Walking with Ghosts

offices of the Evening Press he read through the newspaper reports of the murder of Pammy Wright. Three years earlier, during the first days of September, she had been found by her husband when he returned from work. She was stretched out on the kitchen floor, strangled with a rope. Their infant daughter, Sandy, was upstairs in a high-sided cot, her nappy heavily soiled. She was distressed because she had missed a couple of her feeds, but otherwise unharmed.
    The killing was puzzling, as there appeared to be no motive. Pammy had not been sexually assaulted, and there was nothing missing from the house. The woman’s purse, containing nearly fifty pounds, was left by the kettle in the kitchen, in open view. There were signs that there had been a short struggle before she was overpowered.
    The press called the killer the Surgeon - because he was meticulously clean, having left behind no fingerprints, nothing to indicate who he was.
    And because, before he left to fade away into the anonymity of the city, he had taken a knife from the cutlery drawer and stabbed deeply into both of the dead woman’s eyes.
     
    Sam asked the receptionist to ring the crime-desk and see if Sly Beaumont was available. In the age-old tradition of favour-for-favour Sam had a couple of points in hand with the old reporter. But Sly was looking for even more. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it as he walked over the plush carpeting. ‘Sam. You’ve come to offer me a scoop. Am I right?’
    ‘If I had one I’d give it to no one else, Sly. But I don’t have anything. I’m looking for enlightenment.’
    The old guy laughed, his face creased up like a crumpled paper bag. He took a long draw on the cigarette and coughed. ‘Enlightenment? Sorry, old son, you’ve got the wrong department. You want my wife.’
    ‘The Surgeon,’ Sam said.
    ‘You know something about the Surgeon, Sam?’ Sly’s tone changed abruptly, he reached for the notebook sticking out of his hip pocket.
    ‘I only know what’s been in the press, Sly. What I’ve heard and seen on the news. I’m here to find out what you know.’
    ‘Let’s walk.’ Sam followed Sly out of the office and joined him on the pavement outside. They walked towards Walmgate Bar, the Elizabethan house on top a perfect silhouette in the afternoon sun.
    ‘He’s a nutter,’ Sly continued. ‘Strangled three women in the last three years. Leaves no evidence, no clues. Doesn’t steal anything, has no sexual intentions, doesn’t even ruffle their clothes.’
    ‘I know about Pammy Wright,’ Sam said. ‘I talked with her mother, and I read up your articles. What about the others?’
    ‘Pammy was the first. The following year he killed Amy Munroe, thirty-five-year-old, mother of three. Lived out at Escrick. Then last year Lynn Camish, a widow. Her daughter found her in the kitchen, like the others. House on the Haxby Road.’
    ‘No connection between the women?’
    ‘Nothing at all. Amy Munroe was Afro-Caribbean, Lynn Camish was from the coast, she’d only been in York for two years and Pammy Wright was born in the city. They’d never met, didn’t belong to any of the same clubs, their children went to different schools.’ They reached the Bar and walked through it, passing the wooden doors and portcullis.
    ‘What’s your interest, Sam? I know you, once you get your teeth into something.’
    ‘I’d tell you if I had anything,’ Sam said. ‘But I don’t. A completely different case threw up a connection with Pammy Wright. But my man only knew her when they were at school together, when she was a girl called Pammy Shelton. I don’t know anything new about the Surgeon.’
    ‘Then, why the questions?’
    ‘I got waylaid. After I talked with Pammy’s mother I wanted to know more.’
    ‘So you came to the oracle.’
    ‘Yeah, Sly. For enlightenment.’ They turned around on the pavement and walked back the way they had come. ‘Is there forensic evidence connecting the three murders?’
    ‘Yeah, the guy’s got a roll of washing line. When he’s ready for the next kill he cuts a piece off specially for the job.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘Not hard evidence. But the MO is almost identical. They’re all women. Nothing is ever stolen. They’re not raped or sexually assaulted. They’re all strangled in their kitchens. And after they’re dead he gouges their eyes out.’
    ‘Sounds like someone with a mission.’
    ‘Too fucking true, Sammy boy,’ said Sly turning into