Profile k, p.18
Profile K, page 18
That’s it. Thanks Amb.
Want me to come over? I can bring a bottle.
That was quite the offer, coming from Amber. She always declared that quiet nights in were strictly for the over-forties. Midnight reminded herself how lucky she was to have a friend who was willing to change their own patterns to suit hers, but much as she would have loved to share a bottle of red and pour her heart out, she needed to be alone.
Thanks, but not tonight. Dawn’s restless so need to keep flat quiet. Love you. Thanks for info x.
How many times in one day could she use her beloved sister as an excuse? The answer, sadly, was as many as it took.
Midnight googled Dr Woolwine and found a website with the details of the psychological profiling consultancy she ran.
American forensic psychologist, Dr Woolwine, first name Connie, was the sort of person Midnight had always wanted to be. She spoke her mind, not in a way that was crass or cruel, just whatever she thought, almost unfiltered.
Two problems were lodged between Midnight and the person she needed to speak with. The first was an absolutely gigantic lie about the information she needed and why she needed it. The second was funding. How did you approach one of the world’s most renowned profilers, ask for her help, and have no money to pay her? If she pretended it was a Necto job, there would be no reason to have a problem paying, so that wasn’t going to work.
As she thought about it, Midnight made Dawn a few little triangle sandwiches and filled up a beaker with orange squash.
‘No,’ Dawn said. ‘Moo-moo cup.’
‘I think it’s in the dishwasher,’ Midnight said. ‘Can we use this one for tonight?’
‘Moo-moo cup,’ Dawn insisted. ‘Moo-moo cup.’
‘Okay, babe. I’m getting it.’ Midnight wandered into the kitchen to fetch the old black and white cup Dawn had always loved. Apart from the photo, it was one of the few things left from her parents’ era. Midnight wanted to throw it into a furnace. How could her mother have done it? Fathers left all the time. And no, that wasn’t okay either, but a mother leaving the child who would always need her? Heartless cow. She threw the moo-moo cup into the bin, burst into tears, then got it out again and washed it.
Shit, she was worn out. She decided to make contact with Connie Woolwine by email, then go to bed.
‘Dear Dr Woolwine,’ she typed into the query box of the contacts page. ‘I work at Necto, London, and I have a query I think perhaps only you can help with. It’s not official, so I won’t blame you if you say no, but I don’t know who else to ask. I heard your talk when the new profiling system was introduced. I was a data analyst then but now I’m in client liaison. Sorry and thank you. Midnight Jones.’ She put her contact details in the required boxes, then got Dawn ready for bed.
She accepted the truth while she was putting pyjamas on Dawn and manoeuvring her into bed, that her sister was getting harder to move around. Central London was no place for her. They needed to be in a little cottage in the country where Dawn could spend her days watching ducks and squirrels. Maybe they could even have a cat or a dog. Dawn’s existence was just day after day of getting through the hours, when it could and should be so much more.
Five years, she thought. Stick it out at Necto. Get promoted again. Move to a three-bedroom place where she could advertise for a live-in carer who would get paid, in part, with free room and board. Start to save some money. Move to the country. Become a remote profiling consultant. Work online. Spend every day with her sister, learning to make …
‘Fuck it. Jam or pickles or something,’ she said.
Her mobile rang and she assumed it was Amber, swiped the video call icon and said, ‘Give me a minute. Dawn needs her teddy. I can’t even start to tell you how utterly crap my day has been.’
‘Not what I expected, but okay. That sounds as good a place to begin as any.’
Midnight stared into the screen. ‘Oh, fuck.’
‘You’d think it would be the case that I never get greeted like that, but it happens more often than you’d believe. Midnight Jones, I presume?’
‘Dr Woolwine. I’m so bloody sorry, I wasn’t expecting …’
‘That’s fine. I interrupted you putting your daughter to bed. I’ll call back in a while.’
‘Please don’t go. I really do need to talk to you.’ Dawn began waving and blowing kisses. ‘My twin sister,’ Midnight explained. ‘Dawn, I’ve got to speak to the lady. I’m putting your star lights on. Watch them for a while and I’ll be back to read you a story. Love you.’
There were a few seconds while Connie Woolwine waited and Midnight settled Dawn down, then the bedroom door was shut and Midnight sank onto the sofa.
‘Your sister is beautiful. Must be hard, seeing yourself reflected and wondering how you came out the way you did, and how she seemingly got the short straw,’ Woolwine said. Midnight didn’t even try to answer, it was far too close to her every waking thought. The line crackled suddenly. ‘Sorry. I’m in Venezuela consulting on a case. The hotel Wi-Fi is about as reliable as a used car dealership. Anyway, I was intrigued by your note and I had a few minutes to spare, plus I love your name. So how can I help?’
‘Yes,’ Midnight gave a small cough. ‘So, um, I have a situation at work with a profile and I thought it was sort of a software glitch but while I was doing the data analysis, it did seem to me that probably there were some oversights, um, that you might be able to explain—’
‘Let me stop you there,’ Connie Woolwine said. ‘You’re lying to me. I don’t know why or about what. We can talk about it, and I suspect you have a good reason for contacting me because your baseline emotions are genuine, but everything about you is off right now. So I’m going to hang up, and you’re going to decide what you want to say to me. There’s no rush. I’m not putting a timer on it or any of that bullshit. You look like someone in need, and I checked you out already, so I know you actually do work for Necto. Take a beat, figure it out, then call me back.’
The line went dead.
Chapter 26
It took no more than five minutes to pull herself together. Someone else was going to die. Another Chloe, another Mae. Then there was the thought Midnight had been trying to cram to the very back of her brain, unsuccessfully. Someone had been trying to get information about her too. It might have been a coincidence, and it might have been a joke, but she was jumping at shadows and lying awake half the night. Midnight knew enough about the psychology of serious crime to understand that violent murders of young women by a stranger were both impulsive and compulsive, meaning the murderer had an itch they needed to scratch, and they weren’t simply going to stop. Not now they’d got a taste for it. The only person in a position to help her was Connie Woolwine, and not lying to her didn’t require telling the whole truth.
‘Good, you’re back,’ Woolwine said, without any other greeting. She was wearing a black T-shirt that looked the worse for wear, and was sipping from a bottle of beer, her hair pushed back by sunglasses as she leaned into the camera. Midnight got the impression Connie Woolwine could see through her mobile, halfway around the world and into her soul. ‘Let’s talk.’
‘I can’t tell you why I’m asking,’ Midnight said. ‘And I can’t pay you. You’ll have questions I won’t be able to answer. So if you don’t want to do this—’
‘Why did you lie to me before?’ Woolwine asked, her voice light, curious rather than annoyed.
‘I can’t afford to lose my job. It’ll be my sister who suffers if I do. I don’t want her to have to go into residential care.’
‘High stakes.’ Woolwine whistled.
‘Can I ask how you knew I lied?’ Midnight wished she’d taken her own bottle of beer from the fridge before making the call.
‘Lack of clarity. Fidgeting. Looking away from the screen. Vague language. A light sheen of sweat beneath your eyes. Tense neck. You’re a terrible liar. It wasn’t a party trick.’
‘I’ll remember that. Thanks for taking my call.’
‘I was intrigued. So what’s this about? I ask that with the caveat that my time is limited, I’m half a world away, and I can’t get heavily involved. I’m yours for as long as this phone call lasts, and that’s all.’
‘I understand. It’s about two murders in London. Well, three actually,’ Midnight began.
‘Uh-huh. I know a little about them. My work partner, Brodie Baarda, was a former Met police detective inspector. He’s been keeping a close eye on the murders as they’re on his old stomping ground. He’s spoken to some former colleagues about the details. Part of our job is to stay up to date with current crime events. The third death was collateral, so technically not part of the series, I think.’
‘That’s right. I guess I need to know if watching a video could make someone do something that terrible. Or maybe how it makes them do something like that. I mean, what sort of person would watch a video then do that?’
Woolwine stayed silent and stared at her. Midnight wanted to look away but didn’t dare in case the psychologist ended the call again.
‘That’s three questions,’ Woolwine said. ‘But I have one for you first. Why is this your problem?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ Midnight said. ‘I wish I could, but the ramifications would be too serious. And because I think that maybe I know something, but I don’t know that I know anything. I just can’t shake this link I’ve made in my head and I need …’ the tears started again. She knew they might. The last couple of weeks had been bizarre and devastating, and at the same time none of it seemed real.
‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ Woolwine said. ‘You’re going to take a few real deep breaths with me. Focus only on me. You need to let the stress go to get some clarity. At the moment you’re bombarding your brain with too many different signals. No one’s mind works efficiently like that. I’m going to answer your questions, with the limited knowledge I have about these crimes and how they may link to the videos. I’m going to say this before I start, and I need you to remember it: whatever you’re imagining may not be true. Whatever is happening, you’re not responsible for. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ Midnight said.
Connie Woolwine was the single most confident person she’d ever been in contact with. Quiet, internal confidence. It was almost impossible to look away from her.
‘So these videos, are we talking about a movie or a game, some sort of porn or what?’
‘I can’t tell you much, except that I think maybe the videos were curated because of their extreme violent content. It’s not mainstream viewing.’
‘All right. We’ll start by assuming the man who committed these murders did actually see these videos.’ She was writing as she spoke, looking straight into the camera, as if her brain and hand were completely unconnected. Midnight tried to look into her eyes instead of staring at the pen. ‘I understand they have the perpetrator’s DNA. Given the fact that they haven’t identified him, he’s obviously not in their database which means, firstly, that he’s never been convicted of an offence, and second, it’s the first time his DNA has gone on record or the police would be linking other crimes to him as well.’
‘How can this be the first time he’s hurt anyone?’ Midnight whispered.
‘Oh, it’s not. He’s done other things. Smaller things that he managed to keep hidden. So did his self-control bubble just pop or was it something more triggering? You think those particular videos gave him the inspiration he needed to kill.’
‘I do,’ Midnight said. ‘That’s exactly it.’
‘But there’s plenty of material out there. There’s the dark net or the backroom stuff they pretend not to have at the worst kind of adult stores. He could have seen similar videos easily if he’d looked hard enough.’
Woolwine was drawing a diagram on the page as she stared into Midnight’s eyes. Not at her, Midnight thought. More like through her. It was as if she didn’t even know she was still writing.
‘Was he so entranced by what he saw that he replicated a video in the first murder?’ Midnight was opening her mouth to speak when Woolwine continued. ‘Nope. Why would that have been the catalyst? Why not any other video at any other time? Or a book, a TV show, even just a daydream. If this is what does it for him, why not just follow his own instincts and do the things he’s been longing to do?’ She stopped writing abruptly and chewed the end of her pen. ‘Minute of silence please.’
Midnight watched. Connie Woolwine looked left, up, left again. Her mouth was forming the tiny rapid shapes of internal dialogue. She shook her head and closed her eyes momentarily, then the noiseless speech began again. It was more gripping than any movie Midnight had ever watched, as if Woolwine’s skull was transparent and Midnight could see all the cogs whirring and turning.
‘Okay,’ Woolwine said. ‘This guy isn’t young, by which I mean not a teenager, I’d say mid-twenties at the youngest. These were no clumsy, disorganised, impulse crimes. Compulsive, yes. Impulsive, no. And they’re sexually driven but not sex-centric.’
‘I don’t understand. If the women weren’t raped or sexually assaulted, then how can these crimes be sexual?’
‘First, because he’s actively choosing women to hurt, so there’s almost inevitably a sexual undercurrent. But there’s something else happening at the crime scenes that’s driving him. Something exciting at a primaeval level that gets this guy off, maybe the screaming or the helplessness. It just doesn’t come in the form of a vagina. Perhaps it’s the simple idea of a woman, or maybe it’s that what he wants to do is such a deeply personal thing, he wouldn’t get the sense of intimacy with a man that he craves with a woman.’
‘So, he wants to hurt her, but he wants it to feel like an intimate experience. Like a micro-relationship?’ Midnight offered.
‘Perfect observation,’ Woolwine said. ‘I once tracked a guy across China who was obsessed with men’s elbows. He killed five different men amputating their arms so he could play with their elbow joints. It was still sexual, just in his own unique way.’
‘Shit the bed,’ Midnight said.
‘That is a new phrase to me and one I shall be using later. Baarda is going to hate it, so thank you. We’ll consider that full payment. Now, back to it. Yes, definitely sexual. Both deaths involved blades from what I’ve heard. Hmm. But we were talking about him. Where’s he been until now? Why nothing like this before?’
‘Maybe abroad?’ Midnight offered.
‘Possibly, but the DNA profile will be with Interpol by now and there have been no hits on their system either. That still leaves the countries who don’t routinely store or share DNA data. Let’s assume he’s British. Got to recreate. Hold on.’ She set her mobile down. Midnight could see a basic hotel room, tidy save for stacks of paper and a side wall covered in photos and maps. ‘Ignore all that. I’m mid-case. I need more room to do this.’ She grabbed several sheets of blank paper and laid them out in a long rectangle. ‘Midnight Jones, this is how I work. If it freaks you out, you can leave me to it, and I’ll get back to you.’
‘No, I want to see. I … I think you’re amazing.’
‘Save the fan-girling until I’ve given you useful information.’ She grinned broadly. ‘Right, let’s go.’
She drew the rough outline of a woman on the papers. Scaled down, the figure came out about a quarter of the size of Woolwine herself.
‘I’ve got her tied to the bed. She’s gagged. There’s been a bit of a fight. I’ve taken her clothes off. What else have I done? Locked the door, closed the curtains, probably got an apron on, or a change of clothes with me, I know this is going to get messy. I want to take it slow because otherwise it won’t go the way I want it to, but I’m jacked up. Really fucking excited. You still there, Midnight?’
Midnight tried to stop her mouth from hanging open. She managed a confirmatory grunt rather than any coherent words. Connie Woolwine was—
‘You think I’m weird? Don’t worry, I get that a lot. Just stay with me.’
And also apparently a bloody mindreader.
‘Midnight, you said you spoke to a police officer about the murders, but how much information have they released to the public about the victims’ injuries?’
‘Limited.’
‘Okay, so I know rather more about it than you. Given the fact that it sounds as if you shouldn’t be calling me, can I count on you to keep anything I say confidential?’
‘Oh God, yes,’ Midnight said.
‘Then we can begin. My pen is the scalpel.’ She looked down at the paper woman. ‘You’re naked, panicked, conscious, I’m guessing. If you weren’t conscious, it wouldn’t be exciting. I want to see how you react when I start cutting. Where do I start? The legs, I think. Lighter cuts, to start with. I’m finding my feet, getting to grips with the blade. Although I’ve prepared for this well, watched my victim to make sure she lives alone, I know I’m going to take my time, so I’ve practised on other meat. Of course I have. I want to know how that blade will feel as it goes in. Have I practised on myself? How might that have felt?’ She paused the dramatisation. ‘Damned right, I have. I want to know what the pain feels like. I want to be able to feel what she’ll feel with every little cut.’
‘How many …’ Midnight’s voice was gravel. ‘How many times did he cut her?’
‘I don’t have exact numbers. But most of her body was cut. Arms, legs, torso, face, I think. It was a lot. Doing this reconstruction now, I’d say more than a thousand.’
‘That’s not, um, he’s not human. I mean, surely it’s obvious to anyone who knows him that he’s not normal?’
‘I think our boy is good at hiding it, and I think he’s spent a lot of time and effort getting good at hiding it. Maybe someone helped him, even if they didn’t know it. Just a few more minutes now.’
Midnight didn’t want to watch and she didn’t want not to. She bit into the knuckles of her fist to keep herself quiet.
‘You’re so scared, Chloe.’ Woolwine ran her fingertips over the outline of the head on the pages. ‘The first few cuts wouldn’t have hurt that much, then when he kept going, the sting would have turned to a burning, and after that the skin would have started to pull apart. You were just longing to fall unconscious, weren’t you? Our man, on the other hand, he was just getting going. Didn’t stop. Didn’t give up. Didn’t get bored. Even after you fell unconscious, and you must have, he just kept on going.’ Woolwine made mark after mark on the paper, careful with each, breathing in time with every line.
