Here we have a killer who has killed three women. Please note: there is no need for the helpful among you to submit comments along the lines of ‘But one victim was a man! Don’t forget Joshua Norbury!’ That doesn’t change my fundamental point: it’s an outrage that a male killer can murder three women, and be reported as having done so all over the national media, and yet the words ‘misogyny’ and ‘male violence’ are not even mentioned. It was the same when Godfrey Cornish murdered his daughter Holly. Why are we so reluctant to name this plague that’s claiming more and more lives all the time: pernicious male brutality and the deeply entrenched belief among men that female lives don’t matter? Why do those with the power to control the story reach instead for a nickname like Billy Dead Mates that directs us, however subliminally, to side with the perpetrator rather than with his victims?

I’m aware that we don’t yet know for sure that this killer is a man. The police haven’t found him! He might be a woman! O come all ye mansplainers and men’s rights activists to tell me that women can be killers too. I don’t deny that, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of murderers in our society are male. I don’t believe the police would have coined the nickname Billy Dead Mates if they believed there was an equal chance of the culprit being a woman.

This monster – Billy Dead Women – might or might not be taking lives because he harbours some deep-seated resentment around the issue of friendship. We don’t know that he does, and neither, presumably, do the police. Yet this is the feature of the situation that everyone is keenest to talk about. ‘How intriguing!’ we say to one another in wine bars as if it’s the latest episode of CSI. ‘Pairs of best friends – how novel! How distinctive! Whatever might his motive be?’

Well, let’s think about it, shall we? We know that Billy has murdered three women, and that the majority of his victims are female. We know this beyond doubt, but it’s something no one wants to discuss. That’s not the story that’s got the media excited. That’s just boring old misogyny, the most familiar motive in the world – so old hat that our society regards it as barely worth remarking upon, let alone eradicating.

Chapter 2

2

6/1/2015

Simon Waterhouse feared that DC James Wing from Bournemouth and Poole Police was under the impression that the two of them were becoming friends, or might do so in the future.