Killing by Colours

by Wonny Lea

  It was Calandra who suddenly remembered something and looked earnestly at her cousin to translate her recollections. She gesticulated madly as she spoke and Will had to put his arm around her shoulder because she was getting distressed. Finally he nodded to her and told the others what she had been saying.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Will. ‘We all discovered the body at virtually the same time and that was just after we had changed our overshoes because we had worn them outside. We don’t normally go outside in them but we heard a really loud bang at the front of the unit and we all rushed out to see what had caused it.’

  ‘Did you find out?’ prompted Martin.

  Will continued. ‘Not really, but we did find a car parked alongside mine and my auntie’s car and we assumed it must have backfired or something. If they’re busy some of the other units use our parking spaces, but they usually ask and I haven’t seen that car before.’

  ‘How long were you all out there?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Well we didn’t rush back inside,’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘We were all in early this morning and took advantage of a short break. In fact, Will smoked a cigarette and Cala and I made the most of a few minutes in the sunshine. We were probably outside for about five minutes, certainly no more. We returned via the side entrance so that we could change our shoes, and then walked through together and saw that poor man.’

  Having previously witnessed the deadly resolve and accuracy of the killer Martin knew that five minutes would have been more than enough – but what a chance he had taken! At any time any one of the staff could have returned and witnessed the murder. Would the killer have simply run off, or would they now be investigating more than one murder?

  Martin thanked the three members of staff for their help and asked PC Davies to ensure they were given all the help they needed with sorting out the aftermath of the crime. Mrs Dixon was telling Martin that her daughter was on her way back from what should have been a well-deserved weekend break in London when Matt came back from the car park.

  ‘Found it!’ he proclaimed. ‘It’s a long time since I opened a car with a key, I’m just used to zapping the remote but there wasn’t one. The keys fit a dark green Ford Fiesta, and there is no doubt that the owner is our victim as on the passenger seat I discovered an orange envelope – the same size, shape, and colour as the one you received this morning. It has been sent through the post to the person named on the bank cards, and so we now have the victim’s address.’

  ‘DC Cook-Watts and Sergeant Evans arrived when I was looking for the car and I asked them to make a start on checking the surrounding units, hope that was OK?’

  Martin nodded, walked down the corridor towards his car, and then turned back to Matt who was following behind. ‘Did our victim receive a poem as well?’ he asked.

  Matt replied. ‘Not a poem, but a very good reason why he should be at the side door of this unit at a precise time this morning.’

  Chapter Six

  Who ties knots?

  Less than half an hour later, and with a large cup of coffee almost finished, Martin sat in his office and tried to gather his thoughts into manageable pieces. Failing to do so, he opened his desk drawer and took out a sheet of paper. With his mind all over the place he resorted to a tried and tested way of getting focus and direction.

  He drew his three columns headed ‘Absolute Facts’, ‘Facts to be Considered’, and ‘What Ifs’? As always the discipline worked, and by the time Martin joined the rest of the team for the first briefing on this latest murder, he had at his fingertips all the known facts and had written out lists of possibilities that the team would have to consider.

  Incident Room One was a hive of industry and he was pleased to see uniformed officers and their CID colleagues debating the similarities between the two poems and arguing about the possible meanings of some of the lines. This sort of challenging environment was often the key to solving crimes, and in spite of the very high level of noise Martin did nothing to calm things down.

  He listened to what was being said, and was quite touched by the number of times that his name was mentioned and how angry most of the officers were that the killer was making these crimes in some way personal to him.

  Martin checked his watch and could hardly believe that it was only just coming up to twelve o’clock – no more than three hours since he had picked that orange envelope up from his doormat. His guess at the contents had put him off the breakfast he had planned to enjoy with Shelley, but now he was feeling hungry.

  He called the meeting to order and started with a brief recap of the Red Dragon Centre murder, admitting to an unusual lack of progress. ‘It now looks as if we are faced with another victim at the hands of the same killer, as we are starting today in an almost identical way to the situation two weeks ago. I must confess that the past two weeks have been amongst the most frustrating of my career. It’s difficult to comprehend that with so many potential clues, and even being able to watch the actual murder on CCTV, we are no further forward today than we were then. No knife has been found, we have absolutely no forensic evidence – and this second murder may prove to be equally tormenting.’

  Martin went through the drill of allowing his uniformed colleagues to give details of the 999 call and their subsequent actions. He then nodded in Alex’s direction and the room was shown the outside of the industrial unit and asked to note the three cars in the car park. ‘What you see here is the situation met by us and I have taken the trouble to video the whole of the outside of the building with particular emphasis on possible entrances and exits used by the killer. There is one fire door at the rear but that was closed and so we just have the front and side entrances to consider.

  ‘It’s possible to walk around the whole circumference of this unit and the only place where the people from inside can see anyone on the outside is at the front entrance.’

  Martin interrupted. ‘This killer plans his murders very carefully and goes in and out of the scene without leaving any forensic evidence, but he is still a risk taker.’

  ‘In both cases there were people around and at any time he could literally have been caught in the act. I think he gets a big kick from that.’

  Alex nodded and went back to his presentation. ‘We went in through the side entrance and although I can’t give any scientific evidence I think this is the way the killer entered, although probably via the back of the building and not the front, as we did. There are no footprints and we wouldn’t have expected any as it’s a gravel-type paving all around. We have picked up fingerprints from the front and side doors but I can’t see the killer leaving his prints on anything and I suspect that these prints belong to members of the staff.’

  The next images that Alex displayed were of the room in which the body was discovered. After scanning the whole area the camera focused on the body in the position it had been found.

  ‘Gross,’ said one of the constables. ‘Red and orange can be a strange colour combination at the best of times, and there’s something about blood combining with things we eat that’s quite disgusting.’

  Nobody disagreed and very little else was said as Alex showed the whole process of the management of the body up to the point it was turned and the orange cord revealed. This did cause a ripple of conversation with most people referring to the connections between the two murders.

  ‘We’ll come back to all of that in just a moment,’ interrupted Martin. ‘First I want DS Pryor to tell us about the victim’s car.’

  Matt got to his feet and referred to the keys that Alex had taken from the victim’s pocket. ‘As you will remember, from the first images we saw, only three cars were standing in the car park when we arrived and I didn’t have a problem finding the one I was looking for. There were three members of staff in the building and two of them had come to work in the same car. They had given me the registration numbers for those two cars so I was left with a Ford Fiesta.’

  ‘There was no remote control for opening the doors
, so I risked setting off the alarm and tried the keys in the lock. They worked, and now we know that the victim was the owner of a dark green Ford Fiesta and we presume that he drove himself to the unit. I don’t think he would have given the killer a lift – but hell, who knows? This bastard doesn’t play by any known rules.’

  The constable who had been disgusted by the combination of oranges and blood interrupted. ‘Why would the victim want to go there? Was he a member of staff?’

  ‘No,’ responded Matt. ‘None of the staff had ever seen him before, but when I opened his car door I discovered a letter which explains why he was there.’ Matt held up the envelope contained in a transparent evidence bag and lifted from the table in front of Martin a similar envelope.

  The room became lively and the level of conversation got louder and louder as once again the connections were made and opinions were voiced. As before, Martin let the spontaneous discussion run and listened to some of the comments, but before long he banged on the table and got the required response.

  With the room now quiet he explained the second envelope Matt had shown, confirming that it had been addressed to him in his official capacity but sent to his home address in the same way the red one had been two weeks ago.

  His face was stern as he told his team, ‘Everything we think and do from now on must be with the understanding that we are looking for one killer. The most worrying thing is that he has now killed twice but appears to be telling us that he has plans for five more victims, and we can’t let that happen. We can’t allow a serial killer to get seven scalps on his belt – even this second one is going to cause a public outpouring of disbelief that we are not able to make any arrests, and the press will have a field day.

  ‘They knew far more than we had officially released about the last murder, and I’ll take this opportunity to say that I am on a mission to get to the bottom of the leaks that are coming from this building to the media. When I find out – and I will find out – who is responsible, that person won’t have their job alone to worry about – he or she will be charged with perverting the course of justice.’

  Martin looked around the room, knowing that the vast majority would not entertain passing information to the press – but someone was, and he hoped that this public reference to the problem would put a stop to it.

  ‘Back to the business in hand,’ he said, and turning to Matt Martin asked him to explain why the victim was in the industrial unit.

  Matt responded. ‘The envelope I found in the victim’s car is exactly the same as the one received by DCI Phelps. Neither is handwritten, and unlike in the good old days, when we could have been looking at identifying an individual typewriter, these envelopes and letters are computer-generated. If the killer is as clever as we think he is he will already have deleted the poems and letters from his system.’

  Charlie interrupted. ‘He may think he has,’ she said. ‘Find me the PC or laptop and give it to me and I will make it tell me every key that was ever pressed – there’s no such thing as “deleted from the system”.’

  Matt smiled and told Charlie that as soon as the killer was found his computer would be hers for the taking.

  He continued. ‘There is no poem in the victim’s envelope, just a brief note that very specifically tells him to be at the side entrance of Unit 17, that’s the “Freshly Squeezed” unit, at 09.25. It reads:

  For the attention of Mr Victor Davies.

  If you thought you had got away with your nasty little habits this is to tell you that you have not. Unless you follow these instructions all your Bible-bashing friends will be told what a disgusting pervert you are.

  Meet me at the side entrance of Unit 17 on the Tremorfa Industrial Site at 09.25 Saturday morning and I may be able to prevent you having to read about your dirty secrets in the local rag.

  Drive to the front, park your car, and walk around the back of the building to the side entrance. Be exactly on time and speak to no one.

  ‘That’s it, but there was obviously enough truth in the words to bring Mr Victor Davies to Freshly Squeezed as requested.’ Matt looked at Alex, who was waiting to tell the meeting more regarding the car that was now being scrutinised by his team.

  ‘When we moved the car we discovered a spent firework near the back wheel. According to the writing on the case it was a Mega Boom Banger.’

  ‘That’s undoubtedly the loud bang that the staff told me about,’ said Martin. ‘It was enough to ensure all three of them went straight to the front of the building, giving the killer the opportunity to meet the victim at the side door – and he certainly prevented Mr Davies reading anything about himself in the local rag, given that the dead can’t read!

  ‘So we know that Mr Davies arrived at 9.25 and after parking made his way around the back to the side entrance. The killer must have been watching his arrival and waiting to set off that banger as soon as his victim was in place at the side door.’

  Martin continued. ‘We have already identified him as a risk-taker, but realistically there was almost a one hundred per cent chance that all the staff would respond to the created diversion. As we saw in the Red Dragon Centre the actual killing takes seconds rather than minutes, so the killer wouldn’t even have contemplated being interrupted. He was probably in and out of the building within a couple of minutes, leaving no obvious evidence behind and taking the murder weapon with him.’

  Matt added a comment. ‘This time there are no CCTV cameras for us to scrutinise, as Mrs Dixon told me, with slight embarrassment, that the ones fixed to their building are just dummies. She explained that the cameras are only meant to be a deterrent because they don’t keep money on the premises and their equipment is all bolted to the floor and the walls. The most any intruders would get away with would be crates of citrus fruits, and she doubts that anyone would be that desperate to get their five-a-day. There are other units adjacent to Freshly Squeezed and we are currently checking out their security systems.

  ‘As before,’ continued Martin, ‘we have no idea how the killer arrived at the scene, although this time we will be able to check all the vehicles coming in and out of the main entrance to the industrial estate and determine if there are any without a legitimate reason for being there. There is no barrier on the entrance to the estate, but the security company is based in a small unit at the front entrance and they monitor all the comings and goings. DC Cook-Watts, will you please arrange whatever help you need and get the details of all vehicles driving in and out of the estate this morning, as quickly as possible.’ Helen nodded and left the room, taking two of her uniformed ex-colleagues with her.

  ‘We have the address of the deceased on the envelope but it’s not an area of Cardiff I know very well. Is anyone able to throw any light on Watch Towers, 52-57 Riverside Road, Ely?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Watch Towers?’ questioned Alex. ‘Isn’t that something to do with Jehovah’s Witnesses?’

  One of the PCs was obviously familiar with the address. ‘It may well be,’ she said in response to Alex’s question. ‘But this particular Watch Towers is a block of terraced houses that has been remodelled to provide some sort of sheltered accommodation. To be honest, it’s not a very pleasant place, and we’ve been called out to disturbances there several times.’

  There were nods of agreement from some of her colleagues and Matt expressed his surprise. ‘I thought sheltered accommodation was for the elderly?’

  PC Williams replied, ‘I think it is in the main, but this place seems to have attracted more than its fair share of social misfits. Some of the trouble we have been called to sort out has involved members of the staff, who are themselves a bit dubious. I think the place has been on the verge of being closed on a number of occasions.’

  Martin thanked her for her input and added, ‘So Mr Davies is unlikely to have a loving family, and he must at some time have treated our killer very badly to have possibly merited such a brutal end. Our man obviously knew his victims, but I wonder if they knew one an
other – perhaps Davies was also a teacher, although that is not alluded to in the poem this time.’

  ‘What is suggested is that the victim is some sort of pervert and we can quite easily check out the official sex offenders register, but of course he may only be a pervert in the eyes of the killer. Following this briefing DS Pryor and I will visit Watch Towers and see what we can find out. Meanwhile, does anyone have any suggestions regarding the lines of the poem that relate to the tying of knots?’ Martin had opened the floodgates and almost everyone in the room had an idea to put forward.

  Matt started the ball rolling. ‘Probably the first knots we learn to tie are the laces in our shoes, although thinking of my nieces even their trainers and school shoes have Velcro fastenings. We don’t think our killer is a young man so when he was growing up laces would have been the norm.’

  It was surprising how often knots featured in people’s lives, and ideas ranged from learning to knit to the notion of a couple ‘tying the knot’ when getting married. However the majority of people came up with Cubs, Brownies, Scouts, and Guides, and as the killer was a man he would only have been eligible for two of those. Girls could be members of a scout troop these days but that wouldn’t have been the case when the killer was a member.

  Seven of the people in the room had memories of being a cub and then a boy scout and explained how there were a few basic knots you had to be able to tie before you were allowed to go camping with the troop. There were even badges you could win for mastering more advanced types of knots such as a sheepshank and a half-hitch. For most of the seven it was a few minutes involving a pleasant trip down memory lane, but two officers had different memories and PC Wilding voiced his with a fair degree of venom.

  ‘I was hopeless at tying knots, and boy was it an issue. My team was the Badgers, and my team leader got me transferred to the Moles because he wanted everyone in the Badgers to be good at everything. It sounds something and nothing now, but at the time I was devastated and I left soon after that.’