Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Serial Killer in Ipswich.

Oh dear, it seems we have a serial killer getting up to speed in Ipswich, which is about a three-quarter-hour drive up the A12 from where we live. Last weekend the discovery of two corpses warranted a couple of column inches in the papers about three pages in, now that the killer has bumped off five prostitutes in ten days the media is going into a feeding frenzy. I note that the BBC News anchorman is now at the scene and wonder if the higher-ups in that organization decided to send him, or if he threw his weight around to be in at the kill, so to speak.

One annoying aspect of this is the reporters going on at the police about guaranteeing people’s safety and speculating on how it’s possible for this killer to grab women from ‘under their noses’. Are they too stupid to realise that tens of thousands of cops in the area will not guarantee absolute safety? And that for a lot of the prostitutes there, getting cash for their next drug fix is more important than personal safety, and that lots of police in the area will rather cramp their style so they’ll try to avoid them to get hold of their next customer?

The area where the latest two bodies were discovered (Nacton) is one I know. A friend and workmate of mine used to live up there and I used to visit him. I wonder how he would have been feeling if he still lived there: single bloke living alone in his own house. Of course it’s just as likely that the killer is married with kids, like the Yorkshire Ripper (Caroline and I had a bet on how quickly that name would be mentioned. It was mentioned almost immediately.), and right now some wife is maybe thinking, ‘You never said where you were last night, I thought you were having an affair and now I wonder…’ Another theory posited by someone we know is that there isn’t one killer, that this is the result of some Kosovan gang trying to take control of the prostitution racket. Interestingly, when talking about the murders the police are quite meticulous about saying, ‘person or persons’.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um, not to trivialise this at all, but I'm kind of disappointed, Neal... I was sure that your next post would be a rant about the other breaking news: that as collective taxpayers, we are forking out > £100m to get pretty much every government document and service translated into numerous languages... :)

Neal Asher said...

Yeah, I saw that one, Matthew, but as I said before, I have to sometimes tone down my ranting for my own sanity. I could also have ranted about the prisoners suing for and getting compensation because they were forced to go cold turkey. Or I could rant about the 100 people murdered last year by shitbags out on probation. Plenty of targets out there.

Kirby Uber said...

ah i was wondering when you'd comment on the new "ripper"

see? all this exciting stuff, and i won't be able to visit for a year or more... with luck the new ripper will avoid capture for that long, though i won't hold my breath.

on a truly off note, i see from the pictures of the women killed, that there is a serious discrepancy between the quality of street walkers in the UK and in the US. i must say i am disappointed.

the US is just not first in anything any more.

*sigh*

Neal Asher said...

And being further off ... the pictures were probably family photos taken about half a kilo of heroin and a few thousand fucks ago.

Kirby Uber said...

ah, right you are. i didn't consider the heroin and bodily abuse degradation issue.

see, it's insights like these that allow you to produce such complex plots. you simply think of everything. 8)

Neal Asher said...

Now you're taking the wee wee, Kirby. You'd almost certainly have thought of that, it was just a case of whether or not your internal censor let it through. Then again, I think your internal censor is rather like mine: face up against a wall with a wire round its testicles.

Kirby Uber said...

hah! possibly. maybe a drip or two. i rather like to think of it as no internal monologue. often the first time anyone hears something i have to say, it's the first time i hear it too.

works out pretty well, really. i amuse myself something terrible.

Neal Asher said...

The hideous jokes have now started:

Is it true that the Ipswich rugby team is short of hookers?

What’s the difference between Mr Kipling and the Ipswich killer?
Mr Kipling can get six tarts in a box.

Anonymous said...

If you had been unfortunate enough to have listened to Margaret Beckett waffling on Radio 4 on Wednesday morning, and listened to the article on how the Government spends our money on translating documents for people who don't give a toss about learning English, you would want to emigrate to just about anywhere. Why is it that the Aussies and the Dutch deal with the issues of immigrants in such an efficient manner? Is it because their senior ministers are not married to lefty liberal lawyers? Or just because they care about their culture and heritage, wherever it came from? Carry on ranting, at least I am not the only one who is attempting to celebrate England.

Alan Campbell said...

Ha! I just had a rant about the £100m for translation services, before thinking I wonder if Neal beat me to it?

Good to see that there's still plenty of other stuff to rant about. (Or maybe not. Actually, it would be nice if there wasn't anything to rant about.)

Alan Campbell said...

And this particular topic is something I *really* wish we didn't have to rant about.