The Falcon pub, Clapham Junction

Friday, August 9, 1991; 19:00

I left the pub with a mouth like Gandhi’s flip-flop and a head like Christmas afternoon. The sweltering, petrol-drenched early evening air didn’t help.

Shep had united the team but I still felt odd man out. I’d no experience. No allies. I needed to pass this test to become a fully-fledged member of a murder squad. My career hinged on making a good impression.

I let the booze unfetter my mind so that I could once again run with the illogical idea that Marion was trying to steer me to her killer from beyond the grave. What if Marion’s spirit somehow knew that I’d end up working on her case? What if that’s why she came to me on both those occasions? But why had I failed to crack the clues she’d given me? This seemed to let the whole concept down.

I began to wonder: if I returned to the murder scene, would she come to me again with a fresh clue? Once again in my life, booze galvanised me. I decided to give it a go.

Sangora Road was ten minutes’ walk. I’d get as close as possible to number 21, then see what happened.

No matter how slowly I took it in the screaming low sun, I got there breathless, a little delirious. Heat to an insomniac must be like thick-crust pizza to an anorexic: it knocks you out.

At the bottom of the road, I stumbled into the Roundhouse pub, craving its cool inner gloom just for a few minutes. I took my pint to a window seat out of the sun. My eyes – still scored by the glare – struggled to adjust to the darkness. I tried to focus on something midway between shine and shade, and settled on the people sitting outside enjoying their evening meals. Couples, friends, families chatted, gossiped, laughed. Beyond them, a grandstand view of the steps to number 21, just a half dozen doors up the road. The carefree revelry seemed disrespectful and shallow. Didn’t these people know what happened here a few weeks ago? Didn’t they care?

As I drained the glass, a flash of auburn hair on the sunny street caught my eye. I put the glass down and stared hard through the alfresco diners. She stood on the pavement, side-on to me, just staring towards 21. I knew that thick, curly, blood-red hair. I knew that dowdy, flowery dress. I blinked hard and fast to make sure she wasn’t a hallucination.

‘Marion?’ I mumbled.

‘Marion!’ I called, loud enough for the drinkers inside to look my way. Someone on the outside table stood, blocking my view. I jumped to my feet.

Still she stood there, motionless, oblivious.

‘Marion!’ I shouted. Now everyone on the outside tables stared.

‘Fuck it,’ I thought, and made for the door.

I got outside and scanned the pavement: there was no sign of her. I jogged up to where she’d stood and looked around. She’d vanished.

As I walked on towards 21, I noticed the To Let sign in the front garden. I wondered who’d cleared out Marion’s stuff. Who had painted over the bloodstains on the wall and scrubbed them out of the carpet? Knowing estate agents, they’d probably raced here with buckets and J-cloths. I was certain they wouldn’t be mentioning the grisly murder to any would-be tenants.

I didn’t want anyone thinking I was some sort of crime scene deviant, so as soon as I reached the steps to Marion’s house I wheeled left, back past the pub towards the Common. I looked left to cross the road and saw her: Marion, motionless on the pavement of Strathblaine Road. Again, she was staring towards 21. Her hair blazed scarlet along with the raging low sun. This time I didn’t panic. I walked steadily up towards her.

‘Marion?’ I called out gently. She didn’t respond.

‘Marion!’ I cried loudly.

Next thing, I found myself walking past the pub again. I turned to look where I thought I’d just been. She was gone. Had that actually happened? I felt rattled, disorientated, scared. What was happening to me? I aimed for the shade of the nearest tree on the Common.

I felt in no doubt now: Marion was breaking through to me from the other side. She was hijacking my subconscious, I presumed to help me find her killer. It was illogical, supernatural, an affront to logic. But it was the truth.

I lay down to better cling onto the tree and the wildly spinning world.

Chapter 20

Clapham Police Station, South London

Saturday, August 10, 1991; 10:00

While the rest of the squad were out focusing on Peter Ryan’s relationship with Karen Foster, I was office-bound on the paper trail of Marion’s Lone Wolf Killer.

DS Glenn’s team had made strenuous efforts to get their hands on the case files for every unsolved stranger attack on a woman in London over the past four years. Some were on the computer system, the rest were in box files strewn across an empty office floor.

The Met police was in the throes of ditching its old manual ‘card’ system for computers, so records were a mess. By now, a few stations had everything on computer. Some had part of their records on computer. More still hadn’t even started the process. As a result, lots of paperwork was in transit. And we all know what happens when paperwork gets moved about.

Not that getting hold of case files from other murder squads proved simple at the best of times. Bitter rivalries simmered between many senior officers and, as a result, their CID teams. Most Detective Chief Supers ran their ‘manors’ like personal fiefdoms. They resented other teams snooping around and cracking their outstanding cases. It was petty, small-minded and dangerous – nobody dared stock-check the number of deaths caused by police teams who had failed to cooperate or communicate. The Met hoped technology would tear down these walls of ego and secrecy, and that computers would one day crack crimes all on their own.

I clicked open the folder named Unsolved, then the file named Overview and congratulated myself on my initiative. It was a painstakingly prepared report of the records that had been requested, but not received from stations still converting to the chip. Someone had optimistically dubbed these files: ‘Currently Misplaced’.

A second file contained a comprehensive list of sexual offenders recently released from prison. None of their prints matched those found at Marion’s murder scene. Each had been interviewed and eliminated from the investigation. I had to hand it to Glenn’s team: they were thorough, dogged, methodical – eager hounds chasing the wrong scent.

The third file was a report penned by forensic psychologist professor Laurence C. Richards BSc, MSc, FRSA; criminal behavioural analyst.

Despite Shep’s cynicism, if there was a Lone Wolf Killer (LWK) lurking somewhere in these files, I wanted to know how to identify him. Before I waded through hundreds of offences, I needed some sort of criteria to narrow down the suspects: a sort of LWK Modus Operandi tick list. I was terrified of missing a vital clue, leaving the killer free to strike again.

I quickly realised that Professor Richards’ chief skill was to deliver lots of general, common sense observations with absolute certainty. Whoever killed Marion must have escalated to that level of extreme violence. He will have forced his way into homes before and attacked women at knifepoint. This was ‘his thing’.

The report went on: ‘Although the victim had not been raped or sexually assaulted, the attacker will have gained sexual gratification from the attack. He may well have shortcomings that prevent him having sexual relations with women. As a result, he may despise women. However we shouldn’t rule out that he’s raped women in the past.’

In short then, we were looking for a violent misogynist who was once a rapist but now can’t get it up so he takes it out on random women with a knife. Or possibly not. I couldn’t help thinking that the Prof was covering all the bases.