Evil Intent by John Wainwright
Collins Crime Club, 1966; Fontana, 1969
I bought this one mainly for the cover, but not the cover of the Collins Crime Club edition (above), which is just filling in while my scanner's away at my mate's flat. The cover of the Fontana paperback which so caught my eye shows two sinister black-garbed and cowled figures standing over the blood-spattered body of a bearded man, naked except for some sort of masonic apron covering his recreational area, lying on what I can only describe as a Satanic tablecloth and with a crow/raven (possibly stuffed) perched (as in balanced) on his chest.
Talk about 'Buy me!'.
It was a bit of a toss up as to whether I should put this here in Crime or over in the Witchcraft and Black Magic section (mind you, most of my reviews are a bit of a toss up so nothing new there).
We open on a foggy morning after Hallowe'en with bicycling country bobby, PC Mcillwraith (complete with cycle clips and cape) pedalling up to local landmark, Dell Rock, and making the horrible discovery of just what has turned Farmer Bill Lawson's kids into blubbering wrecks and presumably scarred them for life. For up on the ancient, weather-scarred Table Stone, surrounded by tell-tale traces of black candle wax, lies the ritually mutilated body of a nude tramp. And he's not looking at all well. His head has been all but severed with what may have been a cleaver and some rather more delicate instrument, a scalpel perhaps, has been used to remove his baby-making paraphernalia (present whereabouts unknown). It can all add up to just one thing...
Black Sorcery!
Enter Divisional Superintendent Ripley, a copper of the old school, a policeman's policeman - literally, as John Wainwright was still a serving officer of the law when he wrote this, his third mystery novel. Ripley's seen it all in his time on the force - he's cynical, world-weary, thoroughly miserable - but he's never seen anything quite like this. Witchcraft in this day and age? On his patch? Not bleeding likely! He's not in the business of hunting witches. This is obvioulsy the work of some bloody maniac or pervert. Now that's the type of villain he can understand (and, if necessary, get a confession out of in a locked room with no witnesses). Ripley knows that police work isn't glamorous. It's all about expending shoe leather and filling in forms and more bloody forms.
In this sense,
Evil Intent is something of a 'police procedural'. A kind of 'Singular Case of The Tramp's Missing Knackers', if you will - although said gentleman of the road's absentee ball-sack never does come to light (you wouldn't believe the sleepless nights I've had worrying about that; "Where could they be? Did I miss a vital clue?")
Enter also the national press, gathered in the public bar of the Admiral Benbow, and only too eager to embrace the Black Magic angle on "The Witchcraft Murder".
But if Ripley remains unconvinced, even his own daughter, the charming and not unattractive Susan and best friend, forensic scientist Dr. Carr are more than willing to accept a possible supernatural explanation (cue several pages of expository dialogue about the history of witchcraft, Wernher Von Braun and Aleister Crowley).
Clues are pieced together, guilty secrets are unearthed. Dell Rock it turns out has not always been known as Dell Rock. In the old days it was Devil's Rock. The quiet, little village nearby even has its own witch (although she's rather disappointing and really amounts to little more than a wizened hag. She may have had a cat, I can't remember now but anyway don't get your hopes up).
One thing leads to another and what do you know - Ripley should have had a poster up at the station saying, "Devil-worshippers may be operating in this area" after all. And at the head of this circle of misguided thrill-seekers is the shadowy figure of Cernunnos. But which decent, upstanding members of the community like nothing better than to don a hood of an evening and go around castrating tramps, and just who is Cernunnos?
Could it be analytical chemist and corpulent whoremonger, Dr. Hepplewhite? Or square-jawed, stiff upper-lipped Justice of the Peace, Major General Sir Henry Gresham, K.C.B., M.V.O., D.S.O., etc.? Or how about humourless coroner, Jaques, known to his friends as "Jacques The Ripper"? Is it possible that someone inside the force knows more than they're letting on?
The blurb has it that
Evil Intent ends with "an extraordinary and exciting chase", which I suppose it does if you're a pigeon fancier (no, honestly) or really like helicopters. And not just any old helicopter, it's a Saunders-Roe Skeeter Mk. 12 fitted with a de Havilland Gipsy Major 215 engine. If you hadn't been told that John Wainwright was a policeman, you might be forgiven for thinking that he was something in engineering given the sometimes bewildering amount of mechanical detail he provides. If someone's driving a car, you not only know what make and model of car it is and what it's got under the bonnet, but also what gear the driver's in at any particular stage of the journey.
As this is primarily about police work rather than Devil-worship, the pace can be a bit, if you'll forgive the expression, plodding at times but there is fun to be had within its pages and the occult overtones help to spice up the proceedings.
Think of it as Dennis Wheatley in a panda car.