Bogeyman made flesh. Now reproducing.

The shift of detectives looked to have taken a collective break. Rebus was alone in the room. He left the door open, not sure why, and pored over the documents. Fifty thousand statements had been taken. Rebus read a couple of the newspaper headlines: ‘The Dance Hall Don Juan With Murder on his Mind’; ‘100 Day Hunt for Ladykiller’. In the first year of the hunt, over five thousand suspects had been interviewed and eliminated. When the third victim’s sister gave her detailed description, police knew so much about the killer: blue-grey eyes; straight teeth except for one on the upper-right which overlapped its neighbour; his preferred brand of cigarette was Embassy; he spoke of a strict upbringing, and he quoted passages from the Bible. But by then it was too late. Bible John was history.

Another difference between Bible John and Johnny Bible: the gaps between the killings. Johnny was killing every few weeks, while Bible John had killed to no pattern of weeks or even months. His first victim had been February ’68. There followed a gap of nearly eighteen months – August ’69, victim number two. And then two and a half months later, his third and final outing. Victims one and three had been killed on a Thursday night, the second victim on a Saturday. Eighteen months was a hell of a gap – Rebus knew the theories: that he’d been overseas, perhaps as a merchant seaman or navy sailor, or on some army or RAF posting; that he’d been in jail, serving time for some lesser offence. Theories, that’s all they were. All three of his victims were mothers of children: so far, none of Johnny Bible’s was. Was it important that Bible John’s victims had been menstruating, or that they had children? He’d tucked a sanitary towel under his third victim’s armpit – a ritual act. A lot had been read into that action by the various psychologists involved in the case. Their theory: the Bible told Bible John that women were harlots, and he was offered proof when married women left a dancehall with him. The fact that they were menstruating angered him somehow, fed his bloodlust, so he killed them.

Rebus knew there were those out there – always had been – who believed there to be no connection, other than pure circumstance, between the three killings. They posited three murderers, and it was true that only strong coincidences connected the murders. Rebus, no great champion of coincidence, still believed in a single, driven killer.

Some great policemen had been involved: Tom Goodall, the man who’d gone after Jimmy Boyle, who’d been there when Peter Manuel confessed; then when Goodall died, there’d been Elphinstone Dalgliesh and Joe Beattie. Beattie had spent hours staring at photos of suspects, using a magnifying glass sometimes. He’d felt that if Bible John walked into a crowded room, he would know him. The case had obsessed some officers, sent them spiralling downwards. All that work, and no result. It made a mockery of them, their methods, their system. He thought of Lawson Geddes again …