Dark as Night (15 page)

              Ryan woke up maybe ten minutes later. His face felt itchy and weird. He tried to put a hand up to scratch it but found his wrists were tied down. The man wriggled about, discovering he was tethered to the radiator in the hallway. Then he winced, the metal pipes behind his bare back were burning hot. He attempted to pull himself away from the scalding surface but found it impossible to get free.

              The itchiness was caused by the thick strip of masking tape that was wrapped around his mouth, the sharp edges rubbing at his skin. Ryan allowed his eyes to dart around the apartment. They rested on a tall, thin figure, standing absolutely still in the doorway to the lounge. There was something about this person’s posture that he found familiar.

              Ryan screwed his eyes tight shut as the figure approached his prostrate form, gritting his teeth against the pain which was already shooting across his back. The intruder let his hand slide along Ryan’s naked thigh, which was wet with sweat and possibly blood too, from the head wound that Ryan could now feel as a dull, relentless throb. As the figure began to speak, in a croaky, almost childlike voice, his victim abruptly realised just exactly who this fiend was and cursed himself for his own damned stupidity.

              Ryan Stone, 26, was the first of Ian Cummings’ victims. He was murdered at his Notting Hill flat in March 1989. Stone’s body was left on the floor of the hallway. No attempts having been made to remove the corpse or even try to cover it up. Morgan’s interpretation of this was that there was no automatic sense of remorse from the perpetrator, as there usually was once the adrenaline of the killing had subsided. Cummings, he concluded, lacked the capacity to feel any sympathy towards the men he had butchered.

              Dani was primarily interested in how the Met police had investigated this first crime. The use of DNA profiling was in its infancy. But it had been around for long enough to put criminals on their guard. Ian Cummings had used condoms during his assault on Stone and taken the soiled items away with him.

He’d worn gloves and a mask, meaning there was no transference of DNA or prints left in the flat. The perplexing aspect for the investigating officers was the fact that the killer had got into the property with ease. No signs of forced entry were evident.

              Stone’s immediate neighbours were all out at the time the murder took place. There was someone at home in the basement apartment but they claimed to have seen and heard nothing. Dani could see the SIO’s problem. It wasn’t really until the next victim turned up, three weeks later, that they could begin to discern a pattern.

              After Alastair Whitlow’s murder, at his flat in Shepherd’s Bush, the police could start to identify a precedent. Whitlow was openly gay and was a prominent fundraiser for The Terence Higgins Trust. The victim had lost the man who’d been his first boyfriend to AIDS in 1987.

The Met were now pretty certain that the killer was targeting the homosexual community. They created a focus area for their search, a circle with a two mile radius around the murder sites. Usually, the area would have been larger, but they suspected that the killer was using the tube network to get about. Without the use of a car, they reduced his potential sphere of influence.

              It was also concluded that the perpetrator must be known to the victims. He was obviously entering their flats with a key. This information was leaked to the press in early April 1989. Soon after, the first front page referring to the west London, ‘Latch-Key Killer’ appeared. Despite the Met officers being hostile to this nick-name, it was the press publicity that provided the team with their first proper break.

              On the 24
^th
April, a man entered Paddington police station claiming to have spent the night with the latch-key killer. Graham Clark was 21 years old and a student. His digs were in Ladbroke Grove. He’d met a young man he described as, ‘very good looking’ at a nightclub in the west end. They travelled back to Clark’s shared house, but as the student showed the man in, he apparently became suddenly agitated. Clark was convinced that this was because he realised it was a communal property. They had sex in Clark’s room, but the other man left early in the morning, before any of the housemates were up. He’d never heard from the guy again.

              When Clark read about the murders in the newspaper, he became convinced that ‘Tim’, as he had called himself, was so unsettled that night because he’d expected the student to live alone. This would have given Tim the opportunity to return there at a later date to murder him. As it was, Clark’s living arrangements didn’t fit with what the killer wanted.

              The police didn’t set any great store by Clark’s claims at first, but they recorded and filed his statement, including his detailed description of the man who had picked him up at the nightclub.

              When murders three and four took place, still with no forensic traces left behind, the SIO was forced to return to Graham Clark’s statement. One of the DIs suggested they establish a kind of sting operation. A young detective constable agreed to act as the ‘bait’. DC Harry Kyle attended the same nightclub as Clark for three consecutive weekends. Finally, he spotted a man that fitted the description they had.

              Kyle needed to tread carefully. From what Clark had told them, ‘Tim’ liked to approach the targets himself. The operation wouldn’t work at all if the detective made the running. At the end of a long night, when Kyle was starting to think it was all in vain, Tim came to join him at the bar, casually enquiring if he would like a drink.                   

Chapter 30

T
he Met operation had a problem. Kyle needed to get Tim back to his Maida Vale flat and afford him the opportunity to make a copy of his key without actually having to have sex with him.

              A scenario had been worked out ahead of time. After DC Kyle and Tim entered the flat, the detective went straight into the kitchenette to fix them both a drink. He called into the lounge that he was going to take a shower. Kyle allowed the man plenty of time to do what he had to.

              At exactly 1.45am, the fire alarm for the entire building went off. Kyle insisted they troop out onto the pavement like the rest of the residents. As they’d hoped, Tim quickly made his excuses and headed off, clearly not wishing to be identifiable to the neighbours.

              Plain-clothed officers followed Tim home to his dingy one-bedder in White City. They now had an address. It didn’t take long to ascertain that ‘Tim’ was in fact Ian Cummings, 24 years old, currently unemployed, having spent a childhood in and out of children’s homes and psychiatric institutions.

              Cummings was now the Met’s prime suspect. However, they possessed no solid evidence against him. All they could do from this point onwards was to place the man under surveillance and wait.

              DC Kyle stuck to his cover. He was leaving the flat in the morning and travelling on the tube to Bond Street, where he worked a shift in one of the large department stores, returning at 6.30pm on the dot. After ten days of this routine and much debate within the division as to how likely the scheme was to ever get a result, Cummings struck.

              The subsequent inquiry concluded that whilst he was in the flat with Kyle, the suspect must have unlocked the sash and case window leading from the rear fire escape to the lounge.

              DC Kyle didn’t know the layout of the property well and hadn’t noticed this had been done. So when he arrived that day, Cummings entered the apartment from the back. The officers who were watching the place from the street, didn’t know he was inside.

              There’d been delays on the Central Line and Kyle himself was a little late getting home. His colleagues out front hadn’t given him the signal, so Kyle went straight in. He wasn’t on his guard at all. The young DC padded into the bedroom, taking off his shirt and pulling on a sweater. He’d not seen his girlfriend in a week and she was beginning to give him grief. DC Kyle made a move into the hallway, in order to give her a call from the landline.

              This was the moment that Cummings attacked. He burst out of the bathroom, where he’d been hiding, and barged DC Kyle to the floor, attempting to strike his head with the metal ashtray he’d brought with him. Kyle twisted away, managing to deflect the blow. Cummings became increasingly angry, striking at Kyle repeatedly. But the DC succeeded in crawling along the smooth tiles to the bedroom, where he tugged his radio off the bed and switched it on. The support vehicle picked up the sound of the commotion, entering the flat within minutes and apprehending Cummings as he tore down the fire escape.

              A search of Cummings’ bedsit turned up the putty imprints that the killer had used to make copies of the keys to his victims’ properties. Cummings had an associate he’d known since childhood, who had a little side-line in key cutting. This man’s home was also raided by the Met. The guy got five years.   

              With the evidence mounting up against him, Cummings decided to confess, using his history of psychiatric disorders as an explanation for his actions. This resulted in the murderer ending up in Broadmoor and was the reason for the campaign launched to agitate for his release in 2003. It failed. Cummings was still to this day serving an indefinite sentence of incarceration.

              Detective Constable Harry Kyle suffered a severe concussion after the attack and although he received a medal for bravery, he didn’t return to the police force. According to Morgan’s book, Kyle and his girlfriend moved to her homeland of New Zealand in the 90s, where Harry took up private security work.

              Ian Cummings had brutally murdered four young men and assaulted Harry Kyle in the space of two months. The case had sent shock waves out across the homosexual communities of London. Dani wasn’t surprised that Phil’s parents had been so worried about his brother. The events had cast a long shadow, with much of the conservative press commenting in their editorials on the promiscuous nature of the lives these young men had lived.

              Morgan made much of the cultural reactions to the murders in his book, suggesting it changed the behaviour patterns of a generation of young gay men far more than the spectre of AIDS ever had.

              Dani flicked through the section that dealt with Morgan’s interviews with Cummings. She wasn’t interested in all the psychobabble that no doubt accompanied the transcripts. It was the police investigation which intrigued the DCI. As she reviewed the first half of the book, Dani couldn’t help but reflect that there was something about the west London murders case which left her feeling distinctly uneasy.

Chapter 31

I
t had been an hour now, since Andy Calder arrived at the smart, modern apartment block in Maryhill. It was already 7pm and the detective was beginning to wonder if the guy he was waiting for was ever going to return home.

              Then he spotted a well-dressed man in his early fifties approaching along the leafy street. He was tall and lean, with his neatly cropped silver hair the only indication of his age. The man’s stride shortened when he noticed Andy standing by the gate. For a moment, it looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

              Calder stepped forward to introduce himself, before the man suffered a heart attack. ‘Ben? It’s Andy Calder, here. I don’t know if you remember me?’

              Ben Price put out his hand, his face creasing with relief. ‘Of course I do. For a moment there I thought you were him – just walking up to me like I imagined for years he might do. Even though I know now that’s not possible.’

              ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to unsettle you.’

              Price chuckled. ‘It isn’t your fault you look so much like Don. Please come inside.’

              He led Andy up a wide staircase to his first floor flat. It was simply furnished with nicely chosen, clearly expensive objects. ‘Coffee? Or something stronger?’

              ‘What are you having?’

              ‘Well, I usually pour myself a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc at this time of the day.’ Ben pulled open the fridge, peering inside.

              ‘That’s what I’ll have too then.’

              They settled at the breakfast bar. Andy felt the man opposite seemed very relaxed in his presence. ‘You don’t appear particularly surprised to see me.’

              Ben took a sip of wine. ‘I know the police found Don’s body. It was in the Herald. I’ve been half expecting someone to come and visit. I thought it might be Mae.’

              ‘I’m a policeman now, a detective constable, although I’m on leave. My DCS won’t let me anywhere near Don’s case.’

              The man smiled. ‘But you’re investigating it anyway.’

              Andy chuckled. ‘Something like that.’ He shifted his weight on the stool. ‘Mae told me that at one time you and Don had been more than just friends.’

              ‘Ah, I wondered when that was going to come out. I wanted to inform the police about his sexuality when Don went missing, but Mae asked me not to. I don’t know why I listened to her, really. My loyalty should have been to Don. But she said it would stain his memory, which is actually hugely insulting.’

              ‘When did you and Don have a relationship?’

              ‘Oh, it was decades ago. Mid-eighties, perhaps? I always knew that Donny liked girls too. There was no point in my falling head over heels in love with him. It was obvious he’d get married someday. So I always held myself back. That’s why we were able to remain friends.’

              ‘Mae believes that Don was battling with his sexuality in the months before he went missing. Did he ever speak with you about it?’