Easy Kill Read online

  The DI’s expression was a mixture of anger and frustration. ‘He’s playing with us.’

  Placing Lucie’s body on top of a previous victim, leading them to the burial site, now the release of photographs of the victims shortly after he killed them; everything suggested the perpetrator was keen to control the investigation.

  ‘We should bring Magnus in on this,’ said Rhona. Despite her misgivings, unravelling the twisted thought processes of a serial killer was a job for a psychologist.

  Bill acted as though he hadn’t heard.

  ‘How widely distributed are these photos?’

  ‘IT say they’ve been viewed or downloaded by a substantial number of the “dogging” community, in the UK and probably North America.’

  ‘So the world and his mother is ahead of us on this?’

  ‘There’s something else, sir. A website that may have a link to the crimes.’ Janice moved the slideshow forward and displayed the following script.

  Wednesday July 28th

  Known as streetmeat, they can be found hanging around the Finnieston area or by Glasgow Green. Mostly mangy crackheads and criminals, there are two kinds. The dried-up worn-out clits brigade who’ll do anything, ANYTHING for the money including crap and pee on request. Then the juveniles. Young, some VERY YOUNG and still fresh. Get them before the smack does. If you fancy beating up a whore, this class is for you. Nobody gives a shit what happens to them, including the police.

  Friday July 30th

  Two mangy crackheads lying one on top of the other. One fresh meat, the other rotting. The police didn’t even know the rotting one was missing. Told you. No one gives a shite.

  Saturday July 31st

  If you found your way here, you know what the stakes are. The next streetmeat is yours to slaughter. Bidding starts at a grand.

  The silence in the room was palpable, all eyes glued to the screen.

  The first message had been posted the day Terri disappeared. The second could have been written by a sicko following the case, but the third …?

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It’s an online auction,’ Rhona voiced what no one else wanted to say. ‘He’ll carry out and record the next kill for the highest bidder.’

  There were murmurs of disgust and anger.

  ‘It could be a hoax,’ said Janice.

  Bill shook his head. ‘I think it’s the next move in the game.’

  19

  MAGNUS STARED DOWN at the chessboard. The game was currently in limbo, but he still liked to study the pieces poised for battle, frozen in time. His opponent had departed Orkney for a lecture tour in the United States and Canada on the topic of John Rae, Orkney’s greatest son and explorer.

  Magnus could forecast from the current position that he was likely to lose, again. Douglas Flett was a powerful opponent. Magnus had learned a lot by playing him regularly over the past three years.

  Thinking about Douglas produced a sudden longing for Orkney, its smells and sights. The Raes’ family home, The Hall of Clestrain, overlooked Scapa Flow, not that far from Magnus. Rae had been his boyhood hero. Like the young John, Magnus had learned to sail on the ever changing Scapa waters and believed himself capable of great adventures.

  Magnus stepped out onto the small balcony that hung above the River Clyde. Here at least he could enjoy the smell of water, although not the sea. He would have to go further west for that.

  Glasgow’s great river and its extended waterways covered 600 square miles and was served by multiple marinas. Thousands of people sailed its waters or worked with boats that did. Traces of sea salt and diesel weren’t significant in narrowing their search for the killer, unless they had a suspect. But it added to the profile that Magnus was forming of the man they sought.

  Magnus went back inside, poured himself a whisky and resumed his place in front of the computer screen. If DI Wilson was to take him seriously, he would have to come up with something that made sense to such an experienced professional. Magnus wondered if the older man’s antagonism wasn’t born of more than just having a profiler foisted on him by a superior officer. He recalled the concerned look he’d seen pass between Rhona and the detective. If the DI did have a confidant, it was probably Dr MacLeod.

  Magnus turned his thoughts away from Rhona and towards the large map that hung above his desk. He’d marked all known marinas with a cross. A list of sailing clubs that used these marinas and their race programmes had been easy to find, particularly as many had sites online.

  All the murders (at least the ones they knew about) had occurred in the heart of the city, and not that far from the river. Lucie had been known to work both Finnieston and Calton red-light districts, so she could have been picked up in either area. Terri had stuck to Calton. The killer had either charmed or threatened the dead girls to get them to the graveyard. The timing of the kills would be significant. Someone who planned so carefully did not kill on the spur of the moment. The fact that he had salt and diesel on his hands when he strangled Lucie, suggested he’d been near a boat not long before the crime.

  Magnus was so engrossed in his preliminary profile, he didn’t hear his mobile at first. He got to it just too late and voicemail told him it had been Rhona. He returned her call immediately, before he had time to think about it. When she answered, his body reacted by reminding him of her scent. Magnus found the sensation pleasant, though distracting.

  ‘There’s been a development,’ she said.

  ‘Shall I come down to the station?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation at her end. ‘Can I come by your place on my way home?’

  Magnus had a sudden vision of Rhona in this room. It both excited and perturbed him. ‘Of course.’ He gave her directions.

  ‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

  Magnus found himself lighting lamps against the growing dusk, and tidying the papers on his desk – whether through nervousness or an attempt to impress, he wasn’t sure. If he were honest with himself, he found Rhona MacLeod intriguing.

  Psychologically profiling the women he met was an obsession of his. If they weren’t sufficiently complex, he quickly lost interest in any possibility of a relationship. If he found them enigmatic, he spent too much time on analysis. There were times, like now, when Magnus wished he could just ‘be’ rather than seeking always to understand.

  He refreshed his whisky, and opened the balcony doors wide. A soft breeze swept the room. Magnus tried to concentrate on the aroma of the whisky and the mix of scents wafting in from the river, to no avail.

  The scent of a woman was as distinct as her fingerprints, despite the modern world’s attempt to disguise it with cosmetics and perfume. Sexual attraction was stimulated by image and natural scent. For him, naturally, scent was by far the greater influence.

  Magnus had once sat in a room with two people who, he’d quickly realised, were sexually attracted to one another. There was nothing overtly sexual about their behaviour, but he could smell their desire. The scent was so strong he’d felt his own body respond. Magnus had never, until that moment, imagined the two men in question to be other than straight. He suspected that, until they met each other, neither had they.

  He could only be glad that Rhona MacLeod’s sense of smell was not as acute as his own.

  Rhona pointed the remote at the car. She always unlocked it well before she reached it, especially at night and particularly in an empty multi-storey car park. The distance to her car from the entrance seemed unnaturally far and she was conscious of her heels clipping the surface and of her breathing. There were only four other vehicles on this level. Most evening users found a place lower down.

  Although she knew it was silly, she began to walk faster. The sense that someone was watching her was so strong that she stopped and looked back. The atmosphere was thick with the day’s heat, radiating from the concrete, mingling with trapped exhaust fumes. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and between her breasts. Once inside the car, she locked
all the doors.

  Magnus lived in one of the modern flats by the river. She’d been surprised by the address, having imagined him ensconced in a hundred-year-old sandstone property, with original features and shelves full of books, like an Oxford don.

  Rhona had called Magnus from the incident room, in earshot of Bill. Ignoring the command to include Magnus was Bill’s way of saying he was on top of the job, despite the Super’s suggestion he take compassionate leave until Margaret’s course of chemotherapy and radiation was complete.

  It was easier for Rhona to liaise directly with Magnus than to ask Janice or McNab to defy their boss’s unspoken order openly. Janice had looked relieved when Rhona had said she would bring Professor Pirie up to date. That was one problem solved, at least. And the truth was that Janice, like Rhona, was interested to see what Magnus could come up with; what he would make of the photographs and the messages.

  Rhona tried not to look around the room, but directed her gaze towards the open balcony doors and the inky blackness of the Clyde beyond.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She stepped outside, drawn to an expanse of water, as she had always been from childhood.

  This view of the Clyde was a new experience.

  ‘What a wonderful outlook.’

  ‘I was brought up in a fisherman’s house built below the high water line. At full tide the water lapped three sides of the house. This is the nearest I can get to that.’

  Rhona smiled warmly, pleased by his friendliness. ‘My parents were from the Isle of Skye. I spent most summers there, although I was brought up in Glasgow.’

  ‘You speak Gaelic?’

  ‘A little. I watch the Gaelic programmes sometimes to remind myself.’

  ‘I miss Orkney voices the most, but there’s always Radio Orkney.’

  ‘God bless the BBC.’

  Her small talk exhausted, she locked gazes with him. Magnus took his time about everything. Observing, talking, thinking. It was quite disconcerting in a world where everything and everyone seemed in a rush. His measured delivery almost suggested he was speaking in his second language. Or maybe his brain worked so fast that he deliberately slowed down the articulation of his thoughts.

  Magnus indicated the whisky bottle.

  ‘Can I tempt you to a dram?’

  ‘Maybe a small one, with lots of water.’

  Magnus placed a cut-glass tumbler on the coffee table in front of her and Rhona handed him the printouts in return. He looked at her curiously, saying nothing, then studied both closely. His intent gaze and the angle of his jawline reminded Rhona of a Greek statue in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. She was almost surprised when the statue spoke.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me these.’

  Rhona hadn’t said it was her decision to include him in this development, but she suspected Magnus knew. If he’d queried Bill’s attitude, Rhona would have promptly bitten Magnus’s head off, so strong was her need to defend her friend and mentor.

  ‘Bill thinks the last one refers to Terri.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  His refusal to reach that conclusion irritated Rhona. ‘Now we know what the other two look like, it’s obvious he picks the same type. And Terri’s that type.’

  ‘The looks might be a coincidence.’

  ‘You think so?’

  If he noticed the irritation in her voice, he didn’t rise to it.

  ‘In the early days of artificial intelligence, the Ministry of Defence developed a neural network designed to identify photographs where enemy tanks were hidden among trees. They thought they’d succeeded until they discovered the program wasn’t “seeing” tanks at all. It was picking out the photos that had a certain degree of light. Nothing to do with the hidden tanks.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘We tend to see what we’re looking for.’

  ‘What do you see?’ Rhona struggled to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

  ‘The most recent victim has six stab wounds, the one from a month ago has five, the one before that four.’

  Rhona took a closer look. Each body lay in exactly the same position. In fact they must have been posed for the camera. No two bodies fall the same way; our death throes are uniquely our own. Magnus was right. The level of decomposition of the previous victims had made it difficult to determine the presence and number of stab wounds. These photos solved that problem.

  ‘What do you think that means?’

  ‘It could signify his rising level of anger. It could be he’s deliberately counting. It might mean nothing.’

  ‘So what happened to one, two and three? When should we expect lucky seven?’

  Magnus suddenly looked weary and Rhona wanted to bite her tongue. That was the problem with investigative psychology. There was nothing to get a grip of, nothing to test, no accumulated data on which to base your assumptions. Yet in a case like this, a profiler was seen as an oracle, someone who could supply the answers that tried and tested police procedure and advanced science had failed to find.

  ‘These photographs confirm the ritual aspects of the murders. Serial killers are mercifully rare, so collecting data on them is difficult.’ Magnus shrugged apologetically. ‘But – there are some things we can hypothesise on. These young women were little more than objects to the killer. The ritualistic nature of their deaths – particularly the insertion of an object into their bodies – suggests this. As far as the murderer is concerned, the body is not a person.’

  ‘And the fundamental nature of the relationship between the body and the person is what makes us human.’

  Magnus’s nod of approval pleased Rhona, perhaps more than it should have.

  ‘A prostitute is regarded as a commodity, not a human being. And as such they all look alike to the punter,’ he said.

  ‘And the majority are in the seventeen to twenty-five age group anyway.’

  ‘They are also the most vulnerable and therefore easiest to kill.’

  ‘And their murderers are seldom caught.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t create a profile for the killer that could help narrow the search.’

  Magnus motioned Rhona over to the computer. ‘I was going to present this at Monday’s meeting.’

  ‘Can I take a look?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Rhona read through the detailed observations on the appearance, character, social and sexual history of the perpetrator, and hoped Magnus would be able to convince Bill.

  She realised he was watching her and, no doubt, working out what she was thinking. Rhona decided to call his bluff and allowed her thoughts to turn to sex. She imagined how many women Magnus had made love to in this room. She imagined him naked – always a good way to demystify academics. Unfortunately the idea backfired. Rhona was suddenly aware from the look in his eyes that Magnus was thinking along the same lines.

  There was a moment that lasted an hour, when neither spoke.

  ‘I have to go.’ The standard get-out clause. As a put-down, it didn’t work. Magnus’s keen eye never wavered. Instead Rhona could swear his eyes twinkled. She wanted to laugh. Magnus did laugh.

  ‘Great minds think alike.’

  ‘You are very forward.’

  ‘I try to be honest. We’re working together professionally. Otherwise I would have tried my luck.’

  ‘I’m taken.’ It sounded like a successful move in chess.

  ‘At the moment.’

  How could they be having this conversation? Read one way, it could be a bit of light-hearted banter. But it wasn’t. It was a mating dance, with Magnus’s mind as the peacock’s tail. Rhona thought of Sean – his charisma, the power of his music. Men only choose women who choose them. He’d told her that once. It avoids too many rejections. Their mutual desire was strong, but they never discussed things. A meeting of minds – psychology and science – was an intriguing thought.

  After she left, Magnus sat where Rhona had sat, and allowed hims
elf to breathe her in. His body responded to her even more intensely than he thought it would. It had been this strong only once before. In view of the outcome that time, he’d hoped, planned for it never to happen again.

  Magnus read the three messages again. There were those who were willing to carry out unspeakable acts, and those who preferred the visceral thrill of watching. Magnus had no doubt there would be responses to the online auction.

  The killer was developing. Now he wanted to be observed while he killed. He wanted to record it, to relive the experience himself through the eyes of others.

  The hair on Magnus’s forearms rose, as though a draught of cold air had entered the room.

  20

  THE UNEASY FEELING Rhona had experienced earlier seemed to be following her like a bad smell. The parking below Magnus’s flat was close to the river, which Rhona could hear lapping against the concrete barrier. She’d parked in an empty bay, obviously belonging to another resident who had retaliated by blocking her exit with a four-by-four. As she struggled to manoeuvre around the vehicle, she imagined the owner watching, mouthing ‘serve you right, bitch’.

  Once out of the confined space and back on the road, she felt better. As it was Saturday, she’d promised Sean she would come by the club on her way home. After the session with Magnus, it seemed important to keep her word. Although she would have preferred a quiet night in where she could have contemplated both the case and Magnus’s part in it.

  Despite all the police warnings, Finnieston red-light district had its usual quota of young women looking for clients. Lights shone from the incident caravan on the corner of Cadogan and Douglas Street. There was a similar set-up in Calton. Hopefully the high police presence would keep the killer away from both areas, but if he’d already picked up his next victim, he wouldn’t need to come back.

  Work at the incident room would carry on all night, the late shift taking over from the day. The case involved a mountain of work, sifting through interview coverage, CCTV footage, lists of recorded assaults against prostitutes and reports from the general public. At least fifty officers, looking for a needle in a haystack. In reality, they were all just waiting for the next body to be found.