IMPERFECTION by Ray Clark (e novels to read online TXT) 📗

through it. The texture of his face resembled a piece of old leather. Thorpe was dressed in a well-worn tweed jacket and a pair of brown corduroys, and brown casual slip-on shoes.

Gardener returned to his seat. As he did so, he asked the question, “So, Mr Thorpe, I’m sure DCI Briggs has briefed you about everything that’s happened. Do you have anything to add to what you’ve seen so far?”

“Can I thank you all first for, er, inviting me?” Thorpe walked around the room with his hands behind his back, like a schoolmaster. When he spoke it was very slowly, while he stared at the ceiling.

“There was a lot of, er, work accomplished here, a lot of articulate planning. Couple it with the clues, and you can see straight away that this man is very intelligent. He cares about what he does. It’s an art form. He plans everything down to the last detail. He has medical knowledge.”

Gardener thought Thorpe sounded like a politician. “Why, in your opinion, is he doing it?”

Thorpe went back to his seat and sat, his legs astride, resting his arms on the back, choosing to face his audience, rather than the ceiling. “Because he can.” He lifted one hand matter-of-factly. “I think he likes playing sadistic games. He’ll have played them all his life. When he was younger it would have been animals, children younger than himself. In fact, anything that was defenceless.”

Gardener was beginning to feel irritated by the man’s demeanour. Perhaps that was his manner. He had to accept that the man was here of his own free will. He was not being paid. Maybe Gardener simply didn’t like what he saw.

Thorpe stood up, started to pace, staring at the ceiling again. Gardener felt like he was being lectured.

“Murder usually stems from a deadly fantasy, a need to exert power over the victim, to inflict pain and fear, which can then be played for real. He almost certainly has a grudge, and he is exerting his power. I think you’ll find that’s because he was repressed when he was younger. He had a domineering mother who allowed him no freedom. No chance to express his emotions.

“And that is what we are seeing here. He’s, er, no different to most serial killers. Because they kill so casually, without emotion, they’re almost impossible to catch. Just as difficult to understand. As far as he’s concerned, killing is an art form, no different to eating a meal.” He returned to his seat and pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and mopped his brow.

“Everything all right, Trevor?” asked Briggs.

“Er, yes, may I have a drink of water, please? I, er, need to take a tablet.”

Briggs asked Patrick Edwards to do the honours. After the tablet, Thorpe continued. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, most of them live, er, outwardly normal lives and have a very high IQ. We can see that by the games he’s playing, and the puzzles he’s leaving.”

“Why does he drain the blood?” asked Reilly.

Thorpe took to his feet again. “Well, you see, there’s another interesting point. Blood may be very sacred to him. Have you checked to see if either of these people who have been killed have any blood-related diseases? Particularly in the case of the girl. Was she promiscuous? Was she HIV positive? Maybe he thinks that blood is very precious, and these people...” – Thorpe turned and reached out with his arms – “...are not treating their bodies like a temple, as he does.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Gardener.

“Everything we’ve seen so far. The man is articulate. He’s careful, precise. You have no leads because he leaves you no clues with which to catch him. Here is a man who takes life very seriously.”

Gardener’s mobile interrupted their meeting. After a concerned conversation, he flipped it off and glanced at Briggs. “It’s Fitz. He wants us over at the morgue straight away.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” asked Briggs.

“He wouldn’t tell us over the phone,” replied Gardener, “but he said we’re not going to like it.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

The three of them made it to the morgue in record time. Fitz was in his office. The desk was impeccably tidy, as if all the paperwork had been positioned using a set square. The files on the shelf behind him were arranged neatly in alphabetical order, with the writing facing the same way. Gardener couldn’t identify the piece of classical music that Fitz was listening to, but assumed it to be an opera.

“You didn’t waste much time,” said Fitz, glancing at Gardener.

“It sounded urgent.”

Fitz rose from his chair, adjusted his glasses. “There’s never an urgency when you’re dealing with the dead.”

“Well, there is in our case,” said Briggs.

“Follow me.” Fitz left the office, collecting a green gown and a fresh pair of gloves from a cupboard. He walked over to Janine Harper’s corpse and removed the cover. Her fragile body lacked colour, emphasising the severity of the bruising on her face. Only now, she had a Y-shaped incision where Fitz had done his job.

“What have you found?” asked Briggs.

“Something that needs further investigation,” replied Fitz. “There are traces of a drug called ephedrine in her bloodstream.”

“What’s that?” asked Gardener.

“It’s an alkaloid drug normally used to relieve the symptoms of asthma.”

“Did she have a history of asthma?” asked Briggs.

“Yes, according to her records. I also found alcohol in her system, sherry to be precise, along with traces of nuts.”

“What type of nuts?”

“Nothing specific, a bit of a mixture.”

“Which leads us where?” asked Gardener.

“I think, and I stress think, that what he’s done is ground the nuts into a fine powder and mixed them with the sherry, which, when using the correct quantities, creates a venomous cocktail with the drug ephedrine. I’ll come back to that in a second, but just