by Tim Ellis
‘All I can say is that we’re pursuing a number of leads.’
Looking like a mercenary from a third-world country, a woman in her mid-twenties with long plaited black hair and an Army camouflage jacket on stood up. ‘Dani Vincent from the Hoddesdon Harbinger. What about the details, Inspector? How did they die? Was there lots of blood? Did they wake up and fight for their lives?’
‘You’ve been reading too many comics, Miss Vincent. I’m sure your readers don’t want to know the gory details.’
‘That’s exactly what they do want to know. Instead, all we get from you is: Two people died. Ho-de-hum. What else have you got for us?’
‘They were murdered as they slept.’
‘How?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘Yes, yes. I do need to know. The public need to know. This is the age of reality television, Inspector. Give the masses what they want, or they’ll replace you with someone who will.’
‘Then I look forward to being replaced, Miss Vincent.’
A man in his fifties – dressed as though he was part of a polar expedition – spoke next. ‘Stanley Mellor from the Thurrock Sentinel. Do you know what the motive for the murders is yet, Inspector?’
‘No – we have no idea.’
A young black woman with a colourful Peruvian hat on stood up. ‘Elizabeth Saxby from Five News. We’ve been here thirty minutes and you’ve told us nothing. You have nothing to tell us – no leads, no suspects, no idea. Isn’t that the truth, Inspector?’
‘As I said, Miss Saxby, we’re pursuing a number of leads, and that’s all I can tell you at the moment.’ She stood up. ‘Thank you all for coming. I hope to be able to give you more information tomorrow afternoon at the same time.’ She made her way out through the back door, walked to the stairs and sat on the fourth step with her head in her hands.
Her heart was thrashing about like an eel in a net. She hated it when she had nothing to say to the media. They were like caged animals waiting to be fed, and she was the idiot who fed them. This afternoon though, she had no food to throw into the cage. They were starving, and she’d arrived empty-handed. Soon, they would turn on her. If she couldn’t give them what they wanted, then she would change – in the blink of an eye – from the feeder to the food.
‘Was it bad?’ Stick asked when she walked into the incident room.
‘The worst yet. God, I hate press briefings.’
‘I’ve made you a coffee.’
She was bone weary. She sat down and took a drink of the hot coffee from her mug. ‘Thanks, Stick.’
‘I might have some good news for you.’
‘Hefferbitch has found something we can use at last?’
‘No, but I think we should go to Watford tomorrow.’
‘Because?’
‘Remember Peter Lloyd went to Surrey for weekend taught-elements of the modules on his degree course?’
‘Go on.’
‘Where did he stay during those weekends?’
‘The Halls of Residence?’
‘That’s what I thought, but I’ve been looking through the bag of papers we brought back from the crime scene, and I discovered receipts for weekend stays at the Acorn Lodge Hotel in Surrey that coincide with his taught modules.’
‘A hotel? He wasn’t alone, was he?’
‘I called them . . .’
‘But you’re not going to tell me what they said, are you?’
‘Yes I am, but I’m making the most of it.’
‘Just tell me, and stop being a numpty.’
‘Every time he stayed the weekend, so did a woman.’
‘Someone else on the course?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Coincidence?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘Did they share a room?’
‘No.’
‘Did they eat together?’
‘No.’
‘You got the woman’s name and address, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s in Watford?’
‘Her name is Lisa-Marie Ward. She lives at 44 Bourne Drive in Bushey, Watford. According to the owner of the hotel we’re looking for an attractive dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties.’
‘Good work, Stick.’
He grinned like the cat that ate the canary and said, ‘Thanks.’
She finished her coffee and said, ‘Right, I’m going home.’
Stick began packing up.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Packing up to go home.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. You haven’t finished going through Peter Lloyd’s stuff yet, have you?’
‘Well . . .’
‘A simple “No” will do.’
‘No.’
‘Finish off, then you can pack up and go home. I’ll see you here at eight-thirty in the morning. Don’t be late.’
Stick emptied the contents of the plastic bag out onto the table and began shuffling them into piles. ‘See you tomorrow then.’
Xena closed the door to the incident room behind her and headed for the car park. She tried to think about Peter Lloyd meeting Lisa-Marie Ward at the Acorn Lodge in Surrey, but the synapses in her brain weren’t firing at all.
***
Tuesday, December 9
“Your beauty is all I see.”
That’s what he’d said to her, but he hadn’t meant it. No, he hadn’t meant it at all.
Tears dripped onto the two eyeballs nestled in the palm of her left hand and ran over the black pupils, blue irises and white sclera onto the plastic glove.
She looked at the body of Ian Porter. The empty eye sockets were filling up with blood, and she knew she’d done the right thing – he didn’t deserve to live anymore.
Once, she had loved this man. Loved him more than the life that throbbed inside her. And she thought he had loved her in the same way. He said he had loved her, but then he had gone and loved somebody else. What type of man would do that to another human being?
After sliding the eyeballs into a plastic bag, and that bag into a second one and folding it all up nice and neat as if they were sheep’s eyeballs that she’d just bought from the butchers, she dropped it into the front pocket of her rucksack. She then wrapped the bloody knife in an old towel and put it into the main compartment of her rucksack.
On her way towards the stairs, she checked on the little girl – she was still asleep. She had nothing against the child, and hoped she slept the sleep of the innocent.
The clock on the wall in the living room chimed two o’clock as she left.
***
The archived records relating to the Baker Street Robbery had been digitally scanned and tucked away in a folder entitled: 19710911, which was the date the robbery took place.
She had to drill down some considerable way to find the records, but find them she did. At first, she thought she might print everything off, but she didn’t have enough paper or printer ink without at least two trips to the computer store, so she left them zipped up and saved them to a 32GB memory stick, and then read them on-screen at her leisure.
Besides the names of the people who had rented the 260 safe-deposit boxes that had been emptied, she discovered a couple of other things:
Besides the four robbers who were tried and convicted, a woman (and unknown others) were involved in the robbery, but never identified or caught;
Michael X or Michael de Freitas did not own a safe-deposit box;
The reference to compromising photographs of a member of the royal family held by Michael X was a misdirection to draw people away from something else;
None of the stolen cash or valuables were ever recovered;
The owners of each box were asked by the police to identify what had been stolen, but those records were not part of the archives;
There was mention of child pornographic photographs in some of the boxes, but no one was ever charged with any offences.
The Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC) had its own webpage and archive database, and what she discovered when she began to search through the D-Notices that had been issued in 1971 was that one had been issued on September 12, but then deleted on September 25.
After a tortuous search that led her every which way, she eventually discovered the one remaining robber – of the four who were eventually convicted – who was still alive. He resided in the Poplar Care Home on Ranelagh Road in Isleworth overlooking the Thames.
She stuck pieces of paper on the wall of her room with Blu Tack to create a surface where she could make notes. Although she remembered everything, she found it useful to summarise, especially when she needed to pass on the information to a third party – Jerry Kowalski.
As she scribbled her notes on the sheets of paper with a pencil, it seemed to her that the first place anybody with a brain should start was the Poplar Care Home in Isleworth. George Peckham had first-hand knowledge of what happened during the robbery, what they found in the safe-deposit boxes, which might explain the D-Notice and all the secrecy surrounding the robbery; and what happened afterwards to keep the details secret. Also, he was old and might die before he could tell his story.
She phoned Jerry.
‘Mmmm!’
‘I have information.’
‘Are you crazy? It’s three in the morning.’
‘I thought you said you were in a rush.’
‘It could have waited . . .’
‘Okay, maybe I’ll call back some other time – like the weekend, or maybe next month . . .’
‘Tell me?’
‘Oh, so now you want to know?’
‘I’m wide awake now.’
‘Some of us haven’t been to sleep at all. Some of us have been working our fingers to the elbows. Some of us . . .’
‘Do I need a notebook and pencil?’
‘George Peckham was one of the robbers. He’s the only one who’s still alive, and he’s living in Poplar Care Home on Ranelagh Road in Isleworth. I suggest you go there and talk to him. The other option is to go to the Evidence Warehouse on Caxton Street behind New Scotland Yard in Westminster and ask if you can examine the evidence they collected after the robbery. I’m still looking into it, but that’s what I’ve managed to find so far.’
‘Thanks, Bronwyn. I’ll let you know what I find out.’
‘I would hope so. Oh, one other thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘A D-Notice was issued on September 12, and expunged from the records on September 25.’
‘But the committee said that no D-Notice was issued.’
‘I’m shocked! You mean the government lied? Surely not? Who’d have thought it?’
‘I see they didn’t do anything about your sarcastic streak.’
Chapter Eight
Xena stared at Ian Porter and his wife Lily lying next to each other in the bed. There was blood, but not as much as there had been at the Lloyd’s crime scene. ‘What’s going on, Stick?’
‘It must be the same killer.’
It was seven thirty. They’d both been called by Central Despatch to come to 19 Orchard Gardens in Waltham Abbey. She was still tired, but not as tired as she had been yesterday. She’d slept, but it had been fitful – tossing and turning, waking up to pee, hearing noises that weren’t there, forgetting whether she’d locked the front door to her apartment or not. Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe she needed to see a psychiatrist, a therapist, a witch doctor or all three.
Doc Paine was already carrying out her physical examination of the corpses. ‘That would be my guess as well,’ she said. ‘Both victims have had their throats cut – the man first, then the woman. The focus was on the man again with the removal of his eyeballs. Again, this is not a professional job. Most people would have used a teaspoon to scoop the eyeballs out of their sockets and then sever the optic nerve and blood vessels, but this is a hatchet job. The killer used a knife to gouge into and cut through the skin of the eyelids, pop the eyeballs out and cut through the optic nerve and blood vessels with a blunt knife . . .’ She picked up slivers of skin from the bed sheet and slipped each one into a separate container with clear fluid inside. ‘Eyelids’ she said for explanation. ‘Yes, I’d say it was the same killer. A pathologist gets a feeling at each crime scene, and the methods used here are very similar to the last one.’
‘Time of death?’ Stick asked.
‘The same – between one and three this morning.’
‘Also . . .’ Di Heffernan said from behind them, ‘. . . the killer checked on the little girl before they left. There’s a bloody handprint on the doorknob of her bedroom.’
‘Did the daughter find them?’ Xena asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Six, but she managed to phone 999.’
‘Another damaged child,’ Stick said.
‘Forced entry again?’ Xena continued.
‘Yes – a back window this time.’
Xena stared at Stick. ‘Last time, you thought a woman had come back to reclaim what had been promised to her. What do you think this time, Sticklock?’
‘Maybe . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Maybe . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘I can’t think while everybody is staring at me.’
‘You’re a numpty.’ She turned to Di Heffernan. ‘And what have you got for us Heffalump?’
‘Nothing. The killer enters the house, walks up to the bedroom, kills the victims, takes what they came for and leaves. Yes, we’ve collected hundreds of hairs and fibres, but there’s nothing to compare them against. In the fullness of time, we might find a hair or an unusual fibre that matches the previous crime scene, but you already know it’s the same killer, so it won’t be much help to you. I can’t produce evidence that isn’t there – people get into serious trouble for that.’
‘You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel any better. I want your people to collect every bit of paperwork you can find: receipts, invoices, bills, passports, driving licences, photographs – the lot, put it all in a black plastic bag and deposit it in Incident Room Three. Do you think you can do that without supervision?’
‘I’m sure we can do that, seeing as you asked so nicely.’
‘Good.’ She turned back to Doc Paine. ‘Anything else, Doc?’
‘No. As I said yesterday, the PMs for the Lloyds will be at ten o’clock this morning, and I’ll probably perform the PMs on these two straight afterwards for comparative purposes.’
‘Well, Stick and I are off to Watford this morning – we might have a lead on the killer, so if you do find anything during the post mortems can you give me a ring?’
‘I don’t see why not. I hope the lead pans out.’
‘Thanks, Doc. So do we. Come on Stickamundo, let’s make tracks.’
***
‘I’m feeling adventurous,’ Chief Kowalski said. ‘You brief me this morning, Richards.’
‘Me?’
Parish helped himself to a coffee.
‘You do know what’s going on with the investigation, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Good. Carry on then.’
‘Well, there was a murder yesterday morning . .
.’
‘The one that I allocated to you?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. Well, DI Parish and I went to Wormley Village Hall . . .’
‘The very place I sent you?’
‘So you did.’
‘What’s going on, Richards?’
‘I don’t know, Chief.’
Kowalski looked at Parish.
Parish shrugged.
‘Explain.’ Kowalski asked.
She passed the Chief a photograph of the van driver that Parish had obtained from Traffic and asked Jenny Weber to reproduce for the press briefing. ‘It’s a man, but it should be a woman.’
The Chief stared at the photograph. ‘It’s definitely a man.’
Richards pulled a face. ‘Yes it is, but we were looking for a woman. All the clues indicate that a woman is the killer. Now what do we do?’
‘This picture is of a man driving a vehicle.’
‘That’s right.’
‘It is not a picture of a killer.’
‘But we have CCTV evidence of the van at the crime scene.’
‘That may be so, but you can’t definitely say that this man is the killer, can you?’
‘Well no, but . . .’
‘He might have remained in the driver’s seat throughout. Isn’t that the case, Richards?’
‘It’s possible, but where’s the woman?’
‘At a guess, I’d say in the back of the van.’
‘That’s what DI Parish said.’
‘Then we’re agreed?’
‘It doesn’t make sense though.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, why would a woman be in the back of the van when there’s a perfectly good seat in the front?’
‘Maybe she was busy draining the victim’s blood, or removing his clothes.’
‘I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I’m finding it hard to believe.’
‘So, what’s your theory then?’