She hoped one of them was going to come up with a lead that would give them somewhere to go on these murders, and soon. This was supposed to be the age of total surveillance. But this killer seemed able to elude the ever-watching eyes in the sky. He covered his back. And his keystrokes. She was horribly afraid that he was already planning to add to his tally of victims.
Carol turned back to her own screen and called up the post-mortem reports. Maybe Grisha had some results for them. Absorbed in her reading, she didn’t notice Tim Parker’s approach until he was in her doorway. ‘Hi,’ he said, inappropriately bright and breezy. ‘Just thought I’d bring you a hard copy of my profile. I’ve emailed it to you, but, you know, belt and braces.’
‘That was quick work.’ Probably too quick.
He put it down on the desk. ‘So, I’ll head down to the canteen for a coffee. Maybe you could call me when you’re ready to talk it through?’
‘That would be good,’ Carol said. A couple of pages, by the looks of it. Barely time for him to drink a coffee, she reckoned. He looked expectantly at his work then at her. She smiled. ‘Off you go, then.’
Carol waited till he’d left the main office before she picked up his profile. She read it slowly and carefully, not wanting to be accused of unfairly dismissing him. But her most strenuous attempts at fairness couldn’t tamp down the rising burn of anger. There was nothing here that her own team couldn’t have generated. They’d all picked up enough of the basics from working with Tony over the years. They could have told her all the obvious stuff that Tim Parker had dressed up with fancy prose. Organised killer. White male, 25-40. Uncomfortable with his homosexuality. Incompetent in relationships. Living alone or with mother. Likely to live in Bradfield. Criminal record may include arson, animal cruelty, minor sexual offences such as indecent exposure. Spotty employment record.
It was all straight out of the textbook. There was nothing here to carry them forward an inch. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Carol said. She picked up the two sheets of paper and headed for the door, face grim. She caught Kevin’s eye as she marched past and shook her head.
‘Flak-jacket time for the boy wonder, then,’ Kevin said to her retreating back.
‘I’m doing it in the canteen so I won’t be tempted,’ Carol said without pausing.
She found Tim on a sofa in the far corner of the canteen, nursing a cappuccino and reading the Guardian. He looked up at her approach, his smile fading as he took in her expression. Carol dropped the profile in front of him. ‘Is that it, then? Is that the product of your expensive training at the faculty?’
He looked as shocked as if she’d slapped him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that this is facile. It’s superficial. It reads like it’s been copied from the FBI’s Sexual Homicide textbook. It gives me no sense of this killer at all. I don’t know what he’s getting from these crimes—’
‘Well, sexual satisfaction, obviously,’ Tim said. He sounded put out. She’d thought he was flushed with shame but realised now it was umbrage. ‘That’s what sexual homicide’s about.’
‘You think I don’t know that? I need specifics. Why this process and not something else? What does it mean to him? Why the peaceful death and then the hideous mutilation? What’s going on there?’ She had her hands on her hips, standing over him, knowing she looked like a bully but not caring. He’d committed one of the worst crimes in her book - wasting time and resources in a murder inquiry.
‘It’s impossible to theorise with so little data,’ he said pompously. ‘Technically he’s not a serial killer yet. That’s three plus one, if you take Ressler’s definition.’
‘You think I don’t know that either? You were still at school when I started working homicide. I’ve worked with one of the best profilers in the business for years. I’ve learned the basics. I could have written this. This is the sloppiest piece of work I’ve seen in a long time.’
Tim got to his feet. ‘Nobody could have done any more with the limited information you gave me. If your detectives had come up with more evidence, it would be easier to write a meaningful profile.’
‘How dare you blame my team? Let me tell you, on this showing, there would be no place for you on it. Where’s the insight? There’s nothing here we don’t already know. Why these victims? You don’t even discuss whether the victims are high or low risk. How he acquires the victims. Where he’s killing them. None of that.’
‘You’re asking me to speculate without data. That’s not what the job’s about.’
‘No, I’m asking you to make something of what you’ve been given. If this is the best you can do, you’ve no right to call yourself a profiler. And you’re no use to me.’
His face took on a stubborn set. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘I got some of the highest marks for my course work. I know what I’m doing.’
‘No, Sergeant. You don’t know what you’re doing. Classroom is not incident room. Now, take this back and do some work. I don’t want another shallow pass at this killer. Think. Empathise. Get under his skin. Then tell me something useful. You’ve got till tomorrow morning before I have to tell my boss that you’re a complete waste of space and budget.’ She didn’t wait for his response. He hadn’t earned the right of reply.
She thought she’d never missed Tony more than she did right then.
The team at RigMarole had made Sam’s afternoon a misery. He’d finally had to lose his temper to get them to behave. He didn’t understand how anyone could weigh their business against the lives of innocent teenagers and hesitate for a nanosecond about opening their files. Once he’d pointed out to them how closely the victims overlapped their primary source of income, and how quickly that income stream could disappear once the media got hold of RigMarole’s reluctance, they’d finally seen the light and agreed to hand over the access codes to Stacey and open their hard copy files to him. The contents of those files had turned out to be minimal and a complete waste of time. It was infuriating when he was so close to being ready to confront Nigel Barnes.
The tedious drive back from Worksop gave Sam plenty of time to plan his tactics, against both Carol and Barnes. He had to get the DCI on side. This was the sort of case break that would make him hard to ignore in the upper echelons of Bradfield Police, but it was also in the interests of Carol herself and the MIT. That gave him a better than even chance of getting her to agree that he could arrest Barnes on suspicion of something.
It was a pity he couldn’t haul Tony in on his side of the argument. But he knew better than to show Carol he’d gone behind her back. The last time one of the team had played away with Tony, she’d just about lost her mind. And that had been her blue-eyed girl Paula. He’d just have to persuade her they had enough to make it worthwhile.
He looked at the dashboard display as he left the M1. With luck, he’d be back in Bradfield by eight. Carol would still be at her desk. After all, what else would she be doing on a Saturday night in the middle of a double murder inquiry? It wasn’t as if she had a life.
CHAPTER 30
The digital recorder on the kitchen table was the first thing Tony noticed when he came down for breakfast. ‘Not yet,’ he said aloud as he filled the coffee machine. He needed time to work out the implications of what Carol had told him the day before. He had to figure out the meaning of Vanessa’s story before he could listen to Arthur and weigh his version against hers. If indeed there was any significant difference between the two.