George Heard yawned and stretched. It was not yet five a.m., but being mid-summer the day dawned early. Mr Heard was a chauffeur and he was eager to see if the weather was going to match up to expectations for that season of the year, so he padded from his bed to the window and opened the curtains. The date was 14 July 1964.
That’s funny, he thought, rubbing his eyes, hoping for clearer vision. Slumped outside a neighbour’s garage was a tailor’s dummy; well, that’s what it looked like in the half-light and from the elevated angle. But as his eyes cleared, he said to himself, Blimey! I reckon that’s a body, not a dummy. So he scrambled into some clothes and went to inspect close up.
First impression had been wrong. Second impression had been right. Mary Fleming was no dummy, but she was as lifeless as one. Number five had turned up, but not courtesy of the River Thames. This had been a straightforward dump-and-dash job.
Mr Heard lived at 52 Berrymede Road, Chiswick. He was up with the crow of the cock because one of his daughters was going to France on a day trip and he was to drive her to Acton in his employer’s car; he drove for a City of London banker. His crowing cock had been a pre-booked phone alarm call. The body was outside number 48. ‘Just squatting there,’ he told police and press. ‘You can imagine my shock. Nearly had a heart attack. Enough to put me off my food for a week. I scarpered indoors and dialled nine-nine-nine. I was told not to move or touch anything. I was too spooked for that, anyhow. It gave me the creeps. I told them I took one look and just ran indoors.’
Just before five-thirty, two uniformed constables, Houston and Braddock, arrived from Shepherd’s Bush police station. One of them radioed a report to their HQ while the other taped off the crime scene. Sightseers, some in dressing gowns and even less, were beginning to fill the cul-de-sac. By seven o’clock, there were five detective superintendents there, one of them from the murder squad, Maurice Osborn, who was to take charge. They had to wait another hour and a half for the overworked pathologist, Dr Teare. ‘Here we go again,’ he was heard to murmur, as he commenced his preliminary examination.
Through markings on the body, Teare was able to state categorically that Mary Fleming had been stripped after death. Grease stains on her back and buttocks hinted at her having been transported on the floor of a vehicle, such as a van that was used for work. Distinctive imprints on her back were also consistent with her having lain for a while on a patterned carpet or rough-haired rug. A massive bruise on her left breast, directly above her heart, bore the shape of a fist and the blow appeared to have been delivered with the force and precision of someone exceedingly strong and probably quite heavy, such as a man with boxing skills. At only just over five feet tall and weighing barely eight stone, Fleming would have had no chance of defending herself against a man of even average build, even though she was believed to be armed with a knife, never mind perhaps a professional pugilist. If taken by surprise, she would have been helpless, whatever precautions she had taken.
Bill Marchant quickly assembled a team of door-knockers. Someone must have seen or heard something worthwhile. Of something the police were already certain: the killer wasn’t local. This criminal didn’t mess on – or near – his own doorstep.
Several residents of Berrymede Road had been woken by a noisy, revving vehicle between one and two a.m. All agreed that the engine seemed high-powered and had been driven into the road and then away at speed. Another resident had returned home at just after ten-thirty p.m. on the previous evening from watching greyhounds racing at Wembley Stadium and the body wasn’t there then. So a time frame was beginning to emerge. All the evidence pointed to the drop having been made between one and two, which, on its own, helped the police not one jot.
Dirt was scraped from Fleming’s body at the mortuary and despatched to the Metropolitan Police Forensic Laboratory for examination, marked ‘urgent’. The outcome was promising. Minute particles, visible only under a microscope, were isolated from the rest of the dirt and were an identical match with those from Barthelemy’s body: dust from coal or coke, and red, black and blue paint. Not only had these two women been murdered by the same man, but unquestionably had been stored in the same place. Find that place and you may have found the serial killer, though not necessarily: always a caveat. If the storage venue was some sort of commercial garage, for example, it could be used quite legitimately by scores of people. Never mind, this was a major development, probably the only significant one so far.
So what did the police know about the latest deceased, apart from the fact that she was a prostitute and had lost twelve teeth during the night, ten from the upper deck. She drank a lot; whisky was her favourite tipple. She smoked even more, around forty cigarettes a day. ‘Could stop but don’t want to; enjoy fags too much.’ Just like the other victims, she stalked the streets around the Kensington Park Hotel, the Warwick Castle pub and the Jazz Club, all paradises for ponces, prostitutes and pimps, the three Ps of west London vice.
Foot-slogging detective probing established that on the night of Friday, 10 July she was at the ‘gym’, not doing press-ups but scotch knock-backs. The Gym was a euphemism for an illegal drinking club at 32a Powis Square, run by a monumental Jamaican who made extra money from appearing in movies and TV documentaries as a slave. He would joke, ‘I get whipped for a living.’ Fleming had been dancing there and ‘called it a night’ at around five a.m. and was in bed soon afterwards with her lover at 44 Lancaster Road. She was also there at six o’clock that evening, 11 July, because she returned from shopping to relieve her regular babysitter; Fleming had two young children.
After putting the children to bed, she dressed in lace G-panties, a red suspender-belt, dark nylon stockings, black padded bra, a green-grey blouse, matching jacket and tight woollen skirt, made from heavy material. To finish off, she put on a pair of white plastic sling-back shoes. Her babysitter for that night was an Irishman.
As detectives continued to piece together the final hours in Fleming’s life, it became apparent that she was still alive on the streets at three a.m. after being recognised by a Transport Police officer turning from the Bayswater Road into Leinster Terrace. Earlier, she’d spoken to other prostitutes, complaining bitterly that she hadn’t turned ‘one trick’ and was ‘fed up’ by the lack of trade. It seems that before admitting defeat and knocking-off for the night empty-handed, she was in the mood to do anything with a punter to clinch a sale. That was the last sighting of her, halfway through the night of Friday/Saturday, until she reappeared on the forthcoming Tuesday naked and dead, all those teeth missing and death due to asphyxia; something blocked her airways, but was removed from her throat or neck.
House calls were proving a waste of energy and valuable hours. Most promising was the scientific progress that continued to increase in value. The particles of paint on the body were globular, so they hadn’t come from a brush, but much more likely from a spraygun. Industrial premises, warehouses, garages, boathouses, boatyards, riverside huts and lockups were raided within a six-mile radius of where the bodies of Fleming and Barthelemy had surfaced, with nothing but recurring, monotonous negative results. One hundred and five officers were commandeered for this fruitless operation and more than one hundred and fifty premises were searched. Dust was meticulously collected from stone floors and sent to the lab. Dust was also settling on yet another abortive investigation. After hours of scrutiny under microscopes the response from the boffins was always the same: ‘Sorry, no match.’ Back to ‘Go’. Throw the dice again. Begin another circuit. This was soul-destroying, bad for morale, and even worse for Scotland Yard’s worldwide cred.
As Marchant rightly observed, ‘Just because the bodies turned up in this area, why should we assume that the killing was carried out here or indeed anywhere nearby? The ploy could be to throw us off the scent, to send us on a wild goose-chase.’ If that was the ruse, it was working. The detectives also had to accept that anyone could be using a paint spray at home in a private garage or workshop. Never had so much forensic detail been of so little use.
Referring to the paint particles, ‘Big John’ du Rose commented that ‘the general picture of the colours seemed to fit the pattern of motor cars being currently produced by certain manufacturers and it became that these two bodies [Fleming and Barthelemy] had been in or near premises in which cars were spray-painted during repairs. But where were the premises?’
He hadn’t a clue. Nor had any other detective, top of the ladder or on the bottom rung.
Du Rose added, ‘We had a double headache. We had to find a killer and we had to ensure, as far as humanly possible, that nobody else fell victim to him. But such were the difficulties that existed from the very beginning that the tempo of the investigation, involving countless inquiries, could not be quickened enough to prevent the deaths of yet two more women.’ However one massaged the facts and tried for an upbeat spin, the overriding message was one of abject failure.
He continued, ‘Already the manpower engaged on these murders was affecting the work of the Metropolitan Police, and particularly the CID. Sir Ranulph Bacon, the Assistant Commissioner for Crime, had allocated a far larger number of men and women to the investigation than is customary in a murder inquiry.’
Scarce inspiration came from that little homily.
The weeks passed, then the months, summer turned to autumn and winter, finally November. Even more finally for Frances Brown, where we came in.