The Killing Habit Read online

  ‘Seriously though,’ he said. ‘Long way from Lewisham.’

  She led him back into the tea-room and flicked the kettle on. The smell of what was no more than a glorified cupboard took him back again to those few, uncomfortable months of demotion, when he’d been one of the ‘lids’.

  ‘You were always talking about how great it was up here,’ she said. ‘So I thought I’d see what you were banging on about.’

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose.’ She threw her belt down on the table and undid the vest. Just after lunch and she was clearly coming off the early shift. ‘Slightly better class of shit, I’ll give you that.’

  The ‘shit’. Treasure’s decidedly un-PC collective term for any and all offenders who had the audacity to cross her path and give her paperwork to do. Drunk-drivers, thieves, rapists. She despised them all equally.

  ‘Plus my girlfriend lives in Tufnell Park, so it’s handy, you know?’ She grinned again, the gap between her front teeth making her look deceptively girlish. ‘I should say wife-to-be.’ She held out a hand to show Thorne the ring and waggled her fingers like a princess. ‘Getting married in a couple of months.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I went to her fitness class and proposed over the PA. Good, eh?’

  ‘Classier than I would have expected.’

  ‘You want to come?’

  ‘Do I have to wear a hat?’

  ‘You can wear a fucking tutu for all I care.’ She picked up a mug and raised it. ‘Want one?’

  ‘I should probably crack on.’ Thorne looked at his watch. He was already twenty minutes late for his appointment. He also needed to pop into the flat to check out a possible damp issue and there was that takeaway to pick up.

  Treasure mashed her tea. ‘You here to see Uncle Fester, yeah? The cat thing.’

  ‘You involved with that?’

  ‘I’m involved in everything, mate, one way or another. Knocked on a few doors.’

  ‘Anything I need to know about the boss?’

  ‘He’s all right. He might think you’re a bit underdressed, but he won’t piss you about.’ She took a fast slurp of tea. ‘Come on, I’ll take you up.’

  Thorne followed Treasure up the stairs and along a carpeted corridor to the part of the station where CID was based. A nest of small offices and an open-plan incident room. He asked her if she’d be around when he’d finished, but she told him she was keen to get away; there was a hot body waiting for her in Tufnell Park.

  They stopped outside the detective superintendent’s office.

  ‘What about a wedding present?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Oh, all right then, I won’t.’

  Treasure punched him again, but not as hard this time. ‘I’ll send you a link to the wedding list.’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘You’ve definitely got a lot fancier since you moved up here. John Lewis, is it? Harrods?’

  Treasure grinned and turned to walk away. ‘Lidl,’ she said.

  Thorne understood the nickname, and Treasure’s remark about clothes, before he’d even sat down in Simon Fulton’s office. The man was as bald as an egg and the care he’d taken over the rest of his appearance led Thorne to guess that, lack-of-hair-wise, he had made the decision to jump before he was pushed. He did not look like the kind of man who would be able to live with a comb-over, but then Thorne could never understand anyone who did. Fulton’s dove-grey suit was not off any peg Thorne could afford, the white shirt was pristine, and if he hadn’t had his teeth straightened it would only have been because they didn’t need it.

  He looked like that actor in Kingsman, but Thorne couldn’t remember the name.

  ‘I’d ask if you found us all right,’ Fulton said. ‘But then I don’t need to, do I?’

  The detective superintendent was clearly someone who did his homework and was keen to let people know he had. Who liked to know as much about those he’d be working with as possible. Thorne hoped he hadn’t done too much digging.

  ‘No, I used to live round here,’ Thorne said. Mark somebody, he thought. That actor.

  Fulton nodded and straightened a picture on the corner of his desk. His family? Thorne couldn’t see a wedding ring. His car? ‘Nice part of London,’ he said. ‘Well, maybe not if you’re a cat lover.’

  ‘So, where are we?’

  Fulton did not react to the ‘we’, at least not visibly, which Thorne took to be a good sign. With those rather less secure in their abilities or authority, it might have rankled.

  ‘You know the basics, I presume.’

  Thorne nodded. ‘The numbers, whatever.’

  Fulton told him anyway.

  ‘The truth is that even the numbers are all over the place. Look… a local animal welfare charity brought these killings to our attention over a year ago, and obviously we’re very happy they did.’

  Thorne said, ‘Of course,’ but he had begun to sense that the only thing Fulton was remotely happy about was handing this case over.

  ‘The charity says there are this many victims, the RSPCA reckons it’s another number altogether, and despite the scare stories in the papers, the truth is it’s probably somewhere in between. A lot of the time, killings are being reported when animals have simply gone missing or been hit by cars. Even if it is something more deliberate there’s always the possibility it’s just someone getting fed up with next door’s ginger tom crapping in their flower bed or some thug taking advantage of all the media coverage.’

  ‘A copycat?’ Thorne tried hard not to smile.

  Fulton did the smiling for both of them; just a glimpse of those perfect teeth. ‘So… our estimate is somewhere north of three hundred that we believe to be the work of one individual, and the majority of those are in and around north London.’

  ‘I thought it was wider than that,’ Thorne said. ‘Some of the papers are calling him the M25 cat killer.’

  ‘There’ve been plenty a little further afield,’ Fulton said. ‘We think so, anyway. As I mentioned, it’s hard to be precise about all this. We took everything to a geographical profiler and she’s convinced our offender lives locally.’

  ‘How’s he doing it?’

  ‘A number of the animals have been examined by a veterinary pathologist and in every case the stomach contents were the same, suggesting that he lures the cats to him with chicken. The actual cause of death is always strangulation or blunt head trauma, so the animals are all stunned or already dead before the removal of body parts. Heads or tails, usually. Some limbs. All very clean cuts, so we’re thinking garden shears.’

  ‘What about forensics or prints?’

  Fulton shook his head.

  ‘Can you get fingerprints off a dead cat?’

  ‘Yes, but we haven’t and no DNA either. We’re guessing he wears gloves, because he doesn’t want to get scratched to death. He’s clearly someone who doesn’t like to take chances, because he’s never been seen. No CCTV, no ANPR. He likes to stick to residential areas where there are fewer cameras. We certainly don’t think he’s… impulsive.’

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  Fulton sat forward. ‘At one time or another we’ve had three distinct theories.’ He counted them off with raised fingers. ‘Initially, we brought in a forensic psychiatrist, a… profiler from the National Crime Agency.’ The hesitation was enough to make the man’s feelings about such ‘experts’ abundantly clear. ‘She considered the possibility that our offender might just be a disgruntled teenager, but eventually suggested we were probably looking for a white male between forty and fifty.’

  ‘With unresolved mummy issues.’

  ‘Exactly, so without much else to go on, we based our inquiry around that profile for a while. Then…’ another finger, ‘we began thinking more specifically. Outside the box, you’d probably say.’ There was another smile, and Thorne wondered if the theory he was about to hear was one Fulton had come up wit
h himself. ‘Do you know how many birds are killed by domestic cats every year?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ Thorne said. ‘A lot?’

  ‘Fifty-five million.’ Fulton sat back. ‘Sounds ridiculous, I know, but there’s nine million cats in this country, so that figure’s just based on one cat killing one bird every two months. So, we began to consider the possibility that the individual we were looking for had a particular grudge. A specific agenda.’

  ‘Seriously? A crazed ornithologist?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I take it you brought Bill Oddie in for questioning.’

  Perhaps Fulton did not understand the reference, but if he appreciated the attempt at levity, he decided not to let his face know about it. ‘As of now,’ he said, ‘it’s still an active line of inquiry.’ Finally, the three fingers were up. ‘And, obviously, we have the step-up theory, which is certainly the one our profiler was keen on, and which is where you and your team come in.’

  ‘Right,’ Thorne said. Thinking: Cavalry or sacrificial lamb?

  ‘So far, thankfully, that’s not happened, but we’d be stupid if we didn’t consider it a real possibility. Whichever theory’s right, if any of them are, we need to catch him. Oh, and you should know that a couple of the charities have clubbed together and put up a ten thousand pound reward.’

  ‘Nice.’ Thorne was not surprised. The animal welfare organisations were usually pretty well heeled, most of them raising more money every year than the charities which protected children.

  He was not sure what that said about those who donated.

  ‘Doesn’t show a lot of faith in our abilities, but I suppose it might help.’

  ‘A number of the animals,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said a number of the animals were examined by the veterinary pathologist. Why not all of them?’

  In the few moments of obvious discomfort before Fulton answered the question, and from the earnestness of his response, Thorne finally understood the real reason this case was being handed over.

  ‘Well, as I’m sure you can appreciate, unless and until this becomes a murder case, we can’t really justify every resource we would otherwise be throwing at it.’ Fulton shook his head and tried to look disappointed. ‘To be honest, the profiler was about as high-end as we were able to go. Now we’ve got a specialist homicide unit looking at it, those resources shouldn’t be subject to quite the same scrutiny.’

  ‘I get it,’ Thorne said.

  Not your problem any more. My problem…

  He guessed that the detective superintendent was fighting the urge to punch the air, thrilled to be finally passing on such a poisoned chalice. After all, if the killings did not escalate, his team would be lumbered with a case he was unequipped to solve, while if the man they were after did make that step up, Fulton would then have a very dangerous murderer to catch, which no copper in their right mind would relish.

  Though there were one or two who would, naturally.

  There were a few minutes of amicable natter after that: anything I can do, happy to help, you should seriously think about moving north again, your other half’s Job, isn’t she?

  Thorne stopped at the door. ‘Bill Oddie’s a birdwatcher.’

  Fulton blinked. Said, ‘Yeah, of course. I knew that.’

  FOUR

  ‘It is better. This is still better…’

  Lying beneath a thin, stained duvet on a sofa his neighbours had been throwing away, Adnan Jandali nodded and spoke to himself out loud. Whispered, as he so often did these days, in those moments when he was not shaking or doubled up. A few moments of comfort; spluttered when he could not stop weeping, or chanted – low and broken – as he wandered aimlessly from room to room.

  A few scraps of wreckage to cling to.

  Things were not as bad; how could they be? He thought this and a weak smile briefly cracked the pasty mask of his face. Bad had been one of the first words he’d learned in the detention centre, because it was simple and had said everything he wanted. Those first few weeks, when hope had made him talkative and he’d been keen to pass it on to others. When he’d tried to tell anyone who would listen what things had been like in the place he’d travelled so far from.

  ‘Trust me, this is not so bad…’

  However terrible he felt now, however awful things had become – he had allowed them to become – Adnan had to keep reminding himself why he was here; why a life in this country was so much better than the one he’d had at home. A life, such as it was, that he’d endured until there had been no choice but to leave. Back when he’d first arrived, when he and his children had stepped into a city that was not being bombed out of existence, there had really been nothing to think about.

  The rain was wonderful.

  The language he could not speak sounded magical.

  This was home now, he had told himself. This was where, God willing, he would raise his children and keep them safe. They would grow, be healthy and prosper, and in time perhaps they would forget their mother, or at the very least she would become no more than the memory of a beautiful woman in a story they had been told when they were very little.

  They would forget, even if Adnan could not.

  Those long weeks in the centre had been where it had all started. Weeks that had become months, while they checked his documents and made their decisions. While his children stayed with strangers. Confused and frustrated until he was offered something he was promised would make things easier for him, make the time go faster. He had no money to pay for it, but that wouldn’t be a problem, they had said.

  Smiles and laughter and pats on the back.

  Once you’re out of here and settled, you can pay for it then.

  It had made things better, they’d been right about that. It was as if what was in those little packets just shut down the part of him that remembered, or cared. It put blinkers on him and wrapped him in a blanket. Of course, of course, once he was out of there and back with his boys, he had not stopped needing it and there was never enough money.

  And now his boys had been taken away again.

  Now he had the debt and the pain and a craving that would not stop for something he could not afford.

  This is still better.

  There was a saying here about frying pans and fires. He knew what it meant because there was a similar expression in his own language. Bad to worse, something like that. When things were the other way round there were no words for it, but it was still a blessing. It had to be, didn’t it? When you had escaped from a fire, watched it burn and felt the heat of it, surely anything was preferable, however terrible. Lying here now, with a stinking bucket on the floor and a hole inside because he did not know where his children were, Adnan was still grateful.

  Another thin smile…

  Because he still gave thanks to the Almighty for the frying pan.

  The volume on the television was so loud that it took him a minute or more to register that the doorbell was ringing. Long, insistent. It was another minute before he had wiped his face and buttoned his shirt, walked slowly to the door and opened it to find himself staring at the man in the dark motorcycle helmet.

  The rain outside was not quite as wonderful as he had once thought.

  He said, ‘I have nothing.’

  He raised his arms to ward off the punch, then saw too late that it wasn’t a punch. The noise was like someone coughing behind their hand, and before he sank to his knees and watched his visitor walk away, Adnan felt the blood leaking through his fingers and thought: There are fires everywhere.

  FIVE

  After visiting his flat to check that his tenants weren’t trashing the place, and collecting his takeaway, Thorne drove down to Camden and parked outside a gym behind the Electric Ballroom. A few minutes later, he sat waiting in the gym’s sleek and shiny reception area, watching an assortment of Lycra-clad men and women on their way in or out, and trying not to get too depressed at the fact that this was as c
lose as he was ever likely to come to a fitness regime.

  Much as Thorne loved football, and enjoyed watching almost any sport on TV – though he drew the line at the mind-numbing boredom of Formula One – he had never been the most enthusiastic of participants. A few years before, he had been talked into turning out one evening for a Serious Crime Directorate five-a-side team, and had not exactly covered himself in glory. After ten minutes of being made to look and feel silly by a bunch of coppers half his age, he had thrown in the towel and spent the rest of the game in goal, fighting to get his breath back and deciding there and then that he was better off at home in front of his Samsung.

  With a beer in his hand.

  And a kebab…

  Eventually, Phil Hendricks appeared, coming down the bleached-wood stairs two at a time. A spiked leather kit-bag was slung over his shoulder and the absurdly tight black T-shirt showed plenty of intricate tattoo work.

  ‘You’re late,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Sorry, mate.’

  ‘I’ve been sitting here ten minutes. I’m knackered.’

  Leaning against Thorne’s chair, Hendricks raised his foot, grabbed his ankle and bent his leg behind him to stretch out the muscle. ‘Had to cool down properly, didn’t I?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Gets your heart rate back down.’ Hendricks straightened up and moved away towards the exit. ‘Stops your blood pressure dropping because it’s pooled in the large muscles.’

  Thorne got to his feet and followed his friend out through the revolving door. ‘If you say so.’

  Hendricks was standing on the pavement, continuing to stretch. ‘Gets rid of the lactic acid, all that bollocks.’

  ‘All right,’ Thorne said. ‘Don’t start throwing fancy jargon at me.’

  Despite the less than medically precise turn of phrase, Hendricks knew what he was talking about. As a forensic pathologist, he knew exactly what could be done to the body by things an awful lot worse than lactic acid.