‘Yep!’ Charley breathed in deeply through her nose, and out slowly through her mouth. ‘Mike and Wilkie are on their way back. Can you get hold of Neal and tell him we need him to go back to the flat with us when Mike and Wilkie return? Mike told me that Butterworth found a strip of towelling stuffed down the deceased’s throat, so with that in mind, I want to see if we can find the remainder of the towel, and anything else that might now assist us further with our enquiries,’ she said.
‘Who would kill our would-be murderer, boss?’
‘Well obviously someone did, and we need to find out who. His DNA profile isn’t a match for the DNA found at other scenes. That bothers me, because to all intents and purposes with all the twists, turns and red-herrings that this enquiry has chucked at us, Russell Peters was our man. We’ll have to wait until we get his fingerprints results in, because as far as we know, he’s not on the national database.’ Charley looked at her watch. ‘In fact, I don’t know what’s taking the fingerprints results so long to come back to us. In the meantime, I’ve got the same gut-feeling as I did when we were told that Cordelia was homeless. There are some things that just don’t add up here, and of course we also have another murder to solve, not a suicide as someone wanted us to believe when they set the scene.’
‘Forensic will match up the fibres and the cloth from where it was torn for us, if we can find its origin at the flat,’ said Annie.
‘It’s good evidence, but we already know that the cause of death is asphyxiation because the pathologist has told us so. We know that he was killed in the flat. However, we don’t yet know for certain who our corpse is, we have an idea that it’s Russell Peters, but we must never assume. If it is Russell Peters then we now know he didn’t kill Cordelia Le Beau, or attempt to murder Cath Crowther. Have we got this all wrong? Either way, we need to find out who killed our guy at the mortuary.’
‘When you put it like that, it sounds so very complicated. I’ll go make us a nice cup of tea, shall I?’ said Annie.
‘And, I’ll update the Divisional Commander,’ said Charley, her voice full of dread. ‘He’s not going to be a happy bunny.’
However, as Annie passed her desk, her phone was ringing. After taking the call, she went straight back to stand at Charley’s door.
‘Now what? I thought you were going to make me a cuppa?’ Charley said, placing the phone back on its cradle after speaking to Bobbie Stokes. ‘Can you make it a brandy instead?’
‘Neal was trying to get hold of you but he said your phone was engaged. The prints from the body at No. 14, Websters Towers are a positive match on the system for a Lincoln Heinz who’s got previous – it’s not Russell Peters. As far as Neal knows, he says, our man Russell Peters you’ll be pleased to know, is still very much alive.’
Charley puffed out her cheeks and blew out long and hard. ‘The crafty bastard, trying to wrong-foot us by putting his ID card in his victim’s pocket to make us think it was him. We need to know everything we possibly can about this Lincoln Heinz. Get Ricky-Lee on it as a priority.’
‘What puzzles me,’ said Annie, ‘is that surely Russell Peters would know that we would find out that it wasn’t him sooner or later.’
‘Ah, but he would also know that it would buy him some time.’
‘Buy him time for what though?’
Charley paused and considered her reply. ‘To get away, or to carry on?’
* * *
Lincoln Heinz had previous convictions for minor theft, burglary, being drunk and disorderly, and he was a druggie. What Charley didn’t know, and Ricky-Lee couldn’t tell her from the short time he had spent researching Heinz, was how he knew Russell Peters, and how he ended up dead in Peters’ flat.
Charley walked from the car park, along the single footpath around the building, and headed towards the entrance lobby of Websters Towers, Annie and Mike following in silence. They had arranged to meet with Neal at the scene. His CSI van was parked on the roadway ahead, alongside a police car. It wasn’t an unusual sight, at any given time there would be at least one patrol car in the area, their occupants more often than not making enquiries at Websters Towers, to use their standard phrasing.
Annie left the others in the lobby to go speak to the caretaker. ‘I’ll update her, and find out what details she has for him,’ she told Charley.
‘Better let her know that we won’t be releasing his flat anytime soon, since it’s now a murder scene,’ said Charley as she called the lift down with the press of a button.
‘Any news on Lincoln’s home address?’ Charley asked Mike, as the lift took them to the fourth floor. ‘Once we know that, then we can have the CCTV checked on the route from his home to Russell Peters’ address.’
Mike shook his head. ‘Nothing yet. It’s looking increasingly as if he may be homeless.’
Charley turned to Neal at the door of the flat. ‘See if you can find a better photograph of Russell Peters will you, and anything else that you think might help us to trace him? It goes without saying that we also need to find the towel from which was ripped a piece to stuff down our victim’s throat.’
It was decidedly cooler than the last time that they were inside No.14.
‘Where the hell is Peters?’ Charley said, pushing the inner doors wide open with a gloved hand, and scanning each room, half-expecting him to be in one or the other. ‘He’s got a taste for murder, and he must know we are onto him, because if not, then why would he try to fake his own death?’
The protective clothing over the detective’s clothes made it an uncomfortable, restricted search, but it was something that was necessary, and something that they were used to.
‘We’ve got to find the evil bastard before he strikes again,’ said Charley, ‘because there’s no doubt in my mind that he will continue killing until we have him behind bars. He’s a danger to the community.’
‘Unless he has moved on of course,’ said Ricky-Lee.
‘You’ve probably thought of this but could Peters be using Heinz’s ID?’ said Annie.
‘You think he might be pretending to be Lincoln Heinz?’ said Charley.
‘Why not,’ said Mike. ‘He can’t use his own details can he, because he would know we would be straight on to him.’
‘True. We must ensure that Cath Crowther is being kept safe,’ she said. ‘The last thing we want him to do is have a second chance to end her life.’
‘Why do you think he would do that?’ asked Annie.
‘Because he failed, and my guess is that from what we know of this psychopathic killer he won’t want to fail.’
All was quiet for a moment or two as the team separated to search the flat. Within minutes a shout went up from the toilet, where Neal had discovered a strip of towelling. ‘I’d say this is an exact match to the one we saw earlier in the day, being removed from the corpse’s oesophagus at the mortuary. Wouldn’t you Mike?’
‘Where was it?’ asked Charley.
‘In the toilet cistern, by the radiator,’ said Neal.
‘I knew when you went in there you were getting warm.’ Annie laughed.
Neal moaned loudly. ‘I guess you’re hoping we’ll flush him out now,’ he replied.
Mike remained serious. ‘Or, we try to restrict his movements by giving his details to the media, stating his present whereabouts are being sought for elimination purposes,’ he said to Charley.
‘I don’t think we’ve much choice but to do that now, do you?’ she replied.
Chapter 26
Charley breakfasted on a thick slice of Marmite toast that Winnie had insisted that she ate, but out of her way in the kitchen, whilst the older woman cleaned her office early the next morning. She drew back the blinds and stood for a moment to watch the day begin properly. Her mind ran quickly through what she had just read, which explained, to some extent, why Lincoln Heinz had become the character he was: homeless, penniless, and now most probably dead.
The circumstances caused by his mother’s drinking and ga
mbling addictions, and a birth certificate that showed his father as unknown, meant that Lincoln was said by those who knew him to have ‘dragged himself up’.
DC Ricky-Lee’s enquiries had revealed that, in his early teens, Lincoln Heinz was the victim of one of several of his mother’s boyfriends, a bare-knuckle fighter, and after a traumatic experience, was never the same again.
The relatively young boy, placed in care, was forever running away to live on the streets, where he felt safer than he did inside amongst strangers, when he wasn’t otherwise under the supervision of Her Majesty’s youth prison service.
Normally, Lincoln, described by the locals in his later years as a private and pleasant young man, kept himself to himself, but always said ‘hello’! He would often be observed, noted and spoken to by the police, and the volunteers from the homeless charities, for sleeping in shop doorways, or sitting by the heating vents outside fast-food restaurants, capturing what warmth he could from their extractors.
Charley had gone on to read that Heinz had last been checked out by a uniform patrol in the town centre, three weeks previously, sitting outside McDonald’s, begging for food.
The locals continued to say that there was no malice in Lincoln, and no one appeared to have a bad word to say about him, they rather asserted that he was a real character in the town, with not a bad bone in his body. He had become part of the street furniture.
At the time of the reported sighting of Lincoln, he had given the police officers his correct details, and told them that he had been sleeping rough for just over a week, having been released from prison, where he had been serving a short sentence for the non-payment of a fine.
Owing to the fact he had no fixed abode on his release, he had been given only a small amount of money to get by. Most of that having been spent on sharing his good fortune with other homeless people, and being bullied into giving up the rest, he was considering breaching his bail conditions so that he would be taken back inside, where at least he would get a warm shower, a hot meal and a warm prison cell in which to sleep. No one would employ Lincoln without a permanent address, and neither could he sign on to claim benefits. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Daylight had fully manifested itself when Winnie entered the kitchen, to tell her she was moving on to clean the outer office. She busied herself clearing away Charley’s dirty crockery, but when she came to shoo her out of the kitchen she found that Charley had tears in her eyes. ‘It was good old-fashioned policing by the local officer, who spent time talking to Lincoln Heinz, and recording the information as intelligence that has given us the most recent updates about him,’ Charley said to the older lady. ‘How was the poor lad supposed to get off the streets without any money which he couldn’t claim until he had a fixed address?’ she asked.
Winnie shook her head. ‘Was it the lure of Russell Peters offering him a roof over his head that he craved which resulted in Lincoln ending up in his flat then?’ she asked.
Charley smiled. Winnie missed nothing that went on around the Incident Room, but whatever she saw or heard remained within the station. She had earned everyone’s trust over the years.
‘On the pretext that he would be able to collect his benefits and get himself sorted out, if he had that coveted address? Who knows?’ Charley sighed heavily. ‘One thing I do know is that there is nothing we can do for Lincoln now, other than bring his murderer to justice. If McDonald’s was the place he regularly bedded down, as it’s thought, then we might get CCTV footage of them together.’ Charley got up from the kitchen table and walked into the larger office, to the map of the town centre. Winnie followed her, duster and polish in hand. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘There is a significant direct “L”-shaped route from McDonald’s, Market Street, via the Medway where Cordelia used to sit, past the nearby waste ground where she was found, before joining the main road again to Websters Towers.’
‘I hope the CCTV shows you Peters picking him up,’ Winnie said.
‘I hope so too, Winnie,’ Charley said sadly, just as Annie, Ricky-Lee and Mike walked through the door together.
‘My office, you three,’ Charley told them, as Winnie turned and walked back out of the office, her brief moment of inclusion over.
Russell Peters’ bike, his usual form of transport, had not been found at his flat, so there had to be a presumption that he had ridden from the scene. However, where he was planning to go, or when was unknown.
‘We still don’t know if Peters has any links elsewhere in the country,’ Charley said to the team. ‘In fact we still know very little about him, even though we have his description, his DNA, we know where he lived, and where he worked, but we don’t have him!’
With everything dependent upon finding Russell Peters, and speaking to him, Charley gave the detectives her instructions. ‘Let’s go to talk to his boss, Mr Robinson, again. See if there is anything else that he can tell us, anything at all. Just the slightest nugget of information might give us our next lead. Also, get Peters circulated as wanted for elimination purposes, in connection with the murder of Lincoln Heinz, whose body was discovered at Peters’ last known address.’
There was no doubt that Russell Peters had been hoping to put the detectives off his scent, by trying to disguise the murder scene, and to make it appear that the victim of the crime was Peters himself. This was done knowing that his attempt to mislead could only be short-lived. Sooner or later, Peters would put his head above the parapet, and when he did, Charley and her team would be ready to grab him.
By the end of the day Charley had the financial investigation team attempting to track him, through the bank account into which his salary was paid.
‘We are closing in on him, very soon we will have him in custody,’ Charley told the team at the debrief that day, ‘but we can’t rest on our laurels until we have him locked up. We know he’s hell-bent on murder, and we don’t want another victim added to his killing spree.’ Charley thanked the team for their continued efforts before closing down for the night.
* * *
PC Helen Weir, along with the CCTV team, had been able to plot Lincoln’s movements around the town centre, and updated Charley with their findings the next morning.
‘He didn’t wander far,’ Helen told Charley. ‘We see him sitting outside the Medway where Cordelia once sat, it’s not far away either from where he usually beds down at night, near McDonald’s. He can clearly be seen begging. Just like Cordelia Le Beau…’
‘Which is why I think Peters had returned to where he had his previous success with Cordelia,’ said Charley.
‘Not dissimilar to how wild animals act in their search for food,’ replied Helen.
‘Exactly. I’ve also known burglars do the same, and of course Peters has been showing those characteristics, by preying on his victims at the university, the place where he worked.’
‘The CCTV shows him actually talking with a lad of Lincoln’s description, who is wearing a dark hoodie. He helps him up to his feet, by offering his hand and they walk off together in the direction of Websters Towers.’
‘There’s a male dressed in a dark hoodie who also features in Cordelia’s murder and still remains unidentified from CCTV,’ said Charley.
‘Yes, and who jumped out in front of my car that time at the university,’ said Annie, who had just joined them.
‘Do you think it’s the same guy?’ Charley asked Helen.
‘Could be,’ she said. ‘We can’t say for certain it isn’t.’
‘I want comparisons doing on the person’s clothing if there is nothing else,’ Charley said. ‘If the present CCTV images you’ve been trawling through show two men leaving the town centre together, where they went after that we do not know, but if it is Lincoln Heinz and Russell Peters, then what we do know is that they ultimately ended up at Russell Peters’ flat, where Lincoln’s life was cut brutally short.’
‘One of the reasons that makes me think that these two guys are those guys, is that Lincoln
is noticeably smaller in stature, in comparison with Russell Peters,’ said Helen, ‘and we know that from what we are told Lincoln was not an aggressive person.’
‘You’re telling me that you can quite clearly see Lincoln’s face on the CCTV footage, but not Russell Peters’, as the hoodie covers it?’
Helen nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Come on then, find me a snippet that shows our man’s face, even if you do have to work backwards through the footage. He’s walking about in town, before he befriends Heinz, surely. Let’s see if we can find him.’
Charley stood quietly half an hour later, and watched the team working diligently, from her vantage point at her office door.
‘We know he’s a predator. He plans his crimes. Do you think he might’ve gone back to the university, where he can mingle with the hundreds of students, without raising much concern as just another worker?’ said Annie to her boss, from where she was sitting nearby at her desk.
Before Charley had a chance to answer, a shout came from the far corner of the Incident Room where the financial investigation team was working. ‘Boss, you’ll be pleased to know that Peters was still around yesterday evening. He withdrew fifty pounds out of the hole in the wall at NatWest, Upper George Street. I’m waiting to hear back from them to find out from his records which is his preferred cash machine.’
Charley hurried over to where Ricky-Lee was sat. ‘Does this machine have a camera by any chance?’
‘It does, but would you believe, Sod’s law, it’s faulty?’
Annie walked towards the SIO with a tray of drinks in her hands. Charley’s eyes went up to the ceiling. ‘Give us a break,’ she pleaded with the Almighty up above. ‘I was very hopeful then that we were going to get a recent picture of him.’
Annie sighed. ‘Be patient, it’ll come,’ she said. ‘That’s what you always say. Do you want me to put your drink on your desk?’
Charley nodded. ‘Please.’
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