One of the two warders, who had taken up position by the door, stepped into the corridor briefly and then returned. “Coming now, sir.”
Merlin could hear the sound of footsteps echoing outside and suddenly four men entered. Merlin’s eyes were naturally drawn straight to the man who was at the centre of the proceedings. Flying Officer Peter Harrison seemed to have shrunk a little during his stay in prison. Merlin had not seen him for a month. His head was closely cropped and thus the long cowlick of fair hair he had used to cover his incipient baldness was gone. Without his curls, his ears stuck out even more prominently than they had before. In his grey prison overalls he struck a sorry figure compared with the debonair, confident, smartly uniformed man about town whom Merlin had first encountered.
Flying Officer Harrison had been convicted in July at the Old Bailey of four murders. All the murders had followed a similar pattern. Harrison had picked up a prostitute on the London streets or in a pub, had engaged in sex with her in some back alley and had then slit her throat. The murders had taken place between February and May. Through a combination of good police work and luck, Harrison had been arrested at his base in Kent in June. In attempting to escape he had fired his service revolver and hit Merlin in the shoulder. It could have been a lot worse as the bone was only slightly chipped, but it still caused him some pain. Harrison had been a cocky little chap through the trial proceedings, but little of that spirit remained as Pierrepoint motioned to Harrison’s two accompanying prison officers to bring the man forward. The other man who’d arrived with Harrison was the prison padre, who now opened his bible and began reading.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Harrison’s motive for the murders was still unclear. He had come from an apparently warm and loving family in Tunbridge Wells. His father owned a grocer’s shop in which his son had happily worked with his parents and his two sisters during the school holidays. He had benefited from a good grammar school education and after taking his school certificate had started out as a clerk in a medium-sized stockbroking firm in the City of London. Joining the forces at the outset of the war, he had swiftly risen to a responsible ground staff job at Biggin Hill. Medical evidence at the trial hinted at some strain in his relationship with his mother, but no convincing reason was given for the killings. Merlin inclined to the simple view that Harrison was evil and committed the murders because he enjoyed doing so. In any event, whatever his motive had been, Harrison stood before him now within seconds of paying the ultimate penalty.
Everything happened very quickly. The padre completed his prayers and the Governor asked Harrison if he had anything to say. Harrison shook his head jerkily and then in a swift movement Pierrepoint pulled a hood over Harrison’s head. For a few seconds the only sound was the faint rustling of Harrison’s urine trickling from his trousers onto the wooden planks of the trapdoor as his self-control left him. Pierrepoint stood back, pulled a lever and the trapdoor opened. Despite himself, Merlin joined the others in looking down through the trapdoor at the jerking and twitching form below. The stench of Harrison’s soiled trousers floated up. Merlin closed his eyes, took a deep breath and walked out of the room.
*