[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard Read online

  “Won’t it wait?” The question came in a man’s voice, harsh and abrupt, from a face scarcely visible in the shadows of the hall. But then the speaker came forward and put a hand gently on each of his wife’s shoulders, his own weariness being thrust aside in the need to protect his partner.

  “I’m afraid it won’t, Mr Woodgate. Not if we want to find out who did this awful thing. Time is important, you see.”

  Mary Woodgate nodded. This bright woman with the open face and the auburn hair was only a few years older than the daughter she had lost. Why Hannah? The selfish, inevitable question banged again at her heart. Why was this girl standing here so pretty and so healthy when poor Hannah lay dead and cold on a slab? She said, “You’d best come in.”

  She led them into a room where television pictures danced bright and meaningless without their sound accompaniment.

  There were two sofas and two armchairs, a table with unread papers, and scattered tea cups which Brian Woodgate hastily collected and removed, as though the preservation of domestic tidiness was part of the therapy of recovery. He came and sat upright beside his wife on the sofa opposite the two detectives, his hand stealing shyly across to rest on top of his wife’s wrist. He looked as if he thought these unique circumstances allowed a contact he didn’t usually permit himself in public.

  “She was a good girl, our Hannah,” said Mary Woodgate, pronouncing the words with great care, as if elocution might bring back her daughter and end the nightmare which was turning into reality.

  They were always good girls, thought Lucy. Usually events proved them to be more than usually flawed, but this seemed a close and caring family, and perhaps this time the phrase might be justified. Curiously enough, that notion didn’t cheer her: bad girls usually had bad contacts, and their killings were usually easier to solve. She said softly to the mother who was still in shock, “I’m sure she was, love. And we need to get the man who did this. I know it can’t help Hannah now, but it might save other girls from dying as she did.”

  Brian Woodgate said unexpectedly, “We didn’t realise she hadn’t come home until this morning. I identified her, you know. She looked lovely in that cold place. Almost...almost as though she was just asleep.” His voice broke on the thought; his wife clasped the hand he had put on her wrist in both of hers.

  Lucy tried to be brisk, lest they should descend again into their grief. “Yes. She was a very good-looking girl, was Hannah.” She made herself use the name for the first time, trying not to look at the photograph of the laughing girl with her hair flying in the summer breeze which stood on the sideboard behind her parents.

  Mary Woodgate said, as abruptly as if she were shutting a book, “And now she’s gone. Who would want to do it, Sergeant...I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name, love.”

  “It’s Lucy. And this is Brendan.”

  Mary Woodgate looked at the DC as if she was seeing him for the first time. “That’s an Irish name.”

  “Yes. And I couldn’t have a more Irish second name than Murphy, could I? Even though I’ve lived all my life in Lancashire. But my father’s Irish, you see. And my mother’s family. I think I’ve seen you and the family at church on a Sunday, haven’t I, Mrs Woodgate?”

  She looked full into his face then, noting the fresh complexion, the large brown eyes, the slightly unruly brown hair. Why couldn’t Hannah have fallen for someone like this handsome lad, in her own town? She would surely have been safe with a policeman. She said, “That would be at Saint Alban’s, wouldn’t it? Not that the church matters so much, nowadays. We’re all Christians, they say, and that’s how it should be.”

  Brendan Murphy said gently, “It was at Saint Alban’s, yes. Mrs Woodgate, we need you to tell us about all the people Hannah knew. That’s the way we work, you see, when something like this happens.”

  “Yes, I can see you’d need to know that. And poor Hannah can’t tell you herself, can she?” Then the shock-frozen face melted suddenly into alarm. “But no one she knew would have killed her. Not our Hannah.”

  Brendan said, “Perhaps not. Probably not. But that’s the way we work, you see. The way we have to work. Usually the victim in a case like this has some knowledge of the killer, even if they weren’t very close to each other.”

  It was true enough, but Lucy Blake wondered even as he said the words whether this might be the exception. For a young man, Brendan was surprisingly good in this situation. She let him handle the questioning as they went carefully through the list of boys the dead girl had known. Hannah had spent eighteen years in the town before she went off to university, had passed through seven years in the local comprehensive school, so there were a good many names, all of which would in due course need to be laboriously checked out.

  Brian Woodgate eventually brought in the three younger children, and they added half-a-dozen names that their parents had either forgotten or been unaware of. Lucy noted these within the list as a priority: often it was the men whom a daughter had concealed from her parents who were the best leads in a criminal investigation.

  The two boys of twelve and thirteen had been close to their elder sister, who had baby-sat them many times and guided them towards adolescence. They were shocked by their grief into an uncharacteristic silence, and could contribute little. It was sixteen-year-old Kath who responded when they touched upon the delicate matter of whether anyone might have had a grievance against this shining dead girl. “Jason,” she said. “Jason Wright. Hannah went out with him for over a year when they were in the sixth form. She ended it before she went off to university, but Jason wouldn’t accept it. He came round after her every time she was home. And when he found she’d got herself a new boyfriend at the university, he was really upset.”

  They took his address, and the name of the university boyfriend as well. This lad down in Surrey would need to be checked out, as would a whole list of university acquaintances, if local enquiries did not produce something quickly. The local boyfriend who had been ditched was promising, but only if this was a one-off killing, rather than one of a series of apparently motiveless murders by this man who was no doubt now glorying in his billing as “the Lancashire Leopard”.

  They made their clumsy goodbyes, assuring the family that they would be in touch as soon as they had any news — giving them the impression, Lucy was sure, that a solution was just around the corner, that a killing like this was well within the compass of CID competence. Yet she felt in her heart that this pointless death was going to be difficult to solve. A phrase came back to her from her A-level studies a decade earlier: “motiveless malevolence”. That was Iago in Othello, wasn’t it? Anyway, it was malevolence without motive that modern police forces found most difficult to pin down, however sophisticated their equipment, however extensive their resources.

  Brian Woodgate followed them into the hall. He shut the door carefully behind him before he said, “She looked so peaceful when they showed her to me. Was she — you know...?”

  “Hannah wasn’t raped, Mr Woodgate. We’ll need the post-mortem findings to be absolutely certain, but as far as we could see there was no sign of any sexual interference.” Lucy Blake was happy to reassure him, to offer that tiny consolation to this shattered family. And as a woman, she rejoiced that the girl had not suffered this final violation. But the detective in her knew that it would have been a help to the investigation. There would now be no traces of semen, no DNA to test against a suspect to clinch an early arrest.

  Brendan Murphy was shutting the gate when the youngest boy, twelve-year-old Tim, came trotting round the side of the house. His face ran with fresh tears; he was still a child in his grief, without the adult defences of simulation and concealment. He stopped abruptly halfway down the path, as if he could not find words for what he had run here so urgently to say.

  Then he blurted out to them, “Get the man who killed our Hannah! Get him quickly, please!” and disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived.

  Four

  Monday, Jan
uary 7th

  At midday, Superintendent Tucker held the media conference which Peach had forecast.

  Tucker was at his best in such exercises. He put on his immaculately pressed uniform — he might be CID, but the punters preferred the reassurance of a uniform in the TV pictures — and presented the caring face of the police to the public.

  He knew little more about the killing than Peach had given him, but he was urbane and confident. That is what the public wanted to see. The hardened journalists might see through him, might read between the lines and see how little was there, but Tucker had the air of a patient father calming overexcited children. All would be well, his bearing told them, if they would just calm down and allow the police machine to operate smoothly.

  He had established a cordial relationship with Sally Etherington, the young television interviewer from Granada, in her days with Radio Lancashire, and he exploited that relationship now. He farmed what she had devised as penetrating questions expertly, with a smile which stayed just on the right side of condescension. His hair was now nearly white, but still plentiful; framing his regular, experienced features, it helped to give his statements an appropriate gravitas.

  “Would you say that you are near to an arrest, Superintendent Tucker?”

  “No. I want to be perfectly honest with you about that. But with a murder of this kind, one would not expect an immediate arrest.”

  “Do you have a list of suspects?”

  “Indeed we do. We should be failing in our duty if we did not. Even as I speak to you now, my experienced team of detectives are at work on narrowing the field. The public have a glamorous view of detection — partly as a result of the fictional series they see on television, I’m afraid — but much police work depends on the repetitive, even boring routine of elimination. It is often tedious work for the many officers involved, but it produces results. And results are what we policemen live by.” He gave his interviewer and the camera his most dazzling smile. Without that cynical fellow Peach to puncture his pronouncements, he could be highly effective, he thought to himself.

  “Would you care to say whether you have anyone helping police with their enquiries yet?”

  The press’s flash bulbs went off as he weighed his reply with a grave face. Then he afforded them his most avuncular smile. “That phrase has acquired a particular overtone through its use in the media, you know. It has often been taken to mean that we have arrested and are interrogating a prime suspect in a case. But it should really mean just what it says. Many people are at present helping us with our enquiries. Indeed, I may say here that the response from the Brunton public has been most encouraging. The great mass of people around here are respectable, law-abiding folk. They are as anxious as we are that the man who did this dreadful thing should be put where he can do no further harm.”

  It was the bromide that he had prepared in his office before he went out to face the cameras and the flash-bulbs, knowing that there would be an opportunity for it. But he delivered it well, and his ringing sincerity brought nodding agreement from the Granada interviewer, who knew as well as he did that the public always enjoyed a compliment. People lay back like contented cats to have their bellies rubbed: it was a well-known television axiom.

  The yawns of the cynical hacks in front of them were fortunately not on camera. It was a good note on which to wind down a television item. Sally Etherington offered him her last, inevitable query. “You say we should not expect an immediate arrest, Superintendent Tucker. Can you give us any indication of how quickly you hope to solve this crime?”

  The CID chief leaned forward earnestly. “I won’t attempt to deceive you, Sally. This is far too serious a matter for any fudging. So I won’t pretend that we know who did this before we do. With many murders, we can arrest someone within hours, and we do. These are not the cases which get heavy coverage from the media, so that our successes tend to pass people by.” He allowed himself a small, philosophical smile at the unfairness of the world. “Other killings, such as this one, are more complex. In such cases, murder investigations are not sprints, but marathons. But I venture to say, successful marathons, in our case.” Tucker jutted his determined chin at the camera for its last shot.

  He relaxed a little as the television machinery ceased to whirr. He was less at home with the rough and tumble of journalistic exchange, but he knew that what most people, including his superiors, would see was the television slot. That had gone well, and the crime reporters could only print what he gave them. As the flash bulbs flickered again, he gave them his professional smile, friendly but concerned; approachable, yet never letting people forget that crime was a serious business. His face would come out well in the evening papers: he had practised this smile for too long for it to let him down now.

  The old hands in front of him tried to establish how little the police knew by concentrating upon the Woodgate family and their loss. Tucker turned their queries aside smoothly with a plea that the privacy of grief should be respected. “We have had to station a constable outside the house around the clock to make sure that the Woodgates are not pestered with questions about their daughter and their feelings. I understand that you have a job to do, but it must be done without harassing a grieving family. Mr and Mrs Woodgate and their three younger children must be allowed to take up the reins of life as best they can, without press interference. The officers who have been ensuring their privacy could have been employed in the hunt for Hannah’s killer, had they not been needed to protect her family. That is quite a thought, is it not?”

  T.B. Tucker was rather proud of the way that came out. Pity it hadn’t been in the television interview, but he did see the Radio Lancashire microphone in front of him. They were always so short of news material that it was sure to be quoted there, and with any luck transferred to the national radio bulletins. An attack on the press was always a safe tactic. With a bit of luck, it would even win him approval from his own CID team.

  It was left to Alf Houldsworth, the one-eyed reporter from the local Evening Dispatch, to ask the question Tucker had expected would come earlier. “Superintendent, is it your opinion that this crime is another in the series committed by the man who has come to be called ‘the Lancashire Leopard’?”

  A little buzz of excitement ran through the room, followed by sighs of dismay as Tucker said, “I’m afraid it’s too early for us to say. We are keeping an open mind on the matter.”

  Houldsworth did not sit down after his question as the convention demanded. Instead, he smiled a crooked smile and persisted, “Even from my visually disadvantaged position, that looks like an evasion, Mr Tucker. It is now thirty-six hours since this murder. Time, surely, for you to have considered the modus operandi of the killer. You must have formed an opinion on this matter.”

  Houldsworth, a popular man among his peers because of his long experience and his formidable capacity for alcohol, got a titter of amusement on his joke about his eye and a mutter of agreement for his conclusion. Tucker, who hadn’t studied the evidence and did not easily form an opinion, decided he must give a little more. “It is possible that Hannah Woodgate is not this man’s first victim — I think I can say that we are confident that our killer is a man, in this case. We have an open mind on whether he has killed before.”

  A young reporter from one of the nationals said with what was almost a sneer, “Then surely the matter should be passed from Brunton CID to the Serious Crime Squad, without further delay.”

  Tucker smiled. How foolish of this callow youth to play into his hands on a matter of police procedure. “I’m afraid you are quite wrong there. We shall remain in charge of this case whether it proves to be an isolated murder or one of a series. The Serious Crime Squad will offer us help as and when it is needed. I am in charge of this case and will remain so.”

  He hesitated, then decided that a mention of the egregious Peach was inevitable if he was to convey his own masterful overview of the case. “I have already asked Detective Inspector Pea
ch to take charge of the day-to-day conduct of the case for me. Should it prove necessary, he will be supplemented by resources and personnel from the Serious Crime Squad. What I can tell you is that we are already exchanging information on this and previous crimes with the Serious Crime Squad.”

  Intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, thought Alf Houldsworth. Gladstone, that was; well, the Grand Old Man had nothing on this twat, except a few brains and a lot of integrity. As the audience filed out at the end of the media conference, it was Houldsworth who interpreted the rhetoric for the benefit of those less familiar with Thomas Bulstrode Tucker. “If old Droopy-Drawers is talking to the Serious Crime Squad, that’s it,” he said. “We can start planning headlines about the Lancashire Leopard pouncing on another innocent victim.”

  *

  Alf Houldsworth was right, of course.

  At the beginning of November, a twenty-six-year-old married primary-school teacher in Preston had been strangled at around midnight when walking home from visiting her sick mother on the edge of the town. On the twelfth of December, a woman of forty-one had been killed by the same method on the outskirts of Clitheroe, as she walked home from her local public house. There was no sign of sexual assault in either case.

  Both women had been wearing trousers at the times of their deaths and there was no disturbance of their clothing. Neither woman had had sexual intercourse in the hours before her death. The pattern and the method of killing was the same as in the death of Hannah Woodgate, and the killings had so far proved equally motiveless.

  Peach got his Brunton CID team together and gave his instructions. “This is almost certainly the third in a series of killings. That doesn’t mean we ignore our normal procedures for a death like this. We treat this initially just as if it were a one-off. That means we turn over the local dung-heap and see what we can find. She was at the dance at King George’s Hall on Saturday night. The first thing to find out is whether anyone followed her home from there. That’s a job for DCs Murphy and Pickard.”