by Ken McClure
‘ Understandable. So where do I come in?’ asked Steven.
‘ Take a look at the case file. If you agree with the police assessment we’ll forget it, if not pick away at it, see what you come up with.’
‘ He that pryeth into every cloud may be hit by a thunderbolt,’ quoted Steven with a smile.
‘ But that’s what we pay you for,’ replied Macmillan, handing over the file and adding, ‘Miss Roberts has prepared some extra material for you. Collect it on the way out.’
Steven left the Home Office and took a cab back to his fifth floor apartment in a converted warehouse near the river. It wasn’t quite on the river — Sci-Med pay didn’t quite run to that — but it was only one street back so he could actually see the Thames through a gap in the buildings along to the right. He made himself some coffee and sat down by the window to read through the background material he’d been given.
He started with the original police report on the crime and found it made harrowing reading. Julie Summers had been a bright attractive schoolgirl who had been baby-sitting for a local couple on the evening of January 5 ^ th 1993 while they attended the husband’s works dinner. The couple had been home by twelve but Julie had declined the husband’s offer to walk her home as she lived less than half a mile away. She never made it and was found dead some three days later.
Post mortem examination revealed that she had been raped both vaginally and anally and had been subsequently strangled with her own brassiere. Her panties had been stuffed into her mouth — presumably to prevent her screaming — and three fingers of her right hand had been broken — presumably during the initial struggle.
Steven looked at the photograph of the child supplied to the police by her parents when she first went missing — a pretty girl smiling and eating ice cream — and compared it with the ones taken by the forensics people after her body was found. It was impossible not to feel an overwhelming sense of sadness. Despite his own medical training he actually felt slightly nauseous, maybe because he had a daughter of his own and it was impossible not to wonder, what if?
Just how many of these animals were there? Steven wondered as he paused to look out of the window. How many were out there tonight, just watching and waiting their chance?
He moved on to the photograph the police had taken of David Little. There was certainly no clue from his appearance that he might be one of them but then that was the trouble; lunatics often tended not to look or act like lunatics. How many rapists and killers had subsequently been described by their neighbours as, ‘A quiet man who kept himself very much to himself’? The ugliness of evil was nearly always hidden, just waiting its chance or its trigger.
Little appeared every inch the academic, something under five feet seven according to the police height scale he stood against. He had a mop of frizzy hair, narrow sloping shoulders, a thin waspish looking face, perhaps suggesting petulance or even arrogance, thought Steven and wore small, metal-framed glasses to complete an image that could have been taken from the Hollywood drawer marked, ‘assorted boffins’.
Steven skimmed through the information that Rose Roberts had included in the file about Little’s work and had to admit to being impressed. Unlike so many proposed research projects these days, which were little more than cleverly worded attempts at extracting grant money from the research councils in order to keep their proposers in a job, it sounded as if Little’s work had a real chance of success. It made the man’s conviction and imprisonment all the more tragic.
Little had been thirty-five at the time of the trial; he would now be forty-three, maybe forty-four. He had been married with two children, both girls, who would now be thirteen and ten. They had lived in the same village as Julie Summers, after moving out there from rented accommodation in Edinburgh where they’d been living since their return from the states. This had been in the summer of 1992 when a large, comfortable, family house had come on to the market.
It was difficult not to think that Little had had everything going for him at the time of the murder. He had a job he loved, the recognition of his peers, four million pounds in research grants and as much autonomy to apply them as he could ever have hoped for. He had a wife, two kids and a nice home and he had thrown the lot away because… he needed the body of a schoolgirl.
It seemed incredible but Steven knew well enough that, where sex was the driving force, logic and common sense often went out of the window. It was something that had been documented time and again throughout history. You could be President of the USA and still think that a quick blowjob was worth risking your place in history.
Steven noted that a police psychiatric report had found Little to be uncooperative and aggressive but had found no evidence of personality disorder save for his continuing insistence of his innocence and a reluctance to even contemplate his own guilt.
Little’s wife, Charlotte, had divorced him within a year of his conviction and had subsequently severed all links with him. She had moved with the girls away from the district and was last known to be staying with her parents in Cromer in Norfolk. She had recently declined an invitation to take part in a Channel 4 documentary about the suffering experienced by the wives and families of convicted killers.
Steven referred again to the supplementary file on Little and saw that his academic record was outstanding. From humble beginnings as the only child of an insurance agent and a nursery nurse, he had gained a first class degree from Edinburgh University in medical sciences, and a subsequent D. Phil. from Oxford with a thesis entitled, ‘Mammalian Cell Differentiation, Cause and Control’. He had gone on to carry out post-doctoral research on transgenic mice at UCLA in California and then come back to do a second post-doc at the University of Leicester in England before returning to the States to join the so-called brain drain with a move to Harvard where he took up a tenure-track position in the spring of 1990.
After two years however, his wife had become homesick and he had succumbed to pressure to at least consider a move back to the UK. Rumours on the scientific grapevine had led to him being offered the job at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh and this had tipped the scales in favour of a return. Apart from generous funding for his work it had been made clear that he would be granted a personal chair at the university within a year of his return. The idea of being Professor Little in sole charge of his own unit had heralded a new life for the Little family. Unfortunately, thought Steven, it had also signalled an end to the short one of Julie Summers.
A list of Little’s scientific publications was appended to the file along with a note of his awards and achievements. There was a copy of his medical records, background reports made at the time of the trial and a psychiatric assessment made after his committal to prison. The bottom line was simple. Little was a highly intelligent, if abrasive man and no one quite knew why he’d done what he’d done. He was currently a Rule 43 prisoner in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He did not have visitors.
THREE
The only clue in the files to what went on inside David Little’s head was the incident at the University lab at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. A computing officer, who had been working on a network connection fault, reported by Little himself, had discovered a large amount of hard-core pornographic material being stored on the computer in Little’s office. The man had immediately passed on his findings to the authorities.
Steven suspected that the university would much rather he hadn’t in the circumstances. The last thing it would have wanted at that time would have been any kind of a scandal leading to the dismissal of the man they’d gone to so much trouble to recruit and the subsequent loss of grant money and prestige that would mean. The nature of the material on the disk however, and the fact that a written report had been lodged, had taken matters out of their hands and obliged them to call in the police.
Little had denied all knowledge of the offending material and pointed out that his computer — like all the computers in the unit — was open to use
by research students and any other members of staff who might care to use it when none other was available. Computers were generally not regarded as personal property within university departments and confidentiality where required was usually effected through password protection and the saving of sensitive material to removable disks.
In the circumstances, both the police and the university authorities were happy to embrace this get-out clause and were able to head off any potential embarrassment by dismissing the whole affair as a student prank. No further action was taken and the business did not reach the newspapers.
‘ I wonder,’ murmured Steven. From what he’d read about Little, the man did not strike him as the type of person that research students would play pranks on. His reputation was such that he would be held more in awe than in any disregard. Practical jokes were usually reserved for those members of staff that the students held in low esteem and, while it may have been common practice to share computers in the labs, he couldn’t really see Little — as head of the unit — having shared his. He thought it strongly possible that Little had downloaded the material himself and that this was in fact an indication of the true nature of the man.
There was also the matter of the incriminating material itself. It comprised a large number of photographs downloaded from a site specialising in sexual sadism practised on young girls. One such print was included in the file and was captioned, ‘Tracy learns her lesson’. It showed the back view of a naked girl being whipped by a man wielding a metal-studded strap. The scars of her back were raw and bleeding and the welts on her buttocks made Steven wince.
‘ Power trips, Dave? Is that what you were all about?’ he murmured.
Steven made himself some more coffee and then turned to the newspaper cuttings of the case. Press coverage had been extensive and, in general, the mood of the articles followed a well-established pattern. Horror had been followed by outrage, which in turn had been followed by criticism of the police and then a general outpouring of anger featuring much use of the words, ‘beast’ and ‘monster’ when the simpleton, Mulvey, had been arrested.
Steven noted that the tabloids, after using up all their vitriol on Mulvey, had been distinctly reticent when it came to their treatment of Little when he had finally been arrested and charged — as if they had been embarrassed by Little appearing on the scene when they had already convicted Mulvey. He saw the clear change of tack when they started to blame the police for the Mulveys’ deaths. Little, the real killer, was variously dismissed as, quiet, non-descript, inadequate, enigmatic, and obsessive. ‘The beast with brains’ as one of the papers labelled him.
Little’s glittering research career was given no mention, in keeping with the Press’s tradition of saying nothing good about those who’d been convicted. One of the broadsheets had done a piece on what they saw as an increase in the incidence of professional men being convicted for serious crimes, citing several members of the medical profession who’d been convicted in recent years of the murder of their patients.
After half an hour, Steven concluded that there was nothing of any great significance to be learned from the cuttings. He decided that he needed a break before moving on to the Hector Combe material and checked his watch before deciding that he should phone his daughter before going out to get something to eat.
Jenny lived in the village of Glenvane in Dumfriesshire in Scotland with his sister-in-law, Sue and her solicitor husband Richard who had two children of their own, Mary and Robin. She had lived with them since the death of her mother — Steven’s wife and Sue’s sister, Lisa, who’d died of cancer some three years ago — and she’d now settled in as one of the family. Steven saw her as often as he could and he tried to spend every second weekend in Glenvane, work permitting. In addition he phoned Jenny twice a week to get her news about school and her friends.
‘ How are things?’ asked Steven when Sue answered the phone.
‘ Absolutely fine,’ replied Sue, her great good nature shining through as always. Sue was the most relaxed person Steven knew. She saw the good in everyone and could find positive things to take from situations where others might find only gloom and despair. In this she was almost matched by her easy going husband, Richard who was a partner in a law firm in Dumfries where he took care of the commercial property side of the business. The couple had taken Jenny into their family seemingly without a second thought when Lisa had died, something Steven would be ever grateful for. The weeks and months following Lisa’s death had been the darkest time of his life.
‘ How’s my little monster?’
‘ She’s fine. I spoke to her teacher at the gate this morning; Jenny’s a born organiser, she said — quite happy as long as everyone does things her way!’
‘ Sounds like her,’ said Steven.
‘ I’ll put her on.’
Steven heard Sue call out Jenny’s name and heard the faint reply, ‘I’m busy.’
‘ It’s your daddy,’ Sue called out.
Steven heard the running feet and then the breathless, ‘Hello Daddy, I’m painting an elephant.’
‘ What colour are you painting him, Nutkin?’
Steven heard Jenny’s fit of the giggles. ‘Not a real elephant, silly, a painting book elephant!’
When he’d finished talking to Jenny, Steven went out to find something to eat. His culinary skills did not go much beyond heating up packet meals so take-away food tended to play a significant role in his life. Tonight he returned with a selection of Chinese food from the Jade Garden where he was a once-a-week regular. He reheated it in the microwave before taking a Stella Artois from the fridge and moving everything through on a tray through to the living room where he watched the early evening news on Channel 4 while he ate.
Trouble in the Middle East, trouble in Ireland and trouble in Zimbabwe, was followed by party political squabbles at home over farm subsidies. There was a warning about dearer food prices and an ‘and finally’ story about a kitten marooned on a log floating down a river in Kent and the efforts of the emergency services to rescue it. Steven finished eating and switched off.
The file on Hector Combe related a very different story to that of David Little. Little’s file — up until the time of the computer pornography incident — was a glowing record of personal achievement and academic success; Combe’s recorded a lifetime of mental illness and criminal activity. Born the illegitimate son of a Glasgow prostitute, he had shown a propensity for violence from an early age, being taken into care at the age of seven and failing to fit in with three separate sets of foster parents by the time he was nine. At this point he had already established himself in police records as a juvenile tearaway.
A teenage life of crime punctuated with periods in various corrective institutes and hospitals had established Combe among the criminal fraternity as a true Glasgow hard man — a man without fear and without conscience. He was assessed by the psychiatric fraternity as a borderline psychopath when he was fourteen and had killed his first victim by the time he was eighteen — a twenty-three year old man who didn’t like the idea of Combe chatting up his girlfriend. Combe had knifed him in the stomach and, according to witnesses, stood over him smiling as his intestines spilled out on to the pavement outside a nightclub in Glasgow.
Amazingly, Combe had successfully managed to plead self defence after an exercise in witness intimidation carried out by his underworld friends who valued Combe for his powers of enforcement. Anyone threatened with a visit from Hector Combe generally paid up or shut up, whether it was a case of protection money or sorting out ladies of the night who had become a little too keen on privatising their assets.
Combe had gone to prison for the killing but was out again within five years, the psychiatric board having failed to agree his mental status but deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt in their recommendation to the parole board. It was obvious that the Glasgow police could have helped them out with their assessment of Combe as ‘one evil bastard’ however, this class
ification had not been recognised in the psychiatric lexicon and Combe had been freed to continue his ‘career’.
For the next few years Combe had managed to avoid crossing paths with the police, not that he had mended his ways but assault and rape perpetrated by one of their own on their own went largely unreported by criminal society so Combe managed to stay clear of the courts. The prostitutes he was employed to keep in line loathed him but were too afraid to refuse an ‘invitation’ when it came, knowing that if they declined he would have them anyway and it would be twice as bad. In the end they might literally lose their face as one girl had after Combe had taken a knife to her.
Although not officially on any wanted list, the police kept track of Combe through exchanges of inter-force intelligence. As an enforcer, he occasionally moved around the country, accompanying gang bosses on ‘business trips’ to other cities in the UK. The Glasgow police would inform colleagues as a courtesy when Combe was known to be heading their way.
This situation had continued until June of 1995 when Combe had developed an obsession with a girl outside the criminal fraternity who worked in a flower shop in the centre of Glasgow. At first she had been flattered by Combe’s lavish attention: money was no object in his line of work and fast cars and good restaurants were very seductive to a girl earning four pounds an hour. She went out with him several times over a period of six weeks but, as she told friends later, she’d never felt truly at ease in his company. She said that she found his mood changes ‘odd’ and that he frightened her at times. She suspected that he could be dangerous.
After an incident in a pub in which Combe had threatened a barman with a broken glass, she had told him that she wanted nothing more to do with him but Combe had kept pestering her to continue the association, ultimately threatening her with disfigurement should she even consider seeing someone else. In the end, she had felt obliged to go to the police and they had warned Combe off.