Luke Delaney - Cold Killing

Hellier typed the password: FUCK THEM ALL.

When Sean arrived back at his Peckham office, he found it deserted except for Sally. Ignoring the NO SMOKING signs, she was puffing heavily on a cigarette. She looked up from her paperwork and was relieved to see it was Sean. She held the cigarette up. “Do you mind?”

“No,” Sean answered. “What are you doing here this late?”

“Trying to work a few things out.”

“Such as?”

“Such as how did Korsakov’s fingerprints manage to get up and walk out of Scotland Yard all on their own?”

Sean didn’t understand and he wasn’t of a mind to ask for explanations. His thoughts were still with Heather Freeman.

“And why are you back here so late?” Sally asked.

“I’ve been out east.”

“Why?” Sally sounded almost suspicious.

Sean hesitated before answering. “I believe I’ve identified another murder committed by our man.”

“What?” The surprise made Sally stand involuntarily. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be.”

“Another gay man?”

“No. A girl. A teenage runaway. He abducted her from King’s Cross and took her out to some waste ground in Dagenham. He made her strip before cutting her throat.”

“I don’t see a connection,” Sally confessed. “Did Hellier also know her?”

“I doubt it. But he watched her before killing her. Once he’d selected her, he watched her. Learned her movements. Planned everything very carefully. Then he took her.”

“So she was a stranger, yet Daniel Graydon was someone he knew.”

“I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Not so sure of what?”

“That he knew Graydon-or at least, not as well as he’d have us believe.”

“I really don’t understand,” Sally admitted.

“I think he picked Graydon at random. A week or so before he killed him, he went to the nightclub and he selected him. He paid to have sex with him so that on the night he killed him he could approach Graydon without spooking him. Then they went back to the flat and he killed him, just like he was always going to do.”

“Why didn’t he kill him the same night he first met him?”

“Because he needed to kill him in his own flat. It was how he’d seen it-fantasized about it. But for that to happen he needed Graydon’s trust, he needed him to feel comfortable, so he approached him inside the club, surrounded by witnesses and people who knew the victim. If he’d killed him the same night, it would have been too easy for us to work out what must have happened: stranger arrives in gay nightclub and leaves with known prostitute, next morning prostitute is found murdered. Too easy-too simple. Hellier likes things complicated, layer upon layer of possibilities and misdirection, endless opportunities to bend the evidence away from proving he’s the killer. But above all, there was no way he was going to miss out on a week of fantasizing about how it would feel-killing Daniel Graydon. For him, that would have been every bit as important as the killing itself. Once he’d killed the girl in Dagenham he’d opened Pandora’s box-there’s no going back for him now, even though he knows we’re watching him. He won’t stop, he can’t. Knowing we’re watching him merely heightens his excitement-makes him even more dangerous.”

“Did he leave any evidence at the Dagenham scene?” Sally asked.

“No. Just a useless footprint.”

“Then how are we going to convict him?”

Sean thought silently before answering. “If Hellier has a weakness, if he has one chink in his armor, it’s his desire for perfection.”

“I don’t understand,” said Sally, frowning.

“He can’t leave things half done, untidy, incomplete. Look at his clothes, his hair, his office, his home. Everything immaculate. Not a thing out of place. He couldn’t have that. It’s the same when he kills. Everything has to be perfect. Exactly how he imagines it.”

Sally puffed on her cigarette. “How do you know all this?” she asked. “I’ve watched you study crime scene photographs in the past, and suddenly it’s like you’re there. Like you’re the. .” A look from Sean stopped her before she’d finished.

“I see things differently, that’s all,” he explained. “Most people investigate crimes two dimensionally. They forget it’s a three-dimensional thing. They seek the motive, but not the reason for the motivation.

“You have to question the killer’s every move, no matter how trivial. Why choose that victim? Why that weapon? That location? That time of day? Most people are happy just to recover a weapon, to identify the scene, but they’re missing the point. If you want to catch these poor bastards quickly, then you have to try and think like them. No matter how uncomfortable that may make you feel.”

“You feel sorry for them?” asked Sally.

Sean hadn’t realized he’d shown sympathy. “Sorry?”

“You called them ‘poor bastards.’ Like you felt sorry for them.”

“Not sorry for what they are now,” he told her. “Sorry for what made them that way. Sorry for the hell that was their childhood. Alone. Scared to death most of the time. Terrified of the very people they should have loved. Fearful of those they should have been able to turn to for protection. Sometimes, when I’m interviewing them, I don’t see a monster in front of me. I see a child. A scared little child.”

“Is that what you see when you look at Hellier?”

“No,” he answered without hesitation. “Not yet. It’s too soon. I haven’t broken him down to make him face what he really is. When I do, I’ll know if he’s a product of his past or something else.”

“Something else?” Sally asked.

“Born that way. Whether he was born bad. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“And you already suspect that’s the case with Hellier.” It wasn’t really a question.

“Go home, Sally,” he said quietly. “Get some rest. I’ll call Dave and set up an office meeting for the morning. We’ll talk then, but right now you need to go home, and so do I.”

Hellier typed the password and the false screen began to break away, replaced by a screen filled with twenty-four different bank insignias. Many of the major banks of the developed world were shown, as well as several more specialized ones. They all held accounts belonging to Hellier, some in that name, others in aliases he’d invented. He had excellent forged documents hidden across Europe, North America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

He’d created this website, which appeared to offer advice to private individuals considering purchasing stocks and shares, particularly shares in financial institutions; its main purpose, however, was to hide his complex network of bank accounts and the locations of the false identities that would allow him to gain access to them. There were so many he could never have hoped to remember them all. But with this hidden guide, no matter where he was in the world, provided he could access the Internet, he could access his funds.

The priority was to empty his UK and U.S. accounts. The others couldn’t be touched by UK authorities. Fucking Americans, he thought, always happy to slam shut accounts on the flimsiest of suspicions. Always so keen to help Scotland fucking Yard. Sycophants.

He worked fast. He would be at the terminal for hours, but by the time he was finished the vast majority of his considerable wealth would have been transferred to Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. Out of the reach of the police. Now, if he had to run, he wouldn’t have to be poor too. There were many places in this world where a man’s tastes were restricted only by the depth of his wealth.

Donnelly and DC Zukov were hidden in the office building almost directly opposite Hellier’s. Donnelly was half asleep on the sofa when he felt the phone clipped to his waistband vibrate. The display told him it was Sean. “Guv’nor.”