‘Angus, there isn’t another female officer in Central who’s as well acquainted with the Poser case as I am. And jeez, it’s not like I’m an invalid. I’ll be okay.’
Angus didn’t need much persuading. ‘Good. James, I handed your article over to the newspaper, it’ll be in tomorrow’s edition. That should get our Poser good and riled.’ He looked back at Stevie. ‘All the more reason for you to be fit and healthy, it’s hard to predict the outcome of this.’
‘It could also be one big anticlimax.’ She looked at De Vakey with a humorous glint. ‘If nothing happens, I’d say it’s because our poser is still laid up in a hospital bed.’
De Vakey shook his head, smiling at her tenacity.
Angus asked, ‘How did the meeting with the foreman go?’
Stevie filled him in.
‘Right, you may as well continue with the Sparrow angle, go and have a word with the mother. I’ve already had people at the house. They didn’t find much except some books that might be of interest to you, James. I told them to leave them where they found them on the dining room table.’
De Vakey said, ‘I’ll be happy to go along. I’m also very interested in speaking to the mother.’
‘Fine by me, we need all the help we can get.’ They were about to leave the waiting room when Angus added, ‘One more thing. The uniforms door knocking in Michelle’s apartment block learned something useful from the woman next door. It seems this neighbour spent most of yesterday moving her things out. She identified Sparrow from the photo the uniform showed her. Apparently he was hanging around the bins during the afternoon, cleaning up rubbish and sweeping the paths. At one stage when she was laden down with stuff, he helped her get out of the gate. Later she noticed her security wand was gone. She reported it missing, but didn’t think of him at the time. She’s not one hundred percent certain he took it but thinks, in retrospect, it’s possible. She was surprised, said he seemed like a really nice man.’
Stevie reflected on Sparrow’s treatment by his work colleagues. ‘Being nice never got him very far, did it? Any news from the lab about the drug in Monty’s tomato juice?’
‘Possible drug,’ Angus corrected. ‘No, I’m afraid not. The lab’s up to its eyeballs with these murders, they haven’t got to it yet.’
‘Damn,’ Stevie said under her breath. ‘Have you heard from him at all?’
‘No. Have you?’
She shook her head, not wishing to speculate with Angus. Whatever Monty was up to, she didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to it.
21
Violent film, TV and literature will no doubt influence a person who has already established tendencies towards violence, with non-fiction media proving especially interesting to such a person.
De Vakey, The Pursuit of Evil
A middle-aged woman opened the door of the Sparrow house before Stevie had a chance to knock. ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Jane Cunningham, the social worker. Come in.’
Stevie and De Vakey followed her into the hall. The severe effect of the twin-set and French twist was diminished by Jane Cunningham’s lack of footwear. Her stockinged toes curled when she saw Stevie checking them out with a grin.
‘I don’t see what’s so funny,’ Jane Cunningham said, ‘Mrs Sparrow likes people to take their shoes off before they come inside.’
Stevie thought back to the trainers she’d seen standing to attention in Michelle’s front entrance. Martin Sparrow was obviously a creature of habit.
Stifling her smile, Stevie made the introductions and toed off her own trainers. De Vakey bent down and undid his shoelaces, placing his polished brogues side by side. She noticed his eyes drop to the hole in her sock and acknowledged his humorous glint with a wriggle of her exposed toe.
But the well-dressed middle-aged woman wasn’t interested in Stevie’s toe. She locked her eyes on De Vakey and held them there for several seconds. Stevie almost expected to see her clutch her breast and say, ‘Be still my beating heart.’
Still grinning, she padded in the wake of the social worker’s cloying perfume, through the small black-and-white tiled entrance and into the compact two-storey town house.
Jane Cunningham said over her shoulder, ‘Mrs Sparrow is upstairs resting. I’m waiting for an ambulance to transport her to the extended care hospital. She suffers from severe rheumatoid arthritis and chest problems. I don’t want her left unattended, especially with your colleagues hanging around and upsetting her.’ She gestured to the innocuous constable at the front door with a flick of her head.
De Vakey ignored the hostility and rested his soft grey gaze on her. ‘Were you with her when the police told her the news about her son?’
Jane Cunningham turned to him and patted at the fold of her ash-blond hair. The prickly tone she’d levelled at Stevie turned at once into one of breathy concern. ‘Yes, she was very upset.’
‘I’m sure she was—is she upstairs?’ Stevie said, losing patience. Without waiting for the others she headed for the narrow stairway, until she was stopped in her tracks by De Vakey’s hand on her arm. He gestured to a glass dining table, stacked with books on the lounge room side of the breakfast bar. She raised her eyebrows when she noticed his latest on the top of the pile. ‘Okay,’ she said, drawing out the second syllable with satisfaction.
After snapping on some latex gloves, Stevie handed De Vakey a spare pair from her bag. Another of De Vakey’s books was underneath the first, then another.
‘Looks like another fan of yours.’
De Vakey frowned.
Stevie turned the pages until she came to a double-page photo of a blood-splattered murder scene. The social worker saw it and paled, making no objection when Stevie asked her to put the kettle on.
De Vakey flicked through one of the books. Stevie looked over his shoulder, noticing how some of the pages had been marked with yellow post-it notes, some with underlined paragraphs. He tapped at the first of these.
‘For some reason he’s marked the introduction. This is where I explain some common characteristics in the backgrounds of serial killers.’
Stevie pointed to an underlined phrase. ‘Unhappy childhood.’ There was a question mark pencilled into the margin next to it and some spidery handwriting. ‘ All serial killers were abused children, but not all abused children become abusers or serial killers,’ she read aloud.
De Vakey shrugged.
‘All sorts of ideas here—you know, this could be considered a primer on how to do it.’
He responded to her flippancy with a stern look. ‘This is a textbook for law enforcement agencies.’
‘What about the new edition? It’s geared to the general public. It could give all sorts of ideas to the unstable.’
‘No more than many TV shows and films.’
‘These books need to be taken in as evidence.’
Stevie saw a muscle jumping in the profiler’s jaw. ‘Of course they should, but you should be cautious about jumping to conclusions so soon,’ he said.
‘But look at all this, James. So many of these underlined paragraphs are pertinent to our cases.’
As she flicked through the book, she read snippets aloud: ‘S exual motivations, domination and control.’ She thumped at the page now open in front of her. ‘And look, here’s Linda Royce’s name in the margin, next to this: A scene that is staged for the police and for any other unfortunate person who stumbles across the body is often the result of the killer’s perverse desire to entertain.’ Stevie turned to the next page. ‘And this: The ability to manipulate friends and associates. Something’s written in the margin, but I can’t read it, it’s too smudged.’
De Vakey took the book from her and squinted at the blur of pencil marks. ‘Names, maybe?’