“So no one knew Charlotte would be in Holland Park that night,” Sam says quietly to herself.
She loads up Google Maps and traces the route from Jessica Patel’s house to Palace Gardens, where the Mathers live. Charlotte would have saved maybe fifteen minutes by cutting through the park. She remembers walking down the shady passageway alongside Holland Park after her session with Dr. Thomson; Charlotte must have been so scared, venturing into the park alone. The girl no doubt consoled herself that it was just after sunset and there were still people around. Sam swallows hard and takes another sip to wash away the lump in her throat.
Nigel reported Charlotte missing at 4:35 a.m. on Friday morning when he woke up and discovered his daughter was not in her bed. He called the Patels’ home at 4:28 a.m. and immediately dialed 999 once they told him his daughter had walked home the night before. Charlotte’s body was found in the early hours of Friday morning by a dog walker.
It’s always a dog walker, Sam thinks. She inhales deeply and rubs her eyes. Charlotte was just fourteen. A hot anger rises in her stomach and she gulps a large mouthful of her drink to cool it. Sam’s fourteenth year had been the worst of her life, but Charlotte looked happy in her photo. She deserved so much more. She was just walking home.
“I’ll get you, you bastard,” Sam murmurs, running the back of her hand across her top lip.
Next, she reads the initial forensics report. It’s not very long because there’s little to go on. Two sets of footprints were found at the scene. One was Charlotte’s size-seven school shoes and the other was a man’s boot, size twelve.
“Poor kid.” Sam finishes the last of her drink.
She rolls over the details of the case again as she walks back along Craven Passage. Every few steps, she casts a glance over her shoulder. A murderer is roaming the streets of this city and she analyzes the face of every man she passes, looking for traces of evil, any indication that he could kill. The tightness in her chest lingers, but she feels a renewed determination to bring another predator down—to stop this man before he can strike again.I can do this, she tells herself.I will find him.
A scruffy little dog is tied to a drainpipe on the corner and Sam watches its skinny frame shivering pitifully as she waits to cross the road. It looks up at her imploringly from under wiry eyebrows.You don’t want to come with me, pal, she thinks,I can barely look after myself. The dog whines and strains toward her, stretching its raggedy rope.
“Sorry, little one,” Sam says as she turns her back on the mutt and walks away, assuaging her guilt by resolving to call the RSPCA the second she gets home and charges her phone. She yearns for a cup of tea and an hour of vintageOnly Fools and Horses—her version of self-care. But tonight she has a date with a wall of washing machines at the laundrette on Clapham High Street.
She decides she’ll takeHow to Get Away with Murderalong and try to make progress with it as she watches her undies splash around in lather. She’ll add to her notes and use page markers, as she’d seen her trainee doing earlier. The thought of him brings guilt with it, so she pushes his image out of her mind and picks up her pace.
Sam’s almost to the tube when she hears the sound of footsteps behind her.
This Little Piggie Went to Prison
Before we getinto more specifics of getting away with murder, a basic grasp of how the police catch and convict killers will serve you well. If you are yourself a police officer, a lawyer or have read every Val McDermid novel that’s ever been published, you can probably skip this chapter. For the rest of you, here we go.
For every twenty serious crimes committed, there is only one conviction.
The intelligent enough among you will have derived two important lessons from the above information:
The villains don’t always get caught.
If we get caught, there is often insufficient evidence to convict us.
Not getting caught should always be your number-one priority. However, it might happen, so you need to take action now to avoid the chances of you being convicted if it does.
By understanding the basics of police structure and procedures in your country, you should be able to improve the likelihood of getting away with murder. I will cover UK policing below, but the valuablepoints I make can be applied in the United States, across Europe and beyond. I recommend that you conduct further research depending on where you are, because knowing your enemy is a powerful thing, wherever you may be.
Policing by consent
In the UK, our police operate in accordance with the nine principles put forth by Robert Peel in the early 1800s. This is known as “policing by consent” and is the treasured, traditional foundation of our law enforcement to this day.
Like our American spawn, the British police force is divided into territories and jurisdictions. However, British officers can operate outside of their jurisdiction, and physical county boundaries don’t really come into play here as they do in the US. Of the forty-three police territories in the UK, almost a dozen are in “special measures,” meaning that they are below the required standard—failing, in other words. This includes the notorious Metropolitan (London) Police.
Outside of the police, there are other law enforcement agencies, such as MI6 (Intelligence) and the National Crime Agency, and they will find you quicker than Liam Neeson with a kidnapped daughter.
Stretching the police
Now that you understand a little about how the police force is set up, it may have occurred to you that you should spread your activities across the widest possible geographical area—crucially, across police borders. Stretch the already flimsy police communications and avoid a single detective looking for you for more than one crime within their jurisdiction. As you’ll never be committing crimes near where you live (or places you frequent), this alone will offer you enormous protection from geographic profilers and any triangulation theories.
Police officers themselves are regular people who often do a mediocrejob to earn a crust and just want to get home to Netflix and the company of Ben and Jerry. There are no Kay Scarpettas or Nikki Alexanders in real-life pathology labs. Nor are there any Sherlock Holmeses or Columbos heading up investigations. Police officers are flawed, and often not particularly intelligent. They also work shift patterns, which can leave them exhausted and not at their best. The police are understaffed and officers are often kept back hours over their shift finish-time. Police officers experience more trauma in a week than most people will in a year, and there is little to no mental health provision within the force. Leadership can also be poor, as a lot of higher-ranking officers are corrupt old men.
Avoid commonality
Following the discovery of a piece of your artwork, a variety of people will file reports and take photographs, and then a few will investigate. An SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) will be appointed, and he (or sometimes even “she”) will allocate small inquiry teams of DCs (Detective Constables) to investigate. These “beat bobbies” will bring information back into the investigation in the form of notes or sometimes recorded interviews with witnesses. This documentation will be transcribed and filed on the central police database called HOLMES: the Home Office Large Major Enquiry (per Office of Justice Programs, Criminal Justice Inspectorates) System (named after Sherlock, but nowhere near as smart). HOLMES is operated by minimum-wage civilian indexers whose job it is to catalog and tag everything the inquiry teams discover, and is searchable, like Google. Searches made are processed using keywords such as “stabbing,” “decapitation” or “strangled the cat.” So,avoid commonality between your crimes. Herein lies an important lesson around modus operandi, or MO.
Remember the Wet Bandits from the classic nineties Christmas movieHome Alone? Harry Lime and Marv Murchins were successful burglars (played by Joe Pesci and the other guy, whose name no one ever knew—got hit in the face by an iron: that one). Despite their lack of smarts, Harry and Marv understood the importance of research and preparation.Posing as a police officer, Harry approached the enormous mansion of Peter and Kate McCallister (heaven knows what Pete did for a living, or maybe Kate—no, this was the nineties; women still knew their place, for the most part). I digress. Harry finds out that the McCallisters are going to Paris over Christmas, so he and Marv make plans to rob the house. Young Kevin, their son, left home alone, discovers the plan and enjoys torturing the burglars instead of dialing 911. (Kev would definitely own a copy ofthisbook.) Anyway, Harry and Marv are eventually arrested by the Chicago Police Department. As Harry and Marv are led away, the police officer tells them that the cops know which houses the pair have previously burgled because of Marv’s penchant for blocking all of the sinks and setting the water running. Marv wanted to be a notorious Wet Bandit. Thanks to Marv’s signature move, however, they were connected to far more crimes than the one they were caught for. Harry and Marv have a valuable lesson for us all when it comes to law enforcement: you need to vary everything about your crimes if you can, or copy someone else’s MO. Clever police work involves reviewing your past moves and using them to predict your future ones. Like chess, but more fun. So, don’t be a Wet Bandit.
