the Blooding (1989)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  There was a more serious incident when Ian was making buns with another baker. A huge steel machine cover was propped against a wall. Ian pushed a baking trolley past it and was absolutely sure he had sufficient clearance, but somehow the heavy metal cover fell over and crashed into his partner's legs.

  The man bellowed and swore and accused Ian of crippling him. It turned into such a row that the gaffer came out and shouted, "Stop behaving like kids, the two of you!"

  The injured baker was so outraged he told the boss to stuff it. The baker quit his job that day, saying that Ian Kelly was the one who should've been sacked.

  Ian went back to work, absolutely baffled as to how the machine cover could've fallen. Until he later learned that Colin Pitchfork had been standing nearby when it happened. It was beginning to look like somebody wanted him out of Hampshires Bakery.

  On the morning of Saturday, September 19th, it was decided that Pearce and Chambers would arrest Ian Kelly. And they might arrest the young baker who'd been offered PS200 by Colin Pitchfork, depending on his answers. Mick Thomas and Mick Mason were to call on that young man. Even though they were off duty, DC Brian Fentum and Phil Beeken insisted on being there. Nothing could've kept them away.

  Ian Kelly opened his door that morning to a pair of visitors he knew weren't selling magazines. Derek Pearce showed his warrant card and said, "We're from the murder enquiry incident room at Narborough, investigating the murders of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. Have you given a blood sample regarding those enquiries?"

  "No, not me!" Ian said.

  "I don't believe you," Pearce said. "I have reason to believe you've given a blood sample."

  "No, I haven't!" Ian said.

  "We've talked to other people at the bakery," Pearce said. "I believe you have"

  "Yes, you're right," Ian said. "I did it for another lad at work." "Who's that?" Gwynne Chambers asked.

  "Colin Pitchfork," Ian Kelly answered.

  Pearce said, "I'm arresting you for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and we're taking you to Wigston Police Station."

  "Yes," said Ian Kelly. "I'll just put me shoes on."

  They took Ian Kelly to the station, which was already humming, and put him into an interview room where his statement was recorded.

  Pearce said, "I must tell you, you do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you understand that?"

  Ian began by saying, "Yes, well, the gentleman in question, Colin Pitchfork, he come up to me and asked if I'd do him a favor. I didn't know it were for them murders. I didn't know what it were really for cause he didn't explain what it were for. He just had to give a thingybob cause he got a letter from the police station."

  Then Ian related the story that Colin Pitchfork had told him about giving a sample for the other bloke, and Ian told about the photo strip and altering the passport. But he stuck to his claim that he didn't know that the blooding was for anything as serious as murder.

  Derek Pearce didn't look quite as dangerous as a Shi'ite with an AK-47 when he said, "Yeah, you're Mister Muggins. And you've just gone along and given the sample. And he got what he wanted: full protection. You've delayed us eight months?'

  Ian started to understand what was facing him. He said, "Well, when I went to his house, more or less . . . well, the day before, he told me it were a murder enquiry. But I didn't know which murder it was at the time!"

  And he admitted to having been given a little schooling on the dates of birth of the children and other personal information. He said, "I knew it were for a murder but I didn't know whose it were for, cause at the time when I walked in I were that sick. I'd got a temperature. I was feeling really low. I mean, when I began writing his signature I got shaking like a leaf!"

  Supt. Tony Painter was called in that afternoon and found Derek Pearce bobbing and bouncing like a dinghy in a storm.

  "Let's go nick him!" Pearce said to their commander.

  "No, take it all down on paper," Painter said. "And then go get him." Pearce said, "We want him now!"

  "I'm the boss and I say paper first," Painter said.

  "Quite right," Pearce said. "Paper first."

  So they had to wait another two hours until all statements were transcribed and put in some semblance of order. By the time six of them got to the house in Haybarn Close, the blue Fiat was gone. There was nobody at the Pitchfork home. One stayed; the rest returned to the station, trying to be philosophical. After all, they'd waited four years.

  Chapter 26.

  Blind Terror

  The most important feature of the psychopath is his monumental irresponsibility. He knows what the ethical rules are, at least he can repeat them, parrotlike, but they are void of meaning to him. . . .

  No one wears the mask of normality in so convincing a fashion. He is strikingly cool and sure of himself in situations where others would tremble with sweat and fear. . . . He retains a superhuman composure.

  --PAUL J. STERN, The Abnormal Person and His World surveillance and arrest of a major felony suspect is done differently in Britain than in the United States. In Britain a suspect under observation is often allowed to enter his house so that he can't run away. In a gun-crazy country like the U. S. the last thing the police want to do is let any suspect enter his house, where he may have enough firepower to take the Persian Gulf.

  Late that afternoon the murder squad allowed the blue Fiat to pass into Haybarn Close and proceed to the end of the cul-de-sac. They waited until Colin Pitchfork parked the car, until the entire family was safely inside the house.

  Derek Pearce, who said he lived to cover back doors, ran around to the rear with Gwynne Chambers. The two Micks, Thomas and Mason, went to the front. Phil Beeken and Brian Fentum backed up the two Micks. At 5:45 P. M. Mick Thomas knocked.

  Carole Pitchfork later said, "At first I thought they were insurance men. I thought perhaps it was about the car accident on Narborough Road. They came in and said they were police officers and asked to speak to Colin in private."

  Mick Thomas and Mick Mason walked Colin Pitchfork into the kitchen while the others stayed in the living room. Phil Beeken later said, "I saw him and thought, Yeah, it's him! He looks the way our man ought to look! It's him!"

  Mick Thomas said to Colin Pitchfork, "From enquiries we've made we believe you're responsible for the murder of Dawn Ashworth on the thirty-first of July, 1986. We believe another man gave a blood sample for you. I'm arresting you on suspicion of that murder. I must inform you that you don't have to say anything, but anything you say may be taken down and given in evidence. Do you understand?"

  Colin Pitchfork very calmly said, "First give me a few minutes to speak to my wife."

  Mick Thomas had a feeling from the look of resignation on Colin Pitchfork's face, and so did Mick Mason, who suddenly asked, "Why Dawn Ashworth?"

  Colin Pitchfork replied, "Opportunity. She was there and I was there."

  Mick Thomas then asked, "What do you want to speak to your wife about?"

  "It's going to be a long time till I see them again. You've got to let me say goodbye."

  Just then Colin Pitchfork's four-year-old son cried, "Daddy, the telly won't work!"

  Mick Thomas nodded an okay and Colin Pitchfork walked into the living room to adjust the tuning. Mick Mason grabbed all of the kitchen knives off the counter, just in case, and opened the back door. When the pub singer got outside, he did a little saber dance with those knives, and Derek Pearce knew it was over.

  A few minutes later, Pearce and Mick Thomas were in the little kitchen with Colin Pitchfork, while a very frightened Carole Pitchfork was asked to take the kids upstairs.

  Colin Pitchfork asked, "Why's there a need for the other officers to be going round my house?"

  "There's a number of things we need to search for," Mick Thomas told him.

  "Like what?"

  "The passport that was used."

  "It's not here," Colin said. "Ho
nestly. It's at work. Let me speak to my wife."

  Mick Thomas said, "You can speak to your wife, but only in my presence." Then he called for Carole Pitchfork and she came down and entered the kitchen.

  She looked from one to the other. She looked at him, leaning against the kitchen cupboard.

  He moved forward and tried to put his arms around her, but she pulled away.

  "They've come to arrest me," he said.

  "What foe" she asked.

  "For them murders."

  "But you went for the blood test!" she cried. "And you got a letter saying it was negative!"

  "I didn't go," he said. "Ian went."

  "Did you do it?" Carole Pitchfork asked him then.

  He didn't answer.

  "Did you do it?" she asked again.

  Still he didn't reply.

  "Did you?" she asked.

  "Yes," he answered.

  And she flew at him. Neither detective was ready for her to launch an attack. They jumped in between. Mick Thomas grabbed Carole and bundled her out the door, but not before she directed a punch and kick at Colin Pitchfork. She missed her husband but managed to punch Derek Pearce in the mouth and kick him in the groin.

  On the way to the station, in the back of the CID car, Colin Pitchfork said to Mick Thomas and Mick Mason, "I must let a few people know what's happened to me before they read it in the papers. Then I'll tell you everything." He paused and said, "But I want to do it my own way.

  Because it's really a story of my life, not just the story of a month or two."

  So he was attempting control even before they got him to the station.

  Mick Thomas assigned a man to phone everyone on the team and to keep ringing until they were all found. He didn't want anyone to get the news secondhand, not after four long years. He discovered that he and Mick Mason were going to finish this job themselves, even though a superintendent would ordinarily conduct such an important interview. But there was no senior officer present.

  Every member of the team was bewildered. Supt. Tony Painter had gone home before they'd made the arrest that would conclude the most important murder inquiry ever conducted by the Leicestershire police. But Tony Painter was a very proud man. Perhaps, after clinging so long to his belief in the guilt of the kitchen porter, he just needed some time to deal with it.

  After Colin Pitchfork made his phone calls and had a cup of tea, Mick Mason turned on the tape machine. The prisoner said, "You know, before we actually go into the rigmarole of the details, can we sort out other bits and bobs?"

  He began with his earliest memories. He started by telling them of a friend he'd had when he was eleven. He'd never had many friends in his life. He told them of the Scouts, of his triumphs there. When he had finished describing his first fourteen years on earth, they wanted to please talk about the murders. But it got him angry. Colin Pitchfork threatened to shut down the confession unless they did it his way, beginning with his earliest recollections to the present. Every fascinating event in his fascinating life. It took hours. The stage was his. They were bored to tears.

  After Carole Pitchfork had attempted to attack her husband, she lost touch with the flow of events.

  "Next thing, I was outside with all those coppers," she later recalled. "And soon he was gone from our house."

  When she got her wits about her, she asked the police to call a neighbor to look after the kids. When the neighbor took the children home for the night, her older son cried. He wanted to watch The A-Team, and to make pictures with the new set of paints they'd just bought him.

  Carole remembered shouting at the cops about the searching, and being told, "We have to have your permission to search."

  "Get on with it!" she cried. "Get on with it." Then she picked up a toy fire engine and threw it across the room.

  After she deliberately pushed over the bookcase, Derek Pearce persuaded her to calm herself. They searched the house until 1:00 A. M. but found no significant evidence.

  The couple who lived next door came to assist her, and along with Carole they consumed a bottle and a half of brandy during the course of thepolice search. Then Colin's brother arrived with a girlfriend and offered to sit up all night with Carole. She rang her father who cut short his vacation to run to his daughter.

  Carole got a blinding headache that evening, the worst of her life. Pearce offered to send for a police surgeon, but Carole refused. Then he rang her family doctor who came to the house, examined her briefly, and said, "You've got a migraine."

  When Carole said, "I don't get migraines," the doctor replied, "You've got one now."

  The journalists came the next morning. In droves. She hid inside behind locked doors and drawn curtains. The reporters photographed everything in sight--the house, car, street, windows--waiting for those curtains to move or even twitch. Their cameras rooted into every crevice.

  One of Carole's more irrepressible neighbors, who finally despaired of making the reporters go away, went to the window, opened the curtains, raised her T-shirt and bared her breasts.

  "Put those in your fucking paper!" she yelled.

  They were the only things they didn't photograph.

  When at last Mick Thomas and Mick Mason were permitted by Colin Pitchfork to ask questions about the murder of Lynda Mann, the prisoner again took his time setting the stage. He described how he and Carole had been preparing to move into Littlethorpe in December, 1983, and how he was recording music that night for a going-away party. He told of dropping off Carole at the college and going on a wander for a girl to flash, then of driving down Narborough Road and turning on Forest Road where he saw the young girl walking.

  "Which way was she walking?" Mick Thomas asked.

  Colin Pitchfork grinned triumphantly and said, "This is one of the questions you've always wanted to know, isn't it? She was walking from Narborough up to Enderby. At that time the new housing estate wasn't there, was it?"

  "And then?"

  "Then I turned the car around, my red Ford Escort. I reversed in the drive of The Woodlands, there across from the mental hospital. And I left the car in the drive. The baby were in a carrycot in the back. Always been a big believer in restraints, you know. Car restraints."

  Apparently satisfied that he'd vindicated his parenting, he said, "I set myself a walking place to meet her under the light. It was very dark there. And cold. With me only wearing jeans and a jumper. Have to be under a light. It's no good flashing yourself in the dark, is it? And when she got up to where I stood, I did it. The shock, I would say shock, made her run backwards toward the footpath. She left the main road."

  "You were surprised?"

  "You see, the way she'd been traveling toward where I parked, I couldn't flash her and run back to my car right away or she'd have seen it. If she'd just walked by me like all the others did, I would've started walking down the road, then doubled back and got the car after she got out of sight. But it never happened like that."

  And then what?" Mick Thomas asked. "After she ran in shock toward the footpath?"

  "It were the thing," he said. "The flashing. It got the excitement. . . . It was there She suddenly ran herself back into a dark footpath. On her own. There were an open field by the footpath. She had run herself into . . ."

  Mick Thomas said, "A worse position."

  "Yeah. She ran herself into a dark footpath on her own, and she just froze."

  "And what did you do?"

  "I went up to her and grabbed her and she didn't really resist me when I grabbed her. I took her off the footpath and had a conversation with her."

  "What did Lynda say?" Mick Mason interjected.

  " 'What are you doing to me? What about your wife? Where have you come from? What are you doing this for? What have I done to you?" Then Cohn Pitchfork said to the detectives, "This is the thing I don't understand about flashing. One percent of the time you get someone who goes mad and screams and you have to disappear quick. But all the others walk by you. Just walk by you and
ignore you. But she turned and ran into a dark footpath. She backed herself into a corner."

  "Her mistake?"

  "If she'd walked by, the situation would've disappeared. But she ran back and stood there. She froze. Her two big mistakes were running into the footpath and saying, 'What about your wife?' She'd seen my wedding ring."

  "What happened next?"

  "By then the urge hadn't subsided at all," Colin Pitchfork said. "It was just getting stronger. Because not only had she got herself into the situation, she hadn't screamed. She hadn't struggled. If she'd screamed she would've probably scared me off. I suppose you'd say I raped her. You'd have to say I raped her."

  Mick Thomas said, "You tell us what happened."

  "I raped her in a way," Colin Pitchfork said. "But it wasn't forcible, like if I ripped her clothes off and jumped on her and beat her up. I just said I was going to do it to her."

  "Did you remove any of her clothing?"

  "No, she did. You might think I'm a bloody crank confessing to it. I know this is a daft thing to say but I can remember every bloody detail because it's haunted me. She had on a black donkey jacket. Her trousers had got zips. She were getting most anxious taking her trousers off because the zip jammed. So I just told her I'd do it. 'Don't you do it,' she said. `You'll rip my new trousers.' I said, 'Where do you live?' She said, 'There.' I said, 'Where have you been?' She said, 'At my friend's to get some records.' She was trying to calm me down. Talking me out of it."

  And at this point, Sgt. Mick Mason--who later admitted his "emotional involvement"--wasn't merely trying to establish the legal elements of rape when he said, "And was she terrified?"

  Colin Pitchfork just shrugged and said, "Yeah. But rather than scream and struggle and fight, she decided just to let me do it. It were then that I actually satisfied myself. But I suddenly realized that I got myself into deeper shit than I ever got myself into. Before that, if the police had a look at me it was as a flasher. It was a pain in the arse, but never actually did nowt to me, that flashing trouble. But not now."