What Would Wimsey Do?

by Guy Fraser-Sampson

  “But you always say that there is a pattern to human behaviour, no matter how weird or warped, and that it’s only a matter of working out what it might be.”

  “Do I really? Oh dear, how pompous I must sound,” he said with a smile.

  “Pompous or not,” she replied as she got up to check the saucepan bubbling away on the stove, “I think you’re right. Logically there must be an explanation. It’s just that it’s not obvious yet.”

  Satisfied that the potatoes were cooked, she drained them and began to mash.

  “Here,” he said, standing up, “let me do that. You see to the chicken.”

  “If you’re sure you’re up to it,” she responded anxiously.

  “I’m ill, not senile,” he said severely, “and actually I’m not sure I’m even that ill. I don’t feel as confused as I did a few days ago, though I do still seem to have some gaps in my memory.”

  He added milk, butter and white pepper and began to mash in a contemplative sort of way. “Perhaps where we’re going wrong is to view things objectively rather than subjectively,” he said, looking dubiously into the saucepan. “Rather than considering the situation from the outside, we need to get inside the killer’s head. What he is doing does not seem rational. Therefore it must be driven, not by reason, but either by some direct emotional driver or an aspect of the killer’s personality.”

  “Perhaps it’s obsessive?” she suggested as she served the chicken. “Perhaps he has a need always to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. You know, one of those men who arranges everything in the cupboards with all the labels facing outwards or who hangs up his clothes in the same order every day as soon as he takes them off, perhaps graded by colour.”

  “Well, I do that,” Peter said peevishly. “The last bit, anyway. And that doesn’t make me a serial killer, does it?”

  “True,” she conceded.

  “Anyway, doesn’t everyone?” he asked defensively. “How else are you able to find what you’re looking for? You’re hardly going to scatter your clothes around the room, are you, or drop them on the floor?”

  “I really don’t know, Peter,” she said with a smile as she put the plates on the table, “but perhaps not all men are quite as tidy as you.”

  “Well,” he said, slightly mollified, “the more fool they, or rather the more fool those who live with them. Imagine having to go to bed amidst clothes strewn around the room. I mean, really!”

  He ate silently for a while.

  “I think you may be onto something,” he said slowly, “but there’s another possibility. Suppose that Collison’s theory is correct. Isn’t it possible that our murderer was as ignorant about chloroform as we were? That he used it the first time because he thought it was going to be effective, but that when it wasn’t he was stuck with it? He needs each murder to look the same, to leave no doubt that they really were the work of a serial killer. So he carries on using it not because it was useful for his purposes, but simply because it was necessary to create chloroform burns on subsequent victims to match those on the first one.”

  “Peter, that’s brilliant. If Collison’s theory is correct, that is.”

  “You have your doubts?”

  “In a word, yes. You’d have to be very desperate and very evil to want to do away with several innocent women just to be able to murder your wife and get away with it. But this damn case is so confusing, and has been going on for so long, that I really don’t know what to think anymore. It’s got me wondering if the more ridiculous something is, the more likely it is to be the right answer. We’ve followed all the obvious lines of enquiry and they’ve all led absolutely nowhere. We thought we’d got Clarke bang to rights and then he turns out to have been innocent all along; just a victim of circumstantial evidence and of our confidence in our own infallibility. Poor sod.”

  “I don’t think you should beat yourself up about that,” Peter said uncomfortably. “The evidence was strong, and it did all seem to point in the right direction. Everything the jury was told was true, and they came to their own decision on the facts.”

  “Well, what do you think about this Laughing Policeman idea?” she demanded.

  “I must admit that initially I was sceptical,” he admitted. “Storylines from fiction always seem inherently improbable to occur in real life, yet when we read them we are happy to suspend our disbelief, which may simply suggest that in our everyday lives we have an irrational craving for certainty and probability.”

  He took a mouthful of wine and then continued. “Three things now incline me to believe that the idea may have some mileage in it. The first is this new chloroform consideration. Either, as you suggested, our killer is likely to suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, or, as I have suggested, it may speak to a desire to make all the killings look the same.”

  “Go on.”

  “The second thing is that there was an important way in which the Barker murder was different from all the others. In all the other cases, so far as we know, the victim was killed somewhere else and then the body was moved and dumped after death. Kathy Barker was left and found where she was killed. That also suggests to me that, while she was killed in a public place, the others were not. It seems more likely they were killed in an enclosed, private space, or at the very least somewhere quiet and secluded.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure, but it is an unexplained difference. It could indicate that while the other victims may have been selected at random, perhaps not on the basis of who they were but rather that they were in situations where they could be taken and killed without attracting too much attention, Kathy Barker was targeted specifically—the killer had to take the opportunity when it presented itself, despite the risk of being seen, interrupted or even apprehended.”

  She put down her knife and fork and stared at him. “Oh God, that really is brilliant. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

  “Well,” he said modestly, “it’s hardly conclusive by itself, of course. But then there’s the third thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “Since the Barker murder there haven’t been any others, at least so far as we know—and it’s pretty difficult to hide a body in London. It’s bound to be discovered sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later. Yet we know that serial killers don’t generally just stop killing. On the contrary, they typically speed up as the thrill becomes less and less satisfying. In cases where the killings do stop it’s usually because the killer has moved out of the area, died, or gone to prison for some other offence.”

  “You mean…?”

  “I mean that since our killer has not murdered again then it could suggest that he feels his mission to be complete—that’s not consistent with the mind of a serial killer by the way—which could in turn suggest that his mission was to murder Kathy Barker.”

  “Of course, of course. When you explain it like that, it seems so obvious.” She got up from the table.

  “Where are you going?” he asked uncertainly.

  “To phone Collison.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “So you want to go the whole hog, then?” the ACC asked, looking up from the papers on his desk and peering at Collison over his reading glasses. “Are you absolutely sure, Simon? The DPP is dubious, you know.”

  “I can’t understand why, sir,” Collison replied innocently. “One of his staff was at our con with counsel yesterday and heard the same advice as we did: namely that there is ample evidence to charge Barker and a good chance of being able to persuade a magistrate to remand him in custody.”

  “That’s true, strictly speaking, but it’s not really the issue, is it?”

  “No, sir?”

  “Of course it’s not. The issue is whether we are likely to get a conviction if we take Barker to court and charge him with a string of murders, most of which he has no obvious connection to at all.”

  “I think we can show plenty of connection, sir. He w
as the only keyholder we can identify, apart from Clarke himself, who had any connection to any of the murdered women. He was one of the very few GPs in the country to have access to chloroform, which, incidentally, has subsequently gone missing from his own practice. According to his neighbours, his problems with his wife started a few weeks before the first murder, which was also when the mystery chloroform consignment vanished without trace.”

  “All true,” the ACC said, holding his glasses pensively to his lips, “but all circumstantial.”

  There was a pause.

  “I suppose,” he said tentatively, “there’s no way we could simply charge him with his wife’s murder? At least there we can show motive, means and opportunity.”

  Collison shook his head regretfully. “Won’t wash, I’m afraid, sir. The Barker murder is obviously one of a series. If we don’t charge him with all of them, his defence counsel will have a field day. Either he did them all, or none of them. That’s why we have to argue that the others were deliberately intended to provide a smokescreen. After all, what are the odds that a man who wants to dispose of his wife just happens also to be a serial killer?”

  “Christie was,” the ACC reminded him.

  “He was, sir, but there was a suggestion that it was because during an argument she threatened to expose him for the Evans murders. Anyway, whatever the case, the odds against it would be phenomenal.”

  “Are we sure that the Barker murder really is part of a series?” the ACC asked. “Isn’t it possible that our man decided to kill his wife and simply made it look like one of a series of murders he had read about in the press so as to throw us off the scent?”

  “A very good question, sir. I considered that possibility myself early on, because the Barker murder does stand out a bit, but the answer is no. We deliberately never disclosed the fact that the victims had been raped by a man wearing a condom. The first time that information was made public was during Clarke’s trial, which was of course well after the Barker murder. No, whichever way you look at it, I think it has to be the same man in each case.”

  “When you say the Barker murder stands out, what do you mean?”

  “It was the only one in which the victim was left to be found where she was killed, rather than being moved and dumped after death. That suggests either a random encounter or the very opposite: that the killer wanted her and nobody else, and had to take her when and where he found her.”

  “Couldn’t it have been exactly that, though? A random encounter?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. The FBI studies in America suggest that serial killers are either organised or disorganised. The fact that our suspect had all his necessary equipment with him each time, and exactly the same each time, suggests an organised killer. So does the fact that he was apparently able to kill all the other victims somewhere secluded, at his leisure and without fear of discovery. So, as I say, this one stands out. Why would he suddenly break his pattern? Serial killers don’t.”

  “Hardly something you can put to a jury,” said the ACC gruffly.

  “Well, how about this, sir? Why have the killings simply stopped after Kathy Barker’s death? Serial killers don’t just stop. In fact they usually speed up. That suggests that our killer views his task as now having been completed. Which in turn suggests that his mission was to eliminate Mrs Barker, and the only person whom we know had a motive to do that was her husband.”

  The ACC reflected on this and then sighed. “Simon, are you absolutely sure that you want to nail your colours to this particular mast? Fantastic theories are all very well if they work out: you’ll look like a hero. But what if it doesn’t work out? Suppose this is just all too difficult for the jury to swallow and they acquit? Coming on top of the wrongful conviction of Gary Clarke, it’s almost impossible to imagine what would happen in the press, not to mention the Home Office. You realise the Commissioner would almost certainly feel obliged to resign?”

  “It wouldn’t only be the Commissioner who would feel obliged to resign, sir,” Collison replied evenly. “Coming on top of the Clarke mess, I would obviously offer my own resignation too.”

  There was a knock at the door and the ACC shouted, “Come in.” He sat back in his chair. “Well, if you really have thought this through then do whatever you need to do and I will back you, but by God you’d better be right.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the uniformed sergeant who had just come into the room, “but the Commissioner heard that DS Collison was with you this morning and thought you might both like to see the midday edition of the Standard.”

  He put the newspaper down in front of the ACC, who replaced his reading glasses and scanned the front page. Without a word he tossed it across the desk to Collison.

  “New Arrest Imminent in Serial Killings” ran the headline. Underneath, the newspaper reported that the husband of the last victim, a Dr Colin Barker from Hampstead, was about to be arrested by the police and charged, not only with the murder of his wife, Katherine, but also with all the previous victims. It was rumoured that the move to arrest the doctor had been sparked by a tip-off from a member of the public about his whereabouts on the night of the murder of Tracy Redman.

  Collison felt a wave of nausea rise in his throat. “Oh no,” he said weakly. “Not now. Not now.”

  The ACC stared at him in consternation. “Do you know something about this?” he demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied flatly. “I’m afraid I do.”

  “I’m listening,” the ACC said.

  “It’s Ken Andrews, sir. If you remember, he served on the original enquiry team as a Detective Sergeant. He’s now back with Tom Allen working on the Clarke prison murder case.”

  “I don’t understand,” the ACC said with a puzzled air. “If he’s no longer on the team, how would he have had access to this information? And how can you be sure that he’s responsible anyway?”

  “Because I set a trap for him, and he’s fallen into it, only he’s been way, way more irresponsible than I could ever have believed.”

  “You had better tell me all about this,” the ACC said grimly, “and then I can decide what action to take.”

  “Well, I asked Bob Metcalfe to let slip, accidentally as it were, to Ken the next time he ran into him, that we were about to arrest Barker, and to mention that nonsense about the tip-off concerning the Redman death. I thought that once Barker was arrested he would sell his information to the papers and because he was the only one to have been in possession of that particular piece of news we would know for sure that he was our man. I never thought for a moment that he would risk jeopardising an ongoing investigation by releasing the story before our suspect was arrested.”

  “Stop,” said the ACC, holding up both hands. “Stop right there. First up, why didn’t you just accept the result of the Internal Affairs investigation? They cleared everyone concerned.”

  “No, sir,” Collison corrected him. “They said something like it wasn’t possible to identify anyone in particular. I wasn’t satisfied with that. Someone was compromising my enquiry, I thought I knew who it was, and I was determined to prove it. We all know that the papers have been paying off bent coppers for years to leak details of active cases, and it’s something we have to stamp out.”

  “But how could you be so sure it was Andrews?”

  “I couldn’t be sure, sir; it was a gut instinct, and a strong one. Call it copper’s nose if you like. Whoever it was who was leaking to the papers was also leaking to Tom Allen. Andrews has been close to Allen for years.”

  “So has Metcalfe,” the ACC pointed out.

  “Yes, but I was convinced it wasn’t him. He’s a new-style career copper who’s going to go far. Andrews is never going to progress beyond DS and he knows it. Anyway, on the one occasion that Allen tried to persuade Metcalfe to give him confidential information, he came to me to report it, having lost sleep over it all weekend first. I put it in my diary and asked him to do the same. Andrews was always the most likely ca
ndidate.”

  The ACC gazed at him levelly. “It seems to me, Superintendent, that if anyone has compromised this enquiry it’s you. Totally without authority you released confidential information to someone who was not a member of the team; exactly the same offence of which you suspect Andrews and, by implication, DCI Allen. Further, you released deliberately misleading disinformation which you intended to be published, or at the least you were reckless as to whether it was published or not.”

  “I was intending it to be published after the arrest, sir. It would have been a simple matter then to deny the tip-off allegation. It would simply have made the newspaper look silly, as well as identifying our culprit.”

  “The timing is irrelevant,” the ACC replied crisply. “As soon as you released the information outside the team you had no control over what happened to it thereafter. It seems to me that the risk of compromising a multiple murder investigation is out of all proportion to the possibility of identifying an internal press source. Surely any responsible senior officer could see that.”

  “I saw it as a calculated risk, sir,” Collison responded, reddening.

  “It wasn’t your risk to take. It was mine, if anyone’s, and had you asked me I would have consulted the Commissioner before making a decision. For the record, I would have recommended that he say no.”

  “Then I can only apologise, sir, if I have been guilty of an error of judgment. If you think it appropriate, I will submit my resignation. I have no wish to cause any undue embarrassment.”

  The ACC considered for a moment. “I do think it would be appropriate for you to let me have a letter of resignation, yes. The only reason I am not suspending you on the spot is that someone has to go back to Hampstead and hold the fort while we try to sort this mess out, and you’re the only possible candidate. Metcalfe doesn’t have the seniority and Allen isn’t up-to-date on the case.”

  “And Andrews, sir?” Collison asked. He felt as he did so that he was pushing his luck, but what the hell. If he was going to be fired over this then he at least wanted to succeed in one aspect of what he had set out to do.