The Sedgemoor Strangler and Other Stories of Crime

Ape

I blame my mother and father. Mother would insist on calling me Arthur. She played the tape of her all-time favourite musical while she was giving birth to me, and there was no question of her baby bearing any other first name than that of the King of Camelot. As for father, he thought Arthur was not a cool name for the twentieth century. He wanted me to have a fallback and his choice was Patrick. Not much cooler than Arthur, in my opinion, but I can live with it. I don’t object to Arthur or Patrick. And I don’t object to my surname. It’s Egan. The one small matter neither Mr nor Mrs Egan noticed at the time was that their son’s initials were APE.

You can imagine what I was called at school. Never mind Arthur, or Patrick. I was stuck with it for the rest of my life.

As boys do, I played up to the label, always monkeying around. I sometimes wonder if my character would have turned out differently if Dad had given me the second name Charles. As Ace, I would have had a different sense of self altogether. But the thing was done. I was the class fool, the kid who gave the teachers hell. I truanted, got into trouble on the streets and slipped easily into the life of a petty criminal. And I want to emphasise the “petty.” Nothing I did was violent. You might argue that theft is a form of violence, but I don’t agree. When I’d been caught a few times, I had no other choice but to steal.

I paid my debt to society several times over, in some tough institutions. It taught me to be more skillful. Inside, I learned from masters of the art. I can get through most security systems now. I don’t leave prints or footmarks. I know how to fence the goods I liberate. I’m well respected in the business.

My last stretch was five years — just over three with good behaviour. I found it harder than ever. Prisons are getting no easier, believe me. On the day I was released, the Governor said, “You look ten years older than the day you came in. Don’t be a fool to yourself, Ape. Stay out of trouble this time. Get an honest job and stick at it.”

Fat chance.

My skills are considerable, but not of much use to employers. I’m forced into self-employment.

But this time I did try going straight. Touch my heart and hope to die, I did.

The rehabilitation lady found me a place to doss. No, to be fair, it was better than a doss-house, a decent drum, my own bed-sit. I shared a kitchen with some others. Among them was Gerald.

You don’t expect to find achievers in the kind of billet I was in. Most of the tenants are straight off the streets or fresh out of stir. A few, like Gerald, get there through some personality defect. His problem was a lack of confidence. Poor old duck, he was nodding his head, agreeing with me, before I even spoke to him. He must have been fifteen years younger than me, in the prime of his young life, not bad-looking and with a good physique as well, yet he took a step back and gestured to me to go ahead of him the moment I stepped into the kitchen. I don’t know if he’d heard I was a jailbird.

“Carry on, squire,” I told him. “I’ll take my turn. What are you cooking? Smells terrific.”

It was Spaghetti Bolognese. The meat was simmering nicely in one saucepan and the spaghetti in another. Anyone knows spaghetti doesn’t take long. It’s ruined if you leave it boiling too long, yet Gerald was proposing to step aside while I prepared my own meal. I had to close the kitchen door and stand with my back to it to keep him in there.

“Go on,” I said. “I’m in no hurry.”

He thanked me so effusively that my toes curled. The saucepan was about to boil over and I told him to watch out and he reacted as if I’d drawn a gun, thrusting both hands in the air. I don’t know what he’d heard about me. I got to the gas just in time.

Gerald thanked me some more.

I got to know him reasonably well after that. You see, I’m not much of a cook myself. You don’t get the chance in prison. All they ever let me do was peel potatoes and wash dishes. I persuaded Gerald to include me in his catering. He was only too willing to oblige, if I didn’t mind eating really late, around midnight. It emerged that he had a part-time job in the kitchen of the Ritz Hotel. I think he did the basics there, loading plates into the dishwasher and so on. But he watched the chefs at work, and learned the culinary art. He could make anything taste delicious.

After a couple of weeks of this good living, Gerald and I were buddies. Sometimes he would bake something special in a single dish and we would share it in his room. He did amazing things with a few cheap ingredients like leeks, potatoes and cheese. Now I’d better make clear that these cosy suppers together were purely for convenience. I’m straight, always have been, and so was Gerald. I know, because we discussed women.

You’re probably wondering how much experience the two of us had of the opposite sex — Gerald such a wimp, and me, a jailbird. The answer is less than we would have liked. I never asked him straight out, but I would guess he’d never had the pleasure. And mine was a distant memory. Yet that didn’t stop us talking about it.

Of course, Gerald needed coaxing to talk about anything at all. A few cans of beer helped. They were my contribution to the supper. The subject of women just crept into our conversation. I was saying, “You cook so well, those chefs at the Ritz had better watch out. You’ll have their job.”

He smiled modestly at his plate. Gerald didn’t go in for eye contact.

I said, “You can quote me for a reference any time.”

“Thanks, Ape.”

“Seriously, you’re wasted stacking dishes. It must be so boring.”

He shook his head.

“Not boring?”

“I don’t get bored.”

I waited, expecting him to add something, and eventually he did.

“I watch the chefs.”

“You told me before.”

“And when the chefs have finished, I look out the window.”

Big deal, I thought. “What, to see what the weather is doing?”

“No. The window in the door.”

I understood. Restaurants have those swing doors leading to the kitchens. For safety, there is usually a glass panel set into them. Gerald liked to peek through the door into the dining room.

He said, “Beautiful.”

“I can believe it,” I said. “I haven’t seen the Ritz, but I can believe it. The gilding, the chandeliers, the mirrors, the painted ceiling.”

“No.”

“No?”

“The ladies in their dresses.”

“Ah!” This was truly an insight. “The dishy diners.”

Gerald had turned pepper-red.

“You fancy them, and I don’t blame you,” I said. “I would. I know the feeling. Many’s the gorgeous bird I’ve clocked through glass during visiting. Unattainable. Breaks your heart sometimes.”

“Only one.”

“Who caught your eye?”

“She comes with her father and mother on Fridays, regular,” he said. He was on a run now, actually putting more than three words together at a time. “Really dark hair fixed up high on her head like one of those goddesses. I watch out for her.”

“A hot number?”

“Divine.” Creases of tenderness spread over his face. “One of the waiters told me her name. Pippa. Pippa Coleridge. Her Dad owns one of the new railway companies.”

“He’d have to be loaded to eat at the Ritz every week.”

Gerald’s mind was not on Pippa’s father. “Her features are perfect. She doesn’t wear much make-up. It’s hard to think of her in the real world.”

“She won’t know much about the real world if her old man’s that well off,” I pointed out. “Probably swans around the family estate waiting for Prince Charming to arrive, if he hasn’t already.”

“Oh, no,” Gerald said firmly. “She’s untouched.”

“Get away.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“How old would she be?”

“Nineteen, twenty... I’m not sure.”

“Gerald, old friend, if she’s that good-looking, and rich, you can bet some Hooray Henry has bedded her by now.”

“Don’t say that.” There was a threat in his voice, and I understood just how smitten he was. Dream on, I thought. No way will a misfit like you get a crack at Pippa. But I had some sympathy. Poor old beggar. I wished I could help.

Almost a year went by before the opportunity came. I was still in the same bedsit, getting my cordon bleu from Gerald, but starting to get a life again. It was neat, you have to agree. I was living up to my name. I became an ape. A great ape. A gorilla.

Let me explain. Since my last stretch in the slammer, a curious craze had developed: the gorillagram. Don’t ask me to explain the appeal of it.

The idea started, I think, with the stripagram. Typically, some old gent reaches retirement, throws a party for his workmates and they surprise him. Instead of a good-wish telegram, he gets a girl in black stockings, g-string, wasp-waisted corset and not much else who sits on his lap, plants lipstick all over his face and collar and provides amusement all round. It adapts to almost any celebration from a birthday to a house-warming.

That’s fine for blokes, but who do you hire to surprise a woman? A male stripper? In certain cases, yes, but most women find a fellow in a satin jockstrap more of a threat than a laugh. Gorillas are the number one choice for ladies. For one thing, they’re anonymous. They’re also furry, cuddly and a bit ridiculous.

One day a free paper was pushed through the door of our house. On the front was a picture of some smiling lady in the arms of a man in a gorilla suit. Eureka! I’d found the perfect job for an old con called Ape. I could work for myself with no fear of being recognized. I’d have all the fun of making whoopee at parties, cuddling the women, whisking them off their feet if they weren’t too heavy and getting paid for it into the bargain.

I put a free ad in the same paper the next week:

Two jobs came in the first week. I hired a gorilla suit from the costume shop in the high street and did my stuff. The clients loved it. I beat my chest like King Kong, chased the kids, stood on a car roof, played drums with the band and danced with the lady of the day. It was warm work, but wonderful fun. And I collected a fee for it.

After that, the work came in steadily. The word passed around that I was the greatest ape outside the zoo. I bought a mobile phone, took an ad in the Yellow Pages under Corporate Entertainment, and found myself listed with bouncy castles, murder weekends and hot-air balloons. For me, with my record, this was as good as being on a college honours board.

As a rising star, I got increasingly high-class work, and this was reflected in my fee. I demanded (and got) no less than two hundred pounds. By now I had two handsome gorilla suits of my own, a lifelike silverback and an extra woolly King Kong.

Out of the blue one June afternoon came the phone call that changed my life, and Gerald’s:

“Mr Ape?” A woman’s voice, young and beautifully articulated.

“Speaking.”

“My name is Felicity Clacton-Hayes. You won’t know me. I understand you do gorillagrams for parties and so forth.”

“Sure.”

“Super. Do you happen to be free on Saturday the nineteenth?”

I checked my personal organizer. “In the afternoon or evening?”

“This would be the evening. A friend of mine has a twenty-first birthday party at a country hotel — Cliveden, do you know it? — and some of us want to surprise her. If you could make an appearance at about eight, that would be absolutely brill.”

“It’s not impossible,” I hedged, having taken note that Cliveden is about the swishest hotel in Britain, “but I’d need out-of-town expenses. I don’t use a car in London.”

“The expense is no problem at all,” she delighted me by saying. “Just take a taxi and add the fare to your fee. I can arrange overnight accommodation if you like.”

“No. I do the job and leave,” I told her. “I’m a total professional. My fee for an event like this is three hundred. Travel expenses are extra.”

She was unfazed. “Brill. Now I’m sure you’re used to every kind of occasion, but I ought to tell you that some senior citizens will be at the party. Her grandparents. And her mother and father, too, come to that. We don’t want anything they could object to, if you follow me. The hotel wouldn’t want it, either. I mean you can put your arm around Pippa’s waist and give her a hug, but please no grabbing.”

“Don’t worry, miss. Grabbing isn’t my style.” I understood what she meant. I’d done every kind of party in my time and exhibited just about every facet of gorilla behaviour. At this stage I was more interested in Pippa’s identity. It’s a fairly uncommon name. “So the lady who receives the gorillagram is called Pippa?”

“Pippa, yes. Do you need a description? It will be fairly obvious who she is. She has dark, almost black hair, and she’s very pretty indeed. And I’m Felicity. Short red hair. Passably good-looking, too, my friends tell me. I’ll be in a black see-through dress and of course I’ll look out for you at eight.”

“Pippa who?”

“Coleridge.”

I could hardly wait to tell my old chum Gerald when he got back from his evening at the Ritz. He was gobsmacked.

“Are you certain?”

“It’s got to be her,” I said. “There aren’t that many people with her name who could afford to throw a party at Cliveden.”

“Her twenty-first,” he said wistfully. “Now I know how old she is.”

“And I’ll get to see this gorgeous woman you’re always talking about.”

He sighed. “You’re so lucky.”

“I’ll give her a squeeze for you.”

Now he looked pained.

“It’s my job,” I explained. “I’ve got to do my gorilla act. Give her a bit of a scare, chuck her over my shoulder and run around the room with her. They always scream, but they like it really.”

He gaped. “You can’t treat Pippa like that.”

I spread my hands. “Do you think it gives me any pleasure? We all have to earn a living.”

For the first time since he’d started cooking for me, he burnt the rice. After that, I shut up about the duties of a gorilla.

My brilliant idea dawned later, in the night. It was the neatest thing I ever thought of. It was beautiful. Perfect. Like the story of Cinderella. I was the Fairy Godmother, and Gerald would go to the ball.

I took him for a drink next morning and unfolded the plan. “Just because it means so much to you, I’m willing to make a sacrifice. You can go to Pippa’s party instead of me.”

He frowned. He didn’t yet understand.

“You do the gorillagram.”

“Dress up in a skin?” he said in horror. “I’ve never done such a thing.”

“It’s dead easy. I’ll coach you. Just think of the benefits. You get to cuddle Pippa. You carry her around the room. She sits on your knee. You can say things to her, outrageous things, and she’ll think it’s fun. Play your cards right, and this could be the start of something you never even dared to imagine.”

He said with a blush and a twitchy smile, “I’m not like you, Ape. I’m shy.”

“When you get inside the skin, all that will go. You’ll be supremely confident. Nobody will know who’s under all that fur. Believe me, old friend, you’ll have a ball.”

I could see the conflict going on in him. His hands shook so much that he couldn’t raise the beer to his lips. Part of him wanted desperately to take this heaven-sent chance.

“Look,” I said. “Come back to the house and try on the suit. See what it feels like.”

I knew he would be persuaded. Inside the suit, you feel amazingly secure. Strong. Assertive.

And it worked. The moment I fastened the Velcro and sealed him inside the silverback suit, he made an ape-like sound and shuffled across the room. He had the movement exactly, legs slightly bent, body stooping, arms swinging loose. Then he turned and beat his chest with his fists.

“Sensational,” I said, and meant it.

You may think it strange that a man so introverted could transform himself in this way. It’s not so remarkable. Many actors, for example, are shy people who only find confidence when they take on a role. Acting is their way of escaping from the prison of their personality.

In the next days, I taught Gerald the gorillagram routine. He had to learn how to make a big entrance, getting everyone’s attention with as loud a roar as he could manage, and then loping over to the lady of the evening. That would be followed by a hug — “but not too vigorous,” I stressed — and then conducting the guests as they sang “Happy Birthday.” I told him he would probably get to dance with Pippa if he was gentle at the beginning. And if she seemed willing, he could carry her around the room. “Let her know you’re not really a threat, and she’ll be charmed,” I promised him. “But there are also certain rules. No drinking, no disrobing and no groping.”

When he was out of the costume he said, “I’m grateful, Ape. I’m really grateful.”

I said it was a small return for all the suppers he had cooked. I didn’t tell him I had an ulterior motive.

On the evening of Pippa’s twenty-first, I rented a car and drove Gerald out to Buckinghamshire. Cliveden is an easy run, not far off the M4 motorway. It is approached along a grand drive, with a magnificent fountain playing in front of the house. Although I say all this as if I know the house intimately, I have never stepped inside. That was Gerald’s privilege. Before entering the grounds, he changed into the gorilla suit.

I drove up slowly, to get him there a few minutes before the scheduled time. It was still daylight, being so close to midsummer. I spent the last few minutes reminding him what Felicity Clacton-Hayes would be wearing. There was no need to tell him what Pippa looked like.

“Give it your best shot,” I said as we pulled up at the entrance.

“Count on me,” he said, so much more positive inside the suit.

“I’ll pick you up here at ten sharp. Your duties will be well over by then.”

He lifted one of his great pink hands and gave me a High Five. I drove off. I had things to do.

This, you see, was the neatest part of the plan. I had taken the trouble to look up Pippa’s father in Who’s Who. Sure enough, he was the railway magnate. Happily, his address was listed: a country home a mere half-hour’s drive from Cliveden. Once a thief, always a thief. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of paying the place a visit and doing a little breaking and entering. I had a perfect alibi, didn’t I? The Great Ape was wowing the guests at the party.

It should have been easy from then on. Unhappily for me, it was not. I found the Coleridge residence. I got close to it without anyone challenging me. No servants. No dogs. But what I hadn’t anticipated were the videocameras mounted on each side of the house. Security technology had moved on since I last did a job. I only spotted them out of the corner of my eye when I detected a movement as I approached a window. Time to leave, I thought. Cursing, I abandoned the plan and drove slowly back to Cliveden.

Gerald was late coming out. I waited until twenty to eleven before he appeared, running across the gravel, still dressed in the suit, but with no semblance of a gorilla’s movement.

I said, “Do you know what time it is?”

He just said, “Get me out of here,” and I knew from his tone that something had gone wrong.

We drove for about a mile and he said, “Would you stop? I can’t breathe.”

I sympathised. After a couple of hours, a gorilla suit is pretty uncomfortable. We’d thought of this and brought a change of clothes in the car. I stopped in a quiet spot and waited while he peeled off the suit and changed.

“What was the problem?” I asked when he was sitting beside me again. “She was the right Pippa, wasn’t she?”

Out of the suit, he reverted to his uncommunicative self. I barely got a nod in answer to the question.

“You did your stuff all right?”

Another perfunctory nod.

“She didn’t faint, or anything?”

No answer at all. I gave up. At home, over a beer, he might be induced to talk.

But Gerald had other plans. As we approached central London, going through Hammersmith Broadway, he said with unusual clarity, “Let me out, please.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “We’re not home yet.”

He said, “It’s the only way.”

“Gerald, what’s up?”

“Stop. I want to get out.”

He was so insistent that I braked and let him open the door.

Before leaving me, he said, “Sorry.” There was a moment’s eye contact — so unusual with Gerald — and in that instant I felt I was staring into his soul. He was in torment.

I said, “See you later, then.”

I never did.

When I got back to the house, there were two police cars outside. I stopped and got out. Lights were turned on me. An amplified voice told me to lie on the ground with my hands stretched out.

I said, “What for? I’ve done nothing wrong?” I hadn’t even smashed a window of Coleridge’s house.

“Do it!”

I obeyed. The only thanks I got for co-operating was two burly coppers throwing themselves on top of me, pinning me down.

After a bit, they drove me to West End Central Police Station and shoved me in a cell. They kept me there overnight. It was hours before I was interviewed.

“You are Arthur Patrick Egan, right?”

“Yes.”

“You run a gorillagram service known as Ape?”

I nodded.

“Have you got a tongue in your head?”

“Yes, I do gorillagrams.”

“You had a job at a party at Cliveden yesterday, is that correct?”

“It is. Look, would you let me in on the secret? What am I here for?”

“Save your breath, Egan. We’ve got you on video.”

All this, for a failed burglary. “I did nothing. You can’t stitch me up without evidence.”

They listed their evidence. “A witness called Felicity, who hired you. A car rented in your name, the number noted by the hotel staff. A gorilla suit, found in the back. About two hundred guests who saw you dancing with the deceased.”

“The what?”

“I was referring to one of the victims, Pippa Coleridge.”

“Pippa is dead?” I could scarcely take this in.

“Don’t act the innocent, Egan. You were caught on camera.”

“Maybe, but not at Cliveden.”

“Rushing down the fire escape in your gorilla suit after you strangled them. Pippa and her boyfriend Larry, in the bedroom where they’d gone for a few private moments. For crying out loud, it was her birthday. What did you have against those poor young people? You look sane enough sitting here, but this was a frenzied attack, as if you actually were a bloody great gorilla. Does something happen when you put on that suit?”

I pictured it. Gerald — meek Gerald — driven crazy by the discovery that Pippa had a lover and sneaked off to a hotel room with him. He must have found them in bed and gone berserk.

And they thought I was the killer.

I told them about Gerald. It took hours to persuade them to go looking for him. They didn’t find him. And all the reports of Gerald described him as inadequate, immature, a timid, gentle man.

My last chance rested on the alibi. I’d been at the Coleridge mansion at the time Gerald was performing in the gorilla suit. I said I thought I was caught on the security video. They checked. I was not. I had no alibi.

They checked my DNA and found it matched samples from the gorilla suit. Was that any surprise when I’d worn it so often before? The jury thought it clinched my guilt.

A psychiatrist said in his psychobabble that I was nuts. When I put on the gorilla suit my personality underwent a change. It was traceable to my childhood, when the kids called me Ape at school.

I was given two life sentences. I’m writing this in my cell in the special unit at a maximum security prison in the north of England. I don’t expect anyone to believe me. The judge didn’t, and nor did the jury.

I’m off the tranquillizers now. They know I’m docile.

Unless anyone calls me Ape.