“I’m sorry, I have called at a bad time,” he apologized.
“Right now, believe me, there’s no such thing as a good time. How can I help you, Major?”
“I have very good news,” he said. “We have Miguel Delgado in custody.”
Fiona forced herself to sound bright in spite of the headache that was starting behind her eyes. “Congratulations. You must be very relieved.”
“Si, and pleased that we have succeeded. You were right, he had another line of defence in place. He had a friend with what my wife calls a Winnebago. Somebody he thought he could trust, because he knew this friend was himself a criminal. But his friend is only a small-time thief, a burglar. His friend, he had seen Delgado’s face in the paper and he knew whatever Delgado had done, it must be very serious. And the only really serious crimes he had heard about were the murders. He didn’t want to be implicated in crimes like that, so although he let Delgado take his van, he tipped off the local police. We found him early this morning on a camp site a few miles out of the city.”
“Well done. Has he confessed?”
She could hear Berrocal sigh. “No. He has said nothing since he was arrested.”
“Is there any solid evidence tying him to the crimes?”
“The second victim? The American? A waiter has come forward who says he remembers seeing Delgado with him a couple of days before the murder. We are hopeful that forensics will be able to match up fibres, but we won’t have that for a while yet. Also, we are testing the knives that Delgado had in the van when we caught him. Again, we don’t have the results yet. So, we have nothing much to put pressure on with.”
She hoped he wasn’t looking for help from her. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, that she had far more important things to worry about. But the professional in her knew that putting an end to the Toledo murders was just as important as what was happening in her own life. When it came to value, she had to believe all human lives were equal. Otherwise there would be little point in her work. So she forced herself not to let her frustration and hostility loose on Salvador Berrocal. “I’m sure you’ve got a very experienced team to work on him,” she said, reaching for the button to switch on her computer.
“I have never dealt with a serial killer in interrogation before. But I have a plan,” he said, sounding enthusiastic. “I figured I would make him angry. Use one of my team to taunt him. You know the kind of thing. These stupid local cops, how could they be so dumb as to arrest a pathetic specimen like him? It’s obvious that whoever did these crimes was clever enough to plan very carefully and charming enough to get his victims to go along with him willingly. And an ugly, smelly failed shopkeeper like Delgado couldn’t possibly have what it takes to be the Toledo killer. My man will act as if he’s disgusted to be wasting his time on such a pointless interview.”
“I think that’ll make him very angry,” Fiona said. “Which will almost certainly work to your advantage. You’ve obviously thought it through very carefully.” Now go away and leave me alone, she thought. “Let me know how you get on.”
He was still thanking her for her profile when she put the phone down. So let him think she was a rude bitch. She was past caring. Fiona headed straight for her e — mail program and started to write a new message. Kit wouldn’t answer the phone when he was writing, but she knew he checked his e — mail every hour or so.
From: Fiona Cameron [fcameron@psych.ulon.ac.uk]
To: Kit Martin [KMWriter@trashnet.com]
Subject: Re: Advice
Remember the message on the front of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Well, DON’T PANIC. I didn’t want to alarm you this morning. I had an idea, but I wanted to run it past Steve first. Overnight I discovered that the locals think the Garda have arrested the wrong man for Jane Elias’s murder. Taking into account Drew’s death and Georgia’s disappearance, I had to think about the possibility of a serial offender. So I took a look at And Ever More Shall Be So and was disturbed by certain parallels I found there. I’ve had a meeting with the officer in charge of the case in the City of London Police, and the good news is that they’re taking me seriously. The bad news of course is that if I’m right, then Georgia is probably, as we feared, dead. And the worst news is that there may be other killings. And of course, the police are already saying they don’t want to issue a general warning and start an unwarranted panic, not least because they don’t have the staffing levels to offer people any protection… There is NO REASON to suppose you’re specifically at risk (and yes, I still think the death threats are probably unrelated to the murders), but it makes sense to take precautions. Don’t answer the door to strangers. Don’t go anywhere alone. I mean, anywhere. Fuck bravado, I want you safe. I’m at work if you need to talk. Departmental meeting 2–3, seminar 3.30-5, home by 6. I hope.
I love you. Keep safe. F.
She hit the send button and watched her message disappear into the ether. The logical part of Fiona’s mind knew that she could not save Kit if someone was determined to kill him. But she could adopt the alarm principle. A burglar had once told her that security systems on private houses were no deterrent to the determined raider. If he wanted to get into a specific house, he could and he would. Where they were useful was in putting off the casual burglar. “You gotta make the house next door look like an easier option,” he’d explained. Well, if the price of Kit’s life was making someone else look like an easier option, Fiona was prepared to do that.
Afterwards, she’d live with the consequences. For now, what was important was keeping Kit alive.
In spite of what she’d said to Fiona, Sarah Duvall was conscious that she owed a duty to potential victims. She’d always been a proponent of preventative policing, but it acquired a new urgency when murder was the crime in question rather than burglary or street crime. Her first priority was the preparation of an application for a search warrant for Smithfield Market, but once that was under way, she had turned her attention to what else she could usefully achieve.
Because she’d never worked with Fiona, Duvall recognized she was probably far more sceptical of her insights than Steve Preston, who seemed to regard the psychologist as virtually infallible. So she was wary of Fiona’s contention that the death threat letters were unlikely to be the work of the murderer. Duvall didn’t believe in coincidence. In her book, even synchroniciry was suspect. She simply couldn’t believe that a serial murderer happened to be targeting thriller writers at the same time as a completely different individual was sending them death threats. Either they were one and the same person, or the letter-writer had inside knowledge. So if she could go some way towards identifying the source of the letters, she would either have uncovered the identity of the killer or at the very least, someone who might lead her to her culprit.
While she wasn’t willing to take everything Fiona had said at face value, Duvall was prepared to acknowledge common sense when she heard it. And it seemed to her that it was more than likely that the letter-writer could well be either a frustrated wannabe writer or someone whose career had crashed and burned. If that were the case, then the chances were that there were authors’ agents and publishers’ editors who would have come into contact with the writer of the letters and who might even be able to make a guess at their creator. These people worked with words; it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that they might recognize the prose style of the writer.
So she had set one of her team the task of identifying appropriate authorities, including an expert in the genre of crime fiction. As a result, she had arranged a breakfast meeting for the following morning with two leading agents and three editors in the field. They had no idea what she wanted to talk to them about, though she had impressed them both with the urgency of her request and the need for confidentiality.