the Blooding (1989)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Journalists loved that one. They wrote articles suggesting that some of the huge disputes on Dallas and Dynasty could easily be resolved by genetic fingerprinting. It was said that Dr. Alec Jeffreys had done a disservice to crime writers the world over, whose stories often center around doubtful identity and uncertain parentage.

  Later in 1985 Jeffreys published again, after another system was developed in California, called the polymerase chain reaction. The California technology was even more sensitive than Jeffreys's system, which could get down only to a single hair root. But the California system, which had actually produced a genetic fingerprint from forty sperm heads, didn't have as high a level of individual discrimination. For forensic analysis, the Jeffreys system needed larger amounts of quality genetic material, but its end product was highly discriminatory. The California system could work on more degraded genetic material and so had its own place in forensic science. The bases of the two systems were very different, but they complemented each other.

  Jeffreys wasn't afraid to test his system in a high-profile forensics matter, but the attention he was receiving in 1985 was basically confined to the scientific community. He got a professorship from Leicester University as a result of his discovery, was awarded a string of medals and prizes, and was admitted as a fellow of the Royal Society.

  When the Home Office publicly accepted evidence provided by Jeffreys as convincing enough to use in deciding immigration cases, Alec Jeffreys was quoted as saying, "This makes me very hopeful that it will become a recognized method."

  His comments were printed in the Leicester Mercury, two years after the murder of Lynda Mann. The last paragraph in the Jeffreys article said, "The new technique could mean a breakthrough in many areas, including the identification of criminals from a small sample of blood at the scene of the crime."

  A month prior to that second anniversary of murder, while Alec Jeffreys was preparing a second paper for publication in a scientific journal, a sixteen-year-old trainee hairdresser said good night to her teenage boyfriend late one evening on a street corner in Wigston, a few miles east of Narborough. The boyfriend kissed her and ambled off, disappearing around a corner. The hairdresser turned toward home, walking down Blaby Road.

  She looked fourteen or fifteen to me. A pretty little brunet I was having a wander. Just driving down Carlton Drive when the opportunity presented itself. I followed behind her, but Blaby is a main mad. Don't touch her on a main roadl Mustn't touch her on a main road!

  The hairdresser walked into Kirkdale Road and then turned right toward the footbridge over the railway, toward Kenilworth Road. There was no lighting and she moved more quickly through the darkness on the footbridge.

  It had to be right The car had to be parked in a line with the girl between me and the car. That's the way it had to be. I parked the car in an alley at the back of some shops.

  Coming off the bridge the hairdresser saw something that made her break stride. She saw a shadow figure pacing up and down on the right side of the pavement. It seemed a bit peculiar. The shadow figure seemed to be waiting impatiently. When she got close to him she saw he was wearing a dark-blue nylon hooded jacket with white tassels. She was glad there were houses just ahead. The hairdresser ignored him and tried to walk past.

  His arm shot out and hooked around her neck! She started to scream. She felt the blade of a screwdriver against the left side of her neck. A powerful hand seized her mouth. He whispered, "Shut up screaming or I'll kill you."

  The blade gouged, the hand smothered. Like rabbit and fox, she was jerked, shaken, dragged along the pavement--dragged backward between the houses, back toward a row of garages. When they reached the opening he carried her inside, and pushed her forward in the darkness until her face pressed against the damp brick wall.

  He released her mouth tentatively and said softly, "It'll be all over in a bit."

  "Why me?" she pleaded. "Why me?"

  "You're the only girl around, aren't you?" he said reasonably. "They'll all be coming out of the pubs soon," she sobbed. "There'll be more coming along! Why me?"

  He began moving his free hand all over her. He fingered the zip on her trousers. She whimpered and pushed his hand away.

  "You do it then," he whispered. "You do it."

  She instinctively pulled back but stumbled in the darkness. She found herself sitting on the concrete floor, weeping.

  "Take my money!" she cried. "Take anything but leave me alone! I promise I won't tell anybody!"

  "Well," he said, dispassionately, "you'll have to suck it now, won't you?"

  She started to get up but he shoved her down, letting her feel the blade while he unzipped.

  She didn't really believe he was going to do it. It all seemed so impossible she refused to believe it. He stood over her. He shoved it in her mouth. It was flaccid. He withdrew and masturbated.

  She never shouted She never screamed. I took her to the floor very gently. I told her she was stupid to be walking home alone at that time of night. And what was her boyfriend letting her walk around at that time for? And where the bleedin hell were her parents? And why didn't they come to fetch her? They're nowt but silly twats, I told her.

  He put it back in her mouth. She didn't move. She wanted to clench her teeth but was too frightened.

  "Let this be a lesson," I told her. "You never walk the streets at night. You might not be enjoying this but I ain't hurting you. I could've knocked you of dead easy."

  Suddenly he withdrew from her mouth. He turned away for a second. She didn't know if he ejaculated. If he did, it was when he turned away, or perhaps he didn't at all.

  She knew what I said was right. She agreed with it I came, but I can't remember where I did it. She pulled away from me.

  He said, "Don't say anything to anybody or I'll come back and find you."

  The hairdresser sat there sobbing after he'd gone. She believed he might be there waiting to test her, waiting in the darkness. She managed to stand and move. She crept from the garage. He was gone.

  Her parents were already upset that she'd been seeing the boyfriend and staying out late, so she didn't tell them what had happened. But while at work in Leicester the next day she had to tell someone. After blurting it out to another hairdresser, she felt better. She also told the manager of the salon, and the manager called the police.

  There were some pathetic local headlines in 1985. The Mercury ran a story with a headline that read:

  MURDER STARTED ROAD INTO DEBT

  Edward Eastwood got into debt because he was unable to work after his stepdaughter, Lynda Mann, was murdered, Leicester magistrates were told.

  Eastwood (43) of The Coppice, Narborough, admitted five offences of obtaining credit while an undischarged bankrupt. He was remanded on bail until August 5 for social inquiry report.

  After the first bankruptcy he obtained credit from five different companies without disclosing he was bankrupt, but he had made repayment on all the loans. Solicitor Mr. Walter Berry said Eastwood got into debt because of the very traumatic situation which affected the whole family after the murder in November 1983.

  A doctor's letter, which he handed to the magistrates, told a 'terrible tale of woe,' he said.

  Before the murder, Eastwood was working as a quality control manager and was putting in 90 hours a week to pay off his loan debts. But afterwards, the court was told, he was unable to work and lost the job.

  A month later a story headline said:

  MURDER TRAUMA LED TO OFFENCES

  The stepfather of murdered teenager Lynda Mann was ordered to do 150 hours' community service by Leicester magistrates after he pleaded guilty to five offences of obtaining credit while being an undischarged bankrupt.

  Prosecuting, Mr. John Davis said Eastwood had obtained credit to buy a greenhouse and furniture, have car repairs done, as well as obtaining a loan to pay off debts, and he was subsequently declared bankrupt again.

  Magistrates read probation reports and ordered him to p
erform 150 hours' service to the community during the next 12 months.

  As to his misfortune, Eddie Eastwood said, "English law and the people who administer it have no finesse. No respect for people like me."

  It may well be that the travails of Eddie Eastwood would have taken place regardless of the events on The Black Pad, but there are subtle changes that take place among survivors, as all families of murder victims know. Murder, particularly the murder of children, often produces a complicated, even insidious emotional aftermath.

  On the second anniversary of Lynda Mann's death, an unknown person once again placed a small cross there in the wooded copse beside The Black Pad.

  Chapter 11.

  The Kitchen Porter

  Like the neighboring village of Narborough, Enderby has an old stone church that's outlasted everything else, the parish church of St. John Baptist. One of two churches in Enderby, it's just across the road from a Church of England school, long since closed down. Like the one in Narborough, the little churchyard of St. John Baptist is full of old headstones, but in modern times the vicars needed more burial ground and so a cemetery was consecrated behind the church.

  The seven Enderby pubs, a lot for a village this size, served the needs of hundreds of quarry workers when quarrying was the area's main industry. Many granite walls in Enderby were cut from those quarries and still exist in the old part of the village.

  Rows of terraced brick homes, formerly belonging to quarry workers, stand as good examples of substantial no-frills Victorian housing. As many as twenty-five are sometimes blocked together in a row, differing only in the color of paint on doors, rain gutters and window casings.

  With seven boozers in the village, the young people have their own. Inside theirs, the decibel level from recorded music, teenage guzzlers and fruit machine gamblers could terminate pregnancy.

  But a short walk toward the old part of the village, where the roofs are slate instead of tile, leads to quiet cozy pubs with decent kitchens for a bit of beer-soaked steak or "boozy beef." The New Inn still has a thatched roof, and The Dog and Gun was established in 1650. The pavement in that part of the village is three feet wide, and the two-inch "curbs" hardly qualify.

  It seems certain that Enderby will change from a village to a town long before Narborough does. It isn't that the village has so many more people than the combined total of Narborough and Littlethorpe, but that the residents aren't as steadfast in retaining the character of a village, having allowed more shops and businesses. And it isn't just that Enderby has more of the quarriers' terraced homes and fewer Georgian houses and Tudor cottages. It has to do with attitudes.

  The police say that the young people in Enderby are more "anti" toward the cops, whereas the youngsters in Narborough are more "pro"-- friendlier Narborough being more middle class. Yet some newcomers to the villages say that the adults in Enderby are more welcoming, being more working class then their neighbors in Narborough.

  The residential streets and lanes of both villages are a mixture of architecture and economic circumstance. The teenagers of both villages attend school at Lutterworth, a town with many lovely Georgian buildings, some six miles away.

  For their part the police deal with class distinctions by defining homes on their burglary computer as "council, private, or very high class" for the upmarket and crusty.

  It was difficult to say to which village he belonged, living there by the Foxhunter Roundabout. His mailing address was Narborough, but Enderby was just as accessible to a highly mobile teenager. During the spring of 1986 the boy was no longer riding about village streets on his bicycle with the cowhorn handlebars. He was seventeen years old by then and had gotten his first motorbike.

  He was six feet tall, built large in the hips and thighs. He still never bothered to comb his scruffy hair, and didn't change his jeans very often. His clothing was spotted with grease and oil even more than before, and his fingers were encrusted with grime now that he was tinkering with engines. With physical maturity his brow was a bit more overhung, but he'd probably long have the boneless expression of a child. For sure, he smiled a child's smile, a secret smile, like a giggle suppressed. He was still known as a quiet-spoken loner.

  But one of the villagers, the local locksmith, saw with his own eyes that the "nuisance" hadn't outgrown his bothersome ways. The locksmith was browsing with his small daughter in the video shop a few doors from his home. The tiny shop did double duty, for it also served as the Narborough Taxi Company. A young woman handled the videos for hire and dispatched taxis.

  The locksmith noticed the boy enter the shop and go over to the video collection. A teenage girl happened to bend over to pick out a cassette, and the boy moved behind her, running his hand up between her legs.

  Everyone in the shop was shocked except the boy. He just showed his secret little smile as if to say, "Anything wrong?"

  The locksmith, formerly a British Army judo instructor, strode up to the boy and said, "I'll bang your head in if I ever see you do that again!" He didn't respond. He looked at the man and smiled.

  "He just stared," the locksmith later said. "As though he didn't quite understand. I would never let my daughter anywhere near that lad."

  Despite his love for motorbikes, despite being nearly full grown, the seventeen-year-old seemed to prefer the company of young children. There was a family of six living just down Narborough Road, a family he liked to visit after school. The oldest boy was two years younger than he. The youngest girl was nine years of age. Though he ran errands for her parents and sometimes gave her rides she didn't like him very much.

  According to the child, "He looked and smelled like a fish, so I called him Fishface."

  One afternoon she was playing outside when he arrived on his motorbike to visit her older brother. She had a hairbrush in her hand and after they did some name calling back and forth she walked up and smacked his motorbike with the brush. He took the brush away and shoved the bristles against her nose.

  "Who's a fishface?" he taunted, then slapped her across the face. She ran and told her father, who ordered the boy to go home and warned him never again to put his hands on the children.

  But the following Saturday, he returned. The little girl called him Fishface once again and he chased her down on foot and tackled her. She bit him.

  When she talked about it later, she said, "He pulled me knickers down and put his finger in me money box. It hurt! He were wearing black motorbike gloves."

  A fourteen-year-old girl, who'd seen him pursuing the child, tracked them and found him with his hands inside the child's pants.

  "Get off her or I'll kill you!" she said, picking up a stick and striking at him.

  The boy called them both a few names, including "slag," ran back to his motorbike and sped for home.

  Six days later he came back when the little girl's parents weren't home. This time he entered the house and said he was going to wait for her older brother to return. The little girl's eight-year-old brother was there, and both children told him to get out. The nine-year-old girl again called him Fishface.

  He hit the brother who ran upstairs crying. When he was alone with the little girl she punched him, and dashing through the house to get away, she fell and bumped her head. While she was lying on the floor crying, he knelt down and pulled at her underpants.

  "He poked and hurt me inside me privates again," she later said.

  The seventeen-year-old had stripped her underpants down to her knees when the family dog growled and leaped on his back. With one child crying upstairs, one screaming downstairs, an Alsatian snarling and barking, he retreated to his motorbike.

  The nine-year-old girl was afraid to tell her mother about the incident, but described it to her thirteen-year-old sister. The sister wanted to inform their parents, but the younger child cried and made her sister promise not to tell.

  Then one afternoon in May of 1986, the child was down the road with a teenage girl who fancied another motorcyclist. The thre
e of them were off on a side road in a secluded spot near a housing estate. The older girl and the other cyclist were sitting on a motorbike kissing when Fishface drove up on his motorbike.

  When the seventeen-year-old offered to trade the little girl a bite of his chocolate flake for a kiss, she hopped on his bike and kissed him. After all, sometimes he was nice to her. He'd even given her a necklace for her ninth birthday. But then he began fondling her. He stopped when she began shouting for the others to make him get his hand out of her pants.

  It appeared that he was still having a lot of dangerous problems with them, the ones he called slags, dogs, whores, and bitches. No matter how young they were, they just didn't like him.

  "He's not very bright," his mother later said of him. "He's a bit down in his age group, education-wise. But he's all right."

  He was not all right. But he was employed. He'd gotten a job at Carlton Hayes Hospital as kitchen porter, and they referred to him more grandly as "catering assistant."

  It seemed to amuse him. When asked about his job, he'd show his secret little smile and say, "I'm a kitchen porter. I hand out food in a lunatic asylum. I work in a loony bin!"

  Before the end of the school term in 1986, the police issued a new appeal through the Mercury for village residents to come forward with clues in their relentless hunt for the murderer of Lynda Mann.

  The article said:

  Even though it was such a long time ago, police still hope that someone, casting their mind back to that Monday night, can come up with the killer.

  And once again, a police spokesman reiterated the unswerving opinion:

  Police are convinced she had a pre-arranged engagement with someone on the night of her death, and that she was the girl spotted with a man at the bus stop in Forest Road, Narborough, between 8:05 P. M. and 8:30 P. M. on the night of the murder.