“Why? I’ve told you once I don’t recognize her. So unless you’re doubting my word—”
“I’m not sure you realize how serious this is. There are five people dead already and there will be more unless she is apprehended, so I want you to think. Has your organization been contacted by a student working in the sex industry who fits this description?”
“God, you really have no idea, do you?” Greene replied, shaking her head.
“I beg your pardon?”
“We have dozens... scores of girls matching that description phoning us every week. Do you know how expensive it is doing a degree these days? I’m guessing not.”
Sanderson let the insult ride over.
“Go on.”
“I’m not going to give you names. The sessions are completely confidential. You should know that.”
“And you should know that in extraordinary circumstances—which these most definitely are—I can apply for an order of court forcing you to open up your files. Which means that we will pore over every detail of every student who’s ever got in touch with you.”
“You can threaten me all you like. I’m not giving you names.”
“I’ll ask you again. Has anyone matching the description been in touch?”
“Are you deaf, dear? There arelotsof girls who match the description. They run out of money, turn to prostitution, can’t handle it, but by that point it’s too late. So they drink or take drugs to deal with it and many suffer violence, rape and pregnancy scares along the way. Some of these girls have courses that are six, seven years long, and Mum and Dad can’t pay for them and the government’s sure as hell not going to help them, so what can they do?”
Sanderson felt a little tingle down her spine, as a thought took hold.
“Back up a minute. Would you say that girls with longer courses are more likely to fall into prostitution?”
“Of course. Makes sense, doesn’t it? It costs them tens of thousands of pounds to finish a course like that and prostitution pays better than bar work, so...”
“And what sort of courses last that long?”
“Vets, some engineering degrees, but mostly it’s the doctors. Medicine.”
“And have you recently had a medical student get in touch who might match our description?”
“More than one. But as I said, I’m not giving you any names.”
Jackie Greene sat back in her seat, arms folded, daring Sanderson to go and get a warrant. She would if she had to, but she had another thought on how she could get what she needed. She left the counseling center and headed for the university’s main administration building. An image was forming in her head and she wanted to run it to ground as quickly as possible. After all, who better to carry out a DIY thoracotomy than a former medical student?
103
She should have gone hours ago, but still Helen couldn’t leave. It was nearly nine a.m.—the team would be assembling now—and Harwood would no doubt wait until they were all there before sweeping in and taking control. She was good at timing these things to maximum effect. She would get one of the startled team to bring her up to speed, before issuing tasks. All of which meant Helen had an hour, two tops, before she was out for good.
She had removed the case files from the incident room and holed up in a damp interview room that was generally avoided. All through the night she had been going over the vast cache of documents in the numerous files, trying to see through the mass of details to the important connections. Working backward from the most recent, messiest murder, she had been searching for correlations and parallels, hunting for pointers to why Angel had been driven to kill and what she would do next. Did these men have any connection to the student world? Had they used an escort service that recruited a “better” sort of woman? What had set her off? Who was she angry with? Questions, questions, questions.
As sunrise came and went without progress, Helen had gone back to first principles. Who was Angel and what had precipitated this killing spree? What was the spark that lit the fire?
Opening the Alan Matthews case file, she reread the details for the umpteenth time. She was so tired now that the words swam in front of her eyes. Throwing down another slug of cold coffee, she turned to the pictures from the crime scene instead. She had seen them numerous times, but they still made her feel nauseous—the bloated torso opened up for all to see.
For all to see. The phrase buzzed round her mind as she took in Alan Matthews’s corpse. Suddenly her eyes zeroed in on the hood, which had been placed carefully over his head before death. Helen had always dismissed this as Angel’s security—an attempt by a nascent killer to hide her identity in case it all went wrong and the victim escaped. But what if it signified something else? She had taken her time on the others—she had abused them, then split them open with a steady hand, enjoying herself. The DIY thoracotomy, as Jim Grieves had put it, carried out on Alan Matthews was more ragged, more brutal. Was this because she was an amateur or was something else at play? Was she nervous?
Helen shot a look at the clock. It was half past nine now. Surely her time was almost up. Yet she felt she was onto something, as if the jigsaw puzzle were trying to assemble itself in front of her. She had to keep going and hope against hope that she would not be found. Her phone started buzzing, but she ignored it. No time for distractions now.
The hood. Focus on the hood. The one distinguishing feature of the first murder. Angel might have wanted to conceal her identity in case the victim escapedorshe might have done it because... she didn’t want to look her victim in the eye when she carried out the mutilation. Was she scared of him? Scared her nerve would fail her?Did she know him?
The hood wasn’t used to suffocate him and wasn’t employed in the later murders, so what made her first victim unique? Did he have some kind of power over her? Why was Alan Matthews special? He was a hypocritical, corrupt sexual deviant with an interest in evangelical religion and a passion for beating his family...
An echo of a memory. Something calling to Helen. Suddenly she was tossing the files aside, looking for the surveillance file that DC Fortune and his team had assembled on the Matthews family. There was a mass of mundane details, time logs, all of which might help, but Helen discarded them for the photos from the funeral. Helen had been there, for God’s sake—had the answer been under her nose all along?
