Unlucky For Some

by Jill McGown

  Gary waited until Cox had been taken out. “Snakes, Sarge?”

  “Oh, yes—it’s not unheard of. It’s quite fashionable for drug dealers to use venomous snakes to guard their properties. The ones that are reasonably high up the food chain, anyway.”

  The sooner Gary was off this attachment and back at Malworth, the better. “What did they do when they saw live snakes coming toward them?” he asked.

  Kelly laughed. “Apparently, they were half asleep—one of the lads just sort of scooped them back into the tank with his baton, and put the lid on it.”

  It wouldn’t have been him, Gary thought. No way. He smiled. “I expect they were his brother’s snakes,” he said.

  Kelly laughed. “That story of his would carry a bit more weight if he had a brother.”

  Jack Shaw had rung Stephen as soon as he left the police station, but Grace had said that the police had come for him. He had been worried about that all day, and went straight round to the Tulliver Inn as soon as he got home from work, to see how Stephen had got on.

  “Fine,” he said.

  It wasn’t like Stephen to be short with anyone, so he obviously didn’t want to discuss it. Jack changed the subject.

  “Is your mum about?”

  “No—she’s gone into Stansfield to do some shopping. Did you want her for something?”

  Jack shook his head. “Is he about?” he asked.

  “Who? Tony? No—he’s off being interviewed by Aquarius for tonight’s local news.”

  “Oh.”

  Baker had got himself all over the papers, even though he hadn’t caught the murderer. And now he was going to be on the TV news. Grace would be even more impressed than she already was. Jack thought for a moment, then decided to plunge right in. “Are he and your mum . . . you know . . . ?” His voice trailed off.

  “No. She’d like it if they were, but they’re not.” Stephen looked slightly amused. “Did you send her that Valentine?”

  Jack felt himself blush. “Fat chance I have,” he said. “A one-legged fruit-machine technician.”

  “Oh, don’t put yourself down.”

  “I’m not, but look at me, and then look at him. Handsome, rich, got all his arms and legs . . .”

  “Ah, well—he might have all his arms and legs, but he’s got his own problems.”

  Jack snorted.

  “He has. He’s a diabetic.”

  Jack snorted again. “If men our age go to the doctor with an ingrown toenail, they come out diabetic,” he said. “If you ask me, it’s just something that happens to people as they grow older, but these days they—”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that, but he’s been diabetic since he was a kid. He takes five insulin injections a day—our fridge is full of little bottles of the stuff. He has to test his blood sugar levels, and carry round stuff in case he goes funny, and tell people what to do if he goes into a coma. He has to work out what he’s going to eat, and how much insulin to give himself. He says it’s either that or he has to know in advance exactly what and when he’s going to eat, and that was always practically impossible, doing what he does. So you see, he doesn’t have it all that easy.”

  Oh. Jack thought about that. Maybe he had been a bit self-obsessed. People never knew about his leg until he told them—it looked like it was the same with Baker. He kept his handicap well hidden. And he really did—he was a strong, active man who seemed to have no health worries at all. But he must have to keep tight control of his condition to maintain that. For the first time, he had a fellow feeling with the man. “Stephen—don’t tell anyone else about him being a diabetic, will you?”

  “Why not? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Of course it isn’t. It’s just that . . . well, if he’s anything like me, he’d rather people didn’t know if they don’t have to.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Stephen, amiable as ever. “If you say so. But he doesn’t mind telling people. In fact, it’s hard to stop him once he’s started—he thinks everyone’s fascinated by anything he does.”

  That was the first time Stephen had indicated to him in any way that he wasn’t a big fan of Baker's.

  “And I just thought it might make you feel a bit better,” he added.

  “It does,” said Jack. “It’s made me feel a bit guilty, but a bit better, too.”

  Lloyd had made dinner. At last, something he could do to mark Valentine’s Day. True, her mother was there, which wasn’t exactly romantic, but that probably suited Judy better. Candlelit meals weren’t really her thing.

  He hadn’t cooked for ages, because unlike Judy, Gina was a good cook. Every morning, she made a bacon and egg breakfast for herself and Judy, and every morning she asked him if he would like something. He had had a cup of coffee for breakfast all his adult life; eating first thing in the morning was something he just didn’t do. Unlike Judy, he ate the rest of the time. She sometimes only ate breakfast. But you would think that by now her mother might have accepted that he didn’t.

  He used to make Judy’s breakfast for her, if he was up in time. He often wasn’t up in time, but these days no one got to sleep late, not now that Charlotte could make her way from her room to theirs and announce that it was morning. She seemed to wake up with the daylight—another thing she’d got from Judy, who could sleep through anything but sunshine—and Lloyd was positively dreading the coming spring. She’d be getting them up at three in the morning by June.

  But Gina made the breakfast these days, so this morning, when he could have done something for Judy to mark the date, however practical and unromantic, he hadn’t been given the chance. Then he’d hit on the idea of dinner, and had allowed the three ladies in his life to put their feet up while he slaved over a hot stove.

  Now, one of them was in her playpen, happily banging and twanging the strange thing that banged and twanged, and the other two were coming to the end of what had been an excellent meal, even if he did say so himself.

  “What’s he like?” he asked Judy.

  “Who?”

  She knew perfectly well who. She had told him and Gina all about her investigation when she came in last night, and she knew who he was talking about. Lloyd was a little ashamed of his reaction to famous people, but Judy knew as well as he did that he was slightly starstruck, and Tony Baker, of all people, had found this woman’s body.

  She relented. “He’s all right, I suppose. He thinks he’s gorgeous, and I’m sure he thinks he knows more about policing than all of us put together, but he’s quite pleasant, in a smooth, chat-show-host sort of way.”

  “You know, I think I recorded that documentary that he did about the South Coast murders—the one he did before they made the TV movie and all that. I must dig it out, look at it again.”

  “I don’t know how you can find anything,” said Gina. “I’ve never seen so many videotapes.”

  “He’s got them all catalogued on his database,” said Judy. “On the computer.”

  Gina looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “Have you really?”

  “Yes,” said Lloyd, putting on his offended look, but neither of them took any notice. “There wouldn’t be much point in having them if I couldn’t find what I wanted to watch, would there?”

  “Can I look at your database some time?”

  “Of course.”

  “There might be films and things that I’d like to see.”

  “Oh, there’s bound to be,” said Judy. “He’s recorded every film ever made.”

  “Ignore her,” said Lloyd. “There’s not quite that many. But there are a lot, and she’s right that there’s bound to be something you’d like. I’ll get the database up for you now—show you how to find the sort of thing you fancy.”

  He went into the sitting room and switched on the computer, making ineffectual attempts to tidy the desk while he waited for it to go through its start-up process. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask Gina if she’d like to see any of his films—Judy was never interested
, so he had assumed that her mother wouldn’t be either. Why hadn’t she asked before now? Did she really think that he had total recall of where everything was on the tapes? Anyway, he was pleased that she wanted to make use of the tapes. It made him feel slightly less eccentric for having them.

  She came in just as he had found out which tape Tony Baker was on.

  “Judy’s graciously been allowed to bathe Charlotte tonight,” she said. “So I’ve come in for a lesson.”

  Lloyd showed her how to bring up entries by title, or by category. “You don’t happen to like old sixties cult TV, do you?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes—I loved some of them. Have you got them, too?”

  “Yes. And you’re welcome to watch them whenever you like, as long as you don’t laugh at me for having the ones you think are rubbish.”

  “As if I would.” She sat down, smiling broadly at the computer screen. “This is great fun,” she said.

  Lloyd nodded. “I think so, too. She just thinks I’m mad.”

  “Oh, she would. She thinks if you’ve seen something once, there’s no point in watching it again.”

  Lloyd laughed. “I know—I was one of the first people in Britain to have a VCR, and she had no idea why I wanted one. Or why I preferred to video some programs even if I could watch them when they were on. I tried to explain how I liked being able to stop and run it back if I missed a bit, and all that, but . . .” He shrugged. “She still doesn’t understand. Do you fancy having a look at the South Coast murders thing once we’ve got Charlotte off to bed?”

  “Yes—that would be interesting. I’d forgotten all about that.”

  Several Taffy the Tabby stories later, Lloyd emerged from Charlotte’s bedroom, found the tape, and put it on. “This was shown just after the trial,” he said. “Seventeen years ago. It’s hard to believe it was that long ago, isn’t it?”

  “Look,” said Judy. “He had ordinary hair in those days. He puts highlights in it now. And he’s had his teeth done.”

  Lloyd laughed. “Do you think I should put highlights in mine?”

  “Your teeth, maybe.”

  He watched as Tony Baker, with the aid of filmed reconstructions, went through each of the murders.

  “Here, at Torquay in Devon,” he said, as he walked along the seafront, “five years ago, on the first of July, Carrie Harmsworth was beaten to death in her own home—a little cottage on the edge of town. Lonely, some might have said. Isolated. She and her husband thought of it as peaceful, somewhere she could work undisturbed on her pottery figures, and he could run his mail-order rare book business. He was away at a book fair at the time of the murder.”

  That had caused the entire population of Torquay to suspect him, if not of carrying out the murder himself, then of hiring someone to do the job for him.

  “Nothing was stolen, and the victim had not been sexually assaulted. A small quantity of blood was found at the scene that did not belong to the victim, and though the forensic possibilities of DNA were yet to be discovered, blood could nonetheless prove significant once a suspect had been apprehended.”

  Eastbourne next, and Audrey Little’s murder, on August 1 the following year. The same MO. This time her husband was at work. The similarities had been noticed by the two police forces, as had the fact that in both cases there were travelers in the area. A couple walking their dog had seen someone hanging around earlier in the day, possibly watching the house, but could only give a vague description of the man. Extensive inquiries were made among the Gypsies, but nothing concrete emerged.

  “It was in Brighton that the police made what they thought was their breakthrough,” Tony Baker was saying. “When a Mrs. Lillian Evans died exactly one year and one month after Mrs. Little. Now, they were certain that they had a serial killer on their hands. The victims were all married women. They had all been beaten to death in their own homes with whatever heavy object came to hand. The murders had all taken place in broad daylight, in a south coast town, and in each case, Gypsies had been encamped nearby.”

  Now, he walked along a suburban street. “But this time, the house, as you can see, was not isolated. It stood close to the main London to Brighton line, not far from the railway station. There was a good deal of passing traffic, and they were optimistic of getting some information. And indeed a passing motorist, a visitor to the area, did come forward with information. A Mr. Jason Tebbs Challenger contacted the police to say that he recalled seeing a man running very fast along the road outside Mrs. Evans’s house. He’d noticed him because he was wearing work clothes, not running clothes, and he had thought the clothes were smeared with red paint. Was that Mrs. Evans’s blood? And was this the face of her killer?”

  The screen showed the now-notorious sketch.

  “This was the sketch released by the police as a result of the description given to them by Jason Challenger. It was seen on television screens, on posters, in newspapers and cinemas for months. And this . . .”

  The picture changed to a photograph of the Gypsy who had been charged with the murders. The man was clearly recognizable from the sketch.

  “. . . is Joseph Riley, the man they arrested over a year later, having finally run him to earth farther along the south coast. The other travelers had been keeping him out of sight, simply because of his similarity to the sketch, not because they believed he was in any way involved in the murders. He was arrested two years ago, on the thirtieth of September.”

  Over film footage of Riley’s arrest, Baker picked up the story.

  “Mrs. Evans had been beaten to death by a spade from her own garden shed, and Riley’s fingerprints were on that spade. He had been working in the Brighton area as a jobbing gardener, and his story was that Mrs. Evans had asked him to dig her borders, had paid him, and he had left her alive and well. But he had been in the Eastbourne area in August of the previous year, and in Torquay the July before that, as had all the travelers in his group, and he was not believed.”

  Well, no, thought Lloyd. He doubted very much that he would have believed him.

  “The blood found at the scene of the first murder was of the same type as his. It was type O, the most common blood type of all.”

  The police had then gone back to the second murder, and arranged for the couple who had been walking their dog to attend a lineup. They each picked out Riley.

  “The police were quite happy that they had their man, and he was charged with all three murders.”

  Baker was now standing on some steps in a churchyard.

  “But I wasn’t happy. I had no doubt that the couple attending the lineup had picked out the sketch, not the man. Joseph Riley was barely able to read and write, having received little or no education. He lived on the road—he had no use for calendars. He didn’t have the acumen necessary to devise some elaborate plan to commit murders one year and one month apart. There had to be a reason for that, but, of course, the police don’t need to discover the reason for a crime. They had the physical evidence. The fingerprints. The blood. The eyewitnesses.”

  The camera pulled back. “It was here in Bournemouth that the next murder took place. On the morning of the first of October, the day after Riley’s arrest, Mrs. Nora Green was battered to death in her own home. Nothing was stolen, and there was no sexual assault. But the police would not countenance the idea that they had arrested the wrong man. This murder was different, they said. Her husband wasn’t away, as the others had been—he was there with her. He said he had popped out for the morning paper, as was his habit, but the belief—not publicly stated, but very real—was that he had killed his wife in this way in the hope that it would be taken for the work of the South Coast Murderer, not knowing that he had been arrested the night before.”

  Baker had followed the Bournemouth investigation to the exclusion of all else, taking lodgings in Bournemouth, having to give up his newspaper job as a result. He had pored over all the evidence available to him from the other murders, and had evolved a theory.

>   “I believed that the murderer had deliberately carried out his attacks in areas where the Gypsies were encamped in order that they should take the blame if necessary. That he, having seen Riley working in Mrs. Evans’s garden, had committed his features to memory in order to do exactly what he did—come forward as a witness, produce a sketch so accurate that it might have been a photograph, and throw the investigation in entirely the wrong direction. That he had used the spade Riley had been working with in order that Riley’s prints would be found on it. And I believed that his MO had changed in Bournemouth only in so much that he now needed a new scapegoat—in this case, his victim’s husband.”

  Another man the public had decided was guilty of murdering his wife, Lloyd thought. Murder touched so many innocent people.

  “I believed that Jason Challenger, who I now knew to be the owner of a fitted kitchen company that operated throughout the south of England, who could be anywhere along the south coast that he chose on any day he chose, for as long as he needed to be there, was the murderer. That he spent months choosing his possible victims, making certain of their habits, of when they were alone . . . But the police dismissed my theory, saying I was letting my imagination run away with me.”

  Lloyd was uncomfortably aware that he would probably have said exactly the same thing.

  “I began following Challenger. If I could watch him make his preparations for his next murder, I could surely convince the police. But after a few months, all I got for my pains was a court order telling me to keep away from him, or I’d go to prison. What now? If I couldn’t follow him, how could I prevent another murder?”

  A picture now of Mary Shelley’s grave.

  “It was here that I came to do my thinking. St. Peter’s churchyard in Bournemouth, where the ghost of Mary Shelley—someone who really knew how to let her imagination run away with her—might inspire me. Mrs. Green’s husband was still under clouds of suspicion, though no charges had been brought, Joseph Riley was serving life imprisonment, and I would go to prison if I went anywhere near Challenger. He must have been laughing his socks off.”