Core of Evil

by Nigel McCrery

  ‘I put out some feelers, and asked some friends of mine who work for the Department of Justice who he is. It wasn’t easy – the bloke keeps his head down, but I eventually struck lucky. He’s Assistant Director of the PRU.’

  ‘I knew that. What else have you got?’

  ‘PRU stands for Prisoner Rehabilitation Unit. It’s a department that looks after long-term inmates in Her Majesty’s prisons who, for whatever reason, need careful rehabilitation into society when they get released.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of them.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. They’re a close-knit bunch. They don’t advertise themselves. Myra Hindley was one of theirs, before she died of a chest infection. Apparently they were preparing her for release when she died, despite the number of legal appeals that she’d lost. Ian Huntley’s on the list – the bloke who killed those two girls in Soham. So are Ian Brady and Rosemary West. All the jailbirds who keep getting mentioned in the papers are theirs. It’s the PRU’s job to make sure that when they eventually get out of jail they can reintegrate into society without having the Sun or the Mirror camped on their doorsteps within ten minutes of them getting out.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Lapslie said. ‘I wonder if anyone ever leaves school thinking, “I know what I want to do – I want to prepare serial killers for release into a society that hates their guts”.’

  ‘Hey, we don’t all end up doing what we wanted, you know? I was going to be a car mechanic.’

  ‘I’m touched. I really am. What else did you find out about the PRU?’

  ‘They also spend a year or so before the release training their “customers” up so they know who’s Prime Minister and how much a loaf of bread costs. They were the ones who apparently found Maxine Carr a place to live and got her a new identity. And a new boyfriend, from what I hear. You remember her, she was Ian Huntley’s girlfriend, but she got out way before he ever will. And Dennis Nilsen – he was the one who killed fifteen male lovers, boiled some of them up and then forced their remains down the drain. He’s on their books. He’ll be eligible for parole in a year or two: they must be getting him ready now, I would have thought.’

  ‘I hate to say it, McGinley, but you’ve excelled yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, but does it help?’

  Lapslie thought for a moment. He couldn’t see any connection with the case he was working on. ‘I can’t say it does,’ he said.

  ‘Then let me add something else. While I was asking around, I picked up a rumour or two. No corroboration, but it’s whispered that Myra Hindley didn’t die of a chest infection at all.’

  ‘What, she killed herself? Not much of a story there, McGinley.’

  ‘No, the rumour is that she’s still alive, and she was released from prison under a false name. Rumour is that she’s living somewhere in Wales, under constant observation. Costs the PRU a shed load of money, but it was some kind of deal between the Home Secretary and the judiciary. There was no legal reason to keep her in jail any more, but the public outcry if she was released would have been immense.’

  ‘The slate’s clear, McGinley. I don’t owe you anything and you don’t owe me anything. Understand?’

  ‘The ironic thing,’ McGinley said, ‘is that if things had gone slightly differently, if you had ever got the goods on me, then I might be a customer of the PRU myself.’

  ‘A touching thought, and I suspect the closest thing to a confession I’ll ever get.’

  ‘Stay in touch, Mr Lapslie. There’s precious few of us left, you know.’

  And with that, the mobile went dead.

  Lapslie stood for a moment, the mobile still in his hand. He knew more than he had before, but he didn’t have a clue what it all meant. If the PRU were involved it meant that his case had something to do with a long-term prisoner who was either about to be released or, more probably, had already been released, but did that mean his murderer was their ‘customer’? And if so, why were they allowing her to wander around committing murder?

  ‘ “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?”’ he said softly, quoting T. S. Eliot. ‘“Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”’

  Jane Catherall was in the large autopsy room, supervising the placing of the corpses. One was being unwrapped on the furthest metal table. Three more were being lined up on gurneys on the far side of the room.

  ‘How many more of these poor creatures can I expect?’ Dr Catherall said, gazing at Lapslie from beneath lowered eyebrows.

  ‘Another two vans’ worth is my estimate,’ he said. ‘Assuming four bodies per vanload.’

  ‘Twelve bodies? Apart from coach crashes and fires in night clubs, I can’t think of many circumstances that produce so many bodies in here at the same time, and in both of those instances the cause of death is pretty well established before I start. I am going to have to conduct each autopsy here from first principles.’

  ‘I think I know what you’re going to find.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Please – no clues. It spoils the fun.’

  Lapslie looked at the body on the metal table. Unlike poor Violet Chambers, whose body had been wrapped in plastic and had withered and dried rather than decayed, this one was mostly eaten away by bacteria and by bugs, leaving behind a stained skeleton to which leathery flesh still adhered. The eyes had vanished, and the skull was covered by a thin, dry coating of skin that had drawn back from the discoloured teeth, making the corpse look as though it was perpetually screaming.

  ‘Are they all like this?’ Dr Catherall asked.

  ‘If you lined them up in the right order,’ Lapslie told her, ‘you could take a photograph and use it to illustrate the process of decomposition from beginning to end.’

  ‘The deaths occurred at different times then? Over the course of several years, perhaps?’ Her faced creased into a smile. ‘I’m actually looking forward to this.’

  Lapslie looked at her diminutive, twisted frame. ‘Can you cope?’

  She looked perversely mutinous for a moment. ‘I’m going to have to, aren’t I?’

  Lapslie frowned. ‘I tried to get some of the bodies diverted to other mortuaries, but I was told nobody else was available.’

  Dr Catherall smiled, and turned away. For the next few hours she examined the arriving bodies, one after the other, with the same concentration and dedication that she had displayed when she examined that of Violet Chambers. Samples from the bodies were placed in plastic jars, sealed into transparent envelopes and sent away for testing. Photographs were taken, sketches made and notes dictated. It all began to feel like a dream to Lapslie as he sat, watching her work; a never-ending, recurring dream in which the same words were spoken, the same incisions made and the same samples taken, with only the state of decomposition of the body changing. There were moments when Lapslie’s concentration slipped, or he fell asleep for a while, that made him think that Dr Catherall was carrying out the same long autopsy but that the body on the table was more and more decayed each time he looked.

  Eventually she consigned the last body to be taken away, and walked slowly across to Lapslie. She looked exhausted. No, he thought; she actually looked ill.

  ‘I find that my body tires so much quicker than my mind, these days,’ she said, weariness evident in her voice. ‘So many autopsies on the trot has not been a pleasant experience.’

  ‘“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”’ Lapslie asked.

  Dr Catherall smiled through her tiredness. ‘Robert Browning. How nice.’

  ‘Is there anything you can tell me?’

  ‘There is much I can tell you, most of which you won’t be interested in. The key things you want to hear about are approximate time of death and likely cause of death, and on both of those issues I am sadly bereft of much useful information. The approximate time of death will be plus or minus several months in each case. I will need to make some calculations. What I can tell you, however, is that the deaths were not equally spaced apar
t.’

  He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that there appears to be over a year between the times of death of the oldest bodies, but there’s only a few months between the times of death of the freshest ones. Your killer, whoever it is, is striking more and more frequently. Whatever their reason is for killing, it’s not giving them the same satisfaction now that it used to. They’re speeding up.’

  ‘Satisfaction?’ Lapslie asked.

  Dr Catherall looked up at him. ‘Oh yes. You don’t kill twelve women over the course of many years in a fit of rage. You do it because you want to. Because it fills some sick need.’ She looked back at the bodies. ‘The cause of death in each case is not immediately obvious, although I have sent samples away for toxicological testing, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Obvious reasons?’ Lapslie asked.

  She looked askance at him. ‘You failed to mention it, but these deaths are connected to that of Violet Chambers, are they not?’

  ‘I believe so,’ he said. ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘They are all elderly women, for a start, and the lack of a distinguishing cause of death suggests that poisoning is a possibility worth investigating. And, of course, there’s the fingers.’

  ‘The fingers?’

  ‘You didn’t see?’ Dr Catherall shook her head. ‘How careless of you. As with poor Violet Chambers, the fingers on the right hand of each of the victims had been cut off, all the way down to the knuckles.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Daisy spent most of every day for the next five days with Eunice at the Arts and Crafts Centre, helping get the meagre accounts in order, and in all that time she could only remember a handful of people actually coming inside. One of them had been a local artist, thin and grey-haired, clad in black corduroy, hoping to have his wares exhibited by Eunice. He was doomed to disappointment: Eunice held one of his paintings in front of her, turning it this way and that, squinting as if the sunset over seascape that the artist had tried so hard to emulate was actually putting out fierce rays of light.

  ‘Oh no,’ she had said. ‘Oh no, no, no. These waves are all too similar. Waves should be majestically chaotic. No two alike, you see? And they should blend together indiscernibly. These ones look like you’ve painted them separately, cut them out and stuck them over one another.’ She paused, making a gradual left-hand turn with the painting. ‘The framing is quite good though.’

  Two of the remaining visitors had been local people who had been sorting through the effects of recently deceased loved ones and found what looked to Daisy like a piece of gimcrack china and a dusty and over-varnished painting. Eunice had surprised Daisy by buying both pieces; one for fifteen pounds, the other for thirty-five. After they had left, clutching their cash, Daisy had quietly asked Eunice what she had seen in the pieces. The replies had surprised her.

  Of the china piece, which resembled nothing so much as a seagull with an unnaturally large and removable head, the whole thing coloured with a lurid yellow wash, Eunice had said: ‘This is a Martin Brothers bird, I believe. Made around 1901 in Southall. The Martin brothers were well known for their grotesque animals and fish. This base is ebony, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘And you intend exhibiting it?’

  ‘No, I intend selling it.’ Eunice sniffed. ‘At auction, this little piece will fetch over five thousand pounds.’

  ‘And that woman who sold it to you – she had no idea?’

  ‘Caveat emptor works both ways, my dear. If they don’t do their research, I cannot be held responsible. Not in law.’

  Concerning the painting – a hunting scene with fat horses tottering on matchstick legs across a brook, the whole thing browned and glossy with old varnish – Eunice had told the seller that it was a mass-produced Victorian item of little or no value. When the man had gone, she had placed it reverentially on the counter in front of her and sat, head in hands, gazing at it.

  ‘It’s very badly done,’ Daisy had said. ‘Those horses are exceedingly top-heavy.’

  ‘It was the style of the time,’ Eunice had sighed. ‘Don’t let the varnish deceive you: underneath the surface is something rather surprising. This is an original Henry Alkin. I’ve seen prints taken from it, but I never thought I would see the original.’

  ‘And you intend selling it at auction?’

  ‘After a while,’ Eunice had said dreamily. ‘After a while.’

  ‘For how much?’

  ‘In excess of ten thousand pounds, I would imagine.’ Eunice had glanced up at Daisy, who had put what she had hoped was a disapproving expression on her face. ‘You don’t imagine I earn enough from this place to make a living, do you?’

  Eunice was proving shrewder than her blowsy, artsy exterior had led Daisy to believe.

  The remaining visitors had been holidaymakers, breaking their car journeys for a cup of tea and a slice of cake, or sheltering from the rain when they were out walking. They had spent an hour or so in the barn, looking around in a desultory manner, and then vanished, taking with them a few token postcards and leaving behind a faint smell of damp clothes and cigarette smoke.

  And each of the five days that Daisy had spent at the Arts and Crafts Centre had seen her hating Jasper more than the last.

  Jasper was Eunice’s pride and joy. He was a small, snappy dog of indeterminate breed, and he hated Daisy. He growled at her constantly and followed her around the barn, his overly large black eyes glinting malevolently at her; and he smelled like old washing. His expression seemed to say: ‘I know who you are, old woman. You can fool her, but you can’t fool me.’

  Daisy determined to do away with Jasper as soon as she possibly could. Eunice could wait – Daisy needed to squeeze her of as much information about her past life as possible – but the dog had to go. Regard it as a dry run, she told herself. A chance to test out a poison she had never used before, but had been meaning to for some time.

  Every day that week that she had spent at the Arts and Crafts Centre, Daisy had brought in a bag of apricots for her and Eunice to eat. With the excuse of tidying up, she had collected all the apricot stones once the fruit had been eaten and taken them home with her each night, drying them out on her kitchen windowsill. On the fifth evening, using a cheese grater bought on the way home from a small kitchen store in Leyston, she had carefully rasped at the kernel of the stones until she had a pile of grey powder on a piece of kitchen towel. If she was right then the grey powder contained a lethal dose of hydrocyanic acid, but she had never used apricot kernels before, and she was worried that she might have misjudged the dose. Perhaps the apricots needed to have achieved a certain ripeness before the poison could be extracted. Or maybe the kernels needed to be heated first before being grated. Fortunately, Jasper would act as her test case. She could sprinkle a little on his food every day and monitor what his reaction was. And when he died, if he died, then all Daisy had to do was to multiply up the amount she had used to take Eunice’s weight into account, and then bake it into a shepherd’s pie or something similar. Perhaps an apricot crumble. After all, it seemed a shame to waste the fruit she would be buying.

  On the sixth day, Daisy rested. She needed to give some thought to her next steps, but more than that, she needed Eunice to realise how empty her life was when Daisy wasn’t there. Using the excuse that she needed to do some work on the designs for the Arts and Crafts Centre leaflets, she stayed at home. But before she left the barn, she turned the ringer volume on Eunice’s telephone down to zero. Eunice would be able to make outgoing calls with no problems, but if anyone tried to ring in then Eunice wouldn’t be able to hear the phone. It was crude, but it would help to make her feel even more isolated from her few remaining contacts. And after a couple of weeks of Eunice failing to answer her phone, people would stop calling. It was so simple, it was perfect.

  The next day, Daisy returned to the barn. Eunice was pathetically glad to see her.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘you have no idea how boring i
t is here. I’ve been going gaga. Thank heavens I’ve had Jasper to keep me company.’

  ‘Actually,’ Daisy said, ‘I brought some food in for Jasper. I cooked some chicken yesterday for my dinner, and I thought he might fancy the leftovers. Would that be all right?’

  ‘You are so very thoughtful,’ Eunice said. Jasper just eyed her warily from his position by his mistress’s side. ‘Jasper really appreciates the way you look after him.’

  Daisy took her bag into the kitchen area at the back of the barn and put the chicken on a saucer. A translucent jelly had congealed around the pieces, making them glossy and brown. Looking around to check that Eunice wasn’t watching, she took a tupperware container from her bag and, pulling the lid off, sprinkled a teaspoon of the grey powder on top and then mixed it in with the jelly. With luck, Jasper would not suspect a thing.

  Returning to the barn, she set the saucer down by the side of the counter. The dog trotted across to sniff at it. He looked up at Daisy, then back at the food. He sniffed again. Bending his head, he snuffled the chunks of meat and jelly and poison up into his wrinkled little mouth.

  ‘There’s a good dog,’ said Daisy.

  At lunchtime, Daisy made a cup of tea. Eunice took a packet of pills from her bag and, as she had done every lunchtime that Daisy had been there, pushed a small blue and red torpedo-shaped pill from its blister pack and popped it in her mouth, swigging it down with a mouthful of tea. The blister pack looked like it was mostly used up.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Daisy said, ‘but are they vitamin pills?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Eunice said. ‘Atorvastatin, I think it’s called. It lowers cholesterol. Prescription drug, from my doctor.’

  ‘It must be awful, going into town all the time to get new prescriptions.’