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  The Murdered Staff

  In addition to the residents of the ten houses, the following members of staff were also killed.

  Mrs. Margaret West, Mrs. Jane Mercier, Miss Iris Neame, housekeepers. John Collis, David Taylor, James Poole, chauffeurs. Krystal Werther, Olga Norden, au pairs. Arnold Wentworth, David Lodge, tutors. George Burnett, David Turner, security guards.

  All investigation into the Pangbourne Massacre confirms that not a single adult present in the estate on the morning of June 25 survived the murderous half hour which began at approximately 8:23 a.m.

  The Missing Children

  I looked at the photographs of the thirteen children, a group of thoughtful and pleasant adolescents smiling out of their school speech-day portraits and holiday snapshots. All attempts to trace their whereabouts have failed, despite computerized searches of their dental records, blood groups and medical histories. Four of the thirteen were on courses of prescribed drugs (for hay fever, asthma and tinnitus), five were receiving orthodontic treatment and one was under nominal psychiatric care (Jeremy Maxted, seventeen, for bed-wetting). Despite what was clearly overzealous prescription by their physicians, the latter willingly confirmed that the thirteen children were well nourished and enjoyed robust good health.

  Extensive scuff marks, bloody handprints and shoe impressions that match the children’s known shoe sizes indicate that almost all the children were present at the scenes of their parents’ murders. However, no traces of their own blood were found, and the children do not seem to have been harmed.

  I closed the files, trying to believe that the children were still alive. Given the task faced by the assassins, and the often complex and ingenious ways in which they had murdered their victims, the fact that they had apparently inflicted no harm on a large group of probably hysterical children suggested that hopes for them, however desperate, might well be justified.

  The Massacre: Various Theories

  After this melancholy parade of murder and kidnap victims, I turned to the various theories suggested by the senior Home Office committee charged with the investigation of the killings.

  (1) The Lone Assassin Michael Ryan and the Hungerford tragedy come immediately to mind, like the many similar multiple murders in Japan, the United States and elsewhere. These motiveless killings, in which solitary psychopaths run amok, shooting at unknown passersby, offer an explanation for the Pangbourne Massacre. It seems remotely conceivable that a solitary assassin, perhaps with specialist SAS training in murder by strangulation, trip wire and crossbow, might have entered the estate, killed the security guards and then moved through the ten houses, restraining the children before killing the adult occupants. He may then have returned to collect the children, perhaps driving them away to some secret destination where they remain at his mercy to this day.

  Comment: all the evidence collected, from a shattered video in the Lymingtons’ house recording an early morning film transmission, to the clock in the Maxteds’ Porsche which stopped when the car was driven into the garage door, indicates that the murders were carried out almost simultaneously, within a period of time lasting as little as ten minutes. Several of the victims were killed by gunshots fired in the open air, and it is inconceivable that the intended victims did not flee the estate at the first sign of danger.

  (2) Thrill Killers An extension of theory 1, which answers some of the objections to the single-killer hypothesis. Is it possible that a group of Michael Ryans, perhaps five or six deranged members of a local rifle club, strayed into the Pangbourne estate, perhaps after an all-night drug-taking orgy? Challenged by the guards, they were then provoked into a chain reaction of violence and murder.

  Comment: all the investigating teams (CID, Special Branch, Army Intelligence and secret services) agree that the murders were carried out by a band of assassins numbering at least half a dozen and more probably ten to twelve, working skillfully together to a tightly planned schedule. It is unlikely that a group of psychopaths could have collaborated to this degree, given their customary impulsive behavior and taste for random brutality. Although several of the victims were killed in ingenious ways, none was subjected to gratuitous cruelty. Indeed, the deaths have the clear hallmark of deliberate and careful executions.

  (3) A Misdirected Military Exercise The suggestion has been made in the tabloid press and by backbench Members of Parliament that the Pangbourne Massacre was the tragic outcome of an unofficial military exercise, in which a group of inexperienced SAS trainees were directed to the wrong target. They may have believed that they had been parachuted into a Warsaw Pact country, lost their heads and then murdered the adult residents of the estate before taking pity on the children.

  Comment: inquiries at the highest level within the War Office and the secret services fail to substantiate this theory. A large area surrounding Pangbourne Village was minutely searched, but there is no trace of military vehicles, tire tracks or helicopter exhaust on grass or foliage. None of the residents of the nearby estates reports any sightings of military units. The lawns and soft ground within the estate show no footmarks of athletic men or any signs of their equipment.

  (4) The Political Dimension: Foreign Powers The scale of the Pangbourne Massacre, the number of victims and the daunting task of controlling a large group of children together suggest the deployment of resources that only a foreign power could muster. Many of the murdered parents held senior positions in professions that brought them into frequent contact with foreign governments. The possibility exists of an elaborate act of revenge for unpaid debts or “consultancy fees.”

  Comment: exhaustive inquiries confirm that none of the victims was politically involved in any way. Their only contacts were with U.S. and EEC governments, and the latter’s willing collaboration in the police investigation rules out this possibility.

  (5) International Terrorism Ballistics analysis of the spent bullets and the curious collection of weapons used point to the possible involvement of an international terrorist group, perhaps the IRA or a disaffected assassination squad of Libyan professionals. But the absence of any trace left by such a group, as well as the abduction of the children, rules out this option. However, the example of Patty Hearst suggests that one of the older children may have been brainwashed by a maverick group, perhaps a successor to the Baader-Meinhof gang, the French Action Directe, or the Italian Red Brigades. This remains an outside but remote possibility.

  (6) Organized Crime At least two criminal gangs in the East End of London and one in Glasgow are capable of mounting the large-scale operation involved in the Pangbourne Massacre. The abduction of the children may be part of a mass kidnapping attempt that misfired. Alternatively, the massacre may have been a revenge killing by an international drug syndicate. But there is no suggestion that even one of the parents was involved in drug dealing, in the laundering of syndicate revenues through the London money markets, or in any other activities connected with organized crime.

  (7) The Parents as Killers Could one or more parents have killed the others, and then committed suicide? Possible motives include sexual jealousy, professional rivalry or individual psychopathy. Could the appalled children, in a state of shock that has still not lifted, have then fled the estate, taking refuge in a remote property owned by one of the families? Curiously, for all their participation in group activities at the recreation club, the parents themselves did not mix socially, never invited each other into their homes, and seem to have known one another only as casual acquaintances. All the domestic staff agree that in the three years of the estate’s existence there was not a single example of marital infidelity between fellow residents, a remarkable tribute to the concepts of social engineering built into the estate’s design.

  (8) The Domestic Staff Could disaffected members of the domestic staff—the chauffeurs, housekeepers, cooks and tutors—have turned against their employers? All the servants on leave (one, an elderly gardener, died of a heart attack on hearing of the massacre) were repeate
dly interrogated, and far from showing resentment they all seem to have sincerely admired their employers, and were clearly happy to work for them.

  (9) Bizarre Theories There remain a few outlandish possibilities.

  (a) A unit of Soviet Spetnaz commandos, targeted on the residential quarters of the NATO headquarters staff at Northwood, received an incorrect war alert order and were parachuted by error into the Pangbourne estate during the night of June 24. They slaughtered the adult residents, assuming they were senior military personnel, then realized their error and abducted the children.

  (b) An experimental nerve-gas projectile fell from an RAF or USAF military aircraft into the Pangbourne area and deranged a group of nearby residents, who committed the murders. They then destroyed all traces of the children before suffering retroactive amnesia that erased any memory of the crime. Unaware of the murders they carried out, they have now returned to ordinary domestic life.

  (c) The murdered residents and their children were, unknown to themselves, deep-cover agents of a foreign power. Their mission accomplished, the parents were “instructed” to murder each other, and the children disappeared into the cellars of the foreign embassy before being spirited abroad.

  (d) The parents were murdered by visitors from outer space seeking young human specimens.

  (e) The parents were murdered by their own children.

  Looking through this list, it struck me that all were as fanciful as each other. Some uniquely strange event had taken place at Pangbourne Village, and to find its source I needed to visit the estate myself.

  A Visit to Pangbourne: August 29, 1988

  Needless to say, the visit proved more difficult to accomplish than I imagined. Two months may have elapsed since the murders, but popular interest in the tragedy seems even greater now than it was in the days immediately after June 25, fanned by the popular press and by a series of sensational TV documentaries. Last night the BBC’s Panorama program even speculated that a group of long-term unemployed from the north of England had come down to the leafy Thames Valley in search of jobs, and had been provoked by the ostentatious display of privilege and prosperity into a spasm of murderous rage.

  Farfetched, perhaps, but seeing the large crowd around the entrance to Pangbourne Village I felt that the theory was almost plausible. The murders have attracted an army of sightseers, most content merely to gaze at the houses from the surrounding lanes or any convenient high ground. Scores of people, many equipped with binoculars and cine-cameras, are trudging across the front lawns of the estates, much to the annoyance of the residents. I even saw one man, with a tripod and telescopic lens, clambering onto a garage roof and being pelted with gravel by the outraged chatelaine, a ferocious blonde in her dressing gown.

  The police try to disperse the public—all this must be a field day for burglars out on reconnaissance—but most of their manpower is needed to protect Pangbourne Village. A crowd of some two hundred sightseers was packed into the tree-lined avenue leading to the estate, and there were people actually perched among the branches of the poplars, some with sheets around them, while others shouted abuse at the police below.

  As I edged my car through this mêlée an overexcited young constable pounded on the roof and almost broke the windscreen with his fist. Despite my written authorization from the Chief Superintendent at Reading he was extremely reluctant to let me through.

  I was rescued by a Sergeant Payne of Reading CID, a polite but rather taciturn character who is stationed permanently at the estate, and I suspect is working off some minor penance. He is well informed about the case, in an offhand and sardonic way, but most of his energies are devoted to controlling the spectators. When I parked my car by the gatehouse I noticed that the police were making full use of the closed-circuit TV system, whose severed cables they had replaced. A shirtsleeved officer scanned the monitors, sitting at the chair where his predecessor, the murdered security guard David Turner, was strangled in a strange cat’s cradle of wire and bamboo (a device used by the Viet Cong to trap and kill American soldiers, so Sergeant Payne informed me).

  Seeing the lawns, drives and front porches on the screens, I queasily remembered the police video I had watched in the Home Office theater. As I stepped out along the well-bred gravel of The Avenue into the silent estate, surrounded by the impassive mansions, I half-expected to come across the Mercedes with a trouserless Roger Garfield in its backseat. Fortunately, the forensic teams have long since removed all evidence, and virtually erased every grim trace of the murders. The broken windowpanes have been replaced, bloodstains chemically lifted, bullet holes plugged and replastered. Even the lawns have been cut, on the instructions of the firms of solicitors representing the next of kin.

  Walking around the estate, a bored Sergeant Payne twenty paces behind me, I found it easy to imagine that I was one of the prospective buyers visiting Pangbourne Village soon after its completion. The noise of the distant crowd was lost behind the high screens of rhododendrons, and the fine houses gave off the unmistakable scent of oversleek contentment that comes from the combination of money and taste.

  Selecting it at random, I walked up the drive to the Millers’ house, No. 4, The Avenue. David Miller, a stockbroker, had been killed in his bath, his wife Elizabeth electrocuted on her booby-trapped exercise cycle. Their daughter, Marion, aged eight, and their son, Robin, aged thirteen, were the youngest of the Pangbourne children. While Sergeant Payne searched through his keys, I noticed the remote-control camera mounted on an art nouveau lamp standard in the center of The Avenue. It turned toward us, the officer in the gatehouse keeping an eye on our comings and goings, and then swung away to scan the silent pathways between the houses.

  I pointed to the camera. “I must get one of those for my cottage at Pagham. They’re useful things to have around.”

  “Not useful enough.” Payne pushed the door open for me, unimpressed by the cameras. “As it happens…”

  “Of course, Sergeant. I only meant that they help to keep out intruders. Though constantly living under those lenses must have been a little unnerving. The security is cleverly done, but the estate does seem designed like a fortress.”

  “Or a prison…” Payne lit a cigarette and deliberately exhaled a coarse blue smoke at the white-on-white interior of the Millers’ home. Its deep-pile white carpets, chromium and leather furniture seemed to aggravate him in some way. “The dogs and cameras keep people out, but they also keep them in, Doctor.”

  “A pretty comfortable prison, all the same,” I rejoined. His tone irritated me, like the ash he scattered on the carpet. “Who on earth would want to escape? There’s space for the imagination to breathe here, Sergeant. Young imaginations—I’m thinking of those children.”

  And trying not to think of the Millers’ two children, I began a brief tour of the house. As I gazed at the pleasantly furnished bedrooms, the boy’s with his bathroom and personal computer room en suite, I visualized the civilized and contented lives that the stockbroker and his family had led. There was nothing museumlike about this home—the skirting boards in the boy’s bedroom were scored by the heel marks of a healthy teenager. Sections of the striped wallpaper were pockmarked with old sticky tape from which a gallery of posters had hung. A wide range of interests was on display—there were a chessboard, shelves of intelligent paperbacks, the computer room and its video library of classic films like Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin.

  “A bright lad,” I commented as we looked back from the doorway. “This was a happy child.”

  “Happy? It was practically compulsory.” Payne smiled through a set of tobacco-stained teeth. “With all this gear, anything else would have been a crime.”

  “Perhaps, but it’s not that lavish, Sergeant. It’s just that there are no rubbishy toys here. Tennis racquets, skis, home computer projects—it’s all very sensible.”

  “Oh, it’s sensible.” Payne steered me down the corridor to the parents’ bedroom. “That’s one thing you can say about
Pangbourne Village. It’s all very sensible … and very, very civilized.”

  At the time I thought this an odd choice of words, with the peculiar emphasis that Payne gave to them. We were staring at the Millers’ bathtub, where a man had been put to death before his own children, first stunned by the hair dryer thrown into the water and then stabbed with a kitchen knife. I tried not to visualize the seething explosion of bloody water. This civilized mansion was a modern House of Atreus. I remembered the photograph of the Millers in the dossier, which showed a thoughtful, friendly man and his cheerful, good-looking wife. In the downstairs gymnasium where she died on the booby-trapped Exercycle there had been a wall diary marking out the various activities shared with the children—the school reading assignments to be talked over, the hour set aside after dinner to discuss television programs of mutual interest, the social events at the sports club in which the parents were taking part, the next round of the Pangbourne Village fathers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons junior bridge tournament. Scarcely a minute of the children’s lives had not been intelligently planned.

  Without thinking, I reached out and held the electric plug of a hair dryer that hung beside the washstand (its double, the actual murder weapon, had been removed). The floor-to-ceiling mirrors that lined the walls multiplied the images of myself and Sergeant Payne. He watched me in his broody way, like a teacher patiently waiting for a dull pupil to catch up with him.

  I realized that he wanted me to imitate the assassin’s actions. Refusing to let him outstare me, I pressed the plug into the childproof socket. The spring-loaded pins required a double flick of the wrist, forcing me to lean across the washstand. I switched on the hair dryer, feeling the rush of warm air across my face and forehead, ruffling my hair. I listened to its whir, and watched the smoke from Payne’s cigarette swirl and dance around us, as the water vapor must have swirled and danced on a June morning two months earlier. The mirrors had been spattered with blood, and whoever had put Miller out of his misery had seen endless reflections of himself receding to infinity down aisles speckled with red confetti, a true blood wedding.