Kamella ‘Kamy’ Joseph was a slender woman of striking Asian features, with long black hair. She sat in her office at the university with a large poster of Sydney Opera House stuck to the wall behind her. She glanced out of the window at ducks on the pond and then turned to Hennessey and said, ‘I think you are quite correct. It’s all over.’
‘It seemed like the normal progression, easy victims and undervalued people who won’t be missed. .’
‘Yes, the photographs are clearly of down-and-outs and seem to be deposited or buried all over the UK. I mean, why should the Lothian Borders Police link this gentleman here with this gentleman found in Lincolnshire? Presume they had no identification on them?’
‘It’s safe to assume they didn’t, otherwise the other police forces would have contacted us, and they do not appear to have done, but we think this murder spree is about twenty years in existence. . or was if they have stopped.’
‘If the man in these photographs has himself been murdered in the same way these other victims were murdered then yes, they have stopped. This is going to make an interesting paper. I would appreciate having a look at the evidence once it is all wrapped up.’
‘I think that could be arranged.’
‘Thank you. . and then they ratcheted things up by abducting people who would be missed and leaving them together in an overgrown kitchen garden.’
‘Taunting us?’
‘Possibly, possibly even a way of giving themselves up. I have a photograph of a crime scene in the United States of a serial killer’s work. . or activity. This man would get into the houses or apartments of women who lived alone, murder them, and then ransack the property. In the home of one of his victims he got her lipstick and on the mirror of her dressing table he wrote, “Stop me before I do this again”.’
‘Blimey.’
‘Yes, he wanted to be stopped but he couldn’t just walk into a police station. . the strange workings of the human mind, but that incident has lead to the theory that when a serial killer, or killers, appear to be getting bolder and taking valued and well integrated people as their victims, it is a way of giving themselves up. . of stopping it all.’
‘Interesting. . because they want the notoriety?’
‘Who knows why? It is the thrust of forensic psychology to try to get into the minds of these people, to identify some pathology which they have in common. Being unable, yet wanting to stop has been claimed by other serial killers, so it might not be about notoriety at all.’
‘What sort of person or persons are we looking for?’
Kamella Joseph PhD by the nameplate on her desk, reclined in her chair. ‘Well, apart from the usual manipulation by charm, which is common among psychopaths, I’d say you’re looking for someone. . or persons. . who could offer these victims what they seemed to want, which would appear to be acceptance. Down-and-outs are continually shunned, yet if a charming person, who is well dressed and is like the down-and-out wants to be like, offers friendship, and if that hand of alleged friendship is taken. .’
‘The trap closes.’
‘Yes,’ Kamella Joseph smiled, ‘the trap closes.’
‘And if someone is not a down-and-out but feels socially isolated. .?’
‘Same thing, the offer to meet unmet needs.’
‘Lucky Matilda Pakenham.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘A young woman who, when at a low point of her life, declined the offer of a trip to the coast with a charming couple who had befriended her.’
‘Ah. . so you have a suspect or a couple of suspects?’
‘Yes, but so far just suspects, and I don’t want to act too soon. . don’t want to put them to flight. . though I think there is little risk of that, but I don’t want to run the risk. . and I think. . I believe. . that they have taken their last victim anyway.’
‘Only ever saw him with another woman once. . just one time.’ The man sat rigidly in his chair of grey painted steel, with shallow grey upholstery, behind a metal desk of two-tone grey. ‘He didn’t notice me. I wasn’t looking for him; we just passed in the street, father and son, we just walked past each other, but he’d cleaned himself up. No longer an alcoholic, he was smart and clean and tidy.’ Kenneth Lismore was his father’s son, Webster thought, very small, slightly built, but he had benefited from his mother’s influence, because here was the same benevolent attitude, the same warmth about the eyes.
‘Go on,’ Webster prodded gently.
‘Well, we met up after that. I wanted to get to know him, now that he had sobered, and so we met for coffee from time to time. I asked him about the woman I had seen him with on Swinegate and he said it was a friend of his. He didn’t want me to meet her, he said that “we understood each other”, and added “but it’s not serious”. I took that to mean that they had both been alcoholics, and she did indeed appear to have a hardbitten and a used look about her.’
‘A lady of the streets, perhaps?’
‘Possibly, but by then helping each other to lead cleaner, more sober lives. . so good for both of them, but she still had a humourless expression and cold, angry eyes. All that I saw in an instant.’
‘A name?’
‘He did mention her name once, but you’ll know her.’
‘Oh?’
‘Most probably, she had gaol house tatts.’
‘Gaol house tatts?’
‘Just here,’ Lismore tapped the top of his left hand. ‘Girls in residential care often give themselves similar sorts of tattoos. Soak a ball of cotton wool in ink and push a pin through it, then prick, prick, prick or rather jab, jab, jab and the pin takes the ink beneath the surface of the skin and there it remains.’
‘Ah, yes, of course, I know the type. Will you look at some photographs?’
‘Yes, of course, but this was a few years ago, blonde hair stiff with peroxide. . she had a name. . what did dad call her?’ Lismore turned his head to one side and glanced out at the concrete and glass that was the Stonebow development in the centre of York. ‘What was her name? It was a racecourse name. .’
‘She had the name of a racecourse?’
‘No. . no. .’ Kenneth Lismore held up his hand, ‘part of a racecourse followed her name, like “Winning Post Mary”, but not that name. . a name like it “Starting Gate Sally”. . something like that.’
‘First bend?’ Webster suggested.
Kenneth Lismore shook his head, ‘No. .’
‘Paddock somebody?’
‘Nope, but we’re getting there, keep them coming,’ he added with a smile.
‘Starter’s orders?’
‘Nope. .’
‘Furlong?’
Kenneth Lismore smiled, ‘Furlong Freda. That’s it.’ He beamed. ‘She had “Freda” tattooed on the back of her left hand and he called her “Furlong Freda”. I don’t know how she acquired the name but that was definitely how she was known. There will only be one “Furlong Freda” in York, I’ll be bound.’
‘It sounds like somebody we’ll know, as you say,’ Webster stood, ‘most probably for petty stuff. Thank you, it’s been helpful.’
‘She acquired the name when she was a working girl; she used to work the racecourse.’ Hennessey handed the file to Webster.
‘Furlong Freda McQueen,’ Webster read. ‘Actually, just plain Queen, but calls herself McQueen. For some reason she changed her name between her last period of borstal training when she was nineteen and her first conviction for soliciting when she was twenty-two. She was a regular customer of ours until she was thirty-eight years old. She must have burnt out, as they all do, or got to be good at covering her tracks, but either way, we don’t seem to have had a whiff of her for ten years, sir.’
‘Time to pay a call on her, you and Ventnor, but it’s been a long day, we can ease up.’
‘We can, sir?’
‘Yes, there will be no more victims. I didn’t think there would be and the suspects I have in mind are not going anywhere.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘Dr Joseph at the university agrees, our suspects have “matured” as serial killers do. . or as Furlong Freda seems to have done. . they “burn out”.’