The Perfect Crime (6 page)

TWELVE

“You want me to do what?” Ted hissed.

“Bring all the info round to mine.” Groat was enjoying himself.

“I told you. Mr Morrison said I shouldn’t talk to anyone about the project. I spoke to you – unwisely as it now seems – and now you’re off telling all and sundry. I might as well pack in now.”

“So how much progress
have
you made?”

“I’m still busy analysing the figures.”

“Sorry; not what I asked. What progress have you made?”

Ted sighed. “Look. There are at least five forces across the country where these brace and bit jobs have been committed. You would think that at least they would talk to each other, but no. They might communicate at high level, but as for mutual assistance, or a helping hand, exchange of information at an operational level, well. It’s like ‘My gang’s better than your gang.’ Like some schoolboy pissing contest; ‘Nah nah, ne nah nah,’ ‘We’ll get him before you do.’ And bugger the consequences for the postmasters or the general public.”

“So how
are
you getting on?”

Ted sighed again, “They won’t talk to each other, they certainly won’t talk to me. I just get a blank stare. Sometimes I think it would be preferable if they told me to fuck off, but they don’t. They’re politeness itself. ‘Sorry, but it’s all in hand.’ ‘Not today thank you.’ ‘
Not
today
thank
you
?
’
When then? Tomorrow, next week, next year? After another postmaster has been murdered? Who do they think they are? It’s patently obvious it’s not all in hand or they would have arrested someone by now. D’you know, I’ve been told that this has been going on since 1967!”

Groat said, “But that’s seven years! Can that be true? Seven years and no arrests, no progress at all?”

“Makes matters even worse, doesn’t it.”

Groat engineered a significant pause. “So basically,
they
can’t make anything of it and you’re going on about them not communicating or talking to anyone about it, and now
you’re
acting exactly the same. Pearson, get your arse over here and start making some headway.”

*

It was a reluctant and hesitant Ted Pearson who was introduced to Dee Taylor in the Groats’ comfortable lounge just over an hour later.

“Look.” She said, “So far, as far as I’m concerned, this is all theory. I’ve seen FBI studies from America and I talked to Lester about Dr Haward’s work, but I’ve never done anything like this before – not for real. When I spoke to him before, I was actually wanting to find someone who might have tried to construct a profile from crime data. Or access some old files, some completed cases, so that I could put the principles into practice and see how it compared with reality. And most important of all, see how close I could get – using the methods – to the convicted man. I certainly didn’t anticipate anything like this. Live crimes.”

“So what exactly are we going to do?” Groat asked.

Ted looked on, a glum expression clouding his face.

“I suppose we could give it a go… The problem with this, is that we will be going operational as it were, with no trial run first. No experience, no control samples, no safety net.”

Groat sighed. “Do you think you can do it?”

“Oh, I can do it, but what if I make a mistake? I would have no way of checking. No way of knowing if I have missed something and may be leading you up blind alley, into a dead end, or on a wild goose chase. We might do a lot of work and get absolutely nowhere.”

“Or we might strike gold.” Groat said. “It’s a completely new approach. A completely new way of looking at things. I think we’ve nothing to lose.”

Ted grimaced.

Groat continued, “So if we do give it a go, how do we go about it – and more importantly, are you in?”

Dee smiled. “I am, if you are.”

“Let’s crack on then – tell all.”

Dee’s smile broadened. “Well, the biggest difference between police detectives and a psychological detective is that you analyse the crimes, the crime scene, the MO. You attempt to detect the crime.”

“So? Isn’t that what it’s all about?” Ted sounded puzzled.

“Well, yes – and no.” Dee replied. “A psychological detective attempts to detect the man – the criminal.”

“So what’s the difference?” Ted asked.

“Let me postulate,” She said.

“Get fined five pounds for doing that on a bus.” Groat said.

Dee looked at him sharply.

Groat hurriedly continued, “Sorry – do carry on.”

Dee frowned, appeared confused, but obviously determined to stay on track – “You go to the scene of a crime. You say, ‘this looks like the handiwork of John Smith,’ you find out if he’s out of prison at the moment and if he is, you get him in for questioning. With any luck you’ll get a confession and a fingerprint or two. Yes?”

Groat frowned. “Something like that. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, if he coughs it and it is actually his fingerprint. But what happens in the case of our serial – robber?”

“Robber; burglar.” Groat filled in.

“OK, whatever, you have no suspects and it’s an unknown MO.”

“Wouldn’t say that.” Ted said.

“But you can’t put a name to it, to him. If I say to you, ‘Who commits burglaries with this MO?’, you can’t come up with a name.”

“Not even after seven years.” Groat added.

That seemed to spark a sense of inevitability about the situation that imperceptibly nudged them towards a determination to actually do something, to move away from the juvenility of ‘my gang’s better than your gang’ and see if an open mind could create progress, where closed minds and old fashioned methods were failing.

Ever since Ted was first landed with his project and Groat had told him how things really stood, he likened the experience to swimming in treacle, with the added distraction of someone occasionally poking him in the eye with a sharp stick, or belting him around the earhole with a rounders bat. He was starting to feel cautiously optimistic, when Groat spoke again.

“Course, there’s two very big problems with all this.”

Ted and Dee looked intently at him.

“By telling you about this,” Groat gestured towards the pile of documentation Ted had brought with him, “by allowing you access to this information, Ted would be – we would both be contravening the Official Secrets Act.”

Neither spoke, the unasked question about the second ‘very big problem’ hung in the air between them.

“Secondly, if anything ever comes of it and we – ” he looked pointedly at Dee – “you – actually contribute to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator, how do we explain it? What do we tell the job, the courts?”

“I can answer that,” she said brightly. “My gap year – I worked for the VSO people in Africa – a project sponsored by the Foreign Office. I signed the Official Secrets Act for that.”

“OK, but what do we tell people if you – we – achieve any degree of success?”

“Nothing.” She replied. “I haven’t begun to explain what it is I intend to do, or how I will go about it. Suffice to say for now, that any work I might do would be entirely behind the scenes. I will give you information in such a manner that you will be able to present it – to whoever you have to – in such a way that it could be an idea you have come up with. For example, you will be able to say, ‘Let’s look here for our suspect, or how about we look for this sort of person.’ O.K. for starters?”

“There’s actually something else, as well.” Groat said, uncharacteristically practical for once. “What do you get out of all this?”

“That’s easy.” She grinned. “When it’s all over and the dust has settled – one way or the other,” she added hastily, “I get full access to the whole investigation for my thesis. Nothing comes for nothing, you know.”

Ted worried; far out of his depth.

Groat pondered. “O.K.,” he said, “It’s a deal.”

Ted closed his eyes and hoped to god his friend was right – or at least as lucky as he usually was – and that luck would rub off on him.

“So what do we do?”

Dee smiled, her eyes lighting up behind her heavy black-rimmed specs. “We were talking about the differences between a police detective investigator and a psychological investigator. You attempt to detect a crime, I attempt to detect the man. That’s the theory, anyway.”

“And,” Groat hesitated, “You tell us who is committing the crime? How’s that?”

“By making a study of what he does, when he does it and where he does it.”

“You can give us the name of a criminal from what, when and where he commits crime?” Ted felt that he could not sit there and allow this charade to continue any longer.

“Not exactly.”

“I knew it.” Ted exploded. He rounded on Groat, “This is one of those clever con tricks, where the operator is so clued up on the micro responses from the person they are interacting with, they can come out with seemingly miraculous statements. Can’t you see it? Or are you so blind that you are being taken in by yet another attractive female?”

Groat sat, stunned. Dee blinked, her neck gradually assuming a darkening, mottled shade of pink. Groat had never heard Ted in this vein this before and slowly realised what stupendous pressure his friend was enduring. He started huffing and shushing at him, whilst simultaneously attempting to placate Dee, when she spoke.

“It’s all right, I’ve experienced this sort of reaction before. Before you chuck this particular charlatan out of the house, would you at least give me five minutes to tell you about a few basics?”

Ted looked away. Groat shrugged, continued to look – and feel – extremely uncomfortable, said, “As I said – what have we got to lose?”

Ted was muttering about professional pride, self-respect and not being had over.

Groat cleared his throat. “I asked you here tonight, Dee. Please.”

“I told you, this work is for my dissertation, my master’s in psychology. Not everyone knows that in order to study psychology, you need a firm grounding in maths. A lot of statistical analysis, means, medians, normal distribution curves, what is statistically significant and what is not.”

She regarded her audience. Groat was paying her exaggerated attention, nodding and smiling encouragingly. Ted was busy studying the carpet.

She sighed. “Let me have a look at the information. I will get back to you as soon as I can. I have nothing to gain if I don’t come up with something concrete and the way it looks to me, at the moment, you have nothing to lose – either way.”

THIRTEEN

Wednesday 31st March 1971.

BBC News item:

‘
In
the
early
hours
of
this
morning
the
sub
post
office
at
Berry
Hill
Lane
,
in
Mansfield
,
Nottinghamshire
was
raided
.
The
sub
postmaster
,
an
elderly
man
who
suffers
with
heart
trouble
,
was
ordered
at
the
point
of
a
sawn
-
off
shotgun
,
to
open
the
safe
on
the
premises
.
The
raider
is
reported
to
have
been
a
young
man
dressed
all
in
black
with
what
was
described
as
a
black
silk
hood
over
his
head
.
The
criminal
tied
the
couple
up
and
left
the
premises
with
£
2
,
500
from
the
safe
.
Police
will
not
make
any
official
comment
,
but
there
is
some
suggestion
that
this
robbery
is
connected
with
others
that
have
been
committed
in
the
South
Yorkshire
area
.
’

*

Bonehead Bulstrode blinked in the daylight. He realised, of course, that it was no different from inside the prison walls, only it felt brighter, stronger – and the air smelled sweeter, too. For ten years he endured, but never became completely used to the prison stench, the stink of the other prisoners. So pervasive you could almost touch it – certainly on occasions it would catch in the back of your throat. A robust blend of shit, with a strong initial rush of urine, a soupçon of cabbage water, a cheeky overtone of stale festering sweat, the subtle aroma of unwashed feet, fermenting inside old, unwashed socks and a long lingering finish with a sly hint of disinfectant. A horrible, sickly, cloying assault on his olfactory sense, microscopically short of full blown putrefaction. Every police station cell block he ever worked in was similarly whiffy and Pentonville provided an unwelcome, stomach churning, come-to-daddy. He filled his lungs with fresh London air and headed on down Caledonian Road to the tube station.

Before his release he and other inmates about to get out, were given a lecture on (not) re-offending. He’d been given back the ten year-old clothes back he’d arrived in prison with and a generous state presented him with a fiver to be getting on with.
No
wonder
most
of
them
are
back
inside
before
you
can
say
‘
remanded
in
custody’
.
They’d
piss
that
up
the
wall
on
their
first
night
out
.
They’d
have
nowhere
to
stay
and
what
do
you
know
?
They
would
resort
to
the
only
way
they
knew
of
making
ends
meet
.
Crime
.
Again
.

Many years ago, he’d started to accumulate proceeds from his corrupt dealings and even without the last ten years of (increasing, involuntary) interest it amounted to a substantial stash. Mind you, this wasn’t quite the rainy day he’d envisaged when starting to put it by. They would never see him again, not unless he suffered the misfortune to come across them in Spain – but although that promised land beckoned, there were old scores to settle first.

He took the tube to Holborn, where he changed onto the Central line, travelling east. His informant told him that the Groats had moved from Leytonstone to a bigger house in Loughton. He wanted to be conveniently close, but not so near that he had to keep avoiding them. Neither did he want them catching sight of him while they were out shopping, or driving around. He’d grown a full beard whilst inside and lost a considerable amount of weight, so he doubted that they would recognise him, even if they did see him.
They
won’t
be
expecting
me
–
not
now
,
not
here
,
anyway
.

The second letting agency he visited in Wanstead came up trumps. A ground floor flat on Hickling Road, Ilford. They’d wanted references, but he put down twice the deposit they asked for, which sorted that. It was a nice anonymous sort of place, not far from Ilford Lane. Upstairs neighbours were a bit noisy, eccentric even for a young couple, but they were absorbed in each other and took little or no notice of him, which was ideal.

Next he went hunting amongst the cornucopia of second hand car dealerships along the High Road, out towards Seven Kings and Romford, eventually settling on an anonymous looking, deep sea green, three year old Volkswagen Beetle 1302S.

Perfect.

*

Dr H Milne – interview notes.

Tell me how your plan – ‘The Plan’ – developed.

I were doing all right with the housebreaking, then, one night, instead of a private house – which was what it looked like from the back – I found myself in a shop, only this shop were also a sub-post office. I stood there looking at the safe. This was it – the opportunity to have a go at the big time, but I couldn’t immediately think how to go about it. I would need to do a lot of planning – and some very different kit. I’d only targeted houses whose occupiers I thought could stand losing a bit of cash, but this was entirely different. This money did not belong to any one person. It were government money. They would never feel it if a bit went missing – and if they did, they could print some more. I’m not sure I even took anything from there, that night. I decided to go home and make some good campaign plans.

Can you remember when this was?

Nineteen seventy, happen. Back end, probably.