Killing by Colours

by Wonny Lea

  A young PC was very cynical. ‘Even if we had been given these poems days or weeks before the murders were committed, we still couldn’t have prevented them. Just look at what we are considering to be clues – every one of them only makes sense with the hindsight we now have.’

  There was a lot of debate but in the final analysis no one disagreed.

  Martin called for the briefing to start and did a five-minute recap on what had been seen and discussed at the earlier session. ‘OK let me start the ball rolling by saying that I have just left Prof. Moore and rather as we had suspected he can confirm exactly the same cause of death for Victor Davies as was recorded for Mary Rossiter. Just to remind you all, we are talking about fatal damage caused to major blood vessels near the heart as a result of a long sharp knife being plunged into the chest, below the ribs in an upward direction and with considerable force.’

  ‘According to the prof. death would have been swift with most of the haemorrhage being internal although inevitably some blood loss around the site of the stabbing. In both cases a second knife wound was inflicted in the neck but it’s possible the victims were already dead by then. If the killer had gone for the carotid artery in the neck there would have been a bloodbath and so the Prof thinks it was deliberately missed and he is not able to offer any scientific rationale for that second stabbing.’

  ‘What does this information, together with what is written in the poems, tell us about the killer – anyone got any ideas?’

  Martin looked around the room. It was Alex who started the suggestions that then came rolling in thick and fast.

  ‘He knows what he’s doing with that knife. I have a fair understanding of human anatomy but I’m not sure I would hit the right spot once, never mind twice in succession.’ Other comments followed.

  ‘He’s making some sort of point – pardon the pun – with the second killing.’

  ‘This killer is on a mission to wipe out people who have offended him and has perfected the art of doing it.’

  ‘He’s good at what he is doing so we need to stop him before he does any more.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s already threatened to do some more killing so how do we stop him?’

  ‘I don’t like the fact that he’s playing games with us and thinks he’s one clever bastard.’

  ‘He appears to know you, sir – and that’s a big, big worry.’

  ‘He most definitely has a masterplan and that apparently involves another five murders. God forbid!’

  Almost everyone in the room had a comment to make and Martin allowed them to continue until there nothing new was being said and then summarised.

  ‘OK, we know the exact time of the first murder and the time within minutes of the second one. They both happened on a Saturday morning. We also know that the killer knew both his victims and so they were not randomly chosen.

  ‘The first one was a teacher, Miss Mary Rossiter, and it is likely that she either taught the killer at Penbryn Primary School or that he was one of her private pupils. The poem and things we have learned from other sources confirm that she was a strict disciplinarian, hence the reference to the dragon and I suspect the choosing of the Red Dragon Centre for the crime.

  ‘What most of you will not know is that during our investigations this afternoon Matt and I discovered that the second victim, Mr Victor Davies, was, many years ago, a scoutmaster.’

  This revelation caused an outbreak of general discussion as the obvious links between boy scouts and knots were made.

  Martin continued. ‘What links the second victim to Freshly Squeezed is not immediately obvious. Maybe it’s just a venue the killer came up with to fit in with his macabre game – who knows?’

  ‘We have some knowledge of what the killer looks like. He’s well built, and an inch or two under six feet.’

  ‘Would now be a good time to come in?’ DC Cook-Watts asked her boss. ‘We have had a bit of a breakthrough with the CCTV tapes from the entrance of the Tremorfa Industrial Estate.’

  ‘Feel free,’ Martin replied.

  Helen continued. ‘As you know, we spent time with the security staff – and they were able to identify every vehicle that went in and out during the timescale we gave them – one hour before and one hour after the murder. We were disappointed when, with the exception of the victim’s car, all the cars, vans, and lorries were deemed to belong to owners or employees known to security and said to have a legitimate right to be there.’

  ‘Nevertheless we spotted a total of seventeen cars and vans and two lorries, and started to go through the process of interviewing the drivers, some of whom were still on site and we got an early break. The fourth person we interviewed, a Mr Steve Lewis, gave a lift to a man he picked up at the far end of the approach road to the estate. The timing fits very well, as there are less than ten minutes between Mr Lewis’ van and the green Ford Fiesta coming through the main entrance.’

  ‘Mr Lewis was able to tell us that the man he picked up was very specific about where he wanted to be dropped off and took us to the exact spot. It’s only two units away from Freshly Squeezed and, surprise, surprise, in a camera black spot. I asked Mr Lewis if he would normally have driven to this part of the estate, and he said he wouldn’t as his unit is much further over but the man he picked up had asked him to detour, so he did.’

  ‘When I asked him if he was always so obliging he laughed and said no, but there had been something in the authority of the man’s voice that made him do as he was told – that’s what he said.’

  Martin looked pleased and asked a few questions about Mr Lewis and whether or not he knew the man he had given a lift to.

  Helen responded. ‘He says he’s never seen the man before and I’m afraid that’s where our luck runs out, as the description Mr Lewis was able to give us is pretty hopeless. Yes, the man was the about the same height and build as our killer, and he wore the same type of headgear we saw in the Red Dragon tapes, but the only other thing he was sure about was that the man was clean-shaven, definitely no beard or moustache. He couldn’t remember the shape of his face, the colour of his eyes, nothing, except that he lacked facial hair!’

  ‘That’s better than nothing,’ said Martin. ‘What about the voice? You said Mr Lewis was in some way influenced by the man’s voice.’

  ‘Yes, I pushed him on that, and he said the man spoke like someone who was used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He was a bit embarrassed that he had been so compliant and said it wasn’t like him to do what he was asked to do without question. Anyway, Mr Lewis is being extremely cooperative and is currently in the identification suite with our photo-fit staff to see if they can jog his memory.’

  ‘Well done.’ Martin thanked Helen and the officers who had worked with her, and then asked Sgt Evans if he had any progress to report.

  ‘Nothing really from our end, and we’ve spoken to everyone who was working this morning in the units surrounding Freshly Squeezed. A lot of the units aren’t operational at the weekends, and two such units have CCTV cameras. We’ve located the owners of those two and they are on their way to Tremorfa to give us access to their tapes. The other surrounding units have a variety of cameras – two scan their entrances, five are fixed, and the rest are dummies. We have been through them all but not one person is seen walking and the only vehicles correspond with what DC Cook-Watts has scrutinised. We will of course look at the other two tapes when we get them but looking at the angles of their cameras I don’t hold out much hope.’

  ‘I wish I could put my finger on it,’ continued Sgt Evans. ‘There is something about the build and stance of this killer that, coupled with what we have been told about his voice, is ringing a vague bell.’

  Martin looked up sharply, as he held a great deal of store by John Evans’ intuition. His ‘copper’s nose’, as it was sometimes referred to, had proved to be on the right track many times.

  ‘Stick with it, John,’ said Martin. ‘If you can think of anyone who even vaguely resembl
es the limited description we have, just let me know.’

  Sgt Evans nodded and finished his report. ‘The area has been thoroughly searched for any sign of blood or a weapon, but we’ve come up with nothing, so it looks as if, like before, the killer has taken any evidence home with him.’

  ‘Talking about him going home,’ said Martin, ‘do we know if he thumbed a lift out of the Estate?’

  Helen Cook-Watts responded. ‘We looked at the tapes for a two-hour slot after the murder and the drivers have been identified, but we haven’t finished interviewing all of them as yet. So far, no one gave anyone a lift – and there’s no sign of anyone walking out.’

  Matt offered a couple of suggestions. ‘We know the only way in and out by vehicle is via the main entrance, but maybe there’s another exit for pedestrians. The other possibility is something I think you thought of when we were looking for the killer after the first murder, sir. You wondered if he was still in the area and getting some sort of kick watching us trying to figure things out.’

  Helen responded to the first of Matt’s suggestions. ‘According to the security staff the steel fencing around the estate is almost ten feet high and isn’t broken at any point. One of their duties is to check it every day and at 8.30 this morning there were no problems reported.’

  ‘So, either he was given a lift by one of the drivers not yet interviewed, or he has waited and watched and walked out later.’

  Martin turned to Helen. ‘Continue checking those exit CCTV cameras, there has to be some sign of him leaving and it may be a lot later than we have so far considered. Is there anything else? What about you, Alex?’

  Alex expressed his profound frustration. ‘I can’t ever remember a situation when we had so little forensic evidence to bring to these sessions. The detailed analysis of the scenes of both crimes have produced absolutely nothing to show that the killer was ever there, other than the two similarly-stabbed and very dead victims.

  ‘We’ve crawled all over Miss Rossiter’s car and the surrounding parking bay with nothing to show for it, and the area in which Mr Davies’ body was found is more sterile than most operating theatres. There’s not a fingerprint or a footprint anywhere – nothing whatsoever for us to work on.’

  Martin sensed and shared his colleagues feeling of disappointment, but he was determined not to show it and he rallied the troops. ‘Disheartening, yes, but we are building up a profile of the killer, and we now have a witness who’s seen his face and heard his voice and that’s one hundred per cent improvement on the last time.’

  At Martin’s request Matt filled everyone in on what they had discovered earlier about Mr Davies and especially the rumours of possible improper relationships, when he was a scoutmaster, between him and some of the boys. He explained that although it was still part of local gossip nothing was ever proven at the time and all checks revealed that Mr Davies had no official stain on his character.

  Martin turned to Alex. ‘We now have three pieces of correspondence from our killer, all sent through the post: the letter that Matt found in Mr Davies’ car and the two poems sent to my home address. Do they give us anything to go on?’

  Alex replied. ‘Well, from what we’ve seen of this man we wouldn’t have expected fingerprints, and he knows enough about using computers to have generated the envelopes and the contents electronically. Interestingly, his printer isn’t the most common ink jet variety that most people have at home, it’s a high-specification laser printer.

  ‘The coloured paper and matching envelopes are not exactly run of the mill either, but not that difficult to get hold of either online or from craft shops like Hobbycraft or Paperchase.

  ‘I get the feeling that this man either knows first-hand about forensic detection methods or watches a lot of television crime series. He used water to wet the gum on the stamps, so no saliva for a possible DNA match.’

  Helen interrupted. ‘I didn’t think you had to lick stamps now – I thought you just peeled them off a book and stuck them on the envelope.’

  ‘Not if you buy a sheet of stamps from the Post Office,’ Alex replied. ‘We can see that these are torn from a sheet because the stamp on the envelope sent to Martin today is missing a tiny piece from the bottom right-hand corner. That tiny piece is to be found on the bottom left-hand corner of the stamp on Mr Davies’ orange envelope. Confirmation, if it was needed, that both letters were sent by the same person using postage stamps taken from the same sheet of stamps.’

  ‘All three letters were sent first class, Davies’ on the Thursday and both of Martin’s on the on the Friday, before the respective killings. Despite the bad press Royal Mail gets from time to time, there’s almost a one hundred per cent certainty that they would be received on the Saturday morning – and they were.’

  Martin nodded. ‘Let’s turn our attention to the contents of the three envelopes and first of all the two poems. I don’t want to go over what we have already covered, but is there anything new that we should be considering?’

  Helen responded. ‘When we looked at the second poem earlier, we didn’t know that Mr Davies had been a scoutmaster, and so now the lines about knots make perfect sense. The killer may also be making some sort of sick posthumous gesture by tying his victim’s hands behind their backs using reef knots. Mr Davies would have been in no position to ridicule his efforts this time.’

  Martin agreed. ‘There’s plenty for everyone to be doing, so let’s get on with it. Helen, go back to those CCTV cameras. Matt, get the ball rolling regarding the Boy Scout angle. Take John Evans with you and pay a visit to the vicar of St Stephens and his wife – I suspect they are the “Bible-bashing friends” referred to in the letter sent to Mr Davies. If they can tell us the period when Mr Davies was the scoutmaster it will give us a more accurate take on the killer’s age, as if my memory serves you need to be a certain age before you can join a scout troop.’

  ‘Scouting is a huge organisation; there must be some sort of central register that we can access, and maybe get the names of the boys who enrolled during the time Mr Davies was leading the troop. Let’s get hold of those names if we can and compare them with the names we have on the exercise books from Miss Rossiter’s house, and from her school. Even if we only match first names it could help with the identification of this killer.

  ‘Before you all go I want us to think ahead. If this killer’s plan is to systematically kill off people whom he believes have caused him pain then who do you imagine would be next? It sounds a bit defeatist to be considering his next murder rather than solving the first two, but I think that’s the only way we are going to catch him – by trying to anticipate his next move.’

  Matt made a few suggestions. ‘Well, so far we have someone who upset him when he was just in primary school, so he would have been no more than ten or eleven years of age, and he was perhaps in his early teens when he was a boy scout. After that the thing on the mind of most young men would be looking for love, or at the very least sex, so perhaps his next potential victim will be someone who treated him badly in the relationship department.’

  ‘That doesn’t even help us to know if the next victim on his list is male or female as we don’t know his sexual orientation. The person we are thinking about could be one of his loves that let him down, or maybe someone who stole someone he loved from him. As I said, it doesn’t even give us a clue as to whether we are looking at a man or a woman. Generally speaking, when we’re growing up we tend to be involved with people roughly the same age as us. So if we are on the right track with our thinking the next victim could be quite a bit younger than the first two.’

  Helen intervened. ‘Do we have any way of predicting what colour he would use next? He obviously has five others planned, and probably has five more poems already written with murder venues arranged to fit his wacky colour codes.’

  ‘Miss Rossiter was a primary school teacher and red is a primary colour – but orange isn’t, more’s the pity, or we’d only have to consider red, ye
llow, and blue. Sorry, boss, I’m rambling – there is no clue in what we know so far that could give us an inkling of the next colour.’

  ‘Rambling is good.’ Martin was not going to stop anyone considering whatever popped into his or her head. ‘I suggest you all get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow we start in earnest at what will be just the plain hard slog of going through every bit of information and seeking out records from years ago. The identity of this killer is our main focus, and before I leave I will speak to Mr Lewis to see if our photo-fit staff have been able to jog his memory.’

  The room cleared quickly. Martin remembered that it was a Saturday night and most people had homes and families to get home to. He shouted out a big ‘thank you, everyone’. Matt and Helen remained but Martin quickly told them he was happy to see Mr Lewis without them, and left them to clear up a few ends as he made his way to the identification suite.

  Mr Lewis looked tired and was rubbing his eyes as Martin joined him in one of the pods used by the identification team. The little rooms were soundproofed, as their business was not just building up an image of someone’s face – it was about voice, facial expressions, habits, and a whole raft of other things that made identifications possible.

  Martin introduced himself, apologising that things were taking so long, and thanked Mr Lewis for his help.

  Mr Lewis smiled. ‘My tiredness is nothing to do with this, it’s because we’ve got a young baby and a good night’s sleep is a thing of the past. However, I would be more motivated if I knew what this is all about. I obviously gave a lift to a man that you desperately want to speak to but no one has yet told me why.’

  Martin explained that it was possible that the man he had picked up had committed a murder soon after he was dropped off.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Mr Lewis yelled. ‘He could have murdered me – bloody hell, what would Kim have done without me to help with the sleepless nights? Was I in serious danger of being killed?’