by Alex Gray
Suddenly Valentine began to cough violently, the harsh rasps rising in a crescendo until it seemed as though he would retch. Lorimer winced, watching the old man double up clutching his chest. At last he straightened up, wiping away tears with the back of his hand. Lorimer let him recover for a few moments then tried again.
‘Did you ever hear a cry for help?’
‘No.’
‘Did you hear any sound which was out of the ordinary? Something being dragged along the ground, for instance?’
Lorimer’s elbows were on the table now, his face closer to the old man’s. Valentine paused to consider.
‘No.’
Lorimer decided to try a different tack.
‘Could you see the path from where you were concealed in the bushes?’
‘Oh, yes. I could see out through the leaves, but nobody could see me inside.’
The old man looked a little smug, as if he had scored a point.
‘Did you see anything unusual during those nights? Anything out of the ordinary?’
Lorimer, reflecting on his choice of words, wondered what ordinary meant to a derelict. Other derelicts wandering through the night. Addicts fixing drugs. Low life passing through like a shadowy pageant. Valentine shook his head.
‘What vehicles did you see passing through the park?’
‘I dunno. Hard to see when it’s dark. Police car sometimes. Vans.’ He paused for an instant, then added quickly, ‘Oh, and the old ambulance.’
‘The old ambulance?’ Lorimer sat back, curious. ‘What do you mean old?’
‘Well, you get to know sounds in the dark. The new ambulances sound different. Different engines or something. This one was old.’
Lorimer let this pass for the moment. He spread photographs in front of Valentine.
‘Ever seen these women?’ Lorimer leaned back in his chair, giving Carruthers space and watching his face intently. The eyes looked down on the photos of Sharon Millen, Lucy Haining and Donna Henderson. Valentine’s eyes were expressionless, his bottom lip slightly open as he stared at the dead women. Finally he shook his head and looked up as Lorimer removed the photographs. He licked his lips nervously.
‘That’s them, isn’t it?’
Lorimer ignored the question and the old derelict took his silence as affirmation.
‘I think it would be best if you could find a hostel meantime, Mr Carruthers. The park is out of bounds and I really think you should be indoors for your own safety. Besides,’ the blue eyes fixed him again as Lorimer leaned closer, ‘we would be much happier to have an address so we can contact you again. You understand?’
Valentine nodded. He was going to be released now and he didn’t look sorry. He’d almost seemed to welcome the cell and the breakfast, the constable on duty had claimed. There had been no aggro. But now he shifted restlessly in the plastic chair, eager to get shot of his temporary accommodation.
As he rose to leave the room he caught the eye of a bearded fellow in the corner. He stopped for a moment in surprise. It was obvious he had not realised the man had been there all the time. He gave a start when the bearded stranger dropped him a conspiratorial wink. Valentine scowled and scuttled out into the corridor.
‘Well, what do you make of that, Dr Brightman?’
Lorimer’s question was a reluctant overture to his visitor. Solly shook his head.
‘I doubt if he is capable of contributing very much. He’ll live in a world of his own with little sense of dates or time. He probably hears all sorts of weird things during the night. For him they won’t be weird, though, just a background noise, like bullfrogs in the tropics.’
Lorimer gathered up his papers.
‘Come through to my office, will you? I’d like to talk about your involvement in the case.’
Solly noticed that Lorimer didn’t meet his eye. It was just as well. He might not have appreciated the huge grin that spread across the psychologist’s face.
*
The thunder rumbles overhead. From his vantage point high above the city the watcher looks out at the sudden flashes. Squares and angles of housing blocks are suddenly lit up, looming large and bright. Darkness again.
The watcher edges nearer to the cold glass. What does he see? Lights of the city twinkling through the gloom. Dark masses of parkland, unshining. The faraway lights are frozen by another flash of lightning, turning black night into sudden shocking day. The watcher recoils from the naked light. Too bright. Too penetrating. He needs to retreat into the safe shell of his room.
Elsewhere in the city other watchers stood, disturbed and fascinated by the electrical storm. Solly had pulled a chair over to his window and now sat by the long, undrawn curtain, gazing at the free light show. It exhilarated him to feel an unleashed power which had nothing to do with humankind. No forethought. No motives. No manipulation. He laughed softly, like a child, when the flashes lit up the landscape. His dark eyes gleamed with delight at every crash. The storm was directly overhead now and some car alarms had begun their persistent shrill in the distance. He would sit until the crashes grew fewer and the pounding rain quietened in the streets.
Solly would have no trouble in slipping into sleep, happy with the interlude of the thunderstorm which had cleansed his mind of all the day’s events and the anticipation of events to come.
Lorimer had pulled aside the green curtain after the first huge crash and flash. Light had penetrated the thin material and created a greenish glow in his room. The white lightning was naked and warm. Lorimer thought about the derelict they had brought in. He, and too many others like him, were out there now at the mercy of the elements. He had a sudden picture of soggy cardboard and heaps of rags illumined by the sheets of lightning. Poor sods, he thought, more in anger than in pity. His rage had no direction. For who was to blame for the plight of the homeless? If, like Valentine Carruthers, you had simply strayed away from the conventions of society then there was no one to blame. These things simply happened. Relationships crumbled, illusions and dreams were shattered and broken humans retreated into the safety of the outside world, sheltering as they could from the power of the elements. Like Poor Tom in King Lear. What was it Shakespeare had called humanity? ‘A poor bare, forked animal’? Somewhere out there Valentine would be crouching like a beast below some bushes. Safe again from other wild animals.
Lorimer thought of the killer. He too was out there somewhere, untamed and powerful, like the sudden lightning. But, thought Lorimer, he could be prevented from striking again. He had to find him soon.
CHAPTER 5
Alison Girdley walked energetically along the darkened street. The club had been good tonight, she thought, but she wanted to be home and into the shower to wash away all the hot stickiness. Her white trainers padded over the pavement. She could see the tenement building in the distance. Not far now. Just ahead, parked by the kerb, she could see a large pale vehicle. It looked like an ambulance. Curious, she thought. Why is it parked there, by waste ground? You’d expect an ambulance to be at a close mouth, associate it with stretchers, people taken away from houses.
As she drew closer to the vehicle, the driver’s door opened and a white-coated figure leaned out. Alison looked up, ready to smile, expecting to be helpful. The driver waved a piece of paper in her direction.
‘Excuse me.’ His voice halted Alison in her tracks. ‘Can you tell me where to find Jason’s Lane?’ Alison came right up to the door, her eyes on the paper. She’d never heard of it and was about to apologise when everything changed.
The driver leapt suddenly from his perch. Right towards her. Alison stepped back quickly. There was a glimpse of a chain held taut in both fists. A thin face with staring eyes. Instinctively Alison brought her knee up swiftly just as his hands were raised towards her face. The white-coated body sagged with a deep cry.
Now Alison was running, running as in the nightmares when you seem to be rooted to the spot pursued by a nameless terror and not gaining any ground. But the tenements were
coming nearer. Her breath jerked out in sobs. Her chest was hurting.
Closer. Closer.
Don’t turn around. Keep going.
The first doorway yawned near. Her whole frame was pounding with the effort of gaining this escape. Was he behind? Don’t look round.
Alison stumbled against the door in the darkened hallway and pressed the bell.
‘Please. Please,’ she sobbed. When the door opened she staggered in. ‘Please. Police.’ The two words merged in a hysterical cry.
Jess Taylor put out a hand to comfort this girl.
‘What’s happened?’
Thoughts of rape flashed through her mind. You saw so much about it on the telly and in the newspapers.
‘What’s up, love?’ Mickey Taylor gently took Alison by the shoulder and propelled her into an armchair. ‘Make some tea,’ he whispered to his wife. Alison gulped. Her voice seemed to be constricted somewhere in her throat. The words came out jerkily.
‘The man. He … It’s him.’
‘Who, love?’ Mickey wondered if this girl was on drugs. She was almost incoherent.
‘The one from the park.’
Mickey suddenly understood as Alison finally gave way to rasping sobs. He left her with a pat on the arm and went over to the window. A twitch of the curtain showed a bare street. No one there.
‘Please,’ Alison tried again. ‘Please phone the police. He’s down the road.’
Instead of following her instructions, Mickey went out into the night and looked down the hill. A pale vehicle was turning in the road. Its brake lights flashed on for a moment then it slowly lumbered into the night. Mickey turned back to the house.
‘Was he in a van?’
Alison nodded, her tear-stained face miserable. ‘It was an ambulance. I thought he wanted directions, then … then …’ Her words subsided in sobs.
This was real, thought Mickey. A tremor of anger and fear shot through him. This was the horror which had been talked about by all the world and its wife these past few weeks. He reached for the telephone.
CHAPTER 6
Valentine Carruthers was missing. Given the nature and habits of the average city derelict this was not really surprising. But for Chief Inspector Lorimer it was a confounded nuisance.
‘We’ve checked all the likely hostels and drop-in centres,’ he fumed, glaring at each of his officers as he paced up and down the incident room. ‘Each and every layer of cardboard city’s been turned over. And what? No trace of him!’
Young DC Cameron opened his mouth to protest, but one look at Lorimer’s face quelled him. Lorimer could have guessed the lad’s thoughts easily enough. It was conceivable that being picked up by the police had given Carruthers a shake and that the old man had wandered off out of the city.
‘Right. His record shows convictions for indecent assaults on minors. South of the border.’ Lorimer stabbed the air with his finger as he added, ‘Served his last prison sentence nine years ago and then nothing!’ And in that nothing, Lorimer added to himself bitterly, his life had presumably taken a downward turn after doing time and he had ended up in Glasgow amongst the other flotsam and jetsam to be found on the shoreline of every big city. ‘Okay, the old man might not have had much to add to his comment about the ambulance anyway. But I’d liked to have tied up his statement with this one from Alison Girdley.’
Lorimer brandished the file at the officers then turned on his heel.
The girl had obviously had one hell of a fright, but there was a strength in her which had made her calm enough to answer questions sensibly. Even now a photofit was being made up on the memory she had of the face in the dark. Some of her tape recorded comments were in his mind now, chasing each other around like gerbils on a wheel as he strode down the corridor.
‘He opened his mouth as if …’
‘As if?’
‘As if he was yelling at me. But there was no sound.’ Then later: ‘I saw his teeth in the dark. They were so white.’
Gently DS Wilson had asked questions. He had led the girl back into the depths of her experience, patiently going over details once again when she faltered. His fatherly smile and reassuring voice would have helped her to know that here she was safe. Despite re-living the dark and terror she had been able to give some description.
Wilson had asked questions about his features. ‘Very short hair. Cropped. Stylish, I suppose. And dark, I think. I didn’t see too well. He had dark hairs on his arms. I remember that. They were bare under the white coat.’
Lorimer tried to picture the snarl, the vicious lunge with the chain. If Alison Girdley hadn’t had such swift reactions … but then she was coming home from her karate club.
‘As if he was yelling at me.’
Didn’t they do that in combat sports? Wasn’t there some underlying psychological instinct which made an attacking warrior yell at his opponent? Thundering cavalry charges had screamed as they approached their enemy.
Lorimer smiled slightly as he pushed open his office door. Psychological instincts indeed. Well, he knew who could make something out of that.
Solly was patiently explaining the theory of behaviourism to his first-year students.
‘You see it’s learned behaviour. It’s a process of cause and event, or what you might call mental association. The rat associates lever-pressing with pellet-receiving. Press a lever: a pellet appears. If the pellets were not to appear then the rat’s behaviour would change. It could no longer associate the lever-pressing with receiving a pellet.’
‘But wouldn’t he remember?’ one student enquired.
‘Ah, now, memory. That would come under a different topic,’ began Solly. At that moment the telephone rang and five pairs of eyes watched Solly’s face as he picked up the receiver.
‘Ah … yes … well …’
The students sat mutely, ears strained to pick up any crumbs which would give them a clue to the nature of the conversation.
‘No … that’s quite all right.’
He listened for a few moments more then replaced the receiver.
‘Yes, quite a different topic altogether …’
The students sighed in unison. Solly’s single-minded approach was legendary. He was impossible to divert once he had taken an idea down a particular road.
Sometimes, Solly thought, people were afraid to look for the obvious. There was something endearing about the human mind which hared off in the direction of the tangled thicket when there were open spaces to gaze at instead.
‘Yes, Chief Inspector, American Indians.’ Lorimer’s eyebrows had shot up in scepticism at the psychologist’s suggestion. ‘A warrior brave would certainly do his utmost to appear terrifying: face paint and body paint carried symbols of ancestral spirits which were believed to give the warrior power. But it’s more than that. It’s the disguise which can overpower the enemy. The face-painting dehumanises the warrior.’
‘And the yelling?’
‘Oh, the war cry. Yes. Of course they took these cries from the animals. That’s why so many of their names are like Lone Wolf, Little Bear, things like that. The cries were in imitation of the animal’s way of intimidating its prey.’
‘I see.’
‘What Miss Girdley saw was just the same, only with no sound.’
‘But isn’t that the whole point, to make the sound and frighten the prey?’
Solly smiled. His eyes behind the round spectacle frames were kindly.
‘Ah, but he couldn’t afford to be heard. He might alert someone. His yell was unheard but effective nonetheless. The face became a wolf mask, if you like. No need for paint. Just make the grimace of a snarl. In some ways it can be said that Miss Girdley did hear that cry. Subliminally, of course.’ Lorimer nodded, then shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Then, of course, it explains a lot about the murders themselves.’ The psychologist paused, gazing dreamily into the middle distance. Lorimer looked irritably at his watch.
‘Go on.’
Solly looked up,
an expression of mild surprise on his face, then continued where he had left off.
‘Warrior braves scalped their victims and kept the hair as evidence of their successes. My guess is that this killer has behaved exactly like that. His behaviour shows a pattern very like the brave.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that we have an American Indian out there on the loose?’
Lorimer’s tone was hovering on the derisive.
‘No. Not at all. Or at least yes, but only in one respect.’
Lorimer sighed. Make up your mind, he thought silently to himself.
‘Our killer displays this pattern of behaviour and therefore it follows that he has some knowledge of American Indians, some association with them, perhaps from childhood, or even through literature.’
‘In other words anyone who watched The Lone Ranger could end up scalping young women?’
‘The Lone Ranger rather gives your age away, Inspector,’ laughed Solly. ‘Miss Girdley describes a younger person.’ He paused then stared into space again, talking more to himself than to Lorimer. ‘A real knowledge of the ways of warrior braves might not even be essential. The aggressive behaviour displayed by the open mouth could be quite instinctive. However, I feel there is a genuine association.’
Lorimer’s thoughts strayed to the other approach his investigation was taking, the coverage this case was to have on Crimewatch. He was glad that he had instructed Dr Brightman not to talk to the Press. They would have a field day with his theories. He could just imagine some of the headlines: ‘Apache in the Park’, ‘Police Seek Redskin Warrior’.
‘Our man has to have a deep-seated reason for scalping these poor young women.’ Solly paused again, considering for a moment. ‘This man’s profile will contain the motive for what appears to be a series of senseless acts. You would look for a motive, of course?’
‘Among other things.’ Lorimer steeled himself against giving this odd little man a lecture on investigative procedure. He would concentrate on trying to follow his argument. ‘Motive is a great indicator. Financial gain. Deep emotions. Things like that are a great help in finding a murderer.’