Free Bible John's Secret Daughter by David Leslie Page B

in Aberdeenshire, at the time used to hold men looked upon as the elite regarding major crime and violence but now predominantly home to sex offenders. While he fumed and paced the floor of his cell, Jemima and Helen died.
    Thompson had the perfect alibi but that did not stop police visiting him and asking about the freeloaders and lackeys who had followed him on his excursions to the Barrowland. He was shown the artist’s impression of the man the police were also now unofficially calling Bible John and asked to look back and think about whether anyone he knew matched the description and picture. Once more, helpful and courteous to the police as he would always be, he appeared to give the questions considerable thought but announced he was as baffled as they. That would not stop him, however, he assured his visitors, putting the word about that he was in the market for information, which he would instantly pass on should anything useful come his way.
    If big Arthur was in any way surprised to find the police visiting him, his shock was nothing compared to that of a gang of council cleaners who found themselves whisked off the street one evening and into a police station to be quizzed about their movements on the night Patricia Docker died. They had been working a late shift, picking up overtime in the area around the Barrowland, and detectives wanted to know if they had seen or heard anything unusual. They were released along with their brushes and barrows after a few hours.
    After Arthur’s release, with the Bible John mystery still unresolved, he would be visited once more at a bar he ran in the centre of Glasgow called the Right Half and to which young men were known to call before heading off to the Barrowland. But his vacant expression answered questions more effectively than any reply. Thompson doubtless hoped this was the last time his womanising would interest detectives dealing with murder.
    If so, disappointment was headed in his direction.

EIGHT
    FAMILY SECRET
    Within days of the police releasing the detailed description and rumours of the killer’s religious utterances spreading, the expression ‘Bible John’ had become part of everyday language. Tall, slim men would think twice before uttering an expletive that could be vaguely construed as blasphemous. In churches and chapels throughout the west of Scotland, parishioners eyed preachers suspiciously, looking for a telltale sign that might link any one of them to the killer.
    Drinkers in bars and hotels would furtively eye the man sitting next to them, first to see if what lay in their glass was alcoholic, knowing of the suggestion by police that Bible John might be teetotal, and second to check if his teeth were out of alignment. Mothers who had once threatened wayward children with the promise, ‘The bogey man will get you,’ now warned, to startling effect, ‘Bible John will come for you if you don’t behave.’
    The name was on everyone’s lips and the majority wondered if he would kill again before the police triumphed. Of course, as with any murder inquiry, the officers had to contend with the usual raft of nutcases and time-wasters desperate for their moment of notoriety by declaring themselves the killer. Normally, they dry up quickly once it becomes apparent that either their claims have been dismissed or the real culprit has been arrested, but the unsolved nature of the Bible John case meant such foolishness would go on and on.
    Two years after the death of Helen Puttock, three children playing by a river at Renfrew, on the other side of the River Clyde from where she had been dumped, discovered the naked body of a woman in the bushes. Some police officers may have wondered if Bible John had struck for a fourth time. Certainly, the killer this time wanted them to think so. The corpse was that of local nurse Dorothea Meechan and beside it lay a note reading:
    Mr Polis,
    I have killed that woman in cold blood,
    Bible John
    Richard ‘The