A Spider on the Stairs (34 page)

“Didn't you say you had the name of the school he went to?” he asked Gibbons, who had been dividing his attention between the computer monitor and Brumby.

Gibbons flipped over a page of his notebook. “Not the name of the school, I'm afraid,” he said, looking for the information and
turning another page. “Just the name of the village. Rachel, Jody, and Jenks were all in year three there together. Here it is: Haxby.”

Rowett nodded and went to work.

Bethancourt had not returned to the station with the others; he tended to be impatient with any kind of drudgery and he knew Gibbons would ring him as soon as there was news.

He was oddly tired, and was not looking forward to a discussion of HGH with his aunt, so he was greatly relieved, when at last he got home, to find she had gone to bed. Or at least she had gone to her room; perhaps, he thought, she was no more in the mood for the discussion than he was. Still, he felt some responsibility to his promise to provide her with objective data, so he got himself a drink and settled in on the couch with his laptop.

He was still there two hours later when Gibbons returned, looking rather weary but pleased with the night's events.

“Still up, eh?” he said as he looked into the room.

“Still,” agreed Bethancourt. “Get yourself a drink and tell me how it all went.”

“Very smoothly,” answered Gibbons, pouring himself a healthy tot of scotch. “Andy did his magic with the public records, and Jenks is looking very like our man so far—of course, there's still a good deal to be sorted.” He dropped into an armchair, stretched out his legs, and pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. “I've got it all here,” he continued, “although I think I remember most of it. You know that job in Leeds that Jenks referred to?”

Bethancourt nodded.

“Well, it's with a security company—they do alarms and gates, that sort of thing.”

“Brumby must have been delighted with that,” said Bethancourt, smiling.

“He was indeed,” said Gibbons. He sipped his drink, savoring
both the taste of the whisky and the memory of the moment. “They've looked into that angle before, you know, only of course they were concentrating on companies headquartered in the south.”

“Seems like a rather monumental task,” said Bethancourt. “There are dozens of such companies—not to mention all the one-man shops.”

“It was early days then,” said Gibbons. “They thought they were dealing with someone in Essex, in the Saffron Walden area. Once the crimes started cropping up in different places, they had to abandon that direction. Anyway, it still remains to be seen what exactly Jenks' job is with this company, not to mention whether he travels for them or not.”

“You don't seem to have much doubt about the outcome,” remarked Bethancourt.

Gibbons grinned at him. “I think we're right about this one,” he said. “You know the feeling, when everything just starts to fall into place and all the little details you couldn't fit in before suddenly resolve themselves into a whole picture.”

“Yes,” said Bethancourt. “I know the feeling—almost godlike for just a moment.”

“Still,” said Gibbons, “it doesn't do to be sloppy on that account. Police annals are full of cops who were absolutely certain they were right and who turned out to be wrong in the end.”

“Thus tomorrow's program,” said Bethancourt. “I take it you'll be off to Leeds bright and early?”

But Gibbons shook his head. “Brumby and Howard are going,” he said. “No need for a whole troop of us, much as I'd like to see it through. No, I'm to report in to see what else Andy Rowett has come up with—he's still researching over there. He's already tracked down Jenks' parents and siblings.”

“That's quick work,” said Bethancourt. “Anything interesting there?”

“Yes and no.” Gibbons took another sip of his whisky while he
marshaled his thoughts. “Jenks' mother was a drug addict—she was declared an unfit mother and he went into foster care when he was just a few months old. Eventually, she cleaned herself up and reclaimed him, but by then he was nearly four.”

“Quite a sea change for a toddler,” said Bethancourt, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, he couldn't have remembered her.”

“Very likely not,” agreed Gibbons. “But we're not too sure about the foster home he was in, either. One of his fellows grew up to be a pedophile, and another became a thief. You've got to wonder what those foster parents were up to. Anyway, his mother had married his father by then and they went off to become one big happy family. The father'd had some drug problems himself, but he and his wife were AA members and attended regular meetings and Jenks Senior had got himself a job in a warehouse.”

“And they all lived happily ever after?” asked Bethancourt, though he could tell from his friend's tone that this was not the case.

“They dropped off the radar for a few years, so presumably everything went all right,” answered Gibbons. “The next thing Andy turned up was a death certificate for the mother about four years later. She'd overdosed on heroin.”

“Oh, dear. What about all those AA meetings?”

Gibbons shrugged. “You know how it is—some people make it, some don't. Jenks' father remarried about a year later, and Jenks' half-sister was born about a year after that. Then the family apparently moved, but Andy hadn't got farther than that when I left. I expect by morning he'll know what color socks Jenks wore in the sixth form.”

Bethancourt lit a meditative cigarette, then said, “It does make one wonder if a more favorable upbringing would have changed anything. Or was he destined to be a sociopath no matter what?”

“You never can tell,” said Gibbons. These days they seem to think it's all in the genes.”

“Yes, but genetic predispositions don't translate into unavoidable
traits,” said Bethancourt. “If his problems had been identified early and he had been receiving treatment all this time, would some or all of the deaths have been prevented?”

“Impossible to say,” replied Gibbons. “One would like to think so, but there's no real evidence. Until someone actually kills, it's very difficult to determine whether they're capable of the act or not. So if we were looking at a psychoanalyzed, medicated Jenks who had never killed anyone, we'd never be sure he would have killed if he hadn't been psychoanalyzed and medicated.”

“Very true.” Bethancourt's lips twitched. “And of course in all this, we're presuming guilt. It's all right for me, but you're an officer of the law and are supposed to be impartial.”

“Ah, well, it's only speculation,” said Gibbons. He tossed off the last of the whisky in his glass. “I'm all in,” he confessed. “All the excitement buoyed me up, but I'm knackered now. I'm going up to bed.”

“Sleep well,” said Bethancourt. “I probably won't be far behind you.”

“Good night then.”

Gibbons got to his feet, but Bethancourt stopped him just as he got to the door.

“Jack,” he said, “if Jenks
is
Ashdon, and you catch him, do you think he'll shed any light on Jody's murder?”

“I don't know,” replied Gibbons. “According to Brumby, most serial killers can't help but talk about their crimes. But he may not like to admit to Sanderson's murder, in which case we might not get anything out of him about Jody. But we'll see. Brumby has a great deal of experience with these kinds of criminals—I've seen some of the transcripts.” He cocked his head. “Feeling a bit anticlimactic?” he asked.

“A bit,” admitted Bethancourt. “Jody's case was the one I found interesting, you see. And although we've found the answer, well, there's no way to prove it with Sanderson dead.”

“We can't take it to court,” corrected Gibbons. “But in order to
close the case, the forensics will be gone over pretty carefully. I think in the end we'll find evidence. But you're right—it will never have the satisfaction of an arrest and a conviction.”

Bethancourt nodded and let his friend go.

But as he sat in the quiet drawing room and listened to the rain, he reflected that what bothered him most was the lack of surety. He very much hoped that when Jenks was arrested, he would tell what he knew about Jody's death.

In the early hours of the morning the rain ceased at last. When the early winter sun came up it was clearly visible in the pale blue sky for the first time in a week.

It took several hours, however, for the waters to recede, and it was nearly eleven o'clock before Brumby could start for Leeds, having ascertained by phone that Jenks was still on holiday and not expected at the office. Gibbons, with the rest of the team, poured over the data Andy Rowett had uncovered during the night, but once again he felt superfluous: Brumby's team were experts at this kind of thing and they had it well in hand.

The most important new piece of information was that Jenks's stepmother had been American, and when the family left the York area, they had apparently relocated to Indiana. This had Rowett searching United States databases of unsolved crimes in the Indianapolis area and collecting the telephone numbers of various police departments to ring later, when it would no longer be the middle of the night across the Atlantic.

Gibbons, who felt himself rather outclassed among these research specialists, helped where he could and kept one eye on Rowett, guessing that if any further discoveries were to be made, they would come from him.

Thus he alone was close enough to hear Rowett murmur to himself, “Now that's a bit of interesting.”

“What's up?” he asked, scooting his chair over.

“This report here,” answered Rowett, never taking his eyes from the screen. “Four years ago in Marion County—that's where Indianapolis is,” he added, and Gibbons nodded. “A homicide—young woman, fits our profile, bore the marks of having been tasered before she was killed, cause of death was a massive blow to the left temple, body left displayed by the side of the road.”

Rowett's voice was almost chanting as he ticked off the salient points.

“That sounds right,” said Gibbons encouragingly.

“She was last seen in a shopping mall marketing lot,” continued Rowett, “the afternoon before her body was found.”

Gibbons was peering over his shoulder. “She doesn't seem to have been tortured at all,” he remarked.

“No, and she wasn't killed with a skewer to the brain, but if this was an early attempt, you wouldn't expect all the elements to be in place yet. Let's see, this was eighteen months before the first murder here. If this is our man, there has to be more somewhere.”

“When did Jenks return to this country?” asked Gibbons.

“Two years ago last June,” replied Rowett. “Veronica Matthews was murdered that September. Fits well enough, though that's nothing to go on by itself—I could come up with hundreds of people who fit that bill.”

He was continuing his search of the American databases as he spoke, scrolling through lists of unsolved homicides. Gibbons watched quietly for a moment, then left him to it.

At two, Gibbons volunteered to go out for sandwiches, and
when he returned, he found that Brumby was back and holding court at the long conference table.

“Ah, good,” he said when he saw Gibbons. “We can all eat while we discuss developments. And I have a special job for you, Sergeant,” he added.

Gibbons felt himself suddenly grinning.

“I bought a couple of extra sarnies,” he said. “Have you eaten, sir?”

Brumby had not, although he seemed surprised to remember it, and took a sandwich gratefully.

“I was just telling the others,” he said to Gibbons as he unwrapped his food, “that Jenks most definitely had opportunity. Howard is still at Revetment, getting all the details, but according to Jenks' supervisor, Jenks is one of the technicians they send off to oversee installations, and most of his jobs have been down south. The company has a couple of sales representatives who live down there, but everything else is run out of the Leeds offices.”

“What do they think of him there?” asked one of the researchers.

“Much as you'd expect,” answered Brumby. “Quiet, works very well, but is the odd man out. Mind you, we didn't canvass the entire staff—we didn't want word getting back to Jenks that we'd been there.”

“Of course not.”

“And I've got a titbit for you, Andy,” continued Brumby. “Revetment dug out his application—I've got it in my bag—and he came to them with a wealth of experience in the States. There's a list of American references, as well as one from England. Before he got the job at Revetment, he'd been working as a jobbing electrician in Portsmouth.”

“That'll be helpful,” said Rowett, munching industriously. “I've got a titbit for you, too. I've found a murder in the Indianapolis area that might be Ashdon's early work. Investigating officer was a Lieutenant Roy Baker.”

“Just one?” asked Brumby quickly.

“One so far,” corrected Rowett. “I reckoned you should ring this Lieutenant Baker—those Yanks love a posh accent.”

The rest of the table tittered around their food while Brumby smiled deprecatingly.

“Very well, Andy,” he said. “If you think it best.”

Gibbons, who had been champing at the bit to know what his own job was to be, took the opportunity, after the laughter had died down, to ask, “And what did you have in mind for me, sir?”

“Ah,” said Brumby, turning to him. “I want you to reel in the fish, Sergeant. When we're ready for him, I want you to ring Jenks and tell him we've found a bag we think belonged to Jody Farraday. Ask him to come up and identify it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Gibbons. “I take it you're not ready for him yet?”