of sonny complete with prints, collar size and taste in pop music.”
“Yes,” said Dalgliesh, “we’re so sated now with scientific wonders that it’s a bit disconcerting when we find that technology can do everything except what we want it to.”
“Four women so far, and Valerie Mitchell won’t be the last if we don’t catch him soon. He started fifteen months ago. The first victim was found just after midnight in a shelter at the end of the Easthaven promenade—the local tart, incidentally, although he may not have known or cared. It was eight months before he struck again. Struck lucky, I suppose he’d say. This time a thirty-year-old schoolteacher cycling home to Hunstanton who had a puncture on a lonely stretch of road. Then another gap, just six months, before he got a barmaid from Ipswich who’d been visiting her granny and was daft enough to wait alone for the late bus. When it arrived there was no one at the stop. A couple of local youths got off. They’d had a skinful so weren’t in a particularly noticing mood, but they saw and heard nothing, nothing except what they described as a kind of mournful whistling coming from deep in the wood.”
He took a gulp of his coffee, then went on: “We’ve got a personality assessment from the trick cyclist. I don’t know why we bother. I could have written it myself. He tells us to look for a loner, probably from a disturbed family background, may have a dominant mother, doesn’t relate easily to people, particularly women, could be impotent, unmarried, separated or divorced, with a resentment and hatred of the opposite sex. Well, we hardly expect him to be a successful, happily married bank manager with four lovely kids just coming up to GCSE or whatever they call it now. They’re thedevil, these serial murderers. No motive—no motive that a sane man can understand anyway—and he could come from anywhere, Norwich, Ipswich, even London. It’s dangerous to assume that he’s necessarily working in his own territory. Looks like it, though. He obviously knows the locality well. And he seems to be sticking now to the same MO. He chooses a road intersection, drives the car or van into the side of one road, cuts across and waits at the other. Then he drags his victim into the bushes or the trees, kills and cuts back to the other road and the car and makes his getaway. With the last three murders it seems to have been pure chance that a suitable victim did, in fact, come along.”
Dalgliesh felt that it was time he contributed something to the speculation. He said: “If he doesn’t select and stalk his victim, and obviously he didn’t in the last three cases, he’d normally have to expect a long wait. That suggests he’s routinely out after dark, a night worker, mole-catcher, woodman, gamekeeper, that kind of job. And he goes prepared: on the watch for a quick kill, in more ways than one.”
Rickards said: “That’s how I see it. Four victims so far and three fortuitous, but he’s probably been on the prowl for three years or more. That could be part of the thrill. ‘Tonight I could make a strike, tonight I could be lucky.’ And, by God, he is getting lucky. Two victims in the last six weeks.”
“And what about his trademark, the whistle?”
“That was heard by the three people who came quickly on the scene after the Easthaven murder. One just heard a whistle, one said it sounded like a hymn and the third, who was a churchwoman, claimed she could identify it precisely, ‘Now the Day Is Over.’ We kept quiet about that. It could be useful when we get the usual clutch of nutters claiming they’re the Whistler. But there seems no doubt that he does whistle.”
Dalgliesh said: “‘Now the day is over / Night is drawing nigh / Shadows of the evening / Fall across the sky.’ It’s a Sunday-school hymn, hardly the kind that gets requested on
Songs of Praise
, I should have thought.”
He remembered it from childhood, a lugubrious,
“Yes,” said Dalgliesh, “we’re so sated now with scientific wonders that it’s a bit disconcerting when we find that technology can do everything except what we want it to.”
“Four women so far, and Valerie Mitchell won’t be the last if we don’t catch him soon. He started fifteen months ago. The first victim was found just after midnight in a shelter at the end of the Easthaven promenade—the local tart, incidentally, although he may not have known or cared. It was eight months before he struck again. Struck lucky, I suppose he’d say. This time a thirty-year-old schoolteacher cycling home to Hunstanton who had a puncture on a lonely stretch of road. Then another gap, just six months, before he got a barmaid from Ipswich who’d been visiting her granny and was daft enough to wait alone for the late bus. When it arrived there was no one at the stop. A couple of local youths got off. They’d had a skinful so weren’t in a particularly noticing mood, but they saw and heard nothing, nothing except what they described as a kind of mournful whistling coming from deep in the wood.”
He took a gulp of his coffee, then went on: “We’ve got a personality assessment from the trick cyclist. I don’t know why we bother. I could have written it myself. He tells us to look for a loner, probably from a disturbed family background, may have a dominant mother, doesn’t relate easily to people, particularly women, could be impotent, unmarried, separated or divorced, with a resentment and hatred of the opposite sex. Well, we hardly expect him to be a successful, happily married bank manager with four lovely kids just coming up to GCSE or whatever they call it now. They’re thedevil, these serial murderers. No motive—no motive that a sane man can understand anyway—and he could come from anywhere, Norwich, Ipswich, even London. It’s dangerous to assume that he’s necessarily working in his own territory. Looks like it, though. He obviously knows the locality well. And he seems to be sticking now to the same MO. He chooses a road intersection, drives the car or van into the side of one road, cuts across and waits at the other. Then he drags his victim into the bushes or the trees, kills and cuts back to the other road and the car and makes his getaway. With the last three murders it seems to have been pure chance that a suitable victim did, in fact, come along.”
Dalgliesh felt that it was time he contributed something to the speculation. He said: “If he doesn’t select and stalk his victim, and obviously he didn’t in the last three cases, he’d normally have to expect a long wait. That suggests he’s routinely out after dark, a night worker, mole-catcher, woodman, gamekeeper, that kind of job. And he goes prepared: on the watch for a quick kill, in more ways than one.”
Rickards said: “That’s how I see it. Four victims so far and three fortuitous, but he’s probably been on the prowl for three years or more. That could be part of the thrill. ‘Tonight I could make a strike, tonight I could be lucky.’ And, by God, he is getting lucky. Two victims in the last six weeks.”
“And what about his trademark, the whistle?”
“That was heard by the three people who came quickly on the scene after the Easthaven murder. One just heard a whistle, one said it sounded like a hymn and the third, who was a churchwoman, claimed she could identify it precisely, ‘Now the Day Is Over.’ We kept quiet about that. It could be useful when we get the usual clutch of nutters claiming they’re the Whistler. But there seems no doubt that he does whistle.”
Dalgliesh said: “‘Now the day is over / Night is drawing nigh / Shadows of the evening / Fall across the sky.’ It’s a Sunday-school hymn, hardly the kind that gets requested on
Songs of Praise
, I should have thought.”
He remembered it from childhood, a lugubrious,
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