The Murder Code (12 page)

There were few seats left. I found one at the back.

The coffin rested on a series of rollers in front of a set of drawn red-velvet curtains at the far end of the room. The officiant, an old man in old-fashioned clothes, was standing on a small stage to the side of it. With his glasses and eyebrows, he looked a little like some kind of clockwork owl: bookish and well read. He kept glancing up, patient and serious, waiting for people to settle and the murmur of conversation to fade. Every now and then, he smiled gently at the front row. Through the sea of dark suits, I could make out the back of Carla Gibson’s head, all but lost beneath the frills of a black lace hat.

My attention kept returning to the coffin.

It was the unspoken focal point of the room: the ghost in a crowd that everyone could sense but nobody wanted to acknowledge. Inside it was Vicki Gibson as she was now. Reduced from the attractive, hard-working young woman who connected all these people together to nothing.

For obvious reasons, it was a closed coffin, but when you see a dead body, nothing is clearer than the realisation that the person is gone. The absence hits you immediately. And it’s made more striking because the thing in front of you
looks
like a human being even though it palpably isn’t one any more. A dead human body is an awful thing to see. For a moment, it makes you as still and silent as it is.

Once you get past that, though, there’s usually at least the affirmation that this is what we are: a piece of complex biological machinery that has stopped working—or been stopped. Unlike some officers I know, I’ve never had a problem being an atheist at a crime scene.

Funerals are a different matter, though. It seems to me that when people are gathered together, with all their thoughts and memories, it can somehow rekindle the essence of the person lost—almost resurrecting them, but not quite. They’re not present, but it’s easy to believe they exist again as an odd kind of shadow, one cast not by a presence but an absence, and that they’ve come alive again just enough to hear everyone say goodbye.

Rubbish, obviously—it’s just an illusion. When people are dead, they’re dead, and life for everyone else continues to unfold in its unpredictable manner. Nobody is paying attention apart from us. Nobody else is noticing or keeping score.

The officiant looked up, over his glasses, and smiled gently at the room. It was the exact same expression he’d given Carla Gibson, as though our loss was equal to hers. When he started talking, he addressed the assembled people like friends.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘Thank you for coming to this, one of the saddest occasions imaginable.’

One of the saddest occasions imaginable.

Difficult to quantify that, but in some ways the funeral of Derek Evans was worse. At least Vicki Gibson had the company of her family and friends as she was laid to rest; Evans only had me and Laura, who joined me for this. None of the ‘friends’ Evans had made below the city had come to bid him farewell. And the two of us weren’t enough to raise ghosts, shadows or anything else.

‘Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.’

Laura and I stood side by side with the priest in the graveyard, watching as Evans’s cheap coffin was lowered into a hole barely large enough to contain it.

As the priest finished up the perfunctory service, I glanced around. The cemetery was open and sprawling, the flat ground interrupted only by occasional trees and gravestones—but not here, where the city-funded plots were adorned with nothing grander than a plywood cross and a name plate. There was nobody within fifty metres. Nobody watching. Despite the heat of the day, the breeze drifting across the grass and stone felt cold.

After the service was over, and the coffin had been lowered into the ground, Laura and I wandered away from the grave.

‘He didn’t show,’ I said.

‘You weren’t really expecting him to.’

I shrugged. Not expecting, maybe, but hoping. Because serial killers often did. It was a case of playing the odds again: working the statistics and probabilities. What else did we have right now?

It had been three days since the murders at the Garth estate, and since then there had been no activity whatsoever. I didn’t know what to make of it: the initial flurry of killings, the alleged letter, then silence. It didn’t fit with my expectations based on the textbooks. Serial killers tend to accelerate. Spree killers continue. So there had to be some reason for our murderer turning shy, but I couldn’t think what it might be. Was it deliberate—perhaps part of his supposedly uncrackable code—or was there another explanation?

‘What are you thinking, Hicks?’

We sauntered along. I kicked at the gravel on the path.

‘I’m wondering when we’re going to hear from him again.’

‘You mean a letter?’

‘No, I don’t mean that. He’s not stopped killing. That wouldn’t make any sense.’

‘Not unless he
got
stopped for some reason.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he was hit by a truck.’

‘We’re not that lucky.’

‘Right now, it feels like we need to be.’

I nodded. Right now, hard work alone wasn’t getting us very far. The break in the killings had at least allowed us to catch our breath slightly and thoroughly investigate the victims we did have. Even without taking his letter at face value, every possible connection between the victims—every possible motivation—had to be followed up.

Sandra Peacock, the working girl who’d died first on the waste ground, was thirty years old and a single parent to two little girls. As an intermittent drugs user and a prostitute, she clearly fell into a vulnerable category that separated her from Vicki Gibson. The only connection between the two women was their similar age. Beyond that, there were no obvious parallels at all.

John Kramer was forty-three years old: a bouncer at Santiago’s nightclub in the Beeston area of the city. It seemed obvious that he’d been on his way to a different type of work entirely, but discreet enquiries at the club had failed to turn up what that might be. Regardless, it was clear that the number of people who might want to hurt him was substantially higher than the other victims. That was part of the problem we had. We might find a plethora of individual suspects for a single murder, but without an overarching explanation it meant little.

The third victim on the waste ground had been identified as fifty-three-year-old Marion Collins. From what we’d learned, she’d had no enemies whatsoever. Her husband had reported her missing the same morning, but it had taken hours for the report to trickle through to us. Collins had worked the night shift as a cleaner in an office—a different one to Vicki Gibson—and during the day was a carer for her husband, who was disabled and wheelchair-bound.

Despite the age difference, she fitted into a similar demographic to Vicki—hard-working women, scrabbling to make enough money to support themselves and their loved ones. But nothing else was similar about the two of them, apart from the devastation their deaths had left behind for their loved ones. As far as we could establish, neither woman had outstanding debts that might have warranted retribution.

Forensics had given us nothing either. Not on the victims. Not on the letter. Not on fucking anything.

‘Back to earth, Hicks.’

‘I’m totally on earth, Laura. I’m one hundred per cent grounded.’

‘You’re not. You’ve been doing that a lot recently—disappearing off into the ether. It’s not like you to be so dreamy.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘No. Normally you’re more ambivalent.’

‘Wow.’

‘Not in a
bad
way.’

She meant it as a joke, but I didn’t like to think I came across like that.

‘I’ve never been ambivalent. It’s just there’s no point overdoing it, is there? The dead stay dead regardless. And our job is just to catch the people who made it happen. We’re not …’ I glanced behind us, back to the graveside. ‘Well, we’re not
priests
, are we?’

‘So what’s different now? Because something is.’

I shrugged. It was difficult to explain. It wasn’t just the case, but it was fair to say the case had come along at the wrong time for me, what with the issues Rachel and I were having.

‘Problems at home,’ I said.

‘Ah. Want to talk about it?’

‘Nope.’ I thought about it. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Shoot.’

‘Do you believe in good and evil?’

‘Fucking hell, Hicks.’ She pulled up. ‘Are you serious?’

I nodded.

‘Okay.’ We set off walking again. ‘I suppose it depends what you mean. Personally, I don’t have much of a problem using those words to describe people. I mean, they’re just words. They’re as good as any, for some of the things we come across, aren’t they?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘But then, there have been some occasions when I’ve had my doubts.’ She shook her head. ‘Like when you see some bastard crying over what he’s done, not understanding how it happened. It’s as though someone stepped in and did it when he wasn’t looking. You know?’

I nodded. ‘Do you think people can be born evil?’

‘Oh, Christ. I don’t know. No. I think people can be born
empty
. And have shit lives. But that’s not the same thing, is it? It’s like you always say. It’s cause and effect.’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s all bullshit, Andy. Like you said, we’re not priests. We just have to catch the bastard, not explain him. And we will.’

‘Yes. We will.’

‘And when we do, there’ll be something. He’s not a force for evil. There’s something. There’s a reason.’

‘Because there always is.’

‘Exactly.’ She elbowed me gently. ‘You taught me that. Most of the time I despise you, but deep down I know you’re right about that. You should have more confidence in yourself. I need you on full power right now.’

‘You really hate me most of the time?’

‘It’s more mild irritation.’

‘That’s more what I aim for.’

We walked along a little way. I wanted to believe what Laura had said, but I wasn’t sure I did.

Up ahead, I spotted a groundskeeper. He was an overweight guy in blue overalls, raking the path free of a vague scattering of leaves that had fallen from the trees.

‘Wait here a second,’ I told Laura.

He looked up as I reached him, squinting from beneath a blue baseball cap. He was in his sixties, at least, with skin that was worn and reddened by the elements and by alcohol.

‘Hey there,’ I said.

‘Hey.’

‘You’re the groundskeeper, right?’

‘One of ’em, yeah.’

‘I’m Detective Andrew Hicks.’ I showed him my badge. ‘You work here most days?’

‘Yeah.’ He leaned the rake against a tree. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Not about anything in particular. What’s your name?’

‘It’s Henderson. Stephen Henderson.’

I made a mental note.

‘Okay. Here’s my contact card. It’s got my direct number on it.’ He took it, albeit a little reluctantly. ‘It’s probably nothing, but you ever get any vandalism here?’

Henderson looked around.

‘Not much. Every now and then, you know. The Jewish graves get done over sometimes, but that hasn’t happened for a while.’ He sounded almost accusatory. ‘We called you about that, though.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I just want you to keep my card and let me know if anything happens in the future. Okay? Anything at all. Will you do that?’

Henderson frowned.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll be talking to your management too. It’s just that a guy like you, you might notice something that other people don’t. So, anyone hanging about who shouldn’t be, any vandalism, I’d like you to call me. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Thanks for your co-operation.’

I walked back to Laura.

‘What was that about?’ she said.

‘Just thinking on.’ We started walking again. ‘Just thinking on.’

W
E HELD THE PRESS
conference in the middle of the afternoon, which wasn’t ideal for the evening paper but worked well for the broadcast news. By now, the nationals were picking up on us as well, of course: a serial killer always delivers the requisite headlines. Several news teams had set up camp outside the building, and whenever I ventured through reception, there always seemed to be reporters either leaving or arriving.

I did my best to avoid them; I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the attention—with being the ostensible face of the investigation. Not because the letter had been addressed to me, as such, but because I’d never been happy in the press spotlight.

I’d had to get used to it.

The press room was packed this afternoon, the air hot and still. I sat at the end, behind a small table, speaking into a microphone, a dark blue banner behind me. Laura was beside me, silent for the moment. The pre-prepared statement was mine today. In front of us sat rows of journalists, taking feverish notes on their laptops, maybe even writing copy live for website feeds. Cables spooled across the floor. The whole time I spoke, I was assaulted by camera flashes from the photographers crammed in at the sides of the room.

‘We are now sure,’ I concluded, looking up, ‘that Marion Collins, John Kramer and Sandra Peacock are the victims of the same killer as Vicki Gibson and Derek Evans. We encourage anyone with any information relevant to this inquiry to come forward at the earliest opportunity. Thank you.’

I leaned back slightly, signalling that my part was done.

Laura took over. ‘There will now be a few minutes for questions.’

A dozen hands went up at once. She signalled to one person at a time, and I listened to the questions and her measured responses. Laura was much better at handling the media than I was, even though she disliked them at least as much as I did. Blood sells, and a lot of papers aren’t shy about splashing the lurid details around, so when you’ve sat with the grieving relatives, when you’ve invested in the lives of the victims, it’s difficult to feel much love for the parasitical fuckers.

‘Do you believe the killer was known to the victims?’

‘That is something we cannot say for sure,’ Laura said. ‘It’s certainly possible, and it’s one of the avenues we’re pursuing.’