Page 14 of Copper Script
“Why roses specifically?”
“Because I don’t know anything about flowers, that’s why.I couldn’t spot a dahlia in a police identity parade, but my family home had a rose bed.”
Fowler exhaled.“And roses are about the most popular flower in the country, so you’ve a good chance of the example striking a chord.I dare say that’s very persuasive to clients.”
“Are you suggesting I should use metaphors that are completely alien to people’s experience?”Joel enquired.“Anyway: brother-in-law, how nice.More importantly, what about the third one?Have you reported— No, wait, you’re a rozzer.Have you arrested him?”
“As it happens.”
“What for?”
Fowler hesitated for a few seconds, and finally spoke with clear reluctance.“The third paper was written by Wilfred Molesworth.”
Joel took a second to place the name then sat bolt upright.“Molesworth?Kids under the floorboards Molesworth?And you made metouchthat?Jesus!What the hell did you do that for?”
Fowler’s brows had gone steeply up.“It was just a letter.There was nothing telling in it.”
“It was hishand.I read characters from hands and I do not want to read the characters of child murderers, certainly not without warning.Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Fowler had a sceptical look, as if he thought Joel was play-acting.He could go screw himself.Molesworth’s writing had been like plunging into a mass of cold grey cobwebs—sticky, clinging, crawling.“He hanged, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Good.Maybe try catching the next one before he racks up four children.”
That came out with a touch more venom than, perhaps, it should have, because Fowler gave just the tiniest flinch.His voice was deliberately level when he said, “I suspect it was more than four.He wouldn’t say, though, and now he’s dead.”
Joel paused on that, considered his face.“I don’t remember the case well.It was in the papers when I was in hospital getting the remains of my hand taken off, so I wasn’t paying much attention.”
Fowler gave a tiny shrug—not indifference, more like helplessness.“We found four bodies under the floorboards, and they had not had easy deaths.That’s all we ever managed to discover.We only caught him through sheer luck in the first place.None of the missing children had even been reported, poor little wretches.”
“So how did it come out?”
“Oh, Molesworth’s next door neighbour marched into my police station and said she thought he was a murderer.That might be written off as spite or feuding or eccentricity, but there was something about her; she was truly unsettled.I went round on a pretext, had a nice chat and a cup of tea, and when we were done I popped into the kitchen to rinse the cups.There was a smell, and it didn’t require a lot of police work from there.”Fowler grimaced.“It was counted as a success, but as you say, there must have been an opportunity to catch him earlier.Something that could have been done.”
“You can’t solve a crime before it’s been discovered, I suppose,” Joel said, and then wondered how the blazes he had found himself offering comfort to a rozzer.“Except when you entrap people into them, or frame them up, of course.”
“Naturally that would make it easier,” Fowler said, with some sarcasm.“Did you recognise his hand?”
“Who, Molesworth?From where?”
“You tell me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.How many times must I say—”
“Until I believe you,” Fowler said over him.“If it was possible to glance at a man’s writing and sayThis is a child murderer, we’d have squads of you people looking over samples from everyone in the land.”
“Then thank God it isn’t,” Joel said.“And I didn’t say he was a child murderer.I said there was something horrible about him and he liked to hurt people, and I guessed children because—” Because he’d felt something vile and squirming.“Because that sort of personality targets the weak, the helpless: that’s part of the fun.His hand stank of it and if you can’t see that, it’s not my fault.”
“Ican’tsee it, because it’s just handwriting.And in my view, the best way to judge a man’s character from his writing is if you already know who he is.”
Joel clenched his fist, and felt the twitch in his left arm that suggested he’d tried to clench both.“What’s your idea?That I’ve memorised samples of every lunatic murderer’s handwriting in case a police officer under a false name asks me to look at a random piece of paper?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know!”Fowler said, with sudden, explosive frustration.“I want to know how you come up with this stuff, how you work it, because you have presented me with an absurd claim.You didn’t simply say that Molesworth had this or that characteristic: you recoiled as though I’d presented you with a dead rat.Therefore, youknew.”
