CHAPTER EIGHT
It felt strange, to be stalking another victim so soon after his last. Before, he’d left it months between each one, if not longer. He’d make a kill, and then there would be a gap in which he could enjoy the sensations of peace and fulfilment that came from doing it. There was always a kind of joy that came from a kill, and normally he took his time in basking in it.
Now, though, with Lars Ingram’s execution looming, he didn’t have the time to waste like that. He had to act. He had a lot of work to do if he was going to accomplish everything he had to in time.
Yet there were some things that couldn’t be rushed.
Currently, he was sitting outside a café, watching a young woman wrangle two small children with a kind of expertise that would almost have been impressive if he had cared about such things.
He didn’t care, except about the fact that she cared. She sold that caring, as an au pair to the von Ryan family. It made her a target.
Amelie Pichou, twenty. Pretty, he had to admit that, with delicate features and a button nose. Not that it mattered much. It wasn’t about the looks of the people he killed. This wasn’t a date.
No, it was much more intimate than that. The most intimate moment that Amelie would ever have in her life.
As Amelie led the children down the street, he followed her, staying back, watching her. This part was about learning everything he could about her. About observing her, the way she reacted, the things that might be useful when he made his move. He wanted to know what would lure her into place, what would give him the time he needed to make those precise seven strikes with the knife, exactly the way that Lars Ingram had made them.
He had the knife on him now. It would have been easy to walk up and kill her, there in the street. He could have done it and walked off before anyone even reacted.
Two things stopped him. The first was that he was always more cautious than that. He had no intention of getting caught. Here, in the street, there would be witnesses and cameras. He’d become expert at avoiding both. One of the reasons that he’d taken to copying Lars Ingram’s work was that he’d been so successful.
Ingram had managed to strike again and again like a ghost because he’d picked those who were likely to be isolated, surrounded only by people they were there to care for, not those who could try to protect them. Ingram had managed to get into homes without being seen, and without leaving so much as a trace of evidence behind him until that last fateful day.
He was determined to be more careful than that. He wouldn’t leave DNA behind.
The second reason was that he wanted to do Lars Ingram’s methods justice. He wanted to honor the man who was his inspiration, and that meant doing things exactly the way he would have done them. It meant breaking in exactly the way he would, luring his victims to the perfect place, finishing them with the same knife wounds to the same places.
There was a kind of deep satisfaction that came from getting those details perfect. It wasn’t a ritual, exactly. It felt like playing a difficult piece of music perfectly, getting every note correct.
Doing that meant he needed information, which was why he kept following Amelie, keeping far enough back that she wouldn’t notice, and crucially, that anyone watching cameras later wouldn’t be able to spot him tailing her. Not that anyone looked. People never looked properly. Amelie certainly didn’t look around to see him following her.
She went back to the von Ryans’ house, and he followed as far as he could. It was a large but modern structure, with elegant lines and long banks of windows looking out onto the rest of the city, and over small but well-tended gardens.
He found a spot not far from the house where he could watch it, sitting on a bench and pretending to look at his phone while he secretly used it to take photographs, trying to get a sense of the layout of the place. He took his time, noting the locations of the cameras around the perimeter of the house, then trying to work out exactly what fell in their fields of vision.
It would be a more difficult entry than it had been with the Estrom place. Certainly more difficult than the retirement home. Clearly the von Ryans took their security more seriously. Yet, he suspected that it would be possible to disable one of the cameras without being seen, and from there, he should have a route to get inside.
Of course, if the house had been full of people, it still wouldn’t have worked. Even as he watched, he saw Amelie bring the children up to their mother and father, saw the children run around them boisterously. If all five of them were in the house, then it would create far too many opportunities for him to be seen. There would be too many uncontrolled elements.
That was why, when he’d been picking his target, one of the first things he’d done was to call up Amelie Pichou’s social media accounts, and those of her employers. On her account, he hadn’t found much that would be useful, but on Ms. von Ryan’s accounts, he’d found everything he needed: all the details of the ski trip to San Moritz they were taking with the children. At that point, the fact that Amelie had plans in the city tomorrow had become very relevant: the au pair wasn’t going with them.
Tonight, she would be in the house alone, probably enjoying everything that went with a place like this. Probably pretending that she owned the house for one night.
He watched her guide the children inside, continuing to take pictures as she led them through the house. It meant that he could get a sense of the routes she took through the place, and the room she went back to once the children were safely playing. He scanned the house, looking for the perfect spot in which to make his kill.
It was perhaps another ten minutes before he was satisfied that he had everything he needed. He knew that he had to leave then, though. It was probably wise not to sit here too long. People tended to notice more in affluent neighborhoods. Standing, he started to walk away.
He would be back though. Tonight, he would return, and then Amelie Pichou would die.