September
GRAFFITI ON THE WALL OF the fish and chip shop:
Copper, Copper
Have you stopped the cull?
‘No sir, no ma’am,
Three graves full –
One in a garden,
One in the rain
And one in a tatty den
Up Cock Hill Lane.
Harry Ca Nab!
Rubery Hill Hospital bled majestic charisma, and its sombre function only contributed to its mystery. Its rooftops rose above the trees like the turrets of Aurora’s castle, a fortress as well as sanctuary to the unsound of mind. Its labyrinthine corridors stretched in all directions through vermilion walls, the windows of the generous wards bestowed light, and the kempt gardens were worthy of any stately home. Some later extensions were unlovely, admittedly, yet its elder beauty outmatched the dour modern brick.
But it was still a lunatic asylum. It beheld dangerous psychosis and incurable sadness, and decades of suffering had seeped into its walls, its ceilings, and the very earth beneath its foundations. The faces at the windows aged without experience, trapped in their hectic nightmares or muted melancholies, ensconced in their deranged minds yet free to express their pain in shrieks, in rage, in destruction, or catatonic desolation. Only those strong of humour, compassion and dedication could work there and not be infected by such misery and madness.
Dr Walter Tremblay was tall and lanky, his manner bursting with inquisitive ebullience. His suit was outdated, and his tie knot just too wide.
Delahaye liked him immediately.
They passed light-filled wards along the myriad corridors until they reached a door, which Tremblay unlocked to reveal an untidy office. Here were desks covered in the scree of paperwork, and walls lined with framed certificates. Tremblay locked the door behind them. He offered Delahaye the comfortable chair as he sat in a plastic one, unclipped his tie and laid it on the desk.
‘Anti-garrotte,’ Tremblay explained cheerfully.
‘It takes a very special kind of person to work here,’ said Delahaye.
‘Yes, we get that a lot,’ said Tremblay. ‘I expect you do too, as a police officer.’
‘No, just riots and spitting lately,’ said Delahaye, and Tremblay chuckled even though Delahaye hadn’t meant to be funny.
‘I was very intrigued by your telephone call, Detective Sergeant,’ said Tremblay. ‘I apologise for not getting back to you sooner.’ He sat back. ‘There are so few details in the media about how the boys were killed.’
‘We aren’t sharing that information with the media,’ said Delahaye. ‘And we won’t be sharing anything discussed today. It might spark civil unrest, and I think this community could do without that.’
Tremblay nodded. ‘I understand and that’s a wise course of action.’ He tapped his fingers on his desk, pondering while gazing briefly out of the office window then looked at Delahaye. ‘According to the media reports, the victims are all boys, and the youngest siblings,’ said Tremblay. ‘They were well loved from secure nuclear families.’
‘It had crossed my mind that perhaps the murderer is not from such a loving background, and he’s destroying those families in a way to feel . . . justified,’ said Delahaye.
‘Yes, that’s a plausible hypothesis because there are offenders who blame their behaviour on such formative reasons. Is your leading suspect still Bob Aster?’ asked Tremblay. When Delahaye nodded, he continued, ‘Aster originated from a troubled, chaotic family with a weak widowed mother allowing a string of men into her life; one of those men possibly abused Aster, which might have led him to commit these crimes against boys as a grown man.’
‘Yes, but he seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth,’ said Delahaye. ‘We’re getting desperate if we can’t at least eliminate Aster from the investigation.’
‘Aster could be dead,’ said Tremblay. ‘His type of offender has a high suicide rate, especially when cornered. Or he could have been murdered. His body just hasn’t been found. Aster might not be your man.’
‘True,’ said Delahaye. ‘But we don’t know for sure so he’s still our top suspect.’ He shook his head. ‘This theory that the murderer is suffering from clinical lycanthropy is a very recent one.’ How does one begin a conversation about such things in real life, Delahaye wondered.
‘Understood,’ Dr Tremblay said. ‘Let’s begin at the beginning then, shall we? You tell me all you know about clinical lycanthropy, and I’ll see if I can fill in the gaps. Perhaps even help you understand what it is – separate fact from fiction, so to speak.’
Delahaye read from the notes he’d taken during Miss Misty’s call – the examples she’d given him from history – and spoke of the dead canines found with all three victims.
‘You’ve mentioned most of the historic examples of clinical lycanthropy,’ said Tremblay. ‘It’s not information people are wont to know offhand, even if they’re interested in the monster element. Everything you’ve told me I would’ve told you today,’ said Tremblay. ‘The person you seek must be under a tremendous amount of stress to compartmentalise their lives in this way.’
‘If the specific historic cases have anything in common with the present investigation . . . ’
Tremblay sat back in his chair. ‘In 1572,’ he said, ‘a recluse named Gilles Garnier lived on the outskirts of a French town named Dole. He was married, but his family was poor and starving and, soon after, several children were discovered partially eaten, with their throats torn out. Local workmen discovered what they thought to be a wolf standing over the corpse of a child but it turned out to be Garnier, and he was arrested. At his trial, witnesses claimed to have seen him both as a human and as a wolf. He confessed to the murders. He said a spirit gave him some magic salve that he rubbed onto his body so he could turn into a wolf and become successful at hunting. He was burned at the stake for his crimes.’
The doctor continued. ‘In 1603, around St Severs, Gascony, several small children went missing and were never found. Young women in the area claimed they’d been attacked by a werewolf or large dog. Jean Grenier was a young man who claimed that he’d been given a wolf skin – and an ointment that would indeed turn him into a wolf – by the Lord of the Forest. He boasted to a local girl about his murders and he was subsequently arrested. He was put on trial at Bordeaux, confessed to cannibalism and murder, and was interred in a monastery for the rest of his life.’
Delahaye’s pen paused above his notebook. There were similarities between the Rubery murders and the historical cases.
‘These cases both happened in France . . . ’
‘All the historic cases happened in Northern and Eastern Europe,’ said Tremblay. ‘It must be something in the water.’
‘And all male,’ said Delahaye.
‘With one exception. The historic cases where homicide was involved were male. And most modern-day clinical lycanthropes are male with rare exceptions. It is this statistic that possibly lent the werewolf legend its all-male bias.’
‘Are all the cases linked to cannibalism?’ asked Delahaye.
‘Yes. And possibly witchcraft.’
‘There’s no evidence that cannibalism or witchcraft is the motive for these murders,’ said Delahaye. ‘The victims were killed as if by a specially trained guard dog.’
‘And then ritualistically deposited with a dead canine as a companion,’ Tremblay mused.
Delahaye handed over the photographs showing the boys’ wounds and the dead dogs. The psychotherapist studied each picture.
‘Does this evidence support the theory that the murderer is a clinical lycanthrope?’
‘Yes,’ said Tremblay.
‘Have you ever come across it here?’
Tremblay shook his head. ‘No. I’ve checked, and there’s never been a case of clinical lycanthropy here at the South Birmingham hospitals or at All Saints. I’m a psychotherapist who specialises in rare disorders such as multiple personality disorders and the even rarer species dysphoria – when a person believes totally that they’re a different species to their own. Both conditions can have foundations in schizophrenia or dysthymia – as will clinical lycanthropy.’
‘But you have come across it before?’
‘Yes, at a Welsh asylum. The patient believed he was a werewolf all the time, not just at the full moon. He believed he could change at will. It was only then that he would become very dangerous to staff and the other patients. He would attack by biting rather than punching. He could move on all fours – not hands and knees but properly quadruped. And very fast.’
‘Is that really physically possible?’
‘Yes,’ said Tremblay. ‘With practice.’ He’d given the exact same answer as Miss Misty.
Delahaye reached down for his satchel and pulled from it another photograph, this time of the clearer footprints found around Bryan Shelton’s body; of hands curled into forepaws and the feet high on the toes, like a dog. Delahaye spoke about Neville Coleman, Banlock Farm and its original purpose, and the thousands of animal bones found by Mickey’s body.
‘Let’s say Bob Aster is alive and well. He knows the area well enough to know Banlock Farm was abandoned. He’s still a strong man with a history of biting his victims. He might have progressed to such savagery and murder,’ said Tremblay. ‘His target demographic was exclusively boys.’
‘But the bites on his victims were more like deep love bites with extensive bruising,’ said Delahaye. ‘I mean, he could’ve been planning these attacks for years, changing his MO with his growing needs. He could’ve groomed Mickey, Bry and Gary over time or . . . ’
‘It is unusual for such an offender as Aster to give up sexual pleasure from rape to gratification from bloodlust,’ said Tremblay.
‘Unless he has erectile dysfunction and it’s the only way he can find such gratification?’ Delahaye wondered.
‘Hmm. Have you considered Aster having a young accomplice? A youngster he might possibly have groomed or is paying to lure boys for him? Somebody who is “his type” whom he enjoys having around for other purposes?’
Delahaye’s memory flashed to Mickey Grant and the naked boy in the photograph found at Aster’s home. But he also remembered Karl Jones walking into Mack Hardy’s shop. ‘I haven’t considered that possibility at all,’ said Delahaye, miserable now he had to consider this on top of all the other complex theories.
Tremblay nodded. ‘It’s worth considering even though the historic profile of this type of murderer is exclusively a lone male. Anything else?’
‘We’ve also interviewed witnesses who claim to have seen a strange dog-like creature standing on two legs outside Joseph Sheldon Hospital,’ he said evenly. ‘A man dressed, we believe, in a wolf suit.’
‘A wolf suit?’ Dr Tremblay said with interest. ‘Samuel never thought to do that.’
‘Samuel?’
‘My patient in Wales.’
‘What happened to him?’
Tremblay cleared his throat. ‘Samuel escaped the hospital and disappeared into the countryside. That night, he attacked a flock of sheep and killed as many of the newborn lambs as he could get his hands on. He tore out the throats with his teeth, just as your murderer has done with these children. The farmer had to shoot him to stop him, like a rogue dog. Said he didn’t even have to aim – Samuel came straight at him. Samuel died of his wounds on the way to hospital.’
Delahaye was silent for a moment then said, ‘Had he been born that way, do you think, or made?’
Tremblay smiled sadly. ‘Nature or nurture? That’s The $64,000 Question, isn’t it?’ He tapped his fingertips on the desk again. ‘In Samuel’s case, his mother traced it back to when he was sixteen and had meningitis. He’d almost died, and they thought he’d have permanent brain damage but he seemed to return to a normal life. When he was eighteen, Samuel began to experience debilitating migraines and violent mood swings and, as these worsened, so his condition manifested and exhibited as clinical lycanthropy. You’d be surprised how many homicidal murderers have been found to have had head trauma of one kind or another.’
Delahaye looked up from his notebook. ‘Like Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower Sniper.’
‘Yes, a perfect example. They discovered a brain tumour, didn’t they, at Whitman’s post-mortem? It was pressing against his amygdalae, the clusters of nuclei that control emotional responses – our fight or flight reactions.’
‘And Bob Aster had had a head injury from a hammer strike while in prison,’ said Delahaye. But then, Mack Hardy had also obtained a debilitating head injury – from German Shepherds no less.
Tremblay nodded. ‘Even in history, we can hypothesise it was head trauma that created monsters out of men who’d previously been relatively human before it. Most sufferers of clinical lycanthropy aren’t dangerous, they can be treated, and they can live their lives without hurting anyone. However, if there is a base mental disorder before a head injury, that’s where you’ll find the overlap with homicidal tendencies. When not in thrall to his condition, Samuel was charming and erudite. But it was a deflection from his true psychology – and it wasn’t clinical lycanthropy.’
‘What goes through their heads when they think they change?’ asked Delahaye.
‘When they “change”,’ Tremblay said, ‘the beast is pure in intent, it has no ego – it is the id. It is primal nihilism and possibly rooted in self-destruction. It’s free from guilt and inhibitions. They don’t have to ask permission – they’re free. Some claim they can’t remember what they did after “changing”. Suicide or suicidal thoughts aren’t uncommon in sufferers of clinical lycanthropy. If remorse is experienced, it is only after the rage is spent, even if murder is the result of that rage. Most sufferers of clinical lycanthropy don’t harm anyone else, let alone kill. They can exhibit animalistic behaviour that can be elegant and fascinating to observe. But those that do harm . . . ’
‘Samuel was a psychopath,’ guessed Delahaye.
‘Detective Sergeant Delahaye, Samuel was the typical psychopath cliché. As a small child, he often tortured small animals. His parents took him to a doctor who suggested he was hyperactive and prescribed Ritalin. When he was twelve-years-old, they took him off Ritalin because his parents believed their son was magically cured. But he wasn’t. His energies had diverted to other pastimes: shoplifting, voyeurism, vandalising property.’
‘But those are all the typical warning signs of a homicidal psychopath, cliché or not,’ said Delahaye.
‘And you’ve come across as many psychopaths in your line of work as I have, probably more,’ agreed Tremblay. ‘A child that exhibits these behaviours will continue these traits into adulthood. And they’ve no idea that they have a disorder. You won’t find a psychopath wanting to get better. He thinks he doesn’t need to get better, he is better. And psychopaths can be found from loving, supportive backgrounds – just like Samuel.’
‘Ian Brady has said, “We do whatever we enjoy doing. Whether it happens to be judged as good or evil is a matter for others to decide”,’ said Delahaye.
‘And that’s the typical cop out of a nihilistic, narcissistic psychopath. The human mind is an incredible and mysterious organ, capable of great innovation, creativity and genius. But it is also just as capable of unspeakable evil.’
‘It is strange to hear a man of science use the word “evil”,’ said Delahaye, surprised.
‘I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal and I’ve no faith,’ said Tremblay. ‘I’m a pragmatic realist. The modern terminology faffs about in our bid to understand but when we understand too much we start making excuses. And for human evil, too many excuses means we turn a blind eye to the warnings that alert us of its presence, and its oncoming. Mad, bad or deluded, nature or nurture, human evil has nothing to do with Satan and sinning. It’s to do with choosing to do the wrong thing because we want to.’
‘The murderer must feel some remorse if he places the boys with canine companions, as if he doesn’t want the children to be alone in death . . . ’
‘But have you considered it could be the other way around?’ said Tremblay. ‘That this supposed remorse has nothing to do with the children but all to do with the dogs? That it’s the dogs he worries about being alone in death? Because he sees the dogs as more like him than the boys are?’
Delahaye hadn’t considered this theory at all. He remembered Zasha’s grave hidden at Banlock Farm.
On the wall beside the doctor’s desk was a black-and-white photograph of a little girl walking on all fours. Tremblay turned to see what Delahaye was looking at and smiled.
‘Ah, the nature versus nurture argument again – feral children. That girl was named Kamala and she had a younger sister Amala and they were allegedly raised by wolves in the Bengal, and subsequently rescued. They both died in childhood. It’s a pity there are suggestions the whole story was a hoax.’
‘Like the legend of Romulus and Remus, like Mowgli,’ said Delahaye. ‘Do you believe that such children exist? Do you think that there’re children raised by animals – like wolves?’
‘I do,’ said Tremblay. ‘There’re some interesting cases of children being raised by packs of urban dogs in the Soviet Union.’ A silence settled between the two men. ‘Have I been useful to you, Detective Sergeant?’
‘Everything you’ve said makes sense to this case,’ said Delahaye. ‘Thank you.’
‘It should assist you in creating a profile of the type of perpetrator you seek,’ said Tremblay.
‘Profile?’
‘The conference I attended in the USA was about the kinds of habitual offender we’re seeing more and more of, murderers like John Christie, Peter Sutcliffe, and their ilk. The FBI are organising these offenders into categories and creating descriptions for each type. A taxonomy of such species, if you will. They’ve a new term for such murderers that might catch on – they’re calling them “serial killers”.’
Tremblay scribbled on his notepad and tore the page out, handing it to Delahaye.
‘If you’ve any more questions, please contact me on that number. I’ll be glad to assist in any way I can.’ The men shook hands. ‘I’ve enjoyed our conversation, Detective Sergeant. I haven’t had such an interesting chat in a long time.’