[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard

by J M Gregson

  “You know I do.”

  “Well, look at this map. We now have four killings: one ten miles to the west of Brunton; a second thirteen miles to the north; a third in the town itself; and now a fourth, twelve miles to the south.”

  Wishart was quivering with excitement; Peach felt like a student who must not let him down. “You’re saying that the Leopard is based in Brunton?”

  “I’m suggesting exactly that. We’ve only had four murders yet, thank God, so we haven’t a lot of material to support the idea. But if you look at the patterns of previous serial killers, you will find that they usually operate around a central point. John Francis Duffy, who committed a series of murders and rapes in North London between 1982 and 1986 and was eventually found guilty of two murders and five rapes, operated from a base at the centre of the sites of his crimes. The police in Birmingham originally thought that the series of vicious rapes which took place there in 1987 and 1988 were the work of one man. They eventually proved to be the work of two men, not one, each operating in the area he knew well around his home.”

  “All right. The Leopard’s a Brunton man.”

  “Probably. Certainly a man with a detailed knowledge of the area, who seems to be operating outwards from a central point. Someone who lives or works in the town.”

  Peach said, “We’ll go through the people we’ve already interviewed from the town. The people who can’t alibi themselves for any of these deaths.” His mind flew back to the case that is a nightmare for all policemen, the Yorkshire Ripper. Peter Sutcliffe, the man eventually arrested and convicted, had been interviewed by officers on at least five occasions, but had each time been released without exciting much suspicion. Three different police forces had been involved in the search, had entered Sutcliffe’s name on their files — and missed the connection. They had central computers now, which were supposed to rule out such cock-ups, but there was still the human factor, when you were sifting thousands of possibilities. Had some copper already talked to the Leopard, and let him slip through the net?

  Wishart pulled at his bitter, wondering how to break more bad news to this determined little workaholic he had grown to like and respect. There wasn’t any easy way. He said, “I think your man has been studying previous serial killers. That he is determined to avoid the mistakes that eventually confounded them.”

  Peach took a large swallow of his own pint, replicating the action of the wiry little man on the other side of the small round table — as if the two of them were on strings with their limbs attached to each other, he thought wryly. He tried to savour the ale, and failed. “That’s something I’ve been feeling for the last week. But what makes you say it?”

  “The fact that he plans so carefully, leaving the very minimum to chance: it’s often been when a man has killed on impulse that he has eventually been caught. The fact that he leaves so little of himself behind: no semen; no saliva; so far, not a thread of his clothing or a hair of his head: this is a man who is aware of DNA and its dangers to him, and of the whole battery of forensic weapons in crime-solving. The fact that he gives so little away with his modus operandi: even his strangling is as near anonymous as it could be. The same method, swift and ruthless, each time. The same kind of heavy-duty gardening gloves or motor-cycling gauntlets on each occasion. I think your man has probably studied other men who have raped and/or killed a series of women, with a view to learning from the mistakes which eventually led to their capture.”

  Peach stared bleakly and unseeingly at the far wall of the quiet pub room. “He’ll trip himself up eventually, they always do. But the Ripper killed thirteen. I want to stop this bastard at four.” There was real passion in his voice, ringing out oddly in that inappropriate setting. There was also a thing Wishart had not heard from him before: a tinge of desperation.

  “Then let’s see what else we can offer,” Wishart said. “A locally based man, not travelling in from outside, who has studied previous serial killers and is determined not to be caught as they are. There’s another peculiarity. I took away what you told me about the first three women and I’ve listened to what you’ve just told me about the one who died on Friday night. There’s one thing which is unusual about them as victims. They’re all what, for want of a better word, I’ll call highly respectable women. Am I right?”

  “Yes. The first one was a twenty-nine-year-old schoolteacher with two children. The second was a single woman in her early forties who’d been attending an evening class and was a highly respected member of her village community. The third was a nineteen-year-old student who had a regular boyfriend at university, whom everyone, young and old, thought was a smashing girl, who certainly didn’t sleep around. Friday night’s victim was a woman with two kids who was working part-time in the pub to help out a husband who’d had to move to an inferior job.”

  “No prostitutes; no thieves; no women with known criminal associates. All popular and respected people in their communities.”

  “Yes. Murder investigations often turn up some pretty dodgy habits among the victims, and nearly always a few people around them who felt they had it coming to them. This one is unusual in that we haven’t had that. It’s made it even more difficult to get leads.”

  “But I would be right in saying that in terms of simple opportunity, it would be easier for your killer to go for prostitutes?”

  “Certainly. They’re the most vulnerable women of all.”

  “Yet your man has avoided them. He has had the opportunity, but deliberately turned aside from it. So we can rule out any warped moral crusade to kill ‘sinful’ women, of the kind a lot of previous serial killers like Peter Sutcliffe have used to drive themselves on. I won’t speculate on whether your man has any kind of grudge against ‘respectable’ women, because his chosen victims are too diverse to admit of any definite pattern. But it’s my belief that when he moves again — as he will if he’s not arrested — it won’t be against a prostitute or someone passing her favours around.”

  Peach nodded glumly. “We’ve stepped up policing around all the red-light areas in the Lancashire towns. But I think you’re right.”

  “I don’t say you can call off all protection for prostitutes. It’s rather that you should attempt to protect women living out more normal patterns of life. He seems to be concentrating on more successful women, in the sense of people who are happily coping with life. None of his four victims is a loser, or someone who’s missed out on life. No prostitutes. No drug addicts. No women living in squats or derelict buildings, who would surely be easier targets than the ones he has chosen.”

  Peach nodded thoughtfully. “We can warn the women you call ‘respectable’, certainly. The problem will be doing it without scaring the pants off them, so that they don’t go out of the house at all. Because without an army, we can’t protect them with any certainty.”

  “I don’t think you can issue any public warnings to particular sets of women. The Leopard would merely note them, digest them, and adjust his tactics. Probably go for different targets. You need to concentrate on what he’s telling you about himself, and I’m afraid he’s giving you very little.”

  “Do you think he will live alone?”

  “In a psychological sense, certainly. Even if he is living with a wife or a partner, he is essentially alone. He may be the kind of husband who lives a separate life in his own part of the house, but we don’t always see that from the outside. His crimes are a narrowing experience, not a broadening one. He will be becoming ever more excited by this secret life he lives at night, until it becomes the only really important part of his existence. He may, however, be meticulous in that public part of his being which we can see, because he realises what an important cover it is for what he sees as his real life.”

  “We’ve combed the ranks of the local unemployed, the known odd-bods and loners pretty thoroughly, without turning anything up.”

  Hamish Wishart stroked again at the neat, pointed beard. “I think it’s probable your man ha
s a job, perhaps quite a responsible one. He’s a schemer, who probably enjoys designing his crimes. And he’s rigorous in his own perverted form of self-discipline. He executes his carefully planned killings with the minimum of fuss. Most killers of his kind exhibit a wish to taunt the police or society in general, and I don’t think this man is any exception. But so far, he’s not indulging in the notes or phone calls which might enable you to find him. He knows how to kill women so as to leave as little of himself as possible behind, and he seems to have studied the methods and the downfalls of previous serial killers.”

  “A professional man?”

  “Possibly. One who is used to discipline, and sees its values in this section of his life which is now all-important to him. As we’ve said, he enjoys planning and exhibits a degree of expertise in the way he kills, and that might find some reflection in his job.”

  “A lawyer? A doctor? Since the delightful Doctor Shipman saw off upwards of a hundred people around Manchester, we’re always ready to consider medics.”

  “Lawyers and doctors are both possibilities. Someone who is used to discipline and timing in his ordinary daily life. Policemen are possibilities, of course. And schoolteachers; they’re used to timetables and planning, though they might find it more difficult to conceal a secret life in their everyday dealings with people.”

  Peach wasn’t sure from the academic’s quizzical smile how strong he thought these possibilities were. Policemen would certainly have the knowledge and the discipline, he thought grimly. And they weren’t all such disastrous planners as Tommy Bloody Tucker. He stared into his empty glass. “What the hell’s driving the bugger?” he said, to himself rather than Wishart.

  “That’s a good question. Not sex, certainly. Probably not even sadism — a sadist would be torturing his victims before they died. It’s interesting you should mention the infamous Doctor Shipman. What attracted him to killing seemed to be the feeling of power it gave him. The power over life and death: the power to take away someone’s life is the ultimate power, and it’s denied to anyone except absolute despots. I think it’s that feeling of power which is the attraction for your man. That and making fools of the police and society in general.”

  Peach stood up. “Thank you for your help. If you should have any further thoughts—”

  “I’ll be in touch right away. I wish you good luck.”

  “We bloody need it,” said Peach, with gloomy conviction.

  “I think you do. Because this man is going to get more confident, if he feels you’re not getting near to him. I think he’s going to want to feel again that power over life and death, and that need to demonstrate how clever he is. I’m afraid he’s going to kill again, quite soon.”

  Sixteen

  Sunday, February 3rd

  Winter drops more heavily upon the country than upon the town. The people who live beneath the long flank of Longridge Fell are more conscious of the passing seasons than those in the nearby towns of Preston and Brunton. They can see the steep end of Pendle Hill, often looking much nearer to them than its ten miles on the map. And Pendle, with its head moving in and out of the low cloud, is a constant reminder of the changes in the weather of the Ribble Valley.

  Agnes Blake, busying herself with her daughter Lucy in the kitchen of the low stone cottage, was pleased that Pendle rose clear and sharp against the blue sky at three o’clock on this winter afternoon. She always felt that the village looked at its best in the sunshine, even the low orange light of this winter sun, which would soon be setting, away to the west over the invisible Blackpool. She would not have admitted it to Lucy, but it was important to her that the village and her house within it should look at their best today. Agnes knew her daughter well enough to know that she would not have brought any man to Sunday tea with her mother if he was not rather important to her.

  So she was glad that the snowdrops were out in the small front garden which she kept so neat and tidy, the way her dead husband had planted it and would have wanted it kept. It would have been nice to have the crocuses adding a cheerful outburst of colour beside the porch, but snowdrops were all you could really expect in early February. There would be a frost again tonight, but the snowdrops wouldn’t mind that.

  “What time did you say he’d be here?” she asked Lucy for the second time. She wanted the man to see the cottage with the low sun still mellowing its stone frontage.

  “Percy said he couldn’t promise, but he’d make it as near to four o’clock as he could. He was at the station this morning and then he had to go over to Manchester to see one of the university professors who’s helping us.”

  She was hoping to transfer a little vicarious status to her man by the mention of a university associate, but all Agnes said was, “Funny name, Percy. You didn’t meet people called that much, even when I was a lass.”

  “Percy’s not his real name, Mum. It’s just that everyone calls him that.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even me. He seems to like it. Perhaps it’s the alliteration. Percy Peach drops off the tongue quite nicely.”

  Agnes thought, I bet she thinks I don’t know what alliteration is, but I do. She’s nervous. Well, it’s understandable. When I brought my Bill home to the house all those years ago, I was nervous. Everyone knew you were courting, when you did that. No one seemed to speak of courting, nowadays. Probably because they dropped into bed so casually with each other, these youngsters. She didn’t think Lucy did that, but you didn’t really know what went on, when they got their own places and left home. “What’s his real name, then?” she said.

  “Do you know, Mum, I can’t really remember? His initials are D. C. S. I’ve seen them on official forms often enough, but I’ve quite forgotten what they stand for. Everyone just calls him Percy, from the superintendent in charge of CID to the newest detective constable.”

  Agnes sniffed. Those initials seemed vaguely familiar to her, but it couldn’t have anything to do with this man. “It’s a rum do, when even his girlfriend doesn’t know his proper name. And he’s got a moustache, you told me. Bit like Clark Gable, would you say?”

  Lucy giggled nervously. Mum expected everyone’s ideal lover to walk straight out of Gone With the Wind. She thought of saying she was no Vivien Leigh, but that would only provoke a stout-hearted mother’s defence of the superiority of her fair skin and chestnut hair. And she wasn’t going to tell her that Percy was more like a small version of the fat one in Laurel and Hardy.

  She went into the front room and put a little more coal on the fire which blazed cheerfully in the low brick grate, moving the brass fire-irons so that they caught the reflection of the flames. Glancing to the gate and the lane beyond, she saw no sign of Percy. For the first time in years, she began to study the two landscape paintings which had been on the parlour wall for as long as she could remember, becoming as much a part of the setting as the wallpaper or the curtains.

  And then, at last, he was there, opening the gate, scarcely ten minutes after the time he had said, and her mother was snatching off her pinafore and raising her hand to her hair as she took a last look in the hall mirror. Two experienced women, whose agitation about this moment had been building for at least an hour, thought Lucy. What a ridiculous business life was.

  If Percy Peach was nervous, he certainly did not show it. He marched confidently up the twenty yards of garden path with that bouncing, aggressive walk which was something of a trademark. “You must be Lucy’s mother,” he said on the doorstep. He took her hand in both of his and shook it firmly. “I’d have known that, even in a crowd.”

  And then he bestowed upon her what he considered the friendliest and least threatening of his hundred smiles.

  He refused a welcoming cup of tea, sniffed appreciatively at the baking he could smell, and seated himself in an armchair by the fire in the parlour. “What a charming room!” he said. Something in Lucy’s face beside her mother warned him not to lay things on too thickly. “Charming” was not a Percy Peach wo
rd, and Lucy had recognised that as well as he. He was glad when they left him to go and make the final preparations for tea.

  Lucy peered at him through a crack in the door. Percy was sitting bolt upright with his eyes shut, wondering what he should say when her mother reappeared. Like many policemen, who are used to coming straight to the point with an erring public, Percy had no small talk, and little use for it in others. It was his large talk Lucy feared; like that of Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, it might get him into trouble in delicate social situations. Of which this was certainly one.

  Things were not much better when she went into the kitchen. “He’s not tall enough for a policeman,” whispered Agnes Blake, as if he might after all be an impostor who must be exposed.

  “They’ve relaxed the height regulations nowadays,” her daughter whispered back. “He’s five feet nine — he looks shorter because he’s got broad shoulders. He’s a detective inspector.” As if that made a difference. As if your height could decrease as you went up the ranks, until the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police might be a midget.

  Agnes took a tray of scones out of the oven, slid a knife under each to deposit them on the wire grid to cool. This man looked too old to be courting, and to mothers their daughters are always teenagers. “Are you sure he’s only thirty-six?” she whispered.

  “Of course I am! What do you want him to do, put his birth certificate on the table beside his plate? He looks older because he’s bald, that’s all. I can assure you, everything is in good condition!” It was difficult being indignant in a whisper. Ridiculous was more the word.

  Agnes glanced sharply sideways at her daughter. “There’s no need for smut, our Lucy! Does he eat tongue?”