Steve Wilson - The Element Of Death

I could see that he was waiting for me to respond, so I asked him, “Any ideas what happened?”

“Not yet, though the pathologist reckons she’s been dead for about twelve hours. Her name is — was — Mandy Norris, twenty-four years old, single and an investment banker. She was one of the high-flying set.”

“So robbery’s a likely motive, then?”

“It doesn’t look like that, but we can’t be certain yet. If it was robbery, they left plenty behind. Her purse contained several hundred pounds, and it was in plain view in her bag.”

“So I guess it does sound like him again, then. What time was she killed?”

“I wondered when you’d ask that. I take it you’re still obsessed with the clock.” His face was expressionless as he spoke, but I could detect an element of contempt in his voice. I surmised that this was probably my one and only chance to convince him that I was fully recovered. And, once he had accepted that I was no longer a liability, I was certain that the word would get around and Monika would return home. That, though, would have to wait for another day.

“The clock watcher?” I said, with a hint of a grin. “That was another person in a different life. Here, I don’t need it any more.” I took off my watch and threw it onto a chair. “I mentioned the time because it was the right question to ask. I’ll put it another way, then. Did any of the neighbours hear anything?”

Creswell smiled. “You still have that investigative streak about you, don’t you? Such a shame, such a waste. To answer your question, the woman next door said she heard a scream at around four a.m. She was annoyed, because she expected they would have stopped by that time.”

“They?”

“The trick-or-treaters. They were around in droves until almost midnight, according to the neighbour, but it had been reasonably quiet since then.”

“If that was the case, didn’t she think to report it at the time?”

“No, because she said she heard the woman laugh as well. And, as I said, there’d been screams all night with it being Halloween. There are a lot of younger people in the neighbourhood and four a.m. is still early as far as they’re concerned. If she’d reported every scream, there’d have been police here on a dozen occasions.”

“Old Hercule was right,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of a line I read recently. Something that Poirot said. To paraphrase it slightly, when do you notice an individual scream least? When it is one of a number of related screams.”

“You and your damned detective fiction! This is real life, damn it, not a story book. Somebody is dead here. It’s nothing like anything you’ve read. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sorry, sir. Of course I understand. What do we know about the victim?”

Creswell let out a deep breath before continuing. “From what we’ve been able to gather so far, she was out last night at a Halloween-themed event with some friends from work. They said the party broke up in the early hours, they all left the club, and that’s the last any of them saw of her. She didn’t turn in for work today, but they figured she’d probably had too much to drink. She wasn’t the only absentee, as a few of the girls had over-indulged themselves.”

“Who found the body?”

“Her boyfriend — he’s with the same bank. He had been to a morning meeting in London, and left for the capital yesterday early evening. He arrived back early this afternoon to find this. His alibi is rock-solid, though we don’t really need it. Not with that,” he added, pointing at the wall.

“I’d expected he would target me instead of embarking on another spree,” I said. “Not that I want some maniac to try and kill me, but at least it would stop innocents like Amanda here from getting themselves butchered.”

“Amanda? Oh, Mandy, you mean.”

“Yes, that’s right, Mandy. I guess it’s my formal logical side, imagining her entry on the police database under her full name.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, we’d hoped he would go after you — not that we want any harm to come to you, Ben. You remember what he said at his trial? He promised you a special welcome, but he also said he was going to start again, but on a longer sequence this time. You stopped him when he’d completed six of his seven self-appointed tasks. He is an obsessive. His mental state can’t allow something to remain unfinished. He has to have a perfect run. The problem is, how many will he go for next time? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?”

“Thanks,” I said, wryly. “So what you’re really saying is that if I hadn’t called it in when I found that underwear model, she would be dead, but nobody else would be in danger. That makes me feel really good about myself. Of course,” I added, “given his mental state, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have started a brand-new series anyway? Ten years is a long time. His first series lasted half a year. We could easily have had half a dozen such sprees since.”

“You misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to imply that you were in any way to blame. You were a damned good copper who used your initiative when we’d been trying to locate the potential victim for several weeks, without any success.”

“I know, it’s just me feeling a little sorry for myself. I realise that you don’t blame me for what happened tonight. The problem is, I blame me.”

“Don’t! That’s an order. I still outrank you, so put any such nonsense thoughts right out of your head. Now, about this message.”

“Thanks,” I replied, “and the best thing for me to do is try and solve this before it escalates out of control.” I looked at the congealed writing again, then walked over for a closer view. “I was right,” I said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“I know. That’s one reason why we called you in. The other, of course…”

“Yes, I know. Because the killer has aimed it specifically at me. I know that, and, believe me, I’m not over the moon about it. I’m still a serving officer, though, so it’s my duty to respond. I accept that I’m probably the last person you want looking at this, given what nearly happened last time I was on a case.”

“No, that’s not true at all. We called you in because of your obsession with him over the past ten years. There’s nobody else — other than Gregory himself — who understands his mind as much as you do. We’re going to need to get inside his head to work out what he’s going to do next. You’re going to need to get inside his head.”

“Thanks, boss,” I muttered. I read the message:

This is for Holmes’ lapdog. He thinks he’s so clever, so if you want to try and stop the next one happening, you’d better hope he’s as good as he says he is.

I paused. “That’s the easy bit,” I said, trying to inject a small amount of levity into a sombre situation. I read the remainder, the part that didn’t make sense:

Kds’r rszqs vhsg zm dzrx nmd. Sghr hr sgd ehqrs ne lzmx. Gnv lzmx? Ad z fnakhm gdmbglzm, dke. Knnj enq Zmcx vgdm sgd mdws nmd nbbtqr.

“Any ideas?” asked Creswell.

“Not immediately.”

“Isn’t there some software you can use to crack codes like these?”

“There are plenty of applications out there, yes, but solving this depends on the code used. Some cyphers require a keyword, and without that you don’t stand a chance.”

“We’re stuffed, then.”

“No, I don’t think so. The message is clearly taunting me. There’d be no point to it if it was impossible for me to crack. Leave it with me — I’ll get home and work on my laptop to see what I can find. Can you email me a photograph of the message to make sure I don’t write it down incorrectly? The positioning of the letters might have some importance.”