Antman (29 page)

At last Dr Pearson woke up to the situation and intervened. 'Thank you, Professor. I'm afraid that was the last question we had time for.'

Within a couple of minutes, with the “it only remains routine”, he wound up the entire event.

*  *  *

At about 7:00 p.m., Chris was driving back from Hessle on the Clive Sullivan Way through soft, persistent drizzle. For some reason, she decided to stick to the main road and branch north after crossing the River Hull. On the bridge, she was surprised to see Tom to her right, leaning over the railing, staring out past the spectacular shiplike profile of the marine aquarium tourist attraction, The Deep, into the darkness of the Humber. She turned off, parked the car and made her way back to the spot. He hadn't seen her. She sidled alongside him and peered over the railings.

'How did it go?’ she asked.

Tom gave a start. His words piled out. 'Where the hell did you come from? Don't get me wrong. Nice surprise.'

'You look very preoccupied.'

He tried to shrug off his mood.

'Oh that. I gave one of our research students a lift back to East Hull and thought I'd take a breather before plunging back in at the University.'

'Which is a way of avoiding my question. I was wondering how it went.'

'The lecture or the day as a whole?'

'Both, but especially the lecture, I suppose.'

'All right.'

'A man of few words.'

'Sometimes.'

'All right covers such a multitude of sins,' she persisted. 'You aren't really that British – stiff upper lip and don't talk about your feelings, like some of these hard-boiled coppers I work with. Or have I misjudged you?'

'Okay. I was happy with the lecture. But there was a persistent questioner. I couldn't see him at the back of the hall. I had a feeling I knew him – something about his voice. Or perhaps it was his views. They reminded me of a conversation I'd had, the arguments over the years with Apthorpe, you remember, our so-called rat professor. But I can't place who it was.'

'Did the questions bother you?'

'Yes.'

'Couldn't you answer them?'

'It wasn't that. They're standard debates between scientists studying the animal world – about whether there's more to non-human behaviour than behaviour. Are we the only beings with consciousness, that sort of territory. No, it's more the uneasiness I've described – déjà vu. If I'm honest, I was reminded of a period last year, when I became rather paranoid about the questions from one of my students.'

'Who is he?'

'She. Naomi Waterson, the student I mentioned before and the lad she goes about with. I saw them both. You remember, I said she has had a thing about me in the past and she went through a period of following me about.'

'And the lad, where does he fit in?'

Tom shrugged.

'I couldn't say.'

Side by side, they stared across at the opaque water.

'The river looks forbidding.'

'That's Hull. All the accumulated muck from half a million lives, from more than a thousand years of excretion and chucking rubbish away, concentrated in one filthy stream,' said Tom.

'How to spoil my illusions in a sentence. I was going to say trying to penetrate through those murky depths to what's in the river is like trying to guess what's in your mind.'

'I'm sorry,' said Tom. 'I'm so wrapped up in myself. I should have asked, what about you? You look as though you've had a basinful.'

'Don't talk about it. I'm recovering from a meeting with Dr Threadgold, our forensic psychiatrist. Any comments could tip me towards saying something I'll regret,' said Chris moodily.

'She was rude?'

'Nothing like that. We get on very well as it happens. But the phone kept ringing, people came in and out, her bleeper went off half a dozen times. It doesn't make for productive discussion.'

'Where did you meet her?' asked Tom, trying to turn the conversation in a less fraught direction.

'Her office is at Castle Hill Hospital, almost next to the psychologists. That's only a base, of course. She works all over the place. They don't have a forensic psychiatry department as such.'

'So no progress as far as profiling suspects is concerned.'

'That word profiling! I'm sick of hearing it. Mary Threadgold is very good, but apart from confirming that she has suspicions about what we suspect already – nothing.'

'What did she say?'

'Her advice was to look for someone suffering from schizophrenia. The chaotic thoughts in among the philosophical and scientific details in the notes, apparently. For starters, we're left with the task of checking about ten thousand current and former psychiatric patients in Yorkshire and Teesside. Beyond that her comments could apply to any case. They don't provide us with the kinds of specific factors which could be incorporated into a computer programme to enable us to eliminate people from the investigation. That's on the assumption this person is already known to the authorities. What if he's a recent arrival in the area?'

It was Tom's turn again to stare reflectively into the muddy water.

'They're all victims really.'

'Who exactly?'

'I was reading this article in a criminology journal – some psychiatrist writing about the triangle of victimology – to do with the common bonds between a murderer, the people who victimise him and his own murder victim or victims.'

'Geometrically neat but so what? He could be anybody.'

'Or she.'

'I meant to say that.'

'What did Mary say about gender?'

'It was on the lines of that argument about most abusers and bullies having been abused and bullied themselves.'

'Sounds like the old record which ignores the reality that for every one person who's been abused who goes on to do it to others, there are many who don't.'

'Record! Thanks, Chris, you've broken my block. I had an idea but couldn't recall it later. There's a link between those of us who have stayed on in the laboratory and our suspect who left. Two links actually, or more than two, who knows?'

'Why is it that men don't listen to women, but women are expected to listen to every wittering sentence of every wittering man?'

'The more obvious link first. The aspiring but failed scientist who becomes the frustrated technician working alongside the successful researchers he did not equal, in whatever way. You understand I'm not talking about merit here. He may have been equally deserving, but for whatever reason, we know he didn't make the grade.'

'You don't even know he would have wanted it,' Chris interposed, before she even knew who Tom was talking about.

'True, but every hypothesis has to start somewhere.'

'You said two links.'

'The other link is less obvious but more interesting. Probably also, it's unknown to anyone apart from myself and our suspect.'

'I wish you'd stop applying your pseudo-scientific jargon to the plain speaking world of detection. Not suspect, murderer. Forget the innocent till proved guilty. We're failing to find a murderer here.'

He stayed silent.

'I can't see where this is leading,' said Chris.

'You keep interrupting.'

'Don't push me,' she said grimly. 'We're on a bridge over a fast-flowing river. I'm beginning to see why he became frustrated enough to commit murder.'

He smiled. She was pleased.

'That's good, your face has cracked.' He laughed a little this time and continued.

'The less visible thread linking us is the music. Our suspect, sorry, murderer, mentions music and conducting. I think he's a failed performer. I'm not saying he wasn't good, but for some reason he didn't make the grade. Perhaps he had an accident and became disabled.'

'How do you know this?'

'Little scraps here and there, odd comments he's made about his early life. As a rather mediocre musician myself, I can recognise the signs.'

Chris didn't pick up on this remark. She was impressed, and was preoccupied with this new line of investigation.

Tom was following his own train of thought.

'The core of the conundrum is how these various barriers to conventional success have affected him and their relationship with the content of his scientific interests.'

'It's straightforward enough. He's a frustrated scientist.'

'It's a little more complicated than that. The theory is that our person – okay, our murderer – is driven to each further crime partly by an intensified anger – an urge to destroy, if you like – after each previous killing. At the same time, those same feelings of frustration, failure and anger which feed into this cycle of aggressive acts also fuel ever increasing guilt and self-disgust. The means by which our murderer chooses to commit each crime will relate closely to the themes which link him with his setting – the scientific focus, the music, or whatever – and the series of killings into which he is apparently locked becomes ultimately self-destructive. He's a sort of black hole in our universe, at an individual level, the alter-ego – probably the unacceptable side – of the people with whom he's interacted and at the group or social level, the negation of basic values of decency and humanity.'

'I hope he does kill himself if that's what you're working up to.'

'On the way, he's becoming an angrier person and the incidents have the potential to be more destructive.'

'You could be describing a mass murderer, in the right circumstances, rather than a serial killer.'

'I'm afraid so.'

'And we still haven't the remotest idea who he is.'

'That's why we have forensic psychiatrists.'

'Dr Threadgold probably wouldn't agree with you.'

'The problem is we have loads of information but no leads,' said Chris.

'So what's the next step?'

'My lords and masters are baying for blood. But the investigation is – it's at a dead end. All we can do is review all the evidence.'

'Where are you off to?’ Tom asked.

'Back to the office, to start all over again.'

'Before you go, I've had a look at those insect remains your pathologist passed on. They're not run of the mill. Army or driver ants from the genus Dorylus not found anywhere in this country, or in Europe. They're found in parts of Africa.

'Africa. Does that include rain forests?'

'The sub-Saharan regions, savannah and tropical rain forests, would be among their main habitats.'

'Presumably some zoos here will have them.'

'I doubt it. Someone would need the expertise to manage them. They need so much attention. It wouldn't be worth it, when you can set up an observation colony of harvesting ants for so much less trouble.'

'The implication of this is – what?'

'The only place you're likely to find them is a laboratory where such ants are being used for research.'

'Which is where?'

'There aren't many. Ours certainly. It could be the only one.'

'Right.'

'Who's working on these fellows? That's the question.'

'The person best placed has just left.'

'Perhaps we should have a word with him, or her.'

'It's a him. Robin Lovelace. It will be difficult. He's abroad.'

'Let me guess where. Sub-Saharan Africa.'

'Come on, Robin can't be a suspect. He's halfway across the world.'

'You're asking me to treat this as pure coincidence.'

'It has to be.'

'Even if not, I suppose there isn't enough to justify chasing after him to interview him. When did he go?'

'A few days ago.'

Chris pulled a face. 'Would you regard him as potentially homicidal?'