A deadly likeness, p.34
A Deadly Likeness, page 34
Would that lead them straight back to Wednesdayschild? Maybe too much to hope for. Whoever it was, they had access to trophies Malecki had never admitted taking.
Tomorrow was Wednesday.
I shuddered. There was already a victim in the killer’s sights. A plan already in motion. Would it be tomorrow? Next week?
I felt helpless – impotent to halt a deadly machine that seemed to grind on despite all efforts to stop it.
I pictured Malecki, pacing his small, cold cell in the Seg at the Monster Mansion, and hoped he was suffering. At least I could take satisfaction from knowing I’d sent him there – with a little help.
Harvey padded into the room and came to me for a fuss. I stroked his silky ears and patted his huge chest, until he went to flop in front of the crackling fire.
Then I began unpacking the boxes. Tacking up the posters Ed had printed, until one wall looked like a satellite view of the Cheshire countryside.
Tea was the next priority. Carrying the brew back into the office, I looked up Callum’s number on WhatsApp. My thumb hovered over the icon, as images of the blonde from the surveillance team went through my mind. Whatever had happened between us, business was business and I needed to speak to him.
He answered almost immediately.
‘Everything OK up there? Why you calling on WhatsApp?’ he asked.
‘It’s the rural idyll. No landline or mobile signal.’
‘You got everything you need?’
‘Apart from a vehicle,’ I said, suddenly feeling totally isolated. ‘Feel stuck up here.’
‘The more inaccessible you are the better.’
‘From the killer’s perspective, or yours?’ That sounded more acerbic than I’d intended.
‘I’m not doing this now, Jo.’ Irritated.
I gave myself a mental slap. It wasn’t like me to be bitter, or jealous.
‘Fine. I’m actually ringing about the ACU investigation.’
‘Just a minute.’ The office noise faded as he went somewhere more private. ‘Go on.’
‘Last night, just before eleven, I saw Beth in the street. She was on a phone – not her usual one.’
‘People do have more than one phone.’
‘But they don’t keep it in their boots.’
‘What?’
I explained what I’d seen.
There was a long pause.
‘We’re monitoring Hannah’s phone. Watching all the numbers that called him from burners, in case any of them were switched back on.’
‘And?’
‘The handset that was swapping SIM cards hasn’t been used since we revealed it at the briefing. But 091, that called Hannah to set up the meeting at Paxton Pits, was used last night.’
‘From where?’
‘It pinged from a mast in Fordley centre – the one nearest the police station.’
‘What time?’
‘Ten fifty-five.’
My stomach churned. ‘Beth?’
The timing’s right.’ He exhaled, slowly. ‘I’ll have to pass it to ACU.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
I mentally kicked myself for slipping into that well-worn, but meaningless phrase people use when they know there is absolutely nothing to be done.
‘Not until we see what they find.’ Then in that way he had, of reading my mind, he added, ‘And before you go beating yourself up for telling me – don’t. If Beth is the leak, I need to know. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I haven’t got long, is there anything else?’
‘Any news on the paperweight?’
‘For once, we got a break. The courier is a local business – not one of the big boys. Turns out, head of security is ex-job. Only retired a couple of years ago. So, we didn’t need the hassle of getting a warrant for their records.’
‘Suppose it’s too much to hope you got an address for Wednesdayschild?’
‘Never that easy.’ I heard him shuffling paperwork. ‘The parcel was dropped at a village shop in the Dales on the B6265 near Cracoe. They run a pick-up-and-drop-off parcel service. Courier picked it up from there. Old couple run it. There’s no CCTV and they couldn’t remember who dropped it off.’
‘Elle told you about the custom-made knife. Possibly from Italy?’
‘Helps to know what it looks like. But Malecki can’t serve any more time, even if we do link a murder in Italy to him.’
‘No, but it gives closure to the victim’s family.’
‘That’s something to consider later. Right now, we’ve got enough to be getting on with. Surveillance team have been deployed. For what it’s costing let’s hope it pays off.’
*
After my call with Callum, I felt restless and unaccountably angry. I slammed around the house, unpacking my belongings, until Harvey stopped me on the upstairs landing.
‘What?’
He tilted his head, but as I impatiently went to walk round him, he moved, blocking my path. Then sitting down, he reached out a paw, whining softly.
Unexpected tears pricked my eyelids as I knelt down and hugged him.
He gently licked my cheek.
‘You’re right, we need to walk.’
I left my clothes strewn on the bed and ventured into Elle’s impressively stocked boot room. Choosing a heavy coat and long yard boots, we walked out into a winter landscape that took my breath away.
I was used to the spectacular moorland around Kingsberry, especially in winter. But this scenery was new to me and, despite the bitter wind and the dullness of the day, utterly stunning.
My boots crunched over snow that was beginning to freeze. Ice forming a crystalline crust that sparkled like diamonds scattered across the landscape.
The lane to the house was just a farm track, lost now under the white duvet of snow that drifted almost to the top of the dry-stone walls marking the boundary.
Harvey was in his element. Dashing in mad circles as his nose picked up new scents and exciting tracks to follow. I threw him a snowball. He leaped, catching it in his jaws, then looked confused as it exploded into nothing.
We walked to the bottom of the valley and looked up at the Atom Panopticon on the hill opposite. Its granite-coloured surface reflecting the fading pewter grey light, like some alien spaceship had landed in Narnia.
Huge feathery flakes started to fall, drifting gently from a dove-grey sky that promised more to come.
I called Harvey and turned to climb back up the hill to the house. The light was fading fast and the bitter cold was beginning to bite.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Tuesday Evening, Ferndean House
All I could do was concentrate on the other loose ends, most of which were connected to Malecki’s earlier crimes. A feeling I’d carried since my student days and never been able to shake – that there were other victims we didn’t know about.
I carried a glass of wine from the kitchen and stepped over Harvey, who hadn’t moved from his spot in front of the fire since we’d come back from our walk.
The lights suddenly flickered. I went to the window and parted the curtain. Cupping my hands against the dark glass, I could see the snow falling thick and fast. The lights flickered again – for longer this time.
Power outages were something anyone living in the sticks became used to, especially in bad weather.
I went back to the kitchen, and got a torch and some candles from under the sink. I didn’t have far to look before finding vintage candle holders and even a heavy silver candelabra in the dining room.
‘Very Downton Abbey,’ I muttered – smiling, as I carried my haul back to the office.
I began to unpack the archive boxes from the Malecki enquiry. Somewhere would be a snippet, overlooked or not logged – like the unaccounted-for mileage – that might give us a lead.
When the lights finally went out, it took me a second to register what had happened, because the flickering log burner continued to light the room with an almost romantic glow.
Typical, when you’re on your own, McCready.
I lit the candelabra, putting it down next to me so I could keep working.
There was one box I hadn’t opened. The cardboard was the faded yellow of old parchment and the label had peeled off. I cut the tape around the edges and lifted the lid. It had the familiar scent of old paper. That smell you get when you open a vintage volume in an old-fashioned bookshop.
I pulled out books on architecture and design, exam awards and a birth certificate in Malecki’s name.
The things we all keep in a dusty box at the back of a wardrobe. Documents and keepsakes, too important to discard, which we might need to produce one day. I assumed they’d been taken from Malecki’s house after his arrest, when police seized everything.
There was a shoebox in the bottom, containing handwritten notes and cards, from Malecki’s student days. I flicked through the messages, mostly from women.
The irony that I was reading love letters by candlelight wasn’t lost on me. Nor the fact that the subject of such devotion was a cold-blooded serial killer.
The wind howled down the chimney and I shuddered at the thought of women falling in love with a monster like Malecki. I didn’t have the stomach to keep reading. I dropped the letters and picked out the books.
Why keep textbooks in a box of important documents?
As I opened the first volume, I found the answer.
There was a dedication, dated on Malecki’s graduation, and signed by his father, with a reference to a song, or music. I assumed it was the kind of ‘in-joke’ families have. A shorthand way of referencing things only they understand.
In Tom Hannah’s book, Malecki talked about how close he had tried to be to his father. A stern man, with standards Malecki felt he never lived up to.
He portrayed himself as the emotionally tortured child of a detached and intractable father and an overbearing mother.
A veiled attempt to explain why Malecki had turned out the way he had. Striving to attain a perfection he never could – feeling like a failure despite his outward successes. Indulged by a mother whose devotion left him with a superior sense of entitlement that fed his narcissism.
I moved the candelabra to the desk, and without thinking opened my laptop, confused for a millisecond when it didn’t switch on.
Duh – no electricity and the battery’s not charged.
How automatically we use things without thinking, expecting them to always be on tap.
I opened my notebook instead, glad I’d copied down the lines of binary code in longhand.
Studying the rows of zeros and ones, I imagined Malecki painting them onto his canvas – sure no one but his devotee would ever see them.
‘No good finding them, if we don’t know what they mean,’ I muttered to myself. Harvey lifted his head to watch me.
‘Come on, fella.’ I stood and stretched aching muscles. ‘Late one last night and I’m shattered.’
He lazily uncurled from his warm spot and followed me.
The wind made a high-pitched howling, as it blew through the frozen branches of the surrounding trees and battered the windows. I held the candelabra out in front of us, to light the way upstairs – feeling like the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Ferndean House
Malecki was laughing at me.
I sat on a couch in his cell, my arm draped over the side, as he’d instructed, while he painted me. He turned from the canvas, wielding the paintbrush that dripped with red paint. No. Not a brush, it was a knife!
I jumped up and ran for the door – his laughter bounced off the stone walls as he took the three paces that would close the distance between us and end my life. I desperately pressed the panic button, triggering the alarm that screamed through the cell block. A red light, strobing in time with the pounding heartbeat of the siren.
I sat bolt upright, and for a moment, I didn’t know where I was.
I looked round an unfamiliar room, which glowed with the flashing light that had chased me out of sleep.
On the bedside table, the crimson digits of the screeching alarm clock projected four pulsing zeros across the walls.
The electricity was back on.
I leaned against the pillows and hugged myself, watching the illuminated numerals dance across the curtains, seeming to develop a rhythm all their own.
Like music.
I stared in to the middle distance as my subconscious served up a miscellany of disparate facts that now made sense.
I slapped the alarm into silence, found a dressing gown, then ran down stairs. The analogue clock on the wall in the kitchen said 2 a.m.
The office was still warm from the glowing embers in the log burner. I opened my laptop and plugged it in, then knelt among the papers scattered across the rug, finding the book, with its dedication from Malecki’s father.
Beneath his copperplate signature, what I’d taken to be a description of someone humming a melody:
dah dah di di di di di di dah dah
Google gave me the diagram I was looking for. I got my notebook and studied the rows of binary – checking them against the internet chart. My heart was hammering so hard, it made my writing tremble, as I scribbled letters beneath the code.
I stared at the row I’d deciphered. Then checked it again, more carefully this time. Like a disbelieving gambler checking a jackpot-winning lottery ticket.
‘Holy shit!’
I dialled a familiar number. It rang out endlessly and just when I expected it to go to voicemail, Callum answered.
‘Hello?’ His voice was thick with sleep.
‘It’s me.’
‘Huh?’ I could hear movement and imagined him struggling to wake up.
‘What is it?’ A female voice, in the background.
I froze.
‘It’s OK,’ Callum said, but he wasn’t speaking to me. Then, ‘Jo?’
‘Has the cryptologist looked at the code?’
‘Not yet. Why?’
‘It’s Morse.’
The excitement of my discovery evaporated. Adrenaline drained away, leaving me feeling unexpectedly hollow.
‘Go on?’ He was awake now.
‘Zeros are dots. Ones are dashes. Morse code.’ I sounded flat, as if I was reciting a shopping list.
‘How do you know?’
‘Malecki’s father wrote a dedication in a book, in Morse. He was a naval officer. Malecki was a cadet.’
‘What did the note say?’
‘Seventy-three.’
‘What?’
‘It’s morse abbreviation. It means “fondest regards”.’
‘Have you checked Morse against the binary lines?’
‘No!’ I snapped, as the supressed anger bubbled up. ‘I just called you on a whim. Of course, I bloody well checked. So, if Goldilocks there has a pen and paper handy, she can write down what it says.’
‘It’s OK,’ he replied – icy-cold as his anger matched mine, ‘I’ll remember it.’
I blew out my breath. ‘The code on the oldest painting translates to: “SJ, BK17”. The next line on the same canvas is: “BT, BK22”.’
‘SJ, Stephen Jones. BT, Barbara Thorpe,’ Callum said.
‘I think he numbered the notebooks he kept on his projects,’ I said.
‘“BK” . . . books seventeen and twenty-two?’
‘Yes. On another canvas, it says “Lutner” – in full. But no book reference. I don’t think he had him as a project in the eighties. He probably discussed with his disciple before they embarked on this murder spree that they’d include Lutner.’
‘If they discussed it, why would he write it on a painting?’
‘Because he sent the paintings out of the prison, in the order he wanted the victims to be killed. There are no dates for the killings, just book references and initials.’
‘What about Haverley?’
‘Nothing referencing him that I can see.’
He thought for a moment. ‘The “Q” code. That was the signal to switch targets and change strategy.’
‘Probably.’ I felt suddenly very weary.
‘Right . . . thanks.’ Was all he said before hanging up.
I stared at the phone in my hand, barely resisting the urge to throw it across the room.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Wednesday, 8 a.m., Ferndean House
‘Why so upset?’ Elle was saying. ‘You’re seeing the gorgeous Eduardo.’
The same question I’d been asking myself since my call with Callum.
‘At least I waited until I knew we were over.’ I was trying to rationalise it to myself. ‘He was seeing her while he was with me.’
‘Well, you know what they say, darling?’ I could hear the noises of a busy street. Someone was playing bagpipes. She exhaled as she smoked. ‘The best way to get over someone is to get under someone.’ She laughed at her own joke.
‘How is Edinburgh, anyway?’ I wasn’t feeling the humour.
‘Oh, you know . . . typically tartan.’ She sounded bubbly and relaxed, and suddenly I felt bad pissing on her parade.
‘I’m glad you’re having a good time. You deserve the break.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ I could hear Rina saying something. ‘Anyway, was calling to make sure you’re OK and my boys are behaving themselves?’
‘Mucked out and fed this morning. They’re good as gold.’
‘Excellent. Anyway, must dash. Rina wants breakfast, she gets “hangry” if she doesn’t eat on the hour.’
*
I’d been staring out of the window, watching the blizzard outside. Over the hills, crackling fingers of lightning fractured the sky, followed a few seconds later by muffled rumbles of thunder.
‘Thunder snow’. A rare phenomenon, when warm air, rising from the bottom of the valley, hits cold air from above. I’d only witnessed it once before and although it was spectacular, it meant worse weather to come.
I’d spent the morning trying to make sense of the rest of the binary code. No doubt the university would confirm it was Morse, when they finally got back to the team.
I’d found more initials and book numbers. Who they referred to was anyone’s guess. People who had notebooks on them. The next victims. If we hadn’t tumbled to the disciple, Malecki would have carried on completing his ‘kill list’.
Tomorrow was Wednesday.
I shuddered. There was already a victim in the killer’s sights. A plan already in motion. Would it be tomorrow? Next week?
I felt helpless – impotent to halt a deadly machine that seemed to grind on despite all efforts to stop it.
I pictured Malecki, pacing his small, cold cell in the Seg at the Monster Mansion, and hoped he was suffering. At least I could take satisfaction from knowing I’d sent him there – with a little help.
Harvey padded into the room and came to me for a fuss. I stroked his silky ears and patted his huge chest, until he went to flop in front of the crackling fire.
Then I began unpacking the boxes. Tacking up the posters Ed had printed, until one wall looked like a satellite view of the Cheshire countryside.
Tea was the next priority. Carrying the brew back into the office, I looked up Callum’s number on WhatsApp. My thumb hovered over the icon, as images of the blonde from the surveillance team went through my mind. Whatever had happened between us, business was business and I needed to speak to him.
He answered almost immediately.
‘Everything OK up there? Why you calling on WhatsApp?’ he asked.
‘It’s the rural idyll. No landline or mobile signal.’
‘You got everything you need?’
‘Apart from a vehicle,’ I said, suddenly feeling totally isolated. ‘Feel stuck up here.’
‘The more inaccessible you are the better.’
‘From the killer’s perspective, or yours?’ That sounded more acerbic than I’d intended.
‘I’m not doing this now, Jo.’ Irritated.
I gave myself a mental slap. It wasn’t like me to be bitter, or jealous.
‘Fine. I’m actually ringing about the ACU investigation.’
‘Just a minute.’ The office noise faded as he went somewhere more private. ‘Go on.’
‘Last night, just before eleven, I saw Beth in the street. She was on a phone – not her usual one.’
‘People do have more than one phone.’
‘But they don’t keep it in their boots.’
‘What?’
I explained what I’d seen.
There was a long pause.
‘We’re monitoring Hannah’s phone. Watching all the numbers that called him from burners, in case any of them were switched back on.’
‘And?’
‘The handset that was swapping SIM cards hasn’t been used since we revealed it at the briefing. But 091, that called Hannah to set up the meeting at Paxton Pits, was used last night.’
‘From where?’
‘It pinged from a mast in Fordley centre – the one nearest the police station.’
‘What time?’
‘Ten fifty-five.’
My stomach churned. ‘Beth?’
The timing’s right.’ He exhaled, slowly. ‘I’ll have to pass it to ACU.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
I mentally kicked myself for slipping into that well-worn, but meaningless phrase people use when they know there is absolutely nothing to be done.
‘Not until we see what they find.’ Then in that way he had, of reading my mind, he added, ‘And before you go beating yourself up for telling me – don’t. If Beth is the leak, I need to know. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I haven’t got long, is there anything else?’
‘Any news on the paperweight?’
‘For once, we got a break. The courier is a local business – not one of the big boys. Turns out, head of security is ex-job. Only retired a couple of years ago. So, we didn’t need the hassle of getting a warrant for their records.’
‘Suppose it’s too much to hope you got an address for Wednesdayschild?’
‘Never that easy.’ I heard him shuffling paperwork. ‘The parcel was dropped at a village shop in the Dales on the B6265 near Cracoe. They run a pick-up-and-drop-off parcel service. Courier picked it up from there. Old couple run it. There’s no CCTV and they couldn’t remember who dropped it off.’
‘Elle told you about the custom-made knife. Possibly from Italy?’
‘Helps to know what it looks like. But Malecki can’t serve any more time, even if we do link a murder in Italy to him.’
‘No, but it gives closure to the victim’s family.’
‘That’s something to consider later. Right now, we’ve got enough to be getting on with. Surveillance team have been deployed. For what it’s costing let’s hope it pays off.’
*
After my call with Callum, I felt restless and unaccountably angry. I slammed around the house, unpacking my belongings, until Harvey stopped me on the upstairs landing.
‘What?’
He tilted his head, but as I impatiently went to walk round him, he moved, blocking my path. Then sitting down, he reached out a paw, whining softly.
Unexpected tears pricked my eyelids as I knelt down and hugged him.
He gently licked my cheek.
‘You’re right, we need to walk.’
I left my clothes strewn on the bed and ventured into Elle’s impressively stocked boot room. Choosing a heavy coat and long yard boots, we walked out into a winter landscape that took my breath away.
I was used to the spectacular moorland around Kingsberry, especially in winter. But this scenery was new to me and, despite the bitter wind and the dullness of the day, utterly stunning.
My boots crunched over snow that was beginning to freeze. Ice forming a crystalline crust that sparkled like diamonds scattered across the landscape.
The lane to the house was just a farm track, lost now under the white duvet of snow that drifted almost to the top of the dry-stone walls marking the boundary.
Harvey was in his element. Dashing in mad circles as his nose picked up new scents and exciting tracks to follow. I threw him a snowball. He leaped, catching it in his jaws, then looked confused as it exploded into nothing.
We walked to the bottom of the valley and looked up at the Atom Panopticon on the hill opposite. Its granite-coloured surface reflecting the fading pewter grey light, like some alien spaceship had landed in Narnia.
Huge feathery flakes started to fall, drifting gently from a dove-grey sky that promised more to come.
I called Harvey and turned to climb back up the hill to the house. The light was fading fast and the bitter cold was beginning to bite.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Tuesday Evening, Ferndean House
All I could do was concentrate on the other loose ends, most of which were connected to Malecki’s earlier crimes. A feeling I’d carried since my student days and never been able to shake – that there were other victims we didn’t know about.
I carried a glass of wine from the kitchen and stepped over Harvey, who hadn’t moved from his spot in front of the fire since we’d come back from our walk.
The lights suddenly flickered. I went to the window and parted the curtain. Cupping my hands against the dark glass, I could see the snow falling thick and fast. The lights flickered again – for longer this time.
Power outages were something anyone living in the sticks became used to, especially in bad weather.
I went back to the kitchen, and got a torch and some candles from under the sink. I didn’t have far to look before finding vintage candle holders and even a heavy silver candelabra in the dining room.
‘Very Downton Abbey,’ I muttered – smiling, as I carried my haul back to the office.
I began to unpack the archive boxes from the Malecki enquiry. Somewhere would be a snippet, overlooked or not logged – like the unaccounted-for mileage – that might give us a lead.
When the lights finally went out, it took me a second to register what had happened, because the flickering log burner continued to light the room with an almost romantic glow.
Typical, when you’re on your own, McCready.
I lit the candelabra, putting it down next to me so I could keep working.
There was one box I hadn’t opened. The cardboard was the faded yellow of old parchment and the label had peeled off. I cut the tape around the edges and lifted the lid. It had the familiar scent of old paper. That smell you get when you open a vintage volume in an old-fashioned bookshop.
I pulled out books on architecture and design, exam awards and a birth certificate in Malecki’s name.
The things we all keep in a dusty box at the back of a wardrobe. Documents and keepsakes, too important to discard, which we might need to produce one day. I assumed they’d been taken from Malecki’s house after his arrest, when police seized everything.
There was a shoebox in the bottom, containing handwritten notes and cards, from Malecki’s student days. I flicked through the messages, mostly from women.
The irony that I was reading love letters by candlelight wasn’t lost on me. Nor the fact that the subject of such devotion was a cold-blooded serial killer.
The wind howled down the chimney and I shuddered at the thought of women falling in love with a monster like Malecki. I didn’t have the stomach to keep reading. I dropped the letters and picked out the books.
Why keep textbooks in a box of important documents?
As I opened the first volume, I found the answer.
There was a dedication, dated on Malecki’s graduation, and signed by his father, with a reference to a song, or music. I assumed it was the kind of ‘in-joke’ families have. A shorthand way of referencing things only they understand.
In Tom Hannah’s book, Malecki talked about how close he had tried to be to his father. A stern man, with standards Malecki felt he never lived up to.
He portrayed himself as the emotionally tortured child of a detached and intractable father and an overbearing mother.
A veiled attempt to explain why Malecki had turned out the way he had. Striving to attain a perfection he never could – feeling like a failure despite his outward successes. Indulged by a mother whose devotion left him with a superior sense of entitlement that fed his narcissism.
I moved the candelabra to the desk, and without thinking opened my laptop, confused for a millisecond when it didn’t switch on.
Duh – no electricity and the battery’s not charged.
How automatically we use things without thinking, expecting them to always be on tap.
I opened my notebook instead, glad I’d copied down the lines of binary code in longhand.
Studying the rows of zeros and ones, I imagined Malecki painting them onto his canvas – sure no one but his devotee would ever see them.
‘No good finding them, if we don’t know what they mean,’ I muttered to myself. Harvey lifted his head to watch me.
‘Come on, fella.’ I stood and stretched aching muscles. ‘Late one last night and I’m shattered.’
He lazily uncurled from his warm spot and followed me.
The wind made a high-pitched howling, as it blew through the frozen branches of the surrounding trees and battered the windows. I held the candelabra out in front of us, to light the way upstairs – feeling like the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Ferndean House
Malecki was laughing at me.
I sat on a couch in his cell, my arm draped over the side, as he’d instructed, while he painted me. He turned from the canvas, wielding the paintbrush that dripped with red paint. No. Not a brush, it was a knife!
I jumped up and ran for the door – his laughter bounced off the stone walls as he took the three paces that would close the distance between us and end my life. I desperately pressed the panic button, triggering the alarm that screamed through the cell block. A red light, strobing in time with the pounding heartbeat of the siren.
I sat bolt upright, and for a moment, I didn’t know where I was.
I looked round an unfamiliar room, which glowed with the flashing light that had chased me out of sleep.
On the bedside table, the crimson digits of the screeching alarm clock projected four pulsing zeros across the walls.
The electricity was back on.
I leaned against the pillows and hugged myself, watching the illuminated numerals dance across the curtains, seeming to develop a rhythm all their own.
Like music.
I stared in to the middle distance as my subconscious served up a miscellany of disparate facts that now made sense.
I slapped the alarm into silence, found a dressing gown, then ran down stairs. The analogue clock on the wall in the kitchen said 2 a.m.
The office was still warm from the glowing embers in the log burner. I opened my laptop and plugged it in, then knelt among the papers scattered across the rug, finding the book, with its dedication from Malecki’s father.
Beneath his copperplate signature, what I’d taken to be a description of someone humming a melody:
dah dah di di di di di di dah dah
Google gave me the diagram I was looking for. I got my notebook and studied the rows of binary – checking them against the internet chart. My heart was hammering so hard, it made my writing tremble, as I scribbled letters beneath the code.
I stared at the row I’d deciphered. Then checked it again, more carefully this time. Like a disbelieving gambler checking a jackpot-winning lottery ticket.
‘Holy shit!’
I dialled a familiar number. It rang out endlessly and just when I expected it to go to voicemail, Callum answered.
‘Hello?’ His voice was thick with sleep.
‘It’s me.’
‘Huh?’ I could hear movement and imagined him struggling to wake up.
‘What is it?’ A female voice, in the background.
I froze.
‘It’s OK,’ Callum said, but he wasn’t speaking to me. Then, ‘Jo?’
‘Has the cryptologist looked at the code?’
‘Not yet. Why?’
‘It’s Morse.’
The excitement of my discovery evaporated. Adrenaline drained away, leaving me feeling unexpectedly hollow.
‘Go on?’ He was awake now.
‘Zeros are dots. Ones are dashes. Morse code.’ I sounded flat, as if I was reciting a shopping list.
‘How do you know?’
‘Malecki’s father wrote a dedication in a book, in Morse. He was a naval officer. Malecki was a cadet.’
‘What did the note say?’
‘Seventy-three.’
‘What?’
‘It’s morse abbreviation. It means “fondest regards”.’
‘Have you checked Morse against the binary lines?’
‘No!’ I snapped, as the supressed anger bubbled up. ‘I just called you on a whim. Of course, I bloody well checked. So, if Goldilocks there has a pen and paper handy, she can write down what it says.’
‘It’s OK,’ he replied – icy-cold as his anger matched mine, ‘I’ll remember it.’
I blew out my breath. ‘The code on the oldest painting translates to: “SJ, BK17”. The next line on the same canvas is: “BT, BK22”.’
‘SJ, Stephen Jones. BT, Barbara Thorpe,’ Callum said.
‘I think he numbered the notebooks he kept on his projects,’ I said.
‘“BK” . . . books seventeen and twenty-two?’
‘Yes. On another canvas, it says “Lutner” – in full. But no book reference. I don’t think he had him as a project in the eighties. He probably discussed with his disciple before they embarked on this murder spree that they’d include Lutner.’
‘If they discussed it, why would he write it on a painting?’
‘Because he sent the paintings out of the prison, in the order he wanted the victims to be killed. There are no dates for the killings, just book references and initials.’
‘What about Haverley?’
‘Nothing referencing him that I can see.’
He thought for a moment. ‘The “Q” code. That was the signal to switch targets and change strategy.’
‘Probably.’ I felt suddenly very weary.
‘Right . . . thanks.’ Was all he said before hanging up.
I stared at the phone in my hand, barely resisting the urge to throw it across the room.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Wednesday, 8 a.m., Ferndean House
‘Why so upset?’ Elle was saying. ‘You’re seeing the gorgeous Eduardo.’
The same question I’d been asking myself since my call with Callum.
‘At least I waited until I knew we were over.’ I was trying to rationalise it to myself. ‘He was seeing her while he was with me.’
‘Well, you know what they say, darling?’ I could hear the noises of a busy street. Someone was playing bagpipes. She exhaled as she smoked. ‘The best way to get over someone is to get under someone.’ She laughed at her own joke.
‘How is Edinburgh, anyway?’ I wasn’t feeling the humour.
‘Oh, you know . . . typically tartan.’ She sounded bubbly and relaxed, and suddenly I felt bad pissing on her parade.
‘I’m glad you’re having a good time. You deserve the break.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ I could hear Rina saying something. ‘Anyway, was calling to make sure you’re OK and my boys are behaving themselves?’
‘Mucked out and fed this morning. They’re good as gold.’
‘Excellent. Anyway, must dash. Rina wants breakfast, she gets “hangry” if she doesn’t eat on the hour.’
*
I’d been staring out of the window, watching the blizzard outside. Over the hills, crackling fingers of lightning fractured the sky, followed a few seconds later by muffled rumbles of thunder.
‘Thunder snow’. A rare phenomenon, when warm air, rising from the bottom of the valley, hits cold air from above. I’d only witnessed it once before and although it was spectacular, it meant worse weather to come.
I’d spent the morning trying to make sense of the rest of the binary code. No doubt the university would confirm it was Morse, when they finally got back to the team.
I’d found more initials and book numbers. Who they referred to was anyone’s guess. People who had notebooks on them. The next victims. If we hadn’t tumbled to the disciple, Malecki would have carried on completing his ‘kill list’.
