His reading was interrupted by the phone. Half-distracted, he picked it up. ‘Hello?’ Carol had told him more than once that his phone greeting sounded astonished and wary, as if he was taken aback by a ringing piece of plastic that spoke when you lifted it. ‘You remind me of a poem I read when I was at school,’ she’d said. ‘“A Martian Sends a Postcard Home”, it was called.’
The person on the other end of the phone was hesitant. It sounded like he’d have agreed with Carol, given half a chance. ‘Is that Dr Hill? Dr Tony Hill?’
‘Yes? Who is this?’
‘I’m Detective Inspector Stuart Patterson. West Mercia CID.’
‘We’ve not met, have we?’ Tony always liked to get that out of the way. He was good with faces but names often escaped him. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d thought he was talking to a complete stranger only to discover they’d sat together at some dinner a month before.
‘No. I was told you were the person to talk to about profiling. ‘
‘Well, I’m certainly one of them,’ Tony said. He grimaced at the phone. ‘I have some experience in the field.’
‘We’ve got a case down here. I think we could use your help.’
‘West Mercia? That’s Worcester, right?’ Now he sounded wary even to himself.
‘And the surrounding area, yes. But the murder was on the outskirts of the city. Have you read about it? Is that why you’re asking?’ Patterson’s words ran into each other in his haste, but Tony could distinguish an accent that had the faint burr he associated with the Borsetshire accents in The Archers.
‘No, I just wasn’t exactly sure . . . Geography isn’t my strong suit. So, what is it about this case that makes you think you need someone like me?’
Patterson took a deep breath. ‘We’ve got a fourteen-year-old girl who’s been murdered and sexually mutilated. We’ve been working the case for over a week and we’ve got nothing you could call a lead. We’ve covered all the obvious bases but there’s nothing to go at. We’re desperate, Dr Hill. I want to close this case, but we’re not getting there by the numbers. I need a fresh approach.’ There was a pause. Tony stayed silent, sensing there was more to come. ‘I’ve been told you might be able to provide us with that.’
That was the second time Patterson had spoken of being told. So he was coming to Tony not from conviction but because he was under pressure. Faced with a crime like the one Patterson had described, Carol Jordan and a clutch of other homicide detectives Tony had worked with would have been on the phone to him within hours. That was because they were believers. Working with sceptics always doubled the amount of work on a profiler’s plate. But on the other hand, it meant you couldn’t get away with anything other than solid, evidence-based conclusions. It was always good to be dragged back to basics.
Then he thought, Worcester, and detected the hand of Carol Jordan. She thinks she can’t get me to take an interest in Blythe, so she’s setting me up with a murder in Worcester so I have to go there. She thinks once I’m there, I won’t be able to resist poking my nose in. ‘Do you mind me asking who suggested I might be able to help?’ he asked, sure of the answer.
Patterson cleared his throat. ‘It’s a bit complicated.’
‘I’m in no hurry.’
‘Our FLO - Family Liaison Officer, that is . . . Her bloke’s with West Midlands. One of the lads from Bradfield MIT, a DC called Sam Evans, he liaised with her bloke on the Bradfield bombings case last year. Anyway, the two of them stayed in touch, meeting up for the odd curry now and again. And this DC Evans, he’s been singing your praises. My DS, he put a call in to DC Evans and got your number.’ Patterson gave a small cough, clearing his throat. ‘And my DS persuaded me it was time to think outside the box.’
‘You didn’t speak to DCI Jordan?’ Tony couldn’t believe it.
‘I don’t know a DCI Jordan. Is he DC Evan’s boss?’
An assumption that might have annoyed Tony in other circumstances convinced him Patterson was telling the truth. This wasn’t a Carol Jordan set-up. ‘What was the cause of death?’ Tony asked.
‘Asphyxiated. She had a plastic bag over her head. She didn’t fight, she was off her face on GHB.’
‘GHB? How do you know? I thought you couldn’t detect that because we’ve got it in our blood already?’
‘Not at these levels. She hadn’t been dead long when we found her, so it was more obvious,’ Patterson said heavily. ‘We’re still waiting for a full tox screen, but at this point, it looks like she was given enough GHB to make the killer’s job very easy.’
Tony was automatically scribbling notes as he listened. ‘You said “sexually mutilated”.’
‘He took a knife to her. A long-bladed knife, I’m told. Made a right mess inside her. What do you think, Doc? Are you going to be able to help us?’
Tony dropped the pen and pushed his reading glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose. ‘I don’t know. Can you email me the crime-scene pictures and the summary reports? I’ll take a look at them and get back to you first thing tomorrow. I’ll know then if I can be of any use.’
‘Thanks. If it’s a yes, will you need to come down here?’
A man already worried about his budget. ‘I need to see the crime scene for myself,’ he said. ‘And I’ll probably want to talk to the parents. A couple of days at the most. Maybe one overnight. Two at the most,’ he said, showing he understood. He gave Patterson his email address, took his phone number and arranged to talk to him in the morning.
Tony replaced the phone and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. West Mercia Police wanted him to go to Worcester on the very day when he’d set in train the sale of Edmund Arthur Blythe’s house in Worcester. Some people he knew would build a whole edifice of predestination out of that. But he set no store by coincidence. He had patients who read all sorts of fateful meanings into coincidence; during his brief tenure as a university lecturer, he’d warned his students not to be sucked into those fantasies. How did it go again?
‘We’ve all been there. On holiday, in some out of the way village or on a beach that isn’t in the Lonely Planet guide or in some fabulous little seafood restaurant recommended by the locals. And we come face to face with somebody who plays football with our brother or catches our bus every morning or walks their dog in the same park as we do. And we’re amazed. It’s the thing we tell everybody when we get home - “you’ll never believe who I ran into . . .” But stop and think about it. Think of the myriad moments of each day on your holiday when you didn’t run into anyone you recognised. Come to that, think of the myriad moments of every single day at home when you don’t run into anyone you recognise. Mathematically, the chances are that you are going to run into someone you recognise eventually pretty much wherever you go. The world is a shrinking contact zone. Every year that passes, our chances of these apparently meaningful encounters grows. But they are not meaningful. Unless of course you do have a stalker, in which case you need to disregard everything I am saying and call the police.