Don't Read Alone

by Finch, Paul

  She gave him a querying glance.

  “Most prisoners I’ve ever had in a midweek night-shift is eight.” Rosethorn grinned. He’d already felt a number of collars that evening – mainly drunken drivers and pub brawlers, but they all counted. “This fella’s number five.”

  At which point the young man looked up. Abruptly, his gaze seemed to clear, and he shrieked with hysterical but hard-edged laughter.

  “That explains it!” he shrilled. “I’m number five! Why couldn’t I be number six, eh?”

  The nurse and policeman could only stare at him.

  He continued. “Don’t you understand?” They only need five to get even. If I was number six, I’d have been okay.”

  Rosethorn glanced sidelong at the nurse, and she nodded as though she now fully understood the situation.

  For his part, the young man didn’t say much more. As quickly as he’d begun shouting, he ran out of energy and relapsed into morose silence. When they led him through to the treatment area and took him into one of the bays, he went meekly and quietly. They sat him down and Rosethorn unfastened his left cuff, snapping it closed again around the radiator pipe. The copper then stood back and asked the nurse if there was any chance of a coffee. She smiled, and told him to come through to the desk.

  Rosethorn glanced around before he went. Earlier that evening the treatment area had been teeming with staff and patients, but at this late hour it was deserted. Only a couple of curtains were drawn on the other bays.

  “Don’t suppose he’ll be able to get up to any mischief in here, do you?” he asked.

  The nurse shook her head. “So long as those cuffs of yours are secure. There’s only one other patient in, anyway. Someone else who’s been beaten up, would you believe.”

  “Not the one our man attacked?”

  The nurse glared at him. “Craig Rosethorn … what do you take me for? I wouldn’t leave them in the same room together, would I?”

  She bustled back into the adjoining corridor and marched towards its far end, where her desk was located. Rosethorn followed sheepishly.

  “This one’s nowhere near as bad as that,” she added as she put the kettle on. “Awful bruises on her face, mind. Dark as ink-spots, they are.”

  GRENDEL’S LAIR

  Heorot came to symbolise all that was fine in Hrothgar’s kingdom. There was music and laughter there, and a vast display of wealth and craftsmanship. Hrothgar intended it to be his legacy to the world, but there is no physical trace of it in this modern age …

  The prison interview room was Spartan, its floor and walls stark grey cement; its only window a two-by-two mesh square in the high north corner. There was one table in there and two chairs, all made from plastic – though a hard, durable sort of plastic, as drab and colourless as the walls. Each item was, of course, bolted down.

  At present, there were only two men in the room. They observed each other from either side of the table. One of them was in his mid-forties, lean and shaven-headed. His stained t-shirt revealed ash-pale arms which, though long and rangy, had a look of hidden strength about them. His face was ridged and bony, though it might once have been handsome – even pretty. Judging by its various pits and scars, multiple beatings had gradually disfigured it over a period of years, though the man didn’t seem unduly concerned. He smoked idly and leaned forward on his elbows. The other man was markedly different, being older and heavier, but smartly suited, with a head of preened, snow-white hair and a clipped moustache.

  This older man, who was a visitor to the prison and a detective chief superintendent, commenced proceedings. He straightened the knot of his tie and leaned forward. “Isn’t DNA wonderful?” he said.

  The other man gave him a blank look. “Is it?”

  The chief super grinned. “It is for us. Not for you, unfortunately.”

  The other man smiled wryly, as if this didn’t surprise him.

  “What do you think it is we’ve found, Grimwood?”

  The man called Grimwood blew out a stream of smoke. “Another calling in life.”

  The chief super chuckled. “Very good. Don’t worry … I’ll give you a clue. Do these three words mean anything to you? Kirsty … Ann … McGregor?”

  Grimwood considered, then sniffed. “Yeah. Little girl, wasn’t she? Disappeared a few years back?”

  “In 1979, to be precise. Course, you know all about her.”

  Grimwood made a vague gesture. “Only what I’ve read. Sad tale.”

  “Very sad,” the chief super agreed. “Especially for her parents, who still don’t know exactly what happened to her … who haven’t been able to give her the decent burial she deserved.”

  Again Grimwood shrugged, continued to smoke.

  “You don’t feel anything for them at all?” the chief super asked.

  “Me? Why should I?”

  “Because you murdered their daughter, you bastard!”

  Grimwood’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re out of order, Lockhart. I’ve never been convicted of murder.”

  “Sue me then! Let me make my case in court!”

  Grimwood sat back in his chair. He seemed genuinely offended by the accusation.

  “You see, this is where the DNA comes in, Gordon,” Detective Chief Superintendent Lockhart said. “Don’t know if they let you watch TV in here, but you might’ve heard about new developments in technology and how we’ve started re-analysing old murder cases, putting together detailed biological profiles of suspects and all that.” He grinned again. “Though as far as you’re concerned, we didn’t exactly need a profile – we’ve already got half a ton of your muck in test tubes in police labs all over the country.”

  Grimwood stubbed his cigarette out on the table. His brutalised face was impassive, but he was clearly listening.

  “It was a simple matter of compare and contrast,” Lockhart said. “And guess what? Guess who’s DNA sample married up identically with the tiny specks of blood found on the teeth of Kirsty Ann’s poor little dead poodle?”

  Still the convict said nothing.

  Lockhart stood up. “The judge recommended you serve thirty years minimum, didn’t he? After this, he’ll be recommending you never come out at all.”

  *

  They drove quietly through the darkened town.

  There were four of them in the first car, a sleek grey Jaguar, unmarked but registered to Halliwell CID. Detective Sergeant Brunton was driving. He was young, blonde and bullish, and crammed tightly into a smart rugby club blazer and tie. Next to him sat Lockhart. In the back, fastened into a plastic overcoat, his hands cuffed in his lap, Gordon Grimwood was experiencing his first trip beyond prison walls for fifteen years. Close beside him was the final member of the team, a firearms response inspector called Craegan; he was currently in jeans and sweater, but of tall, military appearance. He looked more than capable of kicking all their butts put together; but just in case he couldn’t, a black steel Glock SLP was holstered at his armpit.

  Another vehicle travelled behind them, an unmarked Sierra, this one packed with plainclothes prison officers. They’d insisted on coming along, but Lockhart had advised them to keep a reasonable distance if they didn’t want dragging to Crown Court to give evidence in a new murder trial. That had not been his real reason, of course – in truth, this was a potentially tricky case where rules might need to get bent, and he didn’t want amateurs clogging up the works. But the story he’d given them had done the trick nicely; whatever happened, it was unlikely they’d interfere.

  “If it’s any consolation, Gordon,” the chief super said, “you’ve made the right decision. If we find her, it’ll stand in your favour.”

  Grimwood glanced out at the passing houses and gardens. “Much good it’ll do me.”

  “Maybe it’ll help you sleep at night?”

  “I sleep alright.”

  “Sure about that?” DS Brunton wondered. “Prison bunks not a tad too clean for you?”

  “You can get used to anything if you
put up with it long enough,” Grimwood said.

  Lockhart snorted. “Well, you’re the living proof of that.”

  Grendel is described variously as a fiend, an ogre, a tormented spirit of Hell – but above all, as an outcast. He listened to the rejoicing of the Danes from his dank underground lair, and went mad with bitterness and jealousy …

  The Gordon Grimwood case belonged exclusively to the ‘sensational and bizarre’ file. It occupied a similar position in the annals of British crime to the Yorkshire Ripper, the Black Panther and the Moors Murderers in that, horrible and revolting as its details might be, the general public couldn’t get enough of it. Years after the prison door was finally slammed on Grimwood – “a disgrace to humanity” in the words of the trial judge – books were still being written on the subject and television documentaries recorded. Temperatures still rose at the mention of his name: there was lingering criticism of the police, who at the time were alleged to have bungled the investigation; while certain misguided, though some would also say “attention-seeking” politicians were constantly airing their view that the criminal was mad rather than bad, and should not therefore have been sent to jail at all, but to the more humane environs of a mental hospital.

  The entire affair had started inauspiciously in 1972, in the industrial town of Halliwell, south Lancashire. A young woman disturbed a burglar in her flat. He was wearing an old Parka coat and a scarf over his nose and mouth. Instead of running, the burglar punched the girl in the face and then kicked her unconscious as she lay on the floor. Three nights later, he struck again in Tulip Drive, a neighbouring street. This incident was even more serious. A mother of two, whose husband was away on the night shift, awoke around one-thirty in the morning to find a man in her bedroom. Again, he was dressed in an old Parka coat and had a scarf around his face. An unprovoked attack then followed, the intruder raping the woman and badly beating her. Throughout her ordeal, he also insulted her in the filthiest language, calling her “a whore” and “a fucking slag”, and saying that this was what she deserved.

  Despite later frustration, the initial police response was swift and efficient. Detectives deduced that the assailant was a local man, as he’d clearly had prior knowledge about his victim’s husband. This line of enquiry was given credence when the woman aired a suspicion that she recognised his voice. With some persuasion, she finally named Gordon Grimwood, a young workmate of her husband’s, who lived with his elderly mother only five doors away. Checks with the factory where Grimwood was employed confirmed that the suspect had been absent on sick-leave on both nights when the offences took place.

  However, when officers arrived at Grimwood’s home address, there was no trace of him. His mother, who, as well as being elderly was also an invalid, reported that she hadn’t seen him for several days. The house was searched, but no clue was found as to Grimwood’s whereabouts. From that moment, a constant watch was maintained on the property, but the suspect did not return. By the end of that year, the conclusion was reluctantly drawn that he’d gone abroad.

  The next development came in 1975, when a schoolgirl was accosted on nearby spoil land, indecently assaulted and savagely beaten, though on this occasion the description of the assailant in no way matched the youthful labourer detectives had wanted to question three years earlier. This latest victim described her attacker as dirty and ragged, with long hair and a straggling beard. As a result, no immediate association was made between the cases, though this new and even more frightening figure was to re-appear again and again over the next few years. In fact, nobody knew it then, but a reign of terror had begun.

  By 1980, the maniac had struck at least twenty times – not just in Halliwell, but in neighbouring towns and even beyond the county borders in Merseyside and Greater Manchester. With each sighting, he grew more ghoulish to look at – being ever hairier, dirtier and more bestial; on one occasion he was described as “resembling an animal rather than a man”. The ferocity of his crimes also intensified; rape seemed to be his prime motive, usually accompanied by a vicious bare-handed battery, though by this stage he had also graduated to humiliation and robbery, stripping his victims of their clothes and valuables, and leaving them bound and naked. It was through no effort of his own that none of the women died, though several were mauled to the very brink of death. Suspicion was also growing that the disappearance of six-year-old Kirsty Ann McGregor, who went to the infant school in Halliwell, might have something to do with this ‘Beast of Lancashire’, as the newspapers were now calling him.

  A major police response was by this time in progress; a special squad drawn from various forces having been assigned to catch the psychopath, but stunningly little progress was made. This was still the pre-computerised age, and the filing and assessment of such a colossal mass of evidence caused more problems than it solved, while the capture of other ‘real murderers’ was still the prime concern for CID departments across the north of England. Ironically, when the culprit was finally arrested, it had nothing to do with any CID officer, either divisional or taskforce. It was the spring of 1984, and a student, having arrived home from university for her Easter break, was walking through a Halliwell park when a stinking and heavily bearded man jumped out at her. The girl was prepared for this, however. She pulled a flick-knife from her coat pocket and stabbed the molester twice. He staggered away in silence, but left a very visible trail of blood, which twenty minutes later a police dog was pursuing. Incredibly, the trail led back to a house that detectives had already visited several times during the course of the enquiry: 41, Tulip Drive, the home of Mary Grimwood, mother of the long missing sex offender, Gordon Grimwood.

  From this point on, sensation followed sensation. While officers turned the little house upside down, the elderly lady who lived there suddenly became foul-mouthed and struck at one of them with a knitting needle, an incident that led to her being arrested herself and later sectioned in a secure ward. After this, the search went on with even greater thoroughness; and though it uncovered bloodstains in the kitchen, where an injured person had clearly tried to tend himself, there was little else. Only when an officer made a casual remark to a colleague that “they’ll have to bring in the bulldozers next”, did the case finally break. To everyone’s astonishment, the carpet in the lounge suddenly lifted, and from under the floorboards emerged a ghastly vision. It was Gordon Grimwood – not that he was recognisable as such at the time. He stank to high Heaven, and his clothes, which were little more than dirt-blackened tatters, were infested with lice – as were his hair and beard, both of which hung in dense, oily masses. What was more, he was badly hurt: two knife-wounds, which he’d been unable to staunch, had leaked a copious amount of blood, and, fearing death more than incarceration, the rapist had finally opted to give himself up.

  But the horror didn’t end there. A search of the crawlspace under the house revealed a cave-like den where the fugitive had dwelt for the past twelve years, hidden from the world and only emerging to gratify his violent and perverted lusts. It was a squalid, filthy hole, strewn with a vile detritus of half-eaten food, drinks cartons and scattered cigarette butts. Several reeking slop buckets swam with human waste and crawled with vermin. There was also a large supply of dog-eared reading matter – old newspapers and paperback books, not to mention a hefty hoard of hardcore pornography.

  The revelation that Grimwood had been living in the very midst of the community he’d terrorised for so long not only led to scandal and recrimination among investigating police teams, who were accused of everything from criminal negligence to rampant misogyny, but caused nationwide revulsion. The physical state of the man, the conditions he’d been found inhabiting, the apparent compliance of his outwardly decent parent, all combined to create an astonishing news story that sent shockwaves across the country …

  For twelve years Heorot was subjected to a non-stop assault by Grendel, whose only solace was to create as much horror and despair as he could. So evil would their memory be of his
depredations that forever afterwards night would be a thing of terror to Hrothgar’s people …

  Every newspaper led on the Grimwood case for weeks. One particularly enterprising Fleet Street journal even managed to get hold of a police photograph of the criminal’s subterranean refuge, and plastered it across its front page.

  The paper headlined its scoop: THE BEAST’S LAIR.

  Not that the place looked especially scary or even mysterious on the night Lockhart’s Jag pulled quietly up at the front of it. To all intents and purposes, it was another redbrick house in a typical terraced street – a street now largely derelict. The only movement was the fluttering of litter in the rubble-strewn gutters. No lights were visible.

  Grimwood, closely accompanied by his escorts, climbed from the car. He peered at his surroundings as if bewildered.

  “What’s the matter?” Brunton wondered. “Surprised there’s no crowd here to meet you? Lucky for you – they’d have brought tar and feathers. We’ve had to keep it well quiet.”

  “I’m more surprised about the mill,” Grimwood replied.

  Brunton looked nonplussed. “What mill?”

  The rapist nodded to the skyline, now empty and black. In his youth, the towering Victorian structure of Myrtle & Son had dominated the neighbourhood like a fortress. It seemed impossible that something so huge and cruel could have been demolished in as short a time as fifteen years.

  “Hardly matters to you, does it?” Brunton said irritably. “Come on, we haven’t got all night.”

  “Any chance of a cig first?”

  Brunton snorted in contempt. “Your lungs must be like ash-pits.”

  “Yeah, well they’re my lungs. Come on, you promised.”

  Grimwood had had a nicotine dependency since boyhood, which now provided a nice carrot for them to dangle. Needless to say, they weren’t trusting him with matches, cigarettes or anything else at present – not while he was on the outside. Brunton was carrying all the necessaries. Grudgingly, he reached into his jacket, but Lockhart stopped him. “We did promise you, Gordon, you’re right,” the chief super said. “But you promised us too.” He nodded towards the house. “We’ll see Kirsty Ann before we get the smokes out.”