Yale University is spread over 837 acres of ground, with over 11,000 students.

‘That’s very true,’ Lucien agreed with a sympathetic chuckle. ‘But you might be in luck. Give me a sec,’ he said, lifting a finger in a “wait” gesture before reaching into his own rucksack. ‘Here we go. I knew it would be here somewhere. Have this one.’ He handed Karen a new campus map.

‘Oh!’ Her eyes lit up with surprise. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, of course. I know my way around quite well. I just never really cleaned out my bag, so that map’s been there for a while.’ He gave her a “What can you do?” kind of shrug. ‘Anyway, where do you need to go just now?’

‘I’m trying to find Grove Street Cemetery.’

Karen’s British pronunciation of cemetery brought a new smile to Lucien’s lips.

‘Wow, that’s quite a walk from here.’ He pointed south. ‘Why do you want to go to the cemetery, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Oh, no, I don’t really need the cemetery. That’s just my point of reference. I need to go to the Dunham Lab building, but I remember that it’s just across the road from the cemetery.’

Lucien nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right, but hey, I’m heading that way myself. I can walk you there if you like.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m going to the Becton Center, which is right opposite the Dunham Lab building.’

‘Oh, that’s a piece of good luck,’ Karen said, hooking her rucksack over her right shoulder. ‘Well, if it really is no bother, that would be great. Thank you very much.’

Then, with a thoughtful expression on his face, Lucien looked at Karen a little sideways. ‘Wait a second.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘You were in the Investigative Psychology and Offending Behavior lecture this morning, weren’t you?’ His performance could’ve won him a place in drama school.

Surprised flourished on Karen’s face. ‘I was indeed. You were there?’

‘Yeah, sitting right at the back. I’m doing a psychology PhD.’

Even more surprise now.

‘So am I. I just transferred from University College in London.’

‘Wow, London? I always wanted to go to London.’ Lucien offered his hand. ‘I’m Lucien, by the way.’

And so they became friends.

Lucien already knew he would kill again. He’d started fantasizing about how he would do it around eight months ago, and the more he thought about it, the harder it got to control his impulses. Meeting Karen Simpson filled him with an immense feeling of relief, as if he’d just found a long-lost piece of a puzzle that had been eating at his brain for months.

Lucien didn’t want to overdo it, though. He knew that people would see them together, so he didn’t want to appear like he was Karen’s best friend, or even a romantic interest. Those were the first people whose doors the authorities would come knocking once she disappeared. No, Lucien was careful to appear like just another student in Karen’s circle of friends. Even an acquaintance, rather than a friend.

His planning took another six months. Four of them were spent searching for a hidden place where he’d be able to take Karen and take his time, undisturbed. He finally found an abandoned shack hidden deep in the forestland by Lake Saltonstall, not that dissimilar to the one he’d found back in La Honda. One thing Lucien was very certain of was that he would skin Karen alive. Skinning was what had given him the biggest high that night with Susan. And that meant he would have to keep Karen in captivity for at least a few hours.

But Lucien also wanted to experiment. He didn’t want to use his hands on Karen’s neck like he’d done with Susan. He wanted something new, something different. The idea came to him one morning as a friend of his, who was reading Molecular, Cellular and Development Biology at Yale, told him about an experiment gone badly wrong inside Pierce Laboratory. As his friend described what had happened, Lucien felt his blood prick inside his veins. He now knew how he wanted Karen to die.

Sixty-Five

Yale University closed for summer in mid-May. Lucien had been eagerly waiting and planning for it for some time, and he played his cards absolutely right.

Around April Lucien had asked Karen if she intended going back to England for the summer holidays.

‘Are you joking?’ she had replied. ‘Summers in England are like a mild spring around here. I’ve been looking forward to my first summer in the US for quite a while now.’

‘Are you staying around here?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I’m thinking about taking a trip down to New York first. I’ve always wanted to see New York, you know, Broadway and all. Maybe even get a new tattoo. There are some great studios over there. After that, I was thinking I could perhaps travel down to Florida and the coast. Spend a few days at the beach? They don’t call it the sunny state for nothing.’ Karen smiled.

‘Are you planning on doing all that by yourself?’ That was Lucien’s key question.

Karen shrugged. ‘I guess.’ She looked at him inquisitively. ‘But I could do with a travel mate, what do you say, Lucien? It could be fun . . . New York, then the beach?’

Lucien saw the opportunity but he screwed up his face and gave her a quick excuse, saying that he already had a few things organized – a few summer jobs. He knew that if he’d said ‘yes’, Karen would probably tell someone else that they’d be traveling together – a friend, a professor, her parents, whoever. Then, if she never came back from their summer trip but he did, his name would be right at the top of the police’s enquiry list. On the other hand, if Karen disappeared when she was supposed to have taken a trip on her own, questions wouldn’t start being asked until much later. Many would just assume that she had given up Yale after one year and gone back to England. It probably wouldn’t be until her parents started worrying from the lack of communication that a few alarm bells would start ringing.

They met again just five days before summer break, and Karen told Lucien that she was planning on leaving for her New York and Florida vacation in four days’ time. That gave him three to get everything prepared. But Lucien had been meticulously organizing everything for two months. He had almost everything he needed in place. The only things missing were a few chemical canisters, and he knew exactly where to get them.

Lucien dropped by Karen’s efficiency apartment the day before she was due to leave for New York. His plan was simple. He would invite her to take a drive with him to Lake Saltonstall that morning for a picnic, saying that they’d be back before nightfall. If Karen said that she couldn’t for any reason, then Lucien would invite her for a quick goodbye drink later that evening, which he was sure she would’ve said yes to. Anyway, the final purpose was the same – to be alone with Karen either at a remote picnic site or inside his car before she was due to leave.

Karen said yes to the picnic.

They set off at around 11:00 a.m. He drove at a steady pace, and the ride to the isolated location he’d chosen by the lake took just under twenty-five minutes. But this time Lucien didn’t subdue his victim inside his car. There was no surprise attack. No needle to the neck. Lucien did actually prepare a picnic, with sandwiches, salads, fruit, donuts, chocolates, beer and champagne. They ate, drank and laughed like a couple of best friends. It was only when Lucien poured the last of the champagne into Karen’s glass that he added enough sedative to throw her into a deep, dreamless sleep for at least an hour.

It took less than five minutes for the drug to work.

When Karen reopened her eyes, there was no more picnic, no more outdoors. She came to very slowly, and the first thing she realized was that her head ached with such ferocity, it felt like an animal was inside her skull, clawing at her brain.