was one of the pile you gave me for Christmas.’
‘Oh yeah, I’d forgotten.’
Fiona grinned. ‘There were so many.’ Ever since they’d first been together, Kit had given Fiona his personal pick of the year’s crime fiction for Christmas. It was a genre she’d scarcely ever read before they’d become lovers. Now, she enjoyed keeping up with her partner’s competition, as long as it was a guided trip and not a random harvest of the crime section of the bookshops.
Scrolling down, Fiona ignored the hagiography and focused on any details of the crime. Nothing they didn’t already know. The second fan site had little more to offer, except a rumour that Shand had frequented a pub in Edinburgh where gay sadomasochistic group sex allegedly took place in an upstairs room. ‘See what I mean?’ Kit said angrily. ‘It’s starting already. The deserving-victim syndrome. You can see it now. He was murdered because he asked for it. He enjoyed the kind of sex that could turn nasty, and it killed him.’
‘It’ll get worse before it gets better,’ said Fiona. ‘Unless they pick someone up quickly and it turns out to be nothing to do with the gay scene.’
‘Yeah, right. If AIDS doesn’t get you, the bogeyman will.’
Fiona called up the menu of her favourite sites on the web and ran her cursor down the list. Kit leaned into her, reading over her shoulder.
‘I wonder how many people’s favourite places list includes the RCMP, the FBI, various serial killer sites and a forensic pathology discussion group?’ Kit asked.
‘More than is healthy, I suspect,’ Fiona muttered. Towards the bottom of the list was a site that she knew infuriated most of the law enforcement officers she knew. Officially, Murder Behind the Headlines was run jointly by a journalist in Detroit, a private eye in Vancouver who was reported to have had a murky past in the CIA, and a postgraduate in criminology in Liverpool. Given the depth of detail they managed to come up with on sensational murder cases, Fiona suspected there were a few serious hackers involved in putting together the site. Not to mention a very large base of anonymous contributors who enjoyed the prospect of sharing whatever privileged information or hearsay they encountered. Several attempts had been made to close them down on the basis that they were making public information that allowed scope both for copycat killings and for false confessions, but somehow they always seemed to resurface with ever more sophisticated graphics and gossip. Fiona sincerely hoped that the more faint-hearted relatives of the victims never logged on to Murder Behind the Headlines.
Seeing where her cursor had paused, Kit groaned. ‘Gossip central,’ he complained.
‘You’d be surprised how often they get it right,’ she said mildly.
‘Maybe so, but they always leave me feeling like I need a bath. And they can’t write for toffee.’
Fiona couldn’t resist a smile as she connected to the site. ‘Never mind the morality, feel the semicolons,’ she said ironically. When she was prompted for her area of interest, she typed, ‘Drew Shand’. In the top left-hand corner of the page that unfurled before them, the same photograph of Drew brooding handsomely into the camera appeared. This time, however, the text was very different.
Scottish thriller writer Drew Shand has been found murdered in the historic heart of the city he lived in and used as the background to his first gruesome novel, the award-winning Copycat. His mutilated body was found just behind St Giles Cathedral, only feet away from the pavements pounded daily by millions of tourists. So far, no suspects have been arrested.
MBTH hears from a source inside the investigation that there are some very spooky coincidences connecting Shand’s own death and the graphic violence he turned to good commercial effect in Copycat. The plot of his serial killer novel centres round a contemporary re-creation of the celebrated Whitechapel Murders—a sort of Jock the Ripper gorefest.
The original Jack the Ripper’s fourth victim was found by a policeman on his beat. So was Shand’s fourth victim. And so too was Shand.
The police surgeon at the time of the White-chapel Murders, Dr Frederick Brown, reported that: <The body was on its back, the head turned to the left shoulder. The arms by the side of the body as if they had fallen there. Both palms upwards, the fingers slightly bent…Left leg extended in a line with the body. The abdomen was exposed. Right leg bent at thigh and knee. The throat cut across. The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder…A piece of about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and left arm.
<The lobe and auricle of the right ear was cut right through…There was a cut…through the lower left eyelid dividing the structures completely through…The right eyelid was cut through to about half an inch.
<There was a deep cut over the bridge of the nose…This cut went into the bone and divided all the structures of the cheek except the mucous membrane of the mouth. The tip of the nose was quite detached…There was on each side of the cheek a cut which peeled up the skin, forming a triangular flap of about an inch and a half. The actual cause of death was haemorrhage from the left carotid artery.
Each of these grim facts was annexed by Shand for his novel. And according to our source, they were all present in the murder of the writer himself. Apparently one of the murder squad detectives called to the scene of the crime had read Copycat and was immediately struck by the similarities. It was only when the police surgeon itemized the injuries and the detective went back and checked both with Shand’s book and accounts of the original Ripper case that the police became convinced that they were dealing with a Copycat copycat.
Apparently the theory doing the rounds at police HQ is that Shand was into hardcore S&M sex. They reckon that made him vulnerable to a perp who had fixated on his book and wanted to try it out for real. Shand was apparently a creature of habit—his daily routine is outlined on his website for all to see. So it wouldn’t have been too hard for the hunter to track him down and, providing the killer was Shand’s type, it would all fall into place. And of course, the easy thing about killing somebody who’s into S&M is they think you’re only playing when you tie them up. Doesn’t matter that, like Shand, your victim works out down the gym every day, because he’s trussed up like a chicken all ready for you.
One other detail—the cops think he was killed somewhere else then brought to the body dump, unlike both the Whitechapel Murders and the slayings in Copycat. But Shand’s flat was clean, so they’ve no idea as yet where the murder actually took place. One thing they can be pretty sure of, though—somebody’s got a helluva cleaning job on his hands.
REMEMBER YOU READ IT FIRST ON
MURDER BEHIND THE HEADLINES
Kit whistled softly. ‘That is seriously creepy shit.’
Fiona logged off. ‘You’re not kidding.’
‘So what’s your take on it?’
‘Probably much the same as yours,’ Fiona said. ‘He clearly planned his crime to mirror the circumstances of one of the murders in Shand’s book. Which in turn mirrors one of the original Ripper murders, apart from the gender of the victim. That he’s succeeded so accurately indicates a high degree of control and organization. His intelligence therefore is likely to be significantly above average. He has a highly developed fantasy life and would probably use violent pornography to support that. He would be unlikely to respond
