Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [27]
‘Look,’ said Debbie, a bright, open expression on her face. ‘This is going to be a big leap of faith for some of you if I ask you to approach this not from an evidentiary perspective but from a psychoanalytical perspective, to ask you to think in terms of profiling the offender. Probably sounds like voodoo to a lot of you.’ She smiled. ‘But if you’re prepared to make that leap of faith then, I can assure you, I’ll be right alongside you.’
Zoë took a long, patient breath. She’d been here before, heard psychologists talking the talk. Spiels about anger excitation, power reassurance, long analyses of why the bastard had done what he did, what he was thinking when he did it, what his eye colour was, what underpants he wore, what he’d had for breakfast the day he did it. In her experience they weren’t worth much as investigative tools, and sometimes they were positively destructive. Still, some investigators swore by them and she could see from the glowy light in the superintendent’s eyes that he was a new convert. Amazing what a nice pair of legs and a smile could do.
‘First,’ Debbie said clearly, ‘I suppose the question that’s in the front of everyone’s minds, the biggest one, is, what’s the writing all about?’ She turned her eyes to the whiteboard where the blown-up photos of Lorne’s abdomen had been pinned. Next to them, in a round, cursive hand, the words had been written out.
No one.
‘I wonder,’ Debbie said ruminatively, ‘I wonder – is that a message to us? Could be. Or to Lorne? Or a statement to the killer himself? Let’s think carefully about that wording: “no one”. Does that mean Lorne is no one to him? A nothing? Worthless? Or is it something else? Does it mean that he’s a no one? That no one cares. No one understands me. I’m inclined to think it’s something like that – which would mean we have someone here with very low self-esteem. He could be the type to form unnaturally intense relationships with people – the type to become jealous or aggrieved easily. Now that he’s killed Lorne he could enter a period of self-recrimination. There may be a suicide attempt. There may already have been a suicide attempt, so I’d suggest that would be something you could check on – suicides and admissions since the time of her death.’ Debbie turned back to the board. She was enjoying this. Like a reception teacher with a class full of bright-faced children gazing up at her raptly. ‘Let’s move on to the next sentence. He’s written something on her thigh that looks like “all like her”. Any ideas on that?’ She scratched her head, a subtle suggestion to the team that they were thinking with her, that she wasn’t just cramming her theories down their throats. ‘Any thoughts?’
The men shrugged, waiting for her to provide the answer.
‘OK.’ She linked her hands round her knees and tipped her head shyly. ‘Let me be a bit bold. Let me take you by the hand and lead you out on a limb. Let me say that, in my opinion, Lorne knew her killer.’
There was a ripple of attention. People murmuring among themselves. Zoë glanced at Ben to see his reaction. His head was lowered and he was busily scribbling notes to himself on his customary yellow legal pad, probably to stop himself laughing out loud, she thought.
Debbie held up her hand to quieten the muttering. ‘I know – a leap of faith, but let me just work with it for a moment. What do we know about Lorne?’
‘That she was popular,’ said the intelligence cell sergeant. ‘Had lots of friends, lots of male admirers. So that sentence could be “they all like her”.’
‘Exactly,’ Debbie said triumphantly, beaming at him. ‘Exactly. This is a direct comment about Lorne. And, in case you think I’m grasping at straws to support a flimsy theory, let me say something else. I’ve analysed Lorne’s tragic injuries, and those just confirm my conclusions about who attacked her that night. He definitely