After listening to Jonah’s reply, Geraldine returned to the police station to pass on what she had learned. The forensic report on the red fabric used in the second murder had not yet been completed, so it had not yet been proved that the same strip of material had been used on both victims. However, the details of the red fabric had been kept from the press, so no one outside the police investigating team knew the material or even the colour of the noose. In view of that, it was virtually impossible that more than one killer was involved, which also meant that Tommy could not have killed both victims since he had been in a cell on the night of the second murder. It seemed his confession had been false.
‘He could have been working with an accomplice,’ Eileen said, ‘or have told someone about the red noose when he was boasting about having killed Bingo.’
But for the time being, at least, they had to release him, and Geraldine was sent to share the news with him.
‘Tommy, new evidence has come to light.’
Tommy’s eyebrows rose slightly, but he did not say anything.
‘Tommy, we know you didn’t kill Bingo.’
‘What do you mean? I confessed, didn’t I? So what’s the problem? I told you I did it. Why wouldn’t you believe me?’
‘The problem is, you were lying. We can prove it wasn’t you.’
Tommy sighed. ‘So you’ve caught the real killer? Oh well, I had a few nights with a roof over my head here. It made a change.’
‘We could charge you with wasting police time.’
‘Go ahead,’ Tommy smiled.
They both knew that, short of prison, there was no punishment the courts could mete out against Tommy. He was in no position to pay a fine, however derisory the amount, and he would seemingly welcome the chance of being locked up in a warm, dry cell for the winter.
‘Why did you confess to a crime you hadn’t committed?’ Geraldine asked him.
He sighed. ‘I thought you’d tumble to the truth long before now,’ he replied. ‘But I did think I was in with a chance, at least for a while.’
‘What if we hadn’t been able to disprove your confession? You would have gone down for years.’
‘And if that happened, maybe something would have been done sooner about this wretched hip of mine. Oh, well. Never mind. It was worth a try. But you know what, Sergeant?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The honest truth is, I would never have touched a hair on Bingo’s head. He was my mate. I’m going to miss seeing him around.’
‘He was your friend, yet you were perfectly happy to be convicted of murdering him,’ Geraldine said. ‘Some friend you are!’
Tommy shrugged. ‘Makes no difference to him now, does it? He’s well out of it.’
‘Don’t you ever consider that you might be able to turn your life around?’
‘And do what, exactly?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, get a job, find a room somewhere, make a life for yourself.’
‘A life? What kind of a life? You tell me. You think I want to spend my time in a shit job being told what to do by some jumped-up young imbecile throwing his weight around, just so I can live in a squalid little room somewhere, sitting around waiting to grow old and die? What’s the point of that?’ It was the first time Geraldine had seen him at all animated. ‘I had a life once,’ he added, his anger subsiding as rapidly as it had erupted. ‘I had a life. A good life. And now it’s gone. All I’m left with is an aching body and a bottle to dull the pain.’
It was not clear if the pain he referred to was physical or mental. Geraldine suspected it was both.
‘There are people who can help you,’ she began, but he interrupted her.
‘Yes, there’s an army of volunteers and key workers, busy salving their consciences by giving a leg-up to poor sods like me who are down on our luck. I’ve met them all. And at the end of the day they go back to their comfortable homes to parade their virtue, while we’re cooped up in communal centres. Oh, I’m not saying they don’t perform a useful function. God knows what we’d do without them in the bad weather, and they do get a few rough sleepers back into a decent life. At least some of the do-gooders do their good work for the best of reasons. But some of us are no-hopers, beyond help.’
‘No one’s beyond help.’
‘A bottle of whisky and a sleeping bag is the only help I want. Sorry to disappoint you, Sergeant, but if you want to make me a better man, you can fuck off. I was an upright citizen once, a pillar of the community, with a home and a wife and a good job. You might not believe it, but I worked hard. And where did it get me? Look at me. Go on, go home to your cosy bed where you can sleep well at night, knowing you’re doing a good job, and save your lectures for people who want to listen.’
26
Since Jasper had been unable to provide an alibi for the time of either of the two deaths, he now became a suspect for both murders. A search warrant had been issued for his apartment, every inch of which had been carefully examined, but no sign of a red tie was discovered, not even a microscopic thread of red fabric.
‘He kept the tie after the first murder, so why didn’t he keep it after the second one?’ Eileen asked. ‘What has he done with it?’
‘It’s a tie,’ Ian replied. ‘It could be anywhere.’
Geraldine and Ian questioned Jasper again and this time Ian wanted to put pressure on him to confess.
‘Don’t give him any wriggle room,’ he muttered as they approached the interview room. ‘We need to catch him out. Once we establish he’s lying he’ll crumble. You can see he’s not strong.’
Looking at Jasper facing them across the table, Geraldine understood exactly what Ian had meant. The suspect was pale and looked as though he had not slept for days. In stark contrast to Tommy, who had been completely relaxed about his arrest, Jasper showed signs of extreme stress. The interview room was cool, but he was sweating and seemed incapable of sitting still. Fidgeting with the edge of the table, he kept shifting in his seat and was unable to look either of his interlocutors in the eye.
Ian started by questioning Jasper again about the second murder.
‘I keep telling you, it wasn’t me,’ Jasper insisted, his face taut with apprehension. ‘I was at home in bed fast asleep when that tramp was killed. I just happened to stumble on the body on my way to work, and that’s when I spat on the pavement, which was stupid of me, I know, and disrespectful, but I didn’t know he was dead then, did I? I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you expect to find on your way to work, is it? A stiff, lying on the pavement. I nearly fell over the guy. I mean, it wasn’t his fault, but I thought he’d just crashed out there, and he nearly tripped me up. When I realised he was dead, that’s when I should have called you, but I didn’t. I admit that. If it’s a crime not to report a dead body then I’m guilty, sure. Like I said, I admit that. It was wrong of me. I was afraid of losing my job if I made any trouble for the boss by having the police traipsing all round the restaurant. But I’m telling you, I didn’t kill anyone. I just found him. You can’t accuse me of something I didn’t do, just because I was there. I don’t even know who the guy was. Why would I want to kill a complete stranger? I was in bed that night, all night.’
‘Can anyone corroborate that statement?’
As Ian continued quizzing him Geraldine listened with growing concern, conscious of the irony of the situation. After believing the false confession of a liar, they were now querying the words of a man who might well be telling the truth. Meanwhile, Ian turned his attention to the first murder. Without any preamble he enquired where the suspect had been on Tuesday evening two weeks earlier. Jasper looked baffled. Turning to his lawyer, he asked what was going on. The lawyer merely shrugged and looked at Ian in silence, waiting to hear where this was leading. Ian repeated his question.
‘I was at home in bed,’ Jasper replied, with growing alarm in his expression.
&nb
sp; ‘Another tramp was murdered that night,’ Ian said quietly.
The lawyer’s expression did not alter, but his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as he understood what was being implied. Jasper understood too, and his reaction was explosive.
‘You can’t pin any of this on me!’ he yelled, losing all his self-control. ‘I never touched anyone! I’m not a violent man!’
He was sweating profusely, and his eyes had taken on a strange wildness. Fear could change a man almost beyond recognition, and Geraldine felt a frisson of pity for the suspect who, for all they knew, might be innocent. Still, unfortunately for Jasper, he had a record for GBH.
‘That was years ago,’ he protested when Ian brought it up. He lowered his voice and his tone became pleading. ‘I was a kid. I did community service for it. That’s got nothing to do with any of this. I was only a kid.’
In desperation he turned to his lawyer, who sat impassive at his side, listening.
Returning to the office, Geraldine and Ian joined Ariadne and a young constable, Naomi, who were discussing the case. Naomi thought Jasper must have been killing tramps for some bizarre reason of his own.
‘We need to question him about what he thinks of rough sleepers,’ she was saying. ‘He might give himself away.’
Geraldine was faintly irritated that Ian promptly agreed with Naomi. Blond and petite, and undeniably efficient, Naomi blatantly fancied Ian who seemed completely unaware of her interest in him. Geraldine wondered if he could really be as oblivious to his young colleague’s interest as he appeared, when just about everyone else seemed to have noticed how Naomi trailed around after him, fetching him coffee and laughing at his jokes. Geraldine had known Ian for a long time, and was aware he was vulnerable after the breakdown of his marriage. She held back from commenting, for fear of being accused of prying, but she was concerned he might enter into a new relationship on the rebound. Still, Geraldine told herself, it was none of her business. Naomi was young, attractive, and smart. What Ian chose to do in his personal life was his own business.
For her part, Geraldine needed to stamp on her own affection for Ian. They had worked together closely for such a long time, it was inevitable that an intimacy had grown up between them. But there was nothing more to it than a close professional relationship. When Geraldine had first moved to York, she had allowed herself to hope their friendship might develop into something more romantic. The realisation that she was deluding herself had been painful, but thankfully she had avoided the humiliation of betraying her feelings.
Ariadne’s curiosity did not help. ‘Do you think Naomi and Ian are going to get together?’ she had asked Geraldine. ‘You know Ian, don’t you? You knew him before you came here, didn’t you? What do you think?’
‘I’m not interested in idle gossip,’ Geraldine had snapped.
Now she watched Ian and Naomi, standing side by side, discussing the possibility that Jasper could have killed both victims for no other reason than that they were homeless. The two officers made a good-looking couple, Ian tall and attractive, and Naomi petite and pretty.
‘But why on earth would he want to kill rough sleepers? And if he thought they were potentially dangerous, what made him pick on his second victim? He was so old and weak, he was hardly going to pose a threat to a young man like Jasper.’
No one had an answer to that. They just had to try to establish the second victim’s identity in the hope that it would enable them to solve the case. In the meantime, the absence of any evidence placing Jasper at the scene of the first murder was proving problematic. An unknown killer seemed to have struck twice. Neither attack appeared to be a crime of passion, or a one-off loss of control. Both murders had been carefully planned and executed to ensure the killer’s anonymity was protected, and where two victims had been so skilfully dispatched, there could be more. They had to establish whether Jasper was guilty and, if he was innocent, they needed to find the killer, and they needed to do so quickly. A killer who had already claimed two victims could not remain at liberty to strike again.
27
The property was rented under a false name, and he could leave no clue as to what he had been doing there. That had been a secret known only to him and Mark. Now that Mark was dead, he alone knew the truth, and he was going to make sure it stayed that way. It had taken a week, but Mark’s life was finally over. Towards the end, the self-appointed executioner had looped a red noose around his victim’s neck and tightened it. By then Mark was as good as dead already, and was too weak to even try to remonstrate when his gag was removed. If anything, it was disappointing that he had succumbed so easily. He might even have been unaware of what was happening. But it was important to strangle him to death. That was how it had to be done, or the other two would have been killed for no purpose, and he hated wasted effort.
Mark’s body was still lying on the floor of the cellar but it could not stay there indefinitely. Apart from anything else, after a while it would start to smell. Before that happened the corpse had to be moved somewhere sufficiently public for it to be found, yet secluded enough for it to be deposited discreetly. Following the news, it was obvious the police had no inkling who was carrying out these murders. That was not going to change, unless someone saw the body being dumped. That would be it. Game over. Up until now he had been playing the game so well. He was not about to throw away his liberty for a stupid blunder like that.
It was easy enough to roll the body up in a length of old carpet, but securing the bundle tightly proved extremely difficult. At last he had the roll tied up in six places, and was confident its contents would not slither out on to the street at either end. Carefully he rolled the carpet across the floor and manoeuvred it through the door. Hauling it up the stairs was heavy work, but he managed it, mainly because he had no other choice. It could not stay where it was.
It had been a stroke of luck finding an old van with the key still in the ignition. That had made his life easier. He wondered if the owner had left the key there deliberately, hoping someone would come along and steal the rusty old heap. But he did not really believe in luck. To be fair, it had taken him a long time to find what he needed. He had been looking out for just such a vehicle for months. If he had not come across that particular one, he knew where others were kept out on the street at night. He had spent months earmarking them for use when the need arose. Having the key was not essential, but it certainly helped.
The house he had rented at the end of a badly lit cul-de-sac had an internal door to the garage. He had been very particular about that. With the van backed up into the garage, he rolled his weighty bundle a short distance across the hall, over carpet covered in plastic sheeting, until at last the body was in the garage. All that remained was to hoist it up into the back of the van. He worked slowly, wary of hurting his back and ending up in serious trouble, but eventually he completed the arduous task. With false number plates attached to the van, front and back, he drove slowly out of the garage without turning the lights on. It was a pity the van was white. He would have preferred a black or navy one, but he had to work with what he could get.
Turning out of the side street to the main road, he put his lights on and went in search of an isolated spot. No one paid any attention to a battered old van cruising along the street. Whistling, he drove along Gillygate to Union Terrace where he parked the van in a corner of the car park. Glancing around to make sure there was no one else about, he slipped out of the driving seat and made sure the van was unlocked. Originally he had planned to dump the body in the city where it might be mistaken for another rough sleeper, but trying to deposit it there would be too risky. In any case, left in the car park the body would be discovered soon enough. Crouching down out of sight, he took the false number plate off the front of the van, but decided against going around the back to remove the other plate, for fear of being spotted. The van would be found sooner or later. What mattered now was for him to l
eave the car park swiftly, without being seen.
Stealing away, he kept to the shelter of the trees, avoiding any cameras. At a safe distance from the car park, he dropped the key to the van down a drain, and made his way home. Already he was regretting having left the false number plate on the back of the van in case it was traced back to the house he had rented but, having left the scene, he was not going to risk going back. He would visit the rented property once more to clear away the plastic sheeting and check he had not left any mess. After that, he had no further use for the house. It was a pity in some ways. He had turned out to be rather good at killing people. But he was not stupid enough to tempt fate by carrying on for too long. So far he had easily escaped detection, but every murder increased his risk of being caught. The rental agreement on the house was due up in a week. He would not renew it. The killer could now vanish without trace, satisfied that he had achieved his purpose. There was no further need for him. At least, that had been the plan.
Thinking over the excitement of the past few weeks as he walked home, he realised he was not ready to give up his new pastime. Admittedly, killing Mark had been the whole purpose of his attacks in the first place. The tramps had been strangled only to conceal the motive behind Mark’s murder, so his killer could never be traced. But he had not anticipated the thrill he would experience as he squeezed the life out of a total stranger. Now that it was all over, he felt compelled to repeat the experience. Every time he killed, he imagined it was his wife’s lover who was struggling frantically against the noose, and the intense gratification he felt turned out to be addictive.
He was going to have to take a break in order to be properly prepared before his next venture. Instead of a house, next time he might rent a lock-up garage under a false name. There were many ways in which to improve his operation. But the red tie would stay. He had become quite attached to it. He smiled, because no one else could possibly have thought up such a simple plan, to use an innocent item of clothing to strangle the life out of his victims. And it meant he could never be caught.
Deathly Affair Page 12