Peter Turnbull: Aftermath

‘Yes, sir, and also like Hindley, he is unlikely to have taken those pictures of himself by himself. It’s possible with a delayed shutter mechanism, but the remoteness of all the locations and Post did not drive. . he had an accomplice or accomplices.’

‘Yes.’ Hennessey looked at the five photographs which just showed James Post, small, diminutive, standing over a small plot of land which clearly had some dreadful significance for him, but a significance, despite its dread nature, which was evidently also a source of pride for him.

‘So we have twenty-five victims and that is the twenty-five which they catalogued. There’ll be more.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We need to know more about James Post.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘He’s the key to this.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Yellich stood.

‘I am going to take learned advice.’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘If. . if. . your enquiries about James Post lead to the mention of a name Malpass, let me know immediately.’

‘Malpass, sir?’

‘Yes, Mr and Mrs Malpass. 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 assume 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 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.’