by John Gardner
At this time, the female egg sac is swollen with around two to three liquid grams of tetrodoxin, which is enough to poison three to four hundred humans. To retrieve the sac from the fish without breaking it, necessitates alarming the fish so that it does its best aggressive trick, inflating itself to two or three times its normal size. At that moment you slit the side of the creature with a razor-sharp knife and remove the sac intact.
In recent years many schools of the Japanese culinary art now openly taught the same ancient secret for removing the poison, for removing it is necessary to make a particular delicacy harmless. Skilled chefs would do this trick, for the tetrodontidae is the main ingredient in the gourmet dish Fugu. Yet,
Fugu which has been improperly prepared.
‘It’s a horrible way to die.’ She shuddered, her skin suddenly pale at the thought. ‘Complete paralysis and respiratory failure in twenty seconds, the Japanese doctor says.’
‘Fast, though.’ Bond sipped his wine, holding a little in his mouth before swallowing, savouring the flavour. ‘Over before you know it. He mention that they still use it for suicide?’
She shook her head: a cross between saying no and driving the spectre of death by this kind of poison from her brain.
‘I read somewhere that people who want out can buy the stuff from chefs. They get drunk then prick themselves with a needle soaked in the wretched venom.’
‘The cops’ve found the place where the sniper holed up.’ She was distancing herself from the effect, returning to the first cause. ‘We can go up there tomorrow. Whoever it was made a comfortable hide for himself, slightly higher up the mountain.’
‘Must’ve been pretty sure of his target, unless our Ms March was chosen at random.’
‘That’s exactly what the cops said. In fact it’s what they’re afraid of, a killer taking pot shots at people with poison darts or capsules. Not the happiest of thoughts, a random poisoner on the loose.’
‘Which is easier to deal with? The random killer, or some terrorist organization intent on revenge, or headlines?’
‘One’s as bad as the other, really. Scares the hell out of me.’
‘And you don’t look as if you scare easily.’
‘I don’t?’
‘You’re a professional, so . . .’
‘Don’t you get scared, James? Don’t all of us?’
‘Of course I do, but only when the situation warrants it. We’re only going through the motions, investigating a murder. We’re working like a couple of homicide detectives, there’s no danger in that.’
She cocked an eyebrow, and swallowed another piece of lamb. ‘That’s how you think of it?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Well, I’ve seen the body, read the evidence. It’s like somebody being bitten by a deadly snake, and the snake hasn’t yet been caught.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘But nothing, James. Didn’t they tell you to move carefully, to watch your back?’ Her face was still pale, and there was a new, concerned, haunted look in her eyes.
‘My Chief mentioned it, yes, but only in the context of the poor dead Ms March’s employers.’
‘Well, perhaps he was playing it down. My boss spelled it out to me. Anyone investigating the death is at risk. If it’s a one-off terrorist thing, nobody’s claiming responsibility, so they could well have expected a long delay before we worked out the cause of death – if we discovered it at all.’
‘And if it’s some crazy, I suppose he could still be lurking around. That how it goes?’
‘Exactly. We’ve been told to take great care. If it is a crazy, we’re all still at risk. If it’s terrorists, the same applies. So, yes, James, I am scared, and I’ll be surprised if you don’t feel something up on that mountain; text-indent: 0; margin-left: outhing tomorrow.’
‘There’s something else?’ Somehow he felt that she was holding back; delaying facing the truth. ‘So, what’s turned up, Flicka? They’ve found where the shooter holed up; we know how the girl was killed. Have the cops had any other ideas?’
‘She’s stayed there before.’
‘In Interlaken?’
‘At the same hotel. At the Victoria-Jungfrau. Three times previously. Each time with the same man. Once a year over the past three years.’
‘They IDed her friend?’
‘No. I’ve seen stats of the register. Mr and Mrs March. His passport showed him as March, we have the number, and her former employers ran a check. The passport was applied for in the usual way, three years ago. You’re going to love this, James, and it might make you almost as frightened as I am. It’s her brother’s passport. His name was David.’
Bond scowled, suddenly looking up into her face. ‘She was an only child. That’s what her service said.’
Flicka smiled, and the nervous, haunted look vanished for a second, then returned. ‘That’s what her service thought. I only saw the signal traffic, and got the documents half an hour before you arrived. It appears that she wasn’t quite telling the truth. She did have a brother. An elder brother. Black sheep of the family. He died in a hospital for the criminally insane five years ago.’
It was Bond’s turn to look serious. ‘Which hospital?’
‘Rampton. He’d been there since the age of twenty, and he was five years older than her.’
‘And . . .’ Bond began, but the waitress was beside them again, asking about dessert. Without much enthusiasm, Flicka ordered the cherry tart, and Bond went for the cheese board. ‘When in Rome,’ he smiled.
She remained passive, as though the spectre of this man, David March, lay across the table between them. ‘It appears,’ she said, ‘that the family moved from the North of England to Hampshire after it happened. It was a pretty big case at the time.’
‘David March,’ Bond mused, the name hung on the lip of his memory, but he could not quite get to grips with the man or his crime.
‘He killed four girls, in the North of England,’ she said, her voice calm now. ‘At the time, the Press drew some sort of parallel between March and . . . oh, who were they? Monsters? The Moors Murderers?’
‘Brady and Hindley, yes. Kidnapped and abused children, then killed and buried them on the moors above Manchester. Sure, a cause célèbre. Brady’s in a secure facility for the criminally insane now, and Hindley’s still in jail. That case broke, oh, some time in the early sixties . . . An appalling business. Terrible . . . yes, monstrous.’
‘Well, David March made those two look like good fairies. He did his particular thing in the early seventies. I read the file while I was waiting for you to land. He was quiet, unassuming, polite, an undergraduate at Oxford, reading law. The psychiatrists’ reports are interesting; the details of the killings are . . . Well, I’d prefer that you read them for yourself, James. I was scared before, but after reading what her brother did . . .’
‘So we have a whole series of bogeymen – terrorists, a lone random crazy, and a victim whose brother . . .’ He stopped as the name David March suddenly connected with a jigsaw puzzle in his head. ‘That _t f bleDavid March?’ He looked at her, knowing his eyes had widened. ‘The one who kept the heads?’
She gave a fast little nod, ‘See for yourself.’ Flicka reached for the leather shoulder bag, but Bond shook his head.
‘No, when we get there. I’ll read it then. How in heaven’s name? I mean how didn’t her people unearth it during her positive vetting?’
‘How indeed? I rather gather there’re a lot of red faces in London. She didn’t even change her name. Nobody in their right mind should have given her a sensitive job with that family skeleton in her closet.’
‘It was her brother, not her.’
‘Read what the shrinks have to say before you make statements like that. Lord, James, think about it. If you remember only small details of the case, he was an horrific, walking, talking, living monster. Yet, two years after his death, sweet little Laura, his sister, lets someone forge a passport with his birth details. What�
��s that make her? To allow someone to use his name, -//W3C//DTD XH
4
BROTHER DAVID
He had barely read the first four paragraphs before the whole story came flooding back. At least the facts read in the newspapers at the time returned vividly. Some of it had been lurid, sensationally reported, with the usual sensitivity of ghoulish newspaper men, but he was certain that, even with the gruesome highlights which became public knowledge after the trial, there were still some things that had been left out. He recalled talking, some years before, to a senior police officer who had assisted in identifying the body of a child buried in dense woodland and found some six months after her murder.
‘We don’t even bring some things out in court,’ the detective had said. ‘I identified that child’s fingerprints certainly, but they had to remove the hands and bring them down to London. I never saw the poor kid’s body.’
The bulk of the file was a detailed and annotated report on the case by the police officer in charge, a Detective Superintendent Richard Seymour, and, even though the lengthy document was couched in official police jargon, the language did nothing to reduce the sense of blind horror.
The events took place in the town of Preston – around thirty-five miles north-west of Manchester – deep in the old cottonmill country. Bond thought of grey granite buildings, and the uncompromising, no-nonsense though cheerful people of Lancashire who were the actors in this story of terror.
When Christine Wright, of 33 Albert Road, Preston, went missing, just before Christmas 1971, her name was simply added to the missing persons’ file. She was twenty-two, blonde, very pretty and at constant odds with her parents who, she was always telling her friends, still treated her like a child. The file did pass across Superintendent Seymour’s desk, but all the indications were that young Christine had run off: she was always talking about getting away, living on her own, or finding Mr Wright – this last was, naturally, a little running joke with her friends. Later it would smack of grim gallows humour.
She did tell her closest confidante – one Jessie Styles, who worked with her at the National Westminster Bank – that she had met someone truly exciting. The report gave the friend’s exact words: ‘Chrissy said she thought this lad was right for her. She wouldn’t talk much about it. Said he was a bit of a toff, had money. Said it could lead to a new life. They were in love, but then Chrissy was always in love with the latest boyfriend. The difference this time was that she didn’t give me any details. Usually she’d have photographs. Tell me everything. She wouldn’t even tell me the name of this one.’
In the early spring of 1972, a pair of hikers literally stumbled over what was left of the missing girl. Christine Wright was identified by her fingerprints – originally, the police had gone through the motions by taking prints from her room at her parents’ house in Albert Road.
What was found by the hikers was simply the torso, in the early stages of decay. The head had literally been hacked off, and the remains buried in a grave less than eight inches deep, near one of the roads leading across the moors above Manchester. It can be very cold in that part of England, and the freezing temperatures that had persisted from early December 1971 to April of ’72, had left the body in a well-preserved state, for it was only just beginning to decompose with the first warmth of spring.
Superintendent Seymour began investigating on the day after the remains were identified. He did not get very far. In his notes there was a query regarding the father, and the constant arguments between him and his murdered daughter; but the policeman, after some long question and answer sessions, noted that he thought Christine’s father was not even ‘in the frame’ as the English police slang has it.
On the Tuesday of Easter week, Bridget Bellamy told her parents she was going to spend the night with her friend Betsy Sagar. She had not returned by the Wednesday evening, so it was her mother who eventually telephoned Betsy’s home. At first she was angry. Even though Bridget was twenty-one years old, Mrs Bellamy liked to think that her daughter always told her the truth. Bridget had not stayed with the Sagars, nor had she been at work on this, the following day.
It was only after Betsy Sagar had owned up that Mrs Bellamy called the police. For the past week, Bridget had been on a high. She had met the man of her dreams, she had told her friend Betsy. They were in love, and he had asked her to marry him. His mother was dead, and the family had a wonderful house which the new boyfriend would inherit, together with a fortune, when his elderly, ailing father died. Bridget Bellamy was a blonde, and the one thing she did not tell Betsy was the name of this wonderful man, though she did mention that he lived in his {font-size: 90% f bleown house near that of his parents.
Bridget’s remains were discovered, again on the moors, in early July. She was more difficult to identify, but there was no doubt, just as there was no doubt that her head had been severed – possibly with an axe and a saw.
There were two more cases during the summer. Both blondes, and in their early twenties; both found headless, soon after telling friends that they would shortly be announcing their engagements.
In those days the name ‘serial killer’ had not yet entered either police or public language, but Seymour did not have to be told that they had one killer on the loose in his area. Someone who had already murdered four times, who favoured blonde females, and whose diabolical work included severing their heads – possibly keeping them as souvenirs.
The Superintendent’s notes over the next two weeks gave the impression of someone under great stress. There were no leads, no clues, and he was doing his best to keep the Press at bay. At one point he wrote: ‘If this continues I shall have to let the truth come out. All blonde young women in the area are obviously at risk, but if I release the full details there will be both a panic and a concerted attack on us by the Press, who will want to know why we have not arrested anyone. If there is another killing, we will just have to give in and make a full statement. This man is a maniac. I am no forensic specialist, but it is certain that the decapitations are performed in a frenzy, and the two medical examiners who have helped me on this case are both of the opinion that the girls died from the blows to the neck – in other words, died from decapitation. I dread another missing persons’ report.’
What he feared occurred in the last week of August. Janet Fellowes, aged twenty-one, blonde as they came. However, Janet was different. Her friends spoke of her, not unkindly, as the Pony Girl – ‘Because she let anyone have a ride,’ one of them said. Also, Janet talked. On the night she went missing she told Annie Frick who, the Superintendent noted, was probably a member of the same pony club, that she was really having some fun with a stuck-up young man. ‘I been teasing him stupid,’ she was reported to have said. ‘Keeps saying he’s in love with me, but I know what he wants – and he’ll get it tonight.’
Janet had also said that he would be okay for a good time, but he would not be around for a while. The reason, she told Annie, was that he was a student: ‘Says he’s up at Oxford University. Has to go back for the new term.’ Those words constituted the first, and final breakthrough.
There were twenty-four undergraduates in the Preston area. Only fifteen of them were up at Oxford. David March was the third young man to be interviewed by Superintendent Seymour.
Giving evidence at the trial, at which David March pleaded guilty by reason of insanity – by then, his only true option – Seymour merely said that after a number of questions, March had admitted to the offences. Bond had been right. Not everything came out in open court. The Superintendent’s official report told the entire chilling story.
The March family lived in a large eighteenth-century house, standing in four acres of garden on the outskirts of Preston. Behind the main house were substantial outbuildings, one of which originally had been a coach house. This, David’s father had completely restored and made into a roomy two-storey cottage so that David, having obtained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, could have his own pr
ivacy, and not be tied to his family during the vacations.
David was packing, getting ready to return to university when Seymour eventually, the animals became disguise there arrived, accompanied by a detective sergeant, and his first impression was that here he had a well-set-up young man: a quiet, good-looking, scholarly type; confident and with a high IQ. He was later to confide that he had immediately scratched March from the list. They sat and talked in a large, book-lined living-room, and the detective began a gentle probing, showing him photographs of the girls, taken in life; talking of David’s future; and slipping in questions about his activities on the significant dates. At the same time, Seymour had the opportunity to look at the books on the shelves. Most were concerned with law, but one whole section was taken up by books on the occult and comparative religion.
David March behaved perfectly normally for the first thirty minutes or so: eager to answer questions, apologizing for the mess, offering coffee. Then, Seymour noticed a sudden change in him. He seemed to be distancing himself from the two policemen, his head cocked on one side, as though listening for something or someone near by. In the middle of answering a question regarding his hobbies and other activities at Oxford, David suddenly said, ‘They say you’ve come to look after them.’ His voice had changed to a dreamy monotone.
‘Who?’ The Superintendent realized that he could have simply answered in the affirmative.
‘The oracles. They’re not all gathered yet – but you know that. Isis says there must be at least six. I have only gathered five.’
‘Does Isis speak with you often, David?’ The policeman was interested in Egyptology, so was familiar with the facts. Isis was possibly the most important goddess of the ancient Egyptians, and among March’s occult and religious works, he had seen at least four books concerning worship and the ancient Egyptians.