Cold cases are getting colder: Why we must have an ending to the story

We hate not knowing what happened to Suzy Lamplugh and Madeleine McCann and so many others because we need a resolution. As cold cases get colder, crime fiction becomes ever more popular. As Andy Martin remarks, we need an ending – a final page to the story

Police have been digging up a garden in Sutton Coldfield – which once belonged to the mother of the chief suspect in the Lamplugh case – in the search for a body (Getty Images)

Everyone who is old enough will remember her face, beaming out from a radiant photo. More than 32 years ago, on 28 July 1986, Suzy Lamplugh, an estate agent, walked out of her office to meet a client, a certain “Mr Kipper” (or possibly “Kuiper”) and show him over a house in Fulham. She never returned. She was officially declared dead, presumed murdered, in 1994.

In the past few weeks, we have witnessed the police digging up a garden in Sutton Coldfield – which once belonged to the mother of the chief suspect in the case – in the search for a body. They dug in vain but vow to continue the investigation. In other words, we still don’t have much of a clue of what became of her. And we hate not knowing.

This applies not just to her close family, like her brother (her parents are now both dead), her colleagues and neighbours, her immediate community, but to every one of us who ever heard about what happened but never found out how it ended. Just as Durkheim argued in his “functionalist” theory of crime, society is drawn together in a reaffirmation of its norms. But there remains a question. A mystery left unresolved. A whodunnit without a who.