“Or someone with a split personality?  Couldn’t a person with a split personality have done all three?” Smith asked, keen to put his rudimentary knowledge of Forensic Psychology to the test.  Millar knew little about such things, but his urge to simplify rather than complicate things showed in the disapproving look he cast Smith’s way.

Ruth shrugged her shoulders.  “Those cases are too rare to crop up.  Multiples are usually females who have been abused either physically, or sexually, or both during their early formative years.  As a reaction to the abuse, and as a coping strategy, they create alternate identities.  Few males are ever given that diagnosis.  American males on death row frequently claim to have split or multiple personalities.  It’s often just a ploy to try to get out of the death penalty.  I’ve never come across a true case of multiple personality disorder in Northern Ireland before, so the likelihood of the killer being a multiple is slim.  If this were the case, would she have the physical strength to carry out these crimes?  Wouldn’t she be more inclined to kill the men who used these women’s services?  In any case, it is males who usually kill females.  I’d rather we consider my original ideas further.”  Ruth seemed insistent.  “There does seem to have been two killers.”

“Two killers?  Tell me more.”  Millar looked unsure about it all.  He still thought it was one killer who had, of necessity, to alter his M.O.

“Modus operandi.  Similar in the first two.  Vinegar to disable, hit on the head and throat cut with a well used but sharp knife, left at the primary crime scene.   Some differences in the third.  No vinegar to disable, same method of killing, but with a very sharp knife, victim taken to a secondary crime scene.  Then there are the religious elements.  In the first two they are very spur-of-the-moment, imaginative, artistic even.  The person creating the religious imagery does so with found objects…..material from the immediate surroundings, like the rusty barbed wire, for instance.  He uses things he didn’t bring with him specifically for the purpose.  In the third killing, you could say that the person was a bit predictable, perhaps even lacking in imagination.  There was some planning involved.  He brought the bread with him to the scene, as though trying to make a mockery out of her by giving her a type of last communion.  Notably, it was one without the wine.  No trace of wine in her gut or on her face, I see, from the Coroner’s report.  So, perhaps this killer was religious himself in that he didn’t want to give her the full rites of the Church, since that would have been wrong.  Wouldn’t it Smith?”