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THIRTY-THREE
Des Banister arrived home in the early hours. I was lying awake dwelling on what Professor Wilson had said about the killer. Trying to wrap my head around the idea he was someone’s brother, boyfriend, father. That there was a person out there who loved him. Who kissed him goodnight, brought him soup when he was sick.
It made no sense to me. How could you love a man who murdered stranger after stranger they’d never met? How could the people close to him not realise what he was doing? Did not realising make them somehow complicit?
The same questions were posed to Jerome Brudos’ wife after his arrest a little over a decade earlier. Didn’t you ever wonder what he was getting up to in his garage? Why he wouldn’t let you in without using the intercom?
In time, my mother and I would be asked those questions too. How could you not have known? Surely you could tell something was up? Did you really not suspectanything?
The sound of an engine idling outside our building cut through my musings. Des’ voice echoing around the empty street—
‘This ain’t over.’ And then, ‘My dog had better be okay.’
Maybe he did love Bailey, after all.
I slipped out of bed, pulled apart the slats on my blinds. He was getting out of the same Honda Accord I’d spotted that morning. I was used to hearing him coming home late at night, often drunk, judging by the way he crashed about downstairs. But this was the first time I’d seen him being given a lift, by men in suits no less.
I still didn’t put it together though, not even when I heard the news the following day.
My mother was at the breakfast table sipping her coffee while I chowed down on a bowl of Cheerios. She’d long ago given up trying to force-feed me Weetabix.
The radio was on, as I imagine it was in most houses in North London that morning. Much had been made of the police’s narrow time window, the thirty-six hours they can hold a suspect without charging them.
‘After that, it’s put up or shut up,’ Matty had said last night.
The custody clock was ticking, he explained. It wouldn’t be long before they confirmed whether they’d caught the killer who’d been terrorising our community for the better part of two years.
A piece of cereal went down the wrong way making me cough.
‘Shh,’ my mother tutted, turning up the volume.
Yesterday, police arrested a man in Parliament Hill in connection with the brutal murders of eight women in North London. It follows one of the largest police operations in recent UK history. The hunt for the killer was launched in July 1981 after the body of a homeless woman was discovered on a towpath at Hampstead Road Lock.
An appeal for tips has led to over 10,000 calls to the police hotline. And it was one of these calls that led to the arrest of a suspect yesterday.
We looked at each other, frozen as if someone had hit ‘pause’.
Had the man been charged? Were they about to reveal the name?
The man in question has since been released in the early hours of this morning with police saying they don’t have enough evidence to hold him.
‘Shit,’ my mother whispered, my mother who never swore.
Scotland Yard has refused to comment on reports that the person they arrested is an odd-jobs man or that he has previously been arrested for soliciting.
She switched the radio off, tipped out her coffee mug into the sink.
‘All these people out looking for him, the whole city on alert. And yet he still slips through the net. Keeps on killing.’
‘How does he do it?’
She ran a hand through her hair. There were strands of grey I’d never noticed before.
‘Who knows?’ she sighed. ‘Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it?’
‘Wonder what?’
‘Will the police ever catch a break?’
