The Hard Detective Read online

  ‘Yes, I can just about follow that. I’m not exactly a simpleton, you know.’

  ‘No, no. I’m sorry. But I am right, aren’t I, in thinking that the communities on either side of the canal are distinctly different?’

  Harriet thought for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know about that. It’s a straightforward working-class area on either bank. Or, rather, that’s what it used to be. A lot of it is sheer slum nowadays. But I can’t see the areas either side of the canal are particularly different.’

  ‘Can’t you? Do you know anything about football?’

  ‘Football?’

  ‘Yes. I assume you know there are two Premiership teams based in Birchester, and—’

  ‘Of course, I know that. For God’s sake, I am a Birchester police officer.’

  ‘Well then, do you know who people on the north side of the canal support?’

  Less than a moment’s thought. Vivid memories of hundreds of green-and-white coloured scarves.

  ‘Yes. They’re United supporters.’

  ‘Right. And on the south—’

  ‘You’re right, of course. Rovers fans. So, yes, I suppose you’re correct. The people on each side of the canal are to some extent different.’

  ‘Which is why I had no hesitation in drawing that more or less straight line — curves a bit, actually — across the top of the circle. Very well, on the basis of previous successful experiences with serial killer cases, we can now say the probabilities are that Mr Man lives inside my flat-topped circle, or somewhere not too far from it, on the south side of the Birchester–Liverpool Canal.’

  ‘So all we’ve got to do now is visit — what? — ten thousand homes?’

  ‘Oh, I can give you more help than that. I can tell you the sort of person you should be looking for in those homes.’

  She fought off the yellowy cloud of her depression.

  ‘All right. I’m listening.’

  ‘Well, to begin with, you should expect to find a man who is at the higher end of the manual worker class. We know from the evidence of the fibre from that donkey jacket that Mr Man is an industrial worker of some sort, and from —’

  ‘We know nothing of the kind,’ she snapped out in irritation. ‘All we’ve got as good evidence is a thread, almost certainly from a donkey jacket, yes, found caught on the wall of the passageway where PC Titmuss was stabbed. Even if it did come from the killer’s coat, we don’t know that the coat actually belongs to him. It may have been borrowed. Or even bought secondhand to use to hide in at the end of that passageway.’

  ‘Yes, there is that. I grant you that. But, always provided the thread did come from the murderer’s donkey jacket, then I think you’ll agree it indicates he has a manual worker background. And, I may add, the fawn-coloured raincoat you told me about this morning, turned out to be, if not quite what you’d expect a hefty mechanic to wear — it’s rather small in fact — a mass-produced garment such as a person at that point in the social scale might possess.’

  Or a senior woman police officer who liked not too feminine outerwear and was not desperate about appearing designer-dressed …

  But she held her tongue.

  ‘Now, I mentioned that Mr Man almost certainly comes from the upper end of the manual worker class. Why? Because he’s a planner. All the evidence goes to show he’s an individual who’s habitually used to working out carefully his next move. And that won’t apply simply to his moves as a killer. No, the cast of mind is there. And will appear in everything he does. Hence he’ll have risen up to become a foreman, that sort of status at least. Until something became too much for him and he was sectioned.’

  ‘Sectioned? How do you know he’s been mentally ill? If you’ve got a name —’

  Now Dr Smellyfeet did lose his cool.

  ‘Superintendent, if I’d had even a short list of names, they’d have been on your desk within two minutes of my getting them.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, sorry. I realize that. All you were saying — was it? — was that it’s likely, or very likely, this man has been in a mental hospital?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m pretty sure that must have been the case. There’s every sign in these crimes of mental instability. Even the papers have seen that. They refer to him as a maniac, as often as not.’

  ‘All right. And, of course, we’ve been working on those lines, certainly ever since WPC Syed’s murder. But, let me tell you, we’ve checked on our computers every name we have who’s ever been reported as mentally unstable. And not one of those men checked can be your Mr Man. Yes, there were five or six in and around Birchester who might have been him — not that they had any anti-police record in particular — but each of them had an alibi, double-checked, for at least one of the murders, if not more.’

  ‘Nevertheless I think it probable, at the very least, that Mr Man was kept in confinement for a long period up until recently. That is why the murders did not start until just recently. All that your searches of your computer records prove is that Mr Man has never come under police notice.’

  She was going to leave it at that. To heave herself out of her chair and get down to the press conference in good time. But then she remembered there was something she had undertaken to consult Dr Smellyfeet over.

  ‘Oh, there is one thing you could perhaps shed some light on. The Chief’s been wondering whether it would do any good to issue an appeal to your Mr Man, beg him to give himself up. Tell him he needs help, that sort of thing.’

  ‘An appeal?’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘No. No, I can’t see it. He’s a planner, as I said. He thinks ahead. He knows what he intends to do, and I very much doubt if any appeal would make him change his mind.’

  ‘Right. Well, I asked.’

  ‘No, I still believe the picture’s something like this: Mr Man was prevented by some circumstance or other from taking his revenge for the ill he believes Greater Birchester Police have done him up until, let’s say, a month before the attack on PC Titmuss. If he is obsessed by hatred centred on your Force, for good reason or bad, then it is psychologically impossible that he would go for years and not take action. It’s his pattern. He can’t escape it. Take it from me.’

  ‘I’ll have to. You’re the expert we’ve called in. But actually I can add something that bears out your —’ She checked herself from saying guess. ‘Your theory. We’ve also been carrying out a search of Greater Birchester Police records and even of the HOLMES computer for anyone who’s made a complaint about being mishandled by the Force in a case involving an eye or the eyes. All our more recent records have revealed nothing. The search is still going on. It’s a long and painstaking process. We may find something in the end. But it certainly indicates that there was a long gap in time between that injury, if there ever was one, and the first attack or the second eye for eye affair.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m glad you realize how useful psychological profiling can be. There are still plenty of muttonheads who think we’re as crazy as the people we’re called in to evaluate.’

  A fellow who’s yet to learn that flattery doesn’t always wash.

  ‘Make no mistake, I’d much rather be dealing with plain facts.’

  ‘Well, at least let me add one or two other pointers you should find useful. For instance, there’s no sexual element involved. I know most laymen think we do nothing but invent fine old sexual fantasies to justify our business. But here’s a plain fact for you.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Let me put it this way. Cadet Chatterton’s uniform trousers were still zipped up.’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Point taken.’

  And then the glimmer of a thought entered her head.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what did you make of the attitude Chatterton was lying in? That sort of thing is grist to your mill, isn’t it?’

  ‘The attitude? Oh, you mean his air of calmness. Well, I see that as being rather more grist to your mill
, Superintendent. One of your plain facts pointing to the lad having been drugged. Probably, as you suggested, with Rohypnol.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s significant that he had to be given a Roofie?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re driving at.’

  ‘That it wasn’t possible for your Mr Man to get hold of the lad by force.’

  ‘I don’t quite —’

  ‘Dr Scholl, isn’t it just possible that your Mr Man is Mr Woman? Think.’

  Chapter Seven

  After the press conference, at which Harriet had felt free to announce that Greater Birchester Police was using the famous Dr Peter Scholl to help with the hunt for the killer — she had not dared even hint at the possibility this was not a man but a woman — it took her most of the rest of the day to work her way through his massive Profile. She would read a page, realize the jargon had temporarily deceived her into thinking she had understood, go back and laboriously work out the obfuscated meaning.

  She had, too, to break off each time that a new report came in. Only to feel a new jab of disappointment when it was not of a sighting of Cadet Chatterton in any of the possible pubs or cafés where he might have drunk a beer or a cup of tea, or in the arcades where he might, like any other teenager, have been playing the machines. Eventually, late in the evening, she had to admit the inquiries were now unlikely to produce a result. Wherever the lad had gone after leaving Queen Street police station no one had particularly noticed him, strange as it seemed. So in all probability they would find no witness to him taking some drink into which his killer had slipped a daze-inducing Rohypnol tablet, get no description of the person who had been with him. The end of a once hopeful trail. Just as the less hopeful hunt for witnesses to WPC Syed’s death and for people in the suburb of Boreham who had been questioned by some stranger about Froggy Froggott’s habits had equally petered out into nothingness.

  She had had to abandon her wrestling with Dr Smellyfeet’s academic prose, too, when the Chief Constable rang to know what his tame expert’s reaction had been to his idea of issuing an appeal hoping to catch the killer in a lucid period. He had needed firm handling to be convinced that the idea had definitely been turned down.

  ‘Well, I suppose the man knows his business …’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m just reading the Profile he’s handed in. It shows every sign of his competence.’

  ‘And light? Does it throw light on who we’re looking for?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It does. A little. But I rather think it will be more useful to us after we’ve laid hands on —’ She checked just for an instant. ‘After we’ve laid hands on him, sir.’

  ‘And are you going to do that, Miss Martens? Are you going to lay hands on this madman before he lays his hands on yet another of my officers?’

  *

  Back at home, almost too weary to make herself a meal, she found she could not stop herself thinking about Dr Smellyfeet’s reaction to her proposal that they could be looking not for Mr Man but for a woman.

  ‘No,’ he had said. ‘No, Superintendent, you’re simply talking nonsense.’

  ‘Or is it just that I’m contradicting the whole basis of this great thick Profile?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  Dr Smellyfeet had had the grace then to look a little ashamed at the heat he had shown.

  ‘Well,’ he had said, ‘it’s not that altogether that riles me. I hope I can take criticism, even somewhat unjust criticism. But I really don’t think that’s why I believe you’re talking non— Why I feel you’re quite wrong. No, I’m basing my objection strictly on the psychological facts in the Profile.’

  ‘All right, but just consider some other facts, of a different sort. Number One, why did our killer have to drug a lad like Chatterton before attempting to cut off his hand? Answer, in my book, because she — she — is too physically weak to do anything else. Number Two: that raincoat left behind in the British Legion yard, a raincoat not unlike one I had myself until a couple of years ago. A raincoat which you said was not quite what you’d expect a hefty mechanic to wear. Just how big or small was it, Doctor? Tell me.’

  Dr Smellyfeet had bitten his lower lip at that.

  ‘It was smaller perhaps than I indicated.’

  ‘Right. A woman’s coat. And something else you pointed out to me: that young Chatterton’s fly was still done up. That not indicate anything to you?’

  ‘Well, of course you’ll find nothing in the Profile that absolutely contradicts your view that Mr— That the person we’re looking for is a woman. But all the same … Of course, there have been instances of female serial killers, but really they’re few and far between. No, Superintendent, you’ve made me think, but in the end I don’t accept your proposition.’

  ‘Let’s say not a proposition, just a suggestion.’

  ‘All right. Then I don’t think there’s really any merit in your suggestion. Or not until we learn something that seems to endorse it.’

  ‘Such as the fact that, if this person is motivated by deep-seated resentment at some injury received at the hands of the Greater Birchester Police, then it’s perhaps more likely it was a physically weak person rather than a physically strong one who received that injury?’

  ‘Yes. There may be something in that. But you can’t rule out a man, my Mr Man, as you constantly call him, having been injured by a member of your Force. Injured in the eye, probably. And feeling deep resentment afterwards.’

  ‘No, as I said, a suggestion only. But, taking it into account, do you still think there’d be no point in appealing to — shall we say to the person? — to come forward and get help?’

  Once more Dr Scholl had considered.

  ‘No,’ he had said after a little. ‘No, either man or woman, I don’t see anyone as obsessed as they are responding to any sort of appeal.’

  ‘Not even …’ She had been thinking as she spoke. ‘Not even to a direct challenge? Might not something like that bring whoever it is out into the open?’

  More thought. Much more.

  ‘I suppose it might. Yes, it might. But surely that’s not on the cards, is it? You’re thinking of a challenge from you as heading the hunt to— To him or her? To do what? To meet you face to face at some place where you’d both be on equal terms? Come on, of course Sir Michael would never agree to any such— Well, I should have to call it a stunt.’

  ‘Yes. In so far as I’d thought at all, that must have been what I had in mind, a stunt, if you like. One that, if it was successful, would cease to be a stunt and become — what? — a dangerous but justifiable stroke. But you’re correct. The Chief would never allow it. And quite right, too, really.’

  Over and over that conversation she went until eventually she made herself go to bed, and at last rigorously apply her sleep-inducing technique.

  *

  No change when she got to her desk next day. No night attack on any patrolling pair of officers. No hulking Mr Man coming at them sweeping his stolen cleaver towards their feet. Not even any suspicious individuals, of either sex, found lurking anywhere. The only new factor worth anything was the full report from Forensic on the raincoat from the British Legion yard. She felt a flicker of irony as she read the words a buttonless unisex garment, but there was nothing to point to its possible ownership. The blood was the same group as Cadet Chatterton’s. A DNA match would take longer to obtain. Two more sections of the trawl through police records for compensation claims that had been rejected. And nothing found.

  The 10 a.m. briefing with little to enthuse it. An 11 a.m. press conference, with enough questions about Dr Scholl to cover up the fact that she had almost nothing to say. And a mercifully silent, for once, Tim Patterson, crime reporter.

  Then, just after midday, toothy Marjorie burst in thrusting out in front of herself like some sort of every-which-way kitchen apron the first edition of the Evening Star.

  ‘What —’

  ‘Miss Martens. I think — Miss Martens, you ought to see this.’


  She managed to batter the paper down, more or less flat, on the desk. And the words of its thick black front-page headline were plain to see.

  AN EYE FOR AN EYE

  She read the heavy print text below at lightning speed. And it was plain, despite the slight misquotation of the big headline, that Tim Patterson, Evening Star Crime Reporter had acquired full details of the link between the Book of Exodus and the paper’s favourite headline Cop Killer. In a separate squared-off panel the whole of the passage was quoted, word for biblical word.

  Life for life

  Eye for eye

  Tooth for tooth

  Hand for hand

  Foot for foot

  Burning for burning

  Wound for wound

  Stripe for stripe

  (Canon Walter Smith writes, page 6)

  The full theological position. That should grab Evening Star readers all right.

  The phone buzzed.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The Chief Constable for you, Superintendent.’

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘You’ve seen the early Evening Star, Superintendent?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I understood we were keeping the connection with the Book of Exodus strictly secret. I thought it was your view, as it was mine, that it was important the killer should not realize we knew of that foul agenda of his.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That was my view. And it still is.’

  ‘Then you didn’t authorize the story in this rag?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So what happened, Miss Martens? This is a serious breach of discipline.’

  ‘It is, sir. And when I’ve got this killer safely locked away, I will investigate.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, well, I’m glad to find you’ve got your priorities right, Superintendent.’

  But who might it be all the same, the thought could not be kept out of her head. How many people had known about that list? Everyone at the daily briefings: they had had to know. So, despite all warnings, could it be one of them? Tim Patterson, notoriously, was free with drinks and flattery. Someone could have … But it seemed unlikely. For one thing they were all working night and day on the hunt. For another, they were dedicated if ever detectives were. The deaths of three colleagues, four now, had to be avenged. So no merry evenings with young Patterson.