The Jigsaw Man by Paul Britton Read Free Book Online

from work -NURSE, 21, SLAIN ON FOOTPATH. Amanda Weedon had been one of our own, working at Groby Road Hospital in northwest Leicester as a state enrolled nurse not long finished her training and soon to be married.
    David Baker called me that evening and next morning I found myself back in his office, listening to another briefing.
    Amanda’s body had been found by a teenage girl at 4.15 p.m. on Saturday, lying under a hedge alongside a tree-shaded footpath which ran between Groby Road Hospital and Gilroes Cemetery. A few yards away further along the path stood a red-brick building called The Chantry, a psychiatric halfway house where patients lived for a time before they returned to the community. A member of staff had seen ‘a shadowy figure’ lurking on the footpath at about the time of the attack.
    Like Caroline Osborne, Amanda had been stabbed repeatedly and there were none of the normal signs that flag a sexual killing. Initially the police thought they might be dealing with a small-time mugger who had bungled his attack. Amanda’s purse containing Ł20 and her cash-card was missing from her brown handbag.
    She had withdrawn the money during the morning and gone shopping with her fiance, Clifford Eversfield. The couple had said goodbye at lunchtime and Clifford, the manager of a local football team, Epworth, was on the touchline watching a game when Amanda was attacked. The news was broken to him when he came to the nurses’ home on Saturday evening to pick up Amanda for a party.
    After lunch, Amanda had walked to a friend’s house in Amadis Road, Beaumont Leys. She left there at about 3.15 p.m. and went to buy a greeting card from Martins newsagent’s in Fletcher Mall at Beaumont Leys. The shop assistant remembered her.
    At 3.45 p.m. she started back towards the hospital through the snow flurries and bitter wind. The walk would have taken seventeen to twenty-two minutes and she would have reached the footpath at about 4.00 p.m. Her body was found fifteen minutes later. The greeting card lay nearby.
    ‘There’s only half an hour we have to account for,’ said Baker, with a palpable sense of urgency.
    ‘I need to know about Amanda.’
    ‘It’s early days,’ he said, finding a folder. ‘Her family comes from Burton-on-the-Wolds, ten miles north of here. Father’s retired … used to work for Rolls Royce … Amanda’s the youngest of three children … the only daughter … always wanted to be a nurse … not much else.’ Baker continued reading out loud. ‘She spoke to her mother three times on Friday about wedding invitations. She was getting married on July twenty-seven.’
    Baker slid an album of crime scene photographs across the table, looking almost apologetic. I took a deep breath. Immediately it was clear that the pattern of knife wounds was similar to the first murder, aimed mainly at the neck and shoulders. Again there was an absence of an overt sexual assault but I had no doubt that it was sexually motivated. It was like laying one template on top of another. There were differences, but these were far outnumbered by the similarities.
    ‘You’re dealing with the same man who killed Caroline Osborne,’ I said.
    Baker nodded in agreement.
    ‘The attack was sudden and not as thought out. He took a greater risk…’
    ‘Which means?’
    ‘Well, it suggests that there was some disinhibition which argues either for him being in a state of greater excitement or illness. He hasn’t had the protracted interpersonal exchange with his victim - not like with Caroline - which suggests he’s immature, otherwise there would have been more refinement. Sexual murderers tend to refine their techniques and increase their control over victims with each new murder. But this killer took a greater risk and even less time. There was also no attempt to bind the victim and no symbolism around the edges.’
    Baker asked, ‘And that means … ?’
    ‘Well, it makes it far less likely that he knew