“Am I to understand it, then, that you were seeing Kathy while you were still living with your then wife?” said Collison.
“For a while, yes,” Barker said awkwardly. “What of it? It’s not a crime, is it? These things happen.”
“I’m just trying to build up a complete picture.”
“It seems to me that the details of my client’s former marriage are of marginal relevance at best,” Cohen observed. “We would much rather hear whatever it is that this tip-off concerns – the one which was reported in the newspapers today.”
“I don’t think that’s something we can talk about right now,” Collison replied.
Cohen stared at him. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, Superintendent, that if you are aware of anything that is relevant to my client’s defence then you are obliged to disclose it.”
“Should this matter proceed to trial, yes,” Collison acknowledged. “But right now your client hasn’t even been charged. Anyway, even if we did have information relating to the Redman killing, we would hardly disclose it while your client is still considering his position as to a possible alibi for that murder. You tell us where you stand on that, and then we’ll see.”
“Then perhaps we could take a break while I take instructions from my client?” Cohen suggested.
“By all means,” Collison agreed, looking at his watch. “For the tape, interview suspended at 1634 for Mr Cohen to take instructions from his client.”
Metcalfe pushed the stop button and the machine beeped. He took the tape out of one of the two decks and gave it to Cohen. “You’re welcome to stay in here if you like,” he told the lawyer. “I can have some tea or coffee sent in.”
“Is my client under arrest?” Cohen asked.
Collison hesitated and looked at Metcalfe.
“If it makes any difference to your decision,” Cohen continued, producing a passport from his inside pocket, “Dr Barker wishes to state his willingness to assist you with your enquiries, as I am sure you will agree he has done so far. He is also willing to surrender his passport.”
“In that case no, not at this stage,” Collison conceded.
“Then with your permission, I’d like to take my client outside for a coffee and some fresh air.”
“That may not be a good idea, Mr Cohen,” Metcalfe demurred. “There’s probably still a whole gang of press outside the station.”
“We ran the gauntlet on the way in,” Cohen said, “and I’m sure we can do the same on the way out.”
“I have a better idea,” suggested Collison. “Let me show you out the side way, through the magistrates’ court. That door is never used normally when the court’s not in session. You can come back that way too, if you phone the desk sergeant and ask him to let you in.”
“Thank you,” Cohen acknowledged. “That would be preferable.”
Collison opened the door of the interview room and let Cohen and Barker go ahead of him as they walked down the corridor into the waiting room. He registered Susan McCormick sitting there, and nodded to her in greeting. To his surprise she reddened and buried her face in her magazine. Suddenly Barker stopped still and Collison cannoned into him. They both staggered across the room, Collison clutching at the wall to stop himself falling.
“Hello,” Barker said hesitantly, a strange expression on his face.
Collison looked from Barker to Susan McCormick and back again. The level of embarrassment in the room was tangible. Suddenly Barker laughed mirthlessly. “You were asking about my ex-wife, Inspector,” he addressed Metcalfe. “Well, here she is. Susan Barker, née Dashwood.”
Collison and Metcalfe gazed blankly at Susan McCormick, who still said nothing.
“Well,” Collison said attempting to gather his wits, “why don’t we say one hour, Mr Cohen? I have another interview to be getting on with. Sergeant, will you see Mr Cohen and his client out through the side door please, and be ready to let them back in when they return?”
“But what are you doing here, Susan?” Barker asked plaintively. “What’s going on?”
“Come on, Colin,” Cohen said, hustling him away. “Let’s go and have a coffee and let the police get on with their job.”
Collison waited for the door to close behind them, then turned to Susan McCormick.
“Why did you not tell us that you were Colin Barker’s ex-wife?” he said curtly.
“I could say ‘because you never asked me’, couldn’t I?” she replied archly.
With the departure of Barker it seemed normality had reappeared – or maybe it was just because she had been given a few moments to compose herself while he and his solicitor left the room. “Don’t worry Superintendent,” she went on with a smile, acknowledging the irritation on his face. “I’m happy to answer all your questions and a lot more besides, but first I have something to tell you.”
“In that case we’d better get on with it,” he said, looking at his watch. “We only have an hour. Will you come through to the interview room?”
CHAPTER 24
“Now then,” Collison demanded, trying to conceal his bafflement, “what on earth is all this about? If you’re Dr Barker’s ex-wife and your maiden name was Dashwood, how come you’re now calling yourself Susan McCormick?”
“Well, I might have re-married,” she said mischievously, “but I haven’t. I changed my name by deed poll because I didn’t want to be known to all and sundry as the first Mrs Barker, and I didn’t want to go back to Dashwood because it seemed like an admission of failure – having a husband and then losing him.”
“Alright,” Collison said. “We’ve got that cleared up, at least. Now, what is it that you want to tell me?”
“It’s really very simple, Superintendent. I’m the person you’re looking for. I’m your killer.”
Metcalfe and Collison stared at her, and then Collison smiled. “I’m not sure what you think you’re playing at Ms McCormick, but you can try again. Whoever we’re looking for is a man. For one thing, he rapes his victims.”
“No,” she said calmly. “It just looks like it. In fact they are raped by a dildo – this one in fact.” So saying, she opened her large handbag and duly produced a large plastic phallus, laying it rather primly on the table in front of them.
“Of course, I had to get around the problem of there being no semen in the bodies, so I used a condom. I assumed that your forensic people would be able to find traces of the lubricant or spermicide or whatever, and believe that, as you have just said, they were raped by a man wearing a condom.”
There was a long silence.
“Ms McCormick,” Collison said eventually, “I am now going to caution you and turn on the tape recorder. DI Metcalfe?”
Metcalfe put two new tapes in the machine and switched it on. He made the preliminary announcements and administered the caution.
“Do you understand the caution?” Collison asked carefully.
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m not obliged to ask you this,” he went on, “but in view of the gravity of what I think you want to say to us under caution, would you like to have a lawyer present?”
“No,” she replied. “I have nothing to hide. I want to make a clean breast of everything.”
“Very well,” Collison said. “Now, Ms McCormick, am I correct in understanding that you wish to confess to the murder of five women: Amy Grant, Jenny Hillyer, Joyce Mteki, Tracy Redman and Katherine Barker?”
She nodded.
“For the tape, please,” Metcalfe urged.
“I’m sorry. Yes, I confess to all five murders.”
“But what possible motive could you have?” Collison asked.
“The only one I wanted to murder was Katherine Barker, of course. I was sorry about the others. She deserved to die but they didn’t.”
“But you killed them anyway?”
“Yes.”
Collison drew a deep breath. “Why don’t you take us through it from the beginning?”
“I met Amy
Grant on a train one Friday,” she said. “She was a sad little soul – seemed completely lost, somehow. We got talking and I was soon pretty sure that she was gay and that she found me attractive, so I invited her to stay with me a few weekends later.”
“So she stayed with you?”
“Yes. To begin with, when I issued the invitation, it was really just curiosity. I’d never been to bed with another woman and wondered what it would be like. But then I got to thinking about how much I wanted to get rid of that bitch Kathy. I’d been dreaming about it for ages, imagining all sorts of different ways I might do it, ideally slowly and painfully, but I always came to the same conclusion: that I would be the obvious suspect. After all, nobody else had a motive for killing her.”
“And just to be clear,” Collison asked, “your motive was simple jealousy?”
She laughed humourlessly. “There’s nothing simple about jealousy, Superintendent. It’s an all-consuming passion. It’s been my constant companion ever since he came home one evening and told me that he was leaving me for that cheap tart. Ten years we’d been married and then along she comes with her short skirts and high heels and entices him away. She could never make him happy of course, but he was too blind to see that.”
“So when did you form the intention to kill her?”
“A little while after he left. I thought that if she was no longer around he’d come to his senses and come back to me. I wasn’t interested in anyone else – I could never be. He was the only man I ever loved, or wanted to love.”
“But you were scared of being caught?”
“Yes. Then I started to think that if I could kill someone else, a total stranger, and then later kill Kathy in exactly the same way, the police would look for someone who was connected to both murders rather than someone who could only be a suspect for one of them. Not long after I met Amy, I began to think that she could be the one. Perhaps it was even in my mind when I met her that first time on the train. Then I started to think about how I might do it.”
“And you settled on …?”
“Chloroform. I thought it would be quick and easy. I quickly discovered that the practice hadn’t changed any of their passwords since I used to work there, so I could still log onto the system. Then I went over late one night and found that they hadn’t changed the code on the entry alarm either. So I logged on remotely, ordered the stuff and then went in a few nights later to pick it up. I was only just in time. It looked as though they’d put it out to be returned.”
Collison and Metcalfe exchanged glances.
“Tell us how you killed Amy,” Collison said.
“It was the Sunday afternoon. We’d had sex the night before. For all my curiosity, I’d been disappointed. It didn’t really do anything for me. But she was transformed – seemed genuinely happy. Sad, really, that something so trivial could make such a difference to someone.”
“Perhaps she didn’t think it was trivial,” Metcalfe suggested, struggling to keep his voice calm. “Perhaps she thought this was going to be the start of a serious relationship.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Anyway, that afternoon I pretended to be looking for something – a box of books, I think – and asked her to come into the garage to help me. It’s an integral garage so we could walk straight into it from the kitchen. Once her attention was distracted I came up behind her with a pad of cotton wool soaked in chloroform and clamped it over her nose and mouth.”
“What happened then?”
“She started struggling and kicking like mad. It was a real shock. I thought that stuff would work almost instantly and she’d just keel over, but she didn’t. She broke away from me and was about to run back into the kitchen so I grabbed something off the shelf – a hammer as it happened – and hit her over the back of the head. She fell down but she was still groaning and moving about, so I grabbed a screwdriver and stabbed her until I was sure she was dead. I left her on the floor of the garage and went back into the kitchen for a cup of tea. I was shaking a bit; excitement I think. It was a strange feeling knowing that she was lying next door, dead. I kept going back in to check that she hadn’t suddenly come back to life or something. Then I realised there was a lot of blood everywhere.”
“What did you do next?” Collison asked.
“I remembered the dildo and condom which I had ready, and soon after she died I raped her. I wasn’t quite sure how long to do it for. Did it matter? Maybe not. I took her knickers and kept them, by the way. I’d already decided that when that bitch Kathy was killed I’d do the same with hers. It would be another point of similarity. Then I called Gary.”
“Gary?” Collison said abruptly, and then again more slowly: “Gary Clarke?”
“Yes, Gary Clarke. He’d been hanging around me for weeks and the only reason I hadn’t sent him packing was because I thought he might just be able to make himself useful. I knew I needed to kill Amy somewhere private and safe like my garage, but that then meant I would have to move the body after death, and for that I’d need help.”
“But how did you persuade him to become an accessory to murder?” Collison said incredulously.
She laughed again. “Oh Superintendent, don’t be so naïve. Sex, of course. Clarke was pathetic. He had no chance of finding a halfway decent woman to have sex with. He was desperate, not just for the usual physical reasons but also to feel adequate as a man. So I invited him round a few days before and prepared the ground a bit.”
“And how did you do that?”
“I gave him a glass of wine and told him that I’d always found him attractive; that I felt he was a kindred spirit, who wasn’t just looking for a normal, boring relationship, but something different and exciting. Of course he agreed straightaway. He’d have put his hand in a waste disposal unit if he thought it would get him into my knickers.”
“So you hatched a conspiracy with Clarke to kill Amy?”
“No, nothing like that. I just suggested that I should find something really dark and exciting for us to do together. Naturally the poor fool couldn’t agree quickly enough. Then he tried to jump on me but I pushed him off and told him he’d have to prove himself first. To stop his whining I gave him a quick handjob and sent him home. When he came on the Sunday, I showed him what I’d done.”
“How did he react?” Metcalfe asked, repelled but fascinated at the same time.
“He ran out of the garage into the kitchen and became hysterical. I played the innocent and said I couldn’t understand why he was so upset as I’d done it for the two of us, like we’d discussed the other day. He started shouting that he’d never intended for me to do anything like this. Then he went into the living room, sat down and cried for ages. I got fed up with it all and went and had a coffee while he pulled himself together.”
“And then?” Metcalfe prompted.
“Well, just as I’d hoped, once he’d calmed down he said that we had to dispose of the body somehow and try to forget the whole thing ever happened. I’d bought some things at a garden centre already so we wrapped her up in polythene and put her at the end of the garage, so we could clean the whole place thoroughly. I had a hose and brushes and lots of bleach, and we washed everything away down the drain in the middle of the garage. There was nothing to see afterwards, though I expect your forensic people would probably find something if they looked hard enough. Then once it was dark I brought the car in from the road, we put her in the boot, and Gary drove her off to dump her in some woods near High Wycombe where I used to walk a dog when I lived in Beaconsfield as a girl. I’d been back a week previously late at night to check it out and it was completely deserted – just the odd courting couple from time to time. I told him to undo the plastic first and lift her out of it. He brought that back in the boot and I put it in a black dustbin bag and took it to the dump a few days later.”
“And he went along with all this willingly?” Collison asked.
“Yes, but he was in a dreadful state,” she said scornfully. “
He kept whimpering and saying how awful it all was. I think I’d convinced him that in some way I thought he’d asked me to do it. When he came back with the car I let him have sex with me on the floor in the living room. It was pretty frightful but at least it was all over quickly. I told him that the sight of the body had excited me. I pretended I thought it had excited him too.”
This seemed to bring proceedings to a natural break. Susan McCormick sat with a slight smile playing around her lips. Collison and Metcalfe were struggling to come to terms with what they had just been told.
“Perhaps I could ask you at this juncture, Ms McCormick,” Collison said eventually, “what prompted you to come and make this confession? If what you have told us is true then it seems to me that the only person who could have incriminated you was your accomplice, Gary Clarke, and he’s dead.”
“I always thought,” she replied calmly, “that once that bitch Kathy was safely out of the way, Colin would regain his senses and we would get back together again. I was going to give it six months or so and then approach him. But when I started driving over to his flat and watching from outside, I discovered that he’d already taken up with someone else. That’s Colin for you, ‘shallow’ is his middle name. And he’s always had a thing for Asian women.” She snorted what might have been a sardonic laugh.
“But I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” Collison said helplessly. “Your plan had failed, yes, but that’s not necessarily a reason to suddenly turn yourself in.”
“It was the only way to show him that I really did love him, that I’d always loved him. After all, what greater proof can there be of someone’s love than that they are prepared to kill for it, not just once but again and again? Then when I learned today that he was suspected of the murders I realised that I had to come forward straight away and clear him. Though why you should suddenly think he might have done it I really don’t know …”
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