‘Just get on with it, for Christ’s sake,’ instructed Chief Superintendent Titmuss, as the thirty-six-hour custody limit approached. ‘You’ve got an open-and-shut case for once, just get on with it...’
An identity parade was staged and both Charlie Collins and the Crescent Hotel receptionist, Janet, picked out Constance at once as being the fictional Mrs Pattinson — and that was without either the blonde wig or the contact lenses. However there was still no real evidence that Constance Lange was a murderer other than her own confession, as Rose somewhat fruitlessly told Superintendent Titmuss.
‘Then bloody well find some if you really think you need it,’ responded Titmuss, who was actually quite certain that a confession alone would, in this case, be sufficient to secure a conviction. Rose was well aware that to him as to so many of her colleagues it was simply a logical progression that a woman of Constance’s bizarre sexual obsession — and being a man he naturally regarded it as quite unnatural for a woman to have those kind of fantasies — would become a murderer.
In Rose’s mind there was no logic to that at all. But then, she felt that she understood so much of what made Constance Lange tick. Nonetheless the views of one woman detective Chief Inspector — Senior Investigating Officer or not — were unlikely to sway the might of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, even had Rose herself considered that she had any rational cause to formally express them.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1999, it was arranged that Constance Lange would be formally charged with the murders of Marty Morris, Colin Parker and Wayne Thompson at Staple Hill Magistrate’s Court.
Eighteen
‘I always knew ’er was a wrong ’un,’ said Marcia Spry in the village shop the next day. Mrs Walters sighed extravagantly, but this time made no further comment.
Peter Mellor regarded the women curiously. They, in turn, had earlier eyed him up and down as if he came from Mars. Well, being black amounted to much the same thing really in a place like Chalmpton Peverill, he thought wryly.
It was the morning of Christmas Eve, just a few hours before Constance was due to appear in court in Bristol to be charged with three murders. The sergeant’s mission was to attempt to get a picture of Constance Lange, and to talk to as many people who knew her as possible, as well as to her immediate family. Before his foray into the shop, he had spoken to the vicar, the headmistress of the primary school, the Langes’ dairyman and a smattering of other villagers including a young man with a name like a motorbike who seemed to regard Constance as some kind of goddess.
Marcia Spry was the first person with anything but good to say about the woman who had pronounced herself a serial killer.
‘As a matter of fact, sergeant, I pride myself on being a fine judge of character, many’s the time I’ve said, haven’t I, Mrs Walters, you mark my words I’ve said, ’er’s a bad penny that one...’
And so the old woman continued her diatribe, apparently blissfully unaware of Mrs Walters’ ill-concealed disapproval.
Peter Mellor was by now only half-listening. Marcia Spry left him in no doubt of at least two things — village life would never be for him, however idyllic it might seem on the surface; and Marcia’s opinion of Mrs Constance Lange counted for little because he’d stake a month’s salary the old biddy never had a good word to say about anyone.
His attention drifted to the scene he could see through the shop’s plate-glass window. The vultures have landed all right, he thought to himself.
A small crowd of press, photographers and reporters were gathered outside Chalmpton Village Farm. Mellor recognised one or two he knew from the Bristol pack. Others would have been dispatched from their main offices in London, he supposed.
Peter Mellor didn’t like this case, he didn’t like anyone involved in it. He just wanted it over. He didn’t like the victims, the witnesses, or the prime suspect. His opinion that Marty Morris and Charlie Collins had degraded themselves and let down their race extended now to everyone involved in the case. He thought the whole damn lot of them had let down the entire human race as it happened. He was particularly contemptuous of, even revolted by, Constance Lange. She was rich, middle-class and privileged. It made Peter Mellor’s blood boil. He had had about as bad a start as you could possibly get, and he had single-mindedly worked towards carving a decent life for himself and his family. It hadn’t been easy. It still wasn’t easy. Being a bright black man in the police force remained a tough ride, and he sometimes wished he had chosen an easier route, if such a thing existed. He had learned that Constance Lange had also not been born into privilege, but that didn’t impress him either. The woman had never had to work for what she had — she had married into it. And she had destroyed her husband, who, as far as Mellor could gather, had been a thoroughly good man.
Even thinking about Constance Lange sent a shiver down Peter Mellor’s spine. She was depraved, totally depraved, in his opinion. It had been her bizarre sexual desires which had turned her into a serial killer and he had to admit that he was disconcerted by his senior officer’s approach to the woman. Rose Piper was showing a great deal too much sympathy, if you asked him.
That aside, he did have some feelings for Constance Lange’s family. And in any case Peter Mellor remained a by-the-book police officer, who would always meticulously carry out what he regarded to be his duty whatever the circumstances. So when, through the window, he saw that one snapper had climbed on top of the wall opposite the farm and had set up his camera on a monopod with a 400mm lens aimed at the Langes’ kitchen window, Mellor made a mental note to have a word as soon as he’d finished in the shop. British law might allow anyone to take a photograph of anyone else in a public place and then publish it without permission, but aiming a Long Tom through someone’s kitchen window breached the privacy laws in Mellor’s opinion.
He wondered how on earth Constance’s children were going to be able to cope with their lives after all this. Mellor was terribly sorry for the seventeen-year-old in particular. The poor kid didn’t know what had hit her. Her brother was a real stiff-upper-lip Englishman, Mellor reckoned, who would never let on to an outsider what he was really thinking. And the elder daughter, Charlotte, merely kept protesting that her mother was innocent, that it all must be a mistake, and he supposed he could understand that. She just didn’t want to face the truth.
What a mess, Mellor thought. Three young men — although it was true he didn’t consider any one of them to be much of a loss — murdered, one thoroughly decent citizen dead, and his whole family wrecked. All down to a sex-mad old tart. The woman should swing, in his opinion. Peter Mellor was pro hanging. For some reason people always seemed surprised that a black man should hold such a view as strongly as he did. Peter Mellor couldn’t understand why. He had no time at all for soft justice. He had clearly defined ideas about right and wrong. He did not see any conflict at all between capital punishment and his strongly held Christian convictions. Wrongdoers should be properly punished, he believed.
That afternoon Charlotte travelled to Bristol to visit her mother in jail. She would have gone before if her husband had not joined her brother in trying to dissuade her. She could do more good at home in Chalmpton Peverill, they both told her. Helen was confused and frightened and badly needed her big sister to comfort her. And in any case it was better for the whole family to keep their heads down, to wait and see what happened, they said.
Well, they had seen all right, hadn’t they, thought Charlotte as she drove considerably faster than she knew she should down the village street — causing at least one cameraman to have to leap out of the way, which even in her present distraught state of mind did give her some brief satisfaction.