‘An impulse, I’m afraid, Chief Inspector. They did appeal for anyone with information.’
‘You didn’t have information. You wasted police time with a crackpot, semi-mystical theory which even I can’t entirely grasp, about so-called ley lines — which I understand the experts say do not even exist — linking a bunch of crimes which simply have nothing in common.’
‘With all respect, Peter,’ said Cindy, ‘that’s what they said about the Yorkshire Ripper.’
‘Not my area,’ Hatch snapped.
‘Oh, no, you don’t want to talk about that, do you? Why Sutcliffe kept walking in and out of the police net because he didn’t fit the profile? And because they were conned by a hoax tape into looking for the wrong type of man entirely.’
‘I don’t see where this-’
‘Still several unsolved murders out there, that might be down to him. And why were they rejected by the Ripper squad? Because they weren’t prostitutes, and the profile said the Yorkshire Ripper Only Kills Prostitutes.’
‘Mr Lewis, we are not looking for a serial killer.’
‘Psychos make their own patterns, see. Sometimes, the police are just so simplistic.’
‘That,’ Hatch said icily, ‘is because, at the end of the day, we have to make it stand up in court. Now look, Mr Lewis, I was very patient. I accepted your desire to do all you could for Mrs Capaldi and I answered your curious questions on three separate occasions. But public relations has its limits, and telling West Mercia you were a friend of mine has, quite frankly, done my career no good at all.’
‘Is the file on Maria still open?’
There was a pause.
‘You know it is,’ Hatch said bitterly.
‘There you are, then, lovely. Your ideas were no better than mine.’
‘We’ll get him, Mr Lewis, I promise you. Meanwhile, if I could give you a word of advice, some senior policemen get rather suspicious of people who hang around murder investigations. It isn’t healthy, if you know what I mean.’
‘No,’ said Cindy, nettled. ‘I do not.’
‘Think about it. I know you’re harmless, relatively speaking, and that your only crime is an attempt to generate some self-publicity to revive a flagging career, but less tolerant officers …’
‘How dare you!’
‘Sorry,’ said Hatch. ‘That was probably uncalled for. But you would do well to remember that, while we welcome all the information we can get from the public, we do tend to prefer it if you leave the interpretation to us, because we’ve been there before.’
But had they? Had they been here before? Would Hatch have been able to say that when, for instance, his Hampshire colleagues had discovered, not so very long ago, that a particularly brutal stabbing was down to a twelve-year-old girl who received sexual gratification from killing? The youngest potential serial murderer in history, dealt with at Winchester Crown Court in March.
The change of millennium was continually pushing back the parameters of human experience.
The British police had simply never encountered a killer who walked the ancient tracks, in the footsteps of his prehistoric ancestors, and committed ritual murders — he would perhaps regard them as sacrifices — which were identifiable as such only by the nature of their locations. No connection at all, except to someone educated in the arcane mysteries of the landcape.
‘There are more crimes in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, my friend.’
Cindy watched the clouds formation-dancing over the bay.
‘Bananas, you are, Cindy.’
The eyes of Kelvyn Kite bulged from the shadows in his corner beside the sink.
‘Why do you bother, you old fool?’
The bird had a point. Why did he bother?
Hatch’s barb about self-publicity had stung only briefly. The stage was his career, but not his life. And he didn’t need the money. His lifestyle was humble. He followed the work around Britain and returned periodically to this very pretty fairground caravan on a tiny plot, which he owned, in a sheltered spot on the most beautiful part of the Pembrokeshire coast. His earthly life was neatly boxed, the corners of the box pleasantly scuffed and rounded.
As for his inner life … Well, sometimes it seemed to be getting richer, more complex. One day, he would have to retire and embark upon the final stage of the great quest, in preparation for his transition. But that was probably years ahead. He couldn’t help feeling there should be an interim stage. The idea that one should live one’s spiritual life solely in preparation for what was to follow did seem unnecessarily self-indulgent. There ought to be a way of using the incidental abilities one inevitably acquired along the way for the greater good of the community at large.
To fight earthly evils?
Perhaps.
Cindy gathered all the press cuttings into a pile. On top was the one from the Shropshire Star he’d picked up last week, during the two nights the Transit Theatre Company’s Macbeth had been playing the Ludlow Assembly Rooms. It was the kind of news story which, for Hatch, would be a complete joke but, to Cindy, was confirmation. MURDER SHOP ‘HAUNTED’ CLAIM.
The story was written in a way that indicated nobody on the paper believed it either. It referred to the butchering of the homeless boy in the shop doorway, the case which had brought Cindy to the notice of the West Mercia CID. Now a local youth leader was claiming attendance at his club was falling off because youngsters didn’t like to go past this particular shop at night.‘Two of the girls told me they had felt a sudden drop in the temperature as they passed the doorway, and one is convinced she saw a trail of blood dripping from the step to the gutter.‘These are decent girls, not, in my view, the kind to be prone to fantasies,’ said Mr Ruscoe, who is calling for the area to be exorcised.However, the owner of thehardware shop, Chamber of Trade chairman Mr James Mills, has condemned the scare. ‘This was a terrible incident, which most people in this town just want to try to forget,’ he said.‘Fairy stories like this are not good for trade or local morale, and Ted Ruscoe should have more sense than to encourage them.’
‘Fairy stories,’ said Cindy scornfully. ‘Fairy stories!’
The man would, of course, have to be the chairman of the Chamber of Trade. Cindy was continually amazed at the arrogance of small-time local officials, who considered their particular field of commercial endeavour to be of supreme importance in the great scheme of things.
The police, in most cases, were exactly the same. If you couldn’t explain it to the Crown Prosecution Service they wouldn’t even consider it.
Cindy swept the pile of press cuttings into a box file and went back to work on the magazines. Wherever he went, he sought out the local dealers in publications devoted to paganism and earth-magic, some of them, like Fortean Times, Kindred Spirit and Chalice, high-quality glossies; some, like The Ley Hunter, quite specialized, and others little more than photocopied pages stapled together. At least one of these, surely, was read — and possibly contributed to — by the killer. Cindy saw this individual as someone with very definite and fixed ideas — ideas which he would want to disseminate. Also, like most killers, he would want his acts to be noticed.
The letters pages were a very likely source of clues. Cindy flicked open an issue of Pagan Quest.
Dear Sir, I have been a worshipper of Thor for over nine years and have recently moved to Basingstoke, where I am anxious to contact fellow pagans…