A Dreadful Past (14 page)

‘If they were transitory at the time for one reason or another, and if not students then perhaps four soldiers from the military base, that is going to make our job all the more difficult to the point of being impossible but …' Hennessey added, ‘… if they were local, and the crimes do suggest an element of local knowledge, and if they still are local, then I think we are in with a chance. So, that appetite you mention, Somerled, keep it keen. Let's all develop that self-same attitude. Let's go hunting. So what's for action?'

‘We have a possible source for the Wedgwood vase,' Yellich sat forward in his chair, ‘in the form of one Janice Moore, who is reportedly at the moment a guest of Her Majesty. The felon who sold the vase to the antiques dealer reports that Janice Moore gave it to him in lieu of a debt.'

‘She's in prison, you say?' Hennessey confirmed.

‘Yes, sir. I don't know which one at the moment. She'll be easy to trace though if she is in custody,' Yellich advised.

‘OK.' Hennessey tapped his desk top with his fingertips. ‘OK, she's not going anywhere. So stay in the present pairs: Somerled and Reginald and Carmen and Thompson. Divide up the victims of the non-fatal attacks; track down as many as you can. Some may not still be with us; others may have moved to pastures new but some will hopefully, hopefully, still be alive and still in York. Interview as many as you can, see if any further memories of their ordeal have surfaced in the last twenty years – you all know the drill. Obtain as much detail as you can. For myself … I will pay a call on someone who might provide psychological insight into the gang of four … if they exist. We have used this lady before and she has been very useful. Very useful indeed.'

‘It is as I thought,' the first man spoke softly into the phone, ‘just petty stuff. He can't keep out of trouble. But he's known and we have an address.'

‘Good. So when do we pay a call on him?' the second man asked.

‘As soon as possible. How does this evening suit?' The first man leaned against the side of the telephone kiosk.

‘Suits fine,' the second man replied. ‘As you say, we must do this ASAP.'

‘He's local,' the first man advised. ‘Can you get here by nine p.m.?'

‘Yes. Where do we meet?' The second man hunched over the phone. ‘We must avoid CCTV. We must be very careful there.'

‘Yes. Agreed. Why not meet at the end of his street? He lives in Holgate, on Windmill Rise. We'll meet there, nine p.m. this evening, at the corner of Poppleton Road.' The first man gently replaced the receiver and walked out of the telephone box.

It was Thursday, 13.10 hours.

In which a man becomes a woman, a name is mentioned and Carmen Pharoah and Somerled Yellich are severally at home to the most charitable reader.

‘I
think your assumptions are more than reasonable, Chief Inspector, much more than reasonable.' Kamy Joseph was a dark-skinned, thin-faced, slender woman with shoulder-length jet-black hair. She sat in a confident upright posture behind her desk. Behind her, in turn, on the wall of her office was a tourist poster of her native Brunei in Indonesia. Her office window looked out on to the angular buildings and landscaped lakes that made up the campus of the University of York. ‘As you say,' she continued, ‘an individual psychopath grows from demonstrating cruelty to animals as a child to committing violent but non-fatal attacks, then to murder and then “matures” before he or she is caught and then commits no further offences. Two people have found each other and have gone on to become a murdering duo like Hindley and Brady and also like Duffy and Mulcahy. There are others and so there is no reason at all why four persons could not have found each other in the same way, recognized kindred spirits in each other once their paths crossed; each possessed a love of violence against the person, each loved the thrill of getting away with the crime … and each knew the thirst for more of the same. No reason at all. Absolutely no reason at all. They started with a minor attack, knocking someone over the head and running away, then graduated on to murder and began resonating with the violence, then stopped murdering when they “matured” as a group, when the urge to kill left them. I think that is indeed the most likely explanation as to why they suddenly stopped murdering people. I also think you're right about the frequency of the murders being indicative of the same gang perpetrating the attacks. In fact, you could probably go back further than the twelve months prior to the first murder and also look for other attacks in neighbouring regions … I mean, they seem to have access to a motor vehicle so they could have travelled, widely so.'

‘So they just “grew up”,' Hennessey replied as his eye was caught by a heron gliding gracefully over the surface of the lake, ‘or “matured”.'

‘Yes, as I said, that is, I believe, to be the most likely explanation. The murder of the family was the most violent of the murders, would you say?' Kamy Joseph sought clarification.

‘Yes,' Hennessey confirmed, ‘it was the only multiple murder and probably the most violent, though the murder of the dog walker was the cruellest.'

‘Again, that is in keeping with observed patterns,' Kamy Joseph commented. ‘The final murder is very often the most extreme, causing the psychopath to mature; quite rapidly – almost overnight – he or she seems then to feel enough is enough. So you say that you think you are looking for a gang of four?'

‘Yes,' Hennessey nodded his head, ‘two tall ones and two small ones.'

‘Did they divide?' Kamy Joseph asked.

‘Yes,' Hennessey smiled and nodded his head, ‘yes, they did, according to the one witness who reports a gang of four. The two tall ones formed a duo and the two short ones formed a duo.'

‘Yes, that accords with our knowledge of small groups.' Kamy Joseph spoke, so Hennessey noted, with perfect received pronunciation. ‘Two peers will quarrel … four will divide into two groups of two but three equals will remain cohesive. A group of three is the strongest of all human bonds.'

‘They were reported to have walked from the house with the two tall ones in the lead,' Hennessey added.

‘Yes, again, that does not surprise me,' Kamy Joseph offered. She was, thought Hennessey, a woman in her mid-to late thirties. ‘I can just see the two larger ones knocking the victim to the ground and the two smaller ones wading in with their boots once the victim is on the deck. Probably the two smaller ones had been bullied or had a chip on their shoulder about some perceived injustice and allied themselves to the taller men who provided victims for them, and that means that you are not, repeat not, looking for four people who were here at our university twenty years ago, nor a team of soldiers in York for a limited period during military posting.'

‘No?' Hennessey smiled. ‘I am encouraged.'

‘Yes, you may be encouraged to believe that the perpetrators were and are still local.' Kamy Joseph returned the smile. ‘University students don't have chips on their shoulders; they have benefited from education, they feel fulfilled, they have a sense of future, they have plans and know they are going somewhere in life. They can be reckless and short-sighted but they would not commit pre-meditated crimes of this nature. Nor, I think, would servicemen.'

‘Yes,' Hennessey's eyes dilated, ‘that makes sense. Do you think that they will still be together?'

‘No.' Kamy Joseph shook her head vigorously. ‘No … definitely not. Once they each matured their gang would have fragmented. They might still be able to contact each other but they wouldn't socialize; they would want to put distance between each other, and between them and their crimes.'

‘Would they have gone on to commit further offences?' Hennessey scratched an itch on the back of his left hand. ‘Even of a less violent nature?'

‘Again … highly unlikely,' Kamy Joseph, PhD Forensic Psychologist by the nameplate on her desktop, smiled her reply. ‘If any did reoffend it would be petty crime only. More likely they would have become model citizens, like I said, very keen on putting it all behind them.'

‘She just never recovered. She never recovered.' The woman sat in the armchair in her living room in front of an empty fire grate. ‘I tell you something left her after she was attacked like that. She was just never the same. I mean, even now, I can't imagine why anyone would want to attack a sixty-eight-year-old woman. Why would anyone want to do that? It was so senseless. York was her home. She had never lived anywhere else, she felt safe here. She said the attack made her feel like she had been betrayed – she said as much. She might have made a better recovery if she had been attacked when she was on holiday somewhere or in another town but after the attack she always said that she couldn't trust this town any more. She was my mother, there was just me and her; my father deserted her before I was born. So it was only ever me and her. She had a sudden heart attack about three years after the attack. Like I said, she just never recovered.'

‘Fatal?' Carmen Pharoah asked, sitting in the opposite chair.

‘Yes. Fatal.' The woman looked vacantly up at the ceiling. ‘I came home from work and found her lying on the kitchen floor. In those three years after the attack she would never leave our little house except unless she was in company and that usually meant myself, and even then she would only go as far as to the shops at the end of the street. Those thugs killed her; it was as if they had succeeded in battering her to death when they attacked her. For three years she lived a non-life then she died of a cardiac arrest.'

‘Thugs?' Thompson Ventnor glanced round the room, reading it as cluttered but also found it to be age and social class appropriate. He thought the woman, Miss Hindmarsh, to be in her late forties. If her mother was attacked twenty years ago at the age of sixty-eight then, he reasoned, Miss Sandra Hindmarsh must have been a very late baby. ‘More than one person?'

‘Yes,' Sandra Hindmarsh nodded, ‘she always said that she heard “them” running away before she lost consciousness. She heard their footsteps … so definitely more than one person, then she heard a car start and drive away.'

‘A car?' Carmen Pharoah also glanced round the room in the small house in Dringhouses. Like Ventnor, she found it to be all quite normal, all as she would expect it to be.

‘Yes, some form of motor vehicle.' Miss Hindmarsh was thin of face, frail of build and had very thin, attenuated legs. ‘But we told the police all this at the time. Why is there a renewed interest in her attack?'

‘We never close a case,' Carmen Pharoah explained. ‘Not until it's solved, but I can tell you that there might have been a significant development which has prompted us to take a fresh look at the attack on your late mother. We really can't say any more than that. Can I ask if your mother remembered anything else about the attack which she didn't tell the police at the time? Anything that occurred to her, perhaps a matter of weeks or months after she was attacked?'

‘Probably. There probably was, in fact,' Sandra Hindmarsh replied. ‘She once told me that a few months after the attack she was sure that she remembered one of them saying, “It gets better each time you do it”. That was something she didn't tell the police because she only remembered it six months or so after she was attacked.'

‘It gets better each time you do it?' Ventnor held his pen poised over his notepad.

‘Suggesting that there were earlier attacks on other victims?' Carmen Pharoah looked at Miss Hindmarsh and then glanced at Ventnor. ‘That is extremely interesting because we think we can link the attack on your mother to other incidents of a similar nature, but we thought that the attack on your mother was the first of the other incidents.'

‘That's interesting, as you say.' Miss Hindmarsh had a high-pitched voice.

‘It seems we didn't go back far enough,' Ventnor commented.

‘Indeed.' Carmen Pharoah felt uncomfortable. ‘We'll go back further.'

‘You know, my mother always said after the attack,' Sandra Hindmarsh continued, ‘“That's what you get for helping someone”. Three years later she had her heart attack.'

‘What did she mean by that?' Carmen Pharoah asked. ‘Do you know?'

‘Well, as she told the police at the time, she was approached by a young woman who asked for directions. The girl seemed a bit slow on the uptake, my mother said, a bit dopey, so Mother offered to help, saying she would show the girl the way where the dopey girl wanted to go. It wasn't much out of Mother's way and, like I said, Mother always felt safe in York, even at night.' Miss Hindmarsh sat upright in her chair. ‘But once they had rounded a corner she was knocked to the ground, then she was kicked and punched. Mother didn't know whether the girl was part of the gang or not. She said the girl seemed a bit dim-witted so she might have run away in fear once the attack started, but she also wondered if that girl might not have been dim-witted at all. She might have been leading her into a trap by pretending to be simple and needy, but Mother always said it's what you get for helping people.'

‘Like grandmother, like daughter, like granddaughter, one after the other. So, all right, I am not proud of what I do for a living and I am really sorry my own daughter has gone the same way. I feel bad about that. I always hoped that it wouldn't happen to my daughter.' Veronica Blackman pulled hard on the cigarette and flicked the ash into a large ashtray which had evidently been stolen from a pub in the days when smoking in pubs was allowed. Veronica Blackman had, thought Webster, a flabby face. He noted her unkempt black hair and he saw how she sat in the armchair of her council flat with her ankles and knees apart, covered in an ill-fitting black woollen dress. ‘Me … I had a one-month-old baby girl to look after, no man, no money, no family … My own mother was in gaol at the time. The dole didn't go anywhere – not once the bills were paid. There was nowhere else to go but the street, especially for a girl like me who was always told “you're born for the street”, by your own mother. “Leave school and get on to the street and start earning”, that's what she would say.'