Fell Purpose

to get it out no more, never again.’

‘That’s right, Ronnie,’ Hollis said. ‘Not unless you’re on your own in the bathroom.’

He stuck his lip out. ‘It don’t hurt ’em just showing it to ’em.’

‘But the probation man said you’re not to, Ron, never no more,’ Mrs Oates said anxiously.

‘All right, mum,’ he said irritably, and turned to Hollis. ‘Anyway, I never hurt her.’

‘Who’s that, Ron?’ Hollis asked, catching the change of tone with a quiver of interest.

‘The other night.’ He lowered his voice to keep it from his mother. ‘I was going to show her my porker. She was lying down. Maybe she was asleep, so it wouldn’t have mattered. She wouldn’t have minded if she was asleep. I wanted to show it her. But then I never.’

‘Why not?’

‘I thought someone might come. And I’m not supposed to get it out no more.’

‘That’s right,’ Hollis said. ‘So was that on the Scrubs? By the railway embankment?’

‘Yeah, in the bushes. People go there to do it, y’know. All sorts. I like watching. I bet that’s why she was there. Like that Wanda. They’re all scrubbers, all them girls. Teasing and asking for it and making you, and then screaming.’

‘But if you squeeze their necks hard enough they can’t scream, can they?’

‘She never screamed,’ Ronnie admitted. ‘She never made a sound.’

‘I’m going to have to ask you to come with me, Ronnie,’ Hollis said gently. ‘Just to have a little chat and write down what you’ve told me.’

He looked alarmed. ‘I never done nothing! I never hurt that girl.’

‘No, of course not. I just want to have a chat where it’s comfortable, and write down what you’ve told me. Tell you what, I’ll ring the station and they can send a proper police car. You’d like a ride in a police car, wouldn’t you? With the lights and the siren going? You like the lights, don’t you?’

‘Can I ride in the front?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘We’ll see. And when we get there, you can have a nice cup of tea and some biscuits.’

‘Cake,’ he stipulated, playing hard ball.

‘All right, cake.’

‘A lot.’

‘As much as you want.’

‘Fruit cake,’ Ronnie said firmly.

You said it, Hollis thought.

When Oates had been removed, Hollis was free to search his room, loath as he was to disturb any layers in there. Apart from the signature dirty clothes, crockery, food waste and general rubbish, Ronnie’s interior decorating style was eclectic, gathering souvenirs from wherever he went. Anything he came across in the street during his wanderings was grist to his mill. Bits of wood, half a broken nameplate from someone’s front gate, several hubcaps, a washing-up bowl with a hole in the bottom, a garden gnome with a chipped nose, a cracked tea plate decorated with violets, a set of pram wheels, an umbrella whose fabric had parted from half its spokes, a wire supermarket basket, a split cricket bat. In a cardboard box in one corner there was a whole collection of bits of broken glass that had once been part of headlights and tail lights of cars that had been in collision – he must have picked them up out of the road, along with the hubcaps, from the scenes of accidents. In another box was an amazing assortment of plastic cutlery of various sizes and styles. Perhaps more sinister was a box full of Barbie dolls, every one of them damaged, some with missing arms or legs, some with missing heads, some bald, all of them battered, dirty and naked. He must have gleaned them from dustbins or perhaps rubbish tips. They lay tumbled together staring up from their box in a way that, Hollis decided in the end, was more pathetic than sinister after all.

Overall it was a weird and far from wonderful collection but there was nothing helpful there, except insofar as it confirmed that the lad had the intellect of someone who bungee jumps off low bridges. Hollis left the bed until last, from an unwillingness to discover what it was like. When finally he turned over the sheets, he found they were not only dirty but suspiciously stiff. Ronnie had evidently used a generous interpretation of the word ‘bathroom’. But reward was there for the dedicated archaeologist, for underneath the pillow he discovered a female’s handbag, pink fabric with shiny threads woven through it, small and oblong, with a thin shoulder-strap.

‘Oh, Ronnie,’ he said aloud, shaking his head in disappointment. ‘You daft pillock. It’s just no fun at all if you make it too easy.’

NINE

From Bad to Verse

Slider went downstairs while they were processing Ronnie, and the sergeant on duty, O’Flaherty, stepped away to talk to him. He was a vast and beefy man whom copious pints of the Guinness and his wife’s traditional cooking maintained at a glossy peak of solidity, like a prize breeding bull. He, Slider and Nicholls had known each other a lifetime, and had seen each other through various vicissitudes – many involving top brass, pointless changes in working practices, and mad political directives descending from on high like the proverbial brown shower. O’Flaherty, whose nickname of Flatulent Fergus was both true and affectionate, had often said that coppers at the sharp end coped with crime in spite of, not with the help of, their seniors. Like Slider, he approved of Porson, who got them left alone to a remarkable degree.

‘Dis is a bad business, Billy,’ he said, unusually serious for him. ‘I always thought Ronnie was going to escalate one day, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. Mind you, I wasn’t in favour of him going down for that Wanda Lempowski thing. She was a nasty piece o’ the divil-in-a-skirt, and I don’t doubt she pushed him in the hope of getting more money out of him. In th’end she hurt him more than he hurt her. She’s twice his size, and she packs a punch like an army mule.’

‘That’s not really the point, is it?’ Slider said, a faint smile twitching his lips.

‘Ah, sure, I know that. But psychiatric was what he needed, not a spell inside learnin’ to be brutal.’

‘Well, he’ll get it this time,’ Slider said. ‘If he’s found guilty his brief will plead insanity and he’ll be locked up at Her Majesty’s pleasure. And that’ll be that.’

Fergus cocked an eye at him. ‘What’s up wit’ you? Don’t tell me you’re developing a liking for smelly little flashers who go on to murder?’

‘God, no! It’s just so depressing. And what’ll happen to his mother?’

‘Ah, don’t you worry about her. She’s too t’ick even to realize he’s gone. Are you going to interview him yourself?’

‘No, I think we should let him settle in first. Get him comfortable, get some good grub inside him.’

‘So he’ll sing like a contented canary?’

‘Right. One thing with Ronnie, you don’t have to worry that he’s using the time to think up answers. He couldn’t make up a story if he used both hands and a tool kit.’

‘Well, we’ll be a while processing him anyway, so by the time he’s had his supper he’ll be ready for bed. You can safely leave him till the morning. And I bet he’ll sleep better than you.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Thanks, Fergus.’

‘How’s your wee boy?’ O’Flaherty asked as he was turning away.

‘I wish I knew,’ Slider said.

Porson called him in as he passed his room. The television was on in the corner.

‘Look at this!’ he barked. ‘Have you seen this?’

Slider looked. It was the twenty-four-hour news channel. The sound was turned down, but the newscaster was mouthing to a background piece of film of the Oates house in East Acton with the squad car parked in front of it, its light revolving, and Ronnie coming out walking between two uniformed officers. The rolling ribbon at the bottom of the screen said: ‘Breaking news – police make arrest in Zellah Wilding case. Ronnie Oates, the Acton Strangler, taken into custody.’

‘How the hell did this get out?’ Porson demanded.

‘From the quality of the film, and the angle, I’d say it was a neighbour using a camera-phone leaning out of a window,’ Slider said. ‘I suppose there must have been neighbours who knew who Mrs Oates was, and knew Ronnie