Amateur Criminal Profiling

The unexpected encounter with the I.A.R.C. investigator completely dispelled Lin Jie's intention of continuing to survey the scene in the streets.

That brass instrument capable of detecting "abnormal fluctuations" was a Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.

He realized that his greatest advantage, his ability to read memories, was also his most fatal weakness.

Using his ability anywhere near a crime scene could expose him to the sight of professional hunters like a bonfire in the night.

Meeting force with force would be like throwing an egg against a rock. He had to change his approach and return to what he did best—information analysis.

That afternoon, he used the few copper pennies he had left to return to the cheap reading room run by the church.

The place was crowded and chaotic, full of all sorts of people. It was instead the perfect place to lose himself in the crowd.

This time, he no longer focused on the sensational front-page headlines. Instead, he began systematically gathering every newspaper published since Jack the Ripper's first case.

From The Times to The Daily Telegraph, and even the cheap penny papers that specialized in exaggerating terror and courting attention, he left none untouched.

He needed to build a sufficiently detailed "database."

He disguised himself as an ordinary citizen with a morbid obsession with the serial murders and spread out his crude workbench in an unnoticed corner—a borrowed sheet of white paper.

He had no pen, so he could only use a small piece of charcoal he had picked up beside the fireplace to make crooked notes on the paper.

First, he drew a simple map of the Whitechapel District.

This was thanks to the knowledge he had accumulated as a history student in his previous life, as well as the on-the-ground measurements he had made with his own footsteps over the past few days since crossing over.

Next, he began organizing and categorizing all the key information in a manner no one from the nineteenth century could possibly understand.

He drew a table.

The horizontal axis listed the "dates of the crimes," from the first case on August 31 to the latest case last night. He marked every point in time precisely.

The vertical axis contained several dimensions of "variables."

"Victim identity": instead of simply recording them as "prostitutes," he broke it down into "age," "health condition," "whether they had a fixed residence," and "whether they had been drinking that night."

"Crime location": aside from the street names, he specifically marked the "degree of enclosure" of the surroundings—open streets, alleys, or courtyards—the "nearby light sources"—distance to gas lamps—and the "number of escape routes."

"Method of murder": he discarded all speculation about "demons" and recorded only the most objective facts—the "method of throat cutting"—one slash or multiple slashes—the "types and number of organs removed," and the "treatment of wounds"—neat or crude.

"Special phenomena": in this column, he wrote down only two words—"sulfur smell" and "no witnesses."

When this charcoal-drawn table, filled with the flavor of modern logical analysis, had taken preliminary shape, even though it was only a rough prototype, the patterns within it already made Lin Jie himself shudder.

A clear predatory pattern leaped from the page.

The intervals between Jack the Ripper UMA's crimes were shortening, from several weeks at first to merely several days now. This proved that it was either growing hungrier and hungrier, or becoming increasingly familiar with this hunting ground, improving its efficiency in hunting.

Its target selection was becoming increasingly precise.

The earliest victims still had relatively fixed residences, but the two most recent victims had been wandering prostitutes from the very bottom of the Whitechapel District, almost completely isolated from society.

This showed that it was learning, optimizing its hunting strategy.

Without exception, all its crime locations possessed the traits of being "easy to ambush in, difficult to witness, and convenient to flee from." This proved it possessed extremely high intelligence and understood how to use the urban environment to conceal itself.

Looking at the analytical chart before him, condensed from modern criminological thinking, Lin Jie's gaze grew increasingly profound.

The value of this thing was immeasurable. If handed to Scotland Yard, it would be enough to completely overturn the direction of their investigation.

If anyone from the I.A.R.C. saw it, they would probably see through his disguise as an "outsider" immediately.

Just as he was immersed in his analysis, a tired voice carrying a trace of curiosity sounded behind him.

"Young man, you're studying these things again. Forgive me for saying so, but these... strange symbols you've drawn confuse me even more than the nonsense written by those newspaper authors."

Lin Jie stiffened and whirled around, only to find the old constable, Arthur Weston, standing behind him again at some point.

His complexion looked even worse than yesterday, and the bloodshot veins in his eyes were more pronounced. It appeared he had gone through another sleepless night.

Lin Jie quickly folded up the sheet covered in analysis, but it was already too late. Weston's gaze had long since fallen upon the simple map and table.

As an old policeman who had dealt with crimes for half his life, he might not have understood Lin Jie's analysis model that transcended the era, but he could intuitively sense the logic and order contained in the chart.

"What are you doing? Drawing a map?" Weston's tone was full of suspicion.

At Scotland Yard, drawing crime maps was work that only high-ranking detectives had the qualifications and ability to undertake.

Lin Jie inwardly cursed his bad luck. What he had done today had indeed been a little too conspicuous.

An ordinary Eastern refugee displaying such professional analytical ability was itself the greatest point of suspicion.

His mind raced as he considered how to respond.

Should he admit it directly, or continue pretending?

In the end, he chose an explanation that was half true and half false.

He pointed to his head, then to the multiple cases in the newspapers. Finally, he spread his hands and put on an innocent expression that said, "I'm scared and want to find a pattern to protect myself."

He even deliberately coughed a few times, making himself look weaker and more helpless.

The performance was impeccable.

A foreigner terrified out of his wits by a serial killer, yet possessed of a little cleverness, trying to use his clumsy methods to find the murderer's pattern in order to protect himself—against the backdrop of the Whitechapel District, that explanation seemed perfectly reasonable.

As expected, Weston's scrutinizing gaze softened somewhat.

He sighed and shook his head. "Child, it's useless. Scotland Yard's best detectives have been left helpless by this. Doing this will only put you in danger."

Having said that, he seemed unwilling to meddle further. He turned and prepared to leave.

Lin Jie knew the opportunity would vanish in an instant. At this very moment, he had to cast out bait weighty enough to drag this old constable completely into the matter.

He called out to Weston.

When the other man turned back, Lin Jie picked up the charcoal. Instead of writing English again, he drew three extremely simple shapes on the paper.

The first was a crude sketch of a woman's profile, with a horizontal line across her throat.

The second was an even cruder map of the Whitechapel District, on which he circled several known crime scenes.

For the third, he hesitated for a moment before finally drawing a large X over an area on the map where no crime had ever occurred.

Then, with the tip of the charcoal, he heavily tapped that X.

Weston stopped dead in his tracks.

He was no fool.

He immediately understood the meaning of those three shapes—the victims, the locations of the previous crimes, and... a prediction of the next crime scene!

"You... what does this mean?" Weston's voice trembled.

Lin Jie did not answer.

He merely pushed the paper bearing the X toward Weston, then packed up his things and silently rose, preparing to leave the reading room.

He had already done enough.

What he had offered was not a conclusion, but a "prophecy." A prophecy that could not be explained, yet was impossibly tempting.

If this prophecy failed, he would completely lose the old constable's trust.

But if... if the prophecy came true, then he would leap from an "amateur offering strange ideas" into a "mysterious informant" holding a crucial secret whom Scotland Yard would have no choice but to rely on.

This was a carefully planned gamble.

The stakes were his own future, and the life of Whitechapel District's next victim.