The Perfect Crime

by Roger Forsdyke

  “Well it’s about time you started.” Dark mood translated into bitter, manipulated and disillusioned. Perhaps she wasn’t as good as she thought she was; as good as he thought she was. Stunning looks, sensuously superlative between the sheets, intuitive, but he was starting to see why she had only been an admin clerk in her last job. “You need to make your demand in such a way that it has optimum impact on your mark.”

  He was thinking on his feet and pursuing a course of action he had never before considered. Putting himself in the position of someone about to commit a crime, planning and at the same time realising that he was taking over this operation from his lover. Had this been her intention all along? He doubted it. On the strength of the last twenty minutes she would be unable to plan a slippery slope in a grease factory.

  Bluff and double bluff?

  He continued, “Make your demand in writing. It will be a shock for them to receive it, they will know you mean business and if they have the slightest doubt about the position they find themselves in, they will be able to refer back to it. And they can’t argue. If you whisper your request in a moment of passion, they might demur, or think about it afterwards and tell themselves that you couldn’t possibly have meant what you said.”

  She looked at him with something approaching awe. “I’d better get typing.” She said.

  “You’ve got a typewriter?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Don’t touch it. I’ve got to go out of town next week, I’ll get you another one.” He explained that typewriters could each be identified by their individual imperfections and microscopic differences, as surely as fingerprints could identify people. She should type out the blackmail notes on the new one. They would then dispose of it and if anyone came looking, they could seize her machine and the fact that it would be demonstrably different to that used to produce the demands, would help clear her of suspicion. He told her on balance that it would be best to hit them all at the same time. That way if it all went wrong, she would at least be in possession of a sizeable lump sum.

  “And I could always get myself some new gentlemen.” She caught his look, “Except you, of course, darling.”

  He subjugated his feelings in being practical, organising the project. “How many names in the book? Twenty?”

  “Over thirty, actually, but some of those don’t come any more.”

  “Still worth a punt. So. Say thirty at an average two grand a pop,” he whistled tunelessly, “that’s sixty grand. Four times the price of your average house in the UK. That’s going some.”

  “And some of it is yours – for helping.”

  He looked at her coldly, “I don’t want your money.” He continued, “That book – is it the only copy of the names and contacts?”

  “Yes, why?”

  More good thinking. He very nearly said, Well, you should have at least one copy you stupid cow.

  He said, “Well, make sure you keep it in a safe place.”

  She smiled at him, totally trusting.

  TWENTY SIX

  “I’ve done some preliminary work, but there’s one or two problems.”

  Groat contrived to exclude Gloria from this meeting, so he and Ted sat alone and listened intently to Dee.

  She continued, “Mainly it works out, but examining the patterns and the type of crime, raises one or two questions that need answering before I can go much further.”

  Ted looked grim, Groat frowned. This profiling business was obviously not as straightforward as he had hoped. Not time for an early arrest and glory yet.

  Groat considered he was the link here – as indeed he was – which added a proprietorial feeling, an ownership of the situation that made him want it to succeed more than ever. This was augmented by the frisson engendered by the fact that they should not be allowing non police personnel access to this information. Strictly, Ted should not have even shared it with Groat. He glanced at Ted who appeared to be examining the carpet – again.

  He said, “Well, you’re the expert here, Dee. You’ll have to talk us through it and if there’s anything we can do, or we can think of anything as you’re talking, we’ll chip in.” He glanced at Ted again and kicked him. He continued, “All right?”

  “OK,” She said. “When we get a series of crimes like this, we use what we call our circle hypothesis. This is based on the theory that people usually commit crime, or start to commit crime in an area they know. For all sorts of reasons. They feel safe, confident – they’re on their home territory. They know where they are and if complications arise, they can get away and quickly go to earth, as it were. So we often find that crime number one in the series will be near to their home, or current base. Not too close for obvious reasons. Crime number two will also be in relatively close proximity to home, maybe a little further away. Once they have committed those crimes successfully, two things start to happen. One, they gain in confidence, get more certain of their ability to do what they do, their chosen modus operandi. I will come back to that at some point, because they also progress in other ways, which is our other problem at the moment.” She looked at Ted who, in spite of Groat’s kick of encouragement, was still apparently taking more interest in his shoes, than paying attention to what Dee was saying.

  “Am I boring you?” She asked.

  “What? No, it’s all this talk of problems,” Ted said. “We, that is – I – seem to have more than my fair share at the moment and I thought you were going to help. But everything you do seems to complicate matters.”

  “OK.” She sounded deliberately determined. “I’ll stop calling them problems, because actually they aren’t. They’re, they’re – ” she paused momentarily, “they’re challenges.” She smiled encouragingly at them. Let’s start again; how about this. My preliminary work has got us quite a way down the line already, but has also thrown up the – ” She paused, treading carefully, needing not to sound negative. She required this to be a success as much as the two police officers, if in rather a different way. “ – the requirement for more information, before I can go much further with it. Once I have got that, I can probably progress it a lot better and more satisfactorily.” She crossed her fingers behind her back and hoped she sounded as confident and optimistic as she wanted to, which was rather more than she actually did.

  “Well,” she continued, “Let me finish this part and I will tell you what I have already found out about our man. All right?”

  Groat said, “Great.”

  Ted nodded unenthusiastically.

  Dee said, “Generally speaking, your criminal then goes a little further afield. Crime number three. If that goes off without a problem, they’ll come back a little nearer to home again for crime number four. Then, if you chart subsequent crimes, they seem to go far and wide, all over the place, but if you correlate dates, draw a circle round the first few, then a bigger circle and then another, what seems to happen is that they commit crimes in ever expanding circles, criss-crossing across their home, or base.”

  Groat started to look interested. “So if we use a clock face as an analogy,” he said, “the first couple of jobs will be near the spindle of the hands, the third will be away, for example, towards four o’clock and the fourth back near the spindle. The fifth will be a similar sort of distance from the spindle, but, say, towards ten o’clock – ” he looked at Dee for affirmation, who nodded and smiled at him, eyes twinkling, “and the sixth,” he paused, “will that be back near home, or out towards, say two, or three o’clock?”

  Dee said, “That’s very good, you’re getting the hang of this. It will be out nearer two, or three o’clock, whatever.”

  “And is that what our man has done?” Ted asked.

  “Undoubtedly.” she said. “But – I know I said I wouldn’t use the ‘P’ word – but this does raise – an issue.”

  “Like what?” Groat asked.

  “Well, how certain are you of all those jobs? What I mean is, how confident are you that he has committed all of them?�
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  Groat looked at Ted, who shrugged. “I only passed on the information given to me.” He said.

  “OK,” she said, “Let’s leave that for a moment, I’ll come back to it a bit later. As well as the circle hypothesis, I often find that making a rudimentary table of the crimes – when, where, what time of day, time of year and so on, can often tell us a great deal.”

  As he started to understand, Groat also began to become fascinated. The part about villains committing crime close to home rang true – although most crimes of his acquaintance simply stayed close to home. Period. He knew who they were by the crimes they committed and the way they committed them, so he could usually tell who had done what.

  “And what does your chart tell us about our man?” He asked.

  “He only commits crimes on GMT.” She said.

  Ted frowned at her, Groat looked quizzical.

  “It’s simple,” she smiled at their pained expressions, “he does not commit crime during BST – summertime.”

  “What does that mean?” Asked Ted.

  “You’re the detectives.” She grinned, “You tell me.”

  “He goes abroad for the summer?” Groat essayed.

  “He’s a school teacher?” Ted said.

  “Now you’re thinking.” Dee sounded pleased. “Want to know what I reckon?”

  They nodded in unison.

  “He only commits his crimes at night, so my guess would be that he likes his darkness to last as long as possible.”

  She showed them the list of offences. With one exception, they ran from October, November time each year to February or March and ceased again until the following September, October.

  “What else does this tell us about him?” She asked.

  “That he’s got a job at some times?” Groat said.

  “That he makes enough money during those times to last him?” Ted tried. He actually seemed to be becoming a little positive, now.

  “That’s good.” She beamed at them, “I was thinking of something a little more general, a bit more basic, prosaic even.” She paused, waiting.

  They looked at her – Groat raised his eyebrows, waved a supplicant, questioning hand.

  “How about,” she paused for effect, “how about something as simple and basic as, ‘he’s a planner.’ ‘He’s not a spur of the moment sort of bloke’?”

  “Yes, of course.” Groat exclaimed.

  Dee said, “And every little bit of information we can collect like this – and eventually piece together – will lead us further and closer towards him.”

  “So what are the problems you were talking about?” Ted asked.

  Dee sighed and attempted to push her fingers through the thick waves of her hair. “Well. This first job on the list is the Woodfield Road post office in Aspley, Nottingham. Then we go onto the one at Barnsley, then Rotherham, then Mansfield, then back to Barnsley. Now I’m not one who tries to make the circumstances fit the theory, but that doesn’t work. Then I thought; everything else fits, so let’s try it, leaving out the very first one. This is why I asked you how confident you were that they were all committed by him. If we leave the Woodfield Road job out, it now fits the theory very well. There’s a further consideration. That first job was in 1967. The next one on the list is 1971. Now there could be a very good reason why he left it four years – four years – before committing his next crime, like being in prison, say, but other than that, it doesn’t make sense. And I have the feeling that our boy has not been caught yet, ever, let alone spent four years inside. But more of that later. Look – Barnsley, then Sandhills post office, a little bit away, but still relatively close, then Berry Hill Lane, Mansfield and what do you know? Back to the Barnsley area. Then we have Stockport, Oldham, Stockport then straight across the map to Spondon, in Derbyshire. Absolutely classic.”

  “He lives in Barnsley.” Groat said.

  “Wherever that is.” Ted said under his breath.

  Dee’s mouth set in a thin line. “Possibly. I would not like to say at this early juncture, but in the general area of Barnsley – with what we’ve got at the moment.” She sounded a warning shot across their bows with this last. “Everything is fluid until he is caught. Nothing is set in stone.” She added with heavy emphasis, “Everything we think we know at this juncture is open to being changed by the next piece of information we get.”

  Both Ted and Groat looked nonplussed, depressed, even.

  Groat said, “But whatever we find out later, can’t change what we already know, surely?”

  “Of course it can. She said, “If you can establish that he definitely didn’t do the job at the Woodfield Road post office, you will have a much better bet that he lives in the Barnsley area. If you can find other jobs he may have done, it might change our conclusions yet again.”

  Her audience looked glummer than ever.

  Dee realised instinctively what was happening.

  “You policemen.” Exasperated. “You want everything black and white; cut and dried. Beyond all reasonable doubt.” She laughed. “Well, life ain’t like that. You of all people should know that. One end of the spectrum, white. Other end – black. But those extremes are very small areas. The great wodge, the huge mass in the middle is grey. Grey area. What do they teach you at detective school? Training school?” She ended uncertainly.

  “OK,” Groat said, “What’s the other… er, challenge?”

  “Progression.” Dee looked at them, anticipating questions.

  Groat said, “In what way?”

  Dee said, “In more than one way, and it is as much of a help – or can be – as a hurdle.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I said that he would progress in terms of confidence – which he would have appeared to have done. He may also – will probably also – progress in terms of the crimes he may commit – ”

  “Yesss.” Ted suddenly shouted. Dee paused, looked at him with enquiry and Groat with concern.

  “What?” Ted said.

  “Yes, what?” Groat said, somewhat bewildered and put out.

  “He’s already moved on – er, that is progressed.” He explained. “Mr Morrison said that he had moved on from straightforward burglaries now he has murdered someone.” For the first time since the meeting started, he sounded bullish.

  “So what inferences can we draw from that?” Dee asked.

  Groat scratched his head and leaned back in his chair. Ted relapsed into staring at the carpet. Dee raised her eyes in supplication. She needed them to think along with her. She would not merely expound to them, they must participate in the process or she ran the risk of losing them.

  She sighed, but a sudden flash of inspiration struck her. “How many people get caught, the very first time they commit a crime?”

  As one, they spoke. Ted said, “None.” And Groat – ever the cynic – said, “The unlucky ones.”

  Dee continued, “And do they start at the top of the tree, or do they work their way up?”

  “Got it, got it, got it.” Groat crowed. “If he’s progressed from aggravated burglary to murder – what did he progress to burglary from?”

  Dee positively beamed. “Work needed, my boys. Work needed. What did he start on – and where did he start. I need more information, specifically that information to work on. Remember – yesterday’s clues are tomorrow’s convictions.”

  *

  After Dee had gone, Ted looked at Groat, “She’s right you know.”

  “What about?”

  “The problems.”

  “Challenges.” Groat countered and looked at his friend. “What is it with you? You’re usually the solid dependable one – it’s me that blows hot and cold and goes up like a bottle of pop.” Groat pondered for a moment. Ted had been working away for a little while, now. Of course. On your own and horribly outside your comfort zone. I was right. No wonder no one else wanted the bloody job. He regarded his friend with growing concern, becoming aware that at the moment, it would be he that would ha
ve to drive this project forward. Probably just as far, or as soon as they could develop something concrete, some positive steps towards their goal. Then maybe Ted would take over, get in the driving seat. After all, it was his job. His responsibility. His kudos.

  Of course…

  “My boy,” he said, “remember your CID training?”

  “What about it?”

  “What would you always do before the end of the course?”

  “Go on a night out with the other people on the course and get falling down drunk.”

  “What else?”

  “Oh Christ, Groat. Don’t try all this clever clever stuff on me. Just ‘cos we’ve spent the last hour and a half with a psychology graduate. Doesn’t make you Hercule Poirot. Leave it out.”

  Groat looked hurt. “I’m trying to think of a way of achieving what Dee wants us – you – to do. Get this other information. Have you got any ideas, then, clever sod?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well then, don’t extract the urine. Listen to Uncle Sherlock.”

  Ted sighed, “Well?”

  “Well, if your courses were anything like the ones I went on, you didn’t only have Met CID there, there were people from all over.”

  Ted knew that there were only a few locations in the country that ran CID courses. The Met, at their Hendon training centre, West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police at Bishopgarth, Wakefield – and Preston, at the Lancashire Constabulary headquarters. “And?” He said.

  “Didn’t you all swap names and contact details before the course finished?”

  “Yes,” Ted frowned, “So?”

  Groat shook his head at his friend’s obtuseness. “Still got them?”

  “Somewhere, I suppose, but what…?”

  “Find them. Start calling people. I’ll do the same.”

  “What for?”

  “We numbered people from Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, even Cumbria on one course as I remember. Call them. Use your contacts. Get intros to local collators in all the areas our man has committed crime. Ask if they’ve got any runs of undetected crimes with the same MO running through the series. Someone, somewhere, has to have the information we need.”