Montrose stepped back a pace, certain that the man had fleas. “Anything else you can tell me about it?”
“Oh, yes. There is at that.”
“Well, do you want to take a seat?” Montrose gestured to one of the empty tables.
“No, I’m better off standing. My piles have been playing havoc the last few days or so and sitting on one of these wooden chairs is the last thing I want to do right now.” Wobbler stopped his scratching and straightened his weird hat. It was a truly odd-looking article of clothing yet somehow it befitted the man upon whose head it rested.
“It were that bastard Norton who done it!” spat Wobbler’s brother, Spud, with hard to contain rage. “He’s killed before. Now he’s done it again. You know what they say – once a killer always a killer.” His words had to fight their way through his beard to be heard and even then they were hard to make out due to his many missing teeth.
“I’d be careful making accusations like that, Spud,” cautioned the barman. “Mr. Norton may not be that well-liked around Thelford but he’s a powerful man, with many high-up friends.”
“Let him hear!” cried Spud, keen to promote his scurrilous agenda. “It were him that did it!” There was a fire in his rheumy eyes and he gripped his pint so tightly in his knobbly fist that Montrose thought it was going to shatter.
“Norton’s got nothing to do with it!” proclaimed Wobbler, adamantly disagreeing with his brother. “He might be a bastard and he might’ve served his time for killing somebody back in the Fifties but it wasn’t him who chopped up Bennet and put him in that postbox. For starters, he wouldn’t dare. I bet even now he’s scared stiff that those Black Magic folk think that he’s the murderer; thinking that they’re going to hunt him down and carve him up on that altar of theirs. After all, Bennet was one of their chosen ones, you know.”
Montrose had brought out his notebook and scribbled down some of the details. The thought that there might be an occult angle to these atrocities had got him interested for he had initially not even considered the possibility that these could be ritual killings. From his reading on the subject he was only too well aware that this was an angle well worth considering. “Who is this Mr. Norton?” he asked.
“Alaric Norton’s a retired bank manager. He lives in the manor house,” the barman answered.
“Maybe I should pay him a visit,” said Montrose, thoughtfully pulling at his bottom lip.
“You’d be wasting your time,” said Wobbler. “Like I said, he’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Well, I guess he’s innocent until proven guilty.” Montrose decided to change tack. Noticing that his informant was already close to finishing his drink, he ordered another round before turning to Wobbler once more. “Regarding the body – can you tell me the circumstances behind the discovery? Tell me what you actually found.”
“What I found? What do you think I found?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” Montrose watched, mildly disgusted as Spud reached into a pocket and scratched at his nether regions. He half-expected the other to whisk out a ferret or something even more unsavoury – such as a mouldy, half-eaten, week old cheese and pickle sandwich.
“Well it were like this, see. It were about half-past five and I’d just parked my bike at the corner of the road, outside the war memorial when I noticed that the door of the postbox was slightly ajar. Now normally there’s a mail collection at four o’clock but our postie’s been off sick so I thought I’d better go and lock it. Didn’t want any old Dick or Harry rummaging through other folks’ letters. Anyhow, when I got closer I saw that there was something running down the outside.
“Now as you know postboxes are red but the base is black and it was this that had been stained. I thought to myself – I hope that’s paint, but I knew that it wasn’t. That was when I saw the foot. Christ! It didn’t half give me a turn.”
Wobbler took a hearty glug from his pint.
“John Doyle, the landlord over at The Wheatsheaf in Little Warborough was on the other side of the road. I shouted him over and together the two of us opened the postbox.” He paused for effect. “And that was when Jason Bennet – or rather his arms and legs – fell out. His torso was still wedged inside. I’m not kidding you it were like something from a horror film.”
“What did you do then?” asked Montrose.
“I can’t say for sure. Guess I might’ve soiled my pants. And so would you if you’d seen what I saw. Doyle must’ve gone into the post office and called for the police.”
“Anything more you can tell me about the – ?” Montrose stopped in mid-sentence upon seeing two uniformed police officers enter. “Excuse me. I have to go to the toilet.” It was high time for him to make good his escape. Putting down his unfinished drink, he turned and slinked out the rear exit.
*
That evening, Montrose sat upright in his bed going through one of his murder books in the search for clues relating to the thought processes of the being he was tracking. From his study of the topic, he knew there was no single factor to explain why people carried out evil acts. People killed for money; power, revenge, passion, pleasure or for other reasons that no one sane could possibly fathom.
Similarly, there was no single dominating trait which could be attributed to the many killers he had read about. Some were tragic loners; social outcasts and misfits who lived reclusive lives whilst others were active members of society. Many hid behind guises; alternate personalities which enabled them to exist in worlds divorced from reality. In numerous cases one of the contributory factors had been dysfunctional childhood development brought about by the untimely death of one or both parents, abuse or neglect.
Poring over his books, the relentless ticking from the clocks in his spare bedroom going through his ears like the sound of a thousand deathwatch beetles, it never for a moment dawned on him that he him himself fitted many of the criteria.
He began reading about Ed Gein, the infamous, real-life Wisconsin ghoul who had murdered two women and dug up many more; fashioning macabre trinkets, household decorations and even articles of attire out of their remains. A recluse with an unhealthy mother-son relationship, Gein’s sickening crimes had gone on to inspire two of his favourite films – Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He had watched both over a dozen times and had never understood why the latter was considered a banned movie. Each film had tried to portray the diametrically opposed aspects of Gein – from Norman Bates’ disturbed normality to Leatherface’s horrendous, inhuman monstrosity. Two portraits of insanity.
Did all that was transpiring in this case just boil down to insanity?
He did not think so. As motives went that was pretty lame.
Then again there was the Satanic link although he did not give much credence to that. After all, there was nothing to suggest a connection with the first victim. Still, it was an avenue of investigation that he would not, as things currently stood, rule out. It seemed to him that Jason Bennet, like Pinky Whelps, had just been unfortunate in that they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Victims of an opportunist and as such it was imperative that he made steps in finding out the motive which drove him – or her.
Although he doubted that the murderer was female it would be remiss of him not to consider that possibility. Some of the leading serial killers he had studied were women – notably Mary Ann Cotton, the most prolific serial killer in Victorian England who was believed to have killed ten of her own children or Belle Gunness, the Norwegian-born ‘black-widow’ who had either poisoned her suitors or snuffed them out with a blow to the head from an axe. Yes, there was no denying the fact that the fairer sex could be just as dangerous.
Montrose cursed with frustration. Everything was too sketchy. He needed more to go on. He took some comfort from the likelihood that more bodies would be discovered.
He had consulted a detailed map of the area and had been somewhat dismayed at just how many little villages th
ere were. Well over a hundred. If he were to try and opt for a successful stakeout, without anything else to go on, his chances of success would be more or less negligible. It would be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. It would be an utter waste of time and what was more, he was only too well aware that the police were coordinating all their efforts on finding the killer, just as he was, and he could only hope that he would beat them to it.
This was a race and one in which there were no prizes for second place. On the few previous occasions when he had solved murder cases before the police, he had sat back, smugly priding himself and feeling empowered by the knowledge that he alone knew the identity of the killer and that for a while he held the other’s fate in his hands. To surrender this information to the law and thus expose the murderer – and hence achieve popularity and perhaps even the goodwill of the nation – was not on his agenda. After all, he was no bounty hunter. Nor did it unduly trouble his conscience if the murderer struck again in the interim period between him figuring out who was responsible and the police making an arrest.
In some ways he likened himself to an angler – the sport was in the fishing and the catching and not so much in the eating of that which was caught. It was the unravelling, the unmasking, that, like his clockwork ‘children’ in the room next door, made him tick.
After having read something that would have brought nightmares to most normal people, Montrose put out his small bedside light and lay cold and alone in the dark, the curtain throwing eerie, dancing shadows across the room. His mind was cycling through countless dark possibilities and his eyes were focused on the small, open leaded window.
Out there, somewhere, lurking in the gloom, perhaps even at the pillar box in his own village, the murderer could be in action. A blood-stained sack could be being offloaded from the boot of a vehicle by a shadowy figure. To him, it was a pleasing thought.
CHAPTER 3
The exploits of ‘The Postbox Killer’, as the murderer became known, were, not surprisingly, big news. Although so far he or she had only struck twice, the brutality and bizarre nature of the disposal of the victims had gripped the nation. Daily police briefings were shown on television amid lame reassurances to the public that all was being done to apprehend the killer.
In an effort to control the almost tangible sense of panic, Detective Chief Inspector Holbrooke made numerous spurious claims to the effect that it was really now only a matter of time before the law caught up with the individual concerned. In truth, he was floundering. There really was very little for him to go on.
The investigations into the lives of Pinky Whelps and Jason Bennet had turned up nothing. No one had a bad word to say about Whelps other than they were pretty sure he never disclosed his earnings to the Inland Revenue and if everyone who did that ended up dead they would be awash with bodies by now. He had initially perked up when several people who knew Bennet had claimed that he was part of a weird group of Devil Worshippers but after interviewing Bennet’s friends he had quickly come to the conclusion that the meetings in the woods had more to do with smoking pot and getting away from the missus than anything occult.
The victim had worked as a book-keeper and had lived a rather dull life with a wife who was more concerned about the fact that he had never bothered to take out life insurance than the fact that he had been brutally murdered.
Holbrooke would have dearly loved to be able to attribute the crime to Irene Bennet but she had been at a WI meeting during the relevant hours and in any case, was clearly lacking the physical strength required to have carried out the job. No, she was shrewish and charmless but unfortunately innocent.
There also seemed to be no connection between the two victims other than their gender and size.
Holbrooke could imagine a faceless figure watching people, eyeing them up to see if they could be made to fit inside a pillar box. Perhaps that was the only criteria the killer had. All leads for people who had a motive to kill Whelps and Bennet had dried up. He could only hope that sooner, rather than later, some new piece of information would come to light or that the murderer would make some error of judgement – some slip up – which would lead to their capture.
In the meantime, many of those villagers who lived close to where the atrocities had been committed lived in constant fear as neighbours who had lived amicably alongside one another for years now eyed one another with varying levels of suspicion. Still, life had to go on, and slowly, as each day went by without incident and the initial shock diminished, the fear and level of heightened vigilance decreased.
*
The sun had yet to rise on a misty May morning several weeks after the dual discoveries of Pinky Whelps and Jason Bennet when nineteen year old Police Constable Ian Walker, a relatively inexperienced new recruit to the force, failed to achieve national renown and a much needed promotion by cycling past a figure whom he assumed to be the postman busily sorting out the mail from the pillar box on the outskirts of Goddard’s Cross.
He would later report to his superior officers that it had all happened so quickly; that it was foggier than it really had been and that he had been focused on avoiding the numerous potholes on the country road. Regardless of the facts, it was only as he had entered the village proper, a couple of minutes later, that a little nagging suspicion prompted him to make inquiries in the post office. Therein, much to his shock, he had encountered the genuine postman smoking a cigarette and collecting his morning paper.
Less than five minutes later, after having instructed the postmaster to notify the police station, Walker pedalled back with all due haste to the pillar box.
All was still; deathly, eerily so in the morning mist. Apart from himself, there was no one about.
Far away, cows could be heard lowing.
Gulping back his fear, Walker slowly approached the wrought iron, five foot high symbol of death which, in his mind, the pillar box had now become. He dismounted from his bike and rested it against a barbed wire fence, wondering who in their right mind would put a pillar box a mile or so from the nearest house. In all likelihood it only served one farm.
Eyes wary, he scanned his surroundings, the fingers of his right hand tightening around the haft of his truncheon. A cold, unpleasant sweat trickled down his spine, dampening his smart shirt. There was a dryness in his throat and, for a fleeting moment, he had the impression that there were eyes watching him from within the mist and surrounding hedgerows.
“Is anyone there?” he called out.
There was no answer.
Common sense was screaming at him to hold back. Upholding the law and carrying out his duties were not worth dying for. If his suspicions were correct and the figure he had seen earlier had been ‘The Postbox Killer’ then confronting him openly was perhaps not a wise tactic. From all that he had been told the other was a bloodthirsty maniac.
Yet, tempering that thought was the glory of making the arrest of the year.
Mustering his courage and aware that backup should now be on its way, he withdrew his truncheon from his belt and strode forward, his nerves wound up like a coiled spring. However, any idea of capturing the culprit and getting his name in the papers was instantly shattered upon seeing the sight that lay before him.
Although the initial discovery filled Walker with such a level of revulsion that he rapidly emptied his stomach of his breakfast, he could tell that he must have interrupted the murderer in the act for which he had claimed such notoriety. The body was terribly mutilated, dismembered as had those which had been found previously. However, in this case, half of it – one arm and the torso – were inside the pillar box whilst both legs and the remaining arm lay outside. Where a heap of letters should be was now a pair of fleshy white, freckled buttocks.
Gagging, a rivulet of sick leaking from between the fingers of the hand clamped to his mouth, the rookie policeman felt his knees weaken. He sagged down so that he was now mere inches from the discarded arm, watching in numbed, nauseated horror as a slug
crept slowly over the bloodied wrist.
In the distance he could hear the sounds of an approaching squad car.
*
By twelve noon the mist had burnt off and it was warm and sunny.
The fields surrounding Goddard’s Cross had been systematically searched by one of the largest ever mobilised police forces in the county. Sniffer dogs and even a police helicopter had been brought in but aside from some tyre impressions which may or may not have been attributable to the killer nothing of great significance was found.
Detective Chief Inspector Holbrooke stood by his car, sipping coffee which he had poured from a thermos flask, watching as the crime scene was, at his insistence, investigated one last time.
Five minutes later, Orton came over shaking his head. From the look on his face it was clear no breakthroughs would be forthcoming, at least not there and then.
“Anything?” Holbrooke asked hopefully.
“Pretty much the same as before – an initial blow to the skull. The dismemberment looks exactly the same. As far as the placement of the parts in the postbox, clearly the killer was rattled by the sight of Constable Walker. I don’t doubt that whoever did this intended to cram the whole body inside.
“Obviously we’ll see if we can find anything when we do the post-mortem but I wouldn’t be too hopeful if I were you. Similarly, I’ll get someone to go through the tyre prints but they’re not clear so I’m not that optimistic.”
Holbrooke scratched his head. This was now the third murder and he had made little progress in solving this case. There was no doubt in his mind that it was the actions of one person. The hammer blow to the back of the head – something which had not been disclosed to the public – strongly suggested that it was not a copycat killing.
*
As the remains of the latest victim were being loaded on to a waiting ambulance, nine miles away, Montrose was stalking through the woods that lay at the far corner of a broad swathe of agricultural land on the outskirts of Thelford.
The Postbox Murders Page 3
