by Tim Ellis
‘Sorry – I’m far too young and good-looking to remember that far back.’
‘That’s what the boys and I are investigating at the moment.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you meant to be doing a law degree, not training to become a detective?’
‘It’s all part of the course. That’s why I chose King’s College. We examine real-life cases and learn from them.’
‘So what have you learnt from this real-life case?’
‘We’ve learnt that the police were useless, that they failed to find and question a crucial witness, and because of that they didn’t identify a key suspect – possibly her killer, or at the very least a witness to her murder.’
‘The police are going to love you. Don’t tell me, DCI George Hill was the Senior Investigating Officer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he still in the force?’
Jerry shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Shakin’ was going to find out last night what he’s up to now.’
‘Every copper has a case that comes back to haunt them.’
‘Do you have one?’
‘Me! No. I solved all my cases.’ He didn’t think it was necessary to mention the mysterious case of ten-year-old Paula Mottram from 1987.
‘Really? You’re my hero.’
‘Even with a less-than-adequate manhood?’
‘You have other qualities.’
‘I’m devastated.’
‘So you’ve said, but you don’t look devastated.’
‘Inside I’m a wreck.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘So, tell me the details of this real-life case you’re investigating.’
She pointed to the folder on her bedside table. ‘Read the police report for yourself.’
He stretched across the bed and retrieved the file.
‘Is there any chance of toast and coffee?’
‘None at all.’
‘We should arrange for a bell system to be installed like they used to have in the upper-crust houses, so that the people downstairs know when they should bring me breakfast in bed.’
‘The people downstairs! You make it sound like Downton Abbey.’
‘Yes, that’s it exactly. We could be Lord and Lady Kowalski, your mother could be the cook, your dad the gardener, and maybe we could employ some of those nubile maids with . . .’
‘Read the file, and I might bring you toast and coffee after I’ve finished getting ready.’
‘You want my thoughts on the case?’
‘I’d be a fool not to listen to one of the best detectives in Essex. I’m sure that inadequacies in other area don’t affect your abilities as a detective.’
‘One of the best! The best.’
‘Of course.’
He read the file while she dried her hair with the dryer. Once she’d finished he said, ‘Mmmm! Who’s this witness you’ve dug up?’
‘The janitor – Mr Beecher Berkley.’
‘Surely the police questioned him at the time?’
‘No. He was meant to be off-duty, so nobody actually knew he was there.’
‘But he was there, and he witnessed something relevant to the case?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t he come forward at the time?’
‘He was doing something that probably would have got him fired.’
‘That sounds suspicious.’
‘Not really. It wasn’t illegal, merely against his contract of employment. He was utilising hospital resources to make pottery.’
‘Pottery?’
‘Yes.’ She went to her handbag, took out the pot, unwrapped it and passed it to him.
He turned the pot around in his hands. ‘Impressive.’
‘It’s worth three hundred pounds.’
‘Doubly impressive.’
‘I thought so. It also adds credence to his story.’
‘Or, he was the killer?’
‘That was another reason why he didn’t come forward at the time. He resembles an albino. People don’t like anything that’s strange or out-of-the-ordinary. He was worried that the police and the media might consider him a suspect because of the way he looks.’
‘Okay. What did he see?’
‘A man called Morton Gillespie helping Emily Hobson out of the ground floor toilet window. It was a well-known entry and exit route to avoid security measures at the front entrance. He was a doctor at another hospital, and he was already as good as engaged to another nurse called Lisa Porterfield. Mr Berkley was outside at the time and heard Emily call the man helping her Morton.’
‘And nobody knew about Morton being with Emily Hobson on the night?’
‘No. And neither did Morton Gillespie come forward in the days afterwards to provide a statement. Also, from what Mr Berkley heard on the night, Morton and Emily were more than just acquaintances.’
‘Where is Morton Gillespie now?’
‘Dead. He was killed in a hit-and-run accident three days after Emily was beaten, raped and strangled.’
‘And you don’t think it’s a coincidence, do you?’
‘No.’
‘From my wealth of experience, I can tell you that where murder is concerned, there’s no such thing as a coincidence.’
‘At the time, because the police failed to perform their jobs adequately, they didn’t know about Morton Gillespie, so his death wasn’t connected to Emily Hobson’s murder, but now . . .’
‘And what’s this about the DNA of a dead woman – Helen Veldkamp – being under the victim’s fingernails?’
‘That’s what we’ll be looking into today. The police eliminated all the obvious explanations for how that DNA got there. Of course, there’s clearly a connection – we just haven’t found it yet.’
‘It’s certainly an interesting case. My advice would be to focus on Helen Veldkamp. There’s no way the DNA of a dead woman can find its way onto a later victim unless someone transferred it either accidentally, or on purpose. Based on what we know about the police performance at the time, I’d re-examine those obvious explanations first, and then consider the less obvious ones afterwards. The only motive I can think of for planting Helen Veldkamp’s DNA on Emily Hobson would be to confuse the police and forensic scientists. Unless there was a secondary transfer.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Emily Hobson’s killer also killed Helen Veldkamp.’
‘Would DNA last that long?’
‘DNA certainly degrades over time, but in ideal circumstances scientists have concluded that it would last 6.8 million years.’
‘So three weeks isn’t out of the question then?’
‘Three years ago, forensic scientists in America re-tested a blanket taken from one of the Boston Strangler crime scenes in the 1960s and found a close match to a family member of Albert DeSalvo. They exhumed DeSalvo’s body and confirmed the match. It also left no doubt in anybody’s mind that DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. So no, three weeks isn’t out of the question.’
‘I see.’
‘The link between the two women is the person who transferred Veldkamp’s DNA. Find that person, and you might be closer to solving the case. Also, my gut feeling is that this isn’t about rape. The rape is probably a red herring.’ He looked at the photograph of Emily Hobson. ‘She was an attractive young woman. If she hadn’t been raped, then the police would have needed to look for another motive. As it was, they decided that rape was the obvious motive for her murder. If Morton Gillespie’s death is connected to Emily Hobson’s, then why? What were they both involved in? And why wasn’t Gillespie murdered at the same time as Emily? Why did the murderer wait three days to kill him?’
His phone vibrated.
‘Well?’ Bronwyn said.
‘You have an extremely limited vocabulary. You go first?’
‘I’ve given your suggestion careful consideration.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I’m looking for a suitable squat in the area.’
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br /> ‘A squat! As long as it’s not in Chigwell.’
‘You don’t want your business partner living in a squat next door to you? I’m shocked.’
‘Buy a house like the rest of us.’
‘I’ll give it further careful consideration.’
‘A wise decision.’
‘Well?’
‘I’ve decided to continue with the case.’
‘That’s not the answer I was hoping for, Kowalski.’
‘Do we have any other cases piling up for my attention?’
‘Well . . .’
‘I thought not. So, you’d like me to drop a case half-way through, and then sit around in the office making your life miserable?’
‘What if a client walks in?’
‘Then we’ll discuss the matter again. In the meantime, I want you to find out who Paige Singer was before she became Paige Singer. Also, try to find her car. It shouldn’t be that difficult with a personalised number plate.’
‘So speaks the Oracle of Delphi. And what are you going to be doing while I’m doing all the work?’
‘After I’ve had my breakfast in bed, I’m going to take a leisurely shower, get dressed in suitable attire so that people don’t stare and laugh at me in the street, and drive to 23 Shere Road in Redbridge to confront Lester Belmont and his pregnant mistress Riley Quinn who, if memory serves, will both be there this morning.’
‘You’ll ask him about his trips to Willesden Green?’
‘As well as all his other secrets.’
‘Okay. I’ll probably see you later then?’
‘Maybe we could meet for lunch.’
‘That sounds like a good plan.’
‘And you can show me the properties on your shortlist.’
The line went dead.
‘How are you two getting on?’ Jerry said.
‘Like a house on fire.’
‘I’m glad. I like Bronwyn.’
***
After an uneventful journey in the crush-hour she half-expected the boys not to be at Temple, but was pleasantly surprised to find them sitting on the concrete steps outside the main station entrance.
Shakin’ handed her a paper cup with a plastic lid and a straw poking out of the top. ‘I know how you like to count the calories, Mrs K. That’s a filter coffee with four calories in it, apparently. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know what a calorie looks like. I mean . . .’
Joe cleared his throat.
‘Oh yeah! You owe Joe seven pounds fifty. The fewer calories, the more a cup of coffee costs, apparently. I mean, it’s just black water, isn’t it? And if there’s only four calories in there, what else do they fill it up with? I mean, that’s nearly two pounds a calorie.’
‘Yeah,’ Joe added. ‘I’ve been seriously wondering. With sugar, milk and chocolate powder you can see what you’re getting, but they never show you the calories, do they? Has anybody ever seen a calorie? I don’t think so. Calories are like a secret ingredient. I wouldn’t be surprised if calories were a mind-control drug that the government added to coffee to keep the population pliable. What do you think, Shakin’?’
‘Sounds plausible, Joe.’
‘You’re looking a bit better, Joe,’ Jerry said.
‘Slept like a hedgehog in hibernation, Mrs K. Of course, Nurse Arwen came over and ministered to my needs, so to speak. She has the gift of healing hands for sure. I’ve said as much to her as well. I mean, if that Holly Madison can insure her breasts for a million dollars, then Nurse Arwen should consider doing the same with her hands.’
The corner of Shakin’s mouth creased upwards. ‘Don’t forget the cream, Joe.’
‘I wasn’t forgetting about the cream, Shakin’. Without the cream her hands are just blocks of wood, but with the cream they become medical instruments in their own right.’
‘And what about you, Shakin’, did Miss Muffet find out where DCI George Hill is now?’
‘No problem, Mrs K. Of course, I had to use my considerable powers of persuasion on Little Miss Muffet, but we got there in the end. I don’t think she’s afraid of spiders anymore.’
Joe and Shakin’ elbowed each other and chuckled.
Shakin’ passed Jerry a sheaf of papers stapled together. ‘The police report from Morton Gillespie’s hit-and-run murder.’
‘Accident,’ she corrected him.
He shook his head. ‘In the report the police concluded it was murder. They found the burnt-out car that hit Gillespie on some waste ground. It had been stolen a couple of hours prior to the murder from outside a house in Lambeth, but they never caught the person who killed him. I know they told Lisa Porterfield that it was probably joy-riders, but in the report they argue that it was more than likely murder. The reasons they give is that there were no skid marks, which would have suggested that the driver had swerved to avoid him, and that the three witnesses to the hit-and-run said that the driver made no attempt to slow down either. Without any real evidence though, they decided to state publicly that it was joy-riders.’
‘I suppose it supports what we were thinking, doesn’t it?’ Jerry said. ‘I had my husband take a look at the file, and he suggested that we focus on Helen Veldkamp, which is what we were going to do anyway. Also, he thinks that Emily Hobson was raped to hide another motive for her murder.’
Shakin’ and Joe glanced at each other.
‘Mr K’s not stupid, is he?’ Joe said.
‘No, he’s definitely not stupid.’
Shakin’ screwed up his face. ‘Makes sense. If the motive for Emily’s murder was rape, why kill Morton Gillespie?’
‘Yeah,’ Joe said. ‘Take out the rape, and we have two murders without a motive. Before, they weren’t connected, but now we know they are. Maybe Emily and Morton were involved in something that got them killed?’
‘Such as?’ Jerry said.
‘Joe scratched his head. ‘Drugs?’
Jerry pursed her lips. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’
‘Maybe they were selling drugs to pay their way through training?’ Shakin’ suggested. ‘They failed to pay what they owed, or creamed off the top . . .’ He drew a finger across his throat. ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’
‘But why was Morton killed three days after Emily?’ Jerry asked.
‘Maybe he ran for it, temporarily evading his pursuers, but Emily got caught. They killed her and made it look like a rape-murder, so that the police wouldn’t search for any other motive,’ Joe offered.
‘Well, it’s all pie-in-the-sky speculation for now,’ Jerry concluded. ‘What about Morton Gillespie, Shakin’? Was he on-call that night?’
‘Yes he was, but he swapped his duty with another doctor called Adam Renshaw, so he was definitely free that night.’
‘Good. Just as long as we’re not making two and two equal five. We only had Beecher Berkley’s word that he saw Morton Gillespie helping Emily out of that toilet window. Now though, we have evidence, not that he was there, but that he could have been there.’
‘We could argue that his hit-and-run murder is evidence,’ Joe said.
‘True, but the thread linking Morton to Emily on that night is still rather tenuous. On the one hand we have the janitor’s account of what he saw, and the fact that Morton swapped his on-call duty to be free that night. On the other hand, Lisa Portfield is convinced that Morton would never have cheated on her . . .’
‘Yes,’ Shakin’ argued, ‘but she was also certain he was on-call that night, and now we know he wasn’t.’
‘True,’ Jerry agreed. ‘Ray says that where murder is concerned there’s no such thing as a coincidence, so Gillespie being run down three days after Emily’s murder could be seen as too much of a coincidence not to be connected.’
‘We both agree with Mr K, don’t we, Joe?’
‘We’d be fools not to, Shakin’.’
‘Very good. If we’re all agreed, we’ll go and see DCI George Hill first?’
‘Where you lead,’ Shakin’ said. ‘We
’ll follow, Mrs K.’
‘So, where did your Little Miss Muffet find him then, Shakin’?’ Jerry said.
‘According to the Member’s Only area of the Police Federation’s website he’s retired and is living in supported accommodation at Inkwell House, 54 Conyers Road in Streatham.’
‘Let’s go then,’ she said, heading back into Temple station.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Do you think Mr Trent really would go to the press if we didn’t find his daughter?’ Richards said.
‘He’d have nothing to lose, would he?’
‘I suppose not. It’d make you look like a fool.’
‘So what’s new?’
‘And me by association.’
‘When the press corps have filled up Puck Road and the briefing room at the station wanting to know where it had all gone wrong, I’d blame you anyway.’
‘I bet you would as well.’
‘But we have a way out.’
‘Oh?’
‘SCIT.’
‘Yes, we could blame them, couldn’t we?’
‘We could indeed. Of course, it would scupper any possibility I might have had of promotion, and reduce your chances of becoming one of the Met’s finest ever glory hunters to zero.’
‘That’s true.’
‘But there’s another way out.’
‘There is?’
‘We could do our jobs and find Summer Trent and the killer before the end of the week.’
‘Do you think we can?’
‘I think we can give it our best shot, Richards.’
‘We could, couldn’t we?’
‘We’d have to up our game though, because so far we’ve not been doing a good job.’
‘Me, you mean?’
‘On this occasion – no. Neither of us are performing at peak efficiency.’
‘It’s not really our fault though, is it?’
‘No, not really.’
‘The killer isn’t giving us anything to grab onto, is he?’
‘No. He’s had lots of practice avoiding our attempts to capture him.’
‘Twenty-four women is definitely a lot.’