by Rosie Harris
‘So what did you do when you found the door ajar?’
‘I rang the bell, knocked on the door and then walked into the hallway and called out his name.’
‘And when there was no answer?’
‘I didn’t know what to do. I knew he wouldn’t have gone and left the front door open. He’s a stickler about doors. He always gives them a shake after he’s locked them to make quite sure they’re secure. In the case of an unoccupied house we are responsible for its security once it’s on our books, you see.’
‘Right. And then what happened?’
June Lowe’s face crumpled, and she dabbed at her eyes with a screwed up tissue.
Ruth gently patted the girl’s arm. ‘Try and tell us . . . in your own words,’ she murmured.
‘Well, I went into the hall, as far as the stairs, and I called out his name again. Then I went into the kitchen . . .’ She gulped and held a hand over her mouth as if she was about to be sick.
‘And that was where you found Mr Jackson . . . on the floor by the sink?’
June Lowe shuddered and nodded. ‘It was terrible,’ she said, gulping.
‘Go on!’
‘He . . . he was lying stretched straight out . . . There was blood . . . blood on his face . . . and on . . . and on his clothes.’ Her voice became a whisper. ‘His clothes . . . His shirt had been ripped open and . . . and . . .’
Unable to go on, she covered her face with her hands.
‘So what did you do then?’ Paddy asked tersely.
June Lowe was crying so much that her words were unintelligible. Ruth signalled to him to wait until the girl had control of herself.
When her anguished sobbing had tapered down to mere sniffles, he repeated his question. ‘So what did you do then?’
‘I ran to my car and rang you,’ said June Lowe.
‘Why did you do that? Surely you had your mobile in your handbag with you!’
Fresh tears welled up in her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. ‘I . . . I don’t know. I knew I must get help . . . I wanted to get out of the house . . . away . . . away from his body.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Ruth reassured her. ‘Simply tell it as it happened. She flashed a warning signal at Paddy. His terse questions were not helping.
‘I stayed in my car until the police came,’ June Lowe went on, looking at Ruth. ‘They brought me back to the house with them. Then the ambulance arrived, and more police . . . and . . . and then you came and started questioning me!’ Her voice rose hysterically. ‘I’ve told you all I know. I want to go home. I don’t know anything else. I don’t know what happened. I’ve told you everything, and now can I go?’
Paddy shook his head. ‘There are still a lot more questions . . .’
‘Please . . . please not now!’ June Lowe implored, clutching at his sleeve.
He shot a glance at Ruth, and she shook her head, an imperceptible warning that she thought the girl had been through enough for the moment.
‘Very well,’ he said stiffly. ‘We’ll send you home in a police car, but you will have to come to the station tomorrow for further questioning.’
She hesitated, shaking her head. ‘I have my own car . . .’
‘But you’re in no fit condition to drive it,’ he snapped.
‘Would it be possible for someone to drive me home, then? My mother wouldn’t like it if I was brought home in a police car.’
‘There didn’t seem to be much point in questioning her any further while she is so overwrought,’ Ruth commented once Paddy had arranged for June Lowe to be taken home.
‘No. Probably not, ma’am,’ he said coldly.
‘It’s hardly likely she did it, or that she knows who was responsible.’
‘She was driving a red car though!’ he pointed out smugly.
‘We’re looking for a red Ford Escort and her car wasn’t a Ford.’
‘Are we? One of the witnesses wasn’t at all certain that it was an Escort – only that it was a red car.’
Ruth let it pass. She was more concerned with the forensic report. Although Dennis Jackson’s murder bore a great many of the same hallmarks as the three previous murders, there were also several marked differences.
This time the murderer hadn’t been content to merely disarrange the victim’s clothes to simulate sexual interference but had gone a step further and actually carried out a serious mutilation of the man’s genitals.
In addition, there were marks on his wrists and around his ankles that indicated they had been tied together with rope. There was also a massive bruise on the back of Dennis Jackson’s head which did not conform with him having banged his head on the floor through a fall.
An hour later, the evidence they’d obtained was even more grisly.
‘As a rough reconstruction,’ Paddy said, ‘I’d say that he was coshed on the head, then trussed up, with his hands tied together and fastened to something in the kitchen. His feet were also tied together and fastened to something else in the room, so that he was stretched out so straight that he’d be in agony. After that, I’m not sure. Obviously that was when his clothing was ripped and when . . . when he was mutilated. The most sadistic thing I’ve ever witnessed,’ he added in a tone of utter distaste.
‘The work of a man . . . a husband who has been double crossed by Jackson,’ mused Ruth.
‘No! Never!’ Paddy looked almost offended. ‘A man wouldn’t do anything as sadistic as that!’
‘If he was very much in love with his wife; if he wanted her back; if he hated the fellow’s guts for breaking up his marriage,’ listed Ruth.
‘Then he’d punch the fellow’s head in, shoot him, even, but not stab him and mutilate him like that.’
Ruth studied him dispassionately. She had never seen Paddy so incensed. She’d thought of him as mild mannered, slow to rouse. Intelligent but not brilliant, pleasant but not complex. Which, she mused, was probably why he’d been passed over when it came to promotion.
‘So you’re suggesting it was a woman who did this?’
Paddy stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘She would have to be either very strong or else so enraged that she had abnormal strength. In the normal way, all these men would be able to fight off a woman.’
‘Unless they were taken by surprise,’ argued Ruth. ‘The first three were all concentrating on what they were doing when they were stabbed from behind.’
‘Dennis Jackson looks as though he was attacked from behind with a heavy blunt instrument . . .’
‘But we can’t be sure if that was what killed him.’
‘True!’ Paddy conceded reluctantly.
‘This murder differs in quite a number of ways from the others—’
‘That is what is so worrying,’ interrupted Paddy. ‘If the killer coshed him from behind, then why stab him in the chest? Unless it was to make sure that it was linked to the others?’
Ruth looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, I suppose that is a possibility.’
‘In which case we have to consider this a copycat murder and not as the work of a serial killer.’
‘Unless he was only knocked unconscious and when he came round . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she met Paddy’s eyes.
The thought uppermost in both their minds was: had the man been stabbed to death before being mutilated?
If it had happened the other way round – that he had been mutilated first and then stabbed to death – then they were looking for a highly dangerous, sadistic psychopath.
‘Time of death appears to have been between four o’ clock and six o’clock. We know that from the fact that Dennis Jackson left his office just before four to keep an appointment with a woman called Margaret Maitland—’
‘Mrs or miss?’ interrupted Paddy.
‘We don’t know. We could ask June Lowe.’
‘And when she’s had time to calm down let’s hope she can give us a more detailed description of the woman.’
‘She won’t be able to do that. The woman phoned
in.’
‘Then it might be worth checking with the people who live in the adjacent houses. Someone may have seen her arrive.
The houses in Englefield Drive were not only detached but all of them were very individual, and they all had long drives and ample gardens separating them from their neighbours. Many, like the Willows, had such high, dense hedges that it was almost impossible to see into each other’s gardens.
Detective Inspector Ruth Morgan and Detective Sergeant Paddy Hardcastle obtained only one clue as the result of several interviews. The woman whose property adjoined the Willows on the right-hand side told them that a red car had pulled into the driveway just before four o’clock.
She had been in her garden and had been interested because only five minutes earlier she had seen Dennis Jackson’s car arrive, and she thought the occupant of the red car might be a prospective new neighbour.
She’d still been in the garden an hour later when the red car drove away. She was unable to tell them whether or not it was a Ford Escort or if it had been a man or woman behind the wheel.
A teenage boy reported that he had seen a small red car, and he was pretty sure it was a Mini, turning into the Willows when he’d been delivering evening newspapers around six o’clock, shortly before the police arrived.
‘That was June Lowe’s car, of course,’ said Paddy with a sigh as he checked over his notes.
‘You don’t suppose it was her car that was there earlier?’
‘I doubt it. According to what she told us, she was at the office until almost six o’ clock, remember.’ He frowned and shuffled the papers in front of him. ‘Not unless she did the murder!’
Ruth shook her head. ‘She was upset when we arrived, but she showed no evidence of having been in any way involved . . .’
‘She would have had time to go home, change her clothes, and then come back again.’
‘That would have taken tremendous nerve!’
‘Even so, we’d better send someone round to check out everything she was wearing, right down to her shoes, before she has time to dispose of any of them.’
‘And what was her connection with the other murders?’
Paddy shrugged. ‘Perhaps they’re not connected. If we can solve one of them it will help to keep Superintendent Wilson off our backs.’
Ruth shook her head. ‘I think we are going round in circles, and not only that, I think we’re on the wrong trail. It might be better if we went to see Mrs Jackson, to find out if she can throw some light on the matter.’
Deborah Jackson answered the door in a stunning black velvet dress, sheer black stockings and high-heeled court shoes. Her make-up was flawless, and it was obvious she was all ready for a special evening out.
Her green eyes grew bright with unshed tears, and she pushed back her shoulder-length hair in a dramatic gesture of shock and despair when they broke the news of her husband’s murder to her.
He had all the attributes of a saint as she described him to Ruth and Paddy. She painted a glowing picture of a devoted husband – not a man who flirted outrageously with almost every woman he met.
Because Paddy was a local man, and knew Dennis Jackson’s reputation, he disbelieved almost every word she uttered and wondered why she was so very much on the defensive. He questioned her, and soon the truth came out, amidst floods of tears.
‘You surely don’t think she had any part in her husband’s murder?’ Ruth queried, after they’d spent a gruelling hour listening to Deborah Jackson’s diatribe.
‘She had every cause to murder him,’ Paddy told her dryly. ‘Even as a schoolboy he had a reputation as a sexually devious monster!’
‘I suppose she could have arranged it,’ mused Ruth. ‘Even have planned it so that it fitted into the same pattern as the other three murders . . .’
‘. . . and had it carried out by a hired killer? Now that’s a thought. That would account for the many similarities.’
‘And for the variances which don’t fit into the previous pattern?’
‘You mean the fact that he had been coshed and tied up as well as stabbed? It would need a man to exert that sort of strength, wouldn’t it?’
‘But you said you couldn’t conceive any man carrying out that sort of mutilation,’ Ruth reminded him.
‘Perhaps we’re not looking for just one person. It could be a couple. The man strikes the blow . . . the woman does the mutilations!’
EIGHTEEN
Detective Superintendent James Wilson was beside himself with anger. Judging from the contents of the Home Office letter he was reading, he was in no doubt that heads would roll unless some positive progress was made on the Benbury murders.
From the tone of the letter, he suspected that even his own position was in jeopardy unless there were satisfactory developments in the immediate future.
It had been a mistake to put Detective Inspector Ruth Morgan in charge of the case, he reflected. Not because she was a woman. He wasn’t sexist. But she had come in through what his generation would describe as the back door.
First-class university honours and Police Training College were all very well, but it wasn’t the same as hands-on experience. That was why he had assigned Paddy as her sergeant. Paddy was a product of the old school. He’d started on the beat, and worked himself up by study, and practical application. He had an invaluable wealth of experience.
James Wilson sighed aloud. If he’d been able to convince the board to think the same way as himself, the post of detective inspector would have gone to Paddy.
The position could still be his if Inspector Morgan didn’t shape up, he thought grimly as he opened the file containing all the information so far assembled on the Benbury murders.
Detective Inspector Ruth Morgan waited in trepidation to be summoned to Superintendent Wilson’s office. He had become increasingly tetchy with each new murder, and this fourth one would further justify his unspoken criticism that she wasn’t right for the job.
She only hoped that Dennis Jackson wasn’t another personal friend of the inspector’s, or a fellow Mason. Since he was a prominent local businessman, owner of the largest estate agency in Benbury, it was more than likely that he was both, she thought gloomily.
If only there were more clues. At present she could list what little they knew about this murder, and the three earlier ones, on one side of a piece of paper!
A red car that could be a Ford Escort, a Vauxhall or even a Mini had all been seen in the vicinity of one or the other of the murders. There was a hard to define logo taken from the instep imprint of a trainer. A parking ticket from the car park near the Masonic hall where the second murder had taken place, the time and date so blurred that they hadn’t been able to ascertain when it had been issued.
Hardly the sort of evidence to convict a serial killer on, she thought ruefully. The only other deducible link was that all the victims were the same age, and they’d all attended Benbury Secondary School. She had sent Paddy along to the school to see if they could turn up the attendance registers for twenty years ago and check who else had been in the same class, to see if that offered any lead.
As the owner of the largest newsagent’s in Benbury, Sandy Franklin was known to at least half the town’s population. Brian Patterson, they had discovered, was not only Sandy Franklin’s solicitor, but he also undertook property conveyancing for Dennis Jackson. John Moorhouse seemed to be the odd one out. Although he’d been at school with the others, none of them seemed to be linked to him. He didn’t move in the same circles as any of them. And yet he had been the first to be murdered.
Ruth found it puzzling. She wondered if this was some sort of clue. If she could establish the link between Moorhouse and the others would it lead her to the killer? Always assuming that it was the same person who had carried out all the attacks. Namely, a serial killer. If they were copycat killings then they really were in trouble. It might even mean they were looking for four murderers!
She didn’t think they were, th
ough. Even the last killing followed the same basic pattern as the three previous ones. It was more sadistic, though. As if the killer had reached a peak, a crescendo of madness that had carried the murders into the realms of atrocity.
Ruth shuffled through the papers, picking out anything she could find that related to the four wives – or, in Sandy Franklin’s case, to his most recent girlfriend, Tracey Walker – convinced that there must be a link there somewhere, some vital clue that she was overlooking.
She spread the information out on her desk in four separate piles and studied them. All the women seemed to have known Sandy Franklin – along with half the female population of Benbury, if rumours were to be believed, she thought dryly. So was there any evidence against any of them?
On the night Marilyn Moorhouse’s husband had been murdered she had been wearing black jeans and trainers, which Forensic reported had no blood stains on them, and the trainers didn’t tally in any way with the imprint they’d found.
Tracey Walker had appeared genuinely surprised and distressed by the news of Sandy Franklin’s murder. She had apparently been in bed when he’d left and had not heard anything at all suspicious. Furthermore, Ruth reflected, the flat had revealed no trace of a disturbance.
Had she followed Sandy Franklin out of the flat when he left, stabbed him, and then dashed back indoors, changed her clothes, and been able to act surprised when the police arrived to alert her that he had been killed?
It seemed unlikely, Ruth decided. What could Tracey have gained by killing her boyfriend? It was far more probable that Mrs Agnes Walker had been waiting outside when he left the flat, and that she had been the one to stab him. Except that she had been able to account for her movements on the evening in question, while Tracey could not. Agnes’ alibi was absolutely watertight. She could produce a dozen witnesses to the fact that she’d been in Dorset, over a hundred miles away.
Sara Patterson didn’t seem to be the type to murder her husband, either, although she had been extremely evasive about why she had been absent from home the night her husband had been murdered.