The Blooding (5 page)

But no matter how cold and cramped it was in the pavilion or in The Rosings, they persevered, in the belief that it couldn't last long. Any one of them would've been shocked to think they'd be there at Christmas. They couldn't foresee that they'd be jogging around that cricket pitch for exercise on warm spring days, or that they'd be there long enough to watch the birth of daffodils in the hospital gardens, and stay to see them die.

The house-to-house teams did what the name implies--they wen
t d
oor to door, to every residence in the three villages, filling out a pro forma document on each male resident between the ages of thirteen and thirty-four. That age had been arbitrarily selected when it was learned from lab technicians that the sperm count in the semen sample was high. Which prompted ad-libs from the over-forty cops, such as: "Well, if I'm out of the age group, how is it I inflate the old woman every time I roll over in bed?"

Protests from middle-aged detectives notwithstanding, they investigated only younger men, and because the house-to-house teams went back five years, so did the hospital teams. It was a massive task to dig into hospital records and try to trace likely outpatients and resident patients who'd passed through Carlton Hayes over that period of time.

They had formed a hospital squad because of the number of sexual offenders, drug abusers and alcoholics treated at Carlton Hayes, not to mention the ordinary psychotics capable of rape and murder. Hospital spokesmen were cooperative after the police offered reassurances, but were understandably cautious about opening up confidential psychiatric files. The hospital would not give background information on patients but repeatedly assured police that the killer of Lynda Mann could not possibly have been one of the resident patients.

"Our wards are secure," the murder squad was told.

After which, Derek Pearce told his men, "About as secure as Woolworth's on Saturday afternoon. You'll just have to be resourceful and sort out as many loonies as you can."

When he was able to assemble a true picture of the monumental job they faced, Pearce said, "Bloody hell! There's more people comes through this place every day than in Euston Station at rush hour, and that doesn't even include the day center!"

There was a little brick outbuilding across the road from The Black Pad, on the grounds of The Woodlands, a large hospital residence made into a day center for people with mental problems not severe enough to be treated in the hospital. The inquiry teams discovered that teenagers would hang around the little brick building drinking beers or soda pop, eating sweets. They were able to prove that Lynda had been there once or twice with other teenagers. It was quite close to her house, closer yet to The Black Pad. They worked the lead exhaustively, but The Woodlands didn't seem to figure in the murder.

Many of the day center patients had no community ties and no family ties. They could be in Carlton Hayes for treatment one day and arrested the next day in Wales or Scotland. The inquiry teams were looking at te
n t
housand hospital patients, and many of them, according to the beleaguered detectives, were potential suspects.

Almost immediately phone calls began flooding the incident room, the most promising being about a "spiky-haired youth." The person on the phone claimed to have seen him at 8:00 P
. M
. at the junction of Forest Road and King Edward Avenue, just a two-minute walk from the wooded copse where they found the body of Lynda Mann. The witness had been driving down the dual carriageway when the spiky-haired youth and a female companion stepped onto the road, forcing him to slam on the brakes. "The girl was wearing jeans and a donkey jacket," he said. "The young man had a dyed punk hairdo. Amazing hair. Like a pot of geraniums cropped off flat."

Within a few days after the description was reported in the Leicester Mercury, the police received a tip on another important suspect seen running on Kipling Drive in Enderby on the night of the murder. He couldn't have been a jogger, the caller told them. He was wearing ordinary street clothes.

Along with the reports on the spiky-haired youth and the running youth was another message given priority by Supt. Courts. Three witnesses reported seeing a young couple in the bus shelter on Forest Road sometime after 8:00 P
. M
. on November 21st. The description of the girl closely matched that of Lynda Mann. It was a lead that Coutts believed corroborated the message about the spiky-haired youth in the street.

Locals told police there were no spiky-haired punkers in the villages, at least not one whose head resembled a flower pot full of cropped geraniums. Courts said there was, and that they'd find him.

Nurses at Carlton Hayes Hospital reported being too terrified to walk from the hospital to their quarters at Sylvia Reid House, just steps from The Black Pad.

"I knew something like this would happen!" a nurse told police. "We're scared to death!"

She wanted the car park in front of their building lit, and demanded that police arrest the prowlers and vandals who came by and tossed stones at their windows.

On the eighth day they got a call from a nurse who claimed to have heard a frightened scream on the night of the murder. "A female shouted, `No, no, nor " she told detectives.

"There's a strong possibility that this was Lynda," Supt. Baker said to reporters. He called the lead "promising."

But Derek Pearce didn't get excited about the scream heard by the hospital nurse. The scream was timed at 8:40 P
. M
. and he knew Lynda Mann had left her friend at 7:26. Despite theories about the girl at the bus stop he believed that nearsighted Lynda Mann had walked to her terrible fate immediately after leaving her friend's house. Straight into an ambush.

"And besides," Pearce confidentially told his men when no bosses were about, "in a madhouse, screaming might be the normal means of communication."

The running youth began to loom larger during the second week. He'd been seen by another witness who'd been walking his dog, a witness who claimed the youth looked as though he was being chased. Described as a teenager, five feet seven inches tall, with dark collar-length hair, this one may or may not have been the original runner. The police realized there could've been several young men running home on such a cold night.

They began tracing anyone at all who'd been in the general area that night. A teenager had been seen getting off the bus outside a pub in Narborough. The driver could say only that he'd picked the boy up in Huncote on the 599 bus at 6:38 P
. M
. Nevertheless, he was hunted for days.

At 7:10 P
. M
. on the night of the murder, a young woman had boarded a bus from the bus shelter on Forest Road. The driver wasn't certain, but thought she'd got off at Foxhunter Roundabout near Enderby. She was sought for weeks as a possible witness to verify the report on the young couple allegedly seen at the bus stop. Then there were two women, one in her early twenties, who'd boarded the 600 bus to Leicester. They too were hunted in vain.

After buses the murder squad started on scooters. A teenager had been seen pushing a motor scooter past the psychiatric hospital just after 8:30 P
. M
. on November 21st. He'd worn a long green parka, but he didn't seem to have a crash helmet so he might have been pushing it to a garage. They sought out all youths with motor scooters, whether or not the scooters functioned.

The Leicester Mercury was of great help, printing virtually whatever the police wished. And of course, each printing brought hundreds more calls, all assigned a priority, all given to various teams.

Nearly every day either Baker or Coutts was interviewed by reporters, and made public pleas: "I urge people to cast their minds back to the evening of November twenty-first. . . ."

Before the second week was finished, the murder squad had checked out hundreds of reports. One of them concerned two teenage boys who'd bought a copy of the Mercury from a newsagent's shop in Narborough on the afternoon the body was discovered.

"The lads studied the paper very intently," police were told. "They should be investigated."

They were.

Still another young man was sighted twice on the evening of the murder, once on Forest Road and another time walking toward the hospital. His priority was raised.

And at 7:30 P
. M
., just after Lynda was last seen alive, a man carrying a guitar case had been seen sitting across from the chemist's shop in Jubilee Crescent. He was added to the list.

By the third week, the police were making even more appeals to the public through the newspapers and television. They particularly wanted the running youth.

"Perhaps some young man arrived home out of bzeath after ten o'clock that night," Supt. Baker suggested to reporters, "and ran straight upstairs to avoid his parents."

There was a "crying youth." He'd been spotted near the murder scene five days after the crime, sitting at curbside opposite The Black Pad. A couple driving by had seen him and immediately telephoned the incident room. He was a fair-haired lad, about seventeen years of age, wearing a bomber jacket. A motorcycle was propped up by him. The crying youth was not found. Boys his age wouldn't come in to admit to such an unmanly display.

The newspaper pleas started paying off. A guitar player called the incident room to see if he was the one they were trying to trace. More running youths were reported, including a new one who'd run under the M 1 motorway bridge. And soon the murder squad began hearing about runners and punks from as far away as Birmingham. They were inundated with punks and runners. Given tips on punks who sounded like Johnny Rotten, they'd more often than not track down a youngster with dyed sideburns and an ear loop, who was just going through a phase.

On December 15th it was announced that lights would be installed on The Black Pad at a cost of PS5,500, and on the same day an unnamed relative of Lynda Mann made a personal appeal to readers of the Leicester Mercury. The headline read: PLEASE HELP TRACE THIS MANIAC.

During that third week in December the police were offered a "Tedd
y b
oy." A new witness had spotted a couple standing on a corner of Leicester Road in Narborough at about 8:20 P
. M
. on the night of the murder. When the driver slowed to allow them to cross, the youth said something to the driver, no doubt something cheeky, because the driver described the youth as being similar in appearance to the youthful rebels of an earlier generation.

Then there was yet another young man who'd bought a copy of the Mercury and "made suspicious inquiries as to whether or not there were details of the murder in it."

It was notable that almost all reported suspects--hundreds of them--were youths. Village people obviously saw the murderer of Lynda Mann as someone quite close to her age, and in fact, so did the murder squad commanders. All of them--the punks, Teddy boys, runners, criers, weepers, readers--all of them were teenagers.

That December a large number of officers volunteered to keep the incident room open during the holidays, even on Christmas Day.

Supt. David Baker took the occasion to say to the media, "Christmas is a time of year when people start reflecting. Lynda's family will certainly be looking back, and also the person responsible, and his family. We would urge anyone who notices anything manifestly different about family members in the Narborough area to come forward and inform us."

He then went on to suggest for the first time that Lynda's killer had been known to her: "They were probably acquaintances, and perhaps what started off as a kiss and cuddle developed into something that got out of hand, resulting in Lynda's death. But only the person responsible can tell us what actually happened."

The police were thus openly offering extenuating circumstances to the killer or to anyone who might be shielding him. There were no takers.

That Christmas, Kath Eastwood had some presents to give out, presents that had been bought by Lynda. Ever the enterprising, resourceful, and self-sufficient girl, Lynda had taken money she'd saved from baby-sitting and bought the presents well in advance of the holiday. Kath gave them out on Christmas Day.

By now the Eastwoods desperately sought what most victims of cruel and terrible crimes want: retribution and revenge. Eddie and Kath were always honest enough to admit the latter.

Eddie told reporters who rang him that Christmas Eve, "We live each day hour by hour, minute by minute. I just hope the man who killed our
Lynda is suffering as much as we are. I just hope he's thinking about the damage he has done to our family while he celebrates his Christmas."

Kath also gave a statement: "This man has got to be punished. And I hope anyone who knows him will think twice about harboring him. We just do not have an existence anymore and he is to blame."

The huge Edwardian brick buildings of the psychiatric hospital, with their gray slate roofs and eccentric campaniles, looked ugly to some, especially that massive brick chimney towering over the countryside. But Derek Pearce said, "I found the old place quite handsome, except it looked very eerie coming in at night."

The eeriness was no doubt heightened by thoughts of the poor wretches confined in those buildings. Perhaps even him, the one they hunted.