Val Mcdermid - Killing the Shadows

— the presenter continued.

A young man with a serious expression stood in front of a grey-stone building. The mutilated body of Drew Shand was found by a police officer on a routine patrol of the Royal Mile just after three this morning. Police cordoned off an area behind St. Giles’ Cathedral which remains the scene of police activity. At a press conference earlier this afternoon, Detective Superintendent Sandy Galloway revealed that the victim’s throat had been cut and his face and body mutilated with a knife. He appealed for anyone who was in the area between the hours of midnight and three a.m. to come forward. In the last few minutes, the identity of the victim was revealed as award-winning thriller writer Drew Shand. Thirty-one-year-old Shand was hailed as one of the new stars of British crime fiction when his first novel, Copycat, shot to the top of the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic and won the John Creasey Memorial Dagger and the Mcvitie prize. The television adaptation of Copycat also went on to win several major awards and has been widely screened abroad. A former English teacher, Shand lived alone in the New Town area of the city. His second novel, The Darkest Hour, is due to be published next month. Shand, who was openly homosexual, was known to frequent several Edinburgh gay bars, including at least one believed to cater for those whose tastes run to sadomasochistic practices. At this point, police are refusing to suggest any possible motive for the killing.

“Fucking typical, blame the victim,” Kit snarled, slamming his glass down so hard the stem broke, sending a stream of red wine across the marble floor. Ignoring it, he took a swig straight from the bottle. He scarcely registered its taste. “Drew Shand,” he muttered, tilting the bottle to his mouth again. He shook his head in disbelief. “Poor bugger.” He had a sudden flashback to the panel they’d done together at the last Edinburgh Book Festival, the one and only chance he’d had to appear with the rising star. He remembered Drew leaning forward, elbows on knees, hands spread open, face earnest as he struggled to make the point that the violence in Copycat had always been functional, never gratuitous. The audience had been won over, Kit recalled, although he’d had his doubts. Then afterwards, sitting outside the Spiegeltent, drinking Becks straight from the bottle, the pair of them had carried on the discussion, lacing their seriousness with the gallows humour beloved of police officers and crime writers alike. A vivid image of Drew throwing his handsome head back and laughing imploded behind his eyes like a terrible firework.

Kit suddenly realized how he longed for Fiona’s presence. A reviewer had once remarked that Kit made his readers care so much for his fictional victims that the reader felt the shock of losing a real friend when he killed them off. At the time, he’d been proud of the comment. But back then, he’d never personally known someone who had been murdered. Sitting in a strange hotel room in an unfamiliar city, numbed with the shock of Drew Shand’s death, he finally recognized the critical comment for the absurdity it had been. Now he knew the truth.

Fiona stretched extravagantly and looked at her watch. To her astonishment, it was ten past seven.

Her movements attracted the attention of Berrocal, who had been absent for most of the day but had returned a short while before. “You are making progress?” he asked.

Fiona outlined the results of her day’s work. “I need a break now,” she concluded. “It’s easy to start making mistakes when you’ve been staring into the screen all day, and if I get the crime-site plotting wrong, the results are worthless.”

Berrocal crossed to her desk, peering over her shoulder at the laptop. “This is remarkable,” he said. “A system like this would make our job so much easier.”

“Quite a few police forces are using it now,” Fiona told him. “The linkage program works best with crimes against property, like burglary and robbery. The version I’m using is experimental. It lets me enter my own set of variables for the checklist, so it needs a certain level of expertise to use it. But the basic version with the fixed parameters reduces burglaries wherever it’s been used. It helps clear outstanding crimes from the books as well as current cases. You should get your bosses to invest in the software.”

Berrocal snorted. “Easier said than done. My bosses don’t like to spend money on anything they can avoid.”

“You did well to get them to pay for me, then,” Fiona said tartly, standing up and switching off the computer.

“When it comes to losing tourist dollars, they panic. Suddenly, we get resources that we’d never get in any other circumstances. So, what are your plans for the evening? Would you like me to take you and Kit for dinner somewhere typically Toledan?” He stepped back to allow her to escape the confines of her desk.

“That’s kind of you, but I don’t think I’d be very good company. I’ve got all this stuff buzzing round my brain, and I’d rather just go back to the hotel and have a bite to eat there with Kit. After that I’ll probably feel like doing more work.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you prefer. But you really don’t have to work every minute you’re here, you know.”

Fiona closed her laptop and started to pack it away. “I think I do, Major,” she said softly. She looked up and met his eye. “He’s out there, planning the next one. He’s already working on a short cycle. I hate to sound melodramatic, but when you’re dealing with a killer as organized and as ruthless as this one, every day counts. I don’t want his next victim’s blood on my hands if I can possibly avoid it.”

Berrocal eased the car into the traffic and gave Fiona a quick glance. “You really think the man behind the vandalism is the same man who did the muggings?”

Fiona shrugged. “There are no certainties in what I do. And ideally, I like to work with at least five locations for each potential series. But on the basis of probability, I’d say so. The vandalism only overlaps the first mugging. After the second mugging, there’s no more paint-throwing or window-breaking. So either the vandal moved away, or he found a more satisfying outlet for his anger. Everything I know about the way violent criminals escalate tells me that it’s likely that, when he wasn’t caught, he became more confident. He moved up a gear and started attacking the direct cause of his rage rather than hitting targets at one remove. If I’m right, it’ll show up when I run the geographic profiling program.”

“You’ll have proof it’s the same offender?” Berrocal couldn’t help sounding a little sceptical.

“Not absolute proof, no. Not even the kind of proof that will stand up in court. But if the program gives me the same likely residential locations for both series of crimes, then we’re looking at a strong probability, wouldn’t you say? And then your colleagues in Toledo will have an idea where to start looking for proof.” Fiona shifted in her seat, trying to unlock the tightness in her shoulders. They had turned on to the road that skirted the river opposite the bluff where Toledo glowed in the twilight. “Amazing view,” she added.

“It’s a beautiful city,” Berrocal acknowledged. “That’s why crimes like these seem so much more shocking than a routine act of violence in the back streets of Madrid. And of course, it’s also why there is so much attention on this investigation. It’s not just my bosses who are leaning on us for a quick solution. The newspapers and the TV stations are all over us. Luckily I’ve managed to keep your name out of the stories so far. I don’t think it would go down well that we have had to bring in an expert from England to solve crimes so very Spanish.”