Cyrus speaks softly. ‘One of the women you chose for me was abducted and murdered. My name came up on her dating history. My photographs.’
I feel my mouth open in surprise. I want to close it, but I can’t be sure unless I cup my chin and make my lips meet.
‘That’s not my fault,’ I say.
‘You sent messages to Maya Kirk, pretending to be me.’
‘I didn’t know she was going to be murdered.’
Cyrus is shaking his head, as though he doesn’t know where to start with me. ‘We can’t go on like this, Evie. I have too many other things to worry about.’ He means his brother being released. ‘Why can’t you be … be … ?’
‘Someone else?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘Normal? Less fucked up?’
‘That’s not what I mean. Every day I seem to be putting out fires. I’m called to the school, or I get a complaint from the neighbours.’
‘It won’t happen again,’ I say. ‘I’ll try harder.’
Cyrus gives me a pained smile. He’s heard my promises before. I glance around the room and my eyes rest on a polished paper shopping bag sitting on a spindly wooden chair in the corner.
‘That’s for you,’ says Cyrus.
‘What is it?’
‘Look.’
Tentatively, I approach and peer into the bag. Reaching inside, I pull out a delicate bundle wrapped in tissue paper. The garment unfurls across my hands, slipping over my fingers. It is a tailored black jumpsuit with pleated trousers and a V-neck. The sleeves are long and buttoned.
‘I heard you had some trouble finding a dress. I thought this might make it easier,’ says Cyrus.
I am holding my tears at bay. Crying on the inside. ‘Why don’t you hate me like everybody else?’ I whisper.
‘Not in my nature.’
‘I don’t deserve this.’
‘No.’
‘At least be angry.’
‘I am.’
‘I hate you.’
‘Ditto.’
25
Cyrus
Evie has gone to bed and the house is quiet apart from the wind rattling the windows and radiators creaking as they begin to cool. I have decorated the library with photographs, propping them on the mantelpiece and the window sill, against the spines of books, and desk lamps, and an antique vase my grandmother insists is valuable, but could hardly be uglier.
Sitting in my swivel chair, I turn slowly, taking in the images of Maya Kirk, in life and death.
When I chose to study forensic science, I thought I’d be employed in prisons or psych hospitals, treating people like Elias. Instead, I have found myself working in the field, identifying sociopaths and psychopaths. Explaining their actions to police. Stopping them when I can or catching them when it becomes necessary.
Maya’s disappearance and death wasn’t a random abduction, or a spontaneous act. Whoever took her came prepared, which suggests a degree of planning and deliberation. But he didn’t expect to find Rohan Kirk in the house, which means he can’t have been watching Maya for any length of time. Although Rohan rarely left the house, there was ample evidence of him – his shoes were in the entrance hall, and his clothes were drying on the radiators.
Every sexual predator is different. Some pick out the weakest in the herd, the young, the sick, or the vulnerable. Others are drawn to their prey by some perceived slight or misread signal. Maya might have smiled at him in a supermarket aisle or across a petrol station forecourt. Or perhaps the opposite happened, he smiled, but she looked away or ignored him.
I go back to the photographs and concentrate on the marks on her wrists and ankles, along with those on her neck. There are similar chafing marks across her back and in the centre of her chest. There is an odd symmetry to them, diamond patterns on her skin. Whoever tied her up had wrapped the ropes into a harness that passed above and below her breasts, wrapping around her back and over her shoulders before being secured by a large bulbous knot in the middle of her back. A dark purple lividity mark shows where the knot was pressed against her spine, while further ropes criss-crossed her hips and were pulled between her legs.
Opening a web browser, I call up images of rope bondage until I come across a rope dress that matches the pattern on Maya’s body.
I reach for my phone and call Ness. He’s watching TV. I can hear the theme music for Newsnight. He mutes the volume.
‘The bindings you found on Maya Kirk’s ankles, what were they made of?’
‘Woven hemp. Why?’
‘She was bound in a particular way and the ropes formed a pattern on her chest. It’s called Shibari – a form of rope bondage that originated in ancient Japan. It began as a form of torture but has morphed into performance art; or a form of subjugation.’
‘Should I ask how you know this?’
‘I studied fetishes and paraphilias at university.’
‘And I wasted my time on medicine.’
Ignoring his chortle, I ask if he’s had any more results back on Maya.
‘We found traces of semen on her dress, which was highly degraded but gave us a partial DNA profile. There was also semen on the sofa in the living room, next to where we found Rohan Kirk.
‘We did an analysis on the dust and grit found beneath Maya’s fingernails and embedded in her knees. The samples contained traces of sand, lime and oyster shells, suggesting some sort of mortar, but nothing modern.’
‘How old?’
‘Nineteenth century, maybe earlier. And the paint chips had a lead carbonate pigment, which dates from the same period. She was held somewhere old.’
There are lots of historic buildings in Nottingham, which could narrow down the search.
‘What about the toxicology report?’ I ask.
‘Nothing in her bloodstream, but some drugs aren’t detectable after twenty-four hours. We’re testing her hair follicles, which should tell us more.’
Ness wishes me a goodnight, and I go back to studying the photographs, turning slowly clockwise and then anticlockwise on my chair. The ropes, the shaving of the head, the slow suffocation – all are indicators of someone using control to subjugate and humiliate. The question is why? Sexual gratification? Revenge? Jealousy?
During the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, women were often punished by having their hair removed, particularly if accused of collaborating with the enemy. It is a gendered form of violence, targeting their identity and sexuality. Maybe we’re looking for an incel （involuntary celibate）， who blames women for their failures. Someone who believes that feminism has gone too far and that men are owed sex and servitude and unquestioning respect from women.
If this were the case, drawing up a profile would be relatively straightforward. I would be looking at someone with a high sex drive, who has struggled to form intimate relationships – a man who falls in love easily, but who lacks the social skills to woo the women who attract him and, ultimately, begins to resent what he can’t have, and to fantasise about punishing those he believes are responsible.
But this is different, and I don’t know enough to understand why. The violence, the control, the elaborate bindings, the shaved head, all suggest a sexual psychopath, but it’s almost as though the killer has ticked off the relevant boxes.