*Understood, sir.'

*If . . . if . . . your enquiries about James Post lead to the mention of a name Malpa.s.s, let me know immediately.'

*Malpa.s.s, sir?'

*Yes, Mr and Mrs Malpa.s.s. If you do hear mention of that name I want to know and I'll tell you why at that point.'

*We have interviewed them, sir. Ventnor and Pharoah . . .'

*I know,' Hennessey smiled. *I know.'

*But if they're suspects we should move before they kill again . . . surely?' Yellich's voice rose.

*No . . .' Hennessey leaned back in his chair. *They are not suspects, not yet, and if I am right there's no more danger.'

*No danger, sir? They're serial killers!'

*Yes . . . and their last victim was James Post. If I am right, it's all been happening around us without us knowing anything about it and we have come in at the aftermath. But I want to bounce my thoughts off a learned brain before I decide how to proceed. And I need more on James Post. Get Webster on it with you.'

Webster thought Mrs Lismore to be a kindly lady. She seemed warm of manner, she was a woman whose eyes sparkled and her smile seemed to Webster to be genuine. She was slender and short, with close cropped hair, and stood on the threshold of her house on the Tang Hall Estate having fully opened the door. *I was,' she said, *until I moved out . . . I am Mrs Lismore now. This is going back some years. How did you find me?'

*Housing Department,' Webster said, *when I told them it was an important investigation.'

*All right, well now you've found me. Would you like to come in? Better than standing out here, even on a pleasant day like today.'

The inside of Mrs Lismore's flat was, Webster found, neat and clean, though a little Spartan and spoke of a limited income. Webster accepted her invitation to sit down. *I told them my partner was abusive,' Mrs Lismore explained as she too settled into an armchair, *and I let them a.s.sume I meant physically abusive, and so they rehoused me and the children here . . . just a few streets away but he never bothers us.'

*He won't be bothering you ever again anyway.'

*Oh . . .?' Colour drained from her face. *You're not telling me he's dead?'

*Yes, I am. He was found deceased in a field outside York. We traced him by a library card in his pocket and his brother made the identification.'

*Oh . . .'

*But we need to know as much about him as possible. We believe he might have been involved in a serious crime which we are still investigating.'

*I see . . . that's unlike him, he was an alcoholic and that's why I left, just picked up the children I had had with my husband and walked into the Housing Department and said, "I have walked out of an abusive relationship". They put us in a woman's shelter and then allocated me this tenancy. So, he was a drinker but never a criminal. I do find that surprising.'

*It probably was a development in his life which occurred after you left him,' Webster suggested, *but the manner of Mr Post's death suggests he was a deliberate target, he was not a random victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

*What was the manner . . . can I ask?'

*Strangled and then battered to death, and his identification removed from his person.'

*But they missed the library card?'

*Yes.'

*I see . . . certainly sounds like someone wanted him dead, I'll give you that.'

*So, accepting you had little or nothing to do with Mr Post in the last few years . . . but might you know of any enemies he had?'

*No . . . no I don't'

*Friends?'

*Again, no. I do wish I could help. He drove any friends he might have had away from him.'

*How did he deal with his drink problem?'

*Alcoholics Anonymous . . . eventually. It was a long time before he got round to going there, but in the end he went and they helped him stay off the bottle . . . so I heard.'

*Long shot, but we had to ask.'

*My son could help you . . . well, he might be able to.'

*Your son?'

*Kenneth. He works in the Civil Service. Nothing special, fairly low grade and money's tight for him . . . State Pensions Department on the Stonebow. He is Jim Post's natural son but he took my name. I believe he tried to get to know his father in the last year or so once he . . . his father . . . had dried out.'

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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude, 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 p.r.i.c.k, p.r.i.c.k, p.r.i.c.k 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 gla.s.s 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".'

Thomson Ventnor ate a ready-made meal that he had bought from the supermarket. Just one meal, which he carried home in a plastic bag; it was the only item he purchased and simply required reheating. After the meal he took a bus out of York to the semi-rural suburbs and to a large Victorian house set in neatly tended grounds. He observed swallows and swifts darting about in the summer evening air as he walked up the winding drive to the house. He opened the door and was met by a blast of heat which he always believed could not be healthy. He signed in the visitors' book and went up the wide, deeply carpeted staircase to a lounge area, where elderly men and women sat in high-backed armchairs, and where a television set stood in the corner. A young woman in a blue smock smiled at him. Ventnor walked across the floor to an elderly man whose face lit up with delight as he recognized Ventnor, but by the time that Ventnor had walked the few paces to where the man sat, the man had retreated into his own mind, so that all Ventnor could say was, *h.e.l.lo, Dad,' even though he knew he was speaking to a person who was little more than a vegetable.

Later, he returned to the city and walked the streets, and eventually fetched up in a pub he found to be pleasingly quiet. He bought a beer and stood at the bar. He thought of the issues . . . the transfer to Canada . . . the need to stay in York until his father had pa.s.sed away . . . his pa.s.sion for Marianne that did not seem to be diminishing.

It was Sunday, 21.45 hours.

SIX.

Monday a 11.30 hours a 14.35 hours/Tuesday 16.50 hours a 17.30 hours