By PAUL EDMUND NORMAN

INTERLUDE – THE DONALD CLITHEROE MURDERS

Five

INTERVIEW

Clitheroe took another cigarette from the packet Thompson had bought for him, and lit it, then threw it angrily to the ground and crushed it under the sole of his shoe.

'It's your money,' Thompson said softly. Clitheroe had just five pounds in his back pocket when they picked him up.

'So I can do what I like with it, can't I?'

'Chief Inspector Wilson has been called away to another case. I am now conducting this interview,' Thompson said.

'Get rid of him,' Clitheroe said, pointing to the new uniformed constable standing with his back to the door.

'Why?'

'Just get rid of him. I don't want to talk to anyone expect you.'

'Why?

'Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?'

'Of course.'

'Then get rid of him.'

Thompson nodded at the constable and he left the interview room. There would be trouble over this, he knew, but if this was the way Clitheroe wanted it, who was he to argue? He would face the consequences after he had heard Clitheroe’s confessions.

'What's so important you can't say it in front of another copper?'

Clitheroe grimaced.

'You'll find out.'

'Are you looking for a deal?'

'No.'

'What then?'

'No deal. You wouldn't guarantee anything, anyway. I killed her, you know it, I know it. I killed all of them. What you don't know is why.'

The motive.

'No, we don't know why.'

'And you'd like me to tell you why, wouldn't you?'

'Of course.'

'Well listen, and listen good. I killed Polly because...'

'Yes?'

The door opened suddenly and a pretty policewoman entered carrying two cups of coffee. When she had gone:

'Go on.'

'She was my niece.'

'Your niece?'

'That's right.'

'So why did you kill her?'

There had not been time for this information to come to light.

'Because she.....she rejected me.'

'She rejected you?'

'Yes.'

'She was fifteen. Fifteen years old, for Christ's sake!'

'So? Plenty of fifteen year-olds knocking around with men my age.'

Your age? Twenty-eight?

'I suppose there may be a few. So you killed her because you fancied her and she wouldn't go with you?'

''S right.'

No point in making a moral judgement, Thompson thought. Not at this stage. Too early. Too early for judgements of any sort.

'Look,' Clitheroe continued, 'it doesn't matter whether you think it's right or wrong for her to do it with me, it's what I thought that was important. It's what I thought, don't you see?'

Why tell me all this when you wouldn't tell Wilson?

It had a curious kind of logic, Thompson had to admit. The man felt that the girl had done wrong by him, and he punished her the only way he knew how. Being a psychopath, that had resulted in murder. It made sense, all right.

'Was she going with anyone else?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Do you want to tell me who?'

Clitheroe shook his head.

'No.'

'Why not?'

'He has nothing to do with it.'

'Why you killed her?'

'I killed her because she wouldn't.....with me.'

'But she would with someone else.'

'That's not the point.'

'Are you sure?'

'It didn't matter she was doing it with someone else. It mattered that she wouldn't do it with me!'

'Donald, I'm not sure I believe Polly Bartram was having sex with someone else. She was only fifteen years old. Her mother said she was a good girl, a decent girl.'

'She would, wouldn't she. Her mother would say that, wouldn't she? I mean, what mother wants to admit to the daily papers that her daughter was having sex with men at the age of fifteen?'

'You're saying her mother was lying?'

'Maybe. Maybe she didn't know. Girls that age are cunning. If they want something, they ask for it. If they can't have it, they get it anyway. Polly was going with someone else.'

'A younger man?'

'Younger than me? Yes. Not much.'

'You were jealous.'

'Not of him. Only of the fact that she wouldn't have sex with me.'

'Tell me something, Donald, have you ever had a successful sexual relationship with anyone?'

Clitheroe stared at him, scowling, and lit another cigarette. He thought carefully.

'No,' he admitted frankly.

'So you killed Polly because she was just another girl who would not have a sexual relationship with you?'

'Not just another girl. She was.....different. She was beautiful. She was......beautiful.'

'She was your niece?'

'Yes.'

'Did you stay at her house at all?'

'All through the summer holidays when I was younger. When I came out of the army I went to live there.'

'At Polly's house?'

'My parents kicked me out. I was pushed around from relative to relative after what happened at the school. They knew I did it. They knew I killed her. They couldn't prove it. No one could. They didn't want me. They kicked me out. When I was old enough my Uncle persuaded me to join up. I ended up in the SAS for a while. When I came out I went to live with them. Polly was about thirteen, I suppose. I moved about the country a bit, doing odd jobs and so on. Then, when I got back, all of a sudden she was grown up.'

'But she didn't want to have anything to do with you?'

Clitheroe shook his head.

'She said she'd always thought of me as a big brother. Once or twice I knocked the shit out some boys who were pestering her. But she never thanked me for it, and she was asking for it anyway.'

'In what way?'

'Dressing up, you know, short skirts, hot pants, see through blouses, skimpy tee shirts, that sort of thing. And earrings. She always wore earrings. Girls that age shouldn't dress up like that.'

Thompson refrained from answering that. It was simply the way things were. Girls grew up faster than ever these days, they wore what they liked, went out when they liked, and from the sound of it, they indulged freely in under-age sex.

'Why do you mention the earrings?'

Clitheroe's eyes flashed towards his in a moment of hatred.

'It makes them look like tarts!'

'Like tarts?'

'Selling themselves! Earrings are the adornments of the devil!'

Thompson knew he had to be careful during this questioning, and wished Clitheroe had not asked to be interviewed alone. He needed a clear, full confession, and these minor details together with the confession to murdering his younger brother and another girl several years earlier would be sufficient to keep the man detained for the term of his natural life. What he did not want was for Clitheroe to say a lot of things now in the heat of the moment that he would retract at the trial.

'You don't like earrings?'

'No. Nail varnish, make-up, earrings, they're all the same. They wear them to get you interested, then they turn you down.'

'Polly did that, did she?'

'She got all dressed up, she put on earrings, and make-up, and she came on to me. Little tart! Dressed up in provocative clothes and gave me the come on, then dropped me so hard, all I could think of wanting to do to her was kill her! I parked the car and waited for her to cycle past, and when she stopped I got her to help me with the car. She came on to me.'

'And then turned you down?'

Clitheroe nodded.

'So you dragged her into the woods, you raped her, you strangled her, and then what did you do?'

'I drove off.'

'What else did you do to Polly?'

'I took her earrings, and I wiped off her make-up. Her nail varnish. Everything. It wasn't right. Girls her age shouldn't look like that.'

'Was that before or after you raped her?'

'Before. I didn't want to do it with no tart!'

'Is that what you thought she looked like?'

He nodded again.

'So you wiped her face and removed her earrings. Then you raped her, then you strangled her.'

'Yes.'

Thompson thought very carefully. Clitheroe was obviously disturbed, obviously a man in need of treatment for the way he viewed young girls and how they dressed up to make themselves more attractive. If it came out in court how he had cleaned off Polly's make-up and removed her earrings there was a chance that the plea of guilty to murder might be changed to one of temporary insanity, that he had committed this act whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed, to put it in legal parlance.

Thompson could not risk that. He could not risk the possibility that anyone might feel sympathy for Clitheroe.

'Where are the earrings, Donald?' he said quietly.

'I threw them away.'

'Where are the earrings?'

'I threw them away. Into the bushes. They're still there. You'll find them if you look hard enough.'

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