbie Greene. ‘Yes, but I don’t see that someone like Abbie would be fooled. She was on the game for a while, and hookers tend to be good judges of character.’

Jenny frowned. ‘The Yorkshire Ripper killed prostitutes. How many was it?’

‘Thirteen. But that was over a five-year period. He’d go for months without killing. And a lot of potential victims turned him down.’

‘What I’m saying is that if prostitutes were good at reading people, wouldn’t they have seen him for what he was?’

Nightingale wrinkled his nose. ‘Maybe they did, but then the need for cash overruled their misgivings, at least long enough for him to get them on their own.’ He gestured at the whiteboard. ‘This is different from the Yorkshire Ripper in so many ways. The Ripper targeted women. In particular, prostitutes. What we’ve got here is two men, three women, two gays, three straight, and none of them prostitutes.’

‘Abbie hadn’t gone back on the streets?’

‘There was no need,’ said Nightingale. ‘Her girlfriend was paying all her bills.’

‘But you said she was carrying a knife?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘Old habits die hard.’ He went back to his desk and sprawled in his chair. ‘I was trying to explain something to a couple of Goths today, about hate crimes. It didn’t come out right.’

‘In what way?’

He pointed at the whiteboard. ‘Well, these are hate crimes, right? That’s the assumption Chalmers and his team are working on.’

‘They don’t come much more hateful than skinning people alive.’

‘And Goths are being targeted. Because they’re Goths.’

‘That seems to be what’s happening, yes.’

‘And these Goths I was talking to said it was a hate crime the same as if gays or blacks were being killed.’

‘Sounds right.’

Nightingale grimaced. ‘Okay, so what I said was that it wasn’t the same because Goths choose to be Goth. No one forces them to wear the make-up and dark clothes.’

‘And I’m guessing they didn’t take it well?’

‘I backpedalled pretty quickly, but I could see that I’d touched a nerve.’

‘Do you think?’ She threw up her hands. ‘Sometimes I despair of you, Jack.’

‘It’s a valid point though, isn’t it?’

Jenny frowned. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? It’s a hate crime if someone lashes out at somebody because they’re different. It doesn’t matter what that difference is.’

‘I get that, Jenny. I’m not stupid.’

‘What about religion? People choose their religion. But if you attack someone because of their religion, then it’s a hate crime.’

‘But Goth isn’t a religion. It’s a cultural thing. Look, I’m not trying to excuse what’s happening, I’m trying to understand it. I can see why straight people might be offended by gays. I can understand why white people might hate non-whites. But I don’t understand why being a Goth can inspire this level of hatred and violence.’

‘I still don’t get what you’re saying, Jack.’

Nightingale took a deep breath. ‘I don’t fully understand it myself,’ he said. ‘It’s just that what’s happening seems out of all proportion to the provocation.’

‘Now you’re saying that the Goths are being provocative?’

Nightingale sighed. ‘Jenny, they choose the gear, they choose the make-up, they choose to hang out with each other. Everything they do is by choice.’

‘And like I keep saying: that’s what makes it a hate crime.’

‘But what’s happening is planned. Very well planned. And carefully carried out. And that’s not what happens with hate crimes. Hate crimes come from hatred. From emotion. What’s happening to these Goths doesn’t seem to involve emotion.’

‘The bodies were mutilated, that seems to me to be fairly emotional.’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘Actually no. The mutilations were cold and clinical. And done in such a way that there was no evidence that could identify the perpetrators. Then most of the bodies were dumped, and dumped carefully. Where’s the hatred, Jenny? I see the crime, but I don’t see the hatred.’

She nodded slowly. ‘I’m listening.’

‘These Goths – a couple of girls – were telling me about the time some guys threw tomato juice over them in a pub.’

‘Tomato juice?’

‘I guess it was a vampire thing. But when they were telling me that I thought, yeah, I see the hatred. Guys in a pub get pissed off at Goths, for whatever reason, and they react by throwing a drink over them. It’s a heat of the moment thing, right. Hatred followed by rage.’

Jenny frowned. ‘Spur of the moment?’

‘Exactly. And gay-bashing, when it happens. How does that work? Usually in the street, a gay couple walk by hand in hand or kiss and a group of Neanderthals kick off. The gays get bashed and the Neanderthals run away. Hatred followed by rage.’

Jenny brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘No planning. No forethought.’ She nodded. ‘They just lash out, right?’

‘Because the attacks are inspired by hatred. By emotion. But what’s happening with these Goths shows zero emotion.’ He held up his hand. ‘I know, the mutilation looks like emotion, but even that is carried out clinically. I’ve seen the crime-scene photographs and there was no obvious emotion involved.’

‘So you’re saying they’re not hate crimes?’

‘I don’t think they were inspired by hatred. Not the sort of hatred that led to them having a drink thrown over them in the pub. These five murders have been well planned and carefully carried out. That’s why the cops have zero evidence to go on. So we’re not going to get anywhere thinking of them as simple hate crimes. There has to be a motive, Jenny. There has to be a logical reason for these killings.’

‘The killers could just be sociopaths, Jack. Have you thought about that?’

‘Sociopaths aren’t usually motivated by hate,’ said Nightingale. ‘And they tend to attack one sex or the other. That’s what’s so strange about these cases. We’ve got male and female, gay and straight, young and middle-aged. Sociopathic serial killers tend to be much more selective about their victims.’

‘So we’re looking for some other connection, other than the fact that they’re Goths?’ said Jenny. She pulled a face as if she had a bad taste in her mouth.

‘You don’t agree?’

‘I think you might be overthinking it,’ said Jenny. ‘You might be giving too much credit to psychopaths who just want to hurt people.’

‘Okay, but look at what they do to the victims. They slash their bodies to ribbons, right? But then they do nothing to the faces. If it was really about hatred, isn’t the face what they’d go for? The face makes it personal. That’s how it works with shooters. If you want to shoot someone you shoot them in the chest because that’s the biggest target. But if there’s hatred involved, if it’s personal, you shoot them in the face.’

‘That’s a fair point,’ said Jenny, looking back at the whiteboard. ‘None of the faces were touched.’

‘Exactly. Dozens of cuts and slashes, but only to the body. And they were all naked.’ He closed his eyes as he tried to remember what he’d seen in the incident room.

‘Are you okay, Jack?’ asked Jenny.

He held up his hand to silence her as he tried to recall the crime scene photographs he’d seen on the five whiteboards. ‘The clothes were cut off,’ he said. He opened his eyes. ‘Three of them were dumped outside, and they were naked when they were dumped. And the two who were found indoors – Daryl Heaton and Abbie Greene – were also naked.’

Jenny frowned. ‘So?’

‘So where’s the hatred in that? If you’re angry at someone and want to slash them to death, surely you’d just hack away? Knives go through clothes just as easily as they cut through flesh. But they cut the clothes off. They were tossed aside and there was no blood on them.’