I Watson - Director's cut

“Nothing else. The trauma’s never left.”

Anian’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “I don’t buy it. You don’t go attacking people because of childhood rejection.”

“Some people do. There’s not enough weight given to rejection at a certain age. Think of the crimes of passion in the adult world. The suicides. There is nothing more devastating than rejection.” Cole lit another JPS and through smoke asked, “What became of his father?”

Maynard nodded. “Good question. He left the forces on compassionate grounds, obviously, and a couple of years after Lawrence’s mother died he married again. This was in the mid-sixties when Lawrence was at university. After that they met only a handful of times. His father, complete with new family, emigrated to Australia. He came back for the trial and there were a couple of photographs taken outside the Bailey but that was about it.”

Cole said, “Earlier you mentioned Jesus Christ. What were you getting at?”

“We were discussing motives. I was convinced there was a religious connection.”

“Knifing women?”

“Pregnant women. I was thinking about the massacre of the innocents, one of Herod’s moments of infanticide – and there were many. But that was to do with the death of male children and when Lawrence carried out his attacks he couldn’t have known the sex of the unborn child. Even if he had the medical records back in seventy-six sexing was not the general rule. Even then, he was clever enough to have made the distinction.”

Cole said, “So, you've changed your mind?”

“I still think there's a religious connection.”

“So, religion. What else?”

“Sex, obviously, and its result, pregnancy, and then the slaughter.” Cole said, “But against the child, not the woman?”

“That’s where I was going. But it was a long time ago.” He turned to Anian. “If you meet him again, don’t mention you’re pregnant.” “I'm not.”

“Don't mention it anyway."

She laughed. Then realized Maynard was serious.

Cole said pointedly, “She’s not going to meet him again, Geoff.” Maynard watched them, fascinated by the strange chemistry of attracting opposites.

Cole continued, “She’s going to stay right out of the way.” Maynard smiled as though he knew something that Cole did not. “Of course she is,” he murmured. “It was just speculation.” He glanced again at Anian and in that fleeting exchange, her tell-tale eyes betrayed her.

Geoff Maynard hoped that he was mistaken and that she had indeed called a halt to the sittings, for he knew without a doubt that she wouldn’t stand a chance with Mr John Lawrence.

Before he slept Cole thought about the woman. He wondered whether there was any truth in the rumour that she had kept Jack Wooderson busy for a few months. Perhaps it was the ambiguity that he found so unsettling, the element of uncertainty, that she could be frivolous and irresponsible and yet, a moment later, quite cold and relentless. Somewhere there, lay the appeal.

In the next room where the windows and curtains were fully opened, where the lights from the traffic came in with the chilled air and skirted over the flower-patterned wallpaper – a reminder that Cole had once been married – Geoff Maynard was thinking about another woman If indeed it was a woman.

She's new in town, he thought, she had to be, and yet her knowledge of the area indicated otherwise. But people didn’t recognize her and, what was more, she had no fear of confrontation with the competition. So if she was local could it mean…

Maynard’s frown became almost painful.

…that she was dressed as the tom no one recognized!

Belle de Jour?

In this case the shrinking violet dressed up like a temptress? Able to go so far but no further and then, out of frustration, attacking the person she actually wanted to be.

Could this be something as simple or as complex as genophobia? Maynard tried to shake the thought from his head.

Start again. People don't start this way. They start in little ways and while they are learning they leave behind a little form. The learning curve. Antisocial behaviour, shoplifting, minor infringements that carried nothing more than a warning. So where did she come from? Where was she staying? The answer lay in the Square, on that kerb of crawlers.

Maynard found sleep difficult at the best of times, but during a case it was almost impossible. He worried it until it was done. That was why after HOPE he had given it up and gone back to therapy. Interaction was where it mattered, where you could rebuild a shattered life. The people who shattered the lives came at you like waves on a spring tide and like Cole had said earlier, he wasn’t King Canute. You could get one or two but there would always be more stacking up behind. They rolled in, wave after wave, bringing with them acts of depravity and wickedness that the civvies – the good citizens of this green and pleasant land – could not even imagine.

We see things that no one should see. We hear things that no one should hear.

Coming back was personal, nothing to do with Cole or Baxter or the closure of HOPE, his old department. If Cole knew why he had come back he would have laughed out loud. Everyone had secrets. Didn’t they just? This wasn’t about the challenge. This was about selfharm. The dawn stole in from an overcast sky and set the day. Sam Butler was well aware that time was running out. What had seemed like crucial breakthroughs were simply not delivering and a sense of panic gnawed at his gut. He said, “They've held on to it since seventy-six?” Anian shrugged and bony shoulders ridged her thin shirt. “It was high profile. And they still use it at Hendon. It was quoted verbatim in one of those true-crime books called…”

He was standing over her. A button was undone and he caught sight of some blue bra. Without looking away he said, “ The Underground Slasher.”

“Absolutely. Guess who wrote it?”

“Wouldn’t be a guy named Maynard, would it?”

Anian threw him a flirty smile. She bent slightly forward – he was sure it was unintentional – and showed him some more of the vale. “I read it,” Sam Butler said, trying to pull back a memory, but the view was in the way and it wouldn't come. He shook his head – the vale of tears was right, he thought – and went on, “Crime does pay.” “It paid even more than that. It was serialized in the Sundays.” She pressed play and the voice of John Lawrence came through. Not as resonant but unmistakable.

“I was a gentle child and so quiet that people would say I wasn’t there when in fact I was. It got me into trouble on more than one occasion when my parents would ask how I had behaved at a particular function only to be told I wasn’t there. I was very shy and you would always find me in a corner, hiding. It was only later that it came to me I didn’t have to hide, that in fact, no one noticed me anyway. “My father was in the army. We were posted to Cyprus. It was well before the country was partitioned but even then Makarios was causing trouble. He was a dangerous man. We lived in Nicosia in a white villa next to a dried-up riverbed. I remember we used to find a lot of dead cats in Nicosia. Wherever you went you came across dead cats and that was strange. The point? Yes, the point is that this is the riverbed where I used to catch lizards. Some of them were up to a foot long. Before that, when I was even younger, I used to make Plasticine models of chickens complete with their lungs and hearts and gizzards and, once I'd made them I would slit them open to extract their innards. It fascinated me. Even though I’d put them there and knew exactly what I’d find, it was still a moment of huge excitement. I never knew why. Now, a little older, I had the lizards. Using drawing pins, I crucified them on little crosses I knocked together. I’d put three of them on a little mound of sand. It wasn’t a green hill but probably closer to the truth. Have you been to Jerusalem? There's not much green. And there wasn’t in Nicosia either. But there were lots of red anemones. I remember them well. But they didn’t last long. Just three days at Easter time and then, they died. Perhaps that is why they have become associated with Jesus. I used drawing-pins at first, until I got some tiny little tacks that would go through their hands and feet. They were better. More realistic. More like nails. You had to bang them in, like the Romans did. Hands? Do lizards have hands? Well, they did for me. If you slice off their tails before you put them on the cross they look quite human. They sort of moved, like Jesus might have done. You know? In agony. Or ecstasy. And they bled. But their blood was fatty, watered down. Not rich red, like ours.”