The Shadow Maker Read Online Free PDF Page B

going?’
    ‘Just getting started,’ she said, swivelling around to face him.
    Loftus was more than her boss - he was also her mentor. At twenty years her senior he had the experience to recognise flair and intelligence when he saw it. That always deserved a helping hand.
    Her ability to maintain fierce concentration for hours on end was one of the reasons he’d chosen her for the profiling role. And even though it intimidated some of her colleagues, he also saw her intellect as a valuable attribute. Another reason - which he didn’t discuss with anyone - was her dark imagination, rooted in a disrupted and unhappy childhood. Before she’d started the course in profiling, he’d asked her if she could cope with focusing so closely on damaged minds. She’d replied flatly, ‘We’re all damaged, Jack.’ That’s when he knew she was the right choice to be a profiler. It was clear she had her own demons - and you needed a few on board to do battle with the devil.
    As well as admiring her policing abilities, he also found his protege attractive. It wasn’t an issue, because a stable marriage, large family, Catholic guilt and no free time ensured he made no attempt to make their relationship anything other than strictly professional.
    This was probably just as well, because the attraction was mutual.
    Rita saw Loftus as a man of depth, who managed to steer his own course through the jargon and the regulations while still being respected. While there was something world-weary about him, like a man who carried too many burdens on his shoulders, or had put in too many years with what he called the Human Depravity Squad, behind his heavy-lidded eyes was a mind full of insights only partly blunted by cynicism.
    ‘I don’t want you to feel you’re under time pressure with this,’
    he said.
    ‘What’s your point, Jack?’
    ‘We should work the case and see if it bottoms out before factoring in a profile. I don’t want premature assumptions to impact on the investigation.’
    ‘Then let’s hope we catch this guy quickly.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Because the man who carried out this attack needs to inflict extreme violence on women. If we don’t stop him he’s likely to do it again sooner rather than later.’
    Loftus didn’t say anything. He shoved his hands in his pockets and sat back on the edge of her desk.
    ‘You’ve gone pensive on me,’ she said.
    He didn’t reply, but got up from the desk and peered at the clutter of items tacked to her pin-board. An A4-size sketch in black pencil caught his eye. It was a picture of a man standing alone under a streetlamp at night. The image was unremarkable except for one thing. The look in the man’s partly shadowed eyes was too intense, ferocious even, psychotic. At the foot of the page was the inscription Hell is otherness .
    ‘This is new,’ he said. ‘Where’s it come from?’
    ‘An agent I studied with at Quantico. Thought I might find it instructive. It was drawn by one of the serial killers he interviewed.’
    ‘What’s “Hell is otherness” supposed to mean?’
    ‘Well, this particular killer suffers from a dissociated personality …’
    ‘Remind me.’
    ‘It’s the pathological coexistence of more than one centre of consciousness in one mind.’
    ‘Multiple personalities.’
    ‘Yeah. And he’s in a psychiatric prison undergoing therapy. So one way of reading it is this man’s personal hell of dissociation.’
    ‘No,’ Loftus shook his head. ‘The guy in this picture’s alone.’
    ‘Interesting,’ she said.
    ‘Don’t try to play the shrink on me,’ he said sternly, catching the analytical tone in her voice. ‘The guy’s alone and apart - that’s the message.’
    ‘Then perhaps it’s what we all feel at times - the hell of alien-ation.’
    ‘Maybe, or what some of us see as the inevitable fall from grace,’
    he sighed. ‘Anyway, back to the case in hand. Strickland’s told me about the victim’s taste in nightlife. I