‘I’m impressed,’ she said. ‘It really pulls everything together. There were a couple of things, though.’
‘Only a couple?’ Tony asked, his voice close to a chuckle.
‘You talk a lot about how he must be strong, to overpower his victims and move them around. Also, you speculate about how he gets them into a vulnerable position in the first place. I was wondering if maybe there were two of them.’
‘Go on,’ Tony said, no hint of frost in his voice.
‘I don’t mean two men. I mean a man and someone else who appears vulnerable. Maybe an adolescent boy or, more likely, a woman. I don’t know, maybe even a person in a wheelchair. A partner in crime. Like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.’ Carol shuffled the papers, putting them back in order. Still Tony said nothing. After a few moments watching his expressionless face, she added, ‘I know you’ve probably thought about it already, I just wondered if it was a possibility we should still bear in mind.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to look like I was ignoring you,’ Tony said hurriedly. ‘I was reviewing the thought, weighing it against what we know and against the profile. One of the first things I considered was whether or not it was a solo. On the balance of overwhelming probability, I decided it was. Cases like the Moors Murders where you have two people acting in tandem to carry out atrocities are incredibly rare, for a kick off. Also, I’d expect to find more variation in the methodology and the pathology if there were two people involved; it’s hard to believe their fantasies would coincide so exactly. But it’s interesting that you’ve come up with it. You’re right in one respect. If he’s working with a woman it does explain how he gets close to his victims without them putting up a fight.’ Tony sat staring straight ahead, brows lowered in thought.
Carol stayed motionless in her seat. Eventually, Tony turned to face her and said, ‘I’m going to stick with my soloist. Yours is an interesting idea, but I can’t see evidence that convinces me I should shift from the most highly probable scenario.’
‘OK, point taken,’ Carol said calmly. ‘Moving on from that, have you considered the possibility of a transvestite? Like you just said, a woman could get close without them putting up a fight. What about if the woman was a man in drag? Wouldn’t that have the same effect?’
Tony looked startled for a moment. ‘Maybe you should think about applying to join the national task force when it’s set up,’ he stalled.
Carol grinned. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’
‘I mean it. I think you’ve got what it takes to do this kind of work. You see, I’m not infallible. I hadn’t actually considered a transvestite. Now, why did I ignore that possibility?’ he mused, thinking aloud. ‘There must be some subconscious reason why I rejected it before it even got to the front of my mind …’ Carol opened her mouth to speak, but he said, ‘No, wait a minute, please, let me work this out.’ His hands ran through his hair again, rearranging the dark spikes.
She subsided, telling herself he was just as arrogant as all the rest, unable to accept he might just have missed something. Stop kidding yourself he’s different, she told herself sternly.
‘Right,’ Tony said, his voice rich with satisfaction. ‘We’re dealing with a sexual sadist, agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘Sado-masochism is the power trip of sexual fetishes. But transvestism is the diametric opposite of that. TVs want to assume the supposedly weaker role that women have in society. What underpins transvestism is the belief that women have a subtle power, the power of their gender. It couldn’t be further removed from the brute transaction of pain and power that sado-masochists crave. That’s not part of a TV’s fantasy at all. To convince the victims that they’re dealing with a woman and not a man in drag, the killer would have to be an accomplished cross-dresser. But, uniquely in my experience of clinical psychology, he’d also have to be a sexual sadist. The two just don’t go together,’ Tony explained with an air of finality. ‘The same goes for a transsexual. Probably more so, in fact, because of the counselling they have to go through before they’re accepted for treatment.’
‘So you’re ruling it out, then,’ Carol said, feeling unreasonably crushed.
‘I never rule anything out. That’s asking to make a fool of yourself in this game. What I think is that it’s so unlikely that I would be loath to include it in a profile because its very inclusion might push people in the wrong direction. But by all means keep it in mind. You’re thinking along the right lines.’ He smiled, unexpectedly, taking the sting of patronage out of his words. ‘Like I said at the start, Carol, together we can crack it.’
‘And you’re absolutely convinced that it isn’t a woman?’ she asked.
‘The psychology’s all wrong. Taking the most obvious point, this killer’s an obsessive, and that tends to be a male trait. How many women do you know who hang about station platforms in the rain in anoraks writing down train numbers?’
‘But what about that syndrome, what’s it called, where people get obsessed with someone else to the point where they make their lives a misery? I thought it was mainly women who suffer from that?’
‘De Clerambault’s Syndrome,’ Tony said. ‘And yes, it is principally women who suffer from it. But they only focus on one person, and the only person who’s likely to get dead as a result is the sufferer, who sometimes commits suicide. The thing is that women’s obsessions and compulsions are different from men’s. Men’s obsessions are about control; they collect stamps and catalogue them, they collect a pair of knickers from every woman they’ve slept with. They need trophies. Women’s obsessions are about submission; in eating disorders, it’s the obsession that takes them over and controls them rather than the other way about. A sufferer from de Clerambault’s Syndrome who married the object of her desire would probably be the chauvinist’s ideal of the perfect wife. That pattern doesn’t fit our killer.’
‘I see what you mean,’ Carol said, loath to give up the one fresh idea she felt she’d contributed to the profiling process.
‘Add to that the sheer physical strength involved here,’ Tony continued, seeing her reluctance. ‘You’re fit. You’re probably quite strong for your height. I’m only a couple of inches taller than you. But how far do you think you could carry me? How long would it take you to pick my body up from the boot of a car and dump it over a wall? Could you throw me over your shoulder and carry me through Carlton Park to the shrubbery? Now bear in mind that all the victims have been taller and heavier than me.’
Carol gave a rueful smile. ‘OK, you win. I’m convinced. There was one other thing that occurred to me.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Reading your profile, it seems to me that the reason you advance for the maintenance of the gaps between the killings just isn’t strong enough,’ she started tentatively.
‘You noticed that too,’ he said wryly. ‘It didn’t convince me either. But I couldn’t think of anything else to explain it. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it, either face to face or in the literature. All the serial offenders I know about go through escalation.’
‘I’ve got a theory that might cover the problem,’ Carol said.
Tony leaned forward, his expression absorbed. ‘Speak to me, Carol,’ he said.
Feeling like a goldfish in a bowl, Carol took a deep breath. She’d wanted his attention, but she wasn’t quite sure if she liked it now she had it. ‘I remember what you said to me a couple of days ago about the intervals.’ She closed her eyes and recited, ‘“With most serial killers, the gap between the killings tends to decrease quite dramatically. It’s their fantasies that trigger off the killings in the first place, and the reality never quite matches up to the fantasy, no matter how much they refine their killing procedures. But the more extreme they get,