the Blooding (1989)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Pearce found himself reading new messages about the punk with spiky hair as though the three-year interruption hadn't happened. The orange-haired punk was being sighted all over Leicestershire and hadn't aged a day or changed his hairdo. A punk who, for all they knew, could've gone bald.

  A policewoman or other operator would record the new information received by telephone. The messages would go to Pearce who had to spend an enormous number of hours evaluating and deciding what he wanted done. He could give a message a high priority, or put a low code or a medium code on it, or decide it was nothing at all, in which case he'd write, "No further action." The message would then go through the computer system with an action allocator getting the print-out. The action teams might receive a message saying, "Interview subject and eliminate him," or "Trace man seen walking dog in King Edward Avenue at 5 P. M."

  As part of the management team Pearce didn't just assign the actions, but made sure the teams followed up on the high-priority markings and didn't just turn to a message that seemed more intriguing. As he put it, he'd "occasionally grab the stickers at the bottom of the piles to make sure the lads weren't sloughing off something promising."

  In the pile of eighteen hundred messages that Pearce had to allocate was one that pertained to someone whose name had popped up on the Lynda Mann inquiry because he was unalibied and had a prior arrest record for flashing. Of course, hundreds of names had been called in anonymously by wives, lovers, rivals, neighbors, bosses, employees and nutters, many of those names belonging to people with prior indecency arrests. This one wasn't worth special attention, because in the earlier inquiry he'd been shown not to have moved to the village until one month after Lynda Mann's murder.

  The anonymous message said: "You ought to have a look at a man in Littlethorpe named Colin Pitchfork."

  Chapter 19.

  The Blooding

  Blooding

  1. The letting of blood, bleeding; wounding with loss of blood.

  2. The action of giving hounds a first taste of and appetite for blood. The Oxford English Dictionary

  .

  By late December, after many members of the inquiry had voluntarily given up their Christmas holiday to work on old and new leads--and after the Leicester Mercury had printed a special four-page edition containing every salient fact and photo that might help the police, and shoved this edition into every letter box in the three villages --Supt. Tony Painter and all subordinates were required to suspend their disbelief. It was going to be assumed that genetic fingerprinting actually worked.

  The ranking officers held a gaffers' meeting with DI's Derek Pearce and Mick Thomas. The subject was blood. Chief Supt. David Baker said, "We're going to try something that's never been done."

  Baker had sold his superiors on an idea--a campaign of voluntary blood testing for every male resident of the three villages. Anyone who'd been old enough to have murdered Lynda Mann in 1983, young enough to have produced the indications of a strong sperm count found in the Dawn Ashworth semen sample.

  Both inspectors felt that Tony Painter was still convinced of the guilt of the kitchen porter. He'd wanted the Regional Crime Squad to do covert surveillance on the boy after his release from prison, but the police administration would not permit it. They knew that Tony Painter still kept the kitchen porter's file under lock and key.

  But David Baker had apparently begun to believe in science. Alluding to the kitchen porter, he said that day, "He's either a co-conspirator or he's innocent."

  By that they understood that Baker must have been pondering genetic fingerprinting. Regardless of what reservations any of them had over the guilt or innocence of the kitchen porter, or the efficacy of genetic fingerprinting, David Baker had decided that he was going to seek permission to do it, and he did.

  The inspectors privately paraphrased Tony Painter's reaction as something like: All right, we'll blood-test them all and then we'll prove that our lad did kill Dawn Ashworth.

  In a compromise with his second-in-command, Baker never admitted publicly that the kitchen porter was probably innocent. His reasons for blood testing didn't mention Dawn's killer or killers. He kept it intentionally ambiguous so that everyone could save face.

  He simply said to his two DI's, "Find the man who shed the semen."

  The decision was made, and announced the day after New Year's 1987, that the murder inquiry was about to embark on a "revolutionary step" in the hunt for the killer of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. All unalibied male residents in the villages between the ages of seventeen and thirty-four years would be asked to submit blood and saliva samples voluntarily in order to "eliminate them" as suspects in the footpath murders.

  The headline on the 2nd of January announced it:

  BLOOD TESTS FOR 2,000 IN KILLER HUNT

  As several members of the inquiry later said, "We had to have blind faith in genetic fingerprinting."

  The planning period for this revolutionary step had been brief, but the police were publicly assured by the county council, the parish councils, the rector of Narborough and the vicar of Enderby that they would support the scheme. All agreed to urge young men in the villages to come forward, since no one could be compelled to do so. One or two community leaders openly expressed pessimism that the experiment would succeed, but everyone was running out of other ideas.

  The logistical task was far bigger than first anticipated. The age span took in anyone who'd been between the ages of fourteen and thirty-one at the time of the Lynda Mann murder in 1983. Wanted for testing was every unalibied male who'd worked in or had some connection with Narborough, Littlethorpe and Enderby, not merely residents of the three villages. And that included hundreds of patients at the Carlton Hayes psychiatric hospital.

  In the beginning, testing sessions were set up at two locations three nights a week from 7:00 to 9:00 P. M., and one daytime session was scheduled each week from 9:30 to 11:30 A. M. The young men were asked to come at a time specified on a form letter sent to each resident listed on the house-to-house pro formas.

  Very soon they decided to include every male born between January 1, 1953, and December 31, 1970, who "lived, worked, or even had a recreational interest" in the area. A letter was sent to several policemen.

  When the Eastwoods were contacted by journalists at their home in Lincolnshire, Eddie said the family was in favor of the tests. He wished they could force suspects to take the test, "because the person they want is not going to volunteer."

  Of course just about every member of the murder squad believed this as wholeheartedly as did Eddie and Kath Eastwood.

  As Derek Pearce later said, "We just hoped that it might somehow flush him out."

  By the end of January a thousand men had taken the tests and only a quarter of that number had been cleared. The forensic laboratory was swamped, and it seemed certain that testing was going to take longer than the early estimate of two months. Teams of five doctors were drawing blood at each location, and police reported a 90 percent response to their letters. The 10 percent who did not respond were of course the subject of police interest.

  Journalists from many parts of the world were now arriving in Leicestershire to try to pry information out of tight-lipped police officials about the unique experiment. Tony Painter relieved his inspectors, Pearce and Thomas, of the television interviews. Painter took them on with the manner of the self-made police administrator. His words were fastidiously chosen, his diction and syntax exact. One reporter writing for an American magazine described his manner as "that of a kindly uncle speaking to a dull child."

  True enough, in that up-by-the-bootstraps career cops often think of journalists and all civilians as untrustworthy naffs who can never hope to understand evil and villainy. Painter's style was to let his long upper lip curve into a weary but tantalizing smile, and say, "There are certain matters about which I cannot speak." When the kitchen porter had been in custody, everything was "sub judice," therefore something about which he could not speak. />
  He certainly would never reveal who had posted the large reward, causing journalists to waste an hour and a half finding out that they were only a pair of businessmen, one of whom employed Barbara Ashworth. The reward hadn't been posted by Boy George or Princess Di. It hadn't even been put up by a local favorite like Humperdinck. It had been posted by public-spirited entrepreneurs who were hardly newsworthy in the first place. If only he'd said that much, but they knew administrators like Tony Painter were like that. By our secrets we measure our worth.

  When journalists asked why police had chosen the youthful age group for blooding, Painter could simply have said, "Rapists are young." Instead, he replied, "There are certain police matters . . ."

  But Tony Painter never forgot the Ashworths, and visited them loyally to give encouraging reports of "certain progress."

  The cops quickly began to refer to their testing sessions as bloodings. They would say, "We have to bloody this bloke."

  The way the bloodings worked was simple. As the donor arrived with his letter, he'd be directed to one of several policemen waiting at a row of tables. He'd be interviewed and identified, no easy task in that there were really no credible identity cards issued in England. The driving license did not bear a photo or a thumbprint, and so the only trusted identity card was a self-employment card, and so-called 714, with the bearer's photo. If he had no current photo the police would take a Polaroid shot which they would later present to a neighbor or employer for identification. Of course, a passport was the best proof of identity.

  After being put with a policeman, the subject was asked a few questions (which some resented) having to do with his whereabouts during the two murders. A form was filled out and the donor, along with his form, was taken to a printed register by the same officer who'd conducted the interview. A registration number and an identification sheet were issued, and the donor was walked to a doctor who drew blood and took a saliva sample on a card covered with clinical gauze. A splash of blood was squirted onto another gauze sample card and a sticky label was attached to the syringe, which, minus its disposable needle, became a self-sealing vial.

  If the subject was found by the laboratory in Huntingdon not to be a PGM 1+ , A secretor, the analysis generally went no further. If he was, the sample was sent to the government laboratory at Aldermaston where Jeffreys's DNA test was done.

  There were action teams, inquiry teams and suspect teams. The miles driven by members of those teams during the next several months were far greater than any ever logged before by the Leicestershire police. These mobile bloodletters swarmed over several counties. They learned to be very clever in suggesting, cajoling, imploring people on their list to come in, but in dozens of cases, a young man simply lived elsewhere and could not comply. In those cases they'd go to him, take him to a doctor's surgery, and authorize payment to the physician for drawing the sample. A team might log as many as five hundred miles in one day on its never-ending quest for blood.

  Supt. Tony Painter kept up the pressure from his end. He continued to visit council meetings and church halls and school fetes, and maintained a relationship with all community and church leaders. But it wasn't very easy to get the blood of those who didn't or couldn't respond to the letters. And it was blood they were after now. The murder squad on Dawn Ashworth II was tireless and implacable in its quest. It simply wanted blood

  One of the detective constables selected for Dawn Ashworth II was John Damon. He'd been on Dawn Ashworth I and was among the most popular members of the new murder squad because of his sharp wit and droll sense of humor. He was a good storyteller and impressionist, the kind who would don his cowboy hat and do John Wayne when the urge struck him. DC Damon was about Pearce's age, a burly cop whose deep baritone voice matched his bulk. He was a tournament-class darts player who seldom had to buy a drink if the bets were on. He was one of those detailed to work on the Carlton Hayes connection.

  Since the Lynda Mann murder there'd remained a strong belief that the answer might lie at the psychiatric hospital. On one of Damon's trips to the hospital, he had occasion to speak with a ward sister about a man the police were interested in blood-testing. During the conversation in her office, Damon, who felt very uneasy in those surroundings, casually asked what they did if a patient got violent.

  The sister was horrified by the question. She said, "There hasn't been a violent patient in . . . I can't remember when!" He was chastened by her withering look.

  Suddenly there was a scream in the ward outside and a table crashed to the floor. Damon and the sister ran from her office and found a middle-aged nurse and a male orderly wrestling on the floor with a patient gone berserk.

  "He was a ruddy bear!" Damon later said. "They were trying to get him round the throat and the poor old dear's skirt was up over her head! So I said, 'Do you want any help?"

  But no one answered. Those in the middle of the melee couldn't, and the ward sister was paralyzed by the eye-popping spectacle of cellulite pillows bulging from the nurse's white cotton stockings, as the poor old dear groaned pitifully and did Esther Williams--backstroke scissors kicks. The other patients just giggled and drooled, and rooted in their noses or ears, gleefully inspecting the nuggets by crosshatched light from wire mesh windows.

  Finally, the orderly wrestling on the floor yelled, "Please! Help!" So Damon took his glasses off and leaped on the ruddy bear, eventually subduing him. When it was all over, the ward sister recovered her composure, strode up to the exhausted cop and said, "Don't you ever again lay hands on one of our patients!"

  It was eerie roaming about the hospital, among people who might be homicidal. Any one of whom might be him. Even without rolling on the floor with ruddy bears, John Damon said it wasn't one of the more desirable assignments: blooding madmen at the nut farm.

  Another prime suspect had entered the picture. The murder squad received some tittle-tattle from traveling workers about a certain pipelayer who used to lure young girls into his transit van, to lay some pipe, as it were. The cops got particularly interested when they discovered he'd been working five hundred yards from the Ashworth house.

  Then a stunning piece of news energized the entire inquiry. The pipe-layer had left work on the very day that Dawn disappeared and had gone directly from the job site to a travel agent in Nottingham. When the pipe-layer was told he couldn't change a flight he'd already booked, a flight leaving for California in two days, he paid PS50 to cancel his ticket. And he coughed up an additional PS50 to get a new one. It cost him PS100 extra to get out of England in a hurry. Furthermore, he never showed up for work to collect PS900 in wages owed to him!

  The more the police looked into the life of the pipelayer, the more excited they became. They traced him to an old job he'd done in the vicinity of The Black Pad. He'd been laying water pipe in and around Narborough at the time of the Lynda Mann murder!

  His ex-wife in Nottingham wouldn't talk to the police about her former husband, and he had no police record for sexual offenses. But he was known to be a violent man, with prior arrests for causing grievous bodily harm. He was a handsome ladies' man, twenty-nine years old, and had worked part-time as a bouncer at a disco.

  Tony Painter decided to get in contact with the FBI, hoping that the pipelayer could be located in California and blood-tested. And if that happened, Derek Pearce planned to drive the blood sample straight to the laboratory from Heathrow Airport. Pearce and John Damon dreamed about going to California to get the sample themselves. Damon wore an American baseball cap to work for a week, but it didn't help. He didn't even get to go to London with Pearce and Tony Painter to request cooperation from the American embassy.

  They never got the blood. Nor did they ever learn why the pipelayer had left in such haste. As with many police investigations the secret ways of people often produced peripheral mysteries as baffling as the one in question.

  He remained totally inactive for a long time after Dawn. There was only one more to relive sometime& There was Lynda and Dawn
and the hairdresser who sucked it, and there was only one other. She was the first he'd ever touched. It was the first time his exploits made the newspaper, the front page of the Mercury. It had happened a long time ago, but he could remember it crystal clear. He could remember every moment with all of them crystal clear.

  On February 13, 1979, a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl who lived in the Leicester suburb of Kirby Muxloe was walking home alone by Desford Lane. It was a rather lonely country road and it seemed a bit unusual to see a young man standing there by a farm gateway. But it was 2:30 in the afternoon so she didn't think much about it.

  The girl was warmly dressed on that winter day. She wore a brown Shetland wool cardigan, blue jeans and a blanket-style coat. When she got to the gateway and walked past him, his arm whipped out and coiled around her neck.

  "Don't scream or I'll kill you," he whispered.

  Then he dragged her through the gateway into the open field, the school bag still dangling from her arm. When he got her into the field he pulled her down and knelt on her coat.

  "No, no, please!" she sobbed, repeating it over and over.

  He grabbed her by the throat and ripped open her blouse. Then he tried to shove his hand down inside her pants, but the zip on the jeans was stuck.

  He was very strong--very cold and calculating about everything he did.

  Even as she sobbed and pleaded she studied him: pudgy face and meaty lips, full beard and moustache, gingery blond hair. She detected what seemed to be a stain or defect in his front teeth. She saw no mercy in his eyes. She felt utterly powerless.

  Suddenly he looked disturbed. He stopped his attack abruptly. He jumped up and ran off without looking back. It was later speculated that, like many rapists, he may have ejaculated before unzipping his trousers.

  It was the first. There was such unexpected ecstasy derived from power. From control. From terror. From all the "foreplay."