[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard

by J M Gregson

  “I can’t call the whole team in,” he said awkwardly, as they arranged their chairs in his office, “because they’re far too busy checking and rechecking people who might have had the opportunity to kill Sally Cartwright last Friday night. But I thought it might help us if we exchanged a few thoughts about the Leopard. Before he kills a fifth woman,” he concluded bitterly.

  It’s as if the killer’s campaign was a personal war against him, thought Lucy Blake. She said supportively, “I think we’d all find that useful.”

  DC Tony Pickard tried not to sound sycophantic as he said earnestly, “I’d certainly welcome it. We all seem to be working our socks off, but going round in circles.”

  Brendan Murphy nodded his fresh face and his head of rather unruly brown hair. “Tony and I haven’t been DCs for that long. It’s our first involvement in this kind of case.”

  “It’s the first involvement for all of us with anyone like this bloody Leopard!” said Peach, with a touch of his normal acerbity. “That’s one of our problems. Even the splendid leadership we’re getting from Wanker Willy upstairs isn’t much help with a serial killer who seems to be playing games with us.”

  DS Blake said, “Are you able to tell us anything useful about your meeting with the forensic psychologist yesterday, or does that remain confidential?”

  Peach smiled. “I’ll summarise exactly what he felt — what we felt, for the most part, when we’d discussed the facts. The Leopard works and probably lives in Brunton. He researches his murders carefully and almost certainly enjoys the planning. He is a loner, but not a dropout or one of our unemployed; he may not even have a criminal record. He may well be a professional person: a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, even a policeman.”

  Pickard grinned. “Does Dr Wishart expect us to entertain that as a serious proposition?”

  Peach did not smile. “It’s a possibility, based on the facts available to him. I haven’t ruled it out myself. This man seems to be familiar with our procedures and to have some knowledge of forensics. He’s left less of himself behind than any killer I’ve encountered, and he’s done that four times. That isn’t by accident. Of course, anyone with an interest in crime could have acquired all the knowledge he’s using by simple research. Maybe because of my own prejudices, I think it’s highly unlikely the Leopard is a policeman. But I haven’t ruled it out.”

  DC Murphy said, “Perhaps we should check the activities of the men who’ve been chucked out of the police in the last few years.”

  “That’s already being done. Not just those we’ve got rid of, but those with a Brunton background who’ve left the force of their own free will over the last five years.” Peach sighed: another list; another set of men to be traced and interviewed. But this list would overlap with others, and some of the men would already have been seen on other grounds. Sometimes the overlaps themselves could be significant, making the man a suspect on several counts.

  Pickard said, “That’s an excellent idea. Someone who’s left the service, for whatever reason, might well have a grudge against the police and enjoy making fools of us.”

  “That’s probably one part of the Leopard’s motivation. But a minor part. You don’t kill four women just to make the police look silly. Usually sex, often in some perverted form, is the driving force for serial killers of women. But this man hasn’t raped or even assaulted any of his victims. It seems to be the exercise of power over life and death which is the fascination for him.”

  Lucy Blake said, “The analysis of a diseased mind isn’t really our province, is it? We need something more tangible.”

  “Which he isn’t giving us. At least I came away from Hamish Wishart feeling rather clearer about the kind of man we were looking for. But I agree we’re going to need something more definite before we can find our killer. Which has got to be soon: Wishart thinks the more he gets away with, the more frequently he’s going to kill, and I agree with that.”

  Tony Pickard said, “He seems to be extraordinarily lucky in isolating his victims in lonely places. We’re told that last Friday’s victim even managed to scream without attracting attention to her killer. And isn’t there a report that he was seen after he’d killed the woman?”

  “Yes. We think he was seen last Friday, after he’d killed Sally Cartwright. But only across the road in the darkness, by a man walking his dog. He didn’t even think of the Leopard. If it was our man who passed him, he was perfectly in control of himself: he even called a goodnight through the darkness. Then he presumably collected his vehicle and made his escape.”

  Murphy said, “Do you think it may be one of the people we’ve already interviewed? All the ones we’ve really fancied for the crimes have been Brunton-based.”

  Peach sighed. “That’s one of the reasons why I’ve brought you in here: I want your views. I need hardly remind you how many times Peter Sutcliffe had been interviewed and discarded before someone eventually realised he was the Yorkshire Ripper. I want this bastard before he gets beyond four victims.”

  Lucy Blake said with a bleak smile, “Tony and I put a lot of time in on Terry Plant. At least we can eliminate him, since he was in custody at the time.”

  “As I had occasion to remind Tommy Bloody Tucker this morning.” Peach allowed himself a brief smile at the recollection of his exit line and Tucker’s astonished face. He turned to Brendan Murphy. “You interviewed the black boy with me. What’s the score there?”

  “Clyde Northcott? What he said about the cocaine rocks held up. He was a user only, not a supplier. The drugs squad arrested his dealer behind the Ugly Heifer pub last Tuesday night. But Northcott’s not been cleared for the first three murders yet. And he has no alibi for last Friday night. Not after ten o’clock, when he left some of his biking mates — even they think he’s a bit of a loner, by the way. He could have got over to Bolton on that fast bike of his with time to spare.”

  Peach nodded. Another visit. Another attempt to put the frighteners on a man who in all probability had nothing to hide, who would probably think he was being victimised because of his colour. But as long as that phrase “in all probability” remained attached to him, he would need to be checked. He said, “One of the question marks against Clyde Northcott is that although I’d say he has no difficulty attracting women, he doesn’t seem interested in them. He has no regular girlfriend, now or in the recent past. Yet that girl who was giving the party, Tracey Wallace, was plainly very taken with him. It was she who corroborated his story about the bust-up at the end of it. Lucy, you haven’t seen this lad yet, and neither has Tony. Pay him a visit, and give us your impressions, please.”

  Pickard was more concerned with another suspect. “The bloke Northcott fought at the party that night, Paul Dutton. The National Front bloke, whom I interviewed with you about the fight. He’s been charged with causing an affray and actual bodily harm. But he’s not in custody, of course, so he could have killed Sally Cartwright. He says he was at an NF meeting last Friday, and drinking afterwards. But there are no witnesses to this, as yet.”

  Peach nodded. Prejudiced or not, he would dearly like their man to be the insufferable Dutton, but things rarely worked out to the satisfaction of policemen like that. “Brendan, he hasn’t seen you before. Take someone out with you. Uniform, if you like — that could scare him more than most young thugs — and give him a grilling. And don’t let him kid you that he’s merely an oaf: he is an oaf, but not merely, and that’s dangerous. He’s cleverer than he likes to let on, in some things. He might well enjoy plotting violence. Wouldn’t you say so, Tony?”

  Pickard nodded, then grinned. “There were times during the course of his interview with DI Peach when I thought he was going to be a victim, though.”

  “So long as he thought that and opened his big mouth, I don’t mind. Who else is near the top of the list?”

  Lucy Blake said, “Michael Devaney. Tony and I went to see him on Thursday. He’d been reported as odd by three different women — not that that means ve
ry much, with the town in its present state of mass hysteria. He’s certainly odd, and a loner. He’s the Community Liaison Officer on the new estate, and he’s in many respects his own boss, with no one directly in his line of work to report to.”

  Pickard said thoughtfully, “Devaney conforms to most of the criteria you’ve just outlined. He’s used to organising his own time; he knows Brunton and the surrounding area well; he seems to enjoy planning, given the job he does; and he’s a loner. I don’t know whether the power over life and death would be an attraction for him, but he must get frustrated by the lack of power in the job he has. Everyone pays lip-service to good community relations, but no one wants to do anything or spend anything on implementing his schemes.”

  Lucy thought of those malleable, unformed, almost childish features, that air of vulnerability that Devaney had carried with him like a garment. She said almost reluctantly, “He has a record of violence against women. Or against one woman. Ten years ago, he hit a twenty-two-year-old woman so hard that she needed eight stitches over her eye.”

  “Was he charged?”

  “No. The woman worked in an office with him. She refused to press charges; it never came to court. She admitted she’d taunted him for months before the incident. She seems to have been the worst of a group of young women who poked fun at him.” Lucy could see those blubbery lips and watery, sensitive eyes. At nineteen, ten years ago, Michael Devaney would have been a pitiable target for the cruel teasing he had described. She said, “For what it’s worth, I believe his story about that incident.”

  Peach looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Two important things from our point of view, though. First, the violence seems to have been unconnected with any sexual assault. Secondly, that sort of treatment might well have left him with a permanent fear of girls, a permanent wish to exercise the sort of control he could only exert in a one-to-one physical struggle.”

  Brendan Murphy, who had never seen Devaney, said thoughtfully, “The ultimate power over life and death. The power to end an individual female life,” echoing the thought that had been put to them a few minutes earlier about what excited the Leopard.

  There was a moment’s reflective silence before Tony Pickard added, “We asked him where he’d been on the night when Hannah Woodgate died. He said he was in bed with a cold he thought was developing into ‘flu. But there’s no record of any time off work, before or after the death. He doesn’t have a permanent girlfriend. Or a boyfriend.”

  Peach looked at the three grave faces before him. “It sounds like a persuasive case. But no more persuasive than half a dozen others. Still, our Community Liaison Officer Michael Devaney will need to be checked as to his whereabouts on Friday night, along with all the others.”

  The old nightmare was before him again: that a man they had already interviewed in connection with the case might have slipped through the net and killed another woman. “It’s in hand,” said Lucy Blake. “Two of the uniformed lads were due to see him at work this morning.”

  The phone on Peach’s desk shrilled, as if in answer to a cue. He listened with a grave face, then put the phone down slowly. He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice as he relayed what might be nothing, or might be a breakthrough. “That was DI Parkinson of the Serious Crime Unit. Your uniformed boys weren’t able to talk to their man. It seems that Michael Devaney has disappeared.”

  *

  The Leopard felt very relaxed on that Monday night. He found that he thought of himself as the Leopard now. That was the real him. When he had started his career as a killer, his secret life had been the smaller part of him. Now that secret part was the real him, and the things he did during the day were a meaningless ritual; a necessary ritual, it is true, but important only as the cover for the real him, the dangerous him, who existed so vitally in the hours of darkness.

  The Lancashire Leopard.

  It was three days now since the fourth killing, and he was sure that he had got away with it as completely as the first three. He had thought that they might pick something up from his brief sighting by that elderly man with the dog, but nothing had come of it. The man couldn’t possibly have seen enough through the night to give any useful description. And he had made the usual mistake that amateurs did and over-estimated his height: he had described the man who passed on the other side of the road as “well over six feet in height”. Thank you so much, punter, for misleading the fuzz.

  It gave him an extra little thrill that this victim had emitted a single sharp scream before she was silenced for ever. That had added to the excitement and fear at the time, and to the exhilaration when he found that he had got away with it. But he wouldn’t be allowing a repeat performance. You wouldn’t always get away with it. And the Leopard was careful, wasn’t he? That was his trademark.

  The press and the media were already gunning for that fool Tucker. And the dissatisfaction was spreading outwards. People in the town were openly saying how inefficient and how stupid the police were: he had heard them yesterday, in the supermarkets and the newspaper shops, when he had patiently been gathering the Sunday papers, never more than two at any one outlet, to read the reactions to his latest escapade. A team of over sixty, with their battery of computers and their vaunted forensic science, all being made to look equally foolish.

  Soon, they would be shown to be even more witless. For he was ready for the latest and boldest of all his killings. It was only three days tonight since the last one. A lesser man than the Leopard would lie low for a time. But the Leopard had no need of such caution. He had been preparing for this death over several weeks now, had been working out the details even while he was rehearsing the Sally Cartwright death in the shadows of that deserted station outside Bolton, waiting to check the times when that silly woman left the pub to walk home.

  He thought best in the darkness. This fifth killing would be the most daring of all his crimes. In his mind’s eye, his plan was complete. There would need to be a degree of improvisation at the time, but that would just stretch him a little further. They hadn’t seen the full extent of his talents yet.

  He didn’t need the television that night. He put out the light and sat in the darkness, revolving his plan over and over again in his head, until the phases clicked like clockwork into position, one after the other. Other, lesser men might have become either anxious or bored with the repetition.

  The Leopard simply became more confident.

  Eighteen

  Tuesday, February 5th

  Michael Devaney was located in a small semi-detached house in Wolverhampton. Why he was there was not clear in the message to Brunton CID from their counterparts in the Midlands. Probably he had not yet been questioned. But he had been arrested and taken to the nick at Wolverhampton: the bird which had flown from Lancashire was not to be allowed a chance to migrate further.

  DI Peach held a terse conversation with a detective sergeant with a thick Black Country accent. It concluded with, “Keep him there. I’ll come and interview him myself.” If this should be the Leopard, Peach wanted it kept as quiet as possible, until he had a confession and the man was locked away securely. If the rumour got out, the press and television boys would besiege Wolverhampton police station. With the money the tabloids were offering for any whisper of the Lancashire Leopard, even policemen could be tempted. Anonymous “spokesmen” from the police service had already milked some handsome sums from the ample coffers of United News and News International in the first years of the new century. And there was no bigger story available than the first news of the arrest of the Leopard.

  Peach deployed his troops for the day, then pointed his car towards the M6 and the Midlands. Three hours alone behind the wheel to wonder whether this might be their man at last; three hours to wonder what else they could do, if Michael Devaney was not the Leopard.

  *

  Whilst Peach sped southwards, Brendan Murphy was preparing to go out and check on Paul Dutton, the man who had assaulted the biker Clyde
Northcott as he tried to leave Tracey Wallace’s party. In Peach’s absence, he sought the advice of DS Blake as to who should accompany him.

  “That’s easy,” said Lucy. “I’ll come with you myself.”

  “I thought you were going out with Tony Pickard to see the black boy?”

  “I am. But not until this afternoon. Tony has a dental appointment: even the Leopard has to wait when a filling is lost.”

  She wondered why young Murphy’s face had fallen at her offer. Perhaps he just didn’t like working with women. She still met that, but less than she had eight years ago when she had joined the police as a callow eighteen-year-old. Perhaps he just didn’t want rank with him, didn’t want his interviewing techniques scrutinised by a detective sergeant, when Peach had said he might take one of the uniform boys with him. Perhaps he would have preferred an admiring, or at any rate largely silent, companion. Tough titty, Brendan!

  Paul Dutton worked in the office of the local brewery. He wore a white shirt and a dark blue tie, like the most conformist of bankers. He had discarded his jacket before they came. As he took them into the small room just off the reception area which he had secured for this meeting, he rolled up the sleeves of his immaculate shirt carefully. On his right forearm this revealed a new tattoo of a Union Jack with the National Front logo above it; on his left forearm a crudely sketched female face leered, possibly Boadicea, more likely Margaret Thatcher.

  Lucy said, “I’m Detective Sergeant Blake, and this is Detective Constable Murphy.”

  Dutton nodded at her, but only so that he could studiously ignore the man at her side, whose Irish name he had registered with a sneer of contempt. He folded his massive arms, trying hard to capture the hard-man image he created in his leisure hours, looking like a bricklayer’s hod-carrier thrust incongruously into executive clothes. “This isn’t convenient, you know. Having the police following me about. If it’s about that fight with the wog, I’ve been charged and I’ve nothing more to say until it comes to court.”