Unnatural Selection by Ann Somerville

Author:Ann Somerville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mm, gay romance, police story
Publisher: Ann Somerville

Chapter 5

The limited description Edward had given us was the first real break we’d had. I couldn’t help but think that Paddy Kennedy fit the description, but so would any tall, heavily-built man wearing those clothes. We had no reason yet to bring him in for questioning, and I hoped that we never would.

Neil had us scouring the CCTV for the distinctive figure of the man our witness had seen lurking. Frustratingly, the CCTV coverage was poor once again and neither our latest victim nor Edward’s tall, great-coat-wearing mystery man appeared on the footage. “If he knows the area, he’ll know where the cameras are,” Andy pointed out.

Did that mean our killer lived in Richmond or Kingston? Or had he just followed the victims to their favourite cruising ground? He was like a ghost—or a vampire. Visible to the naked eye, but not in mirrors or CCTV. It was less surprising that the increased uniformed patrols in the known cruising areas hadn’t spotted him. There were plenty of places to hide from prying eyes, and it wasn’t just serial killers who wanted to avoid being seen by the cops.

Neil also wanted to run with my idea of seeing if anyone who knew our three victims from when they received the ISH treatment, was taking an unhealthy, even homicidal interest in gay men getting a second precious chance to live. Our third victim had, like me and the two victims before, been treated at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead which had been the only hospital in London offering ISH therapy until two years ago.

“Two might be coincidence, three’s a trend,” Neil told me and Phil. “Nick, I want to know how many gay or bisexual men have had ISH treatment through the Royal Free, going back to the start of the program. I want names and addresses, names of consultants, everything we can get.”

“Surely that’ll be hundreds of men,” Phil said.

“I’m betting around two to three hundred, myself,” I corrected. “Andy asked me the other day how many geevees there would be, so I did a bit of research. Before ISH, about five hundred people died each year from AIDS in the UK as a whole. A lot of them weren’t gay—they were either from Africa, infected by heterosexual sex, or intravenous drug users. Most gay men with HIV choose not to have ISH anyway, so even adding the number of those who do to the count of gay men who have ISH therapy for cancer and other conditions, the total is still going to be small because we only make up three or four percent of the male population. In other words, we make up three to four percent of men who receive ISH. Before ISH, around thirteen thousand people used to die of cancer each year. Cancer is the most common condition treated by ISH. If you assume half those deaths were male, and all of them would have taken ISH if it had been offered, which they

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