The Present: The must-read Christmas Crime of the year!

‘Please, take a seat,’ he said.

Gingerly, she sat down. Townsend settled himself behind his desk across from her. It was the same arrangement as in the interview room just moments before, but the atmosphere was now completely different. The sense of hostility was gone. Townsend gently offered Anna another coffee, apologised again for his earlier treatment of her, and then dug out a file from his desk drawer.

‘Look familiar?’ he asked, sliding the file across to her.

Anna opened it and leafed through the pages inside. They were transcripts of emails – the emails sent to her by the ‘whistleblower’ inside CID – and the emails Anna had sent back in return.

‘You’ve been monitoring me all along, I take it,’ Anna said.

‘In a manner of speaking. This whistleblower you’ve been communicating with – it’s me, Ms Vaughan. All that so-called insider information you’ve been receiving came from the laptop sitting here on this very desk between us.’

‘But … But I …’

‘Had a single word of it been true, Ms Vaughan, you would of course have been totally justified to make it public in your newspaper articles. As it happens, it wasn’t true at all. It was lies, Ms Vaughan. I fabricated everything – the cock-up with forensics, the missing CCTV footage, the procedural irregularities.’

‘You duped me.’

‘Yes,’ said Townsend, without a hint of gloating. He was, if anything, apologetic. ‘Yes, Ms Vaughan, I duped you. And you will, of course, be keen to know why. Well, now the deception has been revealed, the time has come to explain what’s really going on with the Steiner investigation.’

He opened up his laptop. An audio-visual screen behind his desk lit up, displaying a police forensics photograph.

‘This is the Steiners’ bedroom as we found it after the abduction,’ Townsend explained. ‘As you can see, the bed sheets are all disturbed, a chair is tipped over, there are signs of a struggle all around the room … and, of course, there’s the blood.’

A second photograph showed a huge black mass of blood on the floor beside the bed and thick, red streaks leading away from it towards the door.

‘It’s Ben Steiner’s blood,’ Townsend went on. ‘Forensics got an ID on it almost straight away – despite what we led you to believe, Ms Vaughan. We’re pretty sure he was attacked in the bed with an axe of some sort, that his body fell here, next to the bed, and that he was then dragged – either dead or unconscious – across the floor.’

A third photo showed the blood streaks leading across the Steiners’ first-floor landing and disappearing into the bathroom.

‘The body, what’s left of it, was found in the bath tub. Do you have a strong stomach, Ms Vaughan?’

‘I … um … well …’

‘I can jump ahead. You don’t need to see it.’

‘No. No, I can take it. Show me.’

She regretted it almost at once. But although she winced, she forced herself not to look away.

‘We think the axe that was used on Ben Steiner in the bedroom is the same on that was used to dismember him in the bath tub,’ Townsend said, staring at the horrific photograph on the screen with cool professional detachment. ‘As you can see, Mr Steiner’s body was completely hacked to pieces. The head is missing, as are several internal organs – the heart, the spleen, the liver. Everything was left piled up here, as you can see. Are you all right, Ms Vaughan?’

Anna was no longer looking at the photograph. She had her hand over her mouth and was breathing slowly and deeply.

A few seconds later she had composed herself. When she looked back, the screen was blank again.

‘Okay?’ Townsend asked, genuinely concerned.

Anna nodded, swallowed, then said: ‘And what about Sharon Steiner? Any idea what happened to her?’

‘No, apart from the fact that she’s missing. There was a small quantity of her blood on one of the pillows, suggesting she was struck or attacked in some way while she was still in the bed. It probably wasn’t a fatal attack, just enough to subdue her. Our assumption at present is that the intruder killed Ben Steiner in the bed, most likely with an axe. Very quickly afterwards he rendered Sharon Steiner unconscious, and this gave him time to drag Ben’s body to the bathroom and dismember it. After that, it seems that he carried Sharon away with him and completely disappeared. The only thing we’ve got to go on are a few grainy images caught on the CCTV camera of a petrol station quarter of a mile away. I’ll show you.’

He tapped a few buttons on the laptop, and on the screen behind the desk some murky, colourless petrol pumps and a stretch of road just across from them appeared. One, two, three jerky frames played in sequence, over and over on a loop, showing the barely discernible shape of a van passing by along that stretch of road.

‘The quality’s too bad for us to get a number plate or any distinguishing ID on that van,’ Townsend said as the loop of three images repeated itself again and again. ‘But the time these pictures were taken and the direction the van’s going in would tally perfectly with an intruder making their getaway from 19 Elm Crescent.’

‘But … I don’t understand, Detective Inspector. Why lead me to believe that your whole investigation is a shambles? Why make me think that? And for God’s sake, why let me print it?’

Townsend poured himself a fresh coffee, settled himself into his chair, took a moment to collect his thoughts, then spoke.

‘We don’t know the identity of the man who killed Ben Steiner and abducted Sharon Steiner – but whoever he is, he’s not entirely unknown to us.’

‘It’s the so-called “Santa” killer, isn’t it,’ Anna put in. ‘The killer who always strikes in December, breaks into a home, kills the man, abducts the woman, holds her hostage until Christmas Day when at last he kills her.’

Townsend nodded: ‘All that stuff’s in the public domain, Ms Vaughan. But what you won’t know about are the Twelve Days of Christmas.’

‘What do you mean, the Twelve Days of Christmas?’

‘We’ve kept this information strictly out of the media. Nobody knows about it except those of us in CID dealing directly with the Santa investigation. You see, Ms Vaughan, every time Santa strikes, every time he abducts a woman and holds her hostage, he contacts us. He makes it very clear – crystal clear – that all communication between him and us is strictly private. If we speak to the press about it, the hostage dies immediately. If we keep it private, there’s a slim chance we might just find her alive. So, we keep quiet – and that’s when Santa starts taunting us with clues as to where to find the missing girl. These clues – or taunts, or whatever the hell they are – come in one at a time, sometimes two or three in rapid succession in a single twenty-four hour period. And each one is based on “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.’

‘Like the note attached to that awful present left outside my door!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me … ’

‘Yes,’ nodded Townsend. ‘That’s Santa. Perhaps there’s a cryptic meaning in the contents of that present, a clue as to how to find Sharon Steiner before the time runs out. Or perhaps he’s just playing mind games with us. Or perhaps he’s just amusing himself. God alone knows. What I know, however, is that for the last twelve years he’s been doing the same thing, and every time CID fails to make sense of the clues until it’s too late. All we ever find is the body of the victim, and not so much as a trace of that bastard Santa … until he surfaces again with a fresh victim and starts the whole process rolling again.’

‘Why does he do it?’ Anna asked. ‘Have you attempted to psychologically profile him?’

‘There’s a file on his possible psychological motivations that’s two inches thick, Ms Vaughan, but it’s no damned used to me. I’m not a psychologist, I’m just a copper. My job’s to find him, not analyse him.’

‘But you haven’t found him.’

‘We will,’ Townsend said firmly. ‘My team will. I will. This year. This year it’s going to be different. This year, I’m on the case. This year me and my people will get the girl back alive. This year we’ll collar that bastard Santa and we’ll bang him up for the rest of his life. This year.’

He got to his feet and paced about for a few moments, tense and agitated.

‘He likes playing games with the police,’ he said at last. ‘Right from the start it’s how he’s always operated. He snatches his victim then taunts the police with clues as to how to catch him. Every time it’s the same. And every time he outwits us. We’re always too slow. We never work out the clues until it’s just that bit too late. But this time around, Ms Vaughan, I’ve decided that I will change the rules.’

‘I think I see your tactics,’ Anna put in. ‘You’ve deliberately made yourself and your investigative team look incompetent. That’s why you posed as a whistleblower and got in touch with me. You made sure I put all this stuff in the paper, and now Santa thinks he’s dealing with a bunch of fools.’

‘Precisely. Painful as it is to paint myself as a cretin in public, it’s a price I’m willing to pay to get Santa to drop his guard. I want him to get overconfident. I want him think he’s already beaten us. I want him to start making mistakes … and I’m hoping that’s exactly what’s happened already.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘That “present” that turned up on your doorstep a few hours ago. It’s the first time he’s ever sent anything like that to an outsider, to somebody other than the CID investigators coming after him. For the first time ever, he’s changed his procedure. And that, surely, must mean something.’

‘But why the hell would Santa start sending things to me?’

‘I can’t answer that, Ms Vaughan, but this is the first time he’s ever sent a clue to anyone other than the police. It’s not like him.’

‘Maybe he saw me speaking up at the press conference.’

‘Quite possibly. Whatever the reason, the fact that he’s suddenly shifted his tactics tells me he’s thinking differently about CID this year. My hope is that he’s getting cocky, that he wants to run rings around the supposedly incompetent DI Townsend who’s been sent to catch him. The fact that he’s directed his first clue not to me but to you, Ms Vaughan, is a hopeful sign – at least, that’s how I choose to see it. I hope to God I’m right; we might just have a chance to save that poor Steiner girl if I am. I’m sorry, Ms Vaughan, that you’ve found yourself unexpectedly dragged into all this. It was never my intention. But you have been dragged into it now. Santa’s dragged you in. He wants you involved. He wants you to come and play his deadly “Twelve Days of Christmas” game. And I’m sorry to say that it’s too late for you to back out now.’

‘He’ll kill Sharon Steiner if I don’t play along with this madness?’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘But if we figure out his game, and beat him at it, we could save Sharon Steiner and put a stop to Santa once and for all.’

Townsend nodded slowly and said: ‘I could use your help in this investigation, Ms Vaughan. Santa’s taken an interest in you. A keen interest. If he’s hovering around, even at a distance and in the shadows, that gives us at least some chance of catching him. And the more he believes me and my team are incompetent idiots, the more chance there is of him becoming overconfident and giving himself away.’

‘You want to use me as bait?’

‘It’s not what I want, Ms Vaughan, it’s what Santa himself decides to do. Since he’s involved you in his plans this year, then me and my team have to work with that. And that means working with you. Is that acceptable to you?’

‘I don’t see I have much choice,’ said Anna. ‘And if it means saving Sharon Steiner then yes, of course it’s acceptable to me. I only hope I’m up to whatever it is you want me to do.’

‘I’m confident that you’re more than up to it,’ Townsend said with conviction. ‘After all, you’ve been road-tested already.’

‘What do you mean, “road-tested”?’

‘Why do you think I gave you such a rough ride just before? I don’t normally behave like that, let me assure you. I needed to see how you handled pressure, whether you were tough enough for this job, whether you’d stand up for yourself.’

‘I always stand up for myself.’

‘I had to see that with my own eyes. And I did. I was impressed. You passed the test. I have every faith you can help us on this case, Ms Vaughan. The stakes are very high. But I think, this year, we can turn the tables on that bastard Santa once and for all.’

‘I’m all for that,’ said Anna. ‘Okay, now I’m seconded to CID, what happens next?’

‘The contents of the box you received have been sent over to forensics. I don’t see what we can do until we get their report. Despite the lies I’ve been feeding you about our forensics team, they’re world-class. They’ll have a full DNA analysis in the next twenty-four hours. We might learn something that points us more decisively in the right direction.’

‘Don’t you have any idea who Santa might be?’

‘He’s like a ghost. He seems to be able to move around the country and leave barely a trace of himself behind. No decent sightings, never a scrap of forensics, nothing. My team at CID are working on theories and hunches and sheer trial and error, trawling through known names in our files and looking for anything that might connect someone we already know to Santa. It’s all starting to feel a bit desperate, to tell you the truth. But we do at least have one suspect whose name we’re keeping in mind.’

‘Can you tell me who it is?’

‘Victor Maxen.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘There’s no reason why you should. He’s nothing, a petty thief, has been picked up by the law a dozen times since he was a child. There’s no reason CID should be remotely interested in him … except for one thing. There’s a minor police report concerning him dated three weeks before one of the abductions four years ago. Somebody was spotted lurking about outside the house the evening before the abduction took place. A neighbour called the police and the officers who turned up found Victor Maxen and confronted him. There were no grounds to arrest him, he wasn’t in possession of anything, and the worst he’d actually done was hang about where he had no need to be. So the officers told him to bugger off and that’s exactly what he did. Later that night, Santa broke into that same house.’

‘Is that really enough to link Victor Maxen to the Santa case? It could simply be coincidence.’

‘By itself it could. Except that, in the course of our investigation this year, we made a connection that nobody else had made. We found an arrest report from a month prior to when Santa’s very first victim was abducted. Victor Maxen was picked up and charged with conspiracy to commit burglary. The house that police believed he was intending to rob was the house belonging to that first victim. The case never went to court in the end and was dropped. But that’s twice that Maxen has been positively identified as being in the immediate vicinity of Santa’s victims prior to them being attacked. Twice in twelve years. Slim evidence, but even

so …’

‘Have you spoken to Maxen about this?’

‘I’ve got people out looking for him right now. He’s a slippery fish – but we’ll find him and bring him in for questioning sooner or later.’

‘What’s he like? What sort of person is he?’

‘Unremarkable to look at. You’d pass him in the street and not notice. Average height, average build. The thing to remember is how many serial killers fit that same description. Average, unremarkable.’ Townsend shrugged. ‘It’s just one lead we’re following up. Maybe it’s a red herring. But he’s the nearest thing we’ve got to a prime suspect at the moment.’

‘Maybe now that Santa’s taken an interest in me, you might get the breakthrough you’re looking for,’ said Anna.

‘That’s the plan.’ And he shot her a sideways glance and added: ‘God, I really do make it sound like I’m using you as bait. I’m sorry, that’s not the way I want you to feel you’re being treated.’

‘I don’t mind being the bait just so long as you get your hands on that bastard before he clamps his jaws around me.’

‘He won’t touch you, Ms Vaughan. I won’t let that happen. I swear to you. I’m determined to outsmart him this time, to figure out his game before it’s too late. And you’re going to help me. Whatever was in that “present” Santa left for you, there’ll be a meaning in it, a clue as to where we can reach Sharon Steiner. He wants to see if we can make sense of it. That’s how he gets his kicks. God knows why, but that’s how Santa’s twisted mind works. But the main thing is that we beat him, Anna – may I call you Anna?’

‘Of course.’

‘And call me Jim. Losing the formality saves so much effort. Like I was saying, the main thing is that we beat him … that I beat him, me and my team at CID. We have to outthink him, meet his match no matter what insane clues he throws at us, we have to be—’

He broke off, interrupted by the urgent ringing of his phone. He took the call, and almost at once his expression changed.

‘Excellent work, Mike,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Take him to interview room 1, I’ll be right there.’

‘A lead?’ Anna asked as Jim hung up the phone and went striding towards the door.

‘Better than that. My people have just hauled in Victor Maxen. He’s downstairs right now.’

‘Would I be permitted to attend the interview?’ Anna said.

‘No,’ Jim sat flatly.

‘I’m not just an idle observer in this business. I’m involved.’

‘I understand that, but I’m bound by regulations. It’s impossible. But we can arrange for you to observe the interview via CCTV from a room we have set up nearby. I’ll send somebody along to take you there.’

‘I appreciate that,’ Anna said, but even as she spoke Jim turned sharply on his heel and marched away, eager to get to the interview room and the prime suspect who awaited him there.

Chapter 3

A uniformed officer arrived and led Anna through a labyrinth of corridors until at last he brought her to a small, grey room somewhere in the bowels of the police station. She settled herself in front of a row of CCTV screens, on which she could see various angles of the interview room where Victor Maxen was being held. She leaned forward, bringing her face close to one of the screens, trying to get a better look at him. He was sitting in a chair, his left ankle resting across his right knee, picking idly at one of his shoe laces. He was much slighter than Anna had been expecting, with high cheekbones and narrow, unfriendly eyes. His lips were plump, almost feminine, but the teeth behind them were large and yellow and unevenly spaced. There was nothing appealing in this face. It exuded hostility and betrayal and cruelty – at least, in Anna’s opinion it did. It seemed to her to be the archetypal face of a killer.

But to think like this was to be prejudiced. Shifty eyes and bad teeth were no indication of a man’s character. Yes, he was a villain, of that there was no doubt – but that didn’t make him a killer.

As she watched, Anna saw Jim enter the interview room along with a short, thickset, burly-looking CID detective who was part of Jim’s team. Maxen stared blankly back at them without so much as a flicker of emotion. His only reaction was to stop playing with his shoe lace. He had been in and out of police interview rooms all his life, he was far too accustomed to this whole procedure to feel any apprehension about what was happening. He simply looked bored.

Jim seated himself across from Maxen and got the interview underway, announcing into the tape recorder that present in the room with the suspect was DI James Townsend and DS Michael Lowry.

‘We’ve got a few things we’d like to discuss with you, Victor,’ Jim said. ‘Feel like talking?’

‘Am I under arrest?’ Maxen asked. His voice was low, almost inaudible. Anna had to turn up the volume on the monitor to make out his words clearly.

‘You’re under caution,’ Jim said. ‘I’m hoping you’ll be good enough to help us as regards our enquiries into a certain matter.’

‘What matter?’

‘Maybe you could tell us?’

Maxen suddenly sneered, curling his big upper lip disdainfully. He did not look in the mood for any games with the police. He took a big breath and let out a bored, exasperated sigh.

But Jim ignored him and pressed on.

‘Anna Vaughan,’ he said. And when Maxen just stared blankly back at him, he added: ‘Come on, Victor, you know who I’m talking about. How did you first become aware of her? What drew your attention to her?’

Maxen continued to stare sullenly – and then suddenly he grinned, stretching his fleshy lips to reveal a jumble of large, uneven teeth.

‘Am I supposed to have killed someone?’ he asked softly.

‘What makes you ask that? I haven’t said anything about killing. Why have you jumped to the conclusion that this is about a murder?’

‘Doesn’t take a genius, old sport. You want to pin something big on me. I can tell.’

‘I’m not trying to pin anything on anyone, Victor, I’m just asking you about Anna Vaughan.’

‘Don’t know the name.’

‘I think you do.’

Maxen shrugged, pouted, rolled his eyes, and muttered something that Anna didn’t catch.

‘Can you speak up for the sake of the recording, Victor,’ Jim prompted him.

‘I said if you really want to fit me up, at least have the courtesy to tell me what it is.’

‘I’ve told you, I’m not trying to fit you up, Victor, I’m just trying to get to the truth.’

‘Truth about what?’

‘We’ll get to that. For the time being, let me ask the questions, okay? Now – are you sure you’ve never heard the name Anna Vaughan?’

‘I don’t know the name Anna Vaughan,’ he echoed sarcastically.

‘But you know her address. You went to her flat, just a few hours ago.’

‘Oh, did I?’

‘You dropped off a package … or should I say a present?’

Maxen paused, examined the dirty fingernails on his right hand – then the ones on his left – and at last said in a voice so soft that it was almost a whisper: ‘I’m really starting to get the feeling that I ought to have a solicitor present.’

‘You have every right to one,’ Jim said. ‘But I was hoping you’d be prepared to discuss a few things first. Because you know why we’ve brought you here, you know what we’re interested in, and you know you might as well start talking to us about it. Right now, Victor.’

Anna was watching Victor Maxen’s face very carefully. Hints and traces of various emotions passed across his features – boredom mainly, and irritation, and a contemptuous exasperation for what he was being put through – but she saw nothing that suggested that he was unduly anxious; that he had any particularly awful secrets to hide. Here, surely, was a small-time villain going through the tedious rigmarole of a police interrogation.

But then again, would a serial killer as cold and as ruthless as ‘Santa’ ever outwardly show the signs of their inner evil? For a psychopath, there was nothing so very terrible about slaughtering innocent people. Sadism and murder instilled no guilt in men like him.

‘Feel free to speak about whatever’s on your mind, Victor,’ Jim said mildly. ‘We’re willing to wait. How about we start with Sharon Steiner. Tell me about her.’

Maxen thought for a few moments, then said: ‘Who’s she, a singer?’

DS Lowry got suddenly to his feet, tipping his chair over.

Maxen himself didn’t even flinch. He simply turned his face to look directly at one the CCTV cameras pointed him – and in so doing stared out of the screen straight at Anna, almost as if he could see her watching him. In a calm, clear voice, he said: ‘Note for the recording: one of the police officers has now adopted a physically threatening posture towards me.’