Phobia by Dean Crawford

Author:Dean Crawford [Crawford, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2019-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

‘The murder of Sebastian Dukas occurred on August thirty–first, with Amber McVey’s murder just afterwards, September first. Both victims were killed and displayed in a manner conducive with a killer who is seeking to make grand statements, showing a desire to be seen, to be noticed. Both murders occurred near the river, with Sebastian Dukas killed within a stone’s throw of Whitechapel. Although I cannot offer anything of true substance to support my suspicion, I believe that in some way this killer is seeking to replicate, in a modern fashion, the fame and success of Jack the Ripper.’

The air in the room felt oppressive, unmoving. Honor stood motionless, staring at the DI as she stared back. Prickly heat tingled across the back of her neck and she felt her heart fluttering uneasily in her chest.

‘You’re giving the papers their headline before they’ve thought of it,’ DCI Mitchell murmured with something that could either have been a smile or a grimace. ‘You walk in there with that this afternoon and they’ll be all over it by the following morning.’

‘There’s more to it than just the Ripper,’ Honor said, eager to support her assertion. ‘I’ve been researching phobias, and one in particular stands out: Thanatophobia, the fear of death, and of losing close friends to death. The killer’s desire to see his victim’s moment of death seems paramount in his work, we see that in his use of cameras to watch the victims’ last moments. He’s killing based on phobias, but many people with phobias also have a fascination with the cause of those fears. I think he’s addicted, in the same way that some people became addicted to snuff videos a few years back, watching people die for real. That’s got to have a cause, a trigger point somewhere in his life, something that drives him to pursue the same experience time and time again.’ More silence. Honor began to feel the room turning against her, even though not a single officer other than the DCI had said a word. It was too wild, too far out there and also too obvious a motive: any killer in the square mile could easily be said to be

emulating the Ripper.

‘Too neat and too Hollywood,’ DS Hansen said. ‘We need to keep anything about the Ripper out of this. Besides, there are too many theories now about how the Ripper didn’t kill prostitutes, wasn’t a surgeon and so on. Anybody basing their crimes on such myths is chasing rainbows.’

A murmur of agreement rippled through the gathering, Honor noting a few stifled chuckles. So much for the brainstorming.

‘I agree, but we’re going public anyway,’ Honor pointed out. ‘What better way to grab people’s attention than an easy and memorable tag? They’ll swallow it up, everybody will be talking about it, and our person of interest on the CCTV will be on every front page by dawn.’

DCI Mitchell nodded.

‘And if they’re innocent of any crime, they’ll be holding a bloody press conference of their own when they sue us,’ he replied.

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