Lynley didn’t hesitate before striding towards the man. He took Robson by the arm without preamble. “You need to leave at once,” he said. “I don’t know how you managed to cross that barrier, but you’ve no business here, Dr. Robson.”
Robson was clearly surprised by the greeting. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the barrier through which he’d just come. He said, “I had a phone call from Assistant-”
“I’ve no doubt of that. But the assistant commissioner was out of order. I want you to clear out. Immediately.”
Behind his glasses, Robson’s eyes assessed. Lynley could feel the evaluation going on. He could read the profiler’s conclusion as welclass="underline" subject experiencing understandable stress. True enough, Lynley thought. Each time the serial killer struck, the bar would be raised. Robson hadn’t seen stress yet, compared to what he’d see if the killer snuffed out someone else before the police got to him.
Robson said, “I can’t pretend to know what’s going on between you and AC Hillier. But now that I’m here, I might be of use to you if I have a look. I’ll keep my distance. There’s no risk I’ll contaminate your crime scene. I’ll wear what you need me to wear: gloves, overalls, cap, whatever. Now I’m here, use me. I can help you if you’ll let me.”
“Sir…?” Havers spoke.
Lynley saw that from the opposite end of the tunnel, a trolley had been wheeled, the body bag upon it ready to be used. A SOCO team member stood with paper bags prepared for the victim’s hands. All that was required was a nod from Lynley and part of the problem engendered by Robson’s presence would be taken care of: There would be nothing for him to see.
Havers said, “Ready?”
Robson said quietly, “I’m already here. Forget how and why. Forget Hillier altogether. For God’s sake, use me.”
The man’s voice was as kind as it was insistent, and Lynley knew there was truth in what he said. He could hold rigidly to the arrangement he’d negotiated with Hillier or he could use the moment and refuse to let it mean anything else than simply that: seizing an opportunity in front of him, one that presented a chance to have a bit more insight into the mind of a killer.
Abruptly, he said to the team members waiting to bag the body, “Hang on for a moment.” And then to Robson, “Have a look, then.”
Robson nodded, murmured, “Good man,” and approached the paintless car. He went no closer than four feet from it and when he wanted to examine the hands, he did not touch them but rather asked DI Hogarth to do it. For his part, Hogarth shook his head in disbelief but cooperated. Having Scotland Yard there at all was bad enough; having a civilian on the scene was unthinkable. He lifted the hands with an expression that said the world had gone mad.
After several minutes of contemplation, Robson returned to Lynley’s side. He said first what Lynley and Havers had themselves said, “So young. God. This can’t be easy for any of you. No matter what you’ve seen in your careers.”
“It isn’t,” Lynley said.
Havers came to join them. By the car, the preparations began for transferring the body onto the trolley, to remove it for postmortem examination.
Robson said, “There’s a change. Things are escalating now. You can see he’s treated the body completely differently: no covering of the genitals, no respectful positioning. There’s no regret at all, no psychic restitution. Instead, there’s a real need to humiliate the boy: legs spread out, genitalia exposed, seated with the rubbish deposited by vagrants. His interaction with this boy prior to death was unlike his interactions with the others. With them, something occurred to stir him to regret. With this boy, that didn’t happen. Rather, its opposite did. Not regret, then, but pleasure. And pride in the accomplishment as well. He’s confident now. He’s sure he won’t be caught.”
Havers said, “How can he think that? He’s put this kid on a public street, for God’s sake.”
“That’s just the point.” Robson gestured to the far end of the tunnel, where Shand Street opened up to the small businesses that lined it in a few dozen yards of South London redevelopment that took the form of modern brick buildings with decorative security gates in front of them. “He’s placed the body where he could easily have been seen doing so.”
“Couldn’t you argue the same of the other locations?” Lynley asked.
“You could do, but consider this. In the other locations, there was far less risk for him. He could have used something no witness would question as he transported the body from his vehicle to the dump site: a wheelbarrow, for example, a large duffel bag, a street sweeper’s trolley. Anything that wouldn’t seem out of place in that particular area. All he had to do was get the body from his vehicle to the dump site itself, and under cover of darkness, using that reasonable means of transport, he’d be fairly safe. But here, he’s out in the open the moment he puts the body into that derelict car. And he didn’t just dump it there, Superintendent. It only looks dumped. But make no mistake. He arranged it. And he was confident he wouldn’t be caught at his work.”
“Cocky bastard,” Havers muttered.
“Yes. He’s proud of what he’s been able to accomplish. I expect he’s somewhere nearby even now, watching all the activity he’s managed to provoke and enjoying every bit of it.”
“What d’you make of the missing incision? The fact that he didn’t mark the forehead. Can we conclude he’s backing off now?”
Robson shook his head. “I expect the missing incision merely means that, for him, this killing was different to the others.”
“Different in what way?”
“Superintendent Lynley?” It was Hogarth, who’d been supervising the transfer of the body from the car to the trolley. He’d stopped the action prior to the body bag being zipped round the corpse. “You might want a look at this.”
They went back to him. He was gesturing to the boy’s midsection. There, what had been obscured before by the body’s slumped position in the seat was visible now that it was stretched on the trolley. While the incision from sternum to navel had indeed not been made on this most recent victim, the navel itself had been removed. Their killer had taken another souvenir.
That he’d done so after death was evident in the lack of blood from the wound. That he’d done so in anger-or possibly in haste-was evident in the slash across the stomach. Deep and uneven, it provided access to the navel, which a pair of secateurs or scissors had then removed.
“Souvenir,” Lynley said.
“Psychopath,” Robson added. “I suggest you post surveillance at all the previous crime scenes, Superintendent. He’s likely to return to any one of them.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
FU WAS CAREFUL WITH THE RELIQUARY. HE CARRIED IT before Him like a priest with a chalice and set it down on a tabletop. Gently, He removed the lid. A vaguely putrescent odour wafted upward, but He found that the smell did not bother Him nearly as much as it had done at first. The scent of decay would fade soon enough. But the achievement would be there forever.
He looked down upon the relics, satisfied. There were two of them now, nestling like shells in a rain cloud. With the slightest of shakes, the cloud subsumed them, and that was the beauty of where He’d placed them. The relics were gone, but still they were there, like something hidden within the altar of a church. In fact, the activity of reverently moving the reliquary from one place to another was indeed just like being in a church, but without the social restrictions that churchgoing always placed upon members of the congregation.
You’ll sit up straight. You’ll stop the fidgeting. D’you need a lesson in how to behave? When you’re told to kneel, you do it, boy. Put your palms together. God damn it. Pray.