Yarrow: The Smiley Killer

16:30

"Would you look at that?" Doug whispered as the plans were pinned to the boards.

Each park had a public right of way through the gardens that backed on to the park. Each body had been found on the other side of the fence and even better, Scott had found that each had been dumped on the day of bin collection around each park. No one could ever doubt his research skills.

The three of them stared at the board and breathed slowly. It was the feeling you get when you finally complete the edge pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and you can start filling in the finer details.

"So what now?" Scott asked.

"Well Teddy will probably be leaving the pub in about an hour and a half if previous nights are anything to go by. Scott can you contact his neighbours and ask the questions. What time has he been getting home recently? Any unusual behaviour? etc."

"On it," he said jumping out his seat, strutting out of the office, grabbing his fake, brown leather jacket off his chair and out the office.

"I'll go ask some of the neighbours for CCTV and then go find Carl, He live near this one anyway so it's basically on the way. I've text him to see what he's up to tonight," Christine grabbed her coat that hung on the corner of the white board. A thin, grey Parker coat, she threw it on and put her hood up.

"Hold on," Doug said just as Christine left the office, just before she was out of ear shot.

Christine turned to face Doug, her face expressionless but straining to maintain the poker face, "yes Dougy?"

"How well do you know Carl?"

"He's an old friend, I told you."

Doug lowered his brow so he looked up at Christine, the way a father would as he tries to figure out if he's being lied to. All that was missing were his pair of fake, thick rimmed spectacles to look over.

"Okay, fine. He's just an ex. We broke up a couple years ago. There's nothing there I just know when he's lying."

Doug just 'hmmed' and maintained his stare.

"Fine, he was THE ex. He cheated on me, lied and I broke it off. The end. No residual feelings."

"Okay."

"I mean it I'm over it."

"I didn't ask that, but thanks for pointing it out so emphatically. Does he still have feelings for you?"

"Doubt it, he had no conscious. Bounced from girl to girl. If he had feelings then he wouldn't have cheated."

"But he normally broke it off right, this time he got dumped."

"Right."

Doug raised his eyebrows and stared at Christine. She hated this look, happened very rarely but it was Doug's way of saying 'you're smarter than this, put two and two together.' Instead of thinking she reverted to being a stroppy teenager being told off by her parents.

"What!?"

"You know I care about you Christine. I don't want to see you getting hurt."

"Doug, sit down," she grabbed his arm and led him to sit in the chair behind his desk. She leaned over him so her eyes were centimeters from his. "I promise he can't hurt my feelings any more than he did. Don't worry about little ol' me."

She kissed Doug on the forehead, stood up and kicked his wheely chair away with him on.

"Beside he's a big girls blouse. He probably couldn't tell Olivia from Lacey - he's so dim. Pretty boy but not much going on up there. Plus I can easily kick his arse and do my nails at the same time."

She gave him a wink and left the office, the only other sound Doug heard from Christine was an excessively loud, "bye Kristian, see you later," shouted across the office.

A smirk crossed his face before he turned back to his board. His fingers caressed the string, physically following the connections. He wondered whether he had got lazy, arrogant or both. He used to do this all the time as a young detective. He couldn't even remember when he'd stopped but there was a simplicity to it, almost a romanticism. 

He then realised - He had something in a theory for how the bodies were dumped, but they were no closer to finding the killer. His heart sank. The energy that came from the realisation they had figured something out  dissipated like a quick spray of deodorant. It was a big step but in reality he was pessimistic that it wasn't enough to save tonight's victim. 

He looked at the numbers, they had been committed to memory by now but he still wanted to check over them, a bit like your first lottery ticket, just making sure he didn't forget them. They were scarred in to his retina's and yet he couldn't stop running his eyes over them. Were they bible versus, Christine was so convinced that they were. It fitted so nicely with Teddy too and he could see Christine's train of thought:

Young man raised by abusive mother, forced to read scripture, joins pro-Isreal movement. That with his upbringing puts him in potentially hostile situations and he learns to get in to trouble. Makes sense so far. Yet he couldn't get around what had happened to make him turn. Why would a man who, granted could lose his temper, start finding women with no siblings and then murder and scar them with scripture. Where was the jump? He didn't come across as a cold, calculated psychopath, more of a grown man-child with a temper. Yet when asked about Lacey...he still didn't like that pause, something about him was off.

Those numbers though, 2.13.2/4.16.1/8.18.2/5.4.1 - Old testament verses seemed too convenient somehow, but in a forced way they did seem to connect. But why would he be murdering women with no siblings.

He reached to the right of his laptop for his coffee mug. It was cold. He grabbed the second mug on his desk - It was empty. A third mug - it had been there since the previous night - The coffee had dried to the side of the mug. There was a fourth behind his monitor screen that had started developing a white mold in it. He dry heaved.