It was hideously late by the time Tim reached home. His house was in darkness. He opened the front door as quietly as he could and tiptoed into the kitchen. Everything was switched off, the working surfaces all pristine. Ever the optimist, he opened the oven door to check that Katrin hadn’t left something to warm for him on a low light, but found nothing but the roasting tin that was kept there when the oven wasn’t in use. He pulled a Peroni from the fridge, snapped off the cap and began to drink it as he prepared a peanut butter sandwich. It was unsatisfying fare, but at least it plugged the growling void in his stomach.
When he’d wolfed down the sandwich, he took the rest of the beer and went to sit for a while in the living room. He was dog-tired, but he needed some time to unwind before he went to bed.
Unwinding proved next to impossible: his head was buzzing with the case – or cases. How many separate cases were there now? The murders of the two women found in the Fossdyke Canal must have been linked: that was obvious. Was the young girl’s killing associated with theirs, or, as was looking more likely, with Smythe’s? Or were hers and Smythe’s separate murders, unrelated both to the Fossdyke mutilations and each other? Were there three separate murderers operating in Lincolnshire at the same time? That almost beggared belief – yet what were the connections between them? Smythe and the girl had been stabbed in a similar way, it was true, but stabbing was a common enough way of committing murder and, pace Professor Salkeld, he wasn’t sure he believed in ‘gentle’ stabbing: to him it seemed to be a contradiction in terms. Smythe was – reputedly, they still had to verify that – a social worker, but unless the girl had recently lived in South Lincs he was unlikely to have come into contact with her. He was also gay, but there was no evidence either way to suggest he’d been the victim of a gay hate attack. François Fabron was still a suspect, but Tim was unpersuaded of his guilt. The Frenchman was of limited intelligence: it would have taken a much better actor than he to feign the shock he’d shown when he’d first discovered the body. So, probably three separate perpetrators, certainly two; and four people murdered. And, apart from Fabron, no leads.
Then there were the fucking vehicle thefts – he hadn’t thought about those much since they’d been handed over to Ricky, but they came back to haunt him now. No leads there, either. Thornton would be doing his nut: in charge of a police force rapidly gaining a reputation for its inability to solve any type of serious crime. The vehicle thefts had been depressing Tim for weeks, but he’d rarely felt as despondent as he did now.
The effects of the beer and the sandwich started to kick in and he told himself that low blood sugar levels and sheer bloody fatigue were largely responsible for his mood. The frustrating evening he’d just spent on fruitlessly trying to track down the parents of the Roma girl had also played its part. His was a naturally sanguine nature, but his worst enemy couldn’t accuse him of patience and his had run out considerably before the utter failure of his repeated attempts to get a reply from the mobile Penny Green had produced. The phone had contained a sim card and there was a single number programmed into its directory, but this number appeared to be out of use. Asked if she had more information about Selina’s parents’ whereabouts, Penny Green could only say vaguely that they were ‘in Ireland’. She thought the name they were using was Wood, but she didn’t seem too certain. Tim didn’t question her about why the surname was different from their daughters’. There could have been another explanation, but he was pretty certain this meant they used more than one name. He didn’t want to frighten Penny by enquiring further into why this might be. They had let Penny go then, after she’d promised to spend the night with the two younger children. They’d have to send someone from the social services department to the camp the next day, but they decided not to do anything to alarm the girls that evening.
Michael Robinson had set someone to work tracking the mobile and discovered that it had been reported stolen several months before and not used since. Another dead end. All they could do was contact the Irish police and ask them to have broadcast an emergency message to ‘Bill and Rosa Wood, believed to be travelling somewhere in Ireland’. As they hadn’t yet given a reason for wanting to talk to the couple, Tim doubted this would produce any results, though there was an outside chance they’d call the mobile, which Michael Robinson had kept in his possession, or try to get in touch with their daughters. That was if they heard the radio message: it was anybody’s guess what they were doing and how remote from normal media channels this activity took them.
‘What a fucking pig’s ear,’ said Tim under his breath, as he picked up the empty Peroni bottle and deposited it in the kitchen. He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but of one thing he could be certain: Thornton would be on the warpath. From an outsider’s perspective, who could blame him?
To his surprise, Tim slept reasonably well. He was woken early by Sophia coming into the bedroom to show him the clothes she’d chosen for pre-school that day.
‘Where’s Mummy?’ he asked groggily.
‘She’s getting the breakfast ready.’
Tim looked at his watch and groaned.
‘It’s only half-past six.’
‘It’s a college day,’ Sophia said reprovingly, as if Tim should have known this already. Perhaps he should, he thought.
‘I forgot! Okay, I’ll get up now. Tell Mummy I’m coming. You look lovely,’ he added as a perfunctory afterthought. Sophia cocked her head on one side and grinned ironically. Tim smiled broadly himself. Her mother’s daughter, through and through, he thought. He’d better be careful: he’d stand no chance against the united wit of both.
He made it to breakfast just as Katrin was helping Sophia put on her coat. He gave them both a kiss.
‘See you this evening!’ he said cheerfully, and, in a lower voice to Katrin, ‘I’m sorry about last night. I was trying to help Michael Robinson out of a mess he’d got himself into.’
‘Was it worth it?’
‘Probably not,’ said Tim. ‘Anyway, I missed our evening together. I really wanted to talk to you.’
Sophia was standing on tiptoe, reaching up for the door handle. Katrin opened the door for her and she went bouncing down the path. Katrin went outside, too, but as she was standing on the doormat she looked back at Tim and said, ‘There’s no college this morning. I only have to go in this afternoon. If there’s something you really need to talk to me about, I’ll be back in twenty minutes.’
‘Great!’ said Tim. ‘Thank you for that. I’ll be waiting for you.’
He turned back into the house, uneasily aware – as he so often was – that he didn’t deserve Katrin. While in the act of fixing himself some toast, he decided to call Thornton and make his late appearance at work official. He looked at his watch. It was barely 7am. Thornton usually got in to work early, but he probably wouldn’t arrive at the station for another half hour or so. Tim left a message on the Superintendent’s office phone and, as an afterthought, on his mobile, too. He knew for a fact that Thornton wouldn’t check the latter, but at least Tim would then have covered all bases. He told Thornton he was following up a lead and would be at the station mid-morning at the latest. He fervently hoped Katrin would produce some good ideas to validate this statement when she returned.
He watched her as she breezed up their short garden path in a few elegant strides, her camel coat flying open, her hair ruffled by a slight wind. She looked almost the same as the girl he’d married nine years before, though he fancied her face was more contoured, the look in her eyes, though still mischievous, flecked with a kind of wisdom. His mood lifted. Murderers, vehicle thieves, Superintendent Thornton! Bring them on, as long his home life was intact.
‘Coffee?’ said Katrin, arching her eyebrows just enough to indicate that Tim should already have made it.
‘Thanks, I could murder some. I’ll do it,’ Tim added ineffectually.
‘No, you clear the table. Then we’ll have somewhere to sit, if we want to look at our laptops.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of…’
‘Just in case,’ said Katrin briskly. ‘You never know.’
A few minutes later, they were installed side by side at the dining-room table, each holding a mug of freshly-ground coffee.
‘I heard about the murder in the Butter Market,’ Katrin said. ‘There was a short piece about it on the local news. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when you didn’t come home when you said you would.’
‘I meant to. I wanted to talk to you about that murder. It wasn’t because of that I was late; it was because I had to go to Lincoln to help Michael Robinson interview a witness.’
‘So you said. Tell me about this latest murder. No connection to the others, I take it?’
‘Not that I can see. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Did Stephen Jenkins commit any other murders?’
‘None that were discovered. The police had their suspicions at the time about various other women who’d gone missing in the area where he lived. There was one case in particular: the woman had been stabbed and her murderer had made a clumsy attempt at hacking off her head. It was never pinned on Jenkins, but it seems likely he did it.’
‘Serving his apprenticeship in decapitation?’ Tim smiled grimly.
‘If you want to put it like that.’
‘Any evidence that he killed or tried to kill men?’
‘Not that I know of. He was one of those killers who become fixated with a hatred of prostitutes. As I told you, he may have killed the girl because she discovered something. She probably wasn’t part of his plan, whatever that was – punishing prostitutes, clearing the area of them, who knows?’
‘I just wondered if he had a thing about gays.’
‘I haven’t read anything to suggest that. I suppose he could have borne a grudge against prostitutes in general, including males. Any chance your victim was a gay prostitute?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s more likely that his boyfriend was one.’
‘Mistaken identity?’
‘Not unless the murderer didn’t know what he looked like. Smythe was quite a hefty bloke – not fat, but broad and muscular. The boyfriend’s a little weedy guy and a gaudy dresser, which Smythe wasn’t. And French, too.’
‘You mean the boyfriend’s French?’
‘Yep. No idea what he’s doing in Spalding, unless it’s just to ply his trade. He’s got digs out in West Marsh Road, but I don’t think he works at any of the factories there. I’m pretty certain he’s unemployed.’
‘Now that is interesting!’ said Katrin thoughtfully. She powered up her laptop.
‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’ said Tim impatiently.
‘Wait a minute. Just let me do this, will you?’
Tim edged his chair nearer to hers and watched while she searched for a website. After a few minutes, she found what she was looking for and read aloud:
‘A middle-aged male, later identified as George Gordon, was found murdered in an alleyway in Alachua County, June 1995. Cause of death: multiple stab wounds. Main suspect was a Quebecois, name of Philippe Pacquet, who was an associate of Gordon’s. Pacquet was released after providing a watertight alibi. The killer has never been found. A cold case enquiry in 2007 yielded no new evidence.’
‘Interesting,’ said Tim, although he was clearly disappointed. ‘But Gordon was killed more than twenty years ago, and in – where did you say?’
‘Alachua County. It’s in Florida. This is an official police website listing unsolved crimes in Florida. I’ve been using it for an assignment.’
‘Right. Are you suggesting Smythe’s killer came over here from Florida? That it’s the same guy who killed this George Gordon twenty-three years ago?’
‘No, Tim, of course I’m not saying that. Can’t you see the similarities between the crimes? Gordon was killed in an alleyway, Smythe in the Butter Market, which is what an American would call an alleyway. Both were stabbed to death. Both had a younger male lover who spoke French.’
‘It doesn’t say that Pacquet was Gordon’s lover.’
‘No, but what do you think ‘associate’ means? Americans can be very squeamish: they’re more prone to using euphemisms than people think.’
‘How do you know Pacquet spoke French?’
‘I don’t; but the odds are in favour of it. He was Québecois. They tend to hang on to their mother tongue.’
‘Okay, so Gordon, a middle-aged man, was killed in an alleyway, but not by his much younger French-speaking male lover; and Smythe was killed in an alleyway, also, in all probability, not by his much younger French-speaking lover. I’m sorry, I must be missing something: I can’t see where you’re going with all of this.’
‘It’s only a theory – or a hypothesis, I should say. But I’m suggesting that maybe the murders are all connected. Perhaps they’re all copycat crimes. The killer of the two women and the young girl in the Fossdyke Canal was copying Stephen Jenkins; and Simon Smythe’s killer was copying whoever killed George Gordon.’
‘You’re suggesting a serial copycat killer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there any previous record of such a person?’
‘There have been lots of copycat killers. But the ones I’ve read about have all based their murders either on one previously-committed murder or the career of a previous murderer. I’ve never heard of a copycat killer who copied the crimes of several different murderers.’
‘That doesn’t make it impossible. But what evidence is there besides the similarities you’ve mentioned? I hate coincidences, as you know, but the Jenkins crimes and the Florida murder are so far apart in time and place that we could be looking at coincidence here.’
‘I agree it’s perfectly possible, but the most striking thing about both the murder of the girl thrown into the Fossdyke Canal and Simon Smythe is these so-called ‘gentle stab wounds’ that Professor Salkeld described. As if the killer’s just going through the motions, not stabbing with any conviction – or rather, not enough conviction to drive him into the kind of frenzy that murderers usually need to see them through. As if he’s not engaged in the actual act so much as the game of following someone else’s actions.’
‘I think you’re on to something,’ said Tim. ‘Well done! We’ll keep this to ourselves for a while, until we’ve had more time to think it through.’
‘There’s just one other thing,’ said Katrin. ‘If this killer kills as a sort of intellectual exercise to prove that he can get away with copying crimes for which someone has been convicted and jailed in the past, like Jenkins, or others for which, like the original killer, he remains unapprehended, that means he doesn’t have a single modus operandi. And that, in turn, means he may be responsible for other killings – either detected or undetected. Murders or disappearances that we’d never link him to because they don’t bear any resemblance to these other crimes.’
‘Christ!’ said Tim. ‘You’re right. But if the murders don’t resemble each other, how can we possibly identify that they’ve been committed by the same person?’
‘There must be a link,’ said Katrin. ‘There always is a link.’
‘Hmm,’ said Tim. ‘Perhaps. And perhaps that criminology course is teaching you to look for patterns where none exists.’ He regretted the snub as soon as the words had left his lips. The smile disappeared from Katrin’s face; her brow creased in a light frown.
‘Anyway,’ Tim finished lamely, ‘I’ll settle for finding the killers of Smythe and the three females first. Then we can think about casting our net further. And thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Katrin wryly, as she gathered the coffee mugs and disappeared with them into the kitchen.
‘By the way,’ Tim called after her, ‘has Thornton picked up on the copycat idea with you? Michael Robinson spotted the similarity between the Fossdyke Canal deaths and the Jenkins murders, too. He told me he’d asked Thornton if you could do a bit of research on them.’
‘He hasn’t mentioned it yet. But if he does, I’ve mostly dug out all I can about Jenkins now.’
‘And I suppose you’ll have to hand it over to him. But don’t tell him about this serial copycat idea yet, will you?’