Crackpot

PHILIP LORAINE

Crackpot

Crackpot

In the opening paragraph of Philip Loraine’s novel a murderer describes the process of picking up an unknown girl in a club prior to strangling her, and admits to disposing of nine others in a similar manner. The murderer then returns to Crestcote House, a gothic mansion which has been turned into a peaceful retreat for ‘artists of recognized stature’.

The community comprises an eccentric composer, a reclusive iron-worker, a beautiful sculptress, a discontented novelist, and three assorted painters, one female, two male. The lord of this remarkable manor is a philanderer, and the place is known locally (and not surprisingly) as Crackpot Castle. No one suspects, however, that one of the denizens is a serial killer.

And no one need ever have suspected if the killer had not elected to play a practical joke on fellow residents which led to a spate of lies, an unsuccessful blackmail attempt—and another killing.

This time Chief Inspector Tom Pennard is very much on the scene. Under his questioning suspicion flickers like a will-o’-the-wisp from one person to the next, while all the time the murderer, anonymous and supposedly secure, offers the reader a first-hand commentary on the unfolding of events, leading to a dramatic unmasking in the final paragraphs of this cunningly plotted story.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Other Books By

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

Before I actually kill I seem to experience tunnel-vision, my whole being concentrated on the search and its inevitable conclusion. Although I don’t care for the idea, I suppose I’m like a junkie aiming for the next fix, and certainly what I do is addictive; but at least it doesn’t leave me a snot-dribbling half-human who will only move again when the desire for more becomes unendurable. Like certain drugs, killing enlarges and revitalizes me, enables me to work twice as well and twice as hard, but the period between my fixes is mercifully a long one—I seldom kill more than once a year.

As for the danger of being caught, it seems that I must take reasonable precautions because I never have been caught, nor, as far as I know, come within a mile of it. I’m not aware of these precautions, any more than a hunting animal is aware of the necessity for slow and cautious movement as it approaches its prey.

Take tonight. I found the name of the bar in Time Out, always a useful source of information. I’d never been to it before, and it was in a part of London, Battersea, which I hardly ever visit. It was called Lucky’s which amused me. As always, I found myself walking up and down the streets on either side of it. Planning? I don’t know, I’m not conscious of that part of my mind, it works as a separate entity, doing its own job and reporting what it feels. Sometimes the report is negative; I don’t inquire into the reasons, there’s no point. I simply take another look at Time Out and choose another place. Tonight the report was positive.

So I went into Lucky’s, paying an exorbitant ‘membership fee’. This didn’t worry me because I saw the girl as soon as I entered the large dimly-lit room, not for once rocking with the mindless racket of disco but with the comparatively subtle rhythm of the Charleston. The place, what one could see of it, was decorated to match in a vaguely 20’s style. But I only noticed this later; my eyes were initially blind to everything except the girl, or rather to her long neck caught by a random spotlight.

It was a beautiful neck, though she herself was no beauty, and she’d made the most of it, wearing low-cut black, wearing her dark hair in a short bob, so that really all there was to see of her was the white neck shining in darkness. The attraction was instant—but not sexual.

(I should explain here that the act of killing gives me no erotic pleasure, even if it’s an experience of stomach-churning excitement: to my mind more exciting, and far more satisfying, than sex can ever be; and I must admit that I find it disgusting, and unbelievable, that some killers achieve orgasm at the moment of death. Or is that pure hypocrisy on my part?)

The only thing that entered my mind when I saw this girl sitting at the bar, semi-spotlight, was the neck and the idea of getting my hands on it. Lucky’s!

I approached her straight away, I never waste time. It’s odd how some kinds of mutual recognition are instant, and of course this can be subconsciously intensified by the strange magnetism which seems to exist between killer and victim. There was the usual chit-chat but I have no idea what it was about. My guardian-mind seemed to approve of the fact that she too had never been to the place before. Her name was Pam; I forget what I called myself. Obviously she’d come out looking for sex, and obviously she found me attractive, I can usually rely on that; but there’s a danger in moving too quickly, a fact of which the hunting animal is always aware; as for the matter of recognition, I wasn’t worried by it; Lucky’s wasn’t the kind of club where I was likely to meet anyone I knew; all the same, I kept to shadow, letting Pam have the spotlight which I think she enjoyed.

She was a secretary (she probably said P.A.—all secretaries like to call themselves P.A.’s); in her late twenties which is a good age; they consider themselves experienced by then, thoroughly streetwise, and also feel a sense of life and youth slipping by too quickly.

As always I eventually said, ‘I live just around the corner, how about it?’ By then, under cover of the crush against the bar—on a Friday the place was packed—we’d progressed from the initial leg contact to more explicit fumbling, and she was evidently quite keen to proceed to the next stage.

During our preliminary stroll, my alter ego had taken note of a kind of mews about three hundred yards from the club, and now it led us there. Nobody was about. Piles of rubbish, stacked for the dustmen indicated that most of the doorways must have been delivery access to shops on the parallel main street. I chose one which might conceivably have led to living accommodation and gestured her to go ahead: it’s essential to have them in front of you. As soon as she stepped into shadow, I pulled on my gloves (nylon: leather sometimes tears quite easily), came up close behind her, put both hands around that long neck and jerked her backwards, off-balance. Nobody in such a position can kick out at you, their weight is wrongly distributed; the most they can do is claw at one’s hands.

As a matter of fact the girl’s fingers were unusually strong, but on the whole she was little trouble, taken so much by surprise, and so swiftly, that terror and lack of oxygen were at work on her before she’d barely reacted at all. A minute later she was no longer able to react. Two minutes later she was dead, but I gave her another minute just to be sure. I allowed her to sag on to the ground; took the precaution of feeling for a non-existent pulse; then picked up a flattened pile of cartons, neatly tied for the dustmen, and put them on top of her. When I glanced back from the still empty street she was indistinguishable from the rest of the rubbish discarded there.

I felt, as I walked away, an enormous, godlike sense of power. This fades quite quickly, leaving me in a state of electric excitement which will last for weeks, months. Now, as the train grinds and squeals over the points outside Waterloo Station, carrying me back to peaceful Crestcote, I wonder all over again what it is that motivates me. I think it must be the sense of danger, which is contradictory since I feel no sense of danger. Yet if you think of it, I’m defying the whole of society, riding roughshod over all its decencies and legalities; I’m in the process of destroying the barricades with which society imagines it can protect itself from the screaming disorder and cruelty of the real world.

Yes, I feel more real than any of the quiet citizens behind these lighted windows outside the train. Is my next victim lying in that bedroom, perhaps reading some sensational thriller about a psychopath? Are the parents of the girl I killed tonight watching television behind that pair of neatly drawn curtains, as yet unaware of the shock which is creeping up on them?

These thoughts arouse no sense of guilt, but that doesn’t make me ‘abnormal’ as the people out there in suburbia would no doubt consider me. I know what the real world is like and they don’t. I’m a part of the real world, the one they saw on the television news not so long ago: saw but did not see: terrorism, war, riot, famine … murder. I’m not suffering delusions of grandeur; there is no grandeur in the real world, not as far as humankind is concerned; we merely deceive ourselves, hiding behind the magnificence of Nature, knowing that we have no part in it.

I slept for half an hour, as I always do, and awoke newly invigorated, newly alive, fifteen minutes before the train pulled in to our small station. I never get out right away, waiting to see if any of my colleagues have been travelling with me. None.

Driving the last nine miles through a fresh and gusty autumn night, leaves whirling in the headlights, I find myself wondering, all over again, whether I’m a fool not to settle down with a suitable girl. This is another reaction which I know well, and of course it’s a delusion. Nothing, and certainly no suitable girl, will ever repress that urge to kill when it overcomes me.

And so through the village of Crestcote St Michael and up the hill, turning into the beautiful curving drive; and there, its absurd tower dominating the skyline against dark folds of down and woodland, lies Crackpot Castle itself, two or three lighted windows still glowing, even this late. We’re an odd lot, we keep odd hours.

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