Child's Play (D.I. Kim Stone #11)(36)

Alison Lowe, profiler and behaviourist sat back in her seat.

‘Better,’ Stacey said. ‘You busy?’

Alison blew her a raspberry.

Stacey peered closer. ‘Are those pencils in your hair?’

Alison’s hands rose up and felt around her head. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said, taking them out.

‘Writing going well, then?’ Stacey asked.

After the last case they’d worked together, where Alison had found herself dangling from the roof of a thirteen-storey building, she’d decided to take some time away from active investigations and write a book based on her experiences as a behaviourist and profiler. Clearly, some writing days went better than others.

Alison blew her another raspberry.

‘Mature, anyway I need your help,’ she said.

No one had been more surprised than her at the friendship that had developed between the two of them since working together. It had begun with an occasional early morning jog together, the novelty of which had since worn off for Stacey and now consisted of a weekly meeting for coffee or a quick lunch.

‘Shoot,’ Alison said, biting into an apple.

‘Talk to me about branding and symbolism and—’

‘Hang on, which one? They’re different. Branding or stigmatising is when a symbol or pattern is burned into the skin of a living person using a hot or very cold branding iron. A bit like what’s done to livestock. Do you have a victim that’s been actually branded?’

‘No, but I’ve got two victims with an X cut into the back of the neck.’

‘Aaah, now that sounds more like signature which is far more interesting,’ Alison said, placing the apple on the desk.

‘Go on,’ Stacey urged.

‘The signature comes from within the psyche of the offender. It reflects a fantasy, a need that the killer has about his victims. Fantasies develop slowly and increase over time. A signature normally involves mutilation and sometimes dismemberment of the victim’s body. A killer’s signature is always the same because it emerges from the fantasy and would most likely have been present before his first killing.’ She picked up the apple, took another bite and put it back down.

‘Any staging or posing?’

‘Ugghh, Alison, chew with your mouth closed for God’s sake,’ Stacey said, stifling a chuckle. ‘And yes, first one on a swing and the second one on a hopscotch grid.’

‘Wow,’ she said.

‘Wow, what?’

‘Wow, I wish I was working this case with you.’

‘Talk to me, Alison,’ Stacey said, leaning forward.

‘Okay, deliberate alterations of the scene or body position can sometimes be made to confuse police, called staging. Other times they serve the fantasy and are considered part of the signature and are considered to be posing. Sometimes the posing is intended to send a message to the police or the general public. Jack the Ripper posed his victims with their legs spread apart to shock the police and onlookers in Victorian England.

‘Some have positioned bodies, bitten victims, covered the face, washed the hair or tied a ligature with an unusual knot. One serial killer in India left beer cans beside his victims.’

‘So, what’s he trying to tell us with an X?’

Alison shrugged as she twirled one of the hair pencils between her fingers. ‘Signatures can be the result of psychological deviance but some are just for effect. Some experts think that signatures are linked more closely with personality traits than what they need to do to carry out the murder. In Poland one guy was too clever for his own good. He disembowelled young blonde women and wrote cryptic letters to police in red ink revealing where bodies could be found and challenged them to catch him. They did exactly that after analysing the ink.’

‘So, there’s no common use of a letter X that you know of?’

Alison shook her head. ‘Any symbol marked on to the victim will be completely personal to the killer. That’s the whole point.’

‘Got it. Thanks for—’

‘Hey, I’m a recluse here. Talk to me a minute. How’s Devon and?—’

‘Later, I’ve got to go,’ Stacey said, cutting the conversation short for two reasons. The first was that she didn’t want to reveal what was going on in her private life and the second was the notification that had just appeared in the top right-hand corner of her screen.

‘Oh nice, just cut me off, eh? Well, I’ll be checking in with you later in the week, buddy.’

‘Okay, chat later,’ she said, ending the call and deleting Alison from her screen.

She instantly clicked on the notification she’d received from the secretary of the editor at the Daily Telegraph. It was a screen shot of the Skype call record between Veronica and her boss.

And there was something there that instantly commanded her attention.





Thirty-Six





Barry Nixon’s wife was not what Kim had been expecting.

Beth Nixon stood at around her own height of five foot nine. She was as light in hair and features as Kim was dark.

Her snug jeans and spaghetti-strapped tee shirt showed off the slim and toned figure of a woman who was at least twenty years her husband’s junior. Age-gap relationships appeared to be common this week.