8

 

‘Oh, please, Dad.’ Brian’s face had turned red. ‘You can’t ask me that.’ He started playing with his chips, spreading them all over the plate.

‘I was just asking if there’s a girl at school who’s more than a friend for you.’ Eric laughed, but what he felt was real fatherly pride. He’d already understood from the boy’s reaction that his supposition was correct. ‘They’re reasonable questions between men.’ He wanted to please him, making him feel older than his fifteen years, even though his son would be a child to him for quite some time to come.

Brian scrutinised him with an unconvinced air. Perhaps he didn’t believe him, but Eric was ready to bet the boy would like to have that kind of relationship with his father.

Ever since they stopped living under the same roof, the way he interacted with his son had inevitably changed. He’d always been an affectionate father, but one who stood firm when needed. But recently he’d felt from his now adolescent son’s attitude as if the latter considered his father responsible for the problems with his mother, which had led to the end of their marriage. To be honest, Eric felt sometimes that he shared this opinion, although he kept repeating to himself that his ex-wife knew full well she’d been marrying a man dedicated to his work, and all the more so once his career took off, bringing him to be the chief of his own team within the forensic department. Despite this, he didn’t blame her for feeling abandoned, nor could he be critical of his son, who was the only real victim of the situation. The problems in his relationship with Crystal had been already there and had got more acute with the latest developments, but Brian was the only one who couldn’t possibly be to blame. And so Eric had recently begun to try to change the way he approached his son, driven by the fear that the boy would grow further away from him.

So far, he thought he was doing a good job. The positive thing was that, in a way, right from the moment of the separation, they’d begun spending more quality time together as father and son. Of course, before, they’d lived in the same house, but that meant each had taken the other’s company for granted. Now the time they spent together had become special. At least, it was for Eric, yet he somehow felt that it was the same for his son, even though it would be difficult to get the boy to admit it.

‘Let’s just say there might be a girl like that,’ Brian started explaining, abandoning his fork altogether. He seemed to need all his strength to concentrate on the conversation.

‘And does this potential girl have a name too?’ Eric leant forward, like somebody ready to receive a confidence.

‘Nicole.’ The boy’s voice had trembled just a little pronouncing her name.

‘Nicole,’ his father echoed, nodding in approval. ‘Tell me something about her. What’s she like?’

‘Blonde, tall.’ Brian gesticulated, dreamy. ‘With two …’ He hesitated. His hands were open, eloquent, mimicking something quite large. ‘Beautiful eyes.’ And he flushed red again.

Eric couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Oh, yes. I’ve always been fascinated by women’s eyes too!’

Brian laughed too. In the end, they’d managed to create a real complicity. ‘It’s not as you think, Dad. She is … clever, very clever.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Eric commented, putting on a serious and composed expression.

‘She always sits at the desk next to mine during French class, and sometimes she explains stuff to me I don’t understand.’

Something in Brian’s tone told him that schoolwork wasn’t exactly the reason why his son was so interested in talking to this Nicole. The boy would have wished he were the one giving explanations.

‘You should hear the way she pronounces those words. It’s so sexy.’

Eric coughed. He’d almost inhaled his food. He wanted to be a modern father, but that word coming out of his son’s mouth made him feel strange.

‘Only I am hopeless,’ the boy continued, the corners of his mouth turning down in an expression that was more shame than sadness. ‘French sounds like double Dutch to me!’

There, that was the reason for his frustration. He was afraid that this girl, whom he clearly liked, might think he wasn’t intelligent enough.

The thought that this girl might be making his son feel this way on purpose dawned for a moment in Eric’s mind, but he decided to dismiss it. It led him to think of something that was absolutely off-limits for an evening he’d decided to dedicate to his son, by taking the boy out for dinner the way he’d been promising to do for some time now.

‘Wait a moment.’ This also explained something else. ‘You asked Miriam to help you with your French so that you could impress this girl, did you?’

‘No, she told you?! I made her promise she wouldn’t tell you about that!’

They both laughed.

‘And how are the private lessons going?’

‘I don’t know.’ Brian picked his fork up again and grabbed a mouthful of chips. Now that he’d revealed his secret, his appetite seemed to have returned. ‘I have the class tomorrow,’ he said, as he chewed. ‘Hopefully I’ll do better than last time.’

‘I’m sure you’ll surprise her.’

Brian nodded. ‘I’m giving it all I’ve got!’

He was really proud of his son. This boy was the most important thing in his life.

 

 

‘So,’ Eric said, putting an end to the hubbub in the meeting room. ‘Let’s try to sum everything up, focusing on facts. Then we’ll consider speculation.’

Standing beside the large screen, which showed the details of the investigation, he prepared to organise the teamwork for the case that the media, showing a lack of originality, had already christened “The Black Death Killings”. Amongst the various theories advanced by the journalists, there was the one of the serial killer, which was always a magnet for public attention, even though in this case the victims weren’t exactly attracting compassion.

‘We have two murders, apparently different from one another.’ He pointed at one and then the other pair of photographs displayed at the top of the screen. Each showed the victim’s corpse and a portrait from when he was alive. ‘Nicholas Thompson, killed at home more than two weeks ago, with two shots from a nine-millimetre equipped with a silencer. One to the groin and one to the neck, both very precise. The bullets stopped at his pelvis and at a vertebra, after tearing open two arteries. He died from loss of blood. The victim was a previous offender, but appeared to have lived an honest life for the past fifteen years. When he was younger, he was convicted for a few thefts, but none of them were particularly violent.’

A few people in the room nodded here and there during Eric’s speech.

‘Here, on the other hand, we have Gerald McKinsey, killed in the City three days ago, just before dawn, with a single shot to the back coming from a nine-millimetre. The bullet perforated his lung and got stuck in his heart. He was dead a few seconds after he hit the ground. This victim was a previous offender as well. He’d been in and out of prison since he was seventeen. He was last released twenty-one months ago. He too was involved in robberies, including a few armed ones.’

He paused to catch his breath and look at his team.

‘The same gun was used in both killings. In both cases, the victims were forced to assume a precise position before they were shot. The first lying down supine.’ He used a laser pointer to indicate this. ‘The second standing and turned around.’ He moved the green dot to the other image. ‘The first body was moved, presumably because the victim was writhing before he died. This suggests that the killer wanted them to be found in a certain position.’

He stepped aside to make sure everyone could see, and leant against the table.

‘Thompson let his killer in, apparently of his own free will, given that he offered him a cup of tea. McKinsey, instead, was chased. He used to walk through that area every day, after he was done with work, even though not exactly on that street. He might have changed his route because he was attempting to escape his murderer.’

Now the laser was pointing at a dark outline located at the middle of the screen.

‘In both crimes, our killer was filmed by the surveillance cameras. In the first case, while he was going into the building and then when he came out about twenty minutes later. In the second case, while he was committing the crime. He was wearing a black tunic and a veil on his head, resembling the kind Arabian women wear that also covers the mouth and nose. However, we can’t be sure it’s the same person. Stern …’ He turned to Martin Stern. ‘What can you tell us about the two videos?’

‘Ahem, well …’ Stern seemed not to be expecting he’d be called upon so early in the meeting. He stood up and walked to the computer connected to the screen, where he produced an image on a previously empty area. ‘In the first video, shot in full daylight, I analysed the suspect’s gait and build. The colour of the clothing flattens the shapes a little, but the computer helps us understand what escapes the eye. First of all, the killer is walking in a clumsy way and seems to have a hard time with high heels. An analysis of the shadows in the image helps us get a sense of the pelvis’s size, which is narrower than the shoulders. My opinion is that we’re dealing with a man. Now, the second video.’ He sighed, whilst another video appeared beside the first one; this time the black figure emerged from the lower left-hand corner. ‘The shot is really dark, and the angle doesn’t help us much. I can just say that the killer moves more comfortably, but as you can see here …’ He froze the footage. ‘He’s wearing trainers. As far as the height is concerned, even taking into account the shoes, there’s not much difference. The calculation returns a difference of one or two centimetres at most, well within the error threshold of the measuring software.’

‘That said, how tall is our killer?’ Eric asked. That would be a useful piece of information, anyway.

‘Between one metre seventy-eight and one metre eighty; allowing for a further error due to the soles of his shoes and the way the veil is placed on his head, there might be another two centimetres margin. Not particularly tall for a man, but quite tall for a woman.’

Jane and Miriam glanced at each other with a half-smile. They both were included in the range.

Stern seemed to have caught their expressions, because he cleared his voice and hastened to correct himself. ‘Well, there are a lot of women that tall, even taller …’

At that very moment, Adele walked into the meeting room, made her way through her colleagues, and reached the back.

‘Ms Pennington graces us with her presence today,’ Eric commented aloud.

The playful atmosphere created by Stern’s words turned cold in a heartbeat and everyone’s eyes turned to the newcomer.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Adele murmured with a faint voice, meeting Eric’s severe frown. Then she finally sat on a chair, almost hidden from his view.

‘Stern?’ The detective had already returned his attention to the other forensic investigator. ‘Your conclusion. Could it be the same person?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, it could be, but of course I can’t say for certain.’

‘Thank you, Stern.’

The man went straight back to his chair, without hesitating a moment.

‘Any relationship between the two victims?’ He turned to Miriam, who stood leaning back against a wall to one side of the room. ‘Aside from both being thieves.’

‘Not directly.’ Her voice was firm. ‘They were never arrested together. We don’t have any proof they knew each other, but …’ She pulled out her smartphone from a pocket. ‘Both were nabbed at different times with a man named Christopher Garnish.’ She showed Eric an image of a forty-something man.

‘Considerably younger than them.’ The others were in their sixties.

Miriam nodded. ‘Back when he was arrested with the victims, he was a novice, he was around twenty.’

‘Old news.’ Jane had been the one who commented. She was sitting in the front row, her legs crossed. She was holding her tablet in her lap. Unwillingly, Eric’s gaze dropped to her right ankle, sticking out from her long white trousers. She was wearing an anklet that jingled when it hit the side of her sandal as she dangled her foot.

‘Yeah, but then he improved.’ Miriam had taken the floor again. ‘So much so that he’s a suspect in a number of high-profile robberies: museums, art galleries, villas … but these have always been rumours from informers, never confirmed by any evidence. Some say he made a fortune. But they are mostly fairy tales … Nobody has had a confirmed sighting of him in years. He likes staying in the shadows.’

‘Any idea where he is right now?’ Eric asked.

‘We don’t have any home address.’ Miriam grimaced. ‘But I don’t think he’s really hiding. After avoiding the law for years, he must feel untouchable. I think I can hunt him down.’

‘Good, so track him down and summon him here. It’s time we had a nice little talk with him. So far he’s the only certain element that might help us shed more light on the motives behind these crimes.’

The young detective accepted Eric’s suggestion with a nod.

‘Any progress with the physical evidence?’ The question had been asked to everyone in the room.

‘Nothing relevant, unfortunately,’ Jane said. ‘Thompson’s flat was even dirtier than the street where McKinsey was killed, if you can believe that. We found a little bit of everything, but so far nothing that can be connected with the murderer. No fingermarks on the surfaces of the table and the door. He took the cup, plate, and spoon, so no DNA. We just have a partial print of the shoe on the corpse, but we couldn’t find any fibres or anything else distinguishable from all the rubbish in that place on the clothing. As far as the other scene is concerned …’ She started swiping her right forefinger on the tablet. ‘We have the data supplied by the City of London Police.’ She nodded at Lennox, who had spent the whole time sitting apart from the others and watching the meeting in silence. ‘Two bullets, respectively, in a wall and on the tarmac, coming from the same weapon. No footmarks distinguishable from the thousands of others present there in the alley.’

‘So basically, we have nothing.’

Jane shrugged. ‘That’s what I’ve said.’

‘There’s nothing left to us except to focus on the motive and on the deliberate scene created by the murderer.’ Eric went back to looking at the photographs of the victims, while the others resumed talking to one another. For the first one, he’d thought the motive might be linked to some sex crime from the past, but the second one had increased the confusion instead of uncovering more elements. Yet he felt a kind of pattern, something familiar, which he couldn’t quite make out, though.

‘Ah.’ Miriam’s voice rose again, silencing the others. ‘The presumed rape victim of Thompson from when he was back in high school. Well, she has a son, but he lives in Glasgow.’

‘Any chance he was in London at the same time the crimes were committed?’ It was a lukewarm trail now, and he could already guess her answer.

‘He doesn’t have a proper alibi for the first murder. He says he was home alone, in Scotland. But the other night he was on a plane flying from New York in the middle of the Atlantic. British Airways has confirmed he was on board. There’s no way he could have been in the City at that time.’

‘Okay, it was worth dispelling any doubts.’ He released a deep sigh. ‘Aside from the mask thing, dressing all in black, which I think was used only to hide his identity, I’m convinced that we’re dealing with a killer who has a very precise purpose. We must figure out what that is.’

‘Could it be some kind of fanatic who copies other crimes? If it were the case, we might be dealing with a serial killer.’ It was the second time Miriam suggested that theory, accompanying it with a distinct glow in her eyes.

‘Two murders aren’t enough to start talking about a serial killer,’ Eric objected.

‘It would be nice to prevent him from committing a third one.’

‘If there is a third,’ Jane interjected.

‘I bet there will be.’ Miriam seemed convinced of what she was saying, judging from her challenging tone.

‘At this point we can’t rule anything out.’ Eric thought it only right to calm things down, since emotions were warming up a bit too much. ‘See if you can find some similarities with any other cases.’

‘Right,’ Miriam said.

‘We must consider two possibilities: either the victims’ identities are the keys to find the motive, or this is only related to the modus operandi.’

‘And what if both are important?’ Adele’s voice had risen from the back of the room, making everybody turn around.

‘What’s on your mind?’ Eric didn’t even try to hold back a smirk.

‘Vendetta,’ she exclaimed with emphasis. The colleagues closest to her gave a slight start.

He focused his gaze on her. What was she thinking?

‘That might be the motive: vendetta. These crimes are reconstructions, a just punishment for something that the victims had done, not the emulation of some crazed lunatic.’

Everybody in the room was hanging on her words.

‘Let’s consider them separately and try to understand what the murderer wants to communicate. The gun might just be a symbol. We should examine unresolved crimes and look for a murder where the victim was hit from behind, maybe with a knife, a hatchet.’ She looked to one side as if searching for inspiration. ‘And also a victim who was castrated or, if it’s a woman …’ She cocked her head. ‘Raped.’ She accompanied the word with a nod. ‘And then …’ She mimicked the act with a finger. ‘Got their throat cut.’

A general clamour rose in the meeting room.

‘The same weapon.’ Adele raised her voice to overpower the others. ‘All this setting up with the black costume makes you think we are dealing with the same killer and, therefore, that the victims are connected. But let’s just suppose it isn’t so.’ She stood up. Her gaze and the satisfied curling of her lips seemed to conceal some secret only she could know. ‘Let’s imagine that two different people killed them in a specific manner, in order to vindicate another crime. Two different people, but they know each other, who dress up the same way and use the same weapon so that we believe they’re one.’

At this point, it seemed like every single person in the room felt an urge to express their opinion, all at the same time.

‘A picturesque theory,’ Eric commented as he tried to bring the room back to order. ‘But an interesting one all the same.’ As had often happened in those months, Pennington managed to offer a completely different point of view about the case. She had a creative approach to deciphering the clues. She always sat apart during the meeting, watched everything, absorbed data like a sponge, and then she came up with one of her theories. He’d expected that from one moment to the next, and when he’d heard her speak up, he’d been certain that something quite pertinent would come out.

‘Or …’ As if she’d been struck by a disturbing revelation, Adele’s face darkened. ‘If our victims are really connected, so the killer might be one. But in that case …’ Her eyes locked with Eric’s, as if to send him a message, which he grasped only a moment before she spoke. ‘The murders the killer is avenging must have taken place together.’