What if there were serial killers so clever that one didn’t even suspect that their murders were connected? The conception we had about serial killers was shaped by TV and Hollywood movies, by FBI profiles on people who due to traumatic experiences in their childhood attempted to recreate a moment of happiness by making lamp shades of human skin, or seeing the life ebb out of a young woman. Scott had reviewed all the literature he could get his hands on. Serial killers were always a product of upbringing and genes.
A dominating mother.
A traumatic experience in their childhood.
A head injury when they were small.
Ken Speis was not a product of any of those things. He had simply chosen to be evil. Because it was a choice, it was always a choice.
There were plenty of psychopaths in the world. Successful women and men were actually surprisingly often psychopaths. Quite possibly their powerful positions gave them an outlet for their urges to dominate others. Or sometimes they just controlled their family. But to become a murderer was a step hardly anyone made.
It was a step Ken had made with ease.
He had first met Heidi Voog in the meeting room of Scott’s wife’s home office. The nineteen-year-old Heidi had been an easy target for the twenty-five-year-old Ken. Ken had been there to interview Scott’s wife for an assignment he was doing during his psychology studies in the summer of 2008. He had been allowed to observe the session with Heidi, and afterwards he had offered to give her a ride back to her hostel. On the way back he had instead offered her to stay at his place for a few days. He had an entire house at Sovereign Island by himself, a luxury home.
Heidi had gladly accepted his offer.
Experiences. She had wanted experiences.
But in doing that she had been given an experience she could have done without.
The experience of being tortured, the experience of being murdered.
Ken had enjoyed studying psychology. He had almost enjoyed it as much as he had enjoyed studying design, which he had done the previous semester. But the psychology studies had done something to him, they had made him realise who he really was. It was said that psychology students had an above-normal rate of suicide; they read about so many mental disorders that they soon self-diagnosed themselves with at least a few of them. It had only taken Ken two lectures to diagnose himself. He had always suspected it. But it had been the lectures that had confirmed it. And it had been a relief. There was no hiding it anymore. Ken was a psychopath.
His fascination for the morbid, his lack of understanding other people’s reactions when they witnessed suffering.
Heidi wasn’t his first victim. He had been killing prostitutes since he was twenty-two.
But they didn’t excite him anymore. They were dirty, insignificant humans whom no one would miss. He simply hadn’t been able to contain himself when he had brought Heidi back to his house. The illness had taken over, and he had brought her down to the basement.
The basement where he could be himself. The basement where he had taken his sister.
And when he had stood there, a blood-sullied hammer in his hand, he had realised that he had crossed a line, that there was no returning.
Heidi hadn’t been a simple hooker. She would be reported missing. People would miss her.
But he wouldn’t give up without a fight. He had called the psychologist. Luckily she worked from a home office. She was the only one who had ever seen him with Heidi.
He had driven to her house the very next day. Claimed that he needed a couple of comments before finalising the paper he was writing. She had accepted, and just like that she had accepted death, accepted that he could take her life.
It had almost been too simple. He had given her a weak dose of Etorphine, a tranquilliser used on animals. Not enough to kill her. Just enough to knock her out, make her more handleable.
He had used the same drug on prostitutes before. A simple prick in their neck, and they had been like jelly in his hands.
The rest had been simple routine. He had located some pieces of rope in the garage. Her husband had obviously been an eager angler, so there had been plenty of equipment lying around. And that had given him an idea. He had carried her into the garage, and hanged her from the beam that went across the ceiling. When her husband found her, he would automatically think it was his fault, that it was something he had done, that she had hanged herself above the boat to send him a signal. A last fuck-you from the grave. Perhaps he hadn’t paid her enough attention? Perhaps he had prioritized going fishing instead of spending time with her? Ken had smiled thinking about it. He had wished he was there to witness it.
The only thing that had worried him was that Heidi hadn’t been a prostitute. She hadn’t been a whore, she had been a backpacker. Her disappearance would be investigated.
To his great surprise, and great joy, he had been wrong. It turned out he had stumbled across a potential new pool of girls. It turned out that girls with psychological problems, girls with depression and medical diagnoses, hardly were investigated. He didn’t have to limit himself to hookers and insignificant dirty humans. If he could identify girls with mental disorders then the police were likely to take the easiest way out, to conclude that they had either committed suicide or disappeared out of their own free will.
Scott put down the diary they had found in Ken Speis’ house at Sovereign Island. It gave a glimpse into the psyche of a sick person, a cold and calculating human monster, a person devoid of emotions.
Andrew Engels had unmasked him. He had realised that it was Ken Speis who had been responsible for all the murdered girls, and Andrew had done the only right thing he could have done in the situation.
Was there ever any good reason to kill another human?
A week ago Scott hadn’t known what to answer.
Now he was one hundred percent sure.
It had been right of Andrew Engels to kill Ken Speis.
It had been one hundred percent right.
94
MONTH 10
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 150
NUMBER OF USERS: 90M
VALUATION: $2 BILLION
Andrew squinted at the half-full glass of Sauvignon Blanc balancing on the weather-beaten wooden table in front of him. Only a small strip of beach separated his table from the vast ocean sloshing ashore fifteen metres from his feet. He snapped a mental photograph of the situation. It was a typical Instagram picture. A picture of a drink, on a canvass of sand and luxury. A picture of how happy and successful one was. A picture intended to make others envious, without crossing the line where it turned into bragging. It struck him that he never again would be able to share anything on Instagram, or the internet in general.
His life on social media was dead.
Dead and buried.
He was wealthy, very wealthy.
He had fifty-two million in his account. Enough money to stay hidden for the rest of his life. But he wasn’t happy – he was far from happy.
He had killed his best friend. A best friend who had turned out to be a ruthless serial killer, a psychopathic murderer, a best friend who had attempted to set him up as a potential fall guy for one of his murders, but still, his best friend.
Andrew hadn’t realised until Frank Geitner tossed a piece of paper in front of Roman Bezhrev, when they sat around that table in Nimbin, attempting to stare each other to death. Roman had had an appointment with Heidi Voog’s psychologist the day she disappeared. There was no doubt about it. The evidence had been there, straight in front of them on the table. But the piece of paper had also contained another name, a name Andrew knew well.
A. Brown, Andrew’s own name. There had been a problem though. Andrew had never been to a psychologist. He had never met Scott Davis’ wife. And that could only mean one thing.
Ken had gone there as A. Brown. As so many times in the past, he had used Andrew’s identity. Andrew knew why he had done it. It had never been a secret. The appointment had read: Interview with psychology student A. Brown. It was probably the reason Frank had never followed the lead up. There existed no psychology student with the name of A. Brown. But someone else had been studying psychology in 2008 – Ken Speis. And Andrew remembered that Ken had warned him that he couldn’t use his own name from time to time in 2008. Ken’s family was well-known on the Gold Coast. They had built up a nationwide chain of electronics stores before suddenly cashing out and moving to Hong Kong with all their money. Andrew’s girlfriend at the time, Ken’s sister Vanessa, had broken up with Andrew on a Monday and moved the very next day. She had said she was afraid to be with him, that she feared him. Andrew had called and sent letters, but she had never replied or picked up the phone.
Only Ken had remained on the coast, living in the family’s big mansion on Sovereign Island. And he had been the person who provided support for Andrew when his heart was broken. For that, Andrew would always be indebted to him.
In 2008 Ken’s family name had again hit the papers, something about possible tax fraud. Ken didn’t want to be identified with his father, and have to explain to everyone that he was the son of the man charged in the huge tax fraud case everyone on the coast was talking about.
It had in fact always been like that. When Ken wanted to avoid attention he just used Andrew’s name. It had to be like that. Andrew had just never thought Ken would be using his identity to commit murder.
Andrew had spent the first weeks back in office to confirm that his suspicions were correct. Ken was the last person who had talked to Fabian, he had personally witnessed them take the slippery slide down to the canteen. Still, Ken had said he didn’t know who Fabian was when Andrew broke the news of his death. Had Fabian told Ken about the virus, that it had been used to spy on users?
The comments from police about the cut off hands of Jodie Harris, and the foot and hand of Marissa Soo, which looked like they had been cut off by someone with a medical background. The police had taken it as a confirmation that Roman was their man; he had, after all, studied to become a doctor before he had ended up becoming a drug kingpin.
But there was another one with a medical background. A perfectionist who had said he looked forward to cutting open corpses during his studies.
The question was of course why body parts had suddenly started to appear. Ten young women had disappeared from the Gold Coast over the last five years, but only body parts from Jodie Harris and Marissa Soo had been found. Marissa Soo had most likely been a mistake. The murderer had attempted to dump a dismembered corpse in the ocean, but the wild weather had brought it back ashore. The finding of the cut-off hands belonging to Jodie Harris, who had disappeared two years prior, was a different case. There had to be an agenda behind the action. Why attract attention for something that wasn’t being actively investigated? It turned out that Roman’s car had been parked at the Australia Fair parking lot in the period during which the hands were dumped. No one would believe a serial killer who had avoided police for years would be so butterfingered; to dump a couple of hands in a garbage bin, two years after the murder. If so, it would have to be a scream for help, a prayer for police to catch him before he killed again.
Or it could be an elaborate attempt to lead the police in Roman’s direction. To make it easy for them to get a search warrant for his house approved, the very house where murder trophies had been found in obvious places.
Andrew thought back on how Ken had praised the way Roman’s house was decorated. He had asked to go for a walk by himself, inspecting the house, getting inspiration for his own home. Ken had had plenty of time to plant the murder trophies if he had wanted. And he had had a motive: He didn’t want to end up as Frank and Andrew, to be forced out of the company and lose his shares.
And then there was Roman’s last comment before dying. “Bob Hare knows who did it.” What on Earth had he meant by that?
Andrew vaguely remembered having seen the name
Bob Hare
in the top left corner of one of the psychological tests he had to complete before Y-Bator decided to invest money in Tuna Life.
It had taken Andrew two weeks to get access to the personal files on himself and Ken from Richard’s office. Richard was abroad, and Andrew had given his PA a white lie about police requiring the files.
“The Bob Hare tests? Of course, I’ll get them to you straightaway, Andrew” she had said, and handed Andrew a stack of papers. Andrew had taken behavioural and personality tests before, both during the interviews for the Ernst & Young job he had declined, and the Avensis Accounting job he had accepted. But the test Y-Bator had conducted had been somewhat different. He quickly flipped through the questionnaire and located the page with the final score.
Andrew had received four points.
Ken had scored thirty-two.
Andrew had opened Google and keyed in
The Bob Hare Test
, the tool Richard had used to test if the founders were suitable to lead the companies he invested in. When he looked at the search result he immediately understood Roman’s comment.
The Bob Hare Test was a test to identify psychopaths. Richard Smith was of the opinion that psychopaths were the best-suited to lead companies, and Ken had scored an almost perfect score.
Andrew had contacted his old girlfriend, Ken’s sister Vanessa, and asked her why she had dumped him and moved to Hong Kong with her parents. He had pressed her on why she had said she had been afraid of Andrew. Vanessa explained that Andrew had misunderstood. She had never been afraid of Andrew. She had been afraid of Ken. Afraid of what Ken would do to Andrew if she stayed with him.
It had been the final piece of evidence Andrew had needed.
Ken was a psychopath.
Ken was a murderer, a serial killer.
It hadn’t been that hard to kill Ken. Not after having witnessed Roman murder Frank in cold blood in Nimbin, not after having witnessed what Ken had been up to in his house at Sovereign Island.