With No One As Witness (12 page)

Despite what he already knew about profiling, Lynley felt doubtful about the number of details Robson had provided. He said, “How can you know all this, Dr. Robson?”

Robson’s lips moved in a smile that tried—and failed—not to look satisfied. He said, “I do assume you know what profilers do, Superintendent, but do you know how and why profiling actually works? It’s rarely inaccurate, and it’s nothing to do with crystal balls, tarot cards, or the entrails of sacrificed animals.”

At this, smacking of the gentle correction a parent gives to a wayward child, Lynley considered half a dozen ways to regain dominance. They were all a waste of time, he concluded. So he said, “Should we begin again with each other?”

Robson smiled, genuinely this time. “Thank you,” he said. He went on to tell Lynley that to know a killer, one merely had to look at the crime committed, which was what the Americans had begun doing when the FBI had developed their Behavioural Science Unit. By gathering information over the decades of pursuing serial killers and by actually interviewing incarcerated serial killers by the dozens, they’d discovered there were certain commonalities that could be depended upon to be present in the profile of the perpetrator of a certain kind of crime. In this particular crime, for example, they could rely upon the fact that the killings were bids for power although their killer would tell himself that the killings had another reason entirely.

“Not just killing for the thrill of it?”

“Not at all,” Robson answered. “This actually has nothing to do with thrill. This man’s striking out because he’s been frustrated, contradicted, or thwarted. Whatever thrill there is, is secondary.”

“Thwarted by the victim?”

“No. A stressor has set him on this course, but its source isn’t the victim.”

“Who is it, then? What?”

“A recent job loss that the killer thinks is unfair. The breakup of a marriage or another amorous relationship. The death of a loved one. The rejection of a proposal of marriage. A court injunction. A sudden loss of money. The destruction of a home by fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane. Think of something that would put your world or anyone’s world into chaos and you’ll have a stressor.”

“We all have them in our lives,” Lynley said.

“But not all of us are psychopaths. It’s the combination of the psychopathic personality and the stressor that’s deadly, not the stressor alone.” Robson fanned out the crime-scene photographs.

Despite the aspects of the crime suggesting sadism—the burnt hands, for example—their killer felt a certain amount of remorse for what he’d done once he’d done it, Robson said. The body in each case told them that: its position traditional to corpses placed in coffins prior to burial, not to mention the fact that the final victim wore what amounted to a loincloth. This, he said, was called psychic erasure or psychic restitution.

“It’s as if the killing were a sad duty that the perpetrator believes and tells himself he must perform.”

Lynley felt this was going too far. The rest he could swallow; there was sense to it. But this…restitution? Penance? Sorrow? Why do it four times if he felt remorse afterwards?

“The conflict for him,” Robson said, as if in reply to the questions Lynley hadn’t asked, “is the compulsion to kill, which has been triggered by the stressor and can only be relieved by the act of killing itself, versus the knowledge that what he’s doing is wrong. And he does know that, even as he is driven to do it again and again.”

“So you believe he’ll strike another time,” Lynley said.

“There’s no question about it. This is going to escalate. It’s actually escalated from the first. You can see that in how he’s been upping the stakes. Not only in where he’s put the bodies—taking bigger risks of discovery every time he positions one—but also in what he’s done to the bodies.”

“Increasing the marking on them?”

“What we call making his signature more apparent. It’s as if he believes the police are too stupid to catch him, so he’s going to taunt you a bit. He’s burned the hands three times, and you’ve failed to make the connection between the killings. So he’s had to do more.”

“But why so much more? Wouldn’t it have been enough just to slice open the final victim? Why add the mark on the forehead? Why the loincloth? Why take the navel?”

“If we discount the loincloth as psychic restitution, we’re left with the slice, the missing navel, and the mark on the forehead. If we see the slice as part of a ritual that we as yet don’t understand and the missing navel as a gruesome souvenir that allows him to relive the event, then what we really have is the mark on the forehead to serve as a conscious escalation of the crime.”

“What do you make of that mark?” Lynley asked him.

Robson took up one of the photographs that featured it particularly. “It’s rather like a cattle brand, isn’t it? I mean the mark itself, not how it was made. A circle with two two-headed crosses quadrisecting it. It clearly stands for something.”

“So you’re saying it’s not a signature on the crime like the other indicators?”

“I’m saying it’s more than a signature because it’s too deliberate a choice to be merely a signature. Why not use a simple X if you just want your mark on the body? Why not a cross? Why not one of your initials? Any of those would be quicker to put on your victim than this. Especially when time is probably of the essence.”

“You’re saying this mark serves a dual purpose, then?”

“I’d say so. No artist signs a painting till it’s done, and the fact that this mark was made with the victim’s blood tells us that it was likely put on his forehead after death. So yes, it’s a signature, but it’s something more. I think it’s a direct communication.”

“With the police?”

“Or with the victim. Or the victim’s family.” Robson handed the photographs back to Lynley. “Your killer has an enormous need to be noticed, Superintendent. If it isn’t satisfied by the current publicity—which it won’t be because his sort of need is never actually satisfied by anything, you see—then he’ll strike again.”

“Soon?”

“I’d say you can depend upon that.” He handed Lynley the reports as well. He included with them his own report, which he took from the manila folder, neatly typed and official, with a cover sheet on the letterhead of Fischer Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Lynley added the reports to the photographs Robson had already handed over, along with his card. He thought about everything the profiler had said. He knew other officers who believed completely in the art—or perhaps it was a real science based on irrefutable empirical evidence—of psychological profiling, but he had never been one of them. Put to the test, he’d always preferred his own mind and a sifting through concrete facts to trying to take those same facts and from them create a portrait of someone utterly unknown to him. Besides, he couldn’t see how it actually helped the situation. At the end of the day, they still had to locate a killer among the ten million people who lived in Greater London, and he wasn’t clear on how the profile Robson had provided was going to help do that. The psychologist appeared to know this, however. He added a final detail, as if to put a full stop to his report.

“You also need to prepare yourself for contact,” he said.

“What sort?” Lynley asked.

“From the killer himself.”

ALONE, He was Fu, Creature Divine, eternal Deity of what must be. He was the truth and His was the way, but the knowledge of this was no longer enough.

The need was upon Him again. It had come far sooner than He had expected. It had come in days instead of in weeks, possessing Him with the call to act. Yet despite the pressure to judge and avenge, to redeem and release, He still moved with care. It was essential He choose correctly. A sign would tell, and so He waited. For there had always been a sign.

A loner was best. He knew that much. And naturally, there were loners aplenty to choose from in a city like London, but following one of them was the only way to confirm His selection as right and apt.

Secure in the camouflage of other passengers, Fu performed this task by bus. His chosen one climbed aboard ahead of Him, immediately making for the curve of stairs to the upper saloon. Fu did not follow him there. Instead, once onboard, He remained below, where He took a position two poles away from the exit door with a view of the stairs.

Their journey turned out to be a long one. They inched along congested streets. At each of the stops, Fu kept His attention fixed on the exit. Between the stops, He entertained Himself by studying His companions in the lower saloon: the tired mother with the screaming toddler, the ageing spinster with sagging ankles, the schoolgirls with coats unbuttoned and blouses hanging out of their skirts, the Asian youths with their heads together making plans, the black youths with their earphones on and their shoulders moving to the beat of music no one else could hear. All of them were in need, but most of them didn’t know it. And none of them knew Who stood among them, for anonymity was the greatest gift of living in this place.

Someone somewhere pressed the button that would alert the driver to pull over at the next request stop. A clatter from the stairs and a large mixed group of youths descended. Fu saw that the chosen one was among them, and He eased His own way down the aisle to the door. He ended up directly behind His prey and He could smell the scent of him when He stood on the steps before they disembarked. It was the rank odour of the boy’s early adolescence, restless and randy.

Out on the street, Fu hung back, giving the boy a good twenty yards. The pavement wasn’t as crowded here as it had been elsewhere, and Fu looked round to get an idea of exactly where He was.

The area was mixed race: black, white, Asian, and Oriental. The voices here spoke a dozen languages, and while no one group looked completely out of place, somehow every individual did.

Fear did that to people, Fu thought. Distrust. Caution. Expect the unexpected from any quarter. Be ready either to flee or to fight. Or to go unnoticed, if that was possible.

The chosen one adhered to this latter principle. He walked, head down, and appeared to acknowledge no one he passed. This, Fu thought, was all to the good when it came to His own intentions.

When the boy reached his destination, though, it was not his home, as Fu had thought it might be. Instead, he walked from the bus stop down the length of a commercial area of markets, video shops, and betting parlours till he came to a small shop with soap-covered windows, and there he entered.

Fu crossed the street so that He could observe from the shadows of the doorway to a bicycle shop. The place the boy had entered was well lit, and despite the cold the door was propped open. Brightly clad men and women stood about chatting while among them children darted noisily. The boy himself was talking to a tall man in a colourful collarless shirt that hung to his hips. He had skin the hue of white coffee, and round his neck hung a carved wooden necklace. There appeared to be some sort of connection between this individual and the boy, but it was something less than father and son. For there was no father. Fu knew that. So this man…this particular man…Perhaps, Fu thought, He had not chosen wisely after all.

He was soon reassured. The crowd took seats and began singing. They did so haltingly. Taped music accompanied their efforts, heavy on drums and suggesting Africa. Their leader—the man the boy had spoken to—repeatedly stopped and started them again. While this was going on, the boy himself slipped out. He came back into the street, zipping his jacket, and he headed in the shadows farther along the commercial area. Fu followed, unseen.

Up ahead, the boy turned a corner and headed down another street. Fu hurried His own pace and was just in time to see him duck inside the doorway of a windowless brick building next to a scruffy workman’s café. Fu paused, assessing. He didn’t wish to risk being seen but He needed to know if His choice of the boy was legitimate.

He sidled up to the door. He found it unlocked, so He eased it open. An unlit corridor led to the doorway of a large room that was fully illuminated. From this room came the sounds of thuds, grunts, and the occasional guttural noise of a man ordering someone to “Jab, God damn it” and “Use an upper cut, for Christ’s sake.”

Fu entered this place. Immediately, He smelled the dust and the sweat, the leather and the mildew, the unwashed male clothes. Along the walls of the corridor, posters hung, and midway to the bright room beyond, a trophy cabinet stood. Fu snaked along the wall with care. He had nearly gained the doorway when someone spoke from out of nowhere.

“You need something, man?”

It was a black male voice and none too friendly. Fu allowed Himself to diminish in size before He turned to see who owned it. A refrigerator made flesh stood on the bottom step of a darkened stairway that Fu had not noticed. He was dressed for outdoors and he was slapping a pair of gloves against his palm. He repeated his question.

“Wha’ you need, man? This’s private premises.”

Fu had to be rid of him, but He also had to see. Somehow, He knew, this building contained the affirmation He needed before He could act. He said, “Sorry. I didn’t know it was private. I saw a few blokes come out and I wondered what this place was. I’m new round here.”

The man observed him, saying nothing.

Fu added, “I’m looking for new digs,” and He smiled affably. “Just doing a recce of the area. Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” He gave His shoulders a little hunch for effect. He moved towards the front door although He had no intention of leaving, and even if He was forced out to the street by this lout, He would return as soon as the other man was gone.

The black said, “You c’n have a look, then. But don’t be bothering no one, you got that?”

Fu felt a bubble of anger rising. The tone of voice, the audacity of the order. He breathed in calm with the stale air of the corridor, and He said, “What is this place?”

“Boxing gym. You c’n have a look. Just try not to look like a punch bag.” The black left then, laughing at his weak attempt at wit. Fu watched him depart. He found that He was longing to follow, to give in to the temptation to let the other learn with whom he had just spoken. The longing fast grew into a hunger, but He refused to submit. Instead, He went to the bright doorway and, keeping to the darkness, He gazed into the room from which the grunts and thuds were coming.