The Mermaids Singing Page 0,37

photograph of him at his passing-out parade. The turnover on pages two and three was a sensationalist summary of the three previous cases, complete with sketch map.

"Bricks without straw, right enough," Tony said to himself as he flicked through to the centre spread. gays terrified by queer killer monster left the reader in no doubt who the Sentinel Times had decided were at risk. The copy focused on the supposed hysteria gripping Bradfield's gay community, complete with interior shots of cafes, bars and clubs that made the scene look seedy enough to pander to the readers' prejudices.

"Oh boy," Tony said.

"You're really going to hate this, Andy." He turned back to the editorial.

"At last," he read, 'police have admitted what many of us have believed for some time. There is a serial killer on the loose in Bradfield, his target the young, single men who frequent the city's sordid gay bars.

"It's a disgrace that the police have not warned the city's homosexuals to be on their guard before now. In the twilight world of anonymous pickups and casual sex, it cannot be difficult for this predatory monster to find willing victims. The police's silence can only have made it easier for the killer.

"Their reluctance to speak out has probably increased the gay community'sexisting suspicion of the police, making them fear that the authorities value the lives of gay men less than those of other members of the community.

"Just as it took the murders of " innocent" women rather than prostitutes to make the police pay full attention to the Yorkshire Ripper, it is wrong that a police officer has had to be murdered before Bradfield Metropolitan Police takes this Queer Killer seriously.

"In spite of this, we urge the gay community to cooperate fully with the police. And we demand that the police investigate these horrific killings diligently and with compassion for the concerns of Bradfield's homosexuals. The sooner this vicious killer is caught, the safer we all will be."

"The usual mixture of self-righteousness, indignation and unrealistic demands," Tony said to the Devil's Ivy on his windowsill. He clipped the articles and spread them across the desk.

He switched on his micro-cassette recorder and spoke.

^Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times, February zyth. At last. Handy Andy has made the big time. I'm wondering how important that is to him.

One of the tenets of profiling serial offenders is that they crave the oxygen of publicity. But this time, I'm not so sure he's too bothered about that. There were no messages after the first two killings, neither of which received that much publicity after the initial discovery of the bodies. And although there was a message directing the police to the third body via a newspaper, that note made no claims about the earlier killings. I had puzzled over that until Inspector Carol Jordan offered an alternative explanation for the note and accompanying video, namely that without direction, the body may have lain undiscovered for some time. So, while Handy Andy may not be obsessive about creating headlines and panic, it's clear he wants the bodies found while they are still recognizably his work. " He switched off the cassette with a sigh. Although he'd turned his back on the academic circus years before, he couldn't escape his training; every stage of the process had to be on record. The prospect of this investigation providing the raw material for articles or even a book was something Tony found hard to resist.

"I'm a cannibal," he said to the plant.

"Sometimes I disgust myself."

He shovelled the clippings together and tucked them into his press-cuttings folder. He opened the boxes and took out the stacks of document wallets they contained. Carol had labelled them all neatly.

Fluent capitals, Tony noted. A woman comfortable with the written word.

Each victim had a pathology report and a preliminary forensic report.
Chapter 7
The witness statements were divided into three groups: Background (victim). Witness (scene of crime) and Miscellaneous. Selecting the Background (victim) files, he walked his wheeled chair across to the table where his personal computer stood. When he'd arrived at Bradfield, the university had offered him a terminal linked into their network.

He'd declined, not wanting to waste time learning a new set of protocols when he was perfectly at home with his own PC. Now, he was glad he didn't have to add data security to the list of worries that kept him awake at nights.

Tony called up the customized software that would allow him to make comparisons between the victims, and started the long