The events that followed are still confusing to me. I vaguely remember there being a lot of bodies in the cellar, and a great deal of shouting from fellow officers. I was still half collapsed on the floor – with blood streaming from the back of my head – and feeling like death myself when I heard someone – it might have been Jim- asking me if I was alright. I thought at the time it was a pretty stupid bloody question, although I wasn’t capable of telling him so. I couldn’t see Connie’s face; she was surrounded by uniformed figures, although I did notice someone had covered her naked body with a sheet from the bed.
I distinctly recall half sitting, half lying, on the cellar floor, flooding with tears at this indescribable tragedy, but the next thing I was aware of was being carried on a stretcher into an ambulance and on my way to hospital.
I was informed later that I had suffered a severe skull fracture – infinitely more serious than my earlier concussion. This time I felt so unbelievably shitty I was unable to argue with the doctors. I remember lying there just wishing I was dead, drifting from an overwhelming sadness and trying to come to terms with what I had witnessed in that cellar. I was simply unable to comprehend the events that had taken place.
Later, after I was able to stem the tide of incessant tears, I moved into a deep depression, which made me feel that life was no longer worth living. I, too, had suffered a kind of bereavement that night.
Jim came to see me regularly, of course. He told me that the majority of officers thought I was some kind of a hero; personally, he felt I had been bloody stupid in not waiting for him to arrive. He was very curt and matter-of-fact, almost as if I had become a complete stranger. I could not care less either way. I was too consumed with my own wildly oscillating emotions. Perhaps it was my disorientation, but I also sensed there was a coolness between us, as if something else had died in that cellar. Oh, he did inform me, as an aside, that the DCS was going to recommend that ‘silly cow’ for a bravery medal!
This time they kept me in hospital for almost three weeks following surgery, during which, I was later informed, a small metal plate had to be implanted into my skull for long-term protection. It was then that I realised I would never again be able to take up active police duties, so forcing me to reconsider my future.
During my time in hospital I did manage to ask various people – including Jim and Paul Simmons – about Connie, and what would happen to her now. I came up against a stiffening reluctance on the part of everyone I asked to give me any information. Jim did confirm, though, that Paul was pretty well spot on with his profile of the killer, even down to his conclusion that he would, in all probability, collect trophies of the victims. That didn’t stop him from constantly reminding me that, as a procedure, profiling was never intended to replace police work, merely to assist us. Nonetheless, it did prove invaluable. It wasn’t until I was actually discharged from the hospital that I was able to complete the whole story about the circumstances following Brownlaw’s death.
* * * * * * * * * *
The first discovery the police made was the body of the taxi driver. They found it in a ditch not far from where Brownlaw had abandoned the taxi. His throat had been cut.
Forensics evidently spent a great deal of time in the cellar gathering samples and DNA. They were able to confirm very quickly that the body of the little girl in the cellar was indeed that of Lisa, the six-year-old from the playground. They also confirmed that Brownlaw’s DNA matched the samples they had recovered from other sources during the investigation, including that found on the clothes of Josephine Marsden. He was also directly linked to the body of one of the children found in the pit in the woods.
Further investigation into Brownlaw’s background uncovered no new evidence, other than that his neighbours knew the killer, vaguely, as Harold Davidson, and that bank accounts – with substantial deposits – also appeared in that name. He was also in possession of various credit cards and a driving licence in the same name. Apparently, shortly after his mother’s deaths, and his inheritance of the millions she in turn had been left by her industrialist husband, he had decided – for reasons we could only speculate on, never prove – literally to disappear as Arnold Brownlaw.
It was Jim’s suspicion that he had murdered his own mother, and his disappearance brought an end to any further investigation that might have followed. Enquires produced little additional information on the man; nothing was established about his education, his career or even his own family. It suggested a convincing argument that, in reality, he was indeed Arnold Brownlaw. Harold Davidson had appeared instantly out of nowhere, almost simultaneously with Brownlaw’s disappearance, which did lend some credence to the suspicion that it was Brownlaw who was responsible for his mother’s death.
The total number of murders this man had committed was never factually established. We had already identified 19 children, making a total of 21 victims including Sheila and the taxi driver, and the obscene trophy photographs of the children on the wall seemed to confirm these numbers. We would never be able to prove that he murdered either his mother or Sylvia; suspicions alone were irrelevant in law. And then we had to ask ourselves: how many more children were there likely to be? We would never know, and personally I don’t think I really wanted to know. I truly had had a sickener of it all.
The end result was that a full enquiry was called for, and granted; one of the Appeal Court judges was chosen to oversee it. The relatives of the victims were promised that it would be comprehensive and there would be no closing of legal ranks.
And, finally, there was Connie, and what became of her. There was no question of a trial, as two eminent psychiatrists, in addition to Dr Simmons, testified that she was totally unfit to plead. As a result, she was committed indefinitely to a penal psychiatric hospital, but from the evidence of all the doctors there was no likelihood of her ever-regaining sufficient mental competence to be considered for release.
On more than one occasion I tried my best to visit her, but I was refused permission. I was once allowed, however, to ‘view’ her from the glass window of her room, and it brought back memories of the early months at Forest Hills, when she spent her days sitting on the floor in complete silence and in a foetal position, recognising no one and communicating with no one. It was more than I could bear. After all we had shared together, the prospect of that poor girl spending the rest of her life trapped in the darkness of her mind tormented me. Once again, the intense hatred I felt for her father boiled to the surface. He had completely destroyed her life, along with the lives of so many others. I remember leaving the hospital in tears and wishing with all my heart that he had killed her.
* * * * * * * * * *
Shortly after that I met up with Paul Simmons again, who did his best to explain what had happened to her. It was Paul’s medical opinion that, because of the sexual abuse by her father, Connie had begun to lose touch with reality so as to escape from the trauma. What then followed, from the discovery of the bodies in the woods, was that something within her, some psychic recognition, realised who the murderer was, thereby forcing her to retreat into a fugue state because of her mind’s inability to cope with the awful truth about her father. Paul had always suspected that somehow her family was involved, and that was why he had been so hesitant about releasing her from Forest Hills. He knew that all it would take would be one catalyst and she would slip back into the world of her childhood. In short, Connie was permanently damaged, and would never experience a stable adult existence. And, of course, he was proved correct. That is precisely what happened to her that night she was abducted.
She had a brief moment between lives, when she remembered that part of her childhood when she lived with her father in the big house in Sutton Coldfield – that instance when she was able to tell me where they going; then she was lost for ever. As Paul said, it wasn’t the Connie I knew who killed her father; it was an eight-year-old child. And that is how she would remain forever – as a child.
It was so, so sad, and the only comforting aspect to it all was that, however unwittingly, Connie had obtained true retribution from her father, for herself and all the other victims he had brutally murdered. After all, what greater retribution could there possibly be than an awareness of his own death, paralleled with a glimpse of the eternal hell waiting eagerly for him on the other side?