The Mentor (3 page)

“Johnson confessed. Right now he’s working out a deal with the crown prosecutor. He’s willing to give up the name of his client in exchange for a reduced sentence. Unfortunately, we can only connect him directly to the latest murder. We don’t have any proof for the others, save the fact that the killings occurred with the same modus operandi and that he was seen around the other victims’ houses. Both interesting clues. Maybe we can squeeze a little more information out of him with the threat of being charged with the other crimes as well.”

Jane spoke all in a rush, the way she usually did. It was an approach that disoriented her interlocutors, especially when they were suspects or when she was speaking during trial depositions. On more than one occasion, it had allowed her to help prosecutors send a fair number of criminals to prison. She’d worked for the Forensic Science Service Laboratory, Scotland Yard’s scientific investigations unit, for over fifteen years and was one of the most talented criminologists on Eric’s staff. He trusted her completely, even though he felt that sometimes she tended to be a little too optimistic.

“Johnson seemed pretty savvy,” he said, dropping the file in a drawer. Eric took one last glance at the computer screen, then leaned back in his chair. He’d finish filing his report later. “If he figures out that our evidence is merely circumstantial and wouldn’t hold up in court, or if he learns that it shouldn’t even be allowed, then he’ll start denying everything. He’ll negotiate a deal for the last murder and manage to do as little jail time as possible.”

Even though they’d caught him, the fact that they couldn’t tie Johnson to the other murders, which Eric was sure he was responsible for, left a bitter taste in his mouth. It wasn’t so much because the killer would get away—in any case, he’d spend quite a while behind bars—but rather because all those other crimes would go unpunished. There were eleven cases in London alone; nailing Johnson would only answer for one dead body.

Despite often resorting to questionable methods and risking his reputation and career to see guilty parties punished, Eric knew that he simply wouldn’t be able to catch everyone. In truth, he didn’t care one whit about the shady tactics he employed. He didn’t have much to lose. His personal life was a disaster. His total, unyielding focus on work had distanced him from his family to the point that, one fine day, his wife had taken their only son, Brian, and left him for good. That was nine years ago, but Eric still hadn’t gotten over it. To cope, he’d thrown himself deeper into his work. Night and day bled together—sometimes he’d find himself working cases on Saturdays and Sundays. He spent less and less time at home, and when he returned he mostly sat around thinking about what he had left undone. He often slept in the office, where he always kept a clean change of clothing in case the need arose.

The murders staged to look like suicides had been gnawing at him for months, and even now, after they’d finally gotten their man, he still didn’t feel satisfied. It was a minor victory, and really not much of one compared to the fact that plenty of criminals were still free walking the streets. He knew he’d done the best he could, overcoming every limit he’d imposed on himself in order to finally trap Johnson. But it hadn’t been enough.

“Come on, don’t make that face.” Jane shrugged. “We’ll double our efforts. We’ll open the older cases back up and work twice as hard to unravel them. We’ll find something. There’s no such thing as a perfect killer. If we rifle through eleven cases, I’m sure we’ll find another mistake somewhere. And if we can connect him to at least one other murder, demonstrate the repeated use of a consolidated pattern, I’m sure we’ll be able to bring him to trial for the other murders too.”

She always saw the positive side of things. That was one of the reasons Eric, as soon as he’d been promoted to head of the scientific investigations department, had selected Jane as his second in command. She was a little like a guardian angel, someone who dragged him back up into reality when depression threatened to gain the upper hand. Jane had been happy to accept the role, and she pulled it off with an almost maternal flair.

He’d met her only after his separation, and she’d been by his side during the agonizing divorce. She’d never seen the old Shaw in action, the meticulous agent who, enamored with forensics, relied on the truthfulness of his evidence as the foundation for everything else. She’d only interacted with his subsequent disillusioned doppelgänger.

They’d never spoken openly about his methods, but Eric was certain she knew. She was too careful and aware to miss certain details, but she’d never mentioned it to him. He couldn’t say whether she did this to protect him, or merely to protect herself. But even if the former were her only motive, it was still the right way to act. Making her an accomplice would have made him feel even pettier than he already did.

A woman wearing a white shirt passed by the glass door to his office. Adele. Eric thought he caught a quick look of disapproval shot in his direction.

Maybe it was just his mind playing tricks on him.

He felt Jane’s hand tighten on his shoulder, dragging him back to the present. He’d been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t realized she’d stood up and walked over to where he was sitting at his desk. “If you keep on like this, sooner or later she’ll pick up on it,” she said with an allusive grimace.

Eric pretended to be shocked by what she was saying, but he knew he wasn’t very convincing.

Ever since Pennington had joined his team a little over six months ago, he’d felt overwhelmed by emotions he didn’t fully understand. He kept telling himself he was just a lascivious old man ogling young women, and he reproached himself for his own feelings. He convinced himself that it was simply a minor midlife crisis, and that it would all blow over soon enough. But it wasn’t blowing over, and he’d begun to think that maybe he wasn’t so old after all. He looked good for a forty-nine-year-old. These were a man’s best years, and he might easily appear attractive to a young, twenty-seven-year-old woman.

He shook his head at this thought. Who was he trying to fool?

Jane started laughing. For a moment he was afraid he’d said something out loud, but the laughter was just Jane’s way of letting her colleague know she knew him all too well.

Jane would have made the perfect companion for him. He needed someone capable of fending off his obsession for his work, and Jane was that. She was also married, happily. He pushed the thought from his head. She wasn’t his type anyway . . . or was she? That was just another excuse. The truth was he didn’t want a challenging relationship, one he’d risk fucking up the way he’d fucked up his marriage. It was much easier to spend time fantasizing about a young, unobtainable colleague than it was to actually get out there and start dating again.

Suddenly his cell phone rang. A second later Jane’s cell phone rang too.

The stench of death hung heavy in the room. A cloud of flies buzzed around, feeding off the mutilated body.

The landlord had been the first one to discover the body after he had decided to use his keys to open the door. He hadn’t seen his tenant, Nicholas Thompson, for a number of days. Thompson had missed his rent, and a few of his neighbors had complained about the foul stink wafting from his apartment.

Until then, Thompson had always been an excellent tenant. The landlord never had a single reason to complain about him. In fact, he found the man funny and personable, so these developments troubled him. He was quick to worry that something had happened to him. But when the landlord had opened the front door, he certainly wasn’t expecting to find himself face to face with a horrifying spectacle.

At first he hadn’t really understood what he was looking at. He’d thought it was some sort of mannequin. He’d hoped it was someone’s idea of a bad joke. After turning on the light, there was no room for doubt. One look was enough to recognize the tenant, even despite all the blood surrounding the corpse.

Who could have done such a thing to poor Nick?

As far as the landlord knew, he was an honest, hardworking man. Nick had retired only a few months earlier, and just a couple of weeks ago he had confided to the landlord that he couldn’t wait for August to arrive, because his son had promised to bring his family to visit. He had seemed truly moved and excited by the idea of that reunion.

Now it was all over.

In truth, the landlord didn’t know much about the man. He’d heard stories about Nick’s past, a few arrests for thievery when he was younger, but nothing serious. He seemed to have gotten his head on straight. He’d been living there for over ten years, and every day Nick had left early in the morning to head for work.

Thinking about all this, the landlord realized that he’d heard a phone ringing on more than one occasion, but he hadn’t been sure it was Nick’s. He lived next door, but the walls in the building were so thin and insubstantial that everyone could hear what was going on.

He didn’t have any trouble telling the police lady precisely that.

“Thank you,” said Miriam. “We’ll be in touch if we need additional information.” She handed him a business card. “Call me at this number here if anything else should come up.” Then she turned around and waved at the scientific investigations team, who were just now walking into the room.

“Hey,” said Jane, her lips tightening. “Let me guess . . . Judging by the stink, I’d say at least a week.”

“Let’s make that ten days,” said the investigations doctor, Richard Dawson. He was leaning over the corpse, examining it.

Eric shouldered past his colleague and the other agents so that he could take a close look at the crime scene. After solving the Johnson case, he’d hoped to relax a little, at least for the rest of the day. But life had other plans.

“Another honest citizen massacred without any clear motivation, I imagine,” said Eric, casting an inquisitive look in Miriam’s direction.

At that very moment Adele stepped past him, brushing against his arm. She had a look of concentration on her face. She didn’t say hello to anyone in the room but simply started taking photographs.

“A gunshot to the neck, which lacerated his carotid artery,” said Dr. Dawson, addressing no one in particular. “Another to the groin. No sign of exit wounds. At first glance I’d say he died from loss of blood almost immediately.”

“Nicholas Thompson, Nick, a sixty-five-year-old repeat offender who appears to have kept himself out of trouble for at least the last fifteen years,” said Miriam, providing a quick summary of the case.

Even though she was the detective assigned to the investigation, when she worked with Shaw she shared all the data she had with him, and they generally tried to resolve the crime by working together. The team was a well-assorted and often-winning combination of individuals. “No one heard the shots, and given that the walls aren’t exactly soundproof,” Miriam added, pointing to the walls on either side, “I’m guessing the gun had a silencer.”

The camera flash illuminated the room, forcing Eric to blink and making his head ache. He had slept little the night before and could already sense that he’d be going to bed later than he’d hoped tonight too. “An execution. There’s a lot of that going around lately,” he said drily.

“Yes, it certainly looks like one,” said Miriam. She was standing alongside him, watching Jane and Adele work.

“Whoever carried it out, however, wanted to leave a very specific message.” Eric stepped in close to the corpse. “If they’d merely wanted to kill him, a shot to the head would have been enough. But one in the neck and another in the groin . . . hmm . . . Do we know if he was ever involved in any sex crimes?”

“He was a thief who specialized in apartments,” Miriam said, reading the dossier on her smartphone. “No formal accusations for sex crimes. Seems like he wasn’t the violent type.” She shrugged. “Of course, we don’t know about additional crimes he was never charged with.”

Eric looked over Thompson’s body, thinking to himself. There was something familiar about the man splayed out on the floor, but he couldn’t quite figure out what. It was a sensation more than anything else. In truth, he felt so completely tired that his sensations could have meant everything or nothing. He smiled, resigned. “Let’s cover every inch of this place,” he said loudly to his entire team. “Was the door forced?” he asked Miriam.

She shook her head, slipping the cell phone back into her pocket. “It was locked. No signs of forced entry. There’s no key either. The landlord opened it with his key, then called us immediately.”

Turning to the entrance, which opened directly into the living room of the little apartment, Eric tried to reconstruct the scene. “He knew his assassin, or at least was willing to let him in. He didn’t think he was in danger.” He imagined Thompson opening the door and letting an undefined figure enter. “But whoever he let in aimed a pistol at him, shooting him first in the throat so that he couldn’t cry out for help, then in the groin. The victim falls on the floor and quickly dies from loss of blood. The killer may have stayed here to watch him die.” The unfocused figure Eric had in his mind was now standing right alongside him. “Then he took the keys, closed the door carefully, and took off.”

“It was personal,” murmured Miriam, putting her hands on her hips. She curled her lips and blew a strand of hair away from one side of her face.

“We’ll do our best here,” Eric said as his eyes focused on the crime scene again. “But I need you to dig into this guy’s life, because I’m certain we’ll find whoever’s responsible for his death in there somewhere.”

From Mina’s Blog

It’s funny how, when you’re little, people seem bigger than they really are. To my eyes, as I was looking at his shoes from underneath the bed, that man seemed like a giant. But when I found myself facing him twenty years later, I realized just how short he really was.

As soon as he opened the door, the first thing that caught his attention was my neckline. Maybe because it was the closest thing to his eye level. I had unbuttoned my shirt precisely because I knew it would make things easier. Only after that did he raise his eyes to look me in the face.

I knew at once, from the way his face relaxed, how happy my presence made him. A young, beautiful girl at his door. I was undoubtedly a pleasant surprise.

I introduced myself, and just as I’d imagined, he didn’t recognize my name. In fact, he let me in immediately so that we wouldn’t have to talk standing there in the doorway. It was even easier than I’d thought it would be. I’d made up a credible story in order to justify my visit, but I didn’t get a chance to use it. Maybe I’ll get a chance later.

He told me to make myself at home and asked if I wanted some tea. He went to make a pot right away. I got the sense he didn’t get a lot of visitors, because he seemed to want to do everything he could to keep me there as long as possible, just to have someone to talk to.

He started talking about the weather—one of those pointless conversations about how this summer was looking rainier than usual, and how melancholy that made him feel.

“Being British and hating the rain sounds like a singular punishment, don’t you think?” he asked, laughing at his own joke. I laughed too. What a loveable little man.

Then he started going on about the different varieties of tea he was preparing, and how when he was younger he paid less attention to those details, how he’d been too absorbed by his frenetic life. He really liked it when I told him I’d heard of the various teas.

When we finally sat down at the table, facing one another, he looked at me closely for the first time. “Excuse me for asking, miss, but have we met before? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere.”

He’d never seen me before, but I know that I look a lot like my mother. When he killed her, she’d only been a few years older than I am right now.

“Not exactly,” I said. “But you’ve had the pleasure of meeting my parents and my brother, even if only for a few hours.”

The man squinted a little, as if he were trying to remember. I could see he was struggling with his memory. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said, his mouth curling into a little frown, almost as if he was embarrassed. “I’m getting old now, and my memory isn’t quite what it used to be. I had a few problems with drugs and alcohol when I was younger, and I have to admit that a lot of my memories from those years have turned hazy. Give me a little hint. When did I meet your family?”

I had set the package I brought with me in my lap. He couldn’t see me slip my hand inside it and take its contents out beneath the table. “Twenty years ago,” I said. “I was just seven. You didn’t see me, but I saw you very well, and I never forget a face.”

He seemed curious to hear what I was saying, but at the same time his expression darkened, as if somewhere in the back of his head unpleasant thoughts were starting to push their way up through his memories.

I smiled. “My father was thirty-four, my mother was thirty-one, and my brother was just nine years old.”

Thompson’s brow furrowed.

I stopped smiling, and the tone of my voice grew hard. “And the safe was upstairs.”

The man’s eyes turned enormous, and it seemed like some faint thread of recognition appeared there. His mouth dropped open. “Oh, fuck me,” he whispered, standing up in a rush, knocking over the chair behind him.

I stood up as well, pointing the pistol with the long silencer straight at him. “Behave, Nick. Lie down on the floor.” I started laughing. “You’ll like it; you’ll see.”