Gone to ground. Nowhere to be found. And plotting and planning, planning and plotting.
Chapter Ten
Next day Harriet had to swallow the bitter pill of seeing all over the front page of the Evening Star the sprawling headlines Cop Killer Strikes Again — The Corpse Caught By The Foot. The story below, after saying the victim was a former policeman, George Studley, now a game-keeper, went on to point out the significance of his being trapped by his foot in a snare he knew nothing of. The Exodus list, too, was back in its full glory on Page One. And, turning with reluctance to the inside pages, she found a leader stating the question of police incompetence was being raised in ‘concerned quarters’. And, worse, she had to acknowledge that the paper’s story was correct in every detail. Bar the fact that it said the murder had been committed by a man.
But for how long, with detectives scouring Birchester looking for a Mrs Grace Brown, could the fact that they knew the sex of the demented murderer they were searching for be kept from getting to her own ears? For how much longer could they retain that small advantage?
Half-expecting her mobile to squeal with the report of yet another fire, Harriet was caught on the hop when a little after midday it was her phone that buzzed.
When she picked it up she heard the familiar The Chief Constable for you, Superintendent. It turned out, however, that, though she had plenty of troubles to contend with, at least Sir Michael was not one of them.
‘Thank you for your memo about the Book of Exodus leak, Miss Martens,’ he said at once. ‘I suppose Inspector Roberts can hardly be blamed really. He hadn’t been told after all that the information was to be kept confidential.’
‘No, sir. But it should have occurred to him.’
‘Well, I suppose so, but —’
‘However, sir, there’s worse to lay at Roberts’ door. It was largely down to him that we failed to get on to Grace Brown through our searches of records of complaints made against the Force. It never occurred to him that complaints made by women were relevant.’
‘I see. He just assumed, as we all did at that stage I’m afraid, that this individual was a man.’
‘He’s felt the rough end of my tongue, sir, over that. In no uncertain way.’
‘Well, Superintendent, I’ve no doubt he’s now thoroughly repenting his error. Which was after all understandable enough, and —’
‘I beg to differ, sir. An error with such potential consequences is not understandable.’
‘I take your point, of course. But Roberts is in the ordinary way a highly conscientious officer. Much laughed at, I understand, for his obsession with those files of his. An obsession which, from all that I hear at meetings with my fellow chief constables, has meant that the Greater Birchester Police personnel records are the envy of every other force. So I think you need take no further action.’
‘If you say so, sir.’
But more irritating than any lack of vigour from above, she knew she would shortly have to sit listening once more at that afternoon’s delayed press conference to its pundits wallowing in the aftermath of the Evening Star revelations. Which now she could hardly deny.
This time it was not Tim Patterson who led the attack but reporters from what she had always called mentally, and sometimes out loud, ‘the gutter press’.
‘Superintendent, is it true that the man who’s been killing your officers one by one has struck again?’
The opening salvo. Avoiding action not worth attempting this time.
‘I take it you’re referring to the death of former Police Constable George Studley? If so, I have to tell you with deepest regret that our inquiries to date, though not yet complete, indicate that his death was in fact the latest in the series apparently dictated by certain words in the Book of Exodus.’
‘You say your inquiries are not complete. When will they be, Superintendent?’
‘When the post-mortem results are in my hands.’
‘Not when you’ve arrested this man who’s happily killing your officers?’
‘That, too.’
Do absolutely nothing to turn face-up the one card still in my hands.
‘And in the meanwhile, Superintendent, how long do you consider it will be before, in the words of the Book of Exodus, one of your officers will be subjected to burning for burning?’
‘A question I can hardly answer.’
‘Superintendent,’ another voice banging in, ‘can you tell us what precautions you are taking to ensure the safety of police officers in Birchester?’
‘If I did, I would be exposing them to greater danger.’
‘Superintendent, has there been any suggestion that some more senior officer than yourself should be put in charge of the hunt?’
‘Another question I’m unlikely to have an answer for. Are there any more?’
She was about to take advantage of the momentary silence among the media people to cut short the conference before any other malicious insinuations were made. But then she realized that, if she went, all she could do would be to go back to her office and sit waiting for Grace Brown to make her move, to attempt once again to kill.
Half out of her seat she sat back on to it.
‘There is one thing I have to say.’
She saw the lenses of the TV cameras swing to point directly at her once again.
‘In the past the conferences I have held have been little more than a battle of wits between us. You have put your questions, designed, frankly, to elicit some gaffe from me. And I have stonewalled. Time and again. But not without good reason. The fact is that a certain piece of information came into my hands which I considered not in the public interest to pass on. It is a fact about the identity of your Cop Killer that could well lead to their being arrested. I kept it secret because I did not want our target to know Greater Birchester Police were aware of it. They could have taken precautions to avoid being seen. However, too much fruitless time has gone by. I am ready now to take the risk.’
She could feel the tension mounting over her like a great overhanging wave, spume-flecked with sharp demands waiting to be made.
‘The fact is,’ she announced, ‘that we now know that the person we are seeking in connection with the murders of police officers in Birchester is a woman. I ask for the co-operation of the public in apprehending one Mrs Grace Brown, of unknown whereabouts.’
*
Back at her office, half furious with herself, half glad to have at least taken a decisive step, she found Rob Roberts waiting for her. He appeared to be listening with grave sympathy to toothy Marjorie’s latest woes.
Christ, he’s not come bringing John’s old mac back? As a bloody peace offering? Typical.
But it was a peace offering of another sort that Inspector Roberts had for her as she preceded him into her room.
‘I hadn’t realized you had a press conference, ma’am. But they told me I could wait for you up here.’
‘That’s all right. But what do you want? You haven’t come to apologize once more, have you?’
A rueful smile below his big fair, fluffy moustache.
‘No. No, ma’am. Though I suppose you could say in a way that I have.’
‘Look, I’ve got a lot to get on with, and to tell you the truth my temper’s none too good after being baited by those ignorant idiots of reporters, so why don’t you spit it out, whatever it is, and let me get on with it?’
An extra reddening in his ruddy cheeks.
‘Yes, ma’am. Well, it’s this. When you left me back in my office yesterday I began to wonder how I could put myself in the right again. What you said to me really went home. And then I thought: what’s the worst problem facing you yourself at the moment? Is it anything I could somehow help to put right?’
‘Inspector—’
The tone of her voice was enough.
‘Yes. Sorry. Well, the first thing that came to me was that there was something in the Book of Exodus that sort of— Well, sort of cast light on it all.’
>
‘Well?’
‘So— So I went and looked it up. I still have the Bible I was given at Sunday School, and—’
‘I hope this is going to be relevant.’
‘It is, ma’am, it is. Listen. I’ve learnt it by heart. If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow he shall surely be punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. That’s where that list begins, ma’am. Life for life, eye for—’
‘All right, what you’ve said actually goes some way to confirm that the person we’re hunting, whose identity as one Grace Brown I’ve just made known to the media, is a woman and that she did lose a baby she was carrying. But I don’t need to have that Exodus rigmarole thrown at me any more than the sodding Evening Star does every bloody day.’
‘No, ma’am, no. I just thought it sort of indicated that Cop Killer might be acting because his wife lost a child. Only it seems you’ve known all along Cop Killer’s a woman. So, well … Well, that wasn’t too helpful. But, ma’am, I think I’ve also hit on something … Well, something even better. I think.’
‘For heaven’s sake, man. Either say it or bloody well shut up.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Well, you see, it seemed to me that the question you must really want answering was: how did Cop Killer get to know so much about the Force? As much as I do, I thought. So then— Well, then it occurred to me they might, in fact, be— Well, just simply someone in the Queen Street nick somewhere. A civilian, of course. And, well, I’ve got access in Personnel to the records of everyone in the building, and I gave them a thorough search, men, women, everyone. It could have turned out to be one of the civilian clerks. But it wasn’t. I’d worked out, in fact, that she probably was the Grace Brown you were referring to.’
‘You’re telling me you’ve found out how Grace Brown knew all she did? You’re telling me that? Then spit it out, man. Spit it out.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Yes. She— She, well, she worked in the canteen.’
‘Worked? You said worked? She’s not there still?’
‘No. No, ma’am. She walked out, as I understand it, the day before Titty Titmuss — er — PC Titmuss, was stabbed, though …’
Harriet’s thoughts leapt from point to point.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It all hangs together. What was she in the canteen? Just someone collecting up dirty dishes? Scraping plates before they go into the washing-up machines?’
‘Yes, just that, ma’am.’
‘Right then. She’d know what that idler Titmuss was like, if only from what the others would say as soon as his back was turned. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were jokes about his favourite place for a crafty drag.’
‘There were, ma’am. I heard them once when I happened to be over in Queen Street.’
‘And, of course, she’d know Syed had set up in that flat with her window-cleaner. Something like that’s going to get talked about. And no doubt she’d know the girl rode there on her bike at the end of each day. And, as for Superintendent Froggott, his early start at his desk was legendary in his B Division days and lots of people would know he lived out at Boreham. So she’d be as well informed about him as— And, Christ, yes. You said it was just your understanding that she left the day before she killed PC Titmuss. But you sounded doubtful, right?’
‘Well, yes. Yes, I was, a little. Someone said he’d seen her at work later than that. But —’
‘Of course they did, whoever they were. She came back to get hold of young Chatterton or someone like him. It’d be perfectly easy. No one takes too much notice of a canteen worker, going round the tables stacking up used dishes, not if they keep themselves quiet. While keeping their ears open. No, it’s obvious. She came back to the canteen, pretending she was still working there. She looked about her. She may have needed to come for two or three days before she saw someone suitable. But then she spotted Chatterton, ideal for her, almost certainly sitting with some drink or other, tea, Coke. She had her Roofie ready — you can buy them in the pubs easily enough — and she dropped it into the lad’s glass or cup and then contrived to lead him out. The British Legion Club’s not so far from the Queen Street nick. It wouldn’t be difficult.’
‘You must be right, ma’am.’
‘I am. I know it.’
*
Rob Roberts had the address Grace Brown gave when she got her canteen job, in Sullivan Street, a short row of terrace houses, once dignified enough, now in decline, a few minutes’ walk only from Queen Street police station. Barely quarter of an hour later Harriet and a team of detectives, cars’ sirens howling, tyres screeching at every corner, were there.
Grace Brown was not.
Each of the rooms in the just-this-side-of-respectable house had long been separately let, provided with a Yale lock and a gas-meter on the landing outside. As soon as Grace’s door had been forced, it was plain that she had deserted the place in a hurry. An old copy of the Evening Star was lying on the floor, in as much of a shapeless muddle as the copy with the headline An Eye For An Eye that Marjorie had come wailing with into the office. There was a meal of sorts laid out ready to eat on the scratched surface of the room’s one rickety table. Evidently Grace before starting it had heard the Greater Birchester Radio report put out immediately after the press conference at which she had been named, and had left, grabbing up just what she could snatch.
Had left perhaps only four or five minutes earlier. To disappear once again into the maze of the city.
Harriet put out a call for an immediate search of the area, but she had little hope it would be successful. Grace Brown, named or unnamed, was too cunning to be so easily caught. However, the team’s search of her room swiftly brought to light at the bottom of the narrow old wardrobe, the cramped room’s only other piece of furniture besides the bed, something well worth gaining possession of. A pair of carpenter’s pincers with traces of blood visible on them still.
‘Poor old Froggy,’ the man who had found them said as, dropping them carefully into a tamper-proof evidence bag, he showed them to Harriet.
‘Detective Superintendent Froggott,’ she snapped at him.
‘Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am. I just …’
‘Then don’t just.’
‘No, ma’am.’
She turned to the rest of the team.
‘What are you hanging about for? Get to it. Every inch of this place turned over. Every inch.’
But it needed less than a minute more to retrieve a find even more valuable than the pincers that had tugged that long yellow tooth out of Detective Superintendent Froggott’s mouth. Under the bed, pushed there as if it had been a pair of discarded slippers, was the stolen butcher’s cleaver that had hacked off Cadet Chatterton’s hand. An object that had surfaced in Harriet’s imagination time and again since she had seen the boy’s body. She watched it slipped into an evidence bag with a sigh of relief.
For a quarter of an hour more she stood watching the search team, although nothing of obvious significance came to light. At last she decided to go.
‘Remember,’ she said to the bent backs of the hands-and-knees searchers, ‘I want anything that gives the slightest hint of where she may have gone to from here. If it turns out that something’s been missed, you can look to going the rounds with a City Council tow-away vehicle.’
*
Nothing more was found however. It was clear before long that there would be nothing to find. Grace Brown’s room — she had had it ever since she had left the ‘halfway house’ she had been directed to when she had been released from the mental hospital — had plainly been merely a refuge to hide in while she began on her demented revenge for what she believed Greater Birchester Police had done to her. Life for life. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Hand for hand. Foot for foot.
And now to come — but when? — there would be burning for burning.
/> One by one the days went by, and the call that Harriet awaited, Superintendent, two officers on patrol … burnt to death, failed to come. A week passed.
Then Dr Smellyfeet — or Peter, as she had eventually agreed to call him — said he wanted to see her.
‘Look, Harriet, I don’t think there’s anything more I can do here. I’ve added what I can to the Profile from what I’ve seen in that room of Grace Brown’s, and that, honestly, isn’t very much. I still think — bar getting it wrong about the sex of Cop Killer — that the bulk of what I said then holds true. I know it doesn’t seem to have been positively helpful —’
‘It hasn’t been.’
‘Yes. All right, you’re not one to mince your words. And I agree, up to now, I certainly haven’t helped you to locate that woman. But I still think in the end my findings may pay off.’
‘Inside the magic circle, is she?’
‘Well, she could still be, couldn’t she? Inside it, or somewhere near its edge. I mean, you haven’t been able to cover all the ground, have you? And she could be shifting from place to place within it. She could be living rough anywhere inside that line I’ve drawn. But I still give it as my professional opinion, based on more than a few cases, remember, that you’ll find her eventually where she needs to be, where she can hardly help but be, inside her stamping ground. She will be within a quarter of a mile of that room of hers. I know it.’
‘And you think we will find her? After almost a week’s searching has got us nowhere, using every man and woman in the Force I can lay my hands on? I’ve got patrols out day and night tasked specifically with looking for a tall old woman probably wearing a long green or brown dress with a blue woolly hat on her head. It’s not the best of descriptions, is it?’
The Hard Detective Page 10