Free A Deadly Compulsion by Michael Kerr

very sharp knife.  But as you can see from the photo, Miss. Stroud was, to say the least, rather traumatised by the procedure.
    She is still alive, but alas, not for too much longer.  You will be in receipt of the rest of her within a few days.
    This one is for YOU, Laura.  I was going to ease up for a month or two and take a summer break, but your insults prompted me to give you something to feel rightfully guilty about.
    DO NOT BADMOUTH ME AGAIN, YOU FUCKING WHORE!!
    Shelley is going to suffer so much because of YOU.
    Sleep well,
    MARK
    Laura felt as though hot lead had cooled and set in her veins.  She had only felt this stupefied and sick at heart once before, and had not thought that she was capable of feeling so bad ever again.  She had got it wrong, screwed-up big time and triggered a response that she had not foreseen.  Shelley Stroud had been missing for four days.  And it was almost certain that when next seen, she would be a mutilated corpse.
    “Get it to the lab,” Laura whispered to Hugh, reaching for a cigarette as she wondered how she would cope with the knowledge that she had been, in part, responsible for the abduction, mutilation, and imminent murder of a young woman.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    ONCE he had broken through the long-standing mental barrier and made the decision to at least look at the paperwork, the floodgates were opened to a torrent of long suppressed patterns of thought that he had developed as a profiler.  Jim was at once engrossed and lost in morbid fascination, back in the groove, journeying through a hellish labyrinth as he searched for clues and absorbed himself in the puzzle that was before him.
    It was a little after eight a.m. when he rose, unable to ignore his full, pounding bladder any longer.  He took a leak, showered, then brewed coffee and sat out on the balcony for awhile, letting what he had read settle and separate out in his mind before going back inside to open a new file on his laptop, pausing for a second before punching in a title: Tacker-1.  He then listed the victims’ names, ages, height, hair and eye colour; every physical detail, however small.  Next, the injuries that they had sustained, and the method adopted and materials used to both bind and torture them with, followed by the locations and positions they were found in.  After a further two hours of contemplation, Jim began to assemble a preliminary outline of the murderer.  Every single serial killer he’d profiled had had an agenda, however warped.  They were incited and driven by deep-rooted trauma that was in almost every case born out of childhood mistreatment or neglect.  Some of their ilk ticked away like time-bombs until they detonated later in life, usually in their late teens or early twenties.  It was a fact that the vast majority of pattern murderers had a blueprint in their damaged minds, and would keep repeating their acts, continually striving – even if unconsciously – to mete out a punishment on whomever had originally maltreated them.  The usual cause for their condition was long-term abuse; mental, physical or a combination of both.  They would continue to kill until they were caught, or took their own lives.  And not many in his experience had offed themselves. It wasn’t in their nature.
    After two days, Jim had a feasible picture of the killer.  Profiling was not as big a deal as the books and movies made out.  Nine tenths of it was just commonsense police work, with studious attention to detail in minutia, sifting through what others might overlook or consider as trivial or irrelevant.  His method was to put all information that was known to appertain to the same offender under a logical mental microscope and attempt to focus in and flush out the dross; to see more clearly any ambiguous patterns and connections.  It was always a jigsaw with a piece missing, that would, when found, complete the picture; a cryptic code that could be broken and made sense of.  What had