might fit the vague profile that had begun to form in his mind. The first had taken place a year earlier in the Manchester suburb of Didsbury. It was a peculiar murder featuring the same specific and repetitive attention to detail that had characterized the death of Adam Bishop. Inspector Collins had not been overjoyed to receive a request from the Metropolitan Police asking him to reopen one of his cases. He felt it cast a slur.
The victim was an army warrant officer, a twenty-eight-year-old unmarried man who had been home on leave visiting his parents. Both parents worked, and on the day of the murder had left their house together in the family car at approximately seven forty-five a.m. Warrant Officer Denis Spencer had been asleep in the spare room. His alarm was set for ten thirty and he had an appointment to meet an old friend in the pub at one thirty. Officer Spencer never made that appointment, because at some point between seven forty-five a.m. and approximately eleven a.m. Spencer had admitted his killer into the house.
‘We reckon it couldn’t have been any later than eleven because of the estimated time of death and the time it would have taken to do the killing,’ Collins explained.
The police presumption was that the person Spencer had allowed into the house must have been armed because he or she was able to persuade Spencer, who was a big, fit man, to go downstairs into the kitchen and allow himself to be secured to a chair with duct tape. The police had not ruled out the possibility that there had been more than one assailant, but apart from the corpse and the blood splattered around it very little evidence of any intruder remained. As in the Bishop case, whoever had attacked Spencer had expertly covered his tracks. And, most significantly, the victim had been subjected to a strange and unusual torment. He had been hit on the head repeatedly, with a soft flat object, perhaps like a large rubber mallet. Warrant Officer Spencer was killed not by the force or weight of the blows, but by the number and frequency. He had been struck many, many hundreds of times over a period of between five and six hours, causing the vertebrae in his neck to become impacted and his brain to be slowly mashed from being bounced back and forth in the skull.
‘The brain was massively bruised,’ the Greater Manchester police doctor explained to Newson when they met at Deansgate Police Station. ‘I remember the details well because it was such a very strange way for a man to die. I mean, I’ve dealt with any number of violently inflicted brain injuries in my time, but it’s normally about one or two big blows. The harder the man is hit, the more damage is done. Poor old Spencer wasn’t hit hard at all, not like with a hammer or a brick. The blows taken individually would not even have been particularly painful. I think of them as slaps rather than blows. The skull was hardly damaged, but the hair and skin on the scalp were completely worn away. I don’t mean knocked off or torn out, I mean worn away. Imagine how many times you would have to slap somebody on the head to wear their hair and skin away . The scalp bleeds copiously, of course, and the man’s face and shoulders were caked in it, as was the surrounding carpet. Eventually the man would have been in agony.’
‘Was the victim conscious while he was being beaten?’
‘Oh yes, conscious all right. The killer made sure of that.’
‘Smelling salts.’
‘Yes. Nasty bugger. Trying not to let him off until the final blow, although God only knows what sort of mental state he. would have been in by then. Completely tonto, I imagine. His brain was literally raffling around in his skull.’
‘And you have no idea what the murder weapon was?’
‘Well, if you really want to know, I think it was a telephone book. That would certainly fit the profile.’
‘But not the Spencers’ own?’
‘No, they were still intact. Besides, the killer would have needed more than
The victim was an army warrant officer, a twenty-eight-year-old unmarried man who had been home on leave visiting his parents. Both parents worked, and on the day of the murder had left their house together in the family car at approximately seven forty-five a.m. Warrant Officer Denis Spencer had been asleep in the spare room. His alarm was set for ten thirty and he had an appointment to meet an old friend in the pub at one thirty. Officer Spencer never made that appointment, because at some point between seven forty-five a.m. and approximately eleven a.m. Spencer had admitted his killer into the house.
‘We reckon it couldn’t have been any later than eleven because of the estimated time of death and the time it would have taken to do the killing,’ Collins explained.
The police presumption was that the person Spencer had allowed into the house must have been armed because he or she was able to persuade Spencer, who was a big, fit man, to go downstairs into the kitchen and allow himself to be secured to a chair with duct tape. The police had not ruled out the possibility that there had been more than one assailant, but apart from the corpse and the blood splattered around it very little evidence of any intruder remained. As in the Bishop case, whoever had attacked Spencer had expertly covered his tracks. And, most significantly, the victim had been subjected to a strange and unusual torment. He had been hit on the head repeatedly, with a soft flat object, perhaps like a large rubber mallet. Warrant Officer Spencer was killed not by the force or weight of the blows, but by the number and frequency. He had been struck many, many hundreds of times over a period of between five and six hours, causing the vertebrae in his neck to become impacted and his brain to be slowly mashed from being bounced back and forth in the skull.
‘The brain was massively bruised,’ the Greater Manchester police doctor explained to Newson when they met at Deansgate Police Station. ‘I remember the details well because it was such a very strange way for a man to die. I mean, I’ve dealt with any number of violently inflicted brain injuries in my time, but it’s normally about one or two big blows. The harder the man is hit, the more damage is done. Poor old Spencer wasn’t hit hard at all, not like with a hammer or a brick. The blows taken individually would not even have been particularly painful. I think of them as slaps rather than blows. The skull was hardly damaged, but the hair and skin on the scalp were completely worn away. I don’t mean knocked off or torn out, I mean worn away. Imagine how many times you would have to slap somebody on the head to wear their hair and skin away . The scalp bleeds copiously, of course, and the man’s face and shoulders were caked in it, as was the surrounding carpet. Eventually the man would have been in agony.’
‘Was the victim conscious while he was being beaten?’
‘Oh yes, conscious all right. The killer made sure of that.’
‘Smelling salts.’
‘Yes. Nasty bugger. Trying not to let him off until the final blow, although God only knows what sort of mental state he. would have been in by then. Completely tonto, I imagine. His brain was literally raffling around in his skull.’
‘And you have no idea what the murder weapon was?’
‘Well, if you really want to know, I think it was a telephone book. That would certainly fit the profile.’
‘But not the Spencers’ own?’
‘No, they were still intact. Besides, the killer would have needed more than
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