hapter 15

In the cab they took to Steve's, Kit was uncharacteristically quiet. Fiona knew better than to try to force him to talk about what was on his mind. That would simply lead to a sullen and mean-tempered denial that anything was troubling him. Like most men, a sense of his own vulnerability made him uncomfortable. Rather than make him even more uneasy by pushing him, she placed her hand on one of his and said nothing. Halfway up Pentonville Road, he finally spoke.

"I know it's hard to credit, but it really hadn't crossed my mind that Drew's killer might come after me," he said, leaning his head against the back of the seat and sighing. "Dumbshit or what?"

"That's the healthy response," Fiona said. "Why should you imagine you're going to be the next victim of a murderer who struck four hundred miles away? If- and it's still a big if- Drew Shand's death is the first in a series, we don't know what it was about him that made him an attractive target. Was it that he was gay? Was it his work? Was it something in his past that we don't know anything about? Was it his attraction to the dark side of his sexuality? All of those are imponderables and only one of them could apply to you. Statistically, your risk of becoming the victim of a serial killer is somewhere around vanishing point."

"Even so, you'd think it would have occurred to me in passing that I might just be on some nutter's hit list," Kit said sharply. "After all, I'm supposed to be the one with the imagination. You thought of it, after all."

Fiona squeezed his arm. "Yeah, but my way of looking at the world is even more fucked up than yours. Besides, I'm your lover. I'm legally entitled to worry unreasonably about you."

Kit grunted, putting an arm round her and pulling her close. "Doesn't it ever piss you off, being right all the time?"

She grinned. "Find out what you're good at and stick to it, that's what

I say. And since you've just admitted I have a right to worry, you have to promise me you won't talk to strangers."

Kit snorted. "That's an easy promise to keep. At least until the new book comes out."

The cab juddered to a halt outside the four-storey Islington town house where Steve occupied the garden flat. He could have afforded somewhere bigger, but he spent so little time at home that he couldn't see the point of moving from somewhere that met his needs perfectly. Two bedrooms one of which doubled as a study a dining-kitchen whose french windows opened out on to the garden and a living room big enough to accommodate two sofas and an armchair was all he needed. He kept the decor simple. Fiona loved the economy of style, but Kit hated its clinical purity. Both suspected Steve barely noticed his surroundings. As long as they were functional, he was content.

Fiona's low heels clattered on the stone stairs down to the basement entry. Kit, following her, marvelled at her hair as the streetlights caught it, burnishing it to a rich chestnut-brown. She was, he thought, more beautiful than he could ever deserve. Catching up with her as she rang the bell, he put his arms round her and kissed her neck. "I love you, Fiona," he said gruffly.

Fiona gave a low chuckle. "Don't I know it."

Steve opened the door and grinned down from his superior height. "Keep it decent," he advised. "Some of us have to live here."

They followed him down the narrow hall into the dining room, where the table was laid with an assortment of breads, cheeses, pates and salads. The air was thick with the aroma of leek and potatoes. Steve lived on soup. There was always a pan of some concoction on the stove, next to the stockpot containing the makings of the next brew. Soup was the only thing he ever cooked. Kit enjoyed mocking Steve's culinary limitations, but when cornered, he was forced to admit that Steve made the best soup he'd ever tasted and, far from having a restricted repertoire, Steve probably experimented more with combinations of flavours than Kit himself.

"It's just that it always comes with a bowl and spoon," he had once complained. "It's so predictable."

"At least my guests don't need a degree in civil engineering to eat their dinner," Steve had growled. "I remember my first globe artichoke round your house. Besides, given the life I lead, I need something instant when I come in the door, and my soup's a damn sight healthier than a bacon butty."

But tonight, no one was interested in arguments about the menu. In the two weeks since she'd returned from Toledo, Fiona had finally found the time to give proper attention to the case file on the sting the Met had mounted against Francis Blake. Since she insisted her input was to remain informal, she had suggested outlining her conclusions round the dinner table. So for once there was an air of tense anticipation among them as they sat down and Steve poured a robust red into their glasses.

"Soup first, then we'll cut to the chase," Fiona decreed.

Steve gave a wry smile. "Whatever you say, Doctor." He filled their bowls with steaming, creamy vichyssoise. "So what small talk shall we indulge in?"

"How about your love life?" Kit suggested.

"That should occupy all of ten seconds," Steve said. He picked up his spoon and examined it critically. "My love life is like the Loch Ness Monster rumours of its existence are greatly exaggerated."

"What happened to that CPS lawyer you took to dinner the other week?" Fiona asked.

"She was more interested in the rules on disclosure of evidence than she was in me," Steve said. "I'd have had a more interesting night out with the Commander and his wife."

Kit whistled. "That good, eh?"

"Hell, I don't suppose I was much more interesting to her," Steve said, lifting a spoonful of soup to his lips.

"The trouble with the three of us is that in our own ways we all have a morbid fascination with violent death," Fiona said. "Maybe Kit should fix you up with a sexy crime writer."

Kit spluttered. "Easier said than done. When you cross off the ones who are already attached, the ones who have a serious interest in recreational drugs and the dykes, there's not a lot left over."

"Besides, you couldn't stand the competition," Steve added.

The first course over, Steve cleared the bowls away and Fiona took a couple of pages of notes from her briefcase. "I must say, the material you gave me made for very interesting reading," she said. "Not least the interpretations that Andrew Horsforth placed on the interaction. It was an object lesson in what happens when you push the theory ahead of the facts. In one sense, the conclusions he drew were valid. If, that is, you concentrate on the margins and ignore the central core of the material. If you look at a series of conclusions as a continuum from most likely to least likely, he's opted more often than not for the least likely, because that's what backed up the view he started with, namely that Francis Blake was the killer."

"But, cleverly, you started from the opposite premise," Kit said with affectionate sarcasm. "Nobody loves a smart arse you know."

Fiona stuck her tongue out at him. "Wrong. I started from the neutral position. I tried to ignore my own half-formed opinion that Francis Blake wasn't the killer. I was concerned with achieving as much objectivity as I could."

"Not something anyone could ever accuse Horsforth of," Steve said. "You'll be pleased to hear that he's been dropped from the list of Home Office-approved consultants after our debacle at the Bailey."

"That's a bit decisive for the Home Office, isn't it?" Kit asked through a mouthful of salad.

"Horsforth's an easier scapegoat than senior police officers," Steve said. "We're as much to blame as him for what happened, but heaven forbid that any more mud should be slung at the Met right now."

"Deputy heads will roll," Fiona observed cynically. "Before I tell you what I think, Steve, I need you to answer one question for me. Although obviously I know more or less where the murder took place, I didn't actually visit the scene of crime, so I wasn't sure about this. Is there anywhere on the Heath where someone could have watched the murder without being seen by Susan Blanchard's killer?"

Steve frowned, his eyes focusing on the corner of the ceiling as he recalled the setting for the murder. When he spoke, his voice was slow, considering. "We found the body in a sort of hollow. There was a line of rhododendrons between Susan and the path. Then the clearing where she was found. Beyond that, the ground rose slightly to another line of shrubs. I suppose someone hidden in those bushes could have escaped observation by a killer who was intent on what he was doing. SOCO will have done a fingertip search of the whole area, though, and I don't recall anything in the forensics to indicate the presence of a third person."

"You think Blake saw it?" Kit broke in, unable to keep quiet.

"You're doing a Horsforth," Steve said. "Theorizing without the data. It could just as easily have been someone else altogether who told Blake about it. Let's hear what Fiona's got to say."

Kit cast his eyes upwards. "I forgot. We have to have the whole lecture. No skipping to the back page to see whodunnit." He shook his head in tolerant amusement.

"Why change the habit of a lifetime?" Fiona said sweetly. "OK, here's what I think. Right from the start, we know we're looking for a confident criminal. We know this because Hampstead Heath is a public place, and the risk of alerting passers-by to such a violent crime in broad daylight is high. Also, the way the body is displayed indicates a man who is, at least in criminal terms, a mature offender. Blake's record, on the other hand, is trivial and shows little sign of escalation towards this sort of crime. That was the first thing that made me a little uneasy about him as prime suspect."

"Hang on a minute, though," Kit objected. "You can't say that just because he doesn't have a criminal record he'd not done the sort of crimes that lead to sexual murder. It might be that he's either been clever enough or lucky enough to get away with it."

"That's true," Fiona acknowledged. "And so I wouldn't write Blake off on those grounds alone. Nor would I dismiss him on the basis that the pornography the police found in his flat, although sadomasochistic in content, contained no photographs or descriptions that fit the way the body was displayed. But again, that detail gives me pause for thought, because the killer had to form that image somehow. If it didn't come from his pornography, it came from some incident in his past, around the time he was forming his sexual identity. And none of Steve's researches came up with anything comparable in Blake's history. So as far as I'm concerned, that's another question mark over Blake."

Steve was leaning forward now, elbows on the table, an intent frown on his face. So far, Fiona had said nothing he didn't already believe himself. But he always found her cogent way of stringing things together clarified things, sometimes rearranging details so they formed a different picture. He sensed where she was heading, and he wondered if Kit had been right about what was coming.

"Another thing I would expect from this killer is that he'd have poor hetero social skills," Fiona continued. "But again, that doesn't fit Blake. He had a girlfriend, but as well as that he was comfortable with contacting strange women through personal ads. We know from some of the women who have come forward that he managed to have sex with them, even if most of them found him too domineering a partner to want to continue the relationship. So here we have a man who is good at making social and sexual connections with women."

"Better than me," Steve pointed out. "You're right, though. That was one of the main reasons I never liked Blake for this job. He wasn't some frustrated virgin or someone whose head was wired for no beating women up as the best means of achieving sexual satisfaction."

"I knew all that before I read the entrapment transcripts," Fiona continued. "As I'm sure you did too, Steve. However, it became clear from reading what passed between Blake and Erin Richards that he knew more about Susan Blanchard's murder than he could have gleaned from the press reports. He knew, for example, that her hands were arranged as if in prayer, the fingers linked rather than having the fingertips propped against each other. Blake always maintained after his arrest that he'd heard that in the pub, but he couldn't identify the person he claimed had told him. I'll come back to that later, though."

Kit nodded. In spite of himself, he was as fascinated by Fiona's dissection as Steve. He was sure he'd guessed where she was heading, but that didn't mean he wasn't interested in seeing how she justified reaching that conclusion. Even after all this time, he was still intrigued by the way her mind worked, so analytical in contrast to his own intuitive approach. "Consider our breath well and truly hated," he said.

Refusing to be thrown off her stride, Fiona ignored him and carried on. "What I want to deal with next is the fantasies that Blake outlined in his letters and conversations with DC Richards. Based on my experience, I would expect the killer to have very specific fantasies. I would expect the object of his fantasies to be a teenage girl or a woman in her early twenties, as Susan Blanchard was. They're easier to manipulate, both in fantasy and reality. In the scenarios he plays out in his head, this killer will objectify women. He'll fantasize about control, submission, violent activity that causes the object of his attention to show extreme fear. He'll imagine threatening her with a knife, tying her up, causing her pain, cutting her, making her beg for mercy." Fiona paused and took a long draught of her wine. "And because he killed her out of doors, I'd expect the setting for those imaginary sexual encounters to be in a park or in woodland.

"But that's not what we find in Blake's fantasies at all. Almost everything he outlined to DC Richards involves voyeurism. He talks and writes about a third person watching their sex games, being turned on by them, often joining in. Admittedly, there are some strong elements of submission and domination in there too, but they're much more in the realm of playfulness rather than the real infliction of pain. But the clincher for me is that in all of the scenarios he outlines for this woman he's aiming to bed, this woman he's been taking on walks through the parks of London in each and every scene he describes, where they are going to have sex is indoors. At the undertaker's where he works, at the office where she works, in a deserted warehouse, in his flat. Not a single one of these elaborately detailed, pornographically described situations is out of doors.

"And finally, there's the question of the pornography that your officers found in Blake's flat. It's true there was a lot of it, both magazines and videos. And it's true that most of it was what would be classified as hardcore, mostly involving young women or teenage girls. But if the catalogue in the file is accurate, surprisingly little of it focuses on rape or S&M. What there was a lot of was threesomes and voyeurism. Plus a bit of bondage."

"You're saying Blake doesn't match the crime," Steve said flatly.

"Based on the product of your operation, I think any qualified psychologist with an open mind would come to that conclusion," Fiona agreed.

"There's more, though, isn't there?" Kit chipped in. "You think you know what really happened, don't you, Fiona?"

Steve paused halfway through spreading pate on a piece of bread. "You do?"

Fiona fiddled with her napkin. "That's not what I'm saying, Kit. I don't know who did kill Susan Blanchard. But I'd stake my reputation that Francis Blake didn't." She took a deep breath. "However, I believe he saw the man who did. Blake's a voyeur. That's why he looks at parks the way he does. He likes to watch. I think this is what happened that morning on Hampstead Heath. He was lurking in the shrubbery hoping he'd see a couple making love. What he actually saw was very different. Francis Blake stood and watched while somebody else raped and murdered Susan Blanchard. And it was the most exciting thing he'd ever seen in his life."

Chapter 16

The silence that followed Fiona's conclusion had the quality of empty air after the shock wave of a bomb blast. Even though Kit had guessed where she was heading right at the start of her exposition, the certainly of her judgement chilled him into stillness. Steve closed his eyes and dropped his head on to one hand, massaging the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "That's a bit of a leap," he said softly.

"It makes sense of all the information in a way nothing else does," she said, reaching for the bottle and refilling her glass, as if girding her loins for a challenge to her reasoning.

Steve raised his head and met her eyes. He wanted to believe her, not least because it might give him fresh avenues to explore. But he was aware that his own feelings for her had always made him willing to give her the benefit of any doubt. He'd stuck his neck out to defend her reports to his bosses, and it had paid off in the past. This time, though, his very future hung on what he did with the Susan Blanchard case. If he screwed it up even more than it already had been his career was effectively over. No one would criticize him if he let the case slide into the unsolved regions; the public assumption would remain that they'd got the right man but had wrecked the case against him. But if he took a chance and pursued the possibilities thrown up by Fiona's theorizing, he'd better be damn sure he got it right. He cleared his throat. "Or maybe Blake is entirely innocent," he said.

Fiona shook her head. "Too many coincidences." She ticked off the points on her fingers. "We know he was on the Heath that day. We know he fantasizes about being a voyeur. And we know he knew things about the murder victim that were never in the public domain. It's stretching credibility too far to suggest that the one man who happened to be on the Heath that morning was also the one man who happened to be told in a pub by an unidentifiable stranger precisely how Susan's body was arranged. All the reasons why Blake was a suspect in the first place have another interpretation, and only one interpretation that he saw what happened."

"If you're right and it sounds reasonable to me the irony is that Francis Blake could genuinely have helped the police with their inquiries," Kit said. "He knows more about this killer than anyone."

"If you'd treated him as a witness instead of a prime suspect the very first time you interviewed him, the day after the murder, it's possible that things might have turned out very differently. But ..." Fiona shrugged. "Probably not."

Steve sighed. "One way or another, we blew it. I have to say, I think you might be right. I'm not totally convinced, but I'm going to have to take it into account."

Fiona gave him a long, considering stare. She was used to Steve grasping her ideas more firmly than this. His very caution made her realize how much pressure he was under in this case. She hadn't wanted to become involved, but now she was glad she had done what little she could to help. "I hope it's useful," she said, with more humility than she usually felt when she had offered her professional opinion.

"What I don't understand," Kit said, 'is why Blake didn't come out with the truth when he was interrogated after you finally arrested him. I mean, it's the obvious get-out for him, isn't it? "It wasn't me, guy, but I saw the bloke who did it.""

"Not if you were supremely confident that the court would throw out the case against you. Not if you knew there could be no forensic evidence tying you to a crime you didn't commit," Fiona said. "He had a solicitor with him, didn't he, Steve?"

"Right from the off. The first interview he did after the arrest was a "no comment". Then when we laid out the evidence, his brief asked for an adjournment. When they came back, all Blake would say was that he'd been on the Heath that morning, he'd lost track of time and realized he was going to be late for work, and that's why he was running when the witnesses saw him. As for what he wrote and said during the undercover operation, he was adamant that it was total fantasy, nothing more."

"So when they had their little chat, the brief will have told him you'd never make it stand up in court," Kit said, understanding dawning. "And that little shit sat there smug as a bug knowing that he knew more than you would ever know about what happened to Susan Blanchard, and that you'd never find out what that was. What a total scumbag."

Fiona nodded. "He probably thought the whole thing would be thrown out in the magistrates' court. Instead of which, he ended up spending eight months on remand. And by that stage, he had no way out. He couldn't recant at that point and admit what he'd seen, because you would have been so furious that he'd jerked you around, you'd have charged him with being an accessory. He must have so much festering rage inside him for the police now."

Kit leaned back in his chair. "Not a bit of it. Didn't you see him on the TV? He's revelling in it. He's been having the time of his life. Not only does he have these powerful memories to relive any time he wants to. He also has the supreme satisfaction of knowing he's left the police and the CPS looking like idiots."

"More than that, he's going to be paid for it," Steve growled. "Massive compensation from the Home Office for wrongful imprisonment, not to mention what he's screwed out of the newspapers." He let out a deep breath. "Sometimes this job would make you fucking weep." In the soft lighting of the dining room, the planes of his face seemed even starker than usual following the bitter confirmation Fiona had brought him.

There was a long pause. Suddenly no one felt much like eating. Kit reached for the bottle and topped up everyone's glass. "So where can you go from here?" he asked Steve.

"Back to square one? Since it wasn't Francis Blake, someone else was on the Heath that morning killing Susan Blanchard. We'll have to go back and look at every single witness statement and reinterview them all."

Kit gave a snort of laughter. "Yeah, right. It's not like Blake's going to be coming across with what he saw."

"There is one thing you might like to consider," Fiona said slowly.

Steve looked up, his eyes alert. "And that is?"

"It's possible that Blake has managed to identify the killer. He may have recognized him, he may subsequently have seen him. He may even have seen the killer make his getaway in a car and managed to get the number. I'd say that given his moment of triumph, it's conceivable that Blake has become confident enough to try blackmailing the real murderer. I don't know if you've got the resources for this, since the investigation is officially dead, but when he comes back from his jolly to Spain, I'd watch him very carefully. Tap his phone, open his mail, carry out very discreet surveillance, monitor his bank account. It's a slim chance, but Blake might just lead you straight to your man."

Steve shook his head dubiously. "It's reaching a bit, Besides, I'll never get a warrant for a phone tap on the basis of this. The best I can manage is probably a loose surveillance."

"It's better than nothing. What else have you got?" Kit demanded. "Sure, you can go back and talk to all your witnesses again, like you suggested. But how much more are you realistically going to get out of them now so much time has passed? Plus, anything they have to say is going to be tainted by the media blitz surrounding the arrest and the trial. They're going to lean even heavier on the idea that Blake's your man. It's only human. Seems to me a slim chance is better than no chance at all. You want to redeem yourselves on Susan Blanchard's murder, I'd say you've got no choice."

"I've also got no budget," Steve said bitterly. "I'm supposed to be pursuing a discreet, deniable investigation here, which means I've got hardly any bodies to speak of and even fewer resources. There's no way I can mount the sort of operation you're suggesting, even if I thought I could justify it."

"Maybe it's time to call in your markers," Kit said. "There's got to be some of your team that owe you big time. Or feel like they owe Susan Blanchard and her family. Not to mention all those coppers that are smarting at what the judge had to say. I bet a few of them wouldn't mind giving you the odd bit of unofficial unpaid overtime. Fuck it, if all you need is somebody to sit outside his house in a car, I'm up for it." He grinned. "Never say die, Stevie."

Steve shook his head. "You put me to shame, you two. Fiona spends hours analysing Horsforth's shitty operation, and you offer to doorstep the number one scumbag in the capital. And all I can do is sit and whinge about how hard it's all going to be." He straightened his shoulders unconsciously. "Thanks, both of you. At least now I've got a new line of inquiry to get people energized."

Kit raised his glass. "To a result," he said.

Steve gave a wry smile. "To the right result."

It was after midnight when they got home. Kit announced he was too wired to sleep and too mellowed on Steve's wine to write so he was going on line to see if any of his international playmates were around on one of the several multi-user computer games he treated as a way of winding down. "Seven o'clock on the East Coast," he mumbled as he wandered through to his office. "Should be somebody out there ready to be killed."

Fiona climbed the stairs to her attic. She'd drop off her papers in her office, then head for bed and a blissful seven hours of sleep. The winking red eye of the answering machine gave her a moment's pause as she turned to leave. Ignore it or hear it out? Duty won over desire, not least because there was obviously only one message.

It was Salvador Berrocal, his confident tones deadened by the soundproofing. "I thought you'd like to know that we have identified a suspect in the two Toledo murders," he said. "I am sending you the details via e-mail, but I wanted to let you know as soon as possible that we have made progress."

"Yes!" Fiona clenched her right hand and punched the palm of her left. Now she was as restlessly awake as Kit. Two swift strides took her to the computer where she accessed her e-mail. There were half a dozen messages, but only one that interested her. She downloaded it and opened it immediately.

From: Salvador Berrocal <Sberroc@cnp.mad.es>

To: Dr. Fiona Cameron <fcameron@ psych.ulon.ac.uk>

Subject: Toledo consultation

Dear Dr. Cameron,

Finally we have managed to procure the details that we needed to make progress.

And so we now have developed what we believe will be a viable suspect. His name is Miguel Jose Delgado. He is a bachelor and is twenty-nine years old. Until two months, he was the owner of a small general store. The shop sold mostly groceries to local people. The business was failing, which

Delgado believed was a result of the city centre residents being forced out into the suburbs.

He lived in a small apartment behind the shop. The owners of the building wanted to sell it to an American hotel chain. The resistance was led by Delgado. According to locals, he spoke with great violence against the proposed development. He claimed that tourists were a cancer eating away the real life of

Toledo. Interestingly, one witness said he was saying often that he wasn't going to 'bend down to be fucked in the ass' by the

Americans.

So, two months ago, the landlord found out that Delgado was going away overnight. When Delgado came back, his shop was boarded up and he could not gain access to his apartment. The landlord had moved all his possessions and the stock of the shop into a new apartment about three miles south of the city. They gave Delgado the keys to his new apartment and 'a large sum in cash' and told him he could no longer run his business from their building. Delgado was not much liked by his neighbours or his customers and that probably has more to do with why his business was doing badly. They describe him as 'sometimes surly and unwilling to be helpful', although some say he could be charming enough if he wanted to, especially if he got on to his pet subject, which was the history of Toledo. He lived alone and had no girlfriend that we can discover. So, you will see that he is a close fit on the profile but also that he is appropriate to the geographical profile as well as the psychological one.

We have only one problem. We are unable to discover where Delgado is living. He has never been seen near his new apartment. In fact, two weeks after he was to move in, the neighbours called the landlord about the smell. When the landlord's men let themselves in, they found that all the perishable goods from the shop had gone bad.

The one good thing is that in spite of our failure to track him down, the killer has not yet attacked another victim. Once again, I must thank you for your help. Without it, we would still have no idea who we are looking for. I will keep you informed of the progress of our search. With best wishes Salvador Berrocal

Fiona reached the end of the message and smiled. At least one police officer looked like he was headed for the right result. She'd been nervous that the next time she'd hear from Berrocal would be when he reported that another foreigner had been killed. But for some reason, Delgado -if he was indeed the killer had temporarily stopped.

Either that or they just hadn't found the body yet.

Whatever, there was nothing she could do about it. Fiona switched off her computer and headed downstairs. As she turned the last corner in the stairs, she saw Kit standing in the doorway of his office, a sheet of paper in his hand and a worried look on his face.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

He looked up, his eyes wide and troubled. When he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically high in pitch. "I've got a death threat."