She nodded.
It had taken a while for the traffic division to set up temporary lights but vehicles were now moving slowly in alternate directions along the opposite carriageway.
‘A lot of people are going to be late for work today,’ Ian said.
At last everything was in place and they were able to approach and view the body which was being photographed before it was removed to the mortuary. The van was already there, waiting for its dead passenger.
‘I’ll go and see the post mortem this time, if you like,’ Ian said.
‘Are you sure?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. You look cold.’
She smiled. ‘It’s bloody freezing here. But I don’t think Jonah’s going to be working outside. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer me to do it?’ She lowered her voice. ‘I know you don’t like going there.’
He laughed. ‘Compared to dealing with my wife – my soon-to-be-ex-wife, I should say – viewing corpses is like a walk in the park on a sunny day.’
Geraldine was not sure that was an appropriate comparison. Ian’s wife was stunningly beautiful and very much alive.
‘All right. But I’ll come with you,’ she said.
The body had been spotted by a member of the public on her way into York to visit her daughter. Geraldine went over to speak to the woman, who was small and dainty, and looked about seventy.
‘I was driving past,’ she said, visibly trembling with shock. ‘I thought someone had collapsed. I didn’t realise he’d been run over.’
Geraldine did not point out her mistake. It would be impossible to hide the bad news from the media, but she was not going to be the first to divulge it.
‘I thought maybe he needed help,’ the woman went on through chattering teeth.
Someone brought her a cup of sweet tea and she sipped at it gratefully.
‘So what happened then?’ Geraldine prompted her.
‘What? Oh, yes. Well, I pulled over. I mean, I know you’re not supposed to stop here, are you, but what if he needed help? I mean, in an emergency, the rules can be waived, can’t they?’
Geraldine nodded. ‘You won’t be in trouble for stopping,’ she assured the woman. ‘You were right to regard this as an emergency. So what, exactly, did you see?’
The woman drew in a breath. ‘I saw him. That man. I thought he might have been knocked out so I went to have a closer look – and that’s when I realised he wasn’t moving. He was just lying there, staring up at the sky.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘So I called 999 and they told me to wait here. So then I had to phone my daughter. I was on my way to her house to look after my grandson because her childminder let her down and she’s not best pleased, but what was I supposed to do?’ She appealed to Geraldine with tears in her eyes.
The woman appeared to be more concerned that she had annoyed her daughter than upset about stumbling on a corpse. After muttering a few platitudes, Geraldine returned to the body. Lying on his side to begin with, the dead man had been turned on to his back prior to being carried over to the mortuary van.
‘Was he killed here?’ Geraldine asked.
‘No,’ a SOCO answered. ‘He was killed somewhere else and deposited here after rigor had set in. From the position of his limbs, it looks as though he might have been sitting down when he died,’ he added.
The doctor arrived, and declared the man dead. ‘He was strangled,’ he added in an undertone.
The doctor was young, and he looked sleepy, but he instantly grasped the implications of the cause of death. Geraldine glanced over at the woman who had found the body. Too far away to hear their muttered exchange, she was talking to a female police constable, no doubt relating how she had let her daughter down. The doctor delicately pulled the dead man’s collar open to reveal a telltale red line around his neck. And that was the moment Geraldine glanced up and recognised a reporter standing a short distance away, phone in hand.
‘Who let her past the cordon?’ Geraldine hissed.
She dashed towards the reporter who backed away, a resolute expression on her face. Before she had a chance to remonstrate, Geraldine had seized her by the arm and grabbed her phone.
‘Police brutality,’ the journalist shouted very loudly, looking genuinely shocked.
‘If you don’t leave this scene immediately, you’ll be charged with obstruction.’
‘What? Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You have no business to be here, contaminating evidence.’
‘What evidence?’ The other woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is this a crime scene?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to ascertain. Look,’ Geraldine went on, lowering her voice in an attempt to sound as though she was sharing confidential information, ‘as soon as we know anything, we’ll let you know. In fact, if you give me your card I’ll contact you myself. But in the meantime, you really shouldn’t be here, and you know that as well as anyone.’
‘Someone’s been run over and you’re treating it as a crime scene,’ the reporter pointed out, looking shrewdly at Geraldine. ‘Evidently there’s more going on here than you’re letting on. So come on, what are you hiding under that tent?’
‘What can be more serious than a hit and run? If this victim doesn’t survive, then whoever ran him over will be facing a murder charge,’ Geraldine said.
‘I don’t believe you. That’s bullshit.’
‘I thought that was your job. Listen, you’ll get the details when we make a press statement. Now, how did you get past the cordon without permission?’
‘You can’t keep people out. This is a public highway.’
‘No, this is a potential crime scene and you’ve entered it without authorisation.’
‘All right, I’m going. Give me my phone.’
‘You can collect it from the police station tomorrow.’
‘What? You can’t keep it!’
‘I just found it,’ Geraldine said. ‘How do I know it’s yours?’ She glared at the reporter. ‘You’ll need to bring along proof of ownership before we hand it over to you.’
‘That’s outrageous! You can’t steal my phone!’
‘I’ll be handing it in at the police station where you can reclaim it any time you want, from tomorrow. Unless my senior officers decide to retain it as potential evidence, that is.’
Still complaining vociferously, the reporter left. Geraldine would have the phone checked, but if pictures of the dead man had been taken they would probably already be automatically stored on the cloud where the reporter could access them. It was just one more irritation for the police to deal with. She stood for a moment, watching the reporter leave, before she returned to the doctor.
‘Can you tell us any more about the attack?’ she asked.
‘It was fatal,’ he answered, with a wry smile.
45
‘This victim is quite different from the other three,’ Jonah said.
That much was evident just from looking at the cadaver lying on the slab. David Rawson cut a robust figure in death, broad-shouldered, with huge feet. His skin was pale, but somehow he looked as though he should have a florid complexion. Geraldine pictured him as a brash man in life, red-cheeked like a cherub, with a complacent air, a man who had lived well.
‘He was in his fifties,’ the pathologist went on, ‘but of course you know all about him, don’t you?’
‘We know his background,’ Ian answered shortly. ‘His name, his address, where he worked, his family circumstances. We know about his life. What we want to know from you is how he died. We’re not here to do your job for you.’
‘He’s cheerful today, isn’t he?’ Jonah said, casting a sly grin at Geraldine. ‘Do you have to put up with this all day?’
‘Just tell us the worst,’ Ian said, smiling an apology.
‘Right you are, then. Here goes. Our man here was well
nourished, no scar tissue or evidence of operations or illness.’
‘His medical history is of no consequence to our investigation,’ Ian pointed out, his gruff temper returning. ‘He was strangled.’
‘There was a small amount of alcohol in his blood,’ Jonah continued, ignoring the interruption, ‘which could have been whisky, although it’s difficult to be sure. The tox report will confirm that. And then there’s this.’ He pointed to a mark on the side of the dead man’s head.
‘That doesn’t look too bad,’ Ian said. ‘Was it a fall or was he hit, do you think?’
‘It looks like a fall, because look, there’s a graze here on the side of his chin, and his shoulder was also bruised. I agree, it doesn’t look like much, especially now I’ve cleaned him up, but it led to a haemorrhage.’
‘So what did he die of? Strangulation or a knock to the head?’ Ian asked.
‘He was strangled, but he would probably have died of internal bleeding anyway, unless he had received fairly urgent medical attention. And there was this.’ He pointed to a picture of a stained coat, slightly torn at the bottom. ‘He was found in this.’
‘We’ve already seen pictures of it,’ Geraldine said. ‘We’re waiting for results of the forensic tests on it.’
Images of the coat had been displayed at the police station, and discussed at length.
‘So he was strangled,’ Ian said, returning to the pathologist’s work, ‘and I suppose you found fragments of red fibres on his neck?’
Jonah shook his head. ‘No, this looks like it might have been a different killer. At any rate, the noose was made of some kind of rough rope, something that might be found in any garden centre or the like. If it was the same killer, he didn’t use the red fabric this time.’
‘The killer might have lost his tie,’ Geraldine suggested.
Anything was preferable to concluding that there might be two people busy strangling rough sleepers. Jonah had nothing more to tell them until the results of the tox report were back, so they returned to the police station to type up their reports.
‘It seems pretty obvious that this was a clumsy attempt at a copycat killing,’ Eileen said when she addressed the team the following morning. ‘For some reason the victim wanted to fool people into thinking he was homeless, and the killer must have mistaken him for a genuine rough sleeper. It’s the same as happened with Mark. Only this time it looks as though we may be dealing with a different villain, someone who’s trying to imitate the Tramp Killer, perhaps in hopes of concealing his own presence in all this.’
‘It would be convenient for a second killer to have his crime blamed on someone who was caught for other murders,’ Ian agreed.
‘That’s the trouble with these high-profile cases,’ Eileen said. ‘Once the media get hold of them, there’s always the risk some lunatic will be attracted by the attention and try to get in on the action.’
‘Why would this recent victim have deliberately tried to look like a rough sleeper?’ Naomi asked.
‘I’m guessing –’ Eileen hesitated, because everyone knew guessing was a mug’s game in their line of work. ‘It’s possible David wanted to mix with the rough sleepers, because he was out looking for his next victim.’
There was a brief pause while everyone considered the implication of that suggestion.
Naomi spoke up. ‘You’re saying that David might have killed three men before he was himself murdered? That would certainly give a motive for David’s murder.’
‘That presupposes that David deliberately disguised himself as homeless,’ Geraldine pointed out. ‘Are we getting a bit ahead of ourselves with speculating about what happened?’
‘Geraldine’s right,’ Ariadne said. ‘It’s just as likely the killer made a mistake in attacking David.’
‘Or maybe dressed him in a dirty old coat to disguise the fact that the wrong person had been murdered,’ Ian said.
‘You mean the right person,’ Geraldine corrected him.
Everyone turned to look at her.
‘Perhaps this killer wanted to get rid of David, so he strangled him and then put him in an old coat to give the impression he was a tramp, so we’d go off on the wrong tack,’ Geraldine explained.
‘Except that Jonah seemed to think he put the coat on before he was killed,’ Ian reminded her.
‘So we’re back to the same question: why would David want to disguise himself as a rough sleeper, knowing there was a killer targeting them, unless he himself was the killer?’ Eileen asked.
‘He could have been a one-man vigilante, hoping to smoke out the killer?’ someone suggested.
‘Or perhaps the killer knew David and persuaded him to put the coat on before killing him?’ Geraldine said.
‘Why would anyone do that?’ Naomi asked. ‘I mean, why would he have agreed to put on the filthy old coat?’
‘Geraldine could be right,’ Ian replied. ‘The killer could have been trying to fool us into thinking this was another tramp murder, when in fact it was something very different.’
Geraldine listened uneasily to the conversation. There was too much theorising going on, without enough evidence.
‘Surely the point is that we just don’t know why David was wearing that coat. Isn’t it fairly obvious that there could be any number of reasons?’ Geraldine said, but no one responded.
‘I wonder where the coat came from?’ Ariadne asked.
‘It’s being examined now, so we should know the answer to that very soon,’ Eileen replied. ‘If it wasn’t the victim’s coat, and we manage to find its owner, he might lead us to the killer.’
46
Malcolm’s coat caused quite a stir at the church breakfast club the next morning. After he had slept in it for one night it still looked as good as new, not even creased. He stretched out his arms, and looked down admiringly at the camel-coloured woollen cloth. The sleeves were too long for him, but he would appreciate them protecting his hands in the cold, and when he lay down it cloaked him like a long blanket. He grinned and twirled on the spot and then regretted his performance because everyone in the queue turned to look at him. It was a smart coat which felt even better than it looked.
‘Where did you get that then?’ someone asked, looking up from a plate of beans and toast.
‘A woman gave it to me,’ he told the other rough sleepers who had gathered round to admire his new coat. ‘They can’t nick me for stealing, can they? Not when she gave it to me.’
‘Who was she? Did she have any more?’ someone asked, only half joking.
Malcolm shrugged. ‘She didn’t say who she was, but she swapped this for my old coat!’ He held out his arms to display the coat.
‘I reckon you got the best of that deal. Who gave it to you?’ one of the regulars asked, eyeing the coat enviously.
‘I’ve got to say, you look bloody good in it,’ one of the volunteers called out.
‘You’re the dogs,’ another guy agreed, reaching out to touch the coat.
‘Watch it,’ Malcolm said, taking a step back from the man who was about to feel the fabric. ‘Don’t get your filthy paws on it. I don’t know who gave it to me,’ he added. ‘It was just some woman. She said it had belonged to her husband and he was dead and she wanted to give it to someone who needed it, someone who would appreciate it.’
If the woman saw him again, she might deny having given it to him, and demand the return of her dead husband’s property. She was bound to have thought better of her generosity by now and be wanting the coat back. It was really too smart for a rough sleeper like him, someone who drifted in and out of homeless shelters. He was going to have to keep an eye out for her. If he saw her, he would have to dodge out of sight and wait until she had gone before venturing out again. Whatever anyone else said about it, he was not prepared to surrender the coat without a fight, especially now that winter was approac
hing. He had only been wearing it for one night, but he had become attached to it and already thought of it as his own.
Uneasy with so much attention directed at him and his coat, he was relieved when the discussion moved on. His coat had offered a brief respite from the murders that had dominated the homeless community’s conversation for the past few weeks. Several of the rough sleepers were angry that the media were calling the deaths ‘The Tramp Murders’, and to make matters worse, some reporters had been less than complimentary about people living on the streets.
‘Calling us tramps! Bloody insult, like we’re all fucking trash,’ one of the women complained to a chorus of assent.
‘Like we’re all prostitutes,’ another woman grumbled.
‘Personally, I’m more worried about being murdered than being called a tramp,’ one of the men said, prompting another outcry.
Along with the rest of them, Malcolm was increasingly bothered by the news, especially now that yet another victim had just been discovered. One of the men who had come to the church for breakfast had brought a paper with him, featuring a report of the death on the front page. Like the other two recent murder victims, this one appeared to have been a rough sleeper, although none of them recognised him from his photograph in the papers. They all agreed that was puzzling.
‘It must be a shit photo,’ one of the men said. ‘I tell you, I know everyone from around here, and I’ve never seen him before. I don’t recognise him at all.’
‘He must have come from somewhere else,’ one of the volunteers agreed. ‘Unlucky for him he met the killer while he was passing through.’
‘Lucky for us though,’ one of the women piped up.
Another woman rounded on her. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’
‘I only meant we’re lucky it wasn’t one of us.’
Glancing at the image in the paper, Malcolm scowled and picked it up for a closer look. As he studied it, his frown deepened.
‘I’ve never seen him before, but I recognise that coat,’ he muttered.
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