Val Mcdermid - Killing the Shadows

“I read the material you sent me,” she said, pushing her fantastical thoughts to one side and turning to meet his gaze again. “I’m not convinced your offender will have a record of sexual offences.” Berrocal frowned. “Why do you say that? From what I’ve read, I thought serial murderers generally had a history of some sort of sexual violence. And he has committed brutal sexual acts on the corpses of both of his victims.”

“That’s true. But in each case, the violations were committed after death. And the penetration was with a foreign object, not the penis. Not that that necessarily discounts a sexual motive of itself,” Fiona added, almost absently. “But I don’t think the gratification sought here is primarily sexual,” she continued with more firmness. “These crimes may appear superficially to be about sexual power but it seems to me that they are about desecration. Almost vandalism,” Fiona said.

Berrocal stirred. He looked as if he was wondering whether bringing her along had been such a good idea after all. “If that is the case, why are the faces not mutilated also?” His chin came up in apparent challenge.

Fiona spread her hands. “I don’t know. But I imagine it was probably because the killer wanted his victims recognized quickly. They were neither of them locals, so it might have taken a little longer to identify them if their faces had been damaged beyond recognition.”

He nodded, partially satisfied by her response. He decided to reserve judgement on this woman who apparently had no difficulty in finding ways to discard the conventional wisdom. “I think it’s better if I don’t ask you your theories now,” he said with another flash of his bright smile. “Better to wait until you have seen where the crimes took place, and then perhaps we could go to the local police headquarters. I have established a control centre there for the investigation.”

“You’re not based in Toledo, I think you said?”

Berrocal shook his head. “I work in Madrid normally. But cities like Toledo have few murders in the course of a year, and most of those will be domestic situations. The result is that they have no one with experience of the more complex type of homicide and so they must bring in a specialist from Madrid. Unfortunately, we have more murders in the city and so someone like me is sent to organize the investigation.”

“That can’t be easy,” Fiona observed. “You must have to be careful of local sensibilities.”

Berrocal shrugged, his fingers drumming on the window ledge. “In some respects. In other ways, it makes it easier for the Toledo officers. When I tread on people’s feet, the local men can spread their hands and say, “Hey, it’s not our fault, it’s that stupid bastard from the big city, coming here and stirring things up and rubbing everybody up the wrong way.” Of course, some of the detectives are a little sensitive, they see my presence as a criticism of them, but I just have to charm them.” His eyes crinkled in a wry smile. “But you must be familiar with these responses too. Like me and my team, you are what my wife calls the visiting fireman.”

Fiona acknowledged his idiom with a half-smile. “Sometimes that has other disadvantages too. It’s possible that my unfamiliarity with a place and its local customs may lead me to place more or less significance on something than it should have.”

He shrugged again. “The other side of the coin is that locals can take for granted what strikes you as an alteration in a pattern, I think.”

“Toledo is very much a tourist city, is that right?” Fiona asked.

“That is correct. It is also the seat of the archbishop, so the bureaucracy of the Church occupies a significant share of the buildings around the cathedral. Between the Church and the tourist trade, there is little room for anything else in the old city. With every year that passes, fewer people live in the old part of Toledo, fewer traditional businesses survive.”

Fiona made a mental note and continued, aiming for a tone of casual interest. “Does that cause ill-feeling among those who are pushed out by the demands of the tourist industry?”

Berrocal grinned. “I think most people are happy to trade a gloomy medieval apartment up five flights of narrow stairs for a building with air and light and an elevator. And a patio or a balcony where they can sit outside and enjoy the air. Not to mention constant running hot water.”

“All the same…” Fiona chose her words carefully. “I grew up in a small town in the north of England. Not much more than a village, really. It’s a very pretty village, right in the heart of the Derbyshire Peak District. The perfect place to go walking from, or to visit the caverns that are open to the public. Over the years, more and more tourists came. Whenever cottages went on the market, they were bought up by outsiders and turned into holiday homes. Every shop in the main street became a tearoom or a craft shop. All the pubs were more interested in catering to day-trippers than locals. You couldn’t stroll down the main street or park your car near your own house in the summer months. By the time I left home, half the population would change weekly, holiday makers who turned up with a carload of shopping. All they ever bought locally was bread and milk. The village lost its heart. It became a tourist dormitory. And the locals who were pushed out in the process weren’t happy at all. At a guess, I’d say there must be some native Toledans who don’t like what’s happening to their city.”

Berrocal gave her a shrewd look. He was sharp enough to realize this was no idle conversation. Following on as it had from her easy dismissal of the obvious analysis of the background of the killer, he understood that she was trying to tell him something. “You think someone is killing people because he doesn’t like tourists?” He tried to keep the incredulity from his voice. This woman had, after all, come with the imprimatur of Scotland Yard.

Fiona turned away from his eyes and stared out across the rolling green fields they were now passing through. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple, Major Berrocal. And really I don’t want to theorize ahead of the data. But I do think your killer is motivated by something rather more out of the ordinary than sexual frustration.”

“OK. How do you want to work this?”

“What I’d like to do is precisely what you’ve suggested. I’d like to look at the sites where the bodies were displayed and then back at your incident room, I’d like to look at the crime-scene photographs and read the pathology reports in full. I’d also like to see the guide books that were found at the scenes of the crimes, if that would be possible. And then I would like to go back to my hotel room and think about what I’ve seen.”

He nodded. “Whatever you wish.”

“I would also appreciate it if you could extract from your Toledan colleagues any reports of vandalism against tourist sites or hotels or businesses that cater to the tourist trade. And any attacks on tourists themselves. Going back, say, a couple of years. Solved and unsolved, if that’s possible.” She smiled. “I’ll also need a reasonably detailed map of the city that can be scanned into a computer.”

“I will arrange it.” He inclined his head in a half-bow. “Already you have shown me a different way of looking at these cases.”

Fiona shifted in her seat so she was staring ahead over the driver’s shoulder. “I hope so. When I look at a crime, I don’t look with the same eyes as a detective. I’m searching for the psychological as well as the solid practical elements that link that one crime to others. I’m also looking for geographical clusters. But as well as that, I’m watching out for other signals that can tell me something about the criminal.”