A Reason to Kill (8 page)

“
I
want you to work with Beth Holder, Tom. See what she can contribute,” Detective Chief Superintendent Jack McClane said in a way that Tom knew was not a request or suggestion.

“We’ve got leads to follow up, Jack. Isn’t it a bit soon to start involving a bloody shrink?”

“She’s not a shrink, Tom, and you know it. She’s a criminal psychologist, who might just be able to give us a handle on what turns this guy’s wheels.”

Tom shifted restlessly on the small but heavy chair that was placed strategically in front of his super’s desk. It was far enough away to prevent visitors from leaning forward and resting their elbows on the polished surface, and was intended to be disconcerting. The space was a buffer. Tom shook his head. He didn’t like civilians on the team, or in his face. Especially women with an attitude, which was what he considered Dr. Beth Holder to be. “I just don’t think
¯”

“Then don’t, Tom. This isn’t open for debate. I’ve already briefed her. She’ll be in your office within the hour, and I want her to see everything you’ve got.”

Tom managed a smile, and Jack allowed himself a wry grin. “You know what I mean, you perv. Mind you, she is a looker.”

“Too self-opinionated and imperious for my taste, Jack.”

“Yeah, but she’s good at what she does. We need closure on this, Tom. If she can give us a pointer that helps, then I want it. We need to break this. Okay?”

Tom nodded, resigned to having to work alongside a woman who talked in riddles and came up with probabilities, which to him were little more than educated guesses wrapped up in supposition.

“Good,” Jack said. “How’s Barnes doing?”

“He’s on the mend, but hurting over what went down. I’m keeping him up to speed with developments.”

Jack sucked at his teeth. “That might not be such a good idea. He’s too close to it. It could give him an agenda we don’t need.”

“He’s an integral part of what happened. He saw the perp, Jack. He deserves to be on the inside. We’ve talked it through. He’ll be fine.”

“I hope so. Don’t underestimate human nature, Tom. This will be personal in Barnes’ book. He’s always been the squad’s answer to Harry Callaghan. I think he watched too many Eastwood movies as a kid.”

Jack got up and walked over to a large fish tank that was set into a teak unit on the back wall. He took the top off a cylindrical container and sprinkled what looked to be ground pepper or fine sawdust onto the surface of the water, and watched as the light glinted off the brightly coloured tropical fish that darted up to gulp at the food.

Tom was convinced that McClane was a control freak. The rotund little Jock even held dominion over his bloody fish, and treated most of his minions as if they were no more than pawns on a chessboard. The troops’ nickname for him was Chairman Mac, in part due to the little red book he filled with copious notes. If someone slighted him, even unintentionally, the misdemeanour was duly recorded, to be acted on weeks, months or in some cases years later. Promotion was a lost cause if an adverse entry had been made. Tom held back a smile as he remembered the far-reaching internal inquiry a decade ago, which had been instigated by Jack following the theft of his diary. Having gone for a dump in a fourth floor men’s room, he had hung his jacket outside the stall, only to find his pockets as empty as his bowels when he’d finished up. There had been so many entries in the purloined diary that he couldn’t narrow his field of suspects, but had interrogated everyone of lesser rank whom he suspected. It was believed that these days he transferred his notes to disk, with a backup copy on a flash drive. Tom knew the identity of the diary thief, and might even tell Jack who it was, on the day the super retired and could not take his revenge.

“Is that it, Jack?” Tom asked, standing and waiting to be dismissed.

“Yes, Tom. But keep me posted. I need this shooter roasting on a spit. The brass is pissed over losing the Santini case, and so am I.”

“I’m more pissed at losing four officers.”

“That goes without saying, Tom. But all we can do for them is find the bastard and put him and Santini away for life.”

“And the mole who served Matt and the team up on a plate.”

“That’s still an assumption. We have no proof of an officer’s involvement.”

“No, but everything points to it. And if one of our own did sell us out, then I wouldn’t give him a turkey’s prayer of seeing another Christmas.”

“That’s dangerous talk, Tom.”

“It’s
straight
talk, Jack. He’ll go down resisting arrest, or maybe top himself in a holding cell. But his chances of reaching court are slim to none.”

Tom took the stairs down to the incident room, told the team that they were about to have a civvy psychologist on board, and instructed them to like it or lump it, but to be civil and offer up any information that she requested from them. He then went to his own shoe box of an office and fired up the coffee maker.

Beth was early. Tom knew she would be. Everyone had their idiosyncrasies, and Beth Holder’s was getting ahead of herself, and usually everyone else.

“Hi, Tom. Pleased to see me?” Beth said, knowing that the hard-nosed DCI had little respect for her skills.

“You know it,” he said. “Coffee?”

“Black, no sugar, please,” she said, delving into her shoulder bag for sweeteners.

“So take a pew, why don’t you?” Tom said, a little intimidated by the tall, sable-haired doctor, who wore a navy power suit over a high-necked oyster-coloured blouse, that he had no doubt was a designer number. He always felt she was trying to evaluate him, and didn’t like it.

“You don’t think this is one for me, do you, Tom?” she asked, sliding onto the chair and crossing her legs.

“No, Beth, I don’t. I was surprised Jack asked you to consult, and that you accepted. This isn’t a serial killer. We’re after a professional hitman.”

“He may get paid to kill specific individuals, but he obviously enjoys his chosen profession. As a stranger-on-stranger killer, he fits loosely into the same frame.”

“You reckon?”

“Yes, definitely. He gets off on repeat killing, so he’s a serial murderer in my book.”

Tom saw the correlation. Had to admit to himself that she was not just a pretty face.

They went through all the paperwork. Beth made notes in the margins of the copies he ran off for her. Two coffees later, she squared the thick sheaf off and put it in her briefcase.

“I need to talk to Penny Page and DI Barnes,” she said, up on her feet, waiting.

“No problem. Any order?”

“Yes, the woman first.”

“And let me guess. You want to do it now.”

“No time like the present.”

“So let’s do it.” Tom said, wanting to be done with it, convinced that the psychologist would not be able to shed more light on what they already had.

“You didn’t release the description of the suspect, why?” Beth asked, walking shoulder to shoulder across the basement garage to Tom’s unmarked Cosworth.

“Matt...DI Barnes thought it would do more harm than good at this stage. I’m holding off for a couple of days. I agree with him that it’s best for our boy to think he’s home free. What’s your view?”

“I’m of the same opinion. He’ll cover his tracks if you spread his likeness all over the front pages. Have you got flyers out, though?”

“Yeah. Every cop on the street has one.”

“There is nothing else I can tell you,” Penny said to Beth, after she had talked through her recollections of the hostage situation at length with Beth.

“Tell me how you found him as a person,” Beth pushed. “Was he tense and aggressive in his attitude?”

“Not all the time. He laughed and talked. Acted as if he was a house guest. But it all seemed false. It was as if he was...empty somehow, putting on an act. I had the feeling he was pretending to show emotions. And he spoke to himself once or twice, as though someone else was present. He was strange.”

“Thank you, Penny. That helps, believe me,” Beth said, making a quick exit before the distressed young woman could gather her thoughts and ask questions for which, as yet, Beth had no answers.

“Well?” Tom said when they were outside the room in which Penny and her baby were ensconced under heavy guard.

“That told me a lot. Faking emotions, self mutilation and talking to his self are pointers. I’m all but sure he suffers from a mental disorder. I believe we have a seriously disturbed individual out there.”

“I don’t think my DI will be able to give any additional info. He only got a glimpse of the guy before he took two bullets.”

“Is he having emotional problems, due to what happened to him?”

“If he isn’t, he wouldn’t be human, Doctor,” Tom said with undisguised irritability. “He almost died. His colleagues did. Believe me, he isn’t a happy camper.”

Beth stopped and faced Tom. She was so close he could smell her minty breath and see flecks of almost red ochre in her dark irises. Her gaze seemed to pin him to the spot, and was by design, disconcerting.

“I’m on your side, Tom. Remember that, please,” Beth said. “You have no need to act defensively. I appreciate that you give little credence to what I do, but it’s pretty basic investigative procedure. I take all known behavioural aspects and just extrapolate them. Anything I come up with might just help. Do you have a problem with that?”

Tom frowned. “Forgive me if my scepticism shows. Truth is, I expect you to come up with a thumbnail sketch of a young white guy who probably lives alone, was abused as a kid, and went on to mistreat animals and burn buildings down before he found his true vocation. And even if you’re on the money, It won’t help us collar him, unless your findings include a name and address.”

“I’ll try to rise above your low expectation of my profession, Chief Inspector. I just look at a different set of clues. Understanding someone’s personality can in some cases narrow the field. If between us we can home in on this man, then it won’t matter how we got there. It isn’t a competition. And be aware that I’m not looking for brownie points. I don’t need this work. The pay is cheap.”

“So why do you put yourself up for it?”

“To make a difference. Isn’t that why you’re a cop?”

“I don’t know why I’m a cop. It just happened, a lifetime ago. Let’s start over. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m open to any input.”

“Good. Tell me how you think this has affected DI Barnes. It will help if I know where he’s coming from.”

“He’s dedicated. One of the best at what he does,” Tom said, breaking the eye contact and walking to the car. He said nothing else until they were both belted up and he was driving out of the clinic’s gates. “Matt comes across as a hard-nosed individual who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He isn’t a diplomat. He tells it how it is, and if you don’t like it, he doesn’t give a toss. The slaughter at the safe house has shaken him up a lot more than he would ever admit...even to me. He was the OIC...officer in charge, so in his book he’s responsible. It went down on his watch.”

“But it would have happened whoever
¯”

“But it didn’t. The buck stopped with him, so he considers himself responsible for the baby getting thrown out with the bath water. It isn’t something you can rationalise. You had to be there, and neither of us was.”

“How badly hurt was he?”

“It was touch and go for a while. Another few minutes at the scene and he wouldn’t have made it. He lost a kidney, got his leg broken, and almost bled out. But it’s not just the physical injuries that are paining him. And between us, his significant other walked out on him, which I reckon added to his overall sense of failure.”

“Why did she or he leave?”

“She, Doctor. Matt is many things, but queer isn’t one of them.”

“You sound a little homophobic.”

“Maybe I am. And as long as I don’t let it get in the way of my work, I can choose to believe that God or nature intended sex to be a way for males and females to procreate, and gave them the appropriate genitalia to get the job done. Anything else is abnormal in my book. Grey isn’t a colour I have a lot of time for. I like black and white.

“Linda left Matt because he was a stranger passing through. I don’t think he’s the type of man who has the capacity to be emotionally involved enough for a woman. They want more than he can give. There’s not enough room in him for a permanent relationship. He was army, then cop. He doesn’t see it as a job. I think he’s on a mission. But Christ knows what really drives him. He doesn’t show a lot. It’s all inside...and lead-lined.”

“Thanks for sharing that,” Beth said. “I imagine him to be a lot like you.”

“We tend to see certain things in the same light. But he’s
nothing
like me. I’ve known him for years, and yet I sometimes think I don’t know him at all.”

“Is he aware that I’m consulting on this case?”

“Yeah. I gave him a bell, to give him time to get his head around it.”

“You mean he’s another non-believer?”

“No. He has an open mind. He even took a course on this behavioural science stuff. You might find he has his own idea of what makes our shooter tick. Don’t mistake him for some plod who doesn’t know where you’re coming from. He’s as sharp as broken glass.”