He looked at his watch. Almost three o’clock in the morning.
He’d given them too much credit. Far too much credit. He was expecting a few links to have been figured out by now. Even the Victorian bobbies had started picking up suspects by now.
The not knowing was infuriating him. Were they just playing games? Was the silence and apparent cluelessness just another police tactic to try and smoke him out? Perhaps it was the endless bureaucracy the modern day police would no doubt have to go through. Maybe that was slowing them down. Or perhaps it was just that they were fucking incompetent.
He hoped that wasn’t the case. The chase wouldn’t be much fun if it was. How can you run a race against a one-legged man? You can’t. Maybe he’d been too clever. Perhaps his clues weren’t quite obvious enough. Perhaps he needed to be more conspicuous.
It was fine. It was all fine. He’d been planning for this eventuality, or rather history had. There was a precedent at this point in time, and he was secretly quite glad he had good cause to use it. It’d be a nice touch, wouldn’t it? And it’d certainly be one clue they couldn’t ignore or fuck up like they had with all the others.
Because everyone would know what this meant. Even the most pig-headed doughnut-munching beat bobby would figure out what it was referring to. Anyone with any sort of interest in murder. In death.
He paced around the dark room, trying to calm his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Deep breaths. That’s what his doctor had taught him. That was the easiest way without pills. And pills weren’t an option. Not now. Doctors knew things, could tell things. He couldn’t be coming face to face with a doctor now. He was great at covering things up — in so many ways — but he needed to stay under the radar.
A solitary shaft of light streamed into the room through the gap in the blinds. He’d need to get that fixed. He couldn’t think in the light. He needed silence, darkness, to dull his senses and heighten his thinking. Only under cover of darkness could he truly be free.