He nodded. “Whatever you wish.”
“I would also appreciate it if you could extract from your Toledan colleagues any reports of vandalism against tourist sites or hotels or businesses that cater to the tourist trade. And any attacks on tourists themselves. Going back, say, a couple of years. Solved and unsolved, if that’s possible.” She smiled. “I’ll also need a reasonably detailed map of the city that can be scanned into a computer.”
“I will arrange it.” He inclined his head in a half-bow. “Already you have shown me a different way of looking at these cases.”
Fiona shifted in her seat so she was staring ahead over the driver’s shoulder. “I hope so. When I look at a crime, I don’t look with the same eyes as a detective. I’m searching for the psychological as well as the solid practical elements that link that one crime to others. I’m also looking for geographical clusters. But as well as that, I’m watching out for other signals that can tell me something about the criminal.”
“So then you can figure out the way his mind works?”
Fiona frowned. “It’s not so much his motivation I’m trying to get at. It’s more about developing a sense of how he looks at the world. Motivation is highly individualistic. But what we all have in common is that we construct our own identities based on what we’ve learned of the world. So the way a criminal commits his crimes is a reflection of the way he lives the rest of his life. Where he feels comfortable, both physically and mentally. I’m looking for patterns of behaviour in the crime that give me clues to how he behaves when he’s going about his ordinary business.”
She gave a wry smile and continued. “Some of my colleagues have a different approach which you’re probably more familiar with. They look at the crimes and seek a set of symptoms in an offender’s past that have produced a particular way of life in the present. I’ve never found that very helpful. For my money, too many people share the same sort of background and don’t turn out to be psychopathic serial offenders for it to be a precise diagnostic tool. I’m not saying that my methods necessarily always produce a more accurate result, but that’s more because I seldom have sufficient data rather than that the methods themselves are flawed. There isn’t a magic formula, Major. But my training is so divergent from that of a police officer that I’m bound to look at things from a different perspective. Between us, we see this thing in stereo, rather than in mono. I can’t help believing that has to give us an advantage over the criminal.”
“That’s why you’re here, Doctor.” Berrocal leaned forward and said something in rapid Spanish to the driver. They were approaching a sprawl of modern suburban housing, the road lined with concrete boxes containing furniture stores, car showrooms and small businesses. He sat back and took out a packet of cigarettes, twiddling them restlessly between his fingers. “Ten minutes more. Then I can have a cigarette and you can go to work.”
This time, Fiona’s smile was grim. “I can hardly wait.” Extract from Decoding of Exhibit P13⁄4599 Uzqhq dftag stfyg dpqdo agxpn qeaqm ek. Upuym suzpq ufarf qzngf uzykt qmpuf tmpnq qzyqe ekmzp rdust fqzuz s…
The document in question utilizes a simple transliteration (am, b=n, etc) and the arrangement of letters into groups of five instead of the normal layout of the words. What follows is a transcription of the coded material, with appropriate punctuation added for sense.
J.M. Arthur, Document Examiner. I never thought murder could be so easy. I’d Imagined It often, but in my head it had been messy and frightening. The reality is quite different. The power surge, that’s what carries you through it. Imagination really doesn’t prepare you for the real thing. The other mistake I made was in thinking murder always had to be part of something else. But the truth is, murder can be an end in itself. Sometimes, people have to pay for what they have done, and taking their lives is the only way to do it. I never thought I was going to be a murderer. I had my life sorted out. Bat then something shifted, and I could see them laughing at me, flaunting their so-called success in my face. I’d be a poor excuse for a man if I just took provocation like that on the chin. Nobody knows how they’ll react when their life gets stolen by people who don’t give a toss who gets hurt. Well, I’ve never been the sort who just sits back and lets things happen, and I’m going to make them pay. I’m going to change the rules. But I’m not going to be obvious. I’m going to be subtle and choose my targets carefully. This time, they won’t be able to ignore me. They won’t be able to write me off. I’ll be writing them off, writing their names in blood, and sending a message loud and clear. They’re responsible for their own downfall, that’s what I’ll be saying. Live by the word, die by the word. It’s not hard to track down thriller writers. I’m used to watching people, I’ve been doing it for years. It doesn’t hurt that they’re all so vain. The Internet is clogged up with their websites and they give interviews right, left and centre. And they’re always doing public appearances. So it made sense to start with somebody who has a really high profile, to make my job as easy as it could be. I decided the best way to make my point was to give them a real taste of their own medicine. It wouldn’t be enough just to kill them. I wanted it to be clear right from the word go that there was nothing accidental about what was going on. And knowing what was coming would make them suffer all the more. Satisfaction, that’s what I want. To make the punishment fit the crime, I have to get the crime right, and now I’ve made my list. I ranked them according to how easy I thought it would be to do them and that’s how I got my candidates for execution.
Drew Shand
Jane Ellas
Georgia tester
Kit Martin
Enya Flannery
Jonathan Lewis Now all I have to do is figure out exactly how to take them down. They put me in this cage. But they should know that caged animals turn savage. They’ve brought this on their own heads.
SEVEN
Fiona scrambled down the narrow path, glad she’d worn flat-soled loafers to travel in. It wasn’t that it was particularly steep, but the beaten ochre earth was dotted with small stones that would have been perilous to the ankles in any sort of heel. She made a mental note to check what footwear Martina Albrecht had been wearing at the time of her death. It might give her some indication as to how willingly she’d accompanied her killer to the scene of her murder.
Berrocal slowed down ahead of her and turned back, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke that reminded Fiona of the dried camel dung fires of the Northern Sahara. “You OK?” he asked.
“Fine,” she answered, catching up and using the pause to scan her surroundings. They were in a narrow, flat-bottomed valley that curved away from the road. The high bluffs on either side had already cut off the line of sight to the viaduct that carried the circunvalacion around the southern bank of the Tagus. From here in, there would have been no chance of being caught in the headlights of a passing car. The sides of the valley were covered in scrubby vegetation, with a few small trees straggling up the gentler slopes.
“We are almost there,” Berrocal said. “You see those bushes ahead? It’s just past there.” He set off again, Fiona in his wake.
“He must have had a torch,” she observed as the tall shrubs closed around them, almost meeting over their heads. Berrocal’s smoke was forced back into her face and she tried to avoid breathing through her nose until they were in the open again.