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  20

  Chief Superintendent Steve Barker called at 7.30am, just as Bloom was finishing her morning run. She’d emailed him the night before – a summary of what they’d learned so far – so she’d been expecting to hear from him.

  ‘I’m setting up a task force following the death of Harry Graham,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken a look at what you sent me on this game and I can provide some additional resource to help track down the other players. I don’t want any more deaths on our hands.’

  Bloom stood at her sink, filled a glass with water and took a large sip. ‘Thank you, Steve,’ she said. ‘Will that be based out of your HQ?’

  ‘To begin with. I’ve spoken to my counterpart in the Met and if we can show this is of national interest they may be willing to gold-command it, but for now you’re stuck with me.’

  ‘No problem at all. Marcus and I can head over later today if you like. For a briefing. Then take it from there.’

  ‘You said in your email you had a working hypothesis?’ Bloom had mentioned a theory, but hadn’t explicitly mentioned psychopaths.

  ‘We do, but I’d rather go through it face-to-face. It’s somewhat sensitive and more than a little controversial.’

  ‘Right. I shall expect nothing less then, Dr Bloom. Shall I organize a briefing for this morning?’

  Bloom and Jameson arrived at Avon and Somerset Police Headquarters in Portishead three hours later. Bloom had collected Jameson from his home in Wembley en route. He had offered to drive, but she didn’t want him coming to her home to collect her. In the five years they’d been working together, he hadn’t visited once. She knew it bugged him.

  They were met in reception by DI Carly Mathers. Bloom introduced Jameson, and then they headed to the designated incident room. Chief Superintendent Barker was sitting with half a dozen plain-clothed officers. On the far wall pictures of Faye and Harry Graham, Lana Reid, Grayson Taylor and Stuart Rose-Butler had been stuck to a whiteboard. Under a smiling photograph of Faye and Harry were two gruesome images of Harry’s bloodied body. Below that, Fred and Julia grinned out from their school photograph, their innocent faces unaware of the horrors to come.

  ‘How are Fred and Julia?’ Bloom asked Mathers.

  ‘Social Services have placed them in a foster home. Faye’s mother died years ago and her father’s in a home. Harry’s parents live in Spain. They’re flying over this afternoon, so perhaps they’ll take them in.’

  ‘Good morning,’ said Barker in a manner that demanded attention. ‘Welcome, Dr Bloom – and this must be Mr Jameson.’ Barker shook Jameson’s hand. ‘I’m delighted you’re working with us on this.’

  Of course, the case now belonged to the police. Senior officers always took ownership when things became interesting.

  Barker continued, ‘Let me introduce the team. You know Detective Inspector Mathers. We also have DS Phil Green.’ Barker gestured to a tall, skinny man in a grey suit that matched the colour of his short hair. DS Green nodded a hello. ‘DC Craig Logan, who is our technical wizard. Anything to do with cybercrime, he’s your man. He’s just finished a secondment with the National Crime Agency in their National Cyber Crime Unit.’

  ‘Good morning,’ said DC Logan, the youngest person in the room by some margin. He wasn’t much more than twenty-five and his pockmarked skin suggested he had suffered severe acne as a teen.

  Barker gestured to another two officers, one male, one female, sitting at the desks behind him. ‘And finally we have DC Raj Akhtar and DC Kaye Willis, two of our most experienced CID officers.’ The two older DCs smiled at Jameson and Bloom. ‘So as I was saying, Dr Bloom leads one of our most popular courses at the National Training Centre on the Psychology of Motivated Crime. I attended three years ago and it was a fascinating and thought-provoking experience. She is also an expert witness for the CPS and along with Mr Jameson here provides specialist investigation support. Is that about right?’ He looked at Bloom.

  ‘Spot on. Thank you, Steve.’ Bloom deliberately referred to senior officers by their first name when working alongside the police. Civilians weren’t required to address officers by their rank and it reminded the team that Bloom and Jameson weren’t part of the normal hierarchy.

  ‘I couldn’t find much background on you, Mr Jameson,’ said Barker.

  Jameson smiled. ‘Ex-MI6,’ he said.

  Bloom felt the usual ripple of nervous energy spread across the room. The police, in particular, were often suspicious of Jameson’s Secret Service past.

  After teas, coffees and packets of biscuits had been delivered by Steve’s PA, Bloom took centre stage.

  ‘We know that Faye Graham was the first person to receive one of these birthday cards. That was on January the fifth. You’ve probably seen the photograph I sent over last night but, for confirmation, it reads “Happy First Birthday” on the front, and then “Your gift is the game. Dare to Play?” on the inside. There’s no other information, but there is a small tacky patch at the bottom of the card. The other three cards have the same patch so we’re assuming something was stuck here originally.’

  ‘Why “Happy First Birthday”?’ said Barker, who was perched on the corner of one of the desks, his highly polished shoe resting on a chair.

  ‘Oh, she’ll come to that,’ said Jameson.

  Bloom knew that Jameson had reservations about her hypothesis, so she was interested to see how the team reacted. ‘Faye Graham went missing that very day and hadn’t been in touch until she returned to the family home earlier this week. We understand from her son – Fred – that she then stabbed Harry Graham to death.’

  This was clearly not news to the team.

  ‘Was there any phone activity for Faye Graham while she was missing?’ asked DC Kaye Willis.

  ‘She didn’t contact her family or her employer. We would need a warrant to access her phone records,’ said Bloom.

  ‘I’ll get on to that,’ said Willis.

  ‘And let’s check call histories for the others too,’ said Jameson. ‘I’ve looked at the social media accounts of all four and there’s been no activity since they went missing, but we need a more sophisticated examination of their activity over the last year or so. I want to know if they were accessing any particular groups or sites of interest.’

  ‘On it,’ said DC Craig Logan, making a note in his book.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bloom. ‘Grayson Taylor, a twenty-year-old politics student at Sheffield University, received the same card and went missing after a night out to celebrate his birthday on February the tenth. Stuart Rose-Butler, a twenty-nine-year-old shelf-stacker from Leeds, then disappeared from the scene of a road-traffic accident on the morning of his birthday on February the twenty-fourth.’

  ‘We’ve an eye witness who claims they saw the driver of the other car pass a white card to Stuart before driving away,’ said Jameson.

  Bloom continued, ‘We’ve made a request to West Yorkshire Police to send us the contact details of all three eye witnesses at the incident, but if you could speed things up that’d be helpful.’

  ‘I’ll speak to them,’ said DC Raj Akhtar.

  Bloom nodded. ‘Then finally we have the disappearance of Lana Reid on March the ninth, again her birthday, and this is where we came in. Lana’s daughter Jane approached us for help.’

  ‘I’ve known Jane since she was a child,’ said Jameson. ‘My sister often took care of her when Lana Reid was deployed overseas in the Army. Except we’ve recently discovered that Lana doesn’t and never has worked for the military in any capacity.’

  ‘So what was she doing?’ asked Barker.

  ‘We’ve no idea.’ Jameson picked up a pen from the desk beside him and turned it over in his right hand. ‘It’s a mystery.’

  ‘So what are our working theories?’

  Jameson looked at Bloom. He clearly wasn’t planning to participate in this part of the briefing.

  ‘As far as we can tell,’ began Bloom, ‘there’s nothing circumstantial linking the fou
r missing people. They are different ages, different genders and have different professions. Some have children, some don’t. They were born and live in different locations and, according to their families, they don’t know each other. There is some suggestion that they were all unhappy, but we have no evidence of significant problems such as debt, depression or mental health issues. What we do know is that they were all living a lie. As Marcus said, Lana was not really in the military, Grayson was failing his degree, Stuart has no known history beyond the two years he has been with his fiancée, and Faye told her employers she was happy at home but her husband said she was vile.’

  ‘Standard,’ said DS Green.

  Jameson smiled.

  Bloom continued, ‘What I’ve been asking myself is why they would take up a dare just because a random birthday card challenges them to. Why leave their lives to play this game? And I think there are three options. The first is blackmail. Someone has discovered their secrets and is threatening to expose them. Faye Graham might have decided to call the blackmailer’s bluff by killing her husband.’

  ‘Harsh, but I’ve seen crazier things,’ said DI Mathers. ‘We should dig deeper into their pasts, see what dirt we can find.’

  Bloom nodded. ‘The second theory is that these people play the game because it promises them something. If we lay this theory on Faye, it could be that she wanted to kill her husband, and this game prepared her mentally and physically for that challenge.’

  ‘In which case, we might have other innocent victims coming our way. And the third theory?’ said Chief Superintendent Barker.

  ‘This is where things get a little more concerning,’ said Bloom.

  ‘This is your controversial theory.’ Chief Superintendent Barker glanced around, checking that everyone was listening.

  ‘I’ve noticed that our game players display certain traits; traits that concern me.’ Bloom stood, picked up a pen from the tray below the whiteboard and wrote a list of keywords as she spoke. ‘Stuart, Faye and Grayson have all been described to us as sociable and charming. We also know that all four players were competent liars. Stuart was described as manipulative and a bully by his ex-employer, and we know that Lana deceived her own daughter and the likes of Jameson’s sister over a considerable time period. When we spoke to Harry Graham, he said his wife was often angry and aggressive. And we have a report from Grayson’s tutor that he threatened to make his life difficult if he was forced to attend lectures. Then we have parasitic lifestyles and a failure to take responsibility. Lana relied on others to raise her daughter, and Stuart happily lived a very comfortable life with his wealthy fiancée while struggling to hold down a menial job himself. Then, of course, we have the level of irresponsibility and impulsiveness needed to walk away from your home, your family, your job and your life to take up some dare … So we have a list of traits which sound worryingly familiar.’ She read the list on the whiteboard aloud. ‘Charming, liar, manipulative, bullying, parasitic, irresponsible, impulsive. We could easily add prone to boredom and lack of realistic goals to the list, as we have seen hints of this in all four missing persons.’

  ‘Looks like a description of your average criminal scumbag,’ said DS Green.

  Bloom nodded. ‘That may be.’ She took another pen from the tray, this time a red one, and proceeded to write a second column of words: inflated ego, emotionally shallow, lack of guilt, lack of empathy. She looked at the faces around the room. Carly Mathers was frowning, DS Green scowling.

  ‘Have you heard of Antisocial Personality Disorder?’ Bloom asked. She pointed at the second list. ‘Because if we add in these last four traits, that is exactly what this board describes.’

  ‘Isn’t that …?’ started DI Mathers.

  ‘Yep,’ interrupted Jameson, with a deadpan tone and a neutral expression. ‘Psychopaths.’

  ‘It’s estimated that one in every hundred people possesses antisocial personality traits. These people live among us in astounding commonality,’ said Bloom.

  ‘One in every hundred?’ said DS Green. He was clearly the sceptic of the group; it was always healthy to have at least one.

  ‘It’s a spectrum. We probably all have some of these characteristics, and some of us will be more extreme on, let’s say, impulsiveness than others. But some people possess all these qualities at a more extreme level. It’s like any human difference. It doesn’t mean they’re all serial killers and most won’t ever commit a crime.’

  ‘So … what? They just do nothing?’ said DS Green cynically.

  ‘Much like the rest of us, yes.’ Bloom replaced the red pen in its tray. ‘They live their lives the best they can. Some know they are different and hide it, some simply believe they’re normal and assume other people think and feel the way they do.’

  ‘I’d say those last characteristics, the ones in red, are the real traits of a psychopath. And you haven’t seen any evidence of any of those in our four players,’ said DI Carly Mathers.

  Chief Superintendent Barker answered for Bloom. ‘Because those are much harder to observe. They’re about how that person feels: a lack of guilt, a lack of empathy, a big ego.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Bloom. ‘We can’t judge those things without speaking to the individuals themselves.’

  DS Green was nodding but the scowl remained. ‘So let’s say all four are psychos. Why the hell would they play a stupid game?’

  ‘People who possess these antisocial traits experience emotions less keenly than the rest of us. They rarely feel scared, coerced, or motivated to fit in, and so their decisions are calculated on the basis of What do I gain? Life is a game to them. They’re often highly competitive, feel superior to their fellow human beings, and make decisions from a totally selfish position.’

  ‘So a game would appeal to them more than it would to a normal person?’ said DC Kaye Willis.

  Bloom chose not to challenge the concept that there is any such thing as a normal person. ‘More than that. If I’m right, this game has been designed specifically for them. I think someone has selected people with these traits and invited them to play.’

  ‘Selected how?’ Barker asked.

  ‘I don’t know. That’s where I need your help.’ Bloom looked at DC Logan. ‘Could it be something online? Somehow tracking their decisions and behaviours? Or even getting them to complete a questionnaire?’

  ‘How the hell do you do that without people getting suspicious?’ DS Green said.

  ‘People are completing questionnaires all the time,’ replied DC Logan. ‘For marketing purposes. All those pop quizzes. “What type of animal are you?” Things that trend on social media. They’re all designed to collect our personal data.’

  ‘So someone could place their own questionnaire into the mix to identify psychopaths?’ Jameson seemed to be coming around to the theory.

  ‘It’s possible. I can look at the online activity of these four people and see if they completed any quizzes or questionnaires,’ said Logan.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Bloom.

  ‘And how sure are you of this theory?’ said Chief Superintendent Barker. ‘How much effort should we be putting into this theory compared to the other two?’

  ‘I think it would be sensible to pursue all three for the sake of open-mindedness. But there’s one more element that I think adds weight to the third option.’ Bloom reached into her handbag and pulled out a card she’d bought at the petrol station. It had a picture on the front of a bunny driving a red train and at the top it said, YOU ARE ONE. ‘I think “Happy First Birthday” is a play on words, or perhaps even a joke. I think it sends a message; it says, “I’ve been watching you and have identified that you are one.” Being chosen would make the dare even more intoxicating to a self-centred, highly competitive risk-taker.’

  DC Kaye Willis leaned forward in her seat. ‘You’re saying we have four psychopaths out there playing some sick game and no idea why?’

  Jameson smiled at Willis and then looked at Bloom. ‘Oh no. What Dr Bloo
m is saying is that someone is selecting psychopaths to play a game, and that an estimated one per cent of the population are psychopaths. So we have way in excess of four players. If she’s right, of course.’

  There was total silence.

  21

  With the girls at school, Claire’s kitchen looked much less cluttered: no toys on the floor or crayons covering the table. ‘So where’s Jane gone?’ Jameson asked.

  ‘Shopping in town with her friends. Not that she has any money, poor thing. I’ve given her twenty quid but that won’t get much more than some lunch, will it? Tell me, what’s with all the secrecy? Why I need to speak to you in private?’ Claire asked, deepening her voice in a pretty convincing impression of her brother.

  Jameson suppressed his rising panic. He didn’t like the idea of Jane being out unsupervised. Faye had murdered her husband. Could Lana hurt her own daughter?

  ‘It’s our latest theory. There’s a chance Lana might have been selected to play this game because of her personality type.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You know the stuff you’ve been complaining about? That she’s an irresponsible mother, that she drinks too much and has crazy one-night stands. There may be more to it.’

  ‘Go on.’ Claire slurped her tea noisily, just like their mother.

  ‘You’re not going to like this, sis, but Lana’s been lying for years. She’s never been deployed oversees by the Army because she’s never been in the Army, or the Navy, or the RAF, or any military organization for that matter.’

  Claire held the mug below her mouth. ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not and never has been employed by the military or the government, neither overtly nor covertly. An old colleague I worked with at River House checked every database. He ran her information through all their systems using personal details, photo recognition, biometrics such as fingerprints and DNA – and nothing.’