The 50/50 Killer Read online

  I looked at Greg. He’d seen it, too. The expression on his face was one of disbelief.

  Simon was oblivious of all this.

  ‘It’s probably unconnected,’ he said. ‘It’s something to do with custody problems, so they’re looking for the father. I was only half listening. I was mostly just being amused by the delightful Mr Hunter playing to the cameras.’

  Mercer rubbed his face slowly. ‘Right. It won’t be connected. I’ll look it up in a moment.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we do that now?’

  ‘In a minute.’ Mercer glared at Greg, then turned back to the screen. ‘What else have you got for us?’

  Simon paused, picking up on the atmosphere.

  ‘Well, there’s a computer in the living room,’ he said. ‘You might have seen it in the last picture. Switched on. Very pretty screensaver running. ’>

  ‘Don’t touch it, please.’

  ‘Nobody has, Greg. I know how territorial you are.’

  ‘Are you happy to travel, Greg? Check out any emails, files, key-logging software.’

  ‘Gladly.’

  ‘Wait, I’m still here,’ Simon reminded us. ‘Before you all run off, you’ll want to see the last file, the one at the bottom.’

  Greg minimised the open picture and clicked on the file Simon had indicated.

  The photograph had been taken in the bedroom, the cameraman standing at the foot of the bed, facing the headboard. On the cream wall there was one of the 50/50 Killer’s spider webs. It was large, ugly and - like the design we’d found at Simpson’s house - appeared to have been drawn in thick black marker. Each line was about the width of a fingertip. Each had been slashed with a short cross-stroke.

  Mercer leaned across to see.

  ‘Greg, would you open up one of the photographs taken at Farmer’s house?’

  He began to click through.

  Earlier on, standing in Farmer’s front room, we’d identified the web the killer had drawn on Kevin Simpson’s wall, and then assumed that the others sketched there were draft versions of the same design. But when Greg opened up the photograph and placed the images side-by-side on the screen for comparison, it took only a moment to find it.

  ‘There.’

  One of the sketches on the wall had been left at Simpson’s house; a second at Scott and Jodie’s. Two out of perhaps thirty.

  Mercer looked fascinated. He pointed at the photograph of Carl Farmer’s wall.

  ‘Some of the designs are obviously very similar,’ he said. ‘You know what we’re seeing here? I almost got it while we were there but I lost the thread. These are his notes.’

  Greg frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The laptop was in the corner of the room,’ he said quietly. ‘I can imagine him working there. He watched video clips, listened to things he’d recorded. And all the time he was standing there, making notes on the wall.’

  ‘The spider webs are supposed to represent the victims?’

  ‘In a way. He studies people for a long time, and these are the connections he’s worked out between them. Then he cuts each strand, one by one.’

  Mercer tapped the screen, singling out individual broken threads.

  ‘He’s using what he learns to make them sacrifice their partner and save their own lives. But the whole web is what he’s after. In his mind, the victim he’s really after is the relationship itself.’

  I tilted my head slightly to look at the designs. For a moment I saw nothing, but then it came into focus. I still didn’t understand, exactly, but I saw them. In front of my eyes, the spider webs became ragged, ruined things: the intricate connections of a relationship, cut and torn and destroyed, left hanging on the wall in the same way that the bodies of the victims were discarded underneath.

  Notes.

  I tried to picture the world through the killer’s eyes. It was impossible. I couldn’t imagine the mental filter that turned information about people into these awful, ugly things. And yet that filter existed. For all their horror, the spider webs were not arbitrary. It was clear that each had been carefully thought out and planned. Earlier drafts had not been quite right, which meant that, random as they might seem to us, the killer had found fault in them and changed tiny details, gradually perfecting the designs.

  I looked at Greg, who was also staring at the screen. He knew Mercer was right, but seemed reluctant to admit it because of everything else and was doing his best to look blank.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Can we check Hunter’s case now, please?’

  Mercer didn’t say anything. He moved back to his own laptop and began working through the log-ins.

  While it loaded, I turned my attention back to the web left at Scott’s flat, glancing here and there, taking in the smears and checks the killer had made. He’d been symbolically breaking the strands holding Scott and Jodie together as a unit. There were ten, twelve, maybe fifteen. Each represented a break: a lie, perhaps, or a harsh truth. This was love, spelled out mechanically. A series of illusory strands and ties that could be unpicked one by one, until the relationship fell apart and died. The body of it bent slowly backwards, a single vertebra snapping at a time.

  One of those smears, positioned carefully in the web by some logic I couldn’t fathom, represented the affair between Jodie and Kevin Simpson. I found myself wondering which it might be, or whether it even mattered.

  Suddenly, Mercer sighed.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Greg muttered.

  Mercer had one elbow on the desk, eyes closed, the tips of his fingers massaging his forehead. There was a desperation to the movement, as though he was telling himself: Keep it together; keep it together.

  The screen had opened up on the main information page for Hunter’s investigation. ‘James Reardon’, it said at the top. To the right of the name, in the corner of the screen, there was a picture of Reardon, of the runaway father Hunter’s team were seeking.

  Carl Farmer.

  4 DECEMBER

  3 HOURS, 20 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  4.00 A.M.

  Pete

  In the dark of the woods, the torches formed cones of light with sharp, defined edges. They cut across the pitted midriffs of trees and found millions of crystals glistening in the solid coating of snow on the uneven ground.

  It was freezing cold. Every time Pete breathed out, he felt a painful humming in his otherwise numb lips. His breath steamed, and he imagined it solidifying into a balloon of ice, then cracking in the air. Further in front, more snow was flashing down, a blur of movement in the bobbing torch lights. Even through his coat, he felt it all over him: a series of constant, soft touches.

  ‘Watch your footing,’ he told the officer behind him.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  There was barely disguised sarcasm in the officer’s voice. Pete let it go for the moment. The situation meant that a certain amount of annoyance was understandable, even when walking on the paths. Now, they were working their way through a tangle of undergrowth and down a gentle but awkward slope in the land. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pleasant. But still, it had to be done.

  ‘I don’t want you falling on me, is all,’ he said dryly.

  The officer said nothing.

  Despite himself, Pete was irritated. He needed them more alert than this; he needed more concentration. The fire was visible through the trees, probably about a hundred metres down, where the slope levelled out. The light from it was broken into fragments and the trees in between seemed to swell and waver as the flames shifted. A big fire. That made him nervous.

  He had thirty men in total. Six of them he’d left at the vans to co-ordinate the search teams and the helicopter. That gave him six teams of four officers, with a search-and-rescue volunteer familiar with the land joining each. The dogs had found nothing, but the volunteers insisted on staying and helping anyway, which Pete considered put his officers’ bitching into some kind of perspective. When the report had come through about the fire, the volunteer had brought them as
close along the main path as they could get, and then Pete had told him to wait there, leaving an officer with him for protection.

  The fire was too big. It implied more than one person, and he wasn’t going to risk a civilian walking into something and getting hurt. Of course, the downside to that was he had only two officers with him. And those two didn’t seem able to keep their minds on the fucking job.

  The slope gradually evened out. For the most part, Pete kept the torch pointed at the ground, checking his footing. Occasionally, he lifted the beam and scanned the trees in front and to either side.

  Nothing.

  ‘There’s nobody here,’ one of the officers said.

  ‘Who lit that fire, then?’ Pete said. ‘Did it spontaneously fucking combust?’

  ‘No. But all this activity, they’ll be long gone.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  He shook his head. For Christ’s sake! It wasn’t like he was under any illusions himself. The chances of finding this girl, Jodie, alive were ridiculously slim, and the search became more difficult and complicated with every sweep the helicopter made. Word had come through on the radio that Banks had been held in a stone building, so all those needed to be searched whether the helicopter picked up a heat trace or not. But it kept feeding back information on heat sources away from the recognised structures. All of those needed to be investigated, too, because the killer might have moved into the undergrowth.

  His team had done two so far, both of them torches in the faces of derelicts sleeping rough, both so frozen they couldn’t do anything except look bewildered and frightened. John would have wanted him to drag them out on the off-chance - but then, John wanted a lot of things. Pete had to work with the resources he had at ground level, and there simply wasn’t the manpower to start rounding everyone up over a fucking pipe-dream.

  It was depressing work, unlikely to yield positive results, but normally he would put such thoughts out of his mind, get his head down and plough through it. And he was trying, but it wasn’t only the weather or the likelihood of success that was bothering him tonight. There was John to think about, too. Pete had never been good at staying angry, and since the last broadcast he’d let the irritation go and concern had grown in its place. Over the years they’d become more than colleagues; they were friends, so John’s attitude bothered him. He really did think this was possible, and it was obvious he had far too much riding on the outcome. When the girl was eventually found dead, Pete would go home, sleep badly and then come back the next day and start on the next case. John, though ... He was in serious danger of unravelling completely.

  And so every unhelpful comment made him want to bite the heads off the officers with him. The job was what it was. They needed to take it on the chin, not keep reminding him how difficult it was. Every complaint just brought his concerns into sharper focus, and for the purposes of the search he needed to distance himself from those kind of thoughts.

  In a normal situation, he might have attempted to explain a little of this - but then, in a normal situation, he wouldn’t have to. Everyone was working hard; everyone was stressed. He needed to bear that in mind, if nothing else.

  ‘Both of you, take care,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir. If anyone’s here, I’m going to ask if I can sit down for a bit and warm up. That okay?’

  Pete managed a wry smile in the dark. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  He led them towards the fire, raising his torch to shoulder height and aiming the beam around the trees.

  ‘Police,’ he shouted. ‘If anyone’s here, make your presence known at once.’

  He got the response he was anticipating: none at all, apart from the crackle of the fire. It had clearly been lit for quite some time: there was an enormous amount of burned wood and ashes at the edges, while in the centre there was still a heaped pile burning beneath large, strong flames. The heat coming off it was intense. When he looked away, green flashes were scarred on his retinas.

  It was possible that the fire had been abandoned some time ago, he thought. Certainly, the snow didn’t seem to be touching it. But that meant it must have been soaked in something - paraffin, maybe - and it all seemed too much effort for one person. A man on his own surely wouldn’t have set so much kindling burning at once. Perhaps there had been a few people here, conducting business they didn’t want the police to know about.

  Pete shone the torch at the edges of the fire. The snow all round it was undisturbed. He tried further out in all directions, but still there was nothing.

  ‘No footprints. Whoever was here left long enough ago for their tracks to have been covered.’

  ‘First sweep of the helicopter, they’ll have been off.’

  Pete nodded. They would probably have assumed the police were looking for them. But wherever they’d gone, the helicopter would pick them up: either that, or they’d try for the road and run into the officers cordoned there.

  Still, there was nothing here, was there? He kicked the snow at his feet. No debris. He wouldn’t have been surprised by needles or bottles or old food, or something, at least, and it seemed unlikely they’d have tidied up before leaving. The snow couldn’t have covered everything.

  He aimed the torch into the tree line, moving it slowly round in a full circle, listening carefully. It was utterly silent here, and that in itself struck him as—

  Something there.

  He moved the torch back and found it.

  ‘What is that?’ one of the officers said.

  All three angled beams of light into the trees. At first, Pete wasn’t sure what he was seeing. It looked like a triangular hole in the ground of the slope - a cave-mouth - except the angles were too symmetrical for that.

  ‘A tent,’ he realised.

  The torch-light went all the way to the back; there was nobody in there.

  Pete lowered the torch to the entrance, saw the new footprints and swirls in the snow. Followed them round with the beam, just as the shrieking man exploded out of the trees beside him.

  He understood the danger a half-second before it hit him, swinging the torch at his attacker. Too late, though - something thudded against the top of his arm. It didn’t feel like much but suddenly his hand was empty and useless. ‘Fuck.’ Thud, thud - he was turning, trying to fight the man off, but he couldn’t lift his arm properly to defend himself. The woods were whirling around him. And then - thud! - the blow on his shoulder was too sharp, too wrong. Nothing like the hard impact of a punch, and suddenly he was on his knees from it.

  ‘Down!’

  Everybody was shouting. Pete caught the scent of pepper-spray in the air, and glanced up to see his attacker falling away backwards into the snow. Both the other officers were immediately on him: shouting; pinning his arm. A baton came down and the man screamed again. The light caught something falling out of his hand.

  A knife.

  Pete touched his shoulder. His glove came away wet.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said to himself.

  He eased himself down into a sitting position. Not the worst thing in the world, to be stabbed in the upper arm. Not great, but not terrible. But the last blow bothered him. Down onto his shoulder, near his col- larbone. That wasn’t good.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get that helicopter back here,’ he managed. ‘Have it do something fucking useful.’

  At least now, maybe he could go home. There were stars filling his vision. Pete closed his eyes and lay back.

  There wasn’t a lot of pain. And he was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to die. So the last thing he thought about was what happened to Andrew Dyson, not in relation to himself but in terms of what this, right here and now, was going to do to John.

  And then there was the presence crouching beside him. The officer’s hand on his chest, and the clamour of his panicked voice on the radio. And then nothing.

  4 DECEMBER

  3 HOURS, 10 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  4.10 A.M.

  Mark

  After Simon h
ad logged off, Greg and Mercer had a predictable, yet remarkably calm, argument about how to proceed.

  Greg was adamant that we should contact Hunter and merge the teams, and I thought he was right. We were looking for the same man, after all, and the investigation into the abducted baby had a large number of officers attached to it, many of whom could be sent to the woods to help with the search there.

  Mercer, of course, disagreed. He argued that it would complicate matters. Any benefit gained from the additional men would be outweighed by the loss of time involved, because Hunter wasn’t going to give up his resources without a thorough understanding of the situation. There was an urgent operation under way and it needed to keep moving forwards.

  Of course, the real argument occurred in all the things that were left unsaid. They both knew that if Mercer contacted Hunter the case would be taken away from him. Any ‘urgency’ in the search of the woods was based on his assumptions rather than the facts. And we all knew that he’d kept quiet when I mentioned the baby, presumably intending to check that himself while hoping there was no connection. His need to catch the 50/50 Killer had taken him into the realm of professional misconduct, and this was undoubtedly the final moment at which we might step back from joining him.

  But Greg didn’t mention any of that. The argument was kept on a practical and functional level, where ultimately it was Mercer’s decision.

  ‘We’re wasting more time here,’ he said.

  Greg was simmering, but he held himself in check and gave up. ‘Do you need me for anything else before I head out?’

  Mercer shook his head.

  ‘Okay, then.’

  Greg gave me a look as he walked over to the door. I didn’t know what it meant at the time: whether it was the equivalent of Pete’s ‘Look after him’, or something else. Later, I would understand that it was a look of reassurance: an It’ll be okay. I should have thought more on the fact that he’d given up the argument too easily, but I was tired and stressed, and I put it down to the effects of Mercer’s earlier outburst.