‘Rare like Sebastian Gibran?’ Featherstone asked, dragging a ghost from the past into the small, warm office. ‘Remember him?’
‘I’m not likely to forget him, am I?’ Sean sighed, memories of the most dangerous killer he’d ever dealt with swarming into his mind.
‘He was something else though, wasn’t he?’ Featherstone reminded them both. ‘Pure bloody evil, that one.’
‘Evil?’ Sean answered. ‘Not sure that exists. He was just wired differently.’
‘You mean wired wrongly?’ Featherstone checked.
Sean ignored the question. ‘He had everything anyone could ever want, but it wasn’t enough. Killing made him feel like he was some sort of god – that taking life was his entitlement.’
‘Do you think we could have another Sebastian Gibran here?’ Featherstone sounded concerned. ‘The last thing we need is another Gibran on the loose.’
‘I doubt it,’ Sean reassured him. ‘Gibran was … exceptional. A one-off. This one’s profile should be more straightforward. Gibran constantly changed his method so we wouldn’t make a link. This one has varied the sex of his victims, but he’s already showing a strong dedication to a particular method. And taking the teeth and fingernails – almost certainly souvenirs. Gibran only took memories.’ He glanced down at the files on his desk, the brutal crime scene photographs staring back at him. ‘All the same, we have a very dangerous individual on our hands.’ He drew a breath. ‘Ten days between the murders?’
‘That’s right,’ Featherstone confirmed.
‘Not good,’ Sean replied, shaking his head. He chewed his bottom lip, deep in thought for a few seconds before continuing. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe he’ll slow down for a while – use his souvenirs to relive the killings – keep his urges at bay.’ The image of a faceless man touching, smelling, tasting the extracted teeth and fingernails flashed in his mind.
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’
Sean shrugged.
‘Anyway,’ Featherstone tried to look on the bright side, ‘it’ll be good to have a proper Special Investigations case again. Can’t have been much fun, being loaned out to other MITs these last few months.’
‘Don’t forget Anti-Terrorist, Special Branch and anyone else who was short of manpower,’ Sean reminded him.
‘Indeed,’ Featherstone agreed. ‘Nothing Addis could do to stop that happening. Can’t justify detectives sitting on their backsides doing nothing, not in this day and age.’
‘No,’ Sean admitted. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Still,’ Featherstone perked up again. ‘Your unit’s back now – with a proper investigation.’
‘So it would appear,’ Sean said, but without any cheer, although inside he felt himself coming to life – adrenalin and ideas, memories and anticipation beginning to flow through his body, sparking the darkest areas of his being that had lain dormant for months. Dark areas that he knew were dangerous to him and everything he’d achieved in his life, just as he knew that the answers tended to lie hidden in that darkness. Answers that could help him catch a killer before he claimed more lives.
‘Speaking of investigations …’ Featherstone appeared to change tack, ‘you should know that this will be my last.’
Sean leaned back in his chair. ‘Oh,’ he managed to say. He liked and trusted Featherstone. With him gone, there would be no protective buffer between him and Addis. Worse still, Addis could put someone else in charge of overseeing Sean and his team. Addis’s own man or woman. His own gamekeeper. ‘How so?’
‘Time for me to call it a day, Sean,’ he told him. ‘I’ve done more than my thirty years. Could have gone a couple of years ago. Was clinging on in the hope of making it to Commander, but it’s pretty clear that’s not going to happen. Every time it looks like it might, I get passed over by some graduate on accelerated promotion. Who gives a fuck if they don’t know their arses from their elbows, right?’
‘Will you be replaced?’ Sean asked.
‘You mean will you get a new boss?’ Featherstone smiled, sensing Sean’s concern. ‘Who knows? That’s Addis’s call.’
‘Great,’ Sean moaned.
‘You’ll survive,’ Featherstone assured him. They were silent for a while before he spoke again. ‘I was meaning to ask: how’s DS Donnelly getting on?’
‘Dave?’ Sean asked, confused.
‘Since the shooting,’ Featherstone added. ‘Not an easy thing to take a life.’
‘If he hadn’t shot Goldsboro,’ Sean reminded him, ‘Goldsboro would have shot me. Dave’s got nothing to feel … guilty about.’
‘We don’t all process these things the same way,’ Featherstone told him. ‘We don’t all have your … clarity of thought.’
Sean knew what he meant: if it had been Sean who’d pulled the trigger and killed Jeremy Goldsboro – the suspect in their last major investigation – he would have felt no guilt. It would simply have been something he had to do. ‘Well, the inquiry concluded it was a justifiable shooting. I think we’ve all moved on.’
‘Good,’ Featherstone replied, though he seemed less than convinced. ‘Well, speaking of moving on,’ he added, getting to his feet, ‘time I wasn’t here. Good luck with this one.’
‘Thanks,’ Sean replied.
‘Oh, one last thing,’ Featherstone turned at the door. ‘Addis wants Anna Ravenni-Ceron to work alongside you on this one. Given the nature of the killings, he feels the input of a psychiatrist would be useful. Since you’ve worked with her before, he thought best to stick with her.’
Sean felt an instant stab in the heart and a tightening in his stomach. He’d barely seen her in over a year, but his feelings about Anna remained confused. The only stability in his life came from his family and his job. Anna was a threat to both. ‘Fine,’ he answered without elaborating.
‘Regular updates would be appreciated,’ Featherstone told him as he left. ‘And watch out for the press.’
Sean’s eyes followed Featherstone across the main office and through the exit before he took a single photo from each file and slumped back in his chair – looking from victim to victim. The more he looked, the more he was sure the killer’s motivation was the act of killing. For some reason he felt compelled to kill.
Again Sean found his thoughts turning to Sebastian Gibran. He threw the photographs back on to his desk and cursed under his breath. ‘Shit.’
David Langley sat at his desk in the manager’s office of the Wandsworth branch of Harper’s Furniture store. Forty-two years old, six foot tall and muscular, he looked fit, tanned and handsome in an everyday way, short brown hair pushed back from his face to show off his deep green eyes. The office was hidden away from the customers who patrolled the showroom outside looking for bargains in the seemingly never-ending ‘All must go!’ sale, the office was crammed with cheap, utilitarian furniture, filing cabinets and computer equipment. The Christmas decorations had been removed from the showroom on 2 January, but a few tattered and depressing remnants still hung in the office.
Anyone who looked in through the office’s only door would have seen Langley facing forward, typing away on his keyboard like a man hard at work. He’d strategically positioned his desk so that no one could sneak up behind and look over his shoulder at the computer monitor. If they had, they would have seen that instead of checking stock levels or placing orders, he was searching the internet for news of last