The Rule Book (32 page)

McEvoy could feel his face flush. He stepped forward, leaned down and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘I’m still training him up,’ she said to Kathy Jacobs. Followed by, ‘You’re freezing. Where the hell’s your coat? You’ll catch your death out here with this wind. And you’re smoking again, Colm. I can smell them. The damn things will kill you. They killed Maggie and they’ll kill you and where would that leave Gemma? Are you going to introduce me,’ she added before he could answer.

‘Er, right, sorry,’ he stuttered, still reeling from Elaine’s rebuke, knowing that she was right, but unhappy to be reminded. ‘Dr Kathy Jacobs, Professor Elaine Jones. Dr Jacobs is a …’

‘I know all about Dr Jacobs,’ the pathologist said, shaking the profiler’s hand. ‘She’s making quite a name for herself these days. Someone high up must have pulled a few strings for you, Colm.’

McEvoy cut across the near empty terrace, the hotel guests having retreated to the sanctuary of the hotel, and entered through a bar. He wandered into the busy reception area. Whelan was standing at the front desk talking to a hassled-looking woman in her mid-thirties.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked, interrupting, glad of the warmth.

Whelan rolled his eyes in response.

‘I just want to know when we’re going to be able to get things back to usual,’ the woman said to McEvoy. ‘Guests need to leave, the shift is meant to change, the rooms need cleaning, deliveries are being turned away. We need to try and get things back to something like normal.’

‘There’s nothing normal about this morning, Miss. One of your guests has been murdered across in the bay. Her head is missing its face,’ he said callously, ignoring the fact that her request was entirely reasonable and she was no doubt under a lot of pressure from guests and staff forced to stay so they could be interviewed. ‘Look, don’t worry; every sick bastard for miles around will come traipsing through here in a few days’ time wanting to see where she was killed. You’ll make up on any lost business then.’

‘I’m sorry. Look, that’s not what I meant … I didn’t mean to …’ she trailed off embarrassed and flustered.

‘What have you found out about the victim?’ McEvoy asked Whelan.

‘I’ve already told the inspector,’ the woman replied, unsure whether McEvoy was still addressing her.

‘And now I want you to tell me,’ McEvoy said, turning back to the woman, frustrated she’d answered a question he hadn’t asked her.

‘We … we think it’s Shirley Hamilton,’ her face flushed red. ‘She’s a Northerner, lives in Belfast. She was doing contract work out at the airport; staff development training, I think. She  stays here rather than the airport as she likes to run along the coast. She runs marathons. One of our bar staff does as well. They know each other from races. We all sponsored her last year when she ran in the New York marathon. I can’t believe this has happened. She was great craic. Always had a joke.’

‘Did anyone see her head out this morning?’

‘One of the reception staff saw her go.’ She nodded at two women sat at a coffee table. ‘She set off around 6.30.’

‘And can you confirm what she was wearing?’

‘Ausra,’ the woman called out, gesturing to the younger of the pair.

The woman approached. ‘Yes?’

‘Can you remember what Ms Hamilton was wearing when she went out for a run this morning?’

‘Ms Hamilton? I think she was wearing a ... yes maybe a red coat and blue trousers,’ she replied with an East European accent. ‘She had her hair in …’ She gestured with her hands.

‘Pigtails,’ McEvoy said.

‘Pigtails?’ the woman repeated, confused.

‘Her hair in two strands,’ McEvoy said.

‘Yes, yes, two strands.’

‘Ausra’s from Lithuania,’ the older woman explained.

‘Is she okay?’ Ausra asked. ‘Ms Hamilton?’

McEvoy pursed his lips. ‘No, I’m afraid she’s dead. She was killed while she was running. We’re investigating her death.’

Ausra nodded, the rumours confirmed.

McEvoy’s phone rang. He signalled apology and stepped away from the counter. ‘McEvoy.’

‘I’ve just spoken to Brady,’ Plunkett said. ‘He was admitted to St Ita’s when he was 17. He kind of went off the rails a bit. He had severe manic depression. He’s been on lithium ever since. He was an in-patient for seven months. If the killer’s one of his co-patients he has no idea who it is. He can’t really remember them and he hasn’t kept in touch with any of them either.’

‘Right, okay. Well, at least the location makes sense. I want you to ask him to come in again. We need to pick his brains, see if we can dislodge something useful. See if he can come in for two o’clock. We’ll hold a team meeting then afterwards, around three.’

‘I’ll talk to him again. The meeting will have to be better than this morning’s. Charlie Deegan was a feckin’ disaster. He basically said he was going to run his investigation and feck the rest of us,’ Plunkett stated, saying what he’d wanted to report in his last phone call.

‘For God’s sake,’ McEvoy said, massaging his face. ‘I thought I told you … It doesn’t matter, I’ll deal with it when I get back. Just keep plodding away for now. I’ll be in after the press conference at one o’clock.’ He ended the call and stepped back over to the reception desk. ‘Do you have a cigarette machine?’ he asked a hint of desperation in his voice.

McEvoy reversed out onto the road, swung the car around and headed back down the road towards Donabate. He sucked on his plastic cigarette and then held it between his index and middle finger, his hand resting on the steering wheel. ‘So you said you’d had a go at constructing a basic profile?’ he asked, breaking the ice.

Kathy Jacobs brushed her hair off her face and twisted her body in the seat towards him. She’d underdone the buttons on her coat and unwound the scarf to reveal a dark grey business suit over a pale blue shirt, the skirt ending at her knees. ‘I’ve had a go on the basis of what was sent to me – some case notes and photos,’ she said in her soft, Scottish lilt. ‘I’ll be able to flesh it out once I’ve seen more of the files and visited the crime scenes.’

‘But you can give me the bare bones of it now?’

‘As long as you appreciate it’s a preliminary profile, then yes, no problem.’

He nodded his assent.

‘As you probably know,’ she started, ‘serial killers fall into two general types – disorganised and organised. Disorganised killers are often paranoid schizophrenics. They have a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy. They end up killing people not so much because they want to, but because at some level they’re driven to. Voices tell them to, or they over-react to a set of circumstances beyond their control. They’re usually people known by the system – their illness is diagnosed and they live with their parents or in institutions or on the street.

‘An organised killer is an entirely different proposition. They know what they are doing and they prepare for their crimes. Whereas disorganised killers are rarely in control of their actions, and any rape and murder usually takes place in a frenzy of violence, organised killers plan things in advance, they collect together everything they need, they clean up after themselves to avoid being caught, and their violence can be calmly and sadistically stretched out over days or weeks. They themselves were probably a victim of violence when a child, developing heightened capacities for delusion, anger, denial and revenge. As adults they’re driven by a deep psychosis that they try to manage and feed victims to while trying to make sure they get away with their crimes. Unlike disorganised killers, they know what they do is considered highly deviant by the rest of society.

‘In both cases, but particularly for organised killers, the murders are nearly always sexually motivated or expressed. They’re driven by a desire to sexually humiliate and conquer their victims. That doesn’t mean rape, it could simply be tying up and torturing the victim; but it does mean sexually dominating or punishing them in some way. The murders are usually highly choreographed and the victims, to some degree, are merely disposable props in their own theatre. The victims also usually follow a pattern – the same age, body build, hair colour, and so on, so their play can be re-performed endlessly.

‘The murders you’re investigating are highly organised, but they differ substantially from the kinds of murder most serial killers commit. They’re not about sex; at least not all of them appear that way. The victims vary in profile and the killings, with the exception of Laura Schmidt were quick and perfunctory and he left the scene in a hurry. They were almost like assassinations rather than serial killings.

‘And your killer is similar to and yet quite different to the usual kind of people who would generally commit such crimes. I doubt, for example, he has a record for sexual offences. I also doubt he was the victim of an abusive household or sexual abuse as a child. He might well though have caught and tortured small animals when he was growing up. He would have liked the power of life and death; of controlling their destiny. There would have been some manifestation of his sadistic tendencies, however expressed.’

‘So what are the murders about?’ McEvoy asked impatiently, glancing over at her.

‘I’m getting to that,’ Jacobs said calmly, ignoring McEvoy’s testiness. ‘I want you to understand that The Raven is different. He doesn’t seem to be driven by a sexual psychosis that he struggles to control. He kills because he can and because he wants to. Not because he wants to commit some kind of sexual revenge. And he has almost certainly killed before this week.
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is a public expression of his confidence in his ability to kill and get away with it.’

‘He’s killed before,’ McEvoy repeated.

‘My professional opinion is several times. You don’t start your killing spree by undertaking anything as complicated as he’s attempting. He’s drawing on experience and a self-assurance that he knows what he is doing.
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explains why he’s got away with them. Why he’s confident that he’ll continue to get away with them.’

‘Jesus,’ McEvoy muttered, shaking his head.

‘He probably appears little different from everyone else,’ Jacobs continued, adjusting the lie of her seatbelt, ‘perhaps married, with children; a pillar of the local community. That said, I think he’s someone who is very confident, very smart, and probably very arrogant; someone with a high degree of detached control, a lot of patience, but also a short fuse. He’s prepared to spend a lot of time planning, thinking through each crime, making sure he knows exactly how he’s going to perform it, on whom, how he will get away, how he will dispose of the evidence, and so on. He’s educated – he can write well, he can think through a large project, and he’s researched how you’ll try and catch him, taking the necessary precautions – using gloves, protective clothing, disguises, whatever’s needed. He likes the challenge of killing in public places but he’s a calculated risk taker.

‘He was relatively cautious to begin with,’ Jacobs explained. ‘The murders happened under the cover of darkness and there were large gaps between them. There were 22 hours between the first and second killings. 24 hours between the second and third. Only 16 hours between the third and fourth, and it took place in broad daylight, albeit in an isolated rather than public spot. By the fifth he’s grown more confident again, killing in broad daylight in a busy, public place.

‘The only anomaly relates to how he killed Laura Schmidt. All of the others he attacked and knocked unconscious before they knew what was happening. With Laura there’s no sign of attack. I’ve been thinking about that. I think he knew that she wouldn’t fight or struggle. I don’t know why, but I think she trusted him.’

‘You think that she knew him?’ McEvoy asked, his brow furrowed with skepticism. ‘That maybe they were friends?’

‘I’m not sure friends is the right word. And I’m only going on the case notes here. I think they’d established some kind of bond; some kind of understanding whereby she took him into her confidence and him likewise. I think she wanted to die and I think she let him kill her.’