The One a Month Man Read Online Free Page A
Author: Michael Litchfield
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
bedroom between retiring to bed on the Friday evening and going with my parents to breakfast the following morning
.
A page of scribbled, handwritten notes was stapled to this statement . A detective had confirmed that there had indeed been a special Friday edition of ‘
Match of the Day
’, plus the fact that the Arsenal v Aston Villa and Manchester United v Chelsea games had been the first two matches screened. Staff in the restaurant had no difficulty recalling that the Popes had been the last diners to leave the restaurant on the Friday evening. A night porter observed the Popes ambling up the stairs, locked in animated conversation. The porter was attracted by the strong aroma from the cigar smoke and Theodore Pope’s sonorous voice. None of the staff on duty that evening saw Richard Pope again until around breakfast time on the Saturday morning.
In the clear
, a Detective Ian Samuels had scrawled at the foot of the sheet of notes.
But he wasn’t and isn’t
, I murmured. Detective Samuels clearly was no Sherlock Holmes, but he was probably a retired chief constable by now.
There were a couple of things I wanted to check in Tina Marlowe’s statement before I forgot. Had she mentioned smelling alcohol or aftershave on her attacker? Richard Pope had shaved at the hotel before dinner and had drunk a few glasses of wine, plus a port, with his meal. It took me a few minutes to locate the relevant statement and to scan it, stepping-stone fashion over buzz words.
There was nothing in the statement about Tina smelling drink or male perfume. Of course, Pope had been wearing a ‘Scream’ mask, so his mouth would have been covered, which could have accounted for the absence of smell on his breath. Maybe hedidn’t use aftershave, though I doubted that. More likely, insufficient questions were put to Tina and Pope. The detectives were just going through the motions, I sensed. They’d written off Pope even before they interviewed him. He was a senator’s son, for God’s sake. He came from Ivy League stock. He was an Oxford Blue and a big-shot attorney-in-the-making. And so was Ivy League serial killer Ted Bundy.
The more I delved into this case, the more Ted Bundy kept trespassing on my thoughts, like a stealthy pickpocket; just a shadow, but his presence unmistakably there; the nimblest of intruders. Bundy’s complete first name was Theodore, the same as Richard Pope’s father. Bundy was a sex-thrill murderer. In just two years, he killed more than twenty unsuspecting young women. Like Pope, he was very intelligent, a student of law and psychology. He had even worked in the USA, on a state governor’s political campaign committee. In Washington high society, he was talked about as a future president. Political bankrollers had already highlighted the similarity between Bundy and President Kennedy; both dashingly handsome, both irresistible to the opposite sex, both academic high-flyers.
I even began thinking ahead to the trial of Richard Pope. The defence would argue that he did not fit the profile of serial killers, who were mostly inadequate and dysfunctional, lacking self-esteem, of low intelligence, devoid of humour, friendless and aggressively schizophrenic. Also buried deeply in their subconscious was a compulsion to be caught and recognized. They saw themselves as celebrities, anonymous headline-makers . And it was the anonymity that finally irked them to distraction. They might be filling more column inches than Hollywood stars, prime ministers or presidents and yet, in their mundane workplace and home, they were treated as losers, dross, pathetic nonentities without personality or initiative. The craving for recognition, stardom, induced them to leave little clues. They would be torn by the ambivalence of the need tocontinue killing for the
sexy
headlines and the urge for exposure so that their co-workers and domineering home-partner would be shellshocked into disbelief and
awe
. They would imagine the
.
A page of scribbled, handwritten notes was stapled to this statement . A detective had confirmed that there had indeed been a special Friday edition of ‘
Match of the Day
’, plus the fact that the Arsenal v Aston Villa and Manchester United v Chelsea games had been the first two matches screened. Staff in the restaurant had no difficulty recalling that the Popes had been the last diners to leave the restaurant on the Friday evening. A night porter observed the Popes ambling up the stairs, locked in animated conversation. The porter was attracted by the strong aroma from the cigar smoke and Theodore Pope’s sonorous voice. None of the staff on duty that evening saw Richard Pope again until around breakfast time on the Saturday morning.
In the clear
, a Detective Ian Samuels had scrawled at the foot of the sheet of notes.
But he wasn’t and isn’t
, I murmured. Detective Samuels clearly was no Sherlock Holmes, but he was probably a retired chief constable by now.
There were a couple of things I wanted to check in Tina Marlowe’s statement before I forgot. Had she mentioned smelling alcohol or aftershave on her attacker? Richard Pope had shaved at the hotel before dinner and had drunk a few glasses of wine, plus a port, with his meal. It took me a few minutes to locate the relevant statement and to scan it, stepping-stone fashion over buzz words.
There was nothing in the statement about Tina smelling drink or male perfume. Of course, Pope had been wearing a ‘Scream’ mask, so his mouth would have been covered, which could have accounted for the absence of smell on his breath. Maybe hedidn’t use aftershave, though I doubted that. More likely, insufficient questions were put to Tina and Pope. The detectives were just going through the motions, I sensed. They’d written off Pope even before they interviewed him. He was a senator’s son, for God’s sake. He came from Ivy League stock. He was an Oxford Blue and a big-shot attorney-in-the-making. And so was Ivy League serial killer Ted Bundy.
The more I delved into this case, the more Ted Bundy kept trespassing on my thoughts, like a stealthy pickpocket; just a shadow, but his presence unmistakably there; the nimblest of intruders. Bundy’s complete first name was Theodore, the same as Richard Pope’s father. Bundy was a sex-thrill murderer. In just two years, he killed more than twenty unsuspecting young women. Like Pope, he was very intelligent, a student of law and psychology. He had even worked in the USA, on a state governor’s political campaign committee. In Washington high society, he was talked about as a future president. Political bankrollers had already highlighted the similarity between Bundy and President Kennedy; both dashingly handsome, both irresistible to the opposite sex, both academic high-flyers.
I even began thinking ahead to the trial of Richard Pope. The defence would argue that he did not fit the profile of serial killers, who were mostly inadequate and dysfunctional, lacking self-esteem, of low intelligence, devoid of humour, friendless and aggressively schizophrenic. Also buried deeply in their subconscious was a compulsion to be caught and recognized. They saw themselves as celebrities, anonymous headline-makers . And it was the anonymity that finally irked them to distraction. They might be filling more column inches than Hollywood stars, prime ministers or presidents and yet, in their mundane workplace and home, they were treated as losers, dross, pathetic nonentities without personality or initiative. The craving for recognition, stardom, induced them to leave little clues. They would be torn by the ambivalence of the need tocontinue killing for the
sexy
headlines and the urge for exposure so that their co-workers and domineering home-partner would be shellshocked into disbelief and
awe
. They would imagine the
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