The Element Of Death. Steve Wilson

Besides, I’m…not at work at the moment.”

      “I know all about your situation, Watson, and I know you’re not a front-line officer any more. Normally, I’d leave you geek-guys to your computers and puzzles, but this isn’t normally. You’ve been named, specifically. There was a message, scrawled on the wall in the victim’s blood, and it was for ‘Holmes’ lapdog’. Get down here. Now.”

      I shuddered. It was beginning. “Okay, I’ll get straight over. It’ll be good to get out of here. I know that might sound odd, considering what you just said, but we’ve all been expecting something like this and nothing is worse than sitting around waiting for it to happen.” I was about to put the phone down, when I added, “Hadn’t you better tell me where ‘here’ is? I know I’m a technical guru, but that doesn’t make me a mind-reader.”

      He gave me the address and I jotted it down. The murder had occurred in the Sherwood district of Fulwood, one of the more select areas of Preston, and they were waiting for me to get there.

      Despite the urgency, there were things I had to do before I could leave. I was a bit like Rupert Penry-Jones’ character in television’s Whitechapel, who was sometimes unable to function as a result of his neat-freak OCD tendencies. I wasn’t as bad as he was, but I couldn’t leave without tidying up. I picked up the novel I had been reading, Conan Doyle’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and removed the bookmark; I would have to finish The Adventure of the Dancing Men another day. I placed it on its shelf in the ceiling-high bookcase, and also put Christie’s The ABC Murders back in its correct place, in between 4:50 from Paddington and The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding. Finally, I returned The Da Vinci Code to sit alongside Brown’s other Robert Langdon novels. Then, and only then, did I set off for the car. As I headed towards it I let my mind wander over the events of the last couple of weeks; I had thought about them a lot during those fourteen days.

      *

      Gregory’s escape had been headline news for most of the past fortnight. The public were aghast at the fact that such a notorious serial killer could be on the loose again, and debating continued long into the night in parliament as the coalition government tried in vain to justify their policy on private security firms being given responsibility for the country’s most evil criminals.

      At a local level, Lancashire was on high alert, and all police leave was cancelled while the local constabulary set about house-to-house searches in a bid to catch him before he began a new killing spree. Everybody remembered the chilling words that he uttered from the witness box during his trial: You haven’t heard the last of me. I would have been happy if I’d finished them all, but you stopped me before the final one. When I return, I will start again, and it will be a longer sequence next time. Bear that in mind, and tell Holmes’ lapdog that I’ll arrange something special, just for him.

      Holmes’ lapdog. That was what he had derisively called me throughout the trial. He maintained that his capture owed nothing to good policing methods and everything to a blundering patrolman who struck lucky. The man on the beat will be a deadbeat by the time I’m through with him was one of his more printable statements.

      The force took the threat seriously enough so that as soon as news of his escape hit, they despatched a patrol to keep watch on my home; in these days of cutbacks, that was a big investment to make. Even so, had Gregory headed straight for my place once he was out, by the time the patrol was authorised and mobilised it would have been too late for them to stop him.

      I remembered the exact moment I heard about his escape with crystal clarity. It was October eighteenth at three-fifteen in the afternoon. It was the same day I found out what was really happening with Monika and I had been sent to ‘work’ at home following the incident at the station. But I didn’t want to think about that right now. Instead, I let my thoughts wander to the beginning, and the time that I thwarted Morgan Gregory.

      *

      I was a policeman on the beat in those days, and had been for several years. As I was in my late twenties, I knew I should really be advancing in my career, but I enjoyed my job, and consequently didn’t push myself forward as much as I should have done.

      Much of what I did would come under the heading of community policing — something that is sadly missing now with all of the cuts that have taken place — although there were times when it could be a harrowing role. The Gregory case had put us all on edge. Nobody knew anything about him — even his name was unknown then — and that added to the air of menace surrounding the killings. He had chosen his victims according to some bizarre ritual so that each killing had a link to the old nursery rhyme. You know, One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told. His first killing had taken place at a funeral home, the next at a maternity unit.

      The whole country was nervously waiting for him to strike again, even though he had confined his first six murders to the North of England. Everybody was desperately trying to convince themselves that they were safe because they had nothing to do with the final line of the rhyme, the secret never to be told; but everybody had secrets, so nobody was safe.

      I was on patrol in Garstang and had been called to deal with a domestic disturbance. The woman, Beverley Evans, had thrown her boyfriend out after she had found out he had been cheating on her and the man hadn’t taken too kindly to it, hence the reason I had been sent for. I made it abundantly clear to the man that he was no longer welcome in her home, and returned to Ms Evans’ address to let her know that we had taken the appropriate action. As I was about to leave, I saw a box full of lingerie on a chair in the front room, and she saw me looking at it.

      “It isn’t what you’re thinking,” she said.

      “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

      “I know. Believe, me, I know.”

      “Enlighten me, then, Ms Evans.”

      “You’re thinking, ‘Where have they come from?’ and ‘What sort of establishment is this woman running?’ Admit it.”

      “I’ll admit to being curious as to what they are doing here. Since you’ve brought the subject up, what are they doing there?”

      “They’re samples from work. I’m a bra specialist — I work for Seductively Secret as a demonstrator. I’ve a party tonight, that’s why I’ve all these,” she said, flinging her arms wide to show another two boxes on the other side of the room.

      “Well, each to their own. I’ll say goodnight, Ms…” And then it hit me. The entire force had been puzzling over where the killer the tabloids had nicknamed The Magpie Murderer would strike next. It had been four weeks since his previous killing, and, as they had all taken place at four-weekly intervals, we expected that the final one would occur some time during that day. We just had no idea where, that was the problem. All we had to go on was that the victim would somehow be linked to a secret.

      “About this party. Is it something your company organised?”

      “After an invite, are you? Sorry, men aren’t allowed in. We don’t do those sorts of functions.”

      “No, that isn’t it at all. This is an official enquiry.”

      “Oh,” she replied, clearly taken aback. “No, this is something I’ve organised. We do freelance work as well as what the company arranges for us. This job came from…” She paused a while as she sorted through her bag, looking for her diary. “Here it is, look. Mr Pica rang me four weeks ago. He was very specific about it being tonight, and at exactly twenty past eight. I had to decide whether or not to rearrange a couple of things to accommodate. But, as you can see from the stock, he’s bringing hundreds of women along to the warehouse and I could make more money tonight than I normally do in a month, so it was an easy decision to make.”

      I thought for a moment before replying. Gregory’s obsession with detail, especially as far as timings were concerned, was something that I was acutely aware of, having similar compulsions myself.