Steve Wilson - The Element Of Death

The force took the threat seriously enough so that as soon as news of his escape hit, they despatched a patrol to keep watch on my home; in these days of cutbacks, that was a big investment to make. Even so, had Gregory headed straight for my place once he was out, by the time the patrol was authorised and mobilised it would have been too late for them to stop him.

I remembered the exact moment I heard about his escape with crystal clarity. It was October eighteenth at three-fifteen in the afternoon. It was the same day I found out what was really happening with Monika and I had been sent to ‘work’ at home following the incident at the station. But I didn’t want to think about that right now. Instead, I let my thoughts wander to the beginning, and the time that I thwarted Morgan Gregory.

*

I was a policeman on the beat in those days, and had been for several years. As I was in my late twenties, I knew I should really be advancing in my career, but I enjoyed my job, and consequently didn’t push myself forward as much as I should have done.

Much of what I did would come under the heading of community policing — something that is sadly missing now with all of the cuts that have taken place — although there were times when it could be a harrowing role. The Gregory case had put us all on edge. Nobody knew anything about him — even his name was unknown then — and that added to the air of menace surrounding the killings. He had chosen his victims according to some bizarre ritual so that each killing had a link to the old nursery rhyme. You know, One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told . His first killing had taken place at a funeral home, the next at a maternity unit.

The whole country was nervously waiting for him to strike again, even though he had confined his first six murders to the North of England. Everybody was desperately trying to convince themselves that they were safe because they had nothing to do with the final line of the rhyme, the secret never to be told; but everybody had secrets, so nobody was safe.

I was on patrol in Garstang and had been called to deal with a domestic disturbance. The woman, Beverley Evans, had thrown her boyfriend out after she had found out he had been cheating on her and the man hadn’t taken too kindly to it, hence the reason I had been sent for. I made it abundantly clear to the man that he was no longer welcome in her home, and returned to Ms Evans’ address to let her know that we had taken the appropriate action. As I was about to leave, I saw a box full of lingerie on a chair in the front room, and she saw me looking at it.

“It isn’t what you’re thinking,” she said.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“I know. Believe, me, I know.”

“Enlighten me, then, Ms Evans.”

“You’re thinking, ‘Where have they come from?’ and ‘What sort of establishment is this woman running?’ Admit it.”

“I’ll admit to being curious as to what they are doing here. Since you’ve brought the subject up, what are they doing there?”

“They’re samples from work. I’m a bra specialist — I work for Seductively Secret as a demonstrator. I’ve a party tonight, that’s why I’ve all these,” she said, flinging her arms wide to show another two boxes on the other side of the room.

“Well, each to their own. I’ll say goodnight, Ms…” And then it hit me. The entire force had been puzzling over where the killer the tabloids had nicknamed The Magpie Murderer would strike next. It had been four weeks since his previous killing, and, as they had all taken place at four-weekly intervals, we expected that the final one would occur some time during that day. We just had no idea where , that was the problem. All we had to go on was that the victim would somehow be linked to a secret .

“About this party. Is it something your company organised?”

“After an invite, are you? Sorry, men aren’t allowed in. We don’t do those sorts of functions.”

“No, that isn’t it at all. This is an official enquiry.”

“Oh,” she replied, clearly taken aback. “No, this is something I’ve organised. We do freelance work as well as what the company arranges for us. This job came from…” She paused a while as she sorted through her bag, looking for her diary. “Here it is, look. Mr Pica rang me four weeks ago. He was very specific about it being tonight, and at exactly twenty past eight. I had to decide whether or not to rearrange a couple of things to accommodate. But, as you can see from the stock, he’s bringing hundreds of women along to the warehouse and I could make more money tonight than I normally do in a month, so it was an easy decision to make.”

I thought for a moment before replying. Gregory’s obsession with detail, especially as far as timings were concerned, was something that I was acutely aware of, having similar compulsions myself. Another officer might not have even noticed, but the time resonated with me. I could visualise the symmetry of the numbers, and, allied to the name of her employer, I was now convinced that I had made a key breakthrough in the case.

Ms Evans was looking at me, expecting a response to her answer, so I asked, “And does this sort of thing normally happen?”

“No, not normally. But it does on occasion, so it’s not totally unheard of. Why? Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. Leave it with me.”

I rang the station and told the desk sergeant what had just taken place. “It was when I heard she worked for Seductively Secret that I wondered. And then, when she told me the time of the meeting, it seemed to confirm it. Do you think there’s anything in it?”

“Maybe, maybe not. What was the man’s name again?”

“Pica.”

“Peeker? Sounds like we’ve a peeping Tom on our hands, not a serial killer.”

“No, it’s not spelt like that.”

“How do you spell it, then?”

“P-I-C-A.”

“That’s a strange name… What was that? Just a minute, Eddie Parkinson is talking to me.”

Parkinson was one of the senior officers, and he was often the victim of ribaldry because of his love for birds — the feathered kind, I must add. On this occasion, his ornithological knowledge was to prove invaluable. I could vaguely hear the discussion taking place, and then the sergeant spoke to me, very slowly. “Eddie has just informed me that the scientific name for the magpie is the Pica Pica. I think you might have found our killer.”

And so it turned out. Instead of Ms Evans, an undercover police detective went to the warehouse, where she found nobody in attendance but Morgan Gregory. He wasn’t, though, expecting the back-up that broke into the building moments later, and the killer was apprehended before he could complete his ‘rhyme’ killings. Everybody was surprised when we discovered that he was a young, baby-faced, clean-cut man who was a few months short of his thirtieth birthday. He was barely older than me, and what I would have described as 'eminently suitable; if your daughter had brought him home to meet the family, most parents would have been delightedly making wedding plans.

The evidence against him was overwhelming. Gregory didn’t even deny his part in the ritualistic slaughtering, but he claimed that it wasn’t murder, as he was obeying orders from a voice only he could hear; it was a convenient defence, and experts lined up to confirm his insanity. His conviction was never in question, but instead of spending the rest of his life in a maximum-security prison — which could easily have been sixty years of incarceration — he was sent to the mental health institution that ultimately allowed his escape; the system had failed the British public once again.