What Would Wimsey Do? Read online

“I know you must feel gutted about being taken off the case,” Metcalfe said carefully, “but you really do look as if you could do with a break. I know you haven’t taken any leave for ages. If you go on like this you’ll just make yourself ill.”

  “I’ve got a cold, that’s all,” snapped Allen, “and it’s nothing to do with the case. It’s just a bug, a simple bug, and I caught it—probably on the tube or something. I’ll be OK in a few days.”

  “All the same, why don’t you just take yourself off to the travel agents and see what they have for a couple of weeks leaving today. You can get some fantastic bargains if you book at the last minute.”

  Allen gave a brief snort. “Leave it out, Bob. Can you really see me going away on my own to sit on a beach somewhere?”

  This was unanswerable. Metcalfe knew that Allen’s last girlfriend had tired of their desultory relationship during the opening months of the current investigation, when the time he was able to spend with her had dropped from minimal to nil. All he had ever heard his colleague speak about, apart from the odd casual reference to football, was the job. He wasn’t even aware of him having any hobbies or interests outside the police, let alone any friends.

  “Isn’t there anyone you could go and stay with—family, perhaps?”

  “No there isn’t,” Allen said shortly. “Never mind about me, anyway. It’s the case that worries me.”

  “But, guv,” Metcalfe reminded him, “you’re off the case now, aren’t you? I’m not even sure that I should be sitting here talking to you about it.”

  “Stuff that. As far as I’m concerned it’s still my case, whoever’s nominally in charge of it. I know more about it than anyone else. I’ve been thinking about it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for eighteen months. If anyone’s going to get that bastard, it’s me.”

  “But you’re not in charge of it, are you?” Metcalfe’s concern was mounting. “Christ, you’re not even a member of the team anymore. So what can you do? I’m sure DS Collison would be happy to hear all your ideas, but basically it’s up to him now, isn’t it? What we do, I mean, and how we proceed.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Allen said with a sour smile. “I can take my leave all right, but there’s nothing to say that I can’t carry on working on the case in my own time, is there? I’ve got it all worked out. You can keep me abreast of everything that comes up, and I’ll feed back my ideas to you, plus any results I get from my own enquiries, of course.”

  “What enquiries?” asked Metcalfe with alarm. “Look, guv, I know you’re upset, and I appreciate your feelings and everything, but you know damn well there are rules, and rule number one is that you can’t discuss the case with anyone who isn’t on the team. Now, please, take some leave like they want, and try to forget about all of this. I’m worried about you—it’s making you ill and you’d be far better off right out of it.”

  Allen stared at him. “You mean you won’t help me?”

  “Can’t, not won’t. Surely you can see that?”

  For a long moment Allen stared hard at him, his hands thrust deep into his raincoat pockets and his legs stretched out under the table. Then, without saying a word, he pulled a handful of change out of his pocket, put it on the table, and walked out. Metcalfe made to follow him after throwing a fiver on top of Allen’s coins, but the DCI was heading down the hill towards Chalk Farm at a brisk pace, while a glance at his watch revealed that Metcalfe needed to head equally briskly up the hill to Hampstead if he was not to be late. He sighed and headed in the opposite direction. While he was walking he came to a decision; like it or not he was going to have to note his conversation with Allen in his diary, and report it to Collison.

  “All right, everybody,” said that very person a little while later as he stood at the front of the incident room. “I’m sure you’ll all have heard by now on the grapevine anyway, but just in case there’s anyone here who doesn’t know, I’m DS Collison, and I’m assuming command of this enquiry on the direct orders of the ACC.”

  He scanned the expressionless faces around him. There was not a single one that he recognised. Luckily, he had memorised a few names.

  “I’ll be meeting with you all individually as soon as possible,” he went on, “but in the meantime I’ll ask DI Metcalfe to brief me on the background now and bring me up to speed on your enquiries so far with regard to victim number five.”

  Metcalfe stepped forwards, and said uncertainly, “I’m not sure just how much you know about the case already, sir…”

  “You may assume,” Collison replied crisply, “that I have read all the files.” He did not add that in consequence he had not gone to bed last night, going home at about 7 a.m. only to shower, shave and change his clothes before returning to Hampstead.

  “Then you’ll know, sir,” said Metcalfe, addressing the room at large, “that we are hunting a serial sex killer whom we believe has so far struck five times, most recently in the case of Kathy Barker, whose body was found in Wood Green just over twenty-four hours ago, and is believed to have been killed where she was found several hours previously. The MO appears to be the same as with our other victims, but as we are still awaiting the forensic report on her, I’ll concentrate on what we know for sure about the others.”

  He glanced at Collison as if to check that this was indeed how the Superintendent wanted to proceed, and received a nod of approval in reply.

  “All four bodies to date have been found in open spaces. All had traces of chloroform burns around the mouth and nose, from which we assume that they were anaesthetised first, and since it seems difficult to imagine a woman tamely allowing a man who is facing her, quite possibly a stranger, to put an ether mask over her face, it seems possible that in each case the victim was surprised by someone who came up behind her.”

  “In at least two of the cases, numbers one and three, we cannot be sure that they were killed where they were found. Their bodies lay undiscovered for some time in fairly remote spots and Forensics were inconclusive on the point. However, if we can’t be sure of “where,” we can be pretty sure of “what.” In each case the nature of the attack seems to have followed the same pattern. First the victim was chloroformed and presumably rendered unconscious. Then she was raped by someone who took the trouble to stop and put a condom on first, following which she was hit violently on the top or back of the head with a heavy blunt instrument, which we are assuming may be something like a hammer.”

  “Now, let me see,” Collison interjected, riffling through the notes he had taken earlier that morning, “victim number one would be Amy Grant, found in privately owned woodland near High Wycombe, and victim number three was Joyce Mteki, found in a conduit on Hackney marshes.”

  “Exactly, sir,” Metcalfe confirmed. “Victim number two was Jenny Hillyer, found, almost immediately we think, at Moat Mount near Apex Corner, which is also open space, while victim number four was Tracy Redman, found by the railway near Paddington. All four had been raped and killed in exactly the same way.”

  “Similarities?” queried Collison. “Points of interest? Connections between the victims?”

  “Other than the MO, sir, the victims seem to have little in common apart from the fact that they were all female and all presumably out on their own when they were attacked. All reasonably young, between eighteen and thirty-eight, anyway.”

  “One point of interest there perhaps, sir,” ventured DC Willis diffidently.

  “Go on,” Collison said, looking at her encouragingly.

  “Well, sexual killers often target prostitutes. Partly perhaps because they are so much easier to trap and kill, having to put themselves into positions of extreme danger every time they go on the street. But also sometimes because they kill from warped religious or sexual impulses, and deliberately target prostitutes either because they see them as figures of evil, or as examples of projected female sexuality which can be used, for example, to take revenge for real or imagined sexual slights in the past.”

>   There were a few smiles and fidgets at this point, even a few murmurs. Analysis of the case within the team was usually succinct and colloquial, while Willis sounded as if she was reading from a book. Collison felt the ripple of amusement and moved to quell it. He swivelled and stared ostentatiously at Detective Sergeant Andrews, who stopped muttering to his neighbour just too late to escape detection.

  “Do you have something you would like to contribute?” he asked. It was a heavily contrived moment, he acknowledged to himself, but he knew it was necessary to stamp his authority on this team—Allen’s team—straight away. He held Andrews’s gaze and forced him to look down.

  “No, sir,” he admitted.

  Collison turned back again to face Willis. “In this case, only one of the victims so far has been a prostitute, at least as far as we know,” he said.

  “Exactly, sir, Tracy Redman, who incidentally lived out in Essex but came into London and mostly worked around Paddington station. And even with her, we don’t whether she was targeted because she was a sex-worker, or just because she was handy.”

  “Good point,” acknowledged Collison. “Well done.” He wished he knew her name but resolved to find it out afterwards; it seemed she was one of the brighter members of the team.

  “And just to remind ourselves,” he continued, looking down at his notes again, “Amy Grant was a student at Birmingham University whom we believe, but have never been able to establish for sure, was hitch-hiking her way back from a weekend in London. Jenny Hillyer was a secretary who shared a flat with some girlfriends in West Hampstead. Joyce Mteki was a nurse at a hospital in Shoreditch and lived in a nurse’s hostel in Dalston, while Kathy Barker was a housewife who lived right here in Hampstead.”

  “So, no apparent connections, sir,” Metcalfe pointed out. “Not even physically. One victim was black, the others Caucasian. Of them, one was blonde, the others brunette.”

  “What does that suggest?” Collison mused aloud, gazing around the room. “A random killer perhaps? An opportunist, who seizes his chance when he sees it?”

  “If so,” Karen Willis said, picking up the thread of his thoughts, “then he must carry his kit around with him.”

  “It would seem so,” Collison agreed. “Normal people don’t wander around with a bottle of chloroform and a pad of cotton wool concealed about their person, not to mention a hammer.”

  “Which suggests a car, or at least some kind of vehicle,” Metcalfe conjectured. “A delivery driver perhaps, or a patrol vehicle—maybe a breakdown mechanic or a security guard?”

  “All avenues worth considering,” Collison agreed. “Now, what else strikes us as peculiar or significant?”

  He looked around the room again. This was starting to assume the cosy atmosphere of a university tutorial, he thought.

  “The condoms,” Metcalfe said. “How many rapists wear a condom? It’s weird.”

  “Unusual, certainly,” Collison agreed. “Surely rape is an act of violence, often intended by the attacker to humiliate the victim by way of revenge for some actual or imagined slight, as we heard.” He nodded in Willis’s direction. “Doesn’t that suggest that the sensation of ejaculating into the victim, of forcing her against her will to be invaded by the attacker’s bodily fluids, with consequent terror of pregnancy or infection, might be part of the whole sensation of revenge? An essential part, perhaps, without which the revenge would not be complete?”

  There was a silence around the room. It was clear that this was a level of discussion to which they were unaccustomed. Metcalfe looked thoughtful, but Collison was not surprised that it was Willis who answered.

  “I’ve been wondering about that myself, sir,” she said. “With your permission, I’d like to do some research on the point.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “In fact, I think it’s essential. Give whatever else you are doing to other members of the team. DI Metcalfe can juggle assignments as necessary.”

  Metcalfe nodded as he jotted notes down on a pad. Then he looked up and said, “Then there’s the absence of underwear, of course.”

  “Yes,” Collison agreed. “Though that’s not so unusual, is it? What do we think about that, people?”

  “We’ve been assuming that they’re taken as trophies, sir,” said Metcalfe, a trifle uncertainly.

  “A sound assumption, I think, Bob. Sound enough to proceed with, at least, unless or until we know different. It’s quite common for serial killers to take a trophy—often much more gruesome than a pair of knickers.”

  “Makes life easier for us, anyhow, sir,” said Andrews, making his first contribution to the discussion. “Find the missing knickers and we find our killer.”

  “True, Sergeant,” Collison acknowledged, “though not precisely accurate. We can use the knickers to identify the killer. We have to find him first, and we can’t go around stopping male members of the public and asking them to turn out their pockets in the hope of finding several items of unwashed ladies’ underwear.”

  A telephone rang abruptly on Priya Desai’s desk and she answered it self-consciously. She listened for a moment and then said, “Hold on, please.” Covering the mouthpiece with her hand, she spoke to Collison. “Excuse me, sir. Dr Williams would like to brief you on his forensic examination. Any time this morning, he says.”

  “How far away is it?” asked Collison.

  “About twenty minutes by car, sir.”

  “OK, tell him I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  He walked up to the board, which took up most of the front of the room. It was horribly cluttered, with many scribbled notes, most of which had subsequently been ticked or crossed out. Only the photos of the victims had survived more or less unscathed. He looked across at Metcalfe.

  “Bob, let’s make a fresh start here. Please detail someone to photograph this so we have a record of it, and then clear everything except the victims’ photos and personal details. I’ll leave you to organise today’s assignments, and I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes. You’d better come with me to the pathologist.”

  “Very good, sir.” Metcalfe hated to admit it, but already there was a new atmosphere about the investigation. He was beginning to see why the ACC should have wanted a fresh mind in charge. That reminded him that he needed to speak to Collison about Tom Allen.

  “OK folks,” he called out as Collison left the room. “Listen up, please.”

  Chapter Three

  “Now tell me,” Collison said to Metcalfe, “provided you don’t mind talking and driving at the same time. Who was that female officer who spoke up in the meeting?”

  “Karen Willis, sir, Detective Constable. Joined the team a few weeks ago, so I’m only just getting to know her.”

  “Lucky you!” opined the Superintendent. “I bet half the male coppers at Hampstead nick are trying to get to know her as well.”

  An uneasy laugh came from the driving seat. Without knowing it, Collison had touched upon a sensitive subject; Metcalfe had been struggling to think about anything other than DC Willis ever since he had first met her.

  “Actually, I’m pretty certain she’s got a boyfriend,” he said ruefully.

  “Ah, well,” replied Collison with all the insouciance of a happily married man. “Attractiveness aside, she seems pretty switched on.”

  “She’s very bright, yes,” Metcalfe agreed. “Degree in law, like yourself, and then went on to do some sort of post-graduate thing in psychology, I think.”

  Collison looked across in surprise. “You been looking me up?”

  Metcalfe smiled. “Just a bit of essential background, you might say.”

  Collison could feel them both relaxing and realised that they were going to enjoy each other’s company. That was good. On a murder enquiry you could end up spending a lot of time together.

  “What about the rest of the team, Bob? Personal assessment. Confidential.”

  “Well, the only other permanent members are DC Desai and DS Andrews. You met them this morning.
They’ve both been on the case from the beginning, so you have to make a few allowances for that. It’s been tough.”

  “Agreed. But still…?”

  “Priya is bright too. Not as bright as Karen, maybe, but when she says something, which isn’t often, mind, it’s worth listening to. She’s hardworking and has great attention to detail. Personality-wise she’s maybe a bit introverted—needs to come out of her shell a bit. But she’s still young and I’m sure she’ll develop.”

  “And Andrews?”

  “Ken’s a traditional police officer,” Metcalfe replied evenly.

  “Now why do I feel you’re suddenly choosing your words carefully?”

  “I am choosing them carefully,” Metcalfe said, “precisely because I don’t want to be misunderstood. Ken’s a perfectly sound copper, but he’s forty-odd years old and he’s still a Detective Sergeant. Even he’s worked out that he’s not going any further, and he’s not the brightest thing on two legs. Good for routine leg work, but don’t expect imagination or flashes of inspiration.”

  “OK. And the others?”

  “The others are really just ships that pass in the night, and that’s been part of the trouble. They drift in for a month or two, and then they drift away again as they get re-assigned or go on leave. To be honest, I don’t think any of them really fancied being part of a long, drawn-out investigation that’s going nowhere. Some of them couldn’t wait to get off the team. And that all added to the problems for the guvnor—DCI Allen, I mean.”

  There was silence in the car while Collison digested this, and Metcalfe realised it might be his best chance of broaching a sensitive subject. “Listen, sir, about Tom Allen. I’ve got something I should tell you.”

  “Go on.”

  “He rang me yesterday to tell me he’d been taken off the case. Asked me to meet him this morning for breakfast on the way to the nick.”

  “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Collison said mildly. “After all, you’re friends, aren’t you?”

  “There’s more I’m afraid, guv, or I wouldn’t be troubling you with it. Fact is he seems to have taken all this pretty badly. He’s insisting that he wants to stay involved with the case, in his own time if necessary. The real point is this, though: he asked me to be his source of information from within the team. Passing on anything we come up with.”