Soul Murder. Daniel Blake

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      Small-time crimes, small-time meetings. Ninety-nine times over a hundred, they could have convened round a table at Starbucks.

      The hacks didn’t tend to question the official version of events. If they did, they’d gradually find themselves frozen out of information and access; then their jobs would go to someone else, someone more prepared to toe the line.

      Besides, the public appetite for other people’s disasters was insatiable. It didn’t really matter what the news was, as long as it was bad. Every media man knew the truth of the axiom: ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’

      But every now and then, those leads slipped from the crime beat to general news.

      It could be something shockingly grotesque. There was the floater the cops had pulled from the Monongahela whose skin had slipped off the hands like a pair of gloves; the dog who’d chewed off his owner’s face because she’d died and there was no one to feed him; and, most celebrated of all, most gasped at and laughed over, the schizo who’d cut open his stomach and pulled out his guts before cutting them into neat pieces with a pair of tin snips.

      Or it could involve someone important. Someone like Bishop Kohler.

      The police department found the largest room available, and even so it was bulging at the seams. Reporters brandishing notebooks and voice recorders annexed every chair going; TV cameras ringed the back and sides of the room like a monk’s tonsure.

      Chance led Beradino and Patrese into the room, holding his hands up as he did so; though whether to acknowledge the assembled multitude or shield his eyes from the popping of flashbulbs, Patrese couldn’t tell.

      Three chairs had been arranged behind a table. Chance sat in the middle, gesturing that Patrese and Beradino should park their butts either side of him, as though he were Jesus and they the thieves.

      Chance’s presence was largely symbolic. He was there for one reason only: to show the police were taking this murder so seriously that an assistant police chief would deign to come and break bread with the masses.

      This was a double-edged sword, of course. If Patrese and Beradino found the killer, Chance would share the credit. If they failed, they’d fail alone.

      Even though he was the junior man, and even though he’d been up half the night consoling his sisters – both of them predictably devastated by Kohler’s murder – Patrese did most of the talking.

      Beradino despised the media, and made little secret of it. He disliked being second-guessed by reporters he considered uninformed at best and irresponsible at worst, and he hated their tacit demands that the police work to news deadlines rather than at an investigation’s natural pace.

      Patrese took a more pragmatic approach. He figured that the media were part and parcel of every major homicide investigation, so he might as well accept it. Better to have them inside the tent pissing out than vice versa. The more he could run them, the less he ran the risk of them running him.

      Picking questioners with a practiced hand, Patrese performed the traditional detectives’ balancing act in such situations: give enough to keep the media happy, not enough to jeopardize the investigation.

      He pointed to a man with a mane of hair that would have shamed a lion.

      ‘Ed Sharpe, KDKA. You believe these killings are connected?’

      ‘We’re keeping an open mind, but obviously we’d be foolish not to be looking for connections. Burning bodies isn’t especially common, either as MO or signature.’

      MO, modus operandi, is the way a killer goes about his business, the things he needs to do to effect the murders as efficiently as possible. Signature is what he needs to do to make the murder worthwhile, be it emotionally, physically or sexually.

      The problem for Beradino and Patrese was this. They couldn’t be sure whether burning was signature or MO without knowing the killer’s internal logic, but finding that logic might be impossible unless they worked out the burning’s significance; whether the killer had burnt Redwine and Kohler because it had been the easiest option available to him, or because he’d felt compelled to.

      ‘Andy Rose, Post-Gazette. Were the victims alive when they were burned?’

      ‘Not as far as we can establish.’ Patrese was proud of his poker face. ‘We believe they’d been asphyxiated first, and then set on fire.’

      And so, when the crazies started ringing up – as they would, sure as night followed day – and started claiming to have used a silk scarf or gimp ball on the victims, Patrese and Beradino could dismiss them out of hand.

      ‘Jess Schuring, 60 Minutes. Is it significant that Bishop Kohler was killed in the cathedral? Some kind of religious aspect?’

      The poker face stayed on. ‘Again, not that we can establish. Probably just the place where the killer knew the bishop would be at a certain time.’

      ‘But some of the stained-glass windows had been smashed.’

      Patrese thought fast. The broken windows were visible from the street outside, so there was no point trying to deny it. He’d have to give a plausible explanation instead.

      ‘Preliminary investigations suggest that the heat of the fire shattered them.’

      He didn’t mention the crucifixes and icons, of course. Nor did he pass on the fact that the fire had also damaged a print of Michelangelo’s Hand of God Giving Life to Adam – an elderly, bearded God wrapped in a swirling cloak, his right arm outstretched to impart the spark of life into the first man.

      Keeping these details quiet was another filter for the lunatics.

      ‘Hugo Carr, Philadelphia Inquirer. You think the Human Torch has a previous history of arson?’

      ‘I’m sorry?’ It was Beradino, tight-lipped with anger. ‘The Human Torch?’

      ‘You know. The Fantastic Four?’

      ‘Is this some kind of nickname for the killer?’

      ‘If you like.’

      ‘No, Mr Carr, I don’t like. I don’t like at all. I don’t like giving some cutesy moniker to anyone who does what this man does. I won’t be calling him the Human Torch or anything else like that. Nor will anyone else working this case. If they do, they’ll be reassigned before they can draw another breath. Is that clear?’

      Subdued: ‘Yes.’

      Beradino gestured towards Patrese: Go on.

      ‘We’re interviewing known arsonists in the area, of course,’ Patrese said. ‘We’ve found indications of accelerant at both scenes, but nothing too sophisticated. Certainly nothing that would rule out, you know, anyone but an experienced firestarter.’

      Nothing that would need advanced chemistry, either; but Sameera Bayoumi had told them that Mustafa had spent the previous evening with her, had left for Philadelphia first thing this morning, and wouldn’t be back till Thursday.

      Patrese looked straight down the lens of the KDKA camera. He knew Pittsburghers СКАЧАТЬ