The Hard Detective (A Harriet Martens Thriller Book 1)

by H. R. F. Keating

  There was a deep silence of expectancy broken only when one of the aides sitting just below the platform croaked out a single interrogative ‘Ma’am?’ before choking back into embarrassed speechlessness.

  She ignored the dying-bird sound. The young man would have worse to utter than an involuntary squawk before she had finished.

  ‘I don’t know how familiar any of you are with the Bible,’ she resumed.

  And it was a credit to the way she was now holding her customarily cynical audience that there was in response not even a murmur of laughter.

  ‘Yes, the Bible. And especially a bit from the Book of Exodus, a bit that goes like this: Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth … And I think I needn’t remind any of you here that the person who killed Mr Froggott this morning did more than stab him, in much the way PC Titmuss was stabbed. He stopped at the scene long enough to wrench from Mr Froggott’s mouth a tooth. A tooth. And I should tell you that I have reason to suspect, too, that WPC Syed was made to fall off her bike under the wheels of a bus by having the beam from a laser pen directed into her eyes.’

  At this stage of a briefing, in the ordinary way, she would have expected questions. Now there were none. Only looks hard set, as if they were drawn up to her by a giant magnet.

  ‘But let me give you the rest of that quotation from the Book of Exodus. It is this. Hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’

  Down almost at her feet the aide who had croaked out that Ma’am was now turning his right hand round and round in front of himself with a look of puzzlement, and a hint even of plain fear. And there did come a question. From Detective Inspector Coleman, back from supervising the scene of Froggy Froggott’s murder, ready to add to the briefing whatever he had just learnt.

  ‘Are you saying, ma’am, that one day some poor bloody police officer is going to get flogged to death by this— This maniac?’

  ‘Yes, they will be. If we don’t stop him first. But now, unlike the situation yesterday when Titmuss’s stabbing seemed motiveless, we do have something to go on. What we’ve got to look for is someone with a fierce grudge against, perhaps the police in general, more likely Greater Birchester Police in particular. A grudge that has something to do with an eye, eye for eye, the loss of an eye perhaps or possibly only serious damage to one. A loss for which, with good reason or with very little reason, they might blame us. So, the first actions I want giving out are for a long hard trawl through all our own records of claims against us for personal damages, together with inquiries to other forces. I don’t know whether such information will have been logged into HOLMES, but that’s where massive computers are meant to be able to assist. Right, as soon as this is over I want those actions up and running.’

  A buzz of comment down on the floor now. She silenced it with a sharp ‘Pay attention.’

  She turned to the nearest whiteboard and picked up the pen on the shelf below. Then she wrote out in a column, the pen giving a shrill squeak at every down-stroke, the whole of the Exodus quotation.

  Life for life

  Eye for eye

  Tooth for tooth

  Hand for hand

  Foot for foot

  Burning for burning

  Wound for wound

  Stripe for stripe

  ‘Now look at those words. All of you. Look at them every day till we have caught the man who, almost for certain, is intent on working his way through that list. And make up your minds: we’re going to stop him.’

  She looked to see what response she was getting. Intent faces, pursed lips.

  ‘All right, it should be obvious to you all that we know one key factor about this maniac. The words I’ve just written up here. Each of his murders so far has been tied to that quotation. But he doesn’t know we’re aware of it. And I don’t want him to know.’

  Another look round the whole big room.

  ‘So no one, no one at all, is to say a word about the Book of Exodus. Is that understood? No going to the press and getting yourself free drinks on the strength of letting them hear a bit of juicy gossip. Not a word. Anywhere. To anyone.’

  From the expectant listeners a few barely audible murmurs.

  ‘A life for a life,’ she went on when they had quietened again. ‘It may be that this madman is someone who once lost a relative, a lover, anyone dear to them in a way that might conceivably be blamed on Greater Birchester Police. So, I want actions made out on those lines. Looking for someone who may have harboured for years past a hatred of the police that at last burst out in the attack on innocent PC Titmuss, not necessarily the worthiest officer in this Force but a man who certainly did not deserve to be stabbed to death.’

  ‘But Mr Froggott’s murder,’ DI Coleman asked. ‘Are you saying that there’s someone out there who had some sort of a grudge against Greater Birchester Police over some dentistry mishap?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think we need go looking for anyone who has a hatred for us over their teeth. I think it’s likely Mr Froggott was killed because he said on the radio last night — I expect many of you heard him — he believed PC Titmuss had been killed by a druggie and that WPC Syed’s death was totally unconnected. The very vigorous way, in fact, that he put down the idea that WPC Syed was deliberately killed must have simply enraged the man who stabbed PC Titmuss. I hazard a guess that perhaps he had had no idea in his warped mind at that time of doing more than taking, as it were, a life for a life and an eye for an eye. But, when he heard that the pointer he had deliberately left at the scene of his second revenge killing, that laser pen, was being totally ignored, I think at that moment he decided to kill Mr Froggott as well.’

  It looked as if her argument, even among the Froggott admirers in A Division CID — and she knew his macho approach had brought him a good many of those — had been accepted. The murmur of agreement, unvoiced but plain.

  ‘Now, a different set of actions will be needed here,’ she said. ‘Because it’s plain to me — and I think Mr Coleman will agree — that whoever killed Mr Froggott must have known more than a little about his regular habits. That, for instance, he always left home to get to his desk very early in the morning. They would need to have known where he lived, the make of his car, and that he left it outside in the road. All of that must be looked into. The house-to-house questionnaires will have to include, not only asking if anyone suspicious was seen in the area, but whether anyone has been making specific inquiries about Mr Froggott’s routines. Some little piece of information one of the officers on door-to-door gets may give us the lead we must find. The lead that, Mr Coleman, will do more than just save one of us from being somehow flogged to death. If we work full-out for whatever hours it takes, if we use to the utmost all the resources that are being placed at our disposal — and the Chief has indicated to me that I can have almost anything I ask for — then some slender pointer we pick up may well save the lives of five of our fellow officers. And, remember, not a word about Life for life, eye for eye. If that gets out and I find someone in this room was responsible, they won’t be off the inquiry, they’ll be off the Force.’

  *

  The briefing over, Harriet stayed in the Incident Room just long enough to see the actions she had requested beginning to be carried out. She had taken over the office that Froggy Froggott himself had had, only getting his Marjorie — still inclined to moan with misery — to remove the all-too male objects that decorated it, the sports trophies from long-ago rugby triumphs, the girlie calendar, the rack of burnt and battered pipes. With the windows open as wide as they would go to dispel the odour of tobacco she at last found it habitable.

  But she had hardly been settled in her chair when another call came from the Chief Constable. One which, with a tinge of irony at the thought of how she had just announced he would give her whatever help she might ask for, she did not wholeheartedly welcome.

  ‘Superintendent,’ he said, ‘I have just been in touch with the University of North E
ssex, speaking to the Head of their Psychology Department, one Professor Peter Scholl. I dare say you know of him.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I do.’

  She did know. Dr Scholl had in recent years established an enormous media reputation as one of the pioneers in the science of criminal profiling. He had had his triumphs. And some less spoken of non-triumphs. In the police, some senior officers tended to try and secure his services every time they were faced with a murder that was at all complex, or with tracking down a persistent rapist. Among the lower ranks he had, however, plenty of detractors. Jumping on the name he happened to share with the well-known brand of pedicure products, they labelled him Dr Smellyfeet.

  Harriet tended to side with that opinion. There was, to her way of thinking, something about his various pronouncements a little slick. With a touch, as well, of something a little too airy-fairy, a little too much ignoring the plain facts of scummy criminal behaviour.

  Hence the ironic smile she allowed herself at the far end of the telephone.

  ‘Well, I am happy to tell you,’ the Chief went on, ‘I have secured Dr Scholl’s services in our present trouble. I have no doubt that, if ever a serial killer has to be tracked down by psychological means, the man we are looking for is such a person. And Scholl agrees with me. He’s promised to be here as early as tomorrow morning.’

  Harriet decided to say in reply nothing about the measures she had already put in hand to trace the killer. She trusted them a good deal more than whatever insights Dr Scholl might provide. But she knew, too, that it could take a very long time to unearth from old records someone with a grudge against Greater Birchester Police over the loss of an eye, even if the right pieces of paper existed. The seemingly simpler task of discovering how the killer had known so much about Froggy Froggott’s home life might also require long painstaking inquiries. So psychology could yet get there first.

  ‘Then I’ll be glad to have Dr Scholl on the team,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much, sir.’

  But, secretly in her head, she echoed Dr Smellyfeet.

  Chapter Five

  By the time Dr Scholl was due to arrive the next day Harriet had conducted her 10 a.m. briefing and had a press conference safely out of the way. She had feared to hear — had almost expected to — that during the few hours’ sleep she had allowed herself after poring over reports late into the night that there had been yet another killing. Of some police officer found dead with one of his hands missing. That at least had not happened.

  But the house-to-house inquiries in the immediate area of Froggy Froggott’s home in ‘leafy’ Boreham, slowed as they had been by an order she had got the Chief to issue that officers in uniform were always to work in pairs, had produced not a single person who had owned to knowledge of his habits. Most of the neighbours, it appeared, had thought the big man they occasionally saw was, not a senior police officer, but either the owner of a chain of betting-shops or, worse, some sort of a criminal himself. His wife — mercifully it had been the Chief who had paid the visit of condolence — was a self-effacing woman who never gossiped with her neighbours and had devoted herself to making the house and garden all that a senior policeman should have.

  So far only one person living nearby, the widow of a retired professor of geography at the University, seemed even to have been aware that every weekday at about 6 a.m. the Rover parked outside the Froggott home had been started up and had left at high speed in the direction of the city centre. The full post-mortem report on Froggy’s body had yet to come in.

  The Area Forensic Laboratory had confirmed that the strand of wool found at the scene of PC Titmuss’s death was from a work-stained donkey jacket, now no doubt well impregnated with blood. But the thread was in no way different from any out of the thousands of similar garments made in the past twenty years. Even the extra inquiries she had ordered when it had become clear that Rukshana Syed’s death was not an accident had yielded little. The driver of the No 14 bus, re-interviewed to see if he could describe any possible witnesses, had been able to produce nothing better than a ‘tallish old duck with a blue sort of hat’ striding away from the scene. Door-to-door inquiries in the area around had failed so far to produce any others. The trawl through the records had yet to turn up a case of Greater Birchester Police being accused of causing damage to any person’s eye.

  Froggy’s Marjorie had just left the office after bringing in mid-morning coffee — ‘Mr Froggott always liked four chocky bikkies, but I only brought you two’ — when she put her head round the door again and announced Dr Scholl.

  Just rising from her chair in greeting him, Harriet observed he was much younger than she had expected. A professor to her, if it did not indicate a long white beard and pince-nez, did at least imply a certain degree of age and even some dignity. Dr Scholl, however, looked to be no more than thirty, if that. Pink-faced and eager, almost as a bright schoolboy, he was wearing jeans and a loose dark green jerkin, revealing a sweatshirt with Harvard University written across it.

  Despite his youthful look, she was quick to note, he was already going a little bald, his dark curly hair not quite concealing the fresh pink skin of his scalp as he leant forward — he was, she judged, something over six foot — insisting on shaking her hand.

  ‘Let me make something clear straight away, Superintendent,’ he said. ‘Though I have come at the urgent request of your Chief Constable — and, I must admit, out of a strong interest myself — I cannot promise necessarily to be any assistance at all.’

  ‘I’ll be as frank,’ Harriet answered. ‘I don’t necessarily expect you’ll be any help. Oh, I’m prepared to admit that, if someone was able to give us an exact description of the circumstances of the person we’re looking for, age, occupation, likely area lived in, then it would be not a little useful. But I should add that, even if you did come up with details of that sort, you’d have to present me with pretty convincing arguments before I’d accept them.’

  ‘Well,’ Dr Scholl-Dr Smellyfeet smiled, ‘I don’t think it’s very likely I’ll give you any such precise information. The best we psychologists can do, you know, is to point to the signals that a killer cannot help giving when he commits his crime. He leaves a pattern. A pattern he’s almost certainly totally unaware of. But one that a trained observer can read. And one where, in a case like this when you’re obviously up against a deeply twisted personality, the psychologist can at least show you what perhaps straight police logic has missed.’

  ‘All right, let me tell you what straight police logic has made clear to me so far, and then you can tell me where I’ve gone wrong.’

  Again Dr Scholl smiled. Engagingly, Harriet had to admit.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘until I’ve seen for myself as much as possible of the work of this Mr Man — shall I call him that? — I’m as much in the dark as you are. It’s the actual facts at the scene, things like the precise method of murder and, more important, the oddities left there, that are going to tell me about Mr Man.’

  ‘Well, I assume my Chief has said that when Detective Superintendent Froggott was killed the person who killed him wrenched out one of his teeth and left it beside his body. Is that one of your oddities?’

  ‘It’s one of them, yes. When Sir Michael told me about that, I thought I might be able to do some good here. I take it it was facts like that which made you conceive your theory — Sir Michael gave you full credit — that you were up against a serial murderer of police officers holding a grudge linked with that quotation from the Book of Exodus. Let me say, I’d call that excellent psychological profiling.’

  ‘And I’d call it just plain good police work. Logical deduction from the available facts.’

  So you needn’t think, Dr Smellyfeet, that flattery will get you anywhere.

  Nevertheless she agreed, before he left, to his request to see all the reports, and told him there could be no objection to his going — she would provide him with a car and driver — to the three crime scenes, although work at them had e
nded long before. And, yes, when DI Coleman was available he could ask him about anything more he might have observed outside the Froggott house.

  ‘And one other thing, Dr Scholl. The press, all of the media in fact: you will give no interviews to them. You will answer no questions.’

  She thought that for a moment a flicker of disappointment had passed across his shiningly pink features. But his agreement came immediately.

  ‘I absolutely understand. A first-class decision. You can expect my fullest collaboration.’

  So you’re prompt to say, Smellyfeet. But I wonder how long you’ll be able to stick to your promise.

  *

  He appeared, however, to keep his word well enough during the week that followed in which the investigation, though unceasing, brought no reward. Afternoon after afternoon the Evening Star splashed the story of the man it called Cop Killer over its front page, seizing on every piece of tittle-tattle it could about the deaths of PC Titmuss and Detective Superintendent Froggott, which so far it knew as the only two murders of police officers. Its scrawled bills all over the city asked time and again, with ill-concealed glee, Cop Killer: Will There Be Another? while so-called experts it had brought in pontificated away on its inside pages. To no purpose that Harriet could see.

  Each morning, too, its more serious daily sister paper soberly repeated Harriet’s press conference assurances that the inquiry was making progress. Had either paper asked to speak to Dr Scholl, she wondered, and had Dr Smellyfeet done as she had asked and actually kept his presence quiet and his mouth shut? Sergeant Sumpter, the Force press officer, a tubby, bouncily self-regarding sometime journalist with whom she had already quarrelled over what he had wanted to tell the world about Operation Stop the Rot, as he delighted to call it, was itching to announce that the famed Dr Scholl had been brought in. She had told him that if one word got out about Dr Scholl or about any single thing the public did not need to know he would find himself walking Birchester’s streets ‘wearing a tall hat’.