Last Rites

by Neil White

  ‘Because we know who did this,’ Joe said. ‘And he harmed more people than Rebecca Nurse.’

  I looked at the papers again and licked my lips nervously. ‘So what have you got there?’

  ‘Murders, rapes, attacks, attempted rapes,’ he answered.

  ‘But he hasn't been caught, has he?’ I said.

  Joe shook his head. ‘No, he hasn't.’

  ‘So how can you be sure?’ I asked.

  Joe shrugged. ‘Just intuition,’ he said, and then scattered more photographs across the desk. As I leaned forward, I saw that they were of different women. Two of them. But the images were similar: young women, slim, light-coloured hair, their hands tied behind their backs, rope around their necks, their clothes dishevelled. Just like Rebecca.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked.

  As Laura rummaged through them, Joe picked up two of the photographs. ‘These two women were killed within a year of each other, not long before April Mather jumped from Blacko Tower.’

  ‘Any connection with the Family Coven?’ I asked, looking at the dead women.

  ‘Only that their killer also murdered Rebecca Nurse,’ he said. Joe floated one of the pictures back to the desk. ‘The first was from Blackpool, a runner, and her jog took her along the sea-front and all the way to Lytham, when she would turn back at the sand dunes. One day, she never made it back. She was killed and dumped in the dunes, and she died like Rebecca, with a cord around her wrists and up and around her neck. The other girl, Beth Howe, was a student at the university in Preston. One night, she didn't take the student safety bus home, set off walking to her boyfriend's flat, but she never arrived. She was found by the side of the A6, just on the other side of the motorway, killed in the same way, with a cord around her wrists and up and around her neck. Just like Rebecca.’

  ‘You said you know who killed these women,’ said Laura.

  ‘Mack Lowther,’ Joe replied, and he grimaced. ‘A real nasty bastard. He went for school kids mainly, enticing them in with fags and booze, which then turned into sex. When he was younger, it seemed more like a party and so a lot of girls went along with him, but he took drugs, and so his teeth went, and his complexion went, and by the time he was thirty he looked twice his age. The school kids kept going round for the fags and booze though, but he wasn't getting what he expected. He would get nasty, hurt them, tell them that he would tell their parents if they didn't do what he asked. Until one of them didn't care what her parents thought, and so the police got involved. When Beth Howe was killed, he was living in a bail hostel, waiting for his trial for forcing an underage girl to do things to him that she didn't want to do. The problem is that all the hostel can do is provide a bed and a no-booze rule, and so Mack Lowther spent his time just wandering around. Not long before his trial, Beth Howe was found dead.’

  ‘And so Mack Lowther was the suspect?’ I said, guessing the answer.

  ‘Number one,’ Joe confirmed. ‘The hostel wasn't far from where she had been last seen, and he couldn't account for his movements. And he liked the rough stuff. Ligatures, anal, that kind of stuff. It was all about pain and humiliation, not about the sex.’

  ‘Why wasn't he convicted of Beth's murder?’ Laura asked.

  ‘No direct evidence,’ Joe said, with a sigh. ‘No DNA. No fibre transfer. Beth Howe came up blank, forensically We knew he had done it, just from the sneer on his face, but we couldn't prove it. He did twelve months for the sexual assault on the young girl, and was then back on the streets. Not long after that, Rebecca Nurse was killed. Once more, he didn't have an alibi.’

  ‘So what was the problem?’ I asked. ‘Why wasn't Mack Lowther caught for Rebecca Nurse's murder?’

  ‘Once again, a clean forensic sweep, but whatever chance we had was taken away when fate intervened,’ said Joe.

  ‘Fate?’ I asked.

  ‘In the shape of a hammer, or something similar,’ Joe replied. ‘He was beaten to death in his crappy little flat; neighbourhood revenge was our guess. And do you know what: no one saw anything.’

  I ran my fingers through my hair, feeling deflated now. ‘So we've got a suicide, and a murder by some local pervert.’

  Joe nodded. ‘That leaves two murders connected to the coven – Mary, who was found by the river, and Susannah, found burned – plus two missing persons. And add in this: maybe witchcraft attracts the misfits, the unconventional. Perhaps it takes less to make them run away. Don't forget April Mather's suicide. Maybe some things are just how they seem, some unhappy tales and a coincidence.’

  I exhaled loudly, feeling frustrated. Things didn't feel right, and I still had the feeling that Sarah was in danger.

  ‘And what if you are wrong about Mack Lowther?’ I said. ‘What if he didn't kill Rebecca Nurse?’

  ‘We know that whoever killed Rebecca killed the two women before her; we know that from the way she died, the knots used, the profile of the killer. And the profile is often the best indicator.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It tells us that the person who killed Rebecca and the other two before her was a white man from Preston, just like Mack Lowther,’ Joe replied.

  I looked back at him, surprised. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘The white-man part is easy,’ he replied. ‘All serial killers are white, and all violent serial killers are men.’ He noticed my expression and added, ‘Female serial killers murder in a different way. You know, the nurses who kill while on duty. Female serial killers murder passively. Men kill aggressively.’

  ‘And the white part?’ I asked. ‘Is that true?’

  Joe smiled, the twinkle of his eyes telling me that he was enjoying himself. ‘It's a hobby of mine, criminology,’ he said. ‘Always has been. For as long as I've been on the murder squad, I've kept up to date with all the latest studies and theories. Police work is about playing the percentages, going after the most probable. Understanding how criminals think helps to narrow the odds, and from what I've read, serial killers are invariably white.’

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Laura.

  ‘No one knows,’ said Joe, ‘or else, no one dares say it. But in each case, you have to look at the victim for the biggest clue, and each victim was white.’ He pointed at the box of papers. ‘They were each found some distance from where they were last seen, so a vehicle was involved, and there seems to be some planning, some watching and waiting.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  ‘Because there are no reports in any of these cases of people being abducted in public, no struggles into waiting cars, no muggings in the street. Whoever did these murders would have been driving around, patrolling the streets, maybe watching his victims, waiting for the right time to strike. And how would you describe the ethnic make-up of Lancashire?’

  I thought about the faces I saw, the new influx of Poles and Iraqis, the working-class white boys, Pakistani Muslims.

  ‘Diverse,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Joe. ‘And what about where they live?’

  I smiled, seeing what he meant. The whites and Asians lived separately, in cluster communities, rubbing shoulders but not shaking hands.

  ‘Apart,’ I said.

  Joe smiled back at me. ‘So what chance is there of an Asian or black man being able to patrol white communities, looking for women, without being noticed? No chance, that is the answer. Think of Rebecca Nurse, walking to the pub from her house in Higham. An Asian man patrolling the country lanes around there would be remembered, somebody would have called it in. But for a white man, being white is his disguise – he's inconspicuous, the killer's get-out clause, so he can back out if things don't go as planned.’

  ‘So what makes them, killers like this?’ I asked.

  ‘Serial killers are born, not made,’ Joe replied, ‘but something has to trigger them off. Their upbringings can seem okay on the outside – parents still together, stable families in nice neighbourhoods – but their lives tend to be messed up on the quiet
: family histories of psychiatric disturbance, alcohol and drug abuse, with sexual violence in the home, but we don't always know that. They retreat into fantasy, an escapist world they create, and they play out hostilities in that secret world. But then there is a trigger, something that makes them step out of the fantasy world and start killing in the real world.’

  ‘What, so there might be potential killers around that just haven't been triggered?’

  ‘Think of wartime,’ Joe said, his eyebrows raised, ‘and what ordinary soldiers do. What do you think traumatises veterans most?’

  ‘Seeing comrades killed?’ I guessed.

  Joe shook his head. ‘Wrong. It's the people they killed, the ones they saw die right in front of them, because that's something they did, on their conscience. In the Second World War, a fifth of soldiers aimed to miss, not kill. But then think of how some behave, in the name of revenge or cleansing, killing and raping civilians. Ordinary people do that, not just generals. You see, some people are born to kill, and others aren't.’

  ‘So how do you spot these people?’

  ‘You can spot them young,’ he said, sighing, ‘but you can't do anything about it. Animal cruelty, arson, things like that, they're the danger signs, but a lot of kids do that kind ofthing.’ Then he leaned forward. ‘Sometimes, though,’ he said, his voice hushed, ‘you get a kid, a young teenager, and you can just tell that he's different. When they get in a cell, most kids get angry, or cry, or get scared, maybe even cocky, but sometimes you get one who is cold, who has no emotion, nothing at all, who just sits and stares, and you realise that he did something cruel just to see what it was like.’

  ‘So why don't you keep a database or something like that?’ I asked.

  Joe shook his head. ‘Someone would complain about privacy, that we were pigeon-holing people.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘But even if we had a database, I'm not sure we would catch anyone. Think of the big ones: Harold Shipman, Dennis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe. All caught by chance. Dennis Nilsen wasn't caught by a profile. He was caught because he blocked his drains with human fat. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper? He was caught because he went into bushes with a prostitute, and when the police went back there, they found a hammer. And as for Harold Shipman, well, it was his greed that let him down. He forged a will, and that led to his murders being discovered. Wherever you look in recent times, it isn't the criminal profile that catches the man, but witness testimony, or forensic evidence, or just plain chance.’

  ‘And so what chance do we ever have?’ I asked.

  ‘None,’ Joe said simply. ‘If we had a database, the list would be too long. Not all young psychopaths go on to be killers. A lot of people have the capacity, but something has to trigger it.’

  ‘But Mack Lowther is dead,’ I said, ‘and the murders are still going on. Is it possible that coven members have been killed by the man who killed Rebecca Nurse and the others, and that he is still attacking people today, including Sarah?’

  Joe looked at me, and then back at the box. ‘I don't think so. The earlier murders were sexual murders. Raped and strangled, the bodies left. Mary and Susannah were kept for a few days, and ropes weren't used. It was more prolonged, more sadistic.’

  ‘Maybe he changed his methods,’ said Laura.

  I could almost see Joe's mind working as he thought about the contents of the box and then of what he knew about Sarah's case. He shrugged and said, ‘It's feasible, I suppose. White victim, with preparation, just like the others. If you are saying that Sarah was abducted, then the snatch took place at just the time that her lodger was away for the weekend. That must be more than mere chance. It suggests that he had been watching her, or perhaps even knew her.’

  ‘It wasn't a very good plan,’ said Laura, teasing her hair as she thought about what Joe had said. ‘What about Luke? If you plan to take someone against their will, you don't take them when they have a fit and trained gym instructor in attendance.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn't always get it right,’ Joe replied. ‘Perhaps he didn't see Luke arrive. He wasn't in his car that night. Did Luke arrive at the back door?’

  I thought about that, but then I remembered something else Joe had said.

  ‘You said that whoever killed these women was a white man,’ I said, ‘but you also said he was from Preston. How can you know that?’

  ‘The preparation time makes it likely, as he has to have the time to devote to research, and so he has to be able to get to each location quickly,’ Joe replied, ‘and Preston is in the middle of them.’ And then he smiled. ‘And of course, there is the circle theory.’ When I looked quizzically at him, Joe explained, ‘Put yourself into the mind of an attacker, or a killer, or a rapist. If you wanted to do the crime and get away without being identified, where would you do it?’

  I scratched my chin and thought for a moment. ‘As far away from my own home as possible, I suppose.’

  ‘That's right,’ Joe agreed, ‘but what if you wanted to do it again? Would you return to the same place?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Right again,’ he said. ‘It would be in people's minds. They would be on their guard. But you still wouldn't do it near your own home, would you?’

  I shook my head again. ‘No, I'd go as far away again, but in the opposite direction.’

  ‘To throw the police into confusion?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, there you have it,’ Joe said, with a note of triumph. ‘You've just created the diameter of the circle. Your instinct was to spread the attacks apart, but as far from your own home as possible. Think how that would look if there were a few attacks, how they would look on a large map. They would form the circumference of the circle, and your home would sit right there, in the middle, as far away as possible from each attack. The first victim was dumped to the west of Preston, the second to the north. Rebecca was found east of Preston. Right in the middle of that was Mack Lowther's home town: Preston.’

  I sat back with a smile. I was impressed. A killer drawing a big arrow to his own home, created by a desire to do exactly the opposite.

  But then something occurred to me, and I thought about Lancashire for a moment, a county clustered around the west coast, with the jaded resorts of Blackpool and Morecambe, and further inland the larger cities of Preston and Lancaster. East of all of that, the clutter became countryside, as the concrete turned into the hills of the Ribble Valley and the ruggedness of the moors further south. Running through those scenes was the cotton belt, the ribbon of cotton towns that hugged the Leeds-Liverpool canal until it disappeared into the Pennine Hills and Yorkshire.

  ‘But if you add the coven deaths into the equation,’ I said, ‘doesn't the centre of the circle change? Susannah Martin was found in a copse just outside of Skipton, much further east.’

  ‘Making it somewhere not far from Pendle Hill?’ Joe queried. But before I could say anything, he added, ‘You're trying to make the facts fit the conclusion. That's the wrong way round.’

  ‘But the same sort of people are victims,’ I countered. ‘Pretty young women, and most of the coven members don't fit that description.’

  ‘Most victims are pretty young women,’ Joe said, and then he raised his hand. ‘Okay, I'll go with this imaginary scenario. He didn't start off targeting coven members. He went after young women, mostly fair-haired and pretty. If he is killing coven members, he is following the same pattern of victim, but just restricting his choice even more. But none of the rest fits, and why would he suddenly move on to members of a witches' coven? None of the other coven members died like Rebecca.’

  ‘Two are missing persons, and so we don't know how they died,’ I said.

  ‘Or even if they're dead,’ Joe responded.

  I breathed out noisily. ‘This is heavy stuff.’

  ‘No, it's not,’ said Joe. ‘It's imaginary. Maybe you're planning one of those press conspiracies, knitting possibles into probables, but I still don't think Sarah has anything to do with Rebecca
Nurse, or the women killed before her – and if this is nothing to do with Rebecca, then you haven't got many coincidences.’

  ‘I hope you're right,’ I said, ‘because it's Halloween, Samhain, whatever you want to call it, and if there is a connection, tonight is the night Sarah will die.’

  ‘I know that,’ Joe replied, his face grim, ‘but we have no evidence.’ He sighed. ‘I'll put out a general alert for unusual activity tonight, but the whole county will be filled with masks and lanterns.’

  Then I thought of something else.

  ‘I've been followed,’ I said.

  Laura looked shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that. Someone in a tatty white van, small, an Astra. I started to notice it, and I've been seeing it more and more.’

  ‘Why do you think it has anything to do with this case?’ she pressed.

  ‘Because I've been at Sarah's house a few times, and around Pendle, asking questions. That's when I noticed it, when I was in Newchurch.’

  Joe nodded and made a note on a scrap of paper, putting it into his pocket. ‘Okay, we'll look into that. If we get some news, you'll be the first to know.’ Then he smiled at me and gestured towards Laura. ‘The afternoon is nearly over. Take Laura up Pendle Hill. That's what most local people do on Halloween. If you're right, it's about to get really busy around here.’

  I remembered the tradition from my own childhood, the torch-lit procession up the hill, excited children in masks and costumes, the hillside filled with lights, like lines of fireflies.

  Then I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I looked at the screen. A text, from Katie. ‘Call me please. Urgent.’

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  When I pulled up outside Sarah's house, Katie came rushing out to meet me. She wrapped her arms around me, tears running down her face.

  ‘Jack! I'm scared.’

  I pulled away from her. ‘What's wrong?’

  She reached into her pocket and produced an envelope.

  ‘Another letter?’ I asked, surprised.

  Katie nodded and wiped her eyes.