Johnston went back to Australia. No visits from the police. No alarms coming from South Wales. Everything normal.
A year passed.
Johnston, I suspect, returned to Wales intending to finish the corpse-disposal job. But he didn’t. I think Elsie Williams wanted to keep the corpse as a way to keep the blackmail money coming in. She needed that corpse, or felt she did.
But as well as that, I think the pair of them had a nasty pleasure in knowing that in the garage freezer, next to the bits of pork and the apple compotes, there was half a dead girl as well. Did they talk about getting rid of it? Did Johnston try to dispose of it? I don’t know. Invulnerability does strange things to rational thinking.
Then, the following summer, Elsie Williams tumbled a small boy off his bike. PC David Beynon came round to deliver a caution. A hot day. The family out in the garden. The garage door lifted. Beynon would have come in via the garage. Might have banged around in there. Certainly emerged into the garden from the garage.
That moment would have terrified Johnston. He’d have realised, suddenly, how thin his skin of protection truly was. If he went back to Australia, if his mother-in-law did anything stupid, or if, in a moment of senility, she started to babble about the corpse in her freezer, he was done for.
He no longer felt safe. His mother-in-law didn’t want to release the corpse – her hold over Johnston would disappear if she let that happen – but he needed some way to protect himself.
The plan they cooked up was something that could only have occurred to the mentally unbalanced, yet it had a strange kind of logic to it too. The plan was to distribute the body so widely that it would be impossible to pin the blame on any one owner.
So Derek started to distribute the corpse. To anyone who had offended him or offended his mother-in-law. His targets were the people he interacted with on his various maintenance chores. The pressure washers, the garage guys, the plumbers’ merchants. Maybe they pissed him off in some obscure way. Or maybe he was just a bastard.
Elsie’s targets were more capricious. Arthur Price, who burned his garden rubbish. His plot was mostly devoted to vegetables, so there wasn’t much rubbish to burn. But espaliered fruit trees need pruning in summer. Either while the Johnstons were making their annual visit or just before. So the old lady’s rage would have been burning at its brightest just when Derek was on hand to satisfy it. It was the same story elsewhere. The churchwarden’s bicycling children, for example, would have been busiest in spring and summer, offending the spiteful old widow with their youth and their shirtlessness. No doubt she found reasons to be furious with people in autumn and winter too, but they weren’t top of her summertime hate list.
The combination of summertime targets and household-maintenance targets first alerted me to Derek Johnston. What clinched it was the weird way the Langton body parts were found. In freezers. In barrels of lawn mower oil. In jam jars of vegetable oil. The forensics guys were puzzled, but pretty consistent in their belief that none of this stuff had been decomposing for the full five years. And even if you date the degradation from Beynon’s house visit in 2007, the rate of decomposition looked puzzling. In particular, the polythene-wrapped arms in Ryan Humphrys’s roof had degraded less than their apparent age would suggest, even if you take 2007 as the date.
But that was a clue in itself. These days, any bag of salad is packed in nitrogen. It’s done like that to exclude the oxygen which would accelerate deterioration. Nitrogen isn’t a hard gas to get hold of. Any welder’s yard will have it. Other inert gases – notably helium – are even simpler and cheaper to procure. My guess is that Johnston packed those arms in helium to make them last longer.
That’s speculation, admittedly, but what isn’t is Derek Johnston’s background. He worked in food processing. A little investigation told me that he was a food technologist, senior enough to be on the conference circuit, talking about the latest advances in packaging technologies and the like. His day job involved preserving foods, including meat. I think he saw Mary Langton’s corpse the same way. A dark joke, if you’re kind. A personality disorder with schizoid elements, if you’re not.
In any case, Johnston was reluctant to let his trophy wither and decompose. So he made efforts, however basic, to preserve the pieces. That was part of the reason I never really bought into the linkages between Langton’s death and Khalifi’s one. One corpse was preserved, the other one scattered. That always said two murderers to me, not one.
I don’t say all that to the Langtons, of course. Watkins needed to know the full picture, but they don’t.
‘It came to our attention that Johnston was going to be travelling to the UK on business. When he came to immigration control, we detained him.’
The flight had got into Heathrow late. It had come via Singapore, been diverted by a mechanical problem en route, and had finally discharged its cargo of exhausted, cramped, and smelly passengers around four hours later than scheduled.
There was a long queue at immigration and we let Johnston get to the head of it. As soon as he did, he was asked to step aside to answer some questions for Border Control. We had him ushered to one of those small white bureaucratic rooms. So cheap and small and standardised that any sane person would want to kick the walls in after about twenty minutes.
We left him on his own for two hours, with a small plastic cup of coffee that we’d allowed to go cold.
Then we got an Asian-British immigration officer to spend thirty minutes asking Johnston pointless questions about his paperwork and punching buttons on a computer keyboard, while we watched proceedings from behind a one-way mirror. Me. Watkins. Mervyn Rogers. Our guy looked pissed off and shattered. Just how we like our suspects.
Then we made our move. We entered the room.
Watkins told him that he was being placed under arrest for the murder of Mary Langton. Rogers put the handcuffs on, none too gently.
Then we battered him. Not physically, alas, but with one of those hostile interviews that Rogers is so good at. He made it seem like we knew everything. That we were only after various final confirmations.
For an hour or so, I thought we were going to swing it. Rogers led the interview. Watkins launched occasional rocket attacks of her own. I interjected when I needed to, which was seldom. The pair of them were as scary as fuck. Relentless, well informed, in control.
Most people, I think, would have crumpled. Johnston almost did. English law doesn’t allow us to give suspects the full Guantanamo treatment, but, give or take some orange jumpsuits, a Sydney-to-London flight comes remarkably close on the sleep-deprivation-and-general-craziness front. Johnston almost gave way, just so he could get himself to a shower.
But he didn’t. At about the seventy-five-minute mark, he said, ‘Fuck it,’ pushed back his crappy little cushionless chair, and said nothing more. Our tape recorder picked up the background chatter of flight announcements but not a further word from him.
We wouldn’t necessarily have been defeated even then.
Part of the problem with Stirfry all along was that we never really knew where to focus. Now that we do, we’ve already got the lab guys looking to link all the various body parts back to Elsie Williams’s garage. We’ve already got one positive hit. The jam jar that held the thumb and the vegetable oil contained in the seal of its lid particles of ceramic dust that appear to match a broken vase on Williams’s tool shelves. Further work of that sort may help us to build a case that’s viable in court. Owen Jenkins’s statement that he wasn’t allowed to store tools in the garage is persuasive evidence that Williams and Johnston knew parts of Mary Langton were still in there. The financial data which shows that Elsie Williams’s income suddenly took a hike after Langton’s death. All the other little bits and pieces.
But perhaps we won’t bother.
Because we are not now the only people with an interest in Johnston.
Our arrest of Johnston was notified automatically to Interpol. And, as luck would have it, while Johnsto
n was in the air over the Indian Ocean, the New South Wales police received an anonymous phone call from a young woman – a young woman who might or might not have had a Welsh accent, and who might or might not have been calling from her very sexy new Alfa Romeo – alleging violent sexual assault by Johnston.
The Aussie police obtained a search warrant. Forcing entry to the property, they found two dismembered female corpses stored, frozen, in a garden outbuilding. The corpses were incomplete, suggesting distribution had already begun. Although the house itself appeared normal in every respect, the outbuilding contained the dismembered, preserved remains of countless wild animals and even a few domestic ones. Items had been pickled, salted, dried, frozen, desiccated, vacuum-sealed, and tinned. There were fox paws in nitrogen, a human hand packed in potassium nitrate.
No one, Karen Johnston said, was ever allowed access to the building, which had no windows and a triple lock on the door. The police, so far, believe her.
Intensive enquiries are ongoing.
Our own preliminary psychiatric investigation of Johnston has revealed a withdrawn individual of low affect. In the words of the summary, ‘His mood is neutral or even blank. He shows emotional activity only when asked about the reasons for his arrest and incarceration, a subject which confuses him. He gives conflicting reports of his previous mental history, but some episodes of psychosis or hallucination cannot be ruled out.’
I think back to the low-key Swansea psychologist. The guy was pretty much bang on the money from the word go. If Johnston had lived in the UK, we’d have got to him much faster, but you can’t go to foreign police services on a hunch and nothing more, and we didn’t even have a hunch. We had 288 people of interest and not a clue where to focus.
When the Aussie police went charging round to the Johnstons’ place, I couldn’t be certain what they would find, of course, but it was hardly wild surmise to send them in. A killer who kills in the ordinary cack-handed way – that could be any of us. A killer who kills someone, and chops up their corpse, and distributes it to people who’ve offended their mother-in-law – that person is a nutcase, one who’s more than likely to be a repeat offender.
Indeed, the biggest question for me had been about when to make that phone call: whether to notify the Australian cops straightaway or wait till we had Johnston in custody here. In the end, I opted for the latter, because it wasn’t too long to wait and because the Aussie cops might not have been able to obtain a search warrant on hearsay evidence alone. A failed intervention by the Aussies would have risked everything. So I forced myself to wait, knowing that by waiting I was running the risk that Johnston would kill again.
‘The good news is,’ I say to Rosemary Langton, ‘that we have your daughter’s killer. He will receive a life sentence. I doubt if he will ever walk free again. He will certainly never injure anyone again. What I don’t know is whether we have enough evidence to convict him here. If you want us to, we will try. We’ll keep him detained as we build our case. If the CPS, the Crown Prosecution Service –’
But the husband – John, I think – interrupts me. He clears his throat, with the hoarseness of scraping rocks.
‘No. There’s no need. As long as he does his time. Rosemary, are you –?’
She’s crying. Tears like sand. But also nodding. ‘I don’t want him –’ she says. ‘I don’t want him –’
She can’t complete her sentence, but we all know what she means. She and her husband want the guy in jail. But they don’t want the trauma of a trial. They don’t want the trauma of a trial that might go wrong. If the police in New South Wales will take care of everything, and if he serves his jail time on the other side of the world, so much the better. The moons of Saturn wouldn’t be too far, as long as this pair are concerned.
Bev and I have accomplished our mission. A mission to save our own police force and the British taxpayer some unwanted costs. But I don’t have any sense that we’ve pushed this pair into a decision that they didn’t want to make. It feels like the right outcome. A good one.
‘I’m so pleased you’ve got him,’ says Rosemary, ‘so pleased.’ As her tears still fall.
We don’t rush off.
To start with, as a police officer, you assume that you’re an intruder in this grief. Then you learn otherwise. That you’re the opposite. An actor essential for this stage of things. As necessary as the vicar, the counsellor, the mumsy neighbour.
So we take our time.
‘Her body,’ says John. ‘I assume we can have it now? For cremation, I mean.’
‘Yes. There’ll be one or two last formalities, I’m sorry to say, but we’ll get those done as soon as we can. I’m sorry it’s been so long.’
We take our time until, finally, we’re almost done.
I say, ‘Rosemary, would it be possible for me to see Mary’s room? One last time. I feel like I’ve got to know her a little. I want to pay my respects.’
I don’t know what she thinks of that request, but she takes me up. The willow tree. The beige carpets.
But the room is not the same. The duvet has changed. The poster is no longer on the wall. The wardrobe is empty.
My look must express my surprise.
‘After you came last time, you and Mrs Watkins, John and I realised it was time to move on. We shouldn’t still hold on to it all. We’ve kept everything precious. The photographs, of course, we could never throw those away.’
For a moment, she’s on the brink of more tears. But it’s been five years. Five heading toward six. And even tears must have an end.
I sit on the bed. There’s a box of junk. Stuff that looks like it’s for throwing away, not keeping. There’s a small plastic model sailing boat. I reach out and pick it up.
‘Your husband mentioned that you’ll cremate Mary’s remains. Do you know what you’ll do with the ashes? Will you inter them or . . .?’
‘We think scatter them. She liked her freedom. And she didn’t have long enough to explore the world. Maybe on the Gower somewhere, she liked her time there.’
‘Swansea Bay,’ I say, with too much speed and certainty. ‘She loved it there. You should scatter her ashes on the waters of the bay.’
‘Maybe . . . yes, maybe.’
She gives me a look. Probably one that questions my right to have any opinion on the subject, but for a moment, I don’t see Rosemary Langton at all. I see her daughter. Like they’re one and the same person. The hockey-playing girl merging with this Bath housewife. For a moment I can’t quite tell whose world I’m in. Rosemary’s or Mary’s. They seem equally present. Equally real.
I find I can’t even quite distinguish myself. Can’t locate my own boundary. As though the pencil lines demarcating these things have become partially erased. Where one person ends and another one begins. Who’s alive and who’s dead. These things seem so clear to most people and they aren’t quite for me. But it’s a good unknowing, this. Truthful, not crazy.
There’s some more conversation between us, but I’m a bit lost. I’m not sure what either of us is saying. When we get up to go back downstairs, I see I’m still holding the boat.
‘Were you going to throw this out?’
She was.
I ask if I can keep it. I can.
We go downstairs. Bev is telling John about the final processes with the coroner and the forensic people. Her tone is professional, sympathetic, competent.
She’s a good officer, is Bev. I see how bad I sometimes am. How impossible for a well-run service to manage. But I have my uses.
We drive back to Cardiff in silence and darkness and the windscreen wipers keep the beat with us all the way.
54
Oslo.
It feels as I expected. An enormous sky. Sun fixed low against a pale horizon. Darkness welling up at street level as lights come on. The buildings are solid, blocky, a northern twist on classical. They could exist anywhere, almost, except for those muted Nordic tones. Lichen green. Rust brown. Ochre yellow. And, always, at the
ends of streets, a glimpse of sea and the scrape of salt.
I’m due to meet Lev at a city hotel. A bland business-type place. Unremarkable. I book in under my own name. No reason why not, though I’ll pay in cash.
I hired a black Toyota Land Cruiser at the airport, boxy and basic. Lev asked me to get a car. He didn’t say what sort, but the Land Cruiser seemed about right.
I check in, dump my bag, stay just long enough in my room to get annoyed with it, then go downstairs so I can start getting annoyed with the whole of downtown Oslo.
As I’m stepping out of the lift, I see Lev entering the hotel. He looks like he always does, but with a gym bag over his shoulder. He checks himself in. I don’t see what name he uses, but I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have a few different identities.
He tells me he’s got to go and see about some stuff. Takes my car keys and says he’ll find me later.
I don’t know what that means, so go out to explore. Walk down to the seafront. Watch the boats. The waves.
This could almost be Cardiff, except those extra few degrees of latitude creep in everywhere you look. We’re farther north than any part of mainland Britain. We’re on a parallel with Orkney, Saint Petersburg. The sea here has a grey-blue seriousness it lacks in Wales. This sea is fed by meltwater running off granite and calving glaciers. A sea that booms with the sound of beluga whales foraging under ice.
The buildings lining the front are treble-glazed, thickly insulated.
Cold stones set by an icy sea.
The Barry Precision case is fucked.
The whole thing. Fucked.
If our battle was Stalingrad, it turned out that we were playing the part of the German Sixth Army. Watkins is our General Paulus. Surrounded, starved, frozen, tricked, destroyed.
We thought that the multiple waves of legal attacks launched by Barry Precision were there to bleed our resources. Slow our enquiry to the point of stalling. We were wrong. It was a blind, a diversion.
Love Story, With Murders Page 37