They traced him through the spanner with which he had killed her and which, passing Mrs Julian’s garden fence, he had thrust into the depths of her compost heap.

The Wrong Category

THERE HADN’T BEEN a killing now for a week. The evening paper’s front page was devoted instead to the economic situation and an earthquake in Turkey. But page three kept up the interest in this series of murders. On it were photographs of the six victims all recognizably belonging to the same type. There, in every case although details of feature naturally varied, were the same large liquid eyes, full soft mouth, and long dark hair.

Barry’s mother looked up from the paper. ‘I don’t like you going out at night.’

‘What, me?’ said Barry.

‘Yes, you. All these murders happened round here. I don’t like you going out after dark. It’s not as if you had to, it’s not as if it was for work.’ She got up and began to clear the table but continued to speak in a low whining tone. ‘I wouldn’t say a word if you were a big chap. If you were the size of your cousin Ronnie I wouldn’t say a word. A fellow your size doesn’t stand a chance against that maniac.’

‘I see,’ said Barry. ‘And whose fault is it I’m only five feet two? I might just point out that a woman of five feet that marries a bloke only two inches more can’t expect to have giants for kids. Right?’

‘I sometimes think you only go roving about at night, doing what you want, to prove you’re as big a man as your cousin Ronnie.’

Barry thrust his face close up to hers. ‘Look, leave off, will you?’ He waved the paper at her. ‘I may not have the height but I’m not in the right category. Has that occurred to you? Has it?’

‘All right, all right. I wish you wouldn’t be always shouting.’

In his bedroom Barry put on his new velvet jacket and dabbed cologne on his wrists and neck. He looked spruce and dapper. His mother gave him an apprehensive glance as he passed her on his way to the back door, and returned to her contemplation of the pictures in the newspaper. Six of them in two months. The girlish faces, doe-eyed, diffident, looked back at her or looked aside or stared at distant unknown objects. After a while she folded the paper and switched on the television. Barry, after all, was not in the right category, and that must be her comfort.

He liked to go and look at the places where the bodies of the victims had been found. It brought him a thrill of danger and a sense of satisfaction. The first of them had been strangled very near his home on a path which first passed between draggled allotments, then became an alley plunging between the high brown wall of a convent and the lower red brick wall of a school.