Luke Delaney - Cold Killing

“He would have threatened her,” Brown answered.

“Absolutely. He would have threatened her,” Sean repeated. “He would have almost certainly shown her the knife that he eventually used to kill her. Any defensive marks on the girl?”

“No.”

“Then he told her he wasn’t going to hurt her and she believed him. She did as she was told. If she’d thought he intended to kill her, she would have fought him or tried to run. She agrees to do what he tells her, so he removes the tape from her mouth and limbs. . But why is that important to him? She wasn’t raped, so he could have left the tape around her ankles and knees. Why risk taking the tape away?”

Sean’s vivid narration stalled, as if someone had drawn a curtain across the window he’d been looking through. He moved around the room, staring at the floor. He moved like an animal locked in a cage. It was minutes before he spoke again.

“He had to remove the tape because it was spoiling it for him. It was necessary when she was first abducted, but now it was spoiling his imagery. He’d imagined her in a certain way for so long, imagined her dying in a certain way, that he couldn’t settle for less. He needed to make life imitate his fantasy. So he makes her take her clothes off. All of them. He doesn’t even let her keep her underwear or a T-shirt on. He’s totally without mercy. Totally without compassion for her-but this is all for our benefit. He wants us to think there’s a sexual motivation for the killing, but there isn’t. He enjoyed the power he held over her, of course-and making her undress was a strong show of his power. But it was purely for us. To stop us linking him to other murders.” He paused for a few seconds, allowing his imagination to again become the killer’s memory. “He makes her kneel down and tells her to perform oral sex on him, but he was never going to allow that to happen, never going to let her get that near him. He was never going to risk leaving forensic evidence. So he grabs her by the scruff of the neck and cuts her once across the throat. He’s strong and fast. The knife is very sharp; again, probably brand-new. One hit is all it takes. What time was she killed?”

“Between eleven P.M. and three A.M. is the best we can say.”

“It would have been dark then,” Sean pointed out. He looked around the building for lighting. There was none. The room would have been pitch-black. “He had to have light to see.”

“Maybe he used a torch?” Brown said.

“No,” Sean replied. “He needed both hands free, and the light from a torch wouldn’t be right for what he wanted.”

“What did he want?” Brown asked.

“He wanted to see her. He needed to see her die.” Sean looked out of the window and saw his own car pointing toward the building. The headlight mountings glinted in the low evening sunlight.

“He used his car headlights,” Sean said. “He would have checked that ahead of time too. He went there on the night of the murder already knowing car headlights would give him all the light he needed.

“And when she was dead, he stayed with her. He’d been dreaming about this for too long to just walk away from her now she was dead. He stood here and watched her bleed to death. Watched until her blood stopped running.

“You didn’t find any signs that the body was moved or mutilated after she’d died, did you?” Sean told rather than asked Brown.

“No,” he answered. “She died where she fell and wasn’t touched.”

“He didn’t want to spoil the perfect picture he’d created. All he wanted was to stand and watch her.” Sean was silent for a while, troubled by the question forming in his mind. “Did you search this wasteland for used condoms?”

“Not specifically for condoms, as far as I know, and I don’t recall seeing any listed on the lab submissions form. Why d’you ask?”

“Because I think he would have masturbated while he watched her die, but he wouldn’t risk leaving his DNA, so he would have used a condom. Maybe he threw it away beyond where he thought we would search.” Sean looked Brown square in the eyes.

“Jesus! Where did you get that from?” Brown asked.

Sean moved on without answering. “Then he left her. He didn’t cover her, not even partially. It would have been a sign of guilt. Remorse. He has no psychological need to try and make amends for his crimes. He felt nothing. He walked away feeling nothing more than a sense of relief, maybe even what for him amounts to happiness.”

“But what’s his motivation?” Brown asked. “Is it sexual? Is this the only way he can get a hard-on?”

“Not sexual,” Sean answered. “Power. With this one, motivation is all about power.”

“But there’re so many sexual overtones to his crimes. Making her strip, making her go on her knees in front of him. You said it yourself: he probably masturbated at the scene.”

“Because the power excites him, makes him feel alive. The sexual acts are merely a symptom, a way he can release the power he feels building up inside him.”

Brown seemed both impressed and unnerved by Sean’s analysis. “Done a few of these types before?” he asked.

“Some,” Sean replied, managing a slight smile. “I do a lot of research.”

“If I can make an observation of my own. .,” Brown asked.

“Go on.”

“If my killer, our killer, is as clever as you say, as good at disguising his methods as you believe he is, then how do we know he hasn’t killed other people? How will we ever know?”

“Truth is,” Sean admitted, “unless he decides to tell us about them, we probably never will.”

They were back. Hellier could feel them before he saw them. Only these were clumsier than the last. Why would Corrigan put amateurs on him? Was the DI so arrogant that he thought second-raters would be good enough to follow him?

My enemy’s mistakes are my greatest gains.

Hellier wasn’t in his own office. He had been earlier, long enough to let the surveillance see him, but now, unseen, he used the office of another junior partner. He’d let it be known he would be working late, to make up for his earlier absence. Truth was, he needed to access certain bank accounts held across the globe. He didn’t want to use the computer in his own office. The police had been in there. They could have somehow bugged his computer. They could be monitoring his online activities. He doubted they were smart enough, but why take the risk?

He was the only person left in the offices. Tonight it was essential to be alone and to move fast. The police had seized many of his bank details and they knew where most of his money was, but not all of it.

They would be moving to block his accounts, but that would require court orders and the banks would take time to comply with the orders’ instructions. That would burn up a few days, and by then it would all be a wasted exercise.

Hellier was skilled on the computer. Able to cover his electronic tracks extremely well. He called up a website on the Internet. It was one he’d set up himself two years ago, but it was no more than an illusion, a front, just like a restaurant or bar could be, and as in those establishments, there was a back door. But you had to know how to find it. Hellier knew. Of course he did. The illusion was his design.

The site was entitled Banks and the Small Investor . There was a hidden command icon on the screen. Hellier carefully placed the cursor on the tail of the site’s symbol, a prancing horse similar to the Ferrari emblem. Pin the tail on the donkey and win a prize. He smiled again, pleased with his private joke.

He clicked the cursor twice and waited a second. A type box suddenly appeared in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen, flashing, demanding a password.