[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard

by J M Gregson

  Brendan Murphy said, “Would drink or drugs be likely to be a prelude to these crimes?”

  Wishart smiled. “Good question. The short answer is that we don’t know. But it’s hardly likely that the man was high on either drink or drugs at the time of the killings, or he wouldn’t have executed them with such cold efficiency and made no mistakes. I’d say you’d be wasting your time sifting through candidates who have serious drink or drug problems. Your man almost certainly won’t be an alcoholic or an addict.”

  “But he might use drugs as a stimulant, to make him feel in control?”

  “Yes. Just as he might use a small quantity of alcohol. Cocaine can give people a feeling of mastery, just as alcohol can. The effects vary with individuals, as you know.”

  Peach noted Brendan Murphy’s satisfaction and knew that he was picturing the ebony face of Clyde Northcott standing over Hannah Woodgate. He said with a touch of acid, “Before all of you begin to put forward your individual preferences for the Leopard, perhaps we should draw this together. I think we’ve given you what we have in the way of information, Dr Wishart. It’s pitifully little. Would you like to summarise your thoughts for us?”

  Wishart nodded and looked down at the notes he had made during the meeting, stroking his small beard thoughtfully, for all the world as if he were concluding an academic seminar in the University of Manchester. “What we’re trying to arrive at in our discussion is what the Americans call an ‘offender profile’. They draw a distinction between organised and disorganised murderers — a simple enough idea, but one they have found useful. The Leopard is an organised killer. He is not a confused loser, but a man who plans his killings carefully and probably enjoys that planning. You have had three carefully organised crime scenes; one might just be luck, but three can only be produced by an organised criminal. He will have a job, very possibly one in which organisation of his time is paramount, whether that is within his own control or enforced by others. He may well be delighted to be frustrating a large police hunt: that is probably one of his satisfactions. He may or may not be married or have a partner; even if he lives with someone else, he will be something of a loner. He will not have a history of sexual crimes, but he may well have indulged in violence towards women which was not directly related to sex.”

  He put down his ball-pen and smiled at his audience. “None of this is gospel, and I don’t want it to prevent you from opening any doors you think need to be opened. It is merely a summary of my thoughts at the moment, based on the existing evidence.”

  A typical academic disclaimer, thought Peach. He muttered to Hamish Wishart as the meeting broke up that the only way he was going to get more evidence was if the Leopard acted again.

  This brought an unexpected response. Wishart said, “I agree. And I didn’t want to raise it in the meeting, because it wasn’t going to help anyone. But if you look at the three killings, the intervals may be significant. Thirty-nine days between the first and the second; twenty-four days between the second and the third. It is now twenty-six days since the death of Hannah Woodgate. I think it likely that the Leopard will be planning to kill again, quite soon.”

  *

  Michael Devaney was an innocent-looking figure. He had a round, unlined face and features which looked not yet fully formed, as malleable and changeable as a child’s. Percy Peach had looked at his picture and said that, while each individual feature was regular enough, no one had taught them the value of team work.

  Yet Devaney was twenty-nine and had a responsible post. He also seemed to have most of the characteristics of the Leopard profile which had been outlined by Hamish Wishart in the morning’s meeting.

  His official title was Care in the Community Officer. It was quite a new post, designed to foster the sort of mutual awareness and assistance in the community which everyone recalled nostalgically from the days of narrow terraced houses and outside lavatories. There had been a lot of those in Brunton, and the worst had been cleared years ago and replaced by modern blocks, and new and more acute social problems.

  Devaney’s job had been created by a well-meaning council to try to alleviate some of these. It was too little and too late. Michael had no one place of occupation and few powers. He popped into the youth club and tried to seem in touch with its members; he liaised with parents’ associations and gave them guidance on the latest state of the illegal drugs industry; he sat on the Asian/British Mutual Understanding Committee; he helped transport pensioners to the Red Cross Centre for their weekly day out on a Wednesday; he tried to find those, mainly but by no means exclusively the old, who were dangerously isolated on the new estate, and alert others to their plight.

  It was a job which needed the services of a superman. And Michael Devaney was no superman. On the face of it, he seemed the kind of well-meaning but largely ineffectual man you might have forecast for the kind of money the Council had decided was appropriate for the post.

  But in the world of fear which gripped Brunton as the town waited for the Lancashire Leopard to pounce again, Devaney was in a vulnerable position. He had been reported to the CID section by three separate women as behaving suspiciously. But they had been able to produce little more than the facts that he was a man who lived alone; who had no girlfriend; who seemed to have little social life outside his work; who probably could not account for himself on the nights of the murders.

  The female CID sergeant who took the calls made polite noises and a note of the man’s name and address. You could not ask the public to help you and then ignore their suggestions. Michael Devaney had to be checked out, though her private feelings were that it would be fruitless work.

  So far, so lukewarm. It was surprising how many people there were in Brunton and its neighbouring towns, in the villages and hamlets of the Ribble Valley, who fitted this description. Perhaps that was some kind of comment on English society in the new century. DS Blake noted that Devaney fitted most of the criteria suggested by Hamish Wishart at the end of the morning meeting.

  And then something quite surprising turned up.

  Michael Devaney had a record. For violence. For violence against a woman. And for violence seemingly unconnected with sex. When he was nineteen, he had hit a woman of twenty-two so hard that she had needed eight stitches over her left eye. She had not wanted to press charges and it had never come to court. Devaney had got away with a police caution, but that meant that the incident had been recorded and was easily resurrected now by the computer.

  There had been no recurrence. Or, as Tony Pickard remarked to DS Blake on their way to interview Michael Devaney, no recorded recurrence.

  They met him in his tiny, crowded office in the Community Centre. He sat behind a desk covered with letters and memoranda awaiting his attention. There was barely room for the two upright chairs they carried into the room to sit on for their exchange: they felt uncomfortably close to their man. He apologised that he couldn’t open the window: “We have to keep them locked against intruders, you see, and I’m afraid I’ve mislaid the key. I’m scarcely ever in here, so it doesn’t matter that much to me.”

  In all truth, it wasn’t warm in the room; the only window was on a north wall, so that there was no heat through the glass from the pale January sun outside. But perhaps Michael Devaney was already feeling the heat of his situation. Lucy Blake said, “I’ll come straight to the point. There’s no way of wrapping this up nicely, even if I wanted to. We’re part of the investigation into the- three murders committed by this man the media have dubbed the Lancashire Leopard, and we’re here in connection with that.”

  No noticeable surprise, apart from a moistening of the lips that was entirely understandable. He said, “Has someone reported me to you? Did someone suggest that you should come here to see me?”

  Did he have a persecution complex? Perhaps it wasn’t just a complex: he looked like a man who would easily be persecuted. And he was right: no fewer than three women had said that he merited this visit, though Lucy could not te
ll him that. She said with a smile, “You should not be unduly alarmed. You are one of several hundred men who have been questioned about these events. We should be happy to cross you off that list; if we can eliminate you from our enquiries, we shall be one tiny step further along what is proving a very long road.”

  He did not respond to her smile. Instead, he said, “Needless to say, I didn’t kill these women. Proving it may be a different thing. But I don’t have to prove it, do I?”

  Tony Pickard said, “Indeed you don’t. Though if we can’t be satisfied that you have no connection, we shan’t of course be able to cross you off our list. Where were you on the night of January the fifth?”

  The bluntness of the question, the suddenness with which it had been posed, from no more than three feet from his face, made Devaney recoil as if in fear of being struck. “I can’t recall. Not just like that. I—”

  “You must have thought about it, surely? Any single man, living on his own, would certainly have thought about where he was that night. I did myself.”

  “No. No, I didn’t. We’re not all the same, you know.”

  “No. Otherwise three women who have been brutally murdered might be alive today, eh? Well, think then, Mr Devaney. Where were you on the night of Saturday the fifth of January?”

  “In bed. In my flat. If you think it’s any business of yours.”

  “Oh, we do, Mr Devaney. And was there anyone tucked up cosily in bed with you? Anyone who might remember a night of passion clearly enough to support your story?”

  “I was on my own. I had a stiff whisky and went to bed at about eight with three aspirins, because I had a shocking cold. I thought at the time it was going to develop into ’flu.”

  “Really. So you had to have time off work, then. That at least we will be able to check on.” Pickard smiled as if he knew the answer to that one already.

  “No. It was only a cold. It lasted for the best part of a week, but I didn’t have any time off.” He looked then at Lucy Blake, as if he hoped for a little more sympathy from a woman. “I’m a bit of a one-man band in my job of community liaison officer, you see. Everything just ceases to happen if I’m not around...there’s no one to take over.”

  She said dryly, “Your devotion to duty is no doubt highly commendable, Mr Devaney. From our point of view, and yours as well, it would be useful if there was someone or something to support your story that you were not out in the town on that Saturday night.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Sergeant, but there isn’t. I didn’t know the wretched girl was going to be killed, did I?”

  They raised their eyebrows a fraction at the adjective, letting him know that he had made a mistake in this bizarre game. Lucy said quietly, “I know it’s a long time ago, but we are finding that most men who live alone have given some thought to the point. Can you tell us where you were on the nights of November the third and December the twelfth?”

  “No. It’s too long ago.” The answer had come too promptly, as if he had been waiting for the question with his blank denial. Perhaps he realised that, for after a few seconds he added, “I’m usually pretty well exhausted after a day’s work with the elderly — I help at the Red Cross centre whenever I can. I was probably listening to music in my flat — I don’t watch television much.”

  He had thought about it enough to realise that the second of the murders was on a Wednesday night then, despite his disclaimers. They studied him for a moment in the little room with its single window and its thin plasterboard walls. They were close enough to hear each other’s breathing, and Lucy realised that Tony Pickard’s, excited by the thrill of the hunt, was louder and more uneven than that of their quarry. From somewhere down a corridor, they heard the sound of a girl’s loud, coarse laughter, followed by words they could not distinguish and a more general burst of hilarity. It made their own little drama seem even more bizarre. She said quietly, “The first killing, that of November the third, was on Saturday night, like the third. Were you also too tired to go out on that night, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I might have chosen not to go out. We don’t all have to be chasing girls around the town, you know.”

  “An unfortunate choice of words, Mr Devaney, in the circumstances.” She looked into the animated, pliant face and realised in a disconcerting flash who this man reminded her of. Lucy was something of a film buff and attended the local cinema club whenever she could. They had recently run a Charles Laughton season, and she knew now that Devaney’s blubbery lips and twitching, mobile face reminded her of the young Laughton, who had been educated not ten miles from Brunton at Stonyhurst.

  To disguise the keenness of her scrutiny of that face, she affected a weariness she did not feel as she said, “You’re telling us that you cannot account for your whereabouts at the time of any one of the three murders which have now been attributed to the Leopard. Is that correct, Mr Devaney?”

  “Yes. There’s no reason why I should be able to, is there?” The full lips set in a sullen, challenging pout.

  Tony Pickard said, “No. And equally, there’s no reason why we should remove you from our list of men who had the opportunity to murder these women.” He paused, studied his man for a moment, and then said, “How do you get on with women, Michael?”

  There was an immediate shift from sullenness to unease. “Well enough. Not that it’s anything to do with you.”

  “Oh, but it is, Michael. You’ve just admitted that you can offer no proof of where you were on the nights when three women were strangled. In the light of that, how you get on with women generally is very much our concern.”

  “I told you. Well enough.”

  “You don’t have a regular girlfriend, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Or a boyfriend?”

  A flash of hatred from that mobile face. “No. And you’ve no bloody right to imply that I—”

  “Fair enough question, Michael, in these enlightened times. Ours not to distinguish between sexual proclivities, nowadays. Feel resentful towards women, though, do you?”

  “Resentful? No! And why the hell you should ask—”

  “I’ll tell you why, shall I, Michael?” Pickard was swift as a poacher springing his trap upon an unsuspecting rabbit. “Because you’ve got a caution for hitting a woman. Because you’ve already got a track record of violence against women! That’s why! So that when someone starts killing women, we search out people like you, who’ve proved in the past that they don’t like them!”

  “I don’t know why you should say that. I’ve—”

  “Oh, but you do know, Michael. I’m quite sure you do. But let me prod that reluctant memory of yours, with just two words. Rosie Woodhouse!”

  They could see that it was the name he had expected, that he had hoped against hope they wouldn’t be able to produce. Tony Pickard had gone for him hard, and Lucy reckoned that was fair enough. No doubt the young DC’s technique owed much to Peach, though it seemed without the humour that was always at the edge of the DI’s harshest interrogations. She watched Devaney’s fleshy face crumple, thought for a moment that he was going to weep. She said quietly, “We have to raise this, Michael. If you give it a moment’s thought, you will see that.”

  He would not look at her. He fixed his eyes upon the papers on his desk and said, “I was nineteen. It was ten years ago.”

  “So tell us about it, please.”

  His narrow shoulders shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know where to begin. It had been going on for months.”

  “What had, Michael?”

  “The taunting. She was the worst.” He shifted uneasily on his seat, realised that he would have to fill in more detail. “I worked in a local government office, then. It was at County Hall, in Chester. They teased me about girls, about the fact that I didn’t have one. Then the girls would pretend to be attracted to me, but laugh in my face when I asked them out. Then they made out that I had a thing going on with one of the caretakers, an older man.”

&nb
sp; “Which you hadn’t.”

  “No, of course I hadn’t. If you’d just seen him! Anyway, they kept that going for several weeks, then turned to pretending that I was bisexual, that I had an insatiable appetite for sex. Rosie Woodhouse was the worst of them. She’d rub herself against me and then accuse me of assaulting her. That day she was wearing a short skirt. She came and sat on my knee and squirmed about. Put her arms round my neck and hugged me against her. Then she leapt off and said I’d groped her. Said she was going to have me for sexual harassment.”

  “And you hit her.”

  “Yes. I snatched up the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be a stapler, and hit her with it. I just wanted to stop her tongue, to bring an end to the coarse things she was saying and the others were all laughing at!”

  “And she ended up in hospital.”

  “Yes. In Casualty. I cut her eyebrow badly. It bled a lot.” Whatever the rights and wrongs of that situation ten years ago, it was still vividly with him. His pain and resentment had come out in his account; once he had begun it, he had scarcely needed prompting. Now that it was over, he plunged his face briefly into his hands at the recollection, then, after a few seconds, raised it tearless to face them.

  Lucy said coolly, “Whatever the reasons, Michael, the fact is that you hit her. She could easily have lost an eye.”

  Tony Pickard said, “And how many women have you hit since then, Michael?”

  “None. I’ve kept away from them.” He was staring down at his desk again now.

  “Interesting. As I said earlier, you don’t like them, do you?”

  A shrug of the narrow shoulders. Michael Devaney was retreating into his own world now. They had thrown the worst they could at him, and he had accounted for himself, after a fashion. Let them make what they wanted of it.

  Tony Pickard glanced sideways into the dark green eyes of his DS, received a tiny nod from her. He said to the man on the other side of the narrow desk, “If you can give us any more convincing account of your whereabouts on the three nights we’ve mentioned, we want to hear it, so contact us. Meanwhile, don’t leave the area without telling us where you’re going.”