Rock'n'Roll Suicide (Jack Lockwood Mystery Series Book 1)

by Geoffrey West

  He nodded grudgingly. “Aye, that’s what it looks like at present, but I must stress that we’re not copper-bottom certain about owt so far. Now tell me, are you absolutely certain you didn’t see anyone running away from the scene?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I had. Do you think it was The Bible Killer?”

  His mouth tightened into a line of anger. “I’m not prepared to speculate. Nor should you. The team have already got a BIA, in case you were going to offer your services.”

  The killings had started a month ago. At five-thirty one sunny morning a window cleaner had found the naked and bloody body of a woman leaned up against a wall in a back alley in the Martyrs Field part of the city. Anna Marie Molloy had been a prostitute, last seen in one of the town’s public houses late the night before. Since then, all the women in the city had taken extra care of their safety, but despite that there’d been another murder. In both cases a small Bible had been left on top of the victim’s chest, open at different places for each of them, as if delivering some kind of message decrying sexual immorality. The press had immediately christened the murderer as the Bible Killer, and the name had stuck.

  “So am I free to go?”

  “Certainly. In the circumstances I’m sorry we had to keep you overnight.”

  “No problem.”

  “I’m glad you see things this way, Dr Lockwood. Glad and, I admit, pretty surprised.”

  Fulford closed my book, then picked it up between a finger and thumb, a look of distaste on his face, dangling it as if it was a sample from a sewage farm.

  “Frankly, sir, I never in a million years expected to find you so understanding about our necessary procedures.” He paused and stared at the book, then back at me. “Because it’s fairly obvious from what you write that you don’t have a lot of time for the forces of law and order in Britain. That you never miss a trick to try and discredit us.”

  “Look, I’m no anti-police crusader, believe me. I’ve worked as a BIA and I’m still on the approved register. I’m on your side, Mr Fulford. Okay Unsafe Convictions happened to be about incompetent police. But in other books I’ve written I give praise to the police where it’s due.”

  “But you don’t find it’s due very often, do you, sir? In this book you analyze the careers of a number of officers who are either retired or dead, and find them ruefully wanting. In The Drugs War We Can’t Win, you rake over the case of an Chief Superintendent who has been convicted of serious corruption.”

  “You obviously enjoy my books.”

  “Enjoyment doesn’t come into it!” he snapped. “I read your books to try and keep in touch with public opinion. What does an Oxford-educated toff like you know about real down-to-earth folk anyway?”

  “For five years I worked as a catch-hand builder’s labourer. You don’t get much more down-to-earth than sharing a three-foot trench with sweating Irish navvies, or hodding bricks up scaffolding when the skin of your hands is ripped raw. In my investigative work I try to be as fair and honest as I can. I do meticulous research, personally interview everybody who’s involved and do my utmost to be strictly neutral and unbiased. All I try to do is to set the record straight for the sake of the innocent victims. I don’t invent the facts.”

  “But you twist ’em, don’t you? You highlight corrupt police practices. Regrettable instances, which in my informed opinion, are very rare indeed. The average Joe reads a book like this, and they leap to the conclusion that the British police force is at best incompetent, at worst venal and corrupt. And so we lose even more backing from the few decent folk who might once have been our supporters.”

  “That isn’t my intention. As I’ve said, I’ve also written books where I outline successful police investigations and talented officers.”

  I could see that Fulford wasn’t going to listen to anything I had to say, and, between you and me, I didn’t care a damn. Maybe he had a point, but it had taken me a long time to carve out my own literary niche and I enjoyed it, and honestly felt I was doing something worthwhile. The harsh facts are that people aren’t interested in obsequious biographies about noble public figures and incorruptible police officers who have raised fortunes for charity and never made mistakes. What they want to read are detailed accounts about the lives and acts of vicious and disgusting serial killers, merciless evil gangsters, the most depraved kind of perverts as well as corrupt law enforcers. And that, like it or not, is my market. End of.

  “And once we catch the Bible Killer, no doubt you’ll write a book about our mistakes leading to needless deaths, just as you did in your book about the Yorkshire Ripper? Or maybe you’ll just wallow in the sensationalism of it, the horror and the gore and exploit the suffering of the poor victims.”

  I took a breath. “I don’t exploit anyone.”

  “Do you not?” he smirked. “Sure about that, are you? I bet some of your readers get their rocks off on all them detailed descriptions of the blood and gore at crime scenes you’re so good at.”

  I stood up. “If you’ve finished with me, perhaps I can leave?”

  “Certainly.” He was all stiff formality again. “Once again, sir, please accept my apologies for your inconvenience.” He got to his feet and walked into the corridor with me, calling a constable to escort me out.

  * * * *

  A fresh-faced young officer had brought my Discovery to the main road in front of the police station. After I’d opened the door, tossed the plastic bag of my possessions onto the back seat and was about to get in, a man pushed in front of me, thrusting a hand across to slam the driver’s door. Stuart Billingham was a barrel-shaped character, whose fringe of lank mud-coloured hair hung down across his eyes. He was wearing a battered brown leather jacket over a white tee shirt with the words GET IN THE GROOVE emblazoned in red. A dirty fuzz of designer stubble served to accentuate his paucine features.

  “I’ve gotta talk to you Jack.” his mouth was a hard line, splitting his face, like a gash across a Halloween pumpkin.

  “No statement, Stuart. Not now.”

  “Don’t want me to make guesses, do you?” The sour scent of his breath washed over me as he leaned in close. That was Stuart, a leaner-inwards, a whisperer in your ear, an invader of space. He thought that building such bridges of familiarity assured him of cooperation to get a story, and, to be fair, sometimes it worked with people who didn’t already know him. I had a close-up of a blackhead on his chin, drowning amongst the whiskers. “The editor wants me to put something like Ex-psychiatric patient runs down innocent woman. You know that old bastard Matthews. He’s been aching for a chance to stir some shit for you, and now he’s gone and got and a sexy headline. But if I can get anything better I can squash it.”

  “Stuart, I’ve had a hell of a night–”

  “Believe me Jack, last thing I want to do is rake up that about your stay in St Michael’s, God knows.” His brows knotted in concern. “If it were up to me, I’d not mention it. But if I don’t do this piece, it’ll be that arsehole Carter, and he’ll wallow in dredging up the nutcase angle. How long ago was it you were an inpatient? Three years? Four? What did they call it? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?”

  “If you’d spent 48 hours tied to a chair in a room with two corpses and a killer periodically sticking a rusty old Webley revolver in your mouth and pulling the trigger, you’d have had mental problems too, believe me.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “Me, I’d have the screaming ab-dabs. No question about it, pal, your nerves must be like razor bloody steel.”

  Billingham, with his usual crassness, had managed to stir up all the memories I most wanted to forget. I’d been working as a BIA with a police team who’s Senior Investigating Officer didn’t like me, and I’d got a tip that we’d find our suspect at a particular address in Bristol. Even though I’d phoned in the information and should have waited for backup, I went in anyway, and backup never arrived. A couple of years later I was exonerated, my reputation intact. But I’d had psychiatric problems i
n the interim, necessitating a stay in a psychiatric hospital, St Michael’s, a grim red-brick edifice of towers and echoing corridors on the outer edges of Surrey, built in 1880 as the county asylum.

  “Come on, Jack, this is me, Stu, you know I’m on your side. All I want is a juicy quote. Any truth in the rumour that she was a victim of the Bible Killer?”

  “Ask the police Press Office.”

  “She was escaping from the bastard and ran out in front of your car?”

  “The police didn’t tell me anything.”

  “But that’s your informed opinion?”

  “That’s my totally uninformed opinion.”

  Stuart’s meaty fist grabbed my shoulder as I tried to push him out of the way. “But they held you overnight, didn’t they?”

  “No comment.”

  He shook his head sadly, hand still resting on my arm. “Why did they hold you?”

  “The police released me without charge, and the woman’s recovering in hospital.”

  “And the police reckon she was a Bible Killer victim?”

  “As I said, Stu, ask their Press Office.”

  “I like it. Bestselling true crime author involved in the kind of life-and-death drama he normally only writes about. Jack Lockwood saved the life of the Bible Killer’s latest victim.”

  Later, as I accelerated up the road I thought back to the years I’d known Stuart: his bluff remarks, tedious jokes, and crass insensitivity. He was different to me in almost every way.

  I often wondered why he was my best friend.

  * * * *

  You’ll find my old house, which was once the gatehouse of a large, now-demolished estate, at the end of an unmade road. I live alone, and there’s a part built extension at the back that I’ve never got around to finishing. I parked in the front drive and walked through to my kitchen breakfast room which has a view out across the Glossop Valley below.

  I had a snack and went to bed to make up for my sleepless night. When I woke up it was evening. Had the woman I’d hit with my car really been the latest intended victim of the Bible Killer? She’d clearly been attacked, beaten about the head, perhaps half strangled, and when she’d run in front of my car it had seemed as if she’d been running for her life. And she’d mentioned someone pursuing her.

  So far, she was the only one of the killer’s victims to survive, and it would be a massive breakthrough if she could supply any clues as to his identity. I thought back to the research I’d done on the Yorkshire Ripper. Only a couple of Peter Sutcliffe’s victims had survived, one of them had been attacked from behind and hadn’t seen the man, the other had given a fairly good description, but, because the police hadn’t linked her attack with the Ripper, no one had followed it up. After being beaten on the head with a hammer, one of the woman had suffered from depression ever since. I’d even uncovered a theory that Sutcliffe himself had been involved in a road accident and sustained personality-changing head injuries, as, curiously, had the mass-murderer Fred West, who’d allegedly acquired such an injury resulting from a motorcycle accident.

  I could only hope that last night’s victim’s injuries weren’t going to affect her in any permanent way. Stuart had told me her name: Caroline Frost.

  It was 6pm in the evening, probably around the time that hospital visiting was allowed. The police had told me she was in St Aiden’s Hospital, so I drove back along the A2 to Canterbury arriving at St Aiden’s reception desk half an hour later.

  “She’s in Edith Grendel Ward,” said the receptionist, dismissing me as the turned to the next person in the queue. “Sixth floor.”

  As I rode up in the lift I reflected that it was unlikely the Ward Sister would let me see the injured woman, but if I explained my involvement, there was a chance she might at least be able tell me how she was recovering.

  I walked out onto the corridor, turning left for the doors above which it said ‘Edith Grendel Ward’. I obediently washed my hands with the alcohol cleaner at the wall machine, then pressed the button to open the ward doors and stepped through. At the end of the line of beds I could see a policewoman was sitting beside one of them.

  No one stopped me approaching the officer, and when I came closer she looked up enquiringly. I explained who I was and why I was there. After phoning her sergeant and confirming my identity, she told me that the doctors had said the woman was recovering well, and would probably be able to talk soon. Her job was to wait and report on anything she might say when she first woke up. I thanked her and left, feeling relieved that things had apparently worked out so well.

  Just as the lift doors were almost closed I saw someone’s face appear in the gap. I levered them open, to reveal a woman, her arms full of manila files.

  “Phew, thanks!” she said with a friendly smile, stepping forward. “I want to get these back to Records before they close – as it is I probably won’t make it.” She was wearing a dark blue top and trousers, yet it wasn’t a nurse’s uniform. The name badge fixed to her tunic said Lucy Green.

  “My pleasure.”

  I couldn’t help staring at her. For a fraction of a second I felt something like a bolt of electricity pass through my brain. Something, I didn’t know what, was incredibly, almost scaringly, familiar about her face. The someone walking over my grave moment passed, but it unnerved me. There was a strangely familiar cleft in her chin that triggered the weird sentiment. That crease below her mouth, and also a certain look in her eyes were familiar to me, but where from, I had absolutely no idea.

  She was studying me too.

  “Excuse me asking,” she said, “but are you Jack Lockwood? The psychologist who writes books about murderers and corrupt police?”

  “Yes,” relief flooded through me. “I know your face too, but I just can’t remember where we met.”

  “I’ve never met you, as far as I know.” She regarded me seriously while the lift rattled in protest as it started its downward journey. Lucy Green rearranged her grip on the pile of folders, clutching them closer to her chest, causing the topmost ones to slide forward and totter precariously. “I saw you on one of those late-night literary discussion programmes on BBC2 TV last year. I even read a bit of one of your books.”

  “Which one?”

  She frowned, trying to remember. “Can’t remember the title. Something about serial killers, I think. I just looked at the opening chapter out of curiosity. It was certainly compulsive reading, but way too grisly for my taste.”

  “Crime’s not your thing?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t mind a bit of detective fiction, but not true crime. Scares me, I suppose. I always want a happy ending, where the killer gets caught and the heroine escapes his clutches. Life’s not always like that, is it? I don’t like facing that kind of reality.” She gave a bitter smile but there was a wariness about it, as if she was on the edge of saying something and then thought better of it.

  And there it was again, that flutter of recognition, as elusive and enigmatic as a lost dream.

  My new friend appeared to be in her thirties, and her eyes were large and dark, her movements vivacious without being over-the-top. She was attractive rather than beautiful, with neat, dark, tastefully-styled shortish hair, a mouth that stretched into grimaces a little too much and eyebrows that almost met in the middle of her forehead; those eyebrows did their best to ameliorate the web of frown lines in her forehead that came and vanished at a moment’s notice.

  The weird feeling that I’d met her before wouldn’t go away. I racked my brains. But I couldn’t catch the memory.

  The gently shuddering lift had almost rattled down to the ground floor. “Wait a minute,” she said slowly, her eyes narrowing. “Jack Lockwood the True Crime writer. Already in the lift when the only ward above us is Edith Grendel. Please tell me it’s a coincidence that we just happen to have a patient there who’s been the victim of an attack? The Bible Killer’s latest?”

  “I came to see how she was.”

  “Priceless!” she s
tepped backwards, glaring at me. “Couldn’t you have had the decency to wait until the killer’s been caught before you push in and ask questions?”

  “Look I’m not–”

  “Don’t you think that poor girl’s had a bad enough experience already, without a self-seeking opportunist like you upsetting her?”

  “Listen–”

  “I’m sorry, but this is so wrong. They surely didn’t let you talk to her?”

  “She can’t talk to anyone.”

  “Good! My God, I thought journalists were the lowest of the low, but you make the gutter press seem like saints! Did you know that girl nearly died?”

  The lift had already stopped and the doors were open.

  “Have you any idea–”

  As I brushed past her I accidentally knocked her arm, so that she dropped some of the files onto the floor, and, in scrambling to retrieve them, dropped the rest, so that their contents was spread across the lift floor in a tidal wave of paper. I stepped over her kneeling figure as she scrabbled around trying to gather things together.

  * * * *

  When I got home I found it hard to sleep. Lucy Green’s accusation of my being a self-seeking opportunist had upset me more than I realised. It wasn’t what she said, so much as the distaste in her eyes as she looked at me. In fact it was much more than that, it was something I couldn’t explain, a bizarre affinity I’d felt for her from the moment I’d set eyes on her face. An affinity that she obviously didn’t share.

  Then my thoughts ran back to the fact that earlier in the evening I’d had more email threats and phone messages from Sean Boyd. The biography I was writing about Boyd, a well known London ‘face’ in criminal circles, was causing me serious problems. Hero or Villain? honestly seemed to me to be a fairly non-controversial summary of the man’s childhood and career so far. Even if I was to have been stupid enough to allege his guilt in specific criminal activities, he ought surely to realise that Truecrime Publications would never print anything he could sue us for. In fact, it was going to be a fairly innocuous book, because of the wretched legal restrictions, something that would almost paint him in a Robin Hood light, so why on earth was he was so determined to prevent publication?