‘No. And I’m afraid I’ll have to knock down the best bit of that. That hat. I rather think that Grace wears that hat only when she’s out getting her revenge. It’s ridiculously conspicuous, after all. If you’ve had every police officer in Birchester going about with that hat as a description, one of them would surely have spotted it long ago. I mean, Grace can’t stay in hiding wherever she is all day and every day. She has to eat, if nothing else. And, remember, she’s a planner, one of nature’s planners. She’ll have been able to work out that she would make herself far less conspicuous by simply taking off the blue hat that’s pretty well her trademark.’
‘Well, thank you for that. So I’ve even less of a description now. Practically all I’ve got is what ex-PC Studley’s wife managed. That and what little the sharp-eyed members of Greater Birchester Police noticed about an old woman creeping round the B Division canteen collecting up dirty dishes and keeping her mouth tight shut. Which is damn-all. You know nobody at that room of hers either saw her more than once or twice? And remembers nothing about her? Your planner planned that all right. No wonder we’re looking for a needle in a bloody haystack.’
‘Well, if anyone can find her, you will, I’ll say that.’
‘Thanks for nothing. But, tell me — this is something I’ve been thinking this past day or two — isn’t it possible Grace has simply given up? Isn’t it possible she’s decided the game’s no longer worth the candle? That she’s upped sticks and is God knows where now? In Scotland? Down in London? In some miserable seaside place somewhere?’
‘No.’
Dr Smellyfeet, Peter, sounded as definite as she had ever heard him.
‘No?’
‘You’ve read my Profile, can you —’
Harriet smiled ironically.
‘I read the Profile of someone you chose to call Mr Man.’
‘Right, right. I got that wrong. But, don’t forget, the statistics of serial murder were fully in my favour. It’s just that we’ve got here the one who goes against the statistics. Still, that doesn’t invalidate what I said. Grace Brown is as much a planner as was my Mr Man. She’s the same person. And a person fundamentally is always what that person is. So, no, Grace has had a plan in her head, and she’s going to carry it out. The silence you’re getting now is, in fact, simply proof of that. She’s planning a burning for burning killing. Lulling you and your searching officers into relaxing vigilance is all part of that plan. I simply haven’t any doubt of that.’
‘All right. How long do you say Grace is willing to hide, wherever she is, and take no action?’
‘Ah, if I knew. If I had anything to indicate what that answer might be. But I haven’t. And that’s why I asked to see you.’
‘Oh, yes, you’re wanting to go back to your academic retreat.’
‘Well, I am. I have commitments. I’ve a career to keep on the rails. I see nothing wrong in that. And if circumstances change here, I’m at the end of the phone.’
‘Okay. I suppose it’s true, you aren’t contributing all that much any more. Which, in fact, doesn’t mean to say that you haven’t contributed something. The Police Authority has had its money’s worth. More or less.’
‘But you, you’re happy to see the back of me?’
‘As I said, your usefulness has come to an end, at least for the time being.’
‘Thank you. But let me say before I go that I’ve been impressed, much impressed, with the way you’ve led this inquiry. It’s been a hard road, a bloody hard road. But I don’t think anyone else would have travelled it any better.’
‘Thank— No, there is one thing more you might be able to do.’
‘Ask.’
‘Once before I put a proposition to you. And, if this wait goes on much longer, I’ll be tempted to put it into practice.’
‘I think I can guess what you’re going to say.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Well, am I right? Is it that you’re thinking once more of issuing some sort of direct challenge to Grace Brown?’
Chapter Eleven
Dr Scholl had been even more dismissive than before of the idea of any sort of person-to-person challenge flushing out Grace Brown. Despite his facing-both-ways answer when Harriet had first suggested the notion, Sir Michael would never agree, he was now more direct.
‘No, Harriet. No. It would be taking an intolerable risk. You’re dealing with a severely disturbed individual. It’s not like trying to guess which way some common-or-garden criminal will jump, and perhaps giving a push in one direction or the other. No, there’s no telling what someone like Grace Brown would do if you faced her with any sort of challenge. It could drive her to even greater lengths than she has gone to so far.’
‘I’d say she’s gone as far as it’s possible to go already. She’s killed five people, damn it. Five police officers. Five of my colleagues, good or bad. And she’s threatening more. Burning for burning. If it would put a stop to that … As it is, I seem to do nothing but take calls from the Fire Service, thinking each one’s going to say a police officer’s been burnt alive.’
‘All right, some sort of a challenge might bring that to an end. But equally it might not. It might result in not just one police officer being burnt to death but — heaven knows — dozens somehow.’
‘Okay, you’ve given me your view. Now, no hard feelings, but bugger off back to cosy academia.’
Nevertheless, as another week went slowly by with neither any sign of where Grace Brown might be hiding nor anything even indicating that her plan to kill some police officer by burning had been tentatively put into operation, Harriet did not forget the blackly unorthodox notion that had occurred to her. So on the Saturday when the Chief Constable telephoned — his calls were no longer daily affairs — after she had reassured him that every precaution was still being taken to safeguard his officers she ventured to broach the subject.
‘Sir Michael, it’s been represented to me that it’s not enough simply to wait for Grace Brown to act. We ought, it’s been said’ — she lied unblushingly — ‘to make an active move. In short, the suggestion is to issue her, not with an appeal, but with a challenge. A challenge to meet me myself somewhere, face to face.’
‘I hope you took no notice of such a suggestion, Superintendent. Just think what that wretched rag the Evening Star would make of a stunt of that sort. Who was it who put such a crazy idea to you?’
Some quick thinking.
‘As a matter of fact, sir, it was the Evening Star, or at least that crime reporter of theirs, Tim Patterson.’
Who, as the Chief Constable’s bête noire, would hardly be likely to be asked to confirm or deny the invention.
‘Yes. The sort of thing I might have expected from a young man of his sort. Anything for a sensation.’
‘I simply thought I ought to hear your view, sir. I have. You see it as a stunt. That’s the end of the matter.’
*
But even the Evening Star, Harriet realized at lunchtime when Marjorie came trotting in with the new edition, had quietly dropped altogether its panel listing the unyielding justices of the Book of Exodus. Its pages now were filled with reports of crimes, major and minor, mostly committed in the area of Birchester policed by B Division.
Drug Deals on Our Doorstep — Residents Complain
Youths’ Assault on Girl, 16
Four Homes in One Street Raided
Black Youth Stabbed
Six Attack White Youth
She began to find herself every now and again actually wanting to be quit of the responsibility she had been proud to be given and to be back again running Stop the Rot, putting as many wrongdoers as possible into the cells or making them wish in other ways that they had never embarked on the criminal life. How much better it would be than chasing a ghost, as she had begun to think of Grace Brown.
But she never for a moment really contemplated asking the Chief Constable to relieve her. Grace Brown was not in custody, and it was her task to se
e that she was. All right, Grace might not even be in Birchester any more, let alone inside Dr Smellyfeet’s mis-shaped circle. She might be anywhere. But equally she might be somewhere within reach. And if so she must be found and put out of the way of causing harm.
At her briefings every morning, weekdays and weekend, she reiterated this message.
‘All right, another twenty-four hours gone by and none of you have seen anything or heard anything of Grace Brown. For your sakes I hope it wasn’t for want of trying. Let me remind you once again, look at those words I wrote on this board here at the start of our hunt. That list from the Book of Exodus. And it’s being worked through. Four of your fellow officers murdered by this woman, as well as a man who had served his time in the police. Number one, PC Titmuss stabbed to death on night patrol, life for life. Number two, WPC Syed sent to her death under a bus blinded by a laser pen, eye for eye. Number three, Detective Superintendent Froggott, again, stabbed to death, with a tooth wrenched from his head, tooth for tooth. Number four, Cadet Chatterton lured to his death, his right hand hacked off, hand for hand. Number five, former police constable, Mr George Studley, leg caught in a snare, shot and then left to bleed to death, foot for foot.’
She looked round the big room. Nothing but sombre, intent faces.
All right, it’s possible that the mad killer we’re looking for has given up on her perverted revenge. But let me say aloud, once again, the remainder of those words from the Book of Exodus.’ She pointed to the list, already beginning to fade on the whiteboard. ‘Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. The whole probability is that Grace Brown means, if she can, to get to the end of her list, that she’s still here, here in Birchester, hiding and plotting. But every now and again she must be having to venture out into the streets. And there we’ll get her. All right, we’ve still not got a really good description. Dr Scholl thinks it’s certain the one useful thing we thought we had, the shapeless blue woollen hat she was seen wearing, is something she puts on only when she is out intent to kill. And, another minus, we do know it’s not obvious that she’s blind in one eye. The people at the mental hospital told us that. But despite all that, we can get her. And we will.’
But in private she went so far one afternoon as to phone Dr Scholl at his university and put to him again, hoping against her better judgement he would now agree, the notion that Grace could have abandoned her vendetta.
‘I hear you, Harriet. And I still have to say, unless you have some real evidence to the contrary, that Grace must be in Birchester. Read my Profile. That woman is a dyed-in-the-wool planner. And when I use that expression, believe me, it’s not just a convenient cliché. I mean it: her habit of planning everything she does is an engrained part of her personality, unaffected by the fixation she’s now prey to. And, remember, it isn’t that someone of that personality-set needs to possess a high-achieving intellect. Grace Brown is not, I believe, particularly intelligent. But she has plenty of cunning. You don’t have to be intelligent to be a planner. Just someone who can’t help planning. And it’s my unchanged opinion that even now she is planning to burn to death a member of the Greater Birchester Police.’
‘Okay, that’s what you think. But I’ll make no bones about it. I’ve a very strong suspicion I’m wasting my time sitting here in this office now. When I think of the work I was doing before this madwoman stuck her knife into that slack fool Titmuss I feel doubly frustrated. I could be back there in B Division, the worst area of Birchester, clamping down on the criminals from drug dealers to public urinators, making them realize there’s right and wrong in this world —’
‘Harriet, listen. Once or twice when I was up there in Birchester, more than once or twice actually, I wondered whether I ought to raise that subject with you.’
‘What subject, for heaven’s sake?’
‘The subject of your much-heralded Stop the Rot campaign. Only I didn’t want anything to interfere with the co-operation I felt there should be between us.’
‘You had objections to Stop the Rot?’
‘I didn’t say so.’
‘But you meant it. All that not wanting to spoil co-operation between us. I sussed out your flattery technique, Peter, before you’d been in my office ten minutes.’
‘Yes. Well, yes, I do actually believe a certain amount of flattery is necessary to secure co-operation with police officers when I’m brought in on a case. You people are such believers in your own limited methods. Anything I can do to soften you up before I put to you the sort of conclusions I know I am going to reach is worth trying.’
‘All right. You tried to soften me up. You failed. But when you did put your conclusions about your Mr Man to me, you can’t say I didn’t listen.’
‘My Mr Man, how much does that indicate you listened?’
‘Okay, I take that back. But I did listen, didn’t I?’
‘You did. And that’s why I’m going to say to you what I hesitated to say when the hunt for Grace Brown was at its most urgent. And that’s this. I don’t think your approach to criminal or delinquent members of the public, or even to social incompetents, is the right one. When Sir Michael rang me up and asked me to come and see what I could do, he said you had been put in charge of the inquiry. I knew your name, of course. There’d been stories in the papers about you and your so-called zero tolerance policing. And I hesitated to agree to come then because I foresaw an absolute difference of opinion between us about how police operations should be conducted. But I did come. The case was too fascinating.’
‘The case was going to get your name in the papers, don’t you mean?’
Down the line came the sound of a heavy sigh.
‘All right, Harriet, what if I admit that I find it pleasant, agreeable, what you will, to find my efforts to assist bringing dangerous criminals to justice bring me renown, fame, whatever. But that doesn’t mean that my efforts are invalid.’
‘Have I ever suggested they were?’
‘Yes, you have. From time to time. But you’ve also admitted that they were to some extent at least helpful to you. So that’s why I’ve held my tongue.’
‘Then I suggest you no longer need to exercise such restraint.’
‘Very well then, I won’t. Let me put it this way. Even reading about you in the necessarily trivialized pieces in the papers, before I had met you at all, I was alienated by your attitude of always being right. And when I did meet you there were many occasions when I had to check the antipathy that same attitude had aroused in me. Almost your very first words to me — I recall them distinctly — were that you weren’t expecting any help from me. Your mind was made up.’
‘Yes. It was. You don’t get anywhere in this life unless you’ve decided where you’re going, and you go.’
‘You make my point for me. And I won’t deny that at times that’s a useful way of going about things. I suppose your insistence that the person I called Mr Man was a woman is a case in point. You believed you were right and scarcely paid any attention to the other point of view. Okay, you were correct, as it happened. But you very well might not have been. The facts were against you.’
‘Except the last fact of all, that Mr Man was a woman.’
‘There you are. Saying I’m right once more.’
‘I was right.’
‘Yes, but you can’t be right every time. That’s just what I objected to in your attitude to policing your area of Birchester. That you applied the same rigid rule to every criminal of every sort you encountered, and, worse, you ordered the officers under you to do the same. People are different, Superintendent. You ought to realize that, and pay attention to it.’
‘No, Dr Sm— No, Peter, at the fundamental level people are not different. They’re either right or wrong, and if they’re wrong then I’m going to point it out to them, as hard as I should do. It’s no use you and your softy friends saying there’s always some excuse for criminal behaviour. There isn’t. There’s right, and there’s wrong. And I know whi
ch is which, if no one else does.’
‘Harriet, I know how effective that attitude of yours has been in putting an end to a great deal of anti-social behaviour, but —’
‘No buts about it. You say you know my actions have ended what you like to call a great deal of anti-social behaviour. But let me tell you in fact what they have done. I launched Stop the Rot eighteen months ago, soon after I was appointed to B Division. In its first year crime was cut by thirty-one per cent. A fact. In the first month of the operation burglaries in the area were cut from over four hundred to less than two hundred. Another fact. My team in that first month stop-searched over a thousand people more than in the month before we began. And one in ten of those stops resulted in convictions. For offences that were going to result in harm to the public. We brought safety back to the streets. That’s another fact.’
‘All right, all right. No one’s denying that you produced astonishing results. But that’s not my point. My point is that you did it in a dangerous way. You did it by assuming you were the one who knew best all along the line.’
‘Someone has to know best. Someone, in this murky world, has to open their eyes and see right from wrong. And it so happens that in Birchester here and now — or rather not now but yesterday, yesterday damn it — I was that one. It wasn’t easy for me. Don’t think it was. But it was there to be done, and I did it. I had to.’
She had slammed down the phone then.
And — the thought was ringing in her head now — she would say again to anybody who asked for it every word she had said then. And mean them.
Chapter Twelve
As day followed day with no sighting of Grace Brown nor reports of any activity that might be put down to her, Harriet began almost to be convinced that she might not be anywhere in Birchester. Despite the confident assertion in Dr Smellyfeet’s Profile, often open on her desk, that a psychological planner would not abandon a plan, more and more frequently she pictured to herself a tall, gaunt, oldish woman, striding the streets of some pre-season, cut-prices seaside resort, the spring gale-whipped breakers crashing down on the promenade at her feet. Even perhaps contemplating throwing herself into the turbulent, foam-flecked sea.
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