James Carol - The Quiet Man

‘So we start by looking at the point where their lives intersected. That would have been when Gifford was called in to take photographs of the staff at Sobek’s company.’

Winter nodded. ‘Those sort of photoshoots are done in the workplace. An office or conference room is commandeered. The workers file in one at a time, have their picture taken, then file out again. Everything is over in thirty seconds. Back then, Sobek was the big cheese. Time was money. He would have wanted things over and done with as quickly as possible. If everyone else was doing it in thirty seconds he’d want to do it in twenty.’

‘And since time was money he wouldn’t have been involved with organising the shoot. That would have been left to one of his underlings. Which means that the only time the two of them had any sort of interaction was when the photograph was being shot.’

‘So the question becomes: what did Gifford see during those twenty seconds? In other words, what were his first impressions?’ Winter looked at Anderton. ‘What were your first impressions?’

‘I thought he was a murderer. And you?’

‘I thought he was a psychopath.’ Winter went to say something else, but the words never made it out. He shut his mouth then went back over what he’d just said. ‘Maybe that’s it. The thing that they have in common is that they’re both psychopaths. On some level that must have registered with Gifford. The difference is that Sobek is functioning at a much higher level. He’s rich and successful and has his own business. You could argue that society has accepted him for what he is. He’s mastered the art of blending in.’

‘And Gifford hasn’t?’

Winter shook his head. ‘No, he hasn’t. Gifford is an outsider. Look what he does for a living. He’s a photographer. He spends his whole life on the outside looking in.’

‘So, what? He does all this because he needs acceptance?’ It was Anderton’s turn to shake her head. It was going from side to side in a way that made it clear that she wasn’t buying. ‘That sounds a little too much like pop psychology for my liking.’

‘It’s not that straightforward. Psychopaths don’t need validation in the same way most people do. It means nothing to them.’ Winter stopped talking. The pair of photographs at eye level showed David Hammond and Gifford with their heads in their hands. They looked as though the world was about to end. ‘One characteristic that defines Gifford is his pragmatism. He eats ham sandwiches and instant noodles because it’s quick and easy and he doesn’t have to waste time thinking about cooking. He wears chinos and button-down shirts for much the same reason.’

‘And he kills because he wants to provoke a particular reaction,’ Anderton put in.

‘It’s all about being pragmatic,’ Winter agreed. ‘The same goes for fitting in. If he can find a way to swim with the flow then that’s got to make his life easier.’

‘All well and good, but why the fascination with negative emotions?’

‘Because psychopaths don’t possess empathy. Most people have a full palette of emotions to work with. Psychopaths don’t. If Gifford is going to fit in then he needs both the negative and positive emotions.’

‘And the problem with the negative emotions is that they are much harder to fake. It’s easy to conjure up a smile, but much harder to produce tears.’

‘Exactly.’

Anderton moved a little further along the wall, looking at the photographs she passed. The pair that she stopped at showed Hammond and Gifford both in tears.

‘How is he able to cry on demand?’ she asked. ‘I mean, thinking about a favourite pet that died when he was a kid isn’t going to work. You need empathy to do that and, as we’ve already established, Gifford doesn’t possess any.’

‘He could try holding his eyes open until they start to water. Failing that, cutting an onion in half would provide the desired effect. Or he could try jamming a knife into his leg. That would work.’

Anderton gave him the look. It was part Did I hear right? and part What the hell planet are you from? ‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Only half joking. Remember, the key word here is pragmatism.’

‘Is there anything else we can learn from the first murder?’

Winter thought this over for a second.

‘You’re frowning,’ said Anderton. ‘What is it?’

‘I was thinking about Sobek sitting all by himself over at Mountain View Cemetery yesterday. I’m figuring that Isabella’s funeral was a circus. A high-profile murder like that is going to attract plenty of media attention.’

‘Yeah, it was a circus all right.’

‘So, someone wandering around with a camera, pretending to be a press photographer wouldn’t have stood out.’

‘You think Gifford was at Isabella’s funeral?’

‘I wouldn’t rule it out. Since the very start, the lack of escalation has bugged me. We now know that the reason we didn’t see any is because we were focussed on the wives. When you look at the husbands, that’s when you start to see signs of escalation. It was three months before Gifford attempted to infiltrate Sobek’s computer. That feels like an afterthought rather than a part of the original plan. He killed Isabella, and for a while that would have been enough to sustain him. But it wouldn’t have sustained him forever. So he starts looking for ways to take this to the next level and that’s when he comes up with the idea of hijacking Sobek’s webcam.’

Winter stopped talking and Anderton nodded for him to continue.

‘Serial offenders start small and build up. There’s always going to be a progression because enough is never enough. So a serial killer will start by killing and torturing small animals before moving on to cats and dogs, and finally people. Similarly, with serial rapists there’s often a history of minor offences before they progress to attacking women. Stealing underwear, exposing themselves, voyeuristic behaviour, that sort of thing.’

‘How does this relate to Gifford? You think he started off by killing the neighbourhood pets?’

Winter shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. Not this time. Gifford is driven by curiosity rather than sadism, so he would start with something that feeds that particular desire.’

‘Such as?’

‘What if he started out by hanging about at funerals watching the mourners? Nobody’s going to look twice at a guy in a black suit at funeral. Everyone’s just going to assume that he knew the deceased. So Gifford gets a ringside seat to witness the grief first hand. Afterwards he would have spent hours going over what he’d seen, replaying those emotions like there’s a film show going on in his head.’

‘But at some point that won’t be enough,’ Anderton said. ‘Somewhere along the line he’ll want something more permanent to look back on.’

Winter nodded. ‘Right. Wearing a black suit won’t raise any eyebrows, but if he starts waving a camera around, that would. Then one day he attends a high-profile funeral. Maybe it’s a murder victim. Or maybe it’s someone famous. Whoever it is, there are cameras around, and the thing is, nobody is looking twice at the people who are operating them, which gets Gifford wondering. So he starts thinking about how he can create a similar scenario.’

‘And Isabella Sobek ends up dead,’ said Anderton.

‘So he turns up at her funeral and takes some pictures, and nobody looks twice at him. For a while that’s enough. But enough is never enough. There’s always going to be a way to push the envelope further.’

‘So he decides to use Sobek’s webcam to spy on him. He’s already got the malware because he used it on Isabella’s laptop, and he knows it’s a great way to watch because he spent hours and hours watching her in the run-up to the first murder. All he needs to do is install it on Sobek’s computer.’