Gallows View (13 page)

“You’re still doing my job.”

“Well, dammit,” Jenny said, “they’re so close. What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. Something about a peeper not being the murdering kind.”

Jenny laughed. “Primary-school psychology? You won’t get that from me. I’ve told you it’s unlikely and I’ve given you one good reason. If he got the release he needed from watching Carol Ellis, I doubt that he’d be emotionally capable of murder immediately afterwards.”

“That’s what I said to the superintendent.”

“Well, why the bloody hell . . . .” Jenny started, and then began to laugh. “We really are doing each other’s jobs, aren’t we? But seriously, Alan, I say it’s unlikely but it’s not impossible.”

“Would he go to her to confess, perhaps?”

Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not to an old woman. Doesn’t fit at all. Offhand, I’d say you’re looking for a bald, shortsighted, middle-aged man wearing a plastic mac, bicycle-clips and galoshes.”

“If only.”

“Stereotypes do exist, you know.”

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dorothy Wycombe.”

“Ah,” Jenny said. “Had a visit, have you?”

“This morning.”

“Ah, yes. Dorothy’s quite a formidable opponent, don’t you think? I find her a bit hard to take, myself.”

“I thought you two were friends.”

“Acquaintances. We’ve worked together on one or two projects,
that’s all. We don’t really have a lot in common, but Dorothy is energetic and very good at her job.”

“WEEF?”

“Yes, WEEF. Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”

Banks nodded.

“Anyway,” Jenny went on, “Dorothy is an intelligent woman, but she lets her dogma get in the way of her thinking. What was it all about, if it’s not private?”

“It is a bit delicate,” Banks told her, then gave an abbreviated account, not mentioning any names, and they both had another laugh.

“The poor man,” Jenny sympathized. “He was just trying to chat her up.”

“Not so much of the ‘poor man,’ if you please. He should have known better.”

“But why did she report him to Dorothy?”

“She didn’t. I popped round to see her on my way here, and she was very annoyed by what had happened. Apparently Ms Wycombe had been visiting the victims—rather like some Victorian lady visiting the poor, I should imagine—and trying to gather some ammunition against us. The woman chatted in quite a friendly way to Ms Wycombe and joked about my man’s visit. She’d actually been quite flattered as she’d had her eye on him for a while and wondered when, if ever, he was going to make his move. Anyway, Dorothy Wycombe twisted the information to suit her purposes and marched in demanding blood.”

“What a job you do.”

“I know. It’s a dirty job—”

“—but somebody’s got to do it. Talking of dirty jobs,” Jenny went on, “I’ve dug out a couple of case histories for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Ever heard of Charles Floyd or Patrick Byrne?”

Banks shook his head. “I’m afraid my history of crime’s not what it should be. Tell me.”

“Patrick Byrne murdered a girl in the Birmingham YWCA in 1959. He was a labourer on a building site near the hostel, and one afternoon he got sent back to the yard by his foreman for returning
to work drunk after lunch. He’d often peeped on the girls undressing in the hostel, but this time he went in and strangled a girl. After that, he undressed her, raped her, then cut off her head with a table knife. He also made an attempt to eat one of her breasts with sugar.”

“That’s not a very encouraging tale, is it?”

“No. Apparently Byrne had had sadistic fantasies, including cutting women in half with a circular saw, since he was about seventeen. He said he wanted to get his own back on women for causing him nervous tension through sex. Before that, he’d been content with simply watching girls undress, but because he was drunk and upset by being told off by his foreman, he went beyond everything he’d ever done before. He also left a note that read, ‘This was what I thought would never happen.’”

“Is the other case just as heartening?”

“Yes. About the only consolation is that it happened in Texas in the forties. Charles Floyd started by watching women get undressed. Then he waited till they went to sleep, killed them and raped them, in that order. There was one woman who never closed her curtains, and he watched her for several nights before he finally climbed in after she fell asleep. He battered her to death, then wrapped her head in a sheet and raped her. After that, he spent the rest of the night in bed with her. He killed other women, too, and when he got caught he admitted he’d been a Peeping Tom who turned to murder and rape when the sexual excitement got too much for him.”

“The woman didn’t close her curtains?” Banks commented. “Surely that was asking for it in a way?”

Jenny shot him a cold glance. “We’ve already been through that.”

“And I did say that women should be careful not to appear to be inviting men to sex.”

“And I said that we should be able to dress how we like and go where we damn well please.”

“So we agree to differ.”

“It looks like it. But please understand, I’m not condoning the woman leaving her curtains open. It was probably a very stupid thing to do. All I’m saying is that what Floyd did was an act of violence more than of sex, and that such things will happen anyway, whatever we do, until more men start to see women as people, not as sex objects.”

“I don’t believe the solution is as simple as that, admirable as it sounds,” Banks said. “Yes, they are acts of violence, but it’s violence that is highly sexual in nature. I think it’s true that at least one of the reasons for the rise in sex crimes is the increase in stimulation—and that includes fashions, pornography, advertising, films, TV, the lot.”

“And who determines women’s fashions?”

“Mostly men, I should imagine.”

“That’s right. You dress us the way you want us, you create us in the image you desire, and then you have the gall to accuse us of asking for it!”

“Okay, calm down,” Banks said, concerned at seeing Jenny so hurt and angry. He put his hand on her shoulder and she didn’t brush it off. “I understand what you’re saying. It’s a very complex subject and it’s hard to portion out blame. I’m willing to take my share. How about you?”

Jenny nodded and they shook hands.

“What conclusions have you drawn from those cases?” Banks asked.

“None, really. Only the most obvious ones.”

“I must be thick, nothing’s obvious to me.”

“Until we know our man’s motivation, we can’t know whether some kind of trigger might exist for him, or how close he is to reaching it.”

“Look,” Banks said, glancing at his watch, “it’s almost ten o’clock. Can I get you another drink?”

“Yes, please.”

“Right you are. And while I’m at the bar, think about this. Is there any indication at all, from what little we know already, that our man might cross the same borders as Floyd and Byrne did?”

The area around the lock splintered easily when Mick pushed on the crowbar, and the two of them broke into the dark, silent house in no time. The light from their small torches criss-crossed the kitchen, picking out the gleaming appliances: fridge, washing machine,
microwave, dishwasher, oven. Quickly, they moved on; only the poor kept their money in jam jars in the kitchen.

Down a short hallway was the split-level living-room, and Mick cursed as he tripped over the divide. It was a big room, sparsely furnished as far as they could make out. Their torches picked out a three-piece suite, TV and video on a stand, and a music centre. By the door stood a tall cabinet full of china and crystal glasses. Mick opened the lower doors and found it full of booze—scotch, gin, vodka, brandy, rum, everything under the sun—and he grabbed a bottle of Rémy Martin by the neck. He slugged it back greedily and began to cough and splutter. Trevor told him to keep quiet.

Trevor was awed just to be in the place. Already he’d forgotten what they came for and was trembling with the excitement of violation. This was someone’s home, someone’s “castle,” and he wasn’t supposed to be in it. It felt like a vast cave full of possibilities, one of those boat rides through dark tunnels he used to take as a child at Blackpool Pleasure Beach—a ghost train, even, because he did feel fear, and each tiny detail his light picked out was a surprise: a wall-lamp curving upwards like a bent arm holding a torch; an ornate standard lamp with carved snakes winding around its column; an antique pipe on the mantelpiece. And his light caught occasional images from the big framed paintings on the walls: a giant bird terrorizing a man; some naked tart standing on a seashell. He could hear his heartbeat, his breathing, and every movement he made was a further violation of somebody else’s silence.

Mick finished with the cognac and dropped the bottle on the floor. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he tapped Trevor on the shoulder and suggested that they look around upstairs. In the master bedroom, their eyes, now accustomed to the dark, picked out the outlines of bed, wardrobe and dresser. The gleam of a streetlamp through the net curtains helped visibility, too, and they turned off their pen-lights.

Trevor began searching through the drawers, using his light again to illuminate the contents. He found dark, silky underwear: bras, panties, tights, slips, camisoles. They were soft and slippery in his hands, charging him with static, and he rubbed them against his face, smelling the fresh, lemony scent of the woman. He also found an old
cigar box in a drawer full of the man’s socks, string vests and under-pants; inside it were a set of keys and about a hundred and fifty pounds in cash.

Mick found what looked like a jewellery box on the dresser. When he opened it up, a ballet dancer began spinning to tinkling music. He dropped the box and spilled the jewels on the floor; then, cursing, he bent and scooped them up.

Trevor looked around for any locked cabinets that the keys might fit, but he found nothing. The two of them went back downstairs, feet sinking luxuriously into the deep pile carpeting, and, shining their torches again, had another look around the living-room. There, in a corner, set into the wall, was what looked like a safe. Trevor tried his keys but none fit. Mick tried the crowbar but it bent. Eventually, they gave up.

“Let’s take the VCR,” Mick whispered.

“No. It’s too heavy, too easy to trace.”

“Lenny’ll get rid of it in London.”

“No, Mick. We’re not taking big stuff like that. It’ll slow us down. You’ve got the jewels and I’ve got a hundred quid. It’s enough.”

“Enough!” Mick snorted. “These people are fucking rolling in it. We’ve not got much more than we get from the old bags.”

“Yes, we have. And people are more careful these days—we’re bloody lucky to have got so much.”

Reluctantly Mick gave up the idea and agreed to leave. Trevor was still enjoying just being there, though, still tingling, and he wanted to do something. Finally, he unzipped his fly and started to urinate over the TV, VCR and music centre, spraying lavishly on the carpet, paintings and mantelpiece, too. It seemed to go on forever, a powerful, translucent stream glittering in the pen-light’s beam, and with it, he felt himself relax, felt a delicious warmth infuse his bones.

Not to be outdone, Mick lowered his pants and dropped a steaming pile on the sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace, giggling softly to himself as he did it.

When they’d both finished, they left the way they came, pausing only briefly to check the kitchen drawers and cupboards, just in case.

“There’s no evidence that we’ve got a Byrne or a Floyd on our hands,” Jenny said, sipping her half of bitter. “I think that if we had, something would have happened before now. The trouble with psychology is that it works best when you know all the facts. It’s hard to make guesses in the dark. It’s also unscientific.”

“Police work’s the same,” Banks added. “There’s nothing like facts, but I’ve always found that occasional guesses, or some kind of hunch based on limited knowledge, can often work well. It gives you a bit of room for the intuition, imagination.”

“That’s surprising, coming from you,” Jenny said, looking at him as if all her earlier theories had been wrong.

“Why?”

“It just is. I suppose I’ve been used to you asking for facts, looking for evidence.”

“It’s important, I’m not denying it. But more often than not forensic evidence is only useful in getting a conviction. First you have to catch the criminal, and he’s as cunning and imaginative as can be. Some aren’t, of course, some are plain stupid. But they’re the easy ones.”

“I should think your peeper is probably quite intelligent. Again, this is mostly guesswork, but he has avoided capture so far, and he’s got his system worked out quite well. It remains to be seen how adaptable he is. He’s certainly not a fool.”

“Back to my original question,” Banks said. “You don’t think he’ll escalate?”

“I said I didn’t think we had a serious sex criminal on our hands. I don’t think he’s likely to move on to necrophilia or eating breasts, with or without sugar, but I wouldn’t be too sure that merely peeping will keep him happy for much longer. It might be getting too easy for him, especially if he’s intelligent. If he stops getting his thrills that way . . . then . . .” She shrugged. “At best he might turn to exhibitionism, at worst some kind of attack, molestation.”

“Rape?”

“Ultimately. Although it might not be rape in the legal sense.
There may be no penetration; he might simply force women to strip. I don’t know, I’m just trying to project the pattern. He might feel the need for greater danger, more risk; he might need to see and absorb the fear of his victims. Yes, it could happen. Especially the closer he gets to his original impulse.”

“What do you mean?”

“If he finds someone who reminds him of his mother, or whoever he was first struck by, then the stimulus might be too much; it might cause him to push through to another level.”

“What can we do with what we’ve got so far, then?” Banks asked.