‘She was discovered by an ARP Warden on his way home. He usually takes a short cut across the park and found the body lying on the pathway. Apparently she had been killed in the bushes…’
‘But the murderer dragged the body out here so that she’d be discovered very soon,’ said David Llewellyn finishing the uniformed sergeant’s sentence for him. He’d been called out of bed early that morning by a telephone call from Deputy Commissioner Bradshaw. ‘It looks like our friend has started his work again, Llewellyn. I reckon you’d better take charge of the business from the start. Get yourself down there pronto.’
And pronto, with the aid of a police driver, he had got himself down to Camden and the little park where the poor girl, Doreen Maberley, had been found.
‘I still don’t understand why he dumped the body out here where anyone could find her?’ the sergeant was musing.
‘To show off his handiwork, I suppose.’
‘Handiwork is right. Poor girl: it looks like Jack the Ripper got at her. All her insides have been interfered with,’ said the sergeant, having great difficulty in keeping his breakfast down.
‘You’ve searched the area, I presume.’
‘With a fine tooth comb, sir. I got two of my lads on it as soon as it was light. They’ve been over the ground half a dozen times. Nothing. Not even any shoe imprints. He’s left the murder scene as clean as a whistle.’
Llewellyn knelt down by the corpse and examined it closely. ‘He’s taken the heart, liver and cut out her tongue.’
‘What sort of man would do such a thing? He must be raving mad.’
‘Mad, certainly. But not raving. He has a cunning intelligence with nerves of steel.’
‘Blimey, sounds as though you know the blighter’.
Llewellyn sighed but said nothing.
Leaving the body in the capable hands of the pathologist from the Yard, the inspector departed the scene, taking in lungfuls of fresh air as he left the park. He couldn’t remember feeling as depressed as he did now. The bastard he’d nailed all those years ago, the bastard he hoped would feel the hangman’s noose around his neck, was free and had killed again. Killed? Well, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. He had ripped and torn the flesh of a young girl to satisfy his appetite for flesh and blood. This wasn’t just murder, it was mutilation and, God forbid, cannibalism. He shuddered at the thought of it.
And now his task was to find him, and find him fast before he was able to carry out another of his gruesome crimes. How on earth was he going to do that? He paused and lit a cigarette before climbing into the police car.
‘Where to, sir?’ enquired the driver, revving the engine. ‘To the Yard, is it?’
‘No,’ said Llewellyn wearily. ‘Priors Court, off the Tottenham Court Road.’
* * *
He felt good. He had hunted, killed and now he had dined on his spoils. He washed down the last of his bloody titbits with a glass of water – nothing stronger than water so as not to interfere with the taste – and sat back with a sigh of great satisfaction. He wiped his mouth and grinned. The whole experience had been as wonderful as he had anticipated. All that was left was to read an account in the press of his glorious escapade. Maybe in the evening edition. Certainly in the next day’s nationals.
He lit a cigarette and puffed contentedly. It would be good to show the newspaper reports to Northcote: another twist of the knife, aggravating the wound. Idly, he thought of his prisoner as he blew smoke rings on the air. There he was in that dark chamber below, lying on his rank bed unable to do anything but sleep and regret. In the few days he had been incarcerated in the cellar, he had regressed into a child-like moronic state. Sexton was convinced this was the result of the shock he had suffered by having his dream of freedom so brutally snatched away from him and being tethered like an animal in a dank cell. Well, in reality, Northcote had fulfilled his usefulness. There was no real point in keeping the beast alive for much longer. He would only become a nuisance, like an ill pet one had to attend to on a daily basis.
As soon as Sexton was able to have the final pleasure of showing Northcote the newspaper story about the girl he’d killed and boast how tasty she had been, as soon as he was able to witness the wild rash emotions that this would raise within his captive, he would have done with the fellow.
And then he would snack off him.