Sugar & Spice (26 page)

121

“Being an expert on dirty old men in raincoats is not my idea of a career.”
“That’s just a stereotype, Claire. You must know that from meeting Bates and
Bristow. The fact is, everyone has sexual fantasies of some sort. Fantasies you
wouldn’t want to admit to in public. Right?”
Claire grinned mischievously. “Do I have to answer that?”
“Exactly. We all do. They shape they take, whether or not they conform to
values considered acceptable by society, will vary according to genetic, medical
and social considerations. But we all have them.”
“I suppose so.”
“If you think about it honestly, the only normal form of sex is your
bog-standard intercourse. In, out, in out, pint before, fag after. It fulfils a
basic human need: reproduBecause we find it pleasurable we do it for reasons
other than reproduction, but when all’s said and done sex is just going through
the motions of a basic human instinct, to perpetuate the species. By very
definition, therefore, it’s natural. By the same token, anything other than
straight sex for reproduction is, by definition, unnatural. Even the simple act
of using a condom. Notwithstanding the elaborate courtship rituals of some
animal species, sexual foreplay is unnatural too. So obviously variations on the
reproductive act like masturbation, homosexuality and of course the less
acceptable paraphilias must be unnatural too.”
“Ceri, you can’t go around saying homosexuality is abnormal. This is the
twenty-first century! That sort of thinking went out with the ark.”
“I said unnatural, in biological terms, not abnormal. Not wrong. I’m not
homophobic, Claire. With my career plans I’m the last person to go around
making subjective judgements. I’m just being clinical in my language.
Homosexuality, by its very nature, inhibits further reproduction. Maybe it’s an
evolutionary device to control the population.”
“So it can be unnatural but still be normal? Acceptable?”
“It depends on how you define abnormality. What it really boils down to is
social acceptability. Homosexuality has rightly, over a half century or so, made
the transition from being an unacceptable and illegal abomination to a widely
acceptable, legitimate form of sexuality.”
“Thomas made that point too. But he was trying to build a defence for sex with
children. That child-sex would undergo the same public transformation, give
time.”
“I can imagine. Paedophiles typically react to their crimes by trying to
invoke a defence of that nature. But in cold, clinical terms, paedophilia is no
different from any other sexual disposition that veers from straight,
reproductive sex. It’s just another variation of the basic sex drive, caused by
genetic, pathological or socio-environmental factors; probably a combination of
all three. That doesn’t make it right or wrong. Right and wrong are matters of
social morality, not biology. Of ethics, not science. Sexual dysfunction is an
area of human nature we’ve barely begun to understand.”
“I’d never heard of it until a few weeks ago. Sexual dysfunction, paraphilia,
auto-erotic whatever it was that killed Thomas. It’s a whole new world.”
“Auto-erotic asphyxiation,” Ceri advised with a grin. “I live and breathe
this kind of thing. It’s been sort of an interest of mine, ever since I found
some magazines in my dad’s wardrobe years ago. You know, I was snooping around,
as kids do, and I came across them. Women dressed up in rubber suits, torturing
naked men with whips and things. I thought it was hilarious at the time, but
later, as sex became more defined in my mind, I started wondering what made a
normal, ordinary bloke like my dad have such things hidden away. It was like he
had a secret life. By day, a doting husband and father to two children, by night
living out these bizarre fantasies.”
Ceri’s eyes were distant, reliving her childhood memories. “I don’t know if
Mum knew. I guess she must have. The mags were just there, in their wardrobe.
Maybe if I’d searched further I would have found her rubber outfit and whips in
a drawer somewhere. Well, maybe not. Not Mum. But the idea that people would do
that for pleasure, for sexual enjoyment, just never occurred to me. We had a
Catholic upbringing. We were taught nothing about the reproductive process. The
teacher wouldn’t even explain how the school rabbits went from two to eight
overnight. The kids all thought it was a miracle.”
She paused to find the tea-bags. Claire waited patiently, not wanting to
interrupt her reverie. “Then at secondary school I learned about real sex for
the first time. Well, I say real sex, but it was just about how babies were
conceived and born. I was about thirteen, just going through puberty myself. You
know, I thought How gross! My parents did that? Even then I couldn’t comprehend
they might still be at it. The way we were taught, if your parents had two kids
then they’d had sex twice in their lives. It was inconceivable people did it for
pleasure. It was another year before I made the connection between reproductive
sex, intercourse, as taught at school, and the magazines my dad read. That was
the day I started thinking about sex seriously.” The kettle came to the boil.
“And here I am.”
Claire grinned. “I can’t help feeling I’ve led a sheltered life by
comparison.”
“What I learned then, from my dad, was that ordinary people had extraordinary
fantasies. I mean, how does anyone first realise that they’d enjoy being tied up
and having their bollocks whipped by a women in a rubber suit? And from there,
how does the real dysfunctional type first realise that they prefer sex with
animals, or children, or whatever?”
Claire nodded. “What I’ve learned from meeting Thomas Bristow and Michael
Bates is that sexual deviants aren’t bug-eyed monsters with hunch-backs and
steel claws.”
“Exactly. They’re just ordinary people with a problem living by society’s
rules.”
“Is that what Uncle Tom is? Just an ordinary person?”
Ceri squeezed the tea-bags. “No, Uncle Tom’s more than that, Claire. He’s an
extraordinary person. But still a person. He’s already made mistakes. A few more
and the Police will have him. And if they don’t, we will. Any milk?”
“There’s a fresh carton in the fridge.”
“You know, this is something I really miss. Fresh milk. But there’s just no
way my landlady will get my fridge fixed. She’s such a… Say, you’re
diabetic?” She held up an insulin pack.
“It was Rebecca’s. Couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. You know how it is.
Silly little things suddenly take on enormous sentimental value.”
The phone rang. Claire took the call, holding back yet more tears, while Ceri
finished the teas.
“That was Matt. There’s someone he wants you to meet, this afternoon. He’ll
pick you up at two-thirty.”

122

“Danny, this is amazing! I love it!”
Ceri almost ran into the room, gleeful as a child in a toy shop.
As the door swung wider, Ceri’s superlatives seemed quite inadequate. Matt knew
Danny was no ordinary kid. But even so…
While other kids collected stamps or model cars, or signatures of famous
sportsmen, Danny, he knew, collected autographs of notorious criminals. What he
hadn’t realised was that while other kids had pictures of footballers and pop
stars on their walls, Danny had portraits of infamous law-breakers staring down.
The Krays, Jeffrey Dahmer, Myra Hindley, the Boston Strangler, the Yorkshire
Ripper, Ian Huntley.
“Where do you get these” Ceri was touring the room, picking up books on
crime and criminals, examining models of weapons, darting from one thing to
another like a wasp around a honey-pot. She gestured to a poster. “Aaron
Kosminsky! So you don’t subscribe to the Maybrick theory?”
“Not a chance. It had to be Kosminski. Jack was a Londoner, not a Scouser.
Begg’s hypothesis.
Matt looked utterly confused. “Is this a private discussion or will someone
tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”
Danny grinned at Ceri. “You’ll have to excuse Matt. He’s a novice.” To Matt,
“Jack the Ripper. I reckon it was Kosminski. They say he confessed, just
before he died.”
“At the Colney Hatch asylum, Ceri added. “Mind you, if -”
“Yeah, yeah,” Matt cut across them. “Danny, if I ever decide to write an
article on Jack the Ripper I’ll know where to come. But we’re here for a reason.
The list?”
Danny produced several sheets of paper.
As he glanced over the print-off, Matt’s heart sank. During the day he’d given
some thought to the project and concluded it would be a relatively
straight-forward task, with the aid of Danny’s compuzardry, to identify a
half-dozen likely venues for Uncle Tom’s next attack. There could only be so
many towns and villages in the British countryside beginning with the letters U
and V. He’d mentally ticked off a few at the time. Uttoxeter. Uxbridge. It was
reassuring. If he could only manage two, could Uncle Tom do much better?
He ran his finger down the list of place-names in alphabetical order from
Ubbeston Green, Suffolk to Uzmaston, Dyfed, each with a map grid reference.
“Jesus, Danny, I didn’t want a list of every single street name! I thought you
understood that. I need towns and villages. We’re working on the presumption
Uncle Tom is travelling to places he doesn’t know. He’ll be using a normal road
atlas of some sort, not a computerized A-Z of obscure places nobody’s ever heard
of. Ugborough? Upper Slaughter? Upton Scudamore? Are you sure you didn’t make
these up?”
“Matt, these are all towns and villages, from the 1:250,000 scale.”
“Meaning?”
“Five kilometres per two centimetres. That’s four miles to the inch in old
money. Every place on that list is big enough to appear in a bog-standard road
atlas.”
“You’re joking! There must be a hundred place-names here.”
“Two hundred and forty seven. The Vs are a little better. There’s only thirty
of them.”
Matt flipped over to the Vs. Earlier he couldn’t think of any.
“Look on the bright side,” Danny said. “When Uncle Tom gets to X he’s
gonna be seriously fucked. There’s not a single place in the entire country
beginning with X. Not on any scale.”
Matt fell silent at the observation. That was four murdered children away.
“The list could be expanded if we opted for a smaller scale,” Danny said.
“For example, the Ordnance Survey Landranger series, 1: 50,000. With the O.S.
Pathfinder series 1:25,000 the list could be bigger still.”
“We’ll stick with this, thanks. Now this is the summary of locations in close
vicinity, right?”
“It doesn’t help much. A fifty mile radius is a big area in a small country
like Britain. Identifying isolated pairs is pretty much guesswork. I’ve marked a
few possibilities, as you can see, but once you get to an area like south-west
England the place is crawling with them. Most of the Vs are concentrated in
Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.”
“Maybe that’s where he’ll target next,” Ceri said. “Figure it from Uncle
Tom’s point of view. Whether he’s driven from genuinely obsessive need to follow
this pattern, or he’s simply playing a game with us, he’ll need to adhere to it
so far as possible.”
“Agreed,” Danny said. “Do you think he’s a Ted Bundy type? Or maybe Gerald
Schaefer?”
“Worse than both, Danny. Some killers leave a symbolic calling-card, but Uncle
Tom does it literally. Rather than wait for the media to give him some stupid
nick-name he’s done it himself. He’s calling the shots.”
“You can hardly blame him.” Danny glanced mischievously at Matt. “I mean,
what kind of pillock came up with names like the Boston Strangler, or the Mad
Bomber, or the Yorkshire Ripper? Journalists?”
“Sub-editors,” Matt assured him. “They can’t do a proper job as a
reporter so they sit at the office all day writing fancy headlines and then hope
some news will come along to fit them.”
“I bet they get pissed off with the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nielsen
then.”
Matt looked mystified. “Why should they?”
Danny shared a conspiratorial glance at Ceri.
“He’s hopeless, Ceri.” To Matt: “They picked off loners. Homeless men,
mainly, so most of their victims were never even reported missing. The media
only give nick-names to killers when they’re big news before they’re caught. It
was the same with Frederick and Rosemary West. Imagine what dumb names your lot
would have come up with for those two!”

123

“Danny’s spot on, Mtt,” Ceri agreed.
Danny beamed at Matt, licking his forefinger and chalking up an imaginary notch
on an invisible scoreboard.
“It’s just another example of how Uncle Tom is demonstrating his expertise,”
Ceri said. “He’s in almost total control. But he’s nothing like Nielsen and
Dahmer.”
“Even I can see that,” said Matt. “They were necrophiles.”
“True, but that’s not what I meant. Uncle Tom is an Organised Non-Social.”
“A what?”
Ceri exchanged a smirk with Danny. “The FBI recognise two types of
lust-killers, Matt. Organised Non-Social and Disorganised Asocial. Peter
Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was a typical Disorganised Asocial.”
“Meaning?”
“A loner.” Danny jumped in. “Uneasy with the opposite sex, even though he
was married. Doesn’t plan in any great detail. Leaves the body more or less at
the scene, with very little effort to cover up the crime. Typically uses any
weapon that comes to hand.”
“And this other type? Organised something or other?”
“Organised Non-Social,” Danny said with a smirk. Matt wanted to strangle the
brat.
“Jack the Ripper is the classic,” Ceri explained. “Hostile towards people,
but you wouldn’t know it to speak to him. He’ll come across as a very sociable
type, adept with people of either sex. Manipulative. Often a commuter killer,
hence the Maybrick theory. Typically he’ll mutilate for a trophy, then dispose
of the body with meticulous care. That’s Uncle Tom all over. The bodies are
deliberately placed where they will be found, but not too soon. He has to
balance the risk of getting caught against the pointlessness of the body
remaining undiscovered. The last thing he wants is anonymity like Dahmer or
Nielsen. He craves the attention. He has a massive ego problem.”
“And he uses his hands as a contact weapon,” Danny said. “It’s a power
thing. Personally I’m thinking we might see ritual mutilation next.”
Matt cast a nervous glance at Ceri. “Ritual mutilation?”
“Agreed. Uncle Tom is a control freak, but self-control only goes so far. Take
Jack the Ripper. Began by killing and mutilating at his own pace, in his own
time, each one planned and calculated. Then as the compulsion grew be became
less careful, more impulsive. An attack was interrupted by a passer-by. Hours
later he attacked again, mutilating his victim there and then on the pavement,
so strong was the compulsive drive. Strong enough to make him abandon his usual,
meticulous planning and risk being caught in the act.”
“And you think Uncle Tom is heading that way?”
“You can be sure of it. I’m convinced the Shrewsbury attack is an early
symptom of break-down. But I wouldn’t rely on him making a big mistake and
getting caught just yet. He’s still in control. The calling cards are a sign of
supreme arrogance, not the suicide complex.”
“Well it would solve a lot of problems if he topped himself,” Matt agreed.
Danny couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s not what she means, Matt. Killers that
start out with a specific aim, like a revenge attack or a need to prove
something or other, often end up killing again just for the sake of it. Once
they’ve achieved what they intended, that’s it. There’s no thrill to the kill.
No purpose. It doesn’t matter what happens to them after that.”
“Elliot Leyton argued the case for the resentful killer quite persuasively,”
Ceri added. “Revenge is a powerful emotive force. Even the sanest person will
curse his car when it doesn’t start, or stare accusingly at the pavement when
they trip. It’s just an extension of that, taken to an extreme.”
“You’re telling me someone might end up a killer just because they stubbed
their toe? Be serious!”
“Peter Sutcliffe became the Yorkshire Ripper because a prozzie ripped him off
for a tenner,” Danny said.
Matt glared at him. Smart-ass brat.
Danny grinned back. “My guess is he’ll go into suicide mode when he reach.”
“That’s four murdered children away. Let’s not think the unthinkable.”
The room fell silent.
“Danny, you said earlier you had a few ideas of your own?”
“Nothing earth-shattering. I expect Ceri’s already sussed it anyway.”
“Sussed what?”
“The way Uncle Tom is modelling himself on the likes of Black and Duffy.”
“Duffy?”
“The Railway Rapist.”
Ceri looked uncertain. “Remind me.”
Danny couldn’t hide his glee. He had the edge on Ceri for the first time.
“Just a sec’.” He reached down under the bed and extracted a pile of
scrapbooks, each filled with cuttings on notorious crimes.
“The red folders are the sex cases. I’ve sub-divided into rapists, paedos,
homophobic attacks.”
“But who’s this Duffy?” Matt demanded.
“Back in the eighties?” Ceri ventured. “Wasn’t it one of Professor
Canter’s early successes?”
“You got it!” Danny produced the relevant scrapbook. “John Duffy, the
Railway Rapist.” He looked at Matt. “So-called because he attacked and raped
his victims, wait for it, near railway lines.”
“I told you. Sub-editors. But these are all attacks on adults. What’s the
connection with Uncle Tom?”
“The way he killed his victims. Strangulation.”
Matt shrugged. “I admit I’m no expert, Danny, especially in present company,
but I’d say strangling is a pretty common form of murder.”
“With a tourniquet?”
Ceri sat forward. “Of course. Yes, Danny!”
Danny had a huge smile on his face.
Matt looked none the wiser. “And?”
“The Duffy case was the first time that particular method of strangulation had
been used in this country. What kind of crime reporter are you anyway?”
Matt glared at him. “I covered normal crimes in my day, Danny. Proper
criminals. Cops and robbers stuff. Not this serial killer business. It’s a new
phenomenon. Another bloody American import.”
“Jack the Ripper is new?”
“Oh, fuck off.” God-damned brat had an answer for everything.
Danny was beaming. He twisted the knife. “And he wasn’t American either.”