The Killing Habit Read online

  In her report, Melita Perera had expressed a degree of doubt that a similar range of methods would have been used on any human victims. There was time and location to be taken into account as well as the fact that cats were less able to protect themselves and fight back. It would be unusual, she had said, based on her experience in studying similar serial offenders. Though the psychiatrist had fought shy of making a definitive prediction, her money had certainly been on the killer having a more clear-cut MO when it came to humans.

  ‘We can probably rule out the shootings,’ Tanner had said. ‘Any victims who died in fires or were poisoned… anything drug-related. Still leaves us plenty to choose from though.’

  Still plenty for Thorne to be thinking about, but as they had walked on towards the station, Tanner’s main concern had been the favour she needed from him.

  ‘I’m putting the house on the market,’ she’d said.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘It’s time.’

  ‘So what, somewhere smaller?’

  Tanner had nodded, then, barely breaking stride, had bent to pick up a discarded plastic bottle. ‘We had a policy, you know? It paid off the mortgage when Susan died. So I can get somewhere decent and still have enough left to mean I don’t have to worry.’

  Thorne was not surprised to hear that Tanner had made provision should the worst ever happen. Practical, as opposed to pessimistic. He was yet to see though, what any of this had to do with him.

  ‘So, want to come flat-hunting with me?’

  ‘Me?’ He watched her drop the plastic bottle into a litter bin, wipe her hands on her jacket. ‘I’m not going to be any use.’

  ‘Come on, I just need another pair of eyes, that’s all.’

  ‘Not mine, you don’t. Trust me, I’m rubbish at that kind of thing.’

  ‘Your flat is pretty nice.’

  ‘It’s Helen’s flat. That’s all down to her.’

  ‘What about your own place?’

  ‘Not quite as nice.’ They walked on, turning into Grahame Park Way, the station a few minutes ahead. Thorne knew he did not have very long to wriggle off this particular hook. ‘I don’t have any… imagination when it comes to that stuff. Honestly, I’d just take one look and go, “the walls are a horrible colour” and yeah, I know you can paint walls, but I can’t see beyond that, or if the furniture’s crappy or if I don’t like the owner’s face. Seriously, you’d be better off asking someone else. What about Phil?’

  Tanner shook her head. ‘It’s about company as much as anything else and there’s only so much of Phil’s I can take before I want to slap him. Look, I just need someone to tell me I’m being too picky, that’s all. Someone else to deal with slimy estate agents.’

  Seeing that his arguments were falling on deaf ears, Thorne took one last shot. ‘I’m not sure you’ll have a lot of time anyway. With all this, you know? The extra work.’

  ‘Oh, I can manage time,’ Tanner said, waving his concerns away. ‘You know I’m good at that. An hour or two here and there to go and look at a few places, that’s all. Just come and see a couple with me and we’re quits.’

  Now, the custody sergeant leaned across the desk. ‘Talking about biting off more than you can chew…’

  Thorne stared. ‘Sorry?’

  The man tugged at his earlobe. ‘Our lugless PC.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Word is, you’ve taken over this cat thing. Trying to find out if it’s more than just a cat thing.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see,’ Thorne said.

  Tanner had been right. If they wanted to make any progress, they needed, at the very least, to prioritise one set of victims, one method of killing. Someone had to make a choice and decide which way to jump.

  Thorne took out his phone.

  Fulton probably knew as much as anybody about the case thus far, but Thorne doubted Uncle Fester would be brave enough to make the call. Or rather, to live with the flak if it turned out to be the wrong one. Thorne was certainly brave – or stupid – enough, but even he wouldn’t do so without seeking a bit of advice first, and he knew just who to ask.

  While the custody skipper returned to the ear-biting incident and made some crack about Reservoir Dogs, Thorne sent the text. Putting his phone away, he turned to see Tanner emerging alone from the corridor. The sergeant craned his neck to look, as though Andrew Evans might simply be taking his time, ambling along behind her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Thorne asked.

  Tanner shook her head and strode past him. She raised a hand to the bemused custody sergeant and made quickly for the door.

  ‘You done, then?’ Thorne hurried to catch her up. They pushed out into the car park and walked towards the main road. ‘We heading back?’

  Tanner nodded. ‘I need to see Russell.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  The wind had picked up a little. Tanner took a scarf from her handbag and began to wrap it around her neck. ‘Mr Evans has got a very interesting story to tell.’

  Thorne waited, looked at her. He raised his voice above the noise of the wind and her heels clattering on the pavement. ‘Nicola…?’

  Tanner gave him the headlines.

  Perhaps the jungle drums had beaten them back from Colindale, or maybe Russell Brigstocke was just good at reading the expressions on his officers’ faces. Whatever the reason, when Tanner and Thorne walked into his office ten minutes later, he did not look as though he was expecting good news.

  ‘We’ve got a problem.’ Tanner took off her scarf. Brigstocke was already nodding when she said, ‘With Andrew Evans.’

  ‘Which is why you haven’t charged him.’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  The DCI sat back and looked up at the clock. ‘We’re already pushing the twenty-four hours, so I’ll get on to the superintendent, get her to sign off on another twelve. Shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘I don’t need any more time,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Right.’ Brigstocke sighed and took his glasses off. ‘Well, I don’t really need to tell you that as things stand, and that includes muggins here not having the first idea what you’re playing at, we’ve only got two options.’

  He glanced at Thorne. Thorne shrugged.

  ‘We charge or release.’

  Tanner dropped her shoulder bag on the floor and pulled back a chair. She said, ‘I don’t want to do either.’

  FIFTEEN

  Melita Perera had suggested a bar in Holborn, just north of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and only a street away from her office. She would be working late, she’d told Thorne, before assuring him it was a nice enough spot for a rendezvous. Thorne thought it should have been an awful lot nicer, considering the prices, though making the place look like the inside of a disused warehouse had probably cost a small fortune. Bare brick walls, wooden benches and dusty industrial lighting; a line of battered metal stools along the bar that reminded Thorne of many uncomfortable hours in his school chemistry lab.

  A pain in the arse, and plenty more elsewhere.

  Standing at the bar, he thought about the teacher who had caught him dicking around with a Bunsen burner. Every bit as formidable in the lab as he was on the rugby field, he had seized Thorne’s hand, sought out the usual cuts and scrapes, then taken great delight in pouring neat wood alcohol into them.

  Probably best not to get into childhood trauma with a psychiatrist…

  Thorne spent five minutes perusing the bewildering array of craft beers listed on a chalkboard above the bar, then ordered a Guinness. Perera asked for a glass of red wine.

  They sat at a table beneath a thick, tubular heating vent, which might have been a design feature and might simply have been a heating vent. Perera was willowy, her long dark hair tied back with a simple red band. The dark skirt and jacket were not surprising as she had come straight from work, yet she somehow managed to look both smart and casual, striking Thorne as a woman whose appearance would be effortlessly stylish whatever the surroundi
ngs. They talked about nothing for a few minutes. Then Thorne said, ‘So, how did you get into this game?’

  ‘Game?’ The woman seemed to find that funny.

  ‘Mysteriously ended up in it, you said. Something like that.’

  She put down her large glass of Merlot. ‘God knows. You don’t always have much of an idea where you’ll end up when you’re training. You read a few studies, take a few courses and suddenly you’re specialising. It wasn’t exactly planned.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘To be honest, I’m always a bit suspicious of the people who want to work in this… area. Who know early on, I mean. Same as dentists. Why would anybody want to do that?’ She sniffed and took a sip of wine. ‘Did you always want to be a policeman?’

  Thorne considered it. ‘Pretty much,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘When the rock-star thing didn’t work out and Spurs hadn’t come knocking.’

  Perera smiled and nodded.

  ‘You must be interested in it, though?’ Thorne shifted his chair a little closer to the table. The legs scraped against the concrete floor. ‘These sorts of individuals.’

  ‘Yeah, absolutely, when I’m working. I try not to take too much of it home with me, though. Doesn’t go down too well across the dinner table. Same for you, I’m guessing.’

  Thorne suddenly found himself wondering who might be sitting on the other side of the woman’s dinner table. There was no wedding ring, but then again, he wasn’t wearing one either. He nodded. ‘Yeah, course.’

  ‘It’s not like you can turn it on or off, obviously. You can’t unthink things. You have to compartmentalise, that’s all. Cases stay with you, though. Certain people.’

  ‘Who was the worst one?’

  She looked at him, clearly well used to this sort of question; the ghoulish enquiry at a party, the invitation to share horror stories. Her casual response, though, suggested that she knew Thorne’s curiosity was not simply a morbid one.

  ‘It’s the ones that say nothing that are actually the worst. The details tend not to bother you after a while, not once you’ve heard enough of them. But the subjects who want to hold on to their power by staying silent are the ones you end up thinking about for a long time afterwards.’

  ‘Like Shipman.’

  ‘Absolutely. Two hundred and eighteen identified victims, so almost certainly more than that, and he never said why. Refused to talk about it. Gave the police nothing and then topped himself.’

  Thorne nodded, drank. He remembered the Sun’s less than subtle headline after the doctor’s suicide.

  Ship Ship Hooray.

  ‘I suppose it’s the same for you,’ she said. ‘It’s the cases you never solve that stay with you.’

  ‘Most of the time.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure there are exceptions.’

  ‘You remember a man called Stuart Nicklin?’

  She thought for a few seconds, then nodded. ‘There were two of them, weren’t there? Working together.’

  ‘Nicklin was running the show,’ Thorne said. ‘It was all down to him.’

  ‘It’s not common, but with killers working in tandem that’s usually the way. There’s an alpha.’

  ‘I did… solve it, and we put him away eventually, but now he’s out again.’ Thorne looked across and met her eyes for just a second. ‘He got out, and that was down to me, more or less.’

  The psychiatrist waited as though keen to hear the story, but Thorne wasn’t keen to tell it; to relive it. He’d already given her as much information as was needed.

  ‘I just wondered what he might do.’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘If you had any thoughts…’

  It was something Thorne thought about a great deal.

  ‘Well, if he’s got any sense and he doesn’t want to go back to prison, he’ll do nothing at all. He’ll disappear, start again somewhere else. Go abroad, maybe? If he’s clever, he’ll stay well away from you.’ She looked at him. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘Oh, he’s certainly clever,’ Thorne said. ‘Ran rings round everyone, me included. But I’m not sure he’s got too much common sense, not the way you mean, anyway. He’s driven by something a bit more… basic.’

  ‘They usually are.’

  Thorne blinked away an image of dead flesh in a plain brown envelope. The scars on Phil Hendricks’s back. He downed what was left in his glass and said, ‘So, what about our man then?’

  Perera leaned back, laughing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wondered when you’d get round to that. I thought I was going to have to start charging you.’

  Thorne found a thin smile from somewhere.

  ‘Why don’t I get us another drink?’

  When she sat down again a few minutes later, Perera said, ‘You’re worried about what to start looking for, yes? The method. I’ve been thinking about that since you texted me.’

  ‘In the report you said that if he stepped up to murder, there would probably be just one method.’

  ‘Yes, if. And if our offender is a he.’

  ‘Surely.’

  ‘Probably. Nothing’s ever one hundred per cent when it comes to these types of offences. I’ve certainly learned that much.’

  ‘OK, noted. But… you said it would be one method.’

  She quickly raised a hand. ‘I didn’t say that. It was… educated speculation.’

  ‘Well, I need you to speculate some more,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Look, it’s still my professional opinion that the diversity of methods used on the animals would not necessarily be reflected in any homicides, if there were any. I simply haven’t come across that kind of… variety before. I know that when we spoke on the phone I said these kinds of killers do their best to be different, but I can only tell you that in my experience there does usually tend to be a fixed MO.’

  ‘Right —’

  ‘To begin with, at least.’ The woman’s voice dropped a little. ‘I’m not just saying this to cover myself, but there’s always the possibility the killer might change things up with each spate of murders. Each theoretical spate, obviously. If we can stretch your exercise analogy a little further, they might decide to introduce a new component to their workout.’

  Thorne thought about that for a few moments. ‘In terms of possible historic offences, though…?’

  ‘One method. Probably.’

  ‘OK, so let’s start from that assumption. We’ve narrowed our causes of death down to three, but it’s still too many. Strangulation or asphyxiation, stabbing, or the use of a blunt instrument.’

  She nodded. ‘The cats were strangled or bludgeoned to death and obviously a blade of some sort was used on them afterwards.’

  ‘So, what about with people? With women?’

  Perera puffed out her cheeks, took a few seconds. ‘So… knives are silent, intimate, and the penetration of the flesh would obviously tally with any sexual element. Then again, our offender might want to get up even closer and put hands on them. A blunt instrument is quicker, but often messier than a knife…’

  ‘So, which one would your money be on?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d put money on any of them,’ she said. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t risk my career.’

  ‘Not asking you to,’ Thorne said. ‘This doesn’t go on any kind of record, OK? We’re just having a drink.’

  The psychiatrist stroked the stem of her wine glass.

  ‘It goes down as my decision.’

  Melita Perera leaned back and shook her head. ‘This is like some weird game show. I feel like the contestant who’s got to decide which box the jackpot’s in.’

  ‘Stabbing, strangulation, blunt instrument.’ Thorne picked up his glass and stared at the woman across it. He said, ‘Pick one.’

  SIXTEEN

  Alice stared up, the fight all but gone from her and thought, Stupid, and Who the hell ticks every box? and Christ, oh Christ, he’s strong, and she kicked out
one last time and thought: Somebody will come.

  She thought about dinner and singing in the car and the clothes laid out on the bed. That serious face across the table. The numbers exchanged and the buzz-and-flutter…

  Somebody will come.

  The light faded, closing in around her, and she remembered how quickly the blackness had come a long time ago, when everything shrank until there was just a dot. When she was little and her dad switched the TV off. Pictures, then nothing and that whoosh to a tiny white dot and she always refused to go to bed until the pinprick of light had gone.

  She thrashed and spat as they swam through her head: all the people she had loved and all those who had loved her in return. Her boys, her parents, her friends, her useless lump of an ex-husband… and her tongue felt so thick and useless between her lips.

  The silent scream she knew that nobody would hear, that this was not fair, this was so unfair.

  And a stockbroker in funny shoes.

  Pulling back her hair and saying, Shush, shush…

  Looking up through bulging eyes, all she could see at the end were twin images of someone like herself. Flickering as he blinked; two tiny pictures of a woman who could not possibly be her, distorted and disfigured. Her own face, cracked and wet and ugly, reflected in the eyes of the man who had his hands around her neck.

  A doll’s eyes, Alice thought. Dead. No sign of a twinkle.

  She heard something snap, like a wishbone.

  Then there was no light.

  PART TWO

  THE PICTURE ON THE BOX

  SEVENTEEN

  Thorne took the M25 south and drove towards the M3, heading for Salisbury. The traffic had eased a little by the time he was past the Heathrow turn-off, when he glanced across and saw that his passenger had her eyes closed.

  ‘Nicola…’

  Tanner opened her eyes immediately. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if you were.’

  ‘I wasn’t, though.’