But she couldn’t stop her mind from flying back to the event she and Monty never discussed. It was as if by never mentioning that night, they could pretend it had never happened. His shame could fade with time and she could stop yearning for something she could never have. Now, here was this stranger dredging it all back up again. She threw him a sharp look.

‘So you think that he really can remember what happened last night and is just conveniently blaming the alcohol? You’re way out of line, mate.’ She flung her hand in his direction. ‘And for God’s sake take that fucking apron off!’

De Vakey looked down at his torso and chuckled, making the down-turned corners of Stevie’s mouth lift slightly. After removing the apron he sat back down and returned to business. ‘I appreciate your loyalty to Monty,’ he said, ‘but it’s time to think outside the square. Maybe he hadn’t been drinking last night, but maybe someone wanted it to seem as if he had.’

Stevie stared at him for a moment. She didn’t need to hear another word. She sprang from the sofa and rushed to the bathroom, pounding on the door.

‘Monty! Get your arse out of there!’

Monty appeared dressed in nothing but a sulphur-yellow towel and a thick blanket of steam. He stood and gaped as Stevie hauled the bag of rubbish from the bathroom, wet hair sticking up on his head like exclamation marks.

De Vakey spread newspaper over a portion of the carpet. He seemed to know what Stevie was doing, although Monty had no idea.

‘James got me thinking about your presumed fall from grace,’ she said as she hefted the garbage bag and tipped out the contents. Empty jars, cans and cartons clattered onto the newspaper. De Vakey reacted quickly with more newspaper to protect the carpet. Monty pushed a beer can back with a bare foot then knelt down to examine it, holding the towel around his waist secure with one hand.

He shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe I did this.’

‘Maybe you didn’t,’ Stevie said, sniffing at another empty can.

Monty followed suit. ‘Sour beer, what are we supposed to be looking for?’

De Vakey handed him an empty carton of tomato juice, its corner cut for pouring. Most of the juice had leaked onto the floor, but a few drops still remained in the bottom of the carton.

Monty put it to his nose and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, has it gone off? I can’t tell.’

‘Considering the amount of chilli you use, I’m amazed you can taste anything.’ Monty was usually sharper than this. Stevie was surprised to have to spell it out for him. ‘Jeez, Monty, don’t you see? You were probably drugged!’

Monty stared open mouthed from one of them to the other.

‘Was this a new carton last night?’ De Vakey asked.

Monty squinted at it as he tried to remember. ‘No, I’m pretty sure it was already open. I took it from the fridge.’

De Vakey ran his finger around the carton’s cut corner, ‘I’m no connoisseur but this juice looks a bit darker than it should.’

Monty looked into the carton and shrugged. ‘Yeah, maybe it is, I was busy with other things last night, I didn’t notice.’

‘These days, because of date rape, an additive is put into Rohypnol tablets to make the liquid they’re put in turn blue in order to alert the drinker,’ Stevie said, examining the dregs in the carton for herself. ‘It doesn’t show in dark drinks though, so I’m not sure if it would dramatically alter the appearance of tomato juice.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But if it was drugged, it would have to be by someone who knows your drinking habits, right?’

‘They’re no secret, it’s common knowledge I’m on the wagon.’

‘Keyes and Thrummel?’

‘I never met them before today, but I suppose word gets around.’ He sighed. ‘But let’s just get me in the clear first before we start pointing any fingers.’

Stevie put the carton on the coffee table. ‘I’ll bag this up and send it to the lab for tests. I think this’ll go a long way to getting you off the hook. Has anyone been in your flat recently?’

Monty collapsed onto the sofa with his head in his hands. ‘No. Yes. I can’t remember.’

‘What about a spare key?’

‘My neighbour to feed the fish when I’m away.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Wait on—there was a plumber. Mrs Nash opened the flat up to a plumber yesterday. She left me a note about it.’

Without moving from the sofa, he made a futile scan of the flat as if he might come across the note. Stevie could see it was a delaying tactic, as if his foggy mind needed time to grapple with the implications.

When his eyes drifted back to hers his voice was hoarse. ‘Of course, that has to be it, but why would someone want to drug me?’

‘It has to be linked to the watch, to putting you in the frame,’ Stevie said.

Monty shook his head and sighed. ‘There was a moment when even I thought, maybe...’ He paused, cleared his throat and shrugged off his self-doubt. ‘Never mind, this explains a lot. Thanks guys.’

‘I’ll speak to Mrs Nash in the morning,’ Stevie said. ‘Hopefully she’ll be able to give us a description of this so-called plumber. Meanwhile you need to get dressed. I’m taking you to the hospital for a blood test.’

15

Often the killer will have his own bizarre language of symbols. For example a hair fixation, as interpreted by Freud, can be seen to represent a fear of the adult female’s sexuality.

De Vakey, The Pursuit of Evil

After the blood test, Stevie and Monty returned to the flat to find that De Vakey had had a lot more success fixing the TV than Monty had. Jeez, Stevie thought, was there anything the man couldn’t do?

‘Before I saw those files,’ Monty said, settling deeper into the sofa next to Stevie, ‘I thought it was the posing that linked the four crimes. Now I see the link as the cut hair or shaved heads.’ A different perspective on the previous night’s events had strengthened his voice. His colour had improved too, Stevie noted.

‘You’re right, the missing hair is much more of a concrete commonality than the posing alone,’ De Vakey said. He rose from his seat and turned off the TV.

‘The hair could easily be our unsub’s fetish,’ he continued, ‘something that triggers memories he has a compulsion to destroy, something to do with his mother most likely. It’s the timing that has me confused, though. I would expect him to escalate as his compulsions grew, but this pattern is hard to understand. There were three weeks between the deaths of the prostitutes, a jump of several years to Royce, then only a matter of days between Royce and Birkby.’ He gestured to Monty. ‘Have there been any other reports of these kinds of staged murders over the last few years?’

‘No, not unless he’s been overseas or inside.’ Monty said.

‘I’ll put someone on an Interpol search tomorrow, also check out recently released sex offenders,’ Stevie said.

De Vakey was deep in thought. ‘Unless Michelle Birkby wasn’t part of the original equation. Unless she needed to be killed.’

‘She was up to something, she as good as told me she was. She’s been like a dog with a bone over those KP murders,’ Monty said.

His slip into the present tense made Stevie’s heart ache for him; she knew his marriage to Michelle had not always been a loveless one.

‘The pattern’s asymmetrical in other ways, too.’ She leaned towards De Vakey. ‘The prostitutes weren’t gym members, but the last two vics were. We’ve got prostitutes to ordinary women, none of them bearing any physical resemblance to each other: black-haired, red, blonde and now brunette. Object rape to no penetration at all, unpainted victims to painted victims magnificently staged with a Keats’ quotation—I mean so much of it just doesn’t make sense.’

Monty pressed both palms into his eyes before focusing a bleary gaze on Stevie. ‘My notebook has gone along with the case files. There are hazy spots in my memory, but one thing I do remember thinking is how the victims were total opposites. Could his selection be a deliberate attempt to throw us off track, to go against the norm? With all due respect, De Vakey, you profilers base your suppositions on research and statistics. There’s not room for much flexibility there.’