Blooding
Page 17
The flashing stopped the whole time I were seeing Leslie. It stopped because I got a lot of excitement from her, combined with the excitement that Carole would catch me.
The Narborough parish councillor was not a man to let Colin Pitchfork trifle with his daughter. In fact, he would’ve been totally in favor of a divorce, but his son-in-law was a persuasive talker. Persuasive with Carole.
She agreed to meet with him, and he promised he wouldn’t do it again, and when he was all finished explaining, she was the one who felt guilty. Why hadn’t she gone out with him to a pub on those nights when he’d asked? Didn’t she know a man needed companionship when things were going wrong? Wasn’t he a good provider? Was he ever unkind to her? Did he ever so much as shout at her in anger? Wasn’t she the one who’d done all the shouting during their rows? That girl Leslie was just … convenient.
“Just one of them things,” he said to her.
“When you love somebody it’s easy to blame yourself,” Carole later explained. “Even when you feel such a prize fool for doing it.”
“Leslie was like the flashing,” he explained to Carole. “Something I got a buzz from because it was something I shouldn’t do.”
“He said she gave him something I couldn’t give because she was so young,” Carole Pitchfork later related, but Carole herself was not yet twenty-three years old in the summer of 1983, and the comparison made her steam.
“What the bloody hell do you mean?” she said to Colin. “I’m too old, am I?”
“No,” he said in his quiet, reasonable way. “But Leslie, she was a virgin. And you weren’t, were you?”
It was the first time he’d ever said anything like that to her. She’d never forget it, but she’d forgive him almost anything. With Carole, outrage could always be diminished by guilt.
“It was just one of them things, love,” he repeated, when he had her emotionally subdued. “Our child will need two parents. And if you don’t give people a second chance you’ll always wonder if you ought to’ve done, won’t you?”
Even before the birth of their baby, Carole had a yearning to get away from that house in Leicester.
“I want a garden,” she told her husband. “And we need a different environment for our child.”
Privately, she told friends that she wanted to get away from “bad memories attached to the house.” Presumably, memories of Colin and Leslie alone in her bed when she was dragging her pregnant belly around a playground, working with other people’s kids while dreaming of her own.
When their son was born in August, Colin was moved to tears and those tears helped wash away her lingering bitterness. She decided to turn the page and try to forget, but it was all becoming just a bit too much, like those romances she read and quickly forgot.
With her father on the Narborough Parish Council, the village was a logical destination. Just down Station Road from Narborough was a nice housing estate with several homes for sale. She and Colin had a look and settled on a semi-detached two-story house in a cul-de-sac with a whimsical name: Haybarn Close. It seemed propitious: Pitchforks in a Haybarn.
Carole planned the move to Littlethorpe in December. She wanted to have Christmas there in the village, and she desperately wanted what most want at a later time in life—a new beginning.
Of his family members, Colin’s father was closest to him. When the older man had time off from his job as a steelworker he’d visit and offer his labor. He’d helped Colin build a new fireplace on one of those visits.
Whenever he came, Carole only had to say something like “I have a casserole on for dinner.” And he’d eagerly say, “Oh, I haven’t had one in years!”
“I think he comes to get away from home,” Carole told her friends. “My mother-in-law has a heart of gold, but…”
Colin’s parents were more excited about having a grandchild than Carole’s were. “My parents had their own separate lives,” she later explained, “but Colin’s were child oriented. They wanted to take care of the baby whenever they could get him. Still, they’re not very approachable people, except for Colin’s younger brother. His brother became closer to me than he was with his own sister. He deals with the rest of his family by ignoring them.”
Well, she hadn’t married his family, she reminded herself, and he hadn’t married hers. Carole was simply grateful that after the baby was born Colin and her father seemed to be getting on a bit better.
But if Colin and Carole Pitchfork had little in common with their in-laws, they were finding more in common with each other. They both enjoyed the outdoors, and looked forward to village life where they could indulge their passion for walking. And anyone who’d lived in the villages knew there were many lovely footpaths in Narborough, Littlethorpe and Enderby.
Carole had signed up for a night class at Rowley Fields College in the fall of 1983. Colin wasn’t all that keen to see her “getting education,” but he didn’t object. Before leaving their old home in Leicester for the new one in Littlethorpe, she thought they should have a “leaving party” for a few friends and neighbors. They planned it for late November, a month before the move.
Five days before the Saturday night “do,” Colin decided to make tapes from several records, so they’d have continuous music for the party. He began the record taping while she was getting ready for her Monday night class.
“I’ll have them done by the time you get home,” he promised her.
It was just before 7:00 P.M. when he drove Carole to school in their Ford Escort. The baby slept in a carrycot on the backseat.
“See you at nine,” he said when he left her.
Colin Pitchfork collected his wife at nine o’clock. When they got home she was happy to see the taping was nearly finished. She was always uneasy leaving him alone at night. He still had a roving eye—she didn’t fool herself about that.
It was good to get home on that clear frosty night. The baby looked snug enough, but Carole was freezing. Monday, November 21, 1983, was the coldest night of the year.
21
Phantom Days
ANTISOCIAL REACTIONS (psychopathic personality)
… Superficially the sociopath excels in social situations.… On the other hand, those who become better acquainted are soon aware of his immaturity, superficiality, and chronic inability to make a success of his own life.… He becomes a true disappointment to those who were charmed to expect more, to those who began to believe in him, to those who continue to see his potential, to those who still hope for him.
—RICHARD M. SUINN, Fundamentals of Behavior Pathology
While Carole was pregnant, Colin became “unsettled” again, and he started complaining more. He’d worked at the bakery since he was sixteen years old and he was tired of the grind, having to be at work at 5:00 A.M. He ought to try other things, he said.
“Perhaps I’ll try writing,” he announced.
“First you should try reading a book or two,” she answered.
Carole read a book a day sometimes, the kind you forget an hour later, but at least she read. Colin didn’t read except on holiday, perhaps one book a year. He looked at the newspaper and Reader’s Digest and that was all.
“Perhaps I’ll just start looking round for another job,” he said from time to time.
“The grass was always greener for him,” Carole recalled. “When we had a son, he wanted a girl. His job was too boring. Our house was too small. There was always something wrong.”
At the time, Carole Pitchfork wasn’t aware that the restlessness she saw was prompting more romantic entanglements, more risks. Life in Littlethorpe was happy enough for her. Her father and husband were still not friends, but at least they got along, now that Colin was appearing more domestic. Even through the terrible twos when their son was, like all children his age, a fair handful, Colin was ever patient. He never spanked the child or shouted at him. Carole told her friends that she could yell her head off to no avail, but Colin had only to raise his voice an octave and the to
t would pay attention. Colin Pitchfork wanted a girl, but their second child, born in January of 1986, was another boy.
That spring things were back to normal in the villages as far as the footpath killing was concerned. Most seemed satisfied that The Black Pad murder had been an aberration—an explicable tragedy that happens and is never repeated. The killer must have been passing through, perhaps on his way to London. He could’ve stopped anywhere and done his terrible deed.
Carole recalled that when the constable had come to their home on the house-to-house check during the Lynda Mann inquiry back in 1983, Colin had been quite willing to answer the policeman’s questions even though there was some concern about his past record for flashing. But the Pitchforks were never bothered again after that first visit, so they seldom talked about The Black Pad affair. Only once, that she could remember.
Commenting on that time in Leicestershire when the county seemed to be a repository for bodies, Colin said to Carole, “This seems an ideal place to commit murder.”
When she asked why, he said, “Because there’s so many unsolved murders being investigated.”
A seventeen-year-old girl who worked at the Queens Road shop of Hampshires Bakery met Colin Pitchfork when he brought baked goods in the company van. He seemed to her like a decent sort of chap, a good family type who always talked about a son he adored. He was so quiet spoken that she had trouble understanding him. Sometimes it was necessary to move closer.
One day in November she was washing up in the kitchen of the bakery when she was startled by hot breath on her neck. She whirled to find him there, grinning. She tried to shove him away, but he didn’t budge. Then he put his hands on the boiler, on either side of her, and stared. This time she shoved past him and went back to work. He laughed and made light of it the next time he made a delivery.
In May of 1986, she was about to celebrate her eighteenth birthday and several employees were invited to a party in her honor. Colin Pitchfork was given the job of baking and decorating the cake for the do, and stopped by her home to make arrangements. He seemed very nice and she thought perhaps she’d misjudged him. He invited her to a pub for a drink one evening and she went.
When they left the pub he drove her home but missed the road to her house.
“I took the wrong turning,” he said, but after a few minutes he took another wrong turning and she found herself on a lonely country lane.
He stopped the car abruptly, leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“No! Take me home!” she told him.
He complied meekly, drove her home and said good night.
Except on her job, she didn’t see him anymore. But he did leave poems with her. There were five altogether. In one of the “love poems” he expressed a fervent desire to impregnate her with his child.
She failed to respond to the invitation and her lack of interest in a creative act to replicate part of himself may have annoyed him enormously.
The love poems stopped, and the poet returned to the prospect of a dreary life in the bakery with a remote possibility of being a foreman someday.
The supervisor of Colin Pitchfork at Hampshires Bakery had this to say about his subordinate: “He was a good worker and time-keeper, but he was moody. Almost a barrack-room lawyer at times. And he couldn’t leave women employees alone. He was always chatting them up.”
Colin had been employed at Hampshires since August of 1976 when he’d started as an apprentice baker and confectioner. During all those years his barrack-room lawyering had gotten him sacked several times. But somehow he’d always manage to talk his way back into the gaffer’s good graces before the dismissal order came into effect.
Along with Colin’s boss, Carole must’ve had a notion about Colin’s attention to female employees. She was always ringing the bakery on some pretext or another to check on him, to make sure he was there.
He’d had to attend technical colleges as part of his training, to get his apprentice papers, but he’d despised the classroom part of it. What Colin liked about his job was the artistry, the decorating of cakes. Colin’s photograph appeared in the newspaper because of one of the cakes he’d done. It was an impressive job, beautifully composed. He’d sculpted a night rider’s motorcycle with colorful icings. But he was asked to pose beside the cake for a publicity photograph.
That was an extraordinary photo session. The cake’s creator looked about as sanguine as a hostage in Beirut. In what should have been a happy news photo he seemed to be staring warily at the lens, at some terrible threat that a newspaper photo might spawn.
In July, 1986, Colin became depressed, for no reason Carole could fathom. He seemed always tired but couldn’t get to sleep. He went to a medical center and was given some sleeping tablets. Carole didn’t find out until a later time what was on his mind: his lover’s pregnancy.
The affair with the woman he called Brown Eyes hurt Carole most of all. She simply couldn’t begin to comprehend that one when it came to light. Leslie had been young and pretty, but this one? It seemed impossible.
Brown Eyes worked as a baker in the Hampshires shop on King Richard II Road. She had a baby of her own and was in the process of getting a divorce, her husband having left one month earlier. According to the gossip Carole got from Colin, the tall young woman had once thrown boiling jam on a fellow employee. But there must’ve been an unspoken message received or imagined by Colin Pitchfork.
One evening he showed up at her home and simply said to her, “Everyone at work has a bet that I daren’t come round for a cup of tea.”
“And you were cheeky enough to do it.”
“At least I’m honest,” he said, and she invited him inside.
He had his tea and they chatted for fifteen minutes. Then he was off, heading for home on his moped.
But he came back, regularly, and always uninvited. Brown Eyes didn’t turn him away. She needed him to commiserate about her failed marriage and found him to be what she called “a sympathetic friend.”
Soon the others at work started noticing. Colin was too solicitous and attentive to her. He started lifting heavy things off the shelves so she wouldn’t have to.
On a cold day in December she was wearing knee socks and he told her, “I like white knee socks.”
For a month he came and went from her house, kissing her only on the cheek. But one day in December things took a turn.
“The sex began,” she later said. “It happened about once a week, on weekdays only. There was never any real foreplay involved. Just straightforward sex.”
As with Leslie, Colin invited Brown Eyes to his home and introduced her as “a friend from work.” She brought her infant along and even babysat for the Pitchforks.
After Carole had her second child in January, Brown Eyes continued to visit, and when Carole went back to work, Colin and Brown Eyes would often be there at the house decorating a cake or playing with all three children.
They were just the best of friends, Colin said to Carole, who told herself that this woman wasn’t his type. She wasn’t innocent. She wasn’t young. She wasn’t a virgin.
The happy arrangement teetered when Brown Eyes announced to Colin that she was pregnant, but Colin responded in his measured quiet way. He overwhelmed her by saying he was pleased. Colin advised her to keep the baby or abort it, as she saw fit, and if she chose an abortion he’d gladly pay for it. He seemed concerned, and visited her often to discuss the decision.
She made an appointment with an abortion clinic, but at the last minute canceled. She decided to have Colin Pitchfork’s baby, come what may.
When she told him of her final decision, he said, “Good. Now see a doctor and take care of yourself. I’m happy. I’ve always wanted a girl.”
During the late summer and fall of 1986, when the shocking murder on Ten Pound Lane had the villages in the grip of terror once again, notices were posted of a special bus pickup to Brockington School. The pickup was in Littlethorpe, by the Pitchfork home.
Colin didn’t watch television much, having to get up so early to work at the bakery. Yet he watched Crimeuiatch UK and all the news bulletins about the Ashworth inquiry, especially after the release of the kitchen porter, when the villagers were distressed and confused.
Carole arrived home from work ahead of schedule on the night they announced the kitchen porter’s release. She liked to pop home unexpectedly, just in case.
“Bunked off early,” she said, finding him glued to the television.
“They let him go,” he said.
“If he wasn’t the one, now what?” she said. “I don’t think they’ll catch anyone until it happens again.”
He shook his head and said, “They just haven’t a clue, have they?”
“Colin wouldn’t balk at having a go at something,” Carole said. “He always wanted to try racetrack rallying but it cost sixty quid a day and we couldn’t afford it. But if we could’ve, he wouldn’t have balked at having a go.”
Whatever it was he cared to have a go at, you could be sure it was something for him, whether or not she was interested or included.
“The life of the family had to revolve around Colin,” she recalled. “And I had to be at his beck and call. Even when I started asserting myself by going to college.”
Carole had some ideas about getting a proper education now, but whenever she’d get excited about a college class schedule and try to share it with him, he’d listen a moment or look at her material and say, “Looks like a load of bullshit to me.”
“You use other people’s egos to step on just so you can improve your own,” she told him. “You pull me down to build yourself up.”