by J M Gregson
And Tommy Bloody Tucker will become Chief Superintendent, thought Peach. It’s a mad, mad world, my masters.
*
Wednesday, January 16th
It was a grey, bleak day, but the visibility was better than you would have expected. The council house was one of a row at the top of a gentle rise, and you could just see the dark shapes of the distinctive skyline of Liverpool in the distance.
The woman who opened the door was in her mid-thirties. Her prettiness was still evident, but fading fast. She looked apprehensive as Lucy Blake showed her warrant card. “Mrs Plant? I’m Detective Sergeant Blake and this is Detective Constable Pickard. We’d like a few words, please.”
“What about? I’ve done nothing. I’ve nothing to talk about...not to pigs.” She checked herself on that word: it was one of his, when she thought she had rid herself of him for ever.
“No one’s suggesting you’ve done anything wrong, Mrs Plant. And if you’re worried about being seen with the police, we’d be better inside the house, wouldn’t we?”
She stared at them for a moment, in which they could see the fear in her eyes. Then she turned abruptly and led them into a living room which seemed clean and fresh, which was shabbily furnished but very tidy. She shut the open window and turned back to them. “It’s Debbie Edgar now, not Plant. I’ve gone back to my own name. This is about Terry, isn’t it?”
It was probably just fancy, but Lucy thought that she could smell the fear on the woman. She said, “It is, yes. But no one knows we’ve come here. And no one will.”
Debbie Edgar wasn’t reassured. She’d heard promises like that before. They might mean it as they said it, but no one could guarantee such things. She said, “You found me, didn’t you? What’s to stop him?”
“We have our methods. The ones we used to find you are not available to Terry Plant. If you can tell us a little about Terry, we’ll go away and leave you in peace.”
She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was one of the few items in the room which had not come from the Salvation Army or the Church Furniture Centre; her mother had given her the clock. It showed her now that the children would be home in half an hour. She wanted these people out of here before then: they were a link with the past which Debbie wanted all of them to forget. She said wearily, “What’s he done now?”
Tony Pickard said, “Nothing, that we’re aware of, Ms Edgar. Nothing that we can charge him with. He’s been looking for you. We encouraged him to give up the idea.”
Her eyes flashed white with fear. “He’ll take no notice of that. He’ll find me, if you have.”
Lucy said firmly, “He won’t, Debbie. The source of our information isn’t available to him.” She didn’t say that the woman who had told them that Terry Plant’s wife might be somewhere around Liverpool was now in Styal Prison for six months, where Terry Plant would certainly not get to her.
Debbie could not let it go; she was desperate for reassurance. “He’ll use the same methods as you did.”
Lucy shook her head, smiled gently. “He won’t, Debbie. He might guess you’ve gone back to your maiden name, but there’s no way he can connect you with this area. And he won’t be able to arrange for computer searches of employees, as we could.”
Debbie Edgar breathed a little more easily. “He might even have forgotten that I trained as a nursery school teacher...I never worked when I was with him. I’ve got myself a job at the local nursery school. Just mornings, but it gives us some money. And I was eligible for this place, once I had a job locally.” She was trying to be matter-of-fact, but her pride in the way she was picking up her life crept into her tone in spite of herself. She looked from the green, intelligent eyes of Lucy Blake to the grave, rather handsome face of the tall young man beside her. “I don’t see how I can be of any help to you two, though.”
Lucy said, “It may be painful, but we’d like to ask you a little about your life with Terry Plant. Believe me, it’s important, or we wouldn’t have taken the trouble to find you and we wouldn’t be bothering you now.”
“What kind of things?”
“Was he violent?”
For a moment, Debbie thought she would refuse to answer, would fling them out of this new home she had worked so hard to create. Then she heard herself saying simply, “Yes. Yes, he was.”
“To you? To the children?”
Debbie glanced briefly at Tony Pickard, then stood and moved to the door, nodding at Lucy Blake to follow her. In the small kitchen where the pots drained on the sink, she pulled up her sweater and shirt and showed the livid scar between the top of her breast and her shoulder. “That was a broken bottle. A memento to remember him by, when I’m going to bed at nights.”
They went back into the living room; Lucy gave a tiny nod to Tony Pickard. She said, “It wasn’t an isolated instance, Debbie, was it?”
“No. It began after we had our first child. He was always very sorry afterwards, in those early days. I suppose that’s why I stayed: I thought he might stop doing it. But it got worse.”
Tony Pickard said, “What age are your children?”
“Rosie’s thirteen now. She can look after the others for an hour, if I need it.”
She looked suddenly guilty, as if she remembered that this was the law she was talking to. “I don’t though, unless there’s some sort of emergency. Keith’s ten and Mandy’s eight.”
“Did he hit the children?”
“He did, yes. He started to hit Rosie. That’s why I left.” Tony Pickard nodded, made a note. “Did he ever hit the boy?”
“No, he didn’t. Keith was only seven when Terry went inside, mind, but somehow I don’t think he’d ever have hit him.”
There was a tiny pause before Lucy Blake said, “I know this is difficult, but can you tell us anything about the kind of violence he offered to you and Rosie? Was there any pattern to it?”
Debbie Edgar looked for a moment as if she would refuse to answer. Then she said slowly, “It wasn’t drink, the way it is with a lot of them. Sometimes he’d had a drink, but most times he hadn’t. And it wasn’t connected with sex — I didn’t refuse him, and at the end he wasn’t that interested. I don’t know whether he had other women or not, and eventually I didn’t care.”
“So it would be after some kind of argument?”
“Yes. But he wasn’t predictable. Sometimes I could talk to him without even a threat. Not often in the last year or two, though. He thinks I shopped him, but I didn’t. He swore he’d kill me, when he got out.”
Lucy said gently, “Well, he’s been out since last September, now, and he hasn’t got near you.”
“Yes. I reckoned he’d be out by then, with remission for good conduct. That’s a joke, after the way he treated me!”
“Do you think it was a power thing, when he hit you? Was it because he saw you as a threat to his dominance?”
Debbie smiled bitterly at the younger woman. “I tried applying all the psychiatric nonsense myself, to see if I could cope with him. Perhaps it was the need to dominate which drove him. Sometimes I thought he just hated all women — he used to shout his mouth off about all of us.” She looked from one to the other of her questioners, sensing their heightened interest. “Why do you want to know all this? Has Terry attacked someone else?”
“Not as far as we know, Debbie. But he’s a violent man, as you say, and we like to keep an eye on such—”
“You suspect him of being this Lancashire Leopard, don’t you? The man who’s killed three women near where we used to live…” Her voice tailed away as her eyes widened with the horror of the thought. She had lived with this man, shared her bed with him for ten years and more, felt his hands upon her, in tenderness as well as in violence.
Lucy said as briskly as she could, “We’re checking out all men with a history of violence, that’s all. The fact that—”
“The dates tally, don’t they? He came out of Strangeways in September, and the first murder was after that.”
“But it could have been Terry, couldn’t it? If he’s on his own, and roaming about the area.”
Tony Pickard said quietly, “It could have been a lot of men, Debbie. That’s our problem. Do you think it could have been him?”
She shook her head in bewilderment, contemplating this ultimate horror of the relationship she was trying to bury. Her voice was scarcely audible as she said, “I don’t know.”
Pickard had watched her intently as she unravelled the life she had shut away from her. He now said quietly, “You say Terry’s violence to you was never connected with sex. Did he ever put his hands round your neck — threaten to strangle you?”
Debbie Edgar looked at him for several seconds, her eyes widening with the terror of her recollection. Then she stared at the empty fireplace and said, “He did, yes, sometimes. Especially in the last years. He put his hands round my neck and pressed until I couldn’t breathe. Then he’d laugh and tell me what a slender thread my life hung by, how easily he could kill me. But he always let me go after a second or two.” She looked up again, fastening her eyes upon Lucy Blake’s alert face beneath the red-brown hair, as if she could only trust a woman to be honest about this. “That is the power thing, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is, Debbie. But it would need someone better qualified than any of the three of us in this room to know how significant it was.”
They left her standing on the step, a lonely, anxious figure, staring down the road for the first glimpse of her children returning home.
*
Saturday, January 19th
The murderer sat in front of his television set, watching a late-night showing of The Silence of the Lambs. It was a strange film to use to wind oneself down, but he felt the tension easing out of his limbs by the end of the first hour of it. He treated the film as pure escapism, and saw no relation to his own life. This Hannibal Lector was clearly a monster and clearly mad.
He listened to the late night news on Radio Lancashire. There was no mention of the Lancashire Leopard. But then he had known that there wouldn’t be. He only watched and listened to the news bulletins to reinforce his sense of security. The police team engaged in the hunt numbered more than sixty now. And they weren’t even getting near.
At 1.30 a.m. he opened a window to the cool night air and sat for a few minutes in a chair with a mug of tea, exulting in the absolute silence of the world around him. Out there, he knew, there would be police officers searching for him, vigilant, nervous, wondering as they moved through the cool night air if the Leopard might be abroad.
He felt better now. Calmer. Earlier in the evening, when he had been out, he had felt a restlessness, a desire to show them again how futile their efforts were. But he had conquered it. You didn’t take hasty, impulsive actions when the stakes were high. You moved in your own time, took action only when you knew it was safe, when it suited you. Your enemy might be baffled, but you didn’t underestimate him. Not if you wanted to go on giving yourself kicks like the ones he had enjoyed so much.
While he remained master of the situation, there could be no danger. He was confident now that he knew everything about the hunt which was being raised against him. He certainly knew enough about what was going on to know when to strike. And where. He had found another possible victim, but he would be as meticulous as ever in his preparations. That was the secret of his success.
Soon the Leopard would be ready to kill again.
Nine
Sunday, January 27th
Clyde Northcott stood with his long legs on the ground on each side of the Yamaha. He revved the 350 c.c. engine, listened to the smoothly accelerating roar with deep appreciation, savoured how slight was the vibration between his thighs even when he opened the throttle almost to the full. A great machine, the Yamaha, well worth the sacrifices he had made to get it. Much better as a companion than these expensive girls. And much more reliable. He eased the bike gently on to the road.
Clyde didn’t speed in the built-up area, despite the power of the bike and his mastery of it. When you were young and black, you attracted police attention like a hornet at a tea-party. And when you had a throaty motorbike to make them jealous, you had to be extra careful. He’d had his usual small rock just before he set out, and he felt like racing up through the gears, but he controlled himself. That was the advantage of good coke rocks, he thought: they put you on a high, but they made you extra smart as well. Your brain seemed to work that little bit quicker, your mind seemed to rid itself of every consideration save the matter in hand.
Restraining himself made his pleasure all the greater when he passed out of the town and on to the open road. He kept a close watch for any pig cars or motorbikes as he moved on to the dual carriageway of the A59. Then he watched the needle on the speedo move swiftly through the numbers, as he roared smoothly up to the ton and sped past Clitheroe. He held it between a hundred and a hundred and ten for four miles of almost deserted tarmac, passing a solitary car as if it were standing still, catching a fleeting glimpse of the woman driver’s white, surprised face as he overtook with a brief wave of his gauntleted hand.
The party was out beyond Gisburn, somewhere, just off the main road. He found the house easily enough: a big, rectangular box of a place, with all the lights on and music already blaring out. He had come quite late, for he did not like to be one of the first at any function. He hated standing around attracting attention and trying to make the small talk which would never come easily to him.
He scarcely knew the girl who was giving the party — taking advantage of her parents’ cruise in the West Indies to use their house for her own purposes. She worked with him at the electrical components factory, but she was office staff, and they rarely deigned to communicate with the shop-floor workers. He had only been invited because she knew one of his companions, a fellow-biker, who had taken the opportunity to win a little cheap popularity with his fellows by stretching his own invitation to include four.
Clyde parked the Yamaha carefully in the shadows at the side of the three-car garage. You didn’t want any casual damage from party revellers when you were only insured for third party, fire and theft. Unlike many of the people here, he had to be careful with his possessions. He put his bottle of wine on the big table which had been set up as a bar in the wide hall of the house, then went and peeled off his leathers in a room his hostess called the family room. This Tracey didn’t even know his surname, he thought. Well, that wasn’t her fault; left to her own preferences, she would never have invited him.
Had he but known it, Clyde Northcott was quite wrong about that. Tracey Wallace, the girl who lived here, was well aware of all his names. She had spotted the tall, handsome youth across the works canteen and made a point of making the cursory acquaintance which was all she had needed to invite him here. It was not surprising that she should do so. Clyde was a striking figure, with a carriage which proclaimed that he owed allegiance to no one. He did not seem to have a girlfriend, and to an impressionable girl of twenty who had come to work straight from Cheltenham Ladies’ College, even the vague air of menace he carried upon his lean black frame seemed to add to his attractions.
Tracey came in with a glass in her hand while he was peeling off his leggings. “Glad you could make it, Clyde. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” she said.
She had a small, pretty face. Her curly blonde hair hung about her ears in what was no doubt a highly expensive style, though it looked to Clyde rather like damp rats’ tails. He said, “I was always going to come. Thank you for asking me,” and immediately felt as conspicuous as he had years ago when invited to children’s parties, the lone black boy in a sea of white faces.
He poured a can of lager into a glass with elaborate care, tilting the glass and pouring slowl
y to make sure the foam did not spill on to the carpet, postponing the moment when he would have to look again into the face of Tracey Wallace. She said, “You’re an expert at that, I can see,” and gave him a wide smile while he tried to shrug away his embarrassment. He could see through the open door that drinks were already being spilled, could imagine what the reactions of his own parents would have been if he had dared to hold a party without their permission in their little terraced house in Bolton.
He wondered why he so constantly remembered that; he had been in homes from thirteen, when his father had gone away and his mother had what was always referred to as her breakdown. His increasingly distant memories of the family home couldn’t have any reference to this girl, or this place. He shrugged the distant image away and gave Tracey a smile. The cocaine coursing through his veins made him feel happy and in control; he wondered why the power did not extend to his tongue, so that he might put aside this bubbling girl without offending her.
But he was reprieved. A crowd of slightly tipsy girls came in from the lounge, where the music was playing so loudly, and took her attention, demanding drinks, teasing her about her posh house, enjoying the delicious idea of using the place without her parents’ consent. Clyde took his lager and moved silently and swiftly into the dim room where the music blared.
He stood at the side of the big square room for a moment, then was drawn into the dancing in the centre of the floor. It was not one of the brasher tunes. Some stringed instrument — a sitar, perhaps — twanged plangently at the outset, and then a solo violin took up the melody for a time, before the backing group came in on the chorus. Clyde let his supple body writhe sensuously to the music, his limbs seeking out the soft rhythm which underlay the tune, his eyes almost shut, his hands caressing the air in a gentle arabesque.
He found some of his friends from work. They stood together at the side of the room, watching the girls, drinking slowly, tapping their feet in line with the beat as the evening became more frenzied. Tracey Wallace came and pulled Clyde on to the floor and he danced for ten minutes with her, his slow smile lighting up the ebony features, his eyes watching her mobile, pretty face and her bare arms that gyrated wildly to the music. At the end of the track, she reached up to him, running her fingers through his tightly frizzed hair, pulling his face down towards hers, fixing her lips upon his in a long, slow kiss.