My breath catches in my throat. Why do I have a sudden feeling of … it’s not exactly déjà vu, but it’s not far from it. Is it the white card on the board?

What else could it be?

Something important, says a stubborn voice in my head. Something you glimpsed for a fraction of a second, and can’t see any more.

Lifeworld online, 2 January 2015

Same Old Story: Misogyny Kills

by Sondra Halliday

So now we know his official nickname, this killer who has claimed four lives so far. The police didn’t want us to find out, which makes it rather strange and counterproductive that they invented such a memorable monicker for him: Billy Dead Mates. Of course someone’s going to succumb to temptation and leak a soubriquet like that. For all the police talk of confidentiality breaches and regrettable information spillages, they wouldn’t have created the tag if they hadn’t hoped it would stick and spread.

Remember the Name The Teddy stall at your local primary school’s summer fair? This is the grown-up, serious-crime version: Name The Evil Killer. If this monster goes down in the history books as Billy Dead Mates, a few sad-sack cops will have made their mark upon the world. That’s what the witty alias is all about: police egos. How much do you want to bet they’re all men? The names I’ve heard so far in connection with the investigation are male without exception: DC Simon Waterhouse, DI Giles Proust, DC James Wing, DS Neil Dunning. ‘I might not have caught the notorious killer,’ these chaps will brag to their grandkids one day, ‘but I sure as hell gave him a catchy nickname.’

Just as Billy must think he’s such a smartypants to have eluded capture for so long (it’s nearly four months since his first kill) so must the detectives hunting him be patting themselves on the back for their verbal cunning. Our Billy certainly seems, on the face of it, to be murdering pairs of close friends. His first two victims, Linzi Birrell from Combingham in the Culver Valley and Rhian Douglas from Poole, Dorset, were well known ‘BFFL’, to use their favoured terminology. Billy’s third and fourth victims might have been older, more affluent and less reliant on text-message acronyms to describe their relationship, but they too were best friends for life. Angela McCabe from Chiswick and Joshua Norbury from Spilling were ‘closer than siblings’, according to Norbury’s actual sibling Lisa.

It’s easy to see the logic the police must have followed: ‘This murderer is killing pairs of best friends! Billy Dead Mates is the perfect name for him! It’s a playful reworking of Billy No Mates!’