Jack-Knifed

by Wonny Lea

  Martin nodded. ‘Yes, but did we fall into that awful trap of only seeing what we wanted to see? Were there details that could have pointed us in a different direction? The only thing I remember being surprised at was that the knife had been removed from the victim, which shows a more professional attitude. Forensics showed that Daniel Philips ran at the knife. Your average robber brandishing a knife as a threat would possibly have taken fright at that point and just run from the scene, leaving the knife behind. It takes a certain amount of sick courage to remove a knife that has just killed someone – and then we had the conflicting descriptions of the killer from Mr Addula.

  ‘At the time his confusion was put down to shock and his was one of the most profound cases of shock I have witnessed. However what if the shock had been more to do with him knowing that he had been the target and that he could be targeted again at some point?’

  ‘That’s quite a lot of ‘what ifs’, guv,’ pondered Matt. ‘I’ll ring the team and get them to dig into the background of Mr Addula, and to leave no stone unturned.’ He got on to his mobile phone immediately, and even before they arrived at the scene of the crime there were people looking at every bank statement, both business and personal, that had ever belonged to Ali Addula. If he had more than one set of business accounts they would be discovered and if the stock in his shop didn’t match the invoices on file this would be further investigated.

  Martin was growing more certain by the minute that it wouldn’t be a case of “what you see is what you get” with this man, and it worried him.

  The familiar police crime scene tape heralded their arrival and Sergeant Evans acknowledged them as he lifted the tape to let them through. ‘Nasty business, but at least there was only one weapon used this time, and it’s still here – well, actually, it’s still in the victim.’

  Matt was about to say that there was only one weapon last time, when he realised that Sergeant Evans wasn’t talking about the last killing at the shop, but about the one he had most recently discovered in Penylan. The man must be feeling a bit shell-shocked, being the first professional on the scene of a monstrous murder twice in just a few days.

  Sergeant Evans remained outside with his colleague while detectives Phelps and Pryor went in to witness the proprietor lying on the floor and very obviously dead. He must have been standing at the corner of the counter where the till was situated and been struck in the throat from left to right causing him to buckle at the knees and end up in a strange position with his legs partly caught up under his body. The axe was indeed still embedded in his neck, or more accurately in his right shoulder, and where he had bled out there was an almost perfect circle of congealed blood on the floor.

  The head had lobbed forward in a grotesque way and Martin got the feeling that it was only the axe and some shoulder muscle that was keeping the head from falling off completely.

  The shop door opened behind them and Alex and Prof. Moore came in and without further ado set to work undertaking the routine but vital task of picking over every piece of the crime scene.

  ‘I’m getting a real sense of déjà vu,’ indicated Alex as he dusted over surfaces that he and his team had previously worked on. ‘How long is it since we were here for the previous murder?’

  Matt answered. ‘Mr Philips was killed here last October, and now the boss is thinking that the original killer was not out to rob the shop, but that Mr Addula was the target and Daniel Philips was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘So you think whoever killed Mr Philips came back today to finish the job he should have done then?’ Alex asked Martin.

  ‘I don’t have any evidence, but I have a gut feeling that all is not what it seems here and I aim to get to the bottom of it. Look, there’s nothing we can do here, so I have a few calls to make and will see you back at base as soon as you have finished.’ Martin was heading for the door when Prof. Moore suggested he should wait a minute.

  All eyes turned on the professor as he was kneeling behind the head of the body and with gloved hands was lifting out the axe.

  Despite his advancing age, the professor’s eyes were as sharp as pins and he had spotted something of interest. Calling for photographs of everything as he went along he carefully removed some clots of blood from the underside of the axe where the blunt part of the metal met the wooden handle to reveal a small sticky label. He carefully dabbed at the label to clear some of the staining caused by blood and looked up triumphantly.

  ‘I can tell you this axe cost £22.50,’ he proclaimed. ‘More importantly, I can tell you that it was bought at The Vale Garden Centre, so maybe that should be your first call, DCI Phelps.’

  Finding the label had been a brilliant piece of luck, and every case needed some of that. But Martin did not make the garden centre his first call instead he sent Matt. He had to visit a very important lady and tell her about this latest murder before she read about it in the press.

  By four o’clock, everyone was back at Goleudy and settled in Interview Room Two for the first briefing of this new case. Martin’s meeting with Helen Philips had gone much as he would have anticipated and he had decided to share his theory with her knowing that his honesty would be appreciated – and it was. She was one of the nicest people Martin had ever met, and he grouped her with Sandy and Norman Harding in that, thinking, what kind of bastards had the right to ruin the lives of such good people?

  The couple that had walked into the shop just after the murder had been interviewed, but were unable to offer much help other than an exact time. Yes, there had been a man walking out of the shop as they approached, but they were unable to remember anything about him – not even if he was tall or short, black or white, fat or thin. The only memory the woman had was of the backpack he carried, and that because it was exactly the same as the one her brother had. She described it as being dark brown, almost black, with the main pocket being a plum colour.

  She particularly remembered this because she had told her brother the two colours did not go together, and that he had no taste whatsoever. It was clear she had spotted the same rucksack as her brother’s, but she was describing her knowledge of this, not the killer.

  Martin gave the meeting a brief outline of the murder scene, and when he got to the discovery of the price label on the axe he handed over to Matt Pryor for an update on his visit to the garden centre.

  ‘The members of staff were all very cooperative,’ began Matt. ‘They certainly remember selling the axe to a man, probably in his thirties, quite tall and well-built. There is a CCTV camera over the till area, and the relevant footage is with our IT people at the moment.

  ‘The staff thought nothing of the man purchasing the axe, as along with it he bought some other things all related to tree care. About ten minutes after he left, another customer came to the till with a bag containing all the items our man had bought – minus the axe. And the bag had been found in the gents’ toilet. Of course, they just thought he had left it there by mistake, and were expecting him to come back for it so kept it behind the counter. We have it here and SOC staff are looking at it, but don’t hold your breath. The cashier remembers the man was wearing gloves, and although she thought it was strange on such a warm day, she said it was no different to people wearing shorts in the middle of winter!

  ‘They have CCTV at the entrance, and their manager ran through the tapes around the time of the purchase and bingo – we have shots of our killer getting into a City Co. Taxi.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ shouted Martin.

  Matt continued with his findings. ‘Our people have spoken to the taxi firm, and they are able to confirm that a pick-up from the garden centre was dropped off less than a mile from the murder scene. Timings all match up, so we have a pretty good record of his movements prior to the crime.’

  ‘This really is good stuff,’ Martin chipped in. ‘Can we see the CCTV from the area after the killing? We know from last time that the cameras from the actual shop are unlikely to contain any tapes bu
t there are others and as I understand it we have collected whatever we have been able to find from within a mile radius.’

  ‘Hats off to our IT people,’ said Matt. ‘They tell me that after spending the last couple of hours on this we now have a good picture of our killer’s movements and I can talk you through them.’

  ‘These first images are those taken from the pay point at the garden centre and show a man, probably about five feet ten and quite well-built. Either by luck or by judgement, he kept his face away from the camera. This is also the case when he was caught on camera getting into the taxi. He was either lucky or well-drilled in the art of dodging the lens.’

  ‘Take particular note,’ Matt pointed out. ‘As he gets into the taxi he is not carrying any bags, suggesting that when he dumped the rest of his purchases in the toilet he put the axe, or hatchet as the Vale Garden Centre calls it, into his backpack. He has now pulled up the hood of a dark blue cotton jacket, and this is how we see him in all the films we have been able to acquire from the cameras in the vicinity of the shop – both before and just after the time of the murder.’

  ‘Do we know where he went?’ asked one impatient officer.

  ‘He seems to disappear somewhere between the shop and the railway station, and we are still looking through dozens of tapes – but there is something else before that,’ said Matt.

  ‘If you look at these pictures they show our killer in the same clothes as we previously noted but look at these where there is a gap of fourteen minutes and he is still in the same clothes but carrying a bag. It looks like a bag from a clothes shop, but it’s not the shop logo on the bag, it’s a Nike carrier bag. It looks to me as if he’s bought a new set of clothes.’

  ‘This next set of images show him just four minutes later and no prizes for noting that he no longer has the carrier bag but is wearing a full new set of clothes even down to a change of shoes. It’s now a dark grey hoodie but the backpack is the same and we are certain these last images are still of our killer, albeit he’s wearing different clothes.’

  Prof. Moore, who had been watching, carefully interjected. ‘Contrary to what most people would expect, it is unlikely from what I have so far gleaned from the body that our killer would have been covered with blood, and in fact the probable cause of death will be that his windpipe was sliced open and no air could enter his lungs, followed of course by critical haemorrhage, not to mention an obvious degree of shock. I will be able to give a more accurate summary after the post-mortem examination.’

  ‘So the killer may have wanted a new set of clothes just in case there had been some blood splatter, or it may be part of a ritual that some serial killers need to complete the act,’ Martin added.

  ‘That’s a rum thought,’ said Matt. ‘In any event, we have a sequence of images lasting for about ten minutes, during which time he appears to have bought some new clothes, carried them for a short distance in a carrier bag, and then changed into them. Presumably putting his old gear back in the carrier and dumping it.’

  ‘Unless he put it in his backpack,’ someone suggested.

  ‘That’s possible, but the team has looked carefully at pictures of the backpack during this period, and it looks to be totally undisturbed, with no sign of an extra package being added. Anyway if he has gone to the trouble of buying new clothes with the possible motive of hiding incriminating evidence, he would want to dump it, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘This is good work,’ said Martin. ‘We’ve been able to narrow down the time and the place of this activity, and it’s well worth getting some officers out there immediately to see if they can come up with anything. We need to talk to clothes shop assistants and search toilets, garages, or whatever to see if we can find that carrier bag.’

  He looked towards Sergeant Evans, who confirmed that as many officers as possible would be detailed to the task, but adding his regrets that not one of the CCTV tapes had come up with an image of the killer’s face. ‘If my officers take a picture of a man in a hoodie and ask local shop keepers if they have seen this man they will be laughed at – I mean, fifty per cent of their customers will be in hoodies! Still, we’ll do our best, and maybe something like the backpack will trigger memories.’

  ‘We also have a pretty good idea of the clothes he bought,’ Martin reminded the officer. ‘That could be something the retailers will relate to. We also need to keep looking for CCTV cameras around the area of the last place he was seen – this man couldn’t have just disappeared.’

  ‘As well as concentrating on where he went, what about finding out where he came from? Assuming that it took him less than twenty minutes to buy his chosen murder weapon and dump the other things he bought as a legitimate cover for the axe, he would have been there no more than half an hour. Let’s get the earlier CCTV footage from Vale Garden Centre and check it out.’

  There was a general buzz of things happening and officers were moving off in all directions and generally getting a good feeling that through this meticulous routine police work they would get their man. Martin wished they had such good leads in connection with the Mark Wilson murder.

  True, two out of three wouldn’t be bad, but solving the three murders and bringing the killers to justice would be so much better. Was there a killer in the Wilson case – or were there killers? They couldn’t be sure that the man they were currently pursuing was the same man who had killed Daniel Philips and as yet they were not sure if there had been more than one person responsible for the slaughter of Mark Wilson.

  Most people had left the interview room when Matt’s ever-demanding phone rang again, and he took a call that lasted just a few seconds. After thanking the caller he turned to his DCI.

  ‘She’s awake, guv, so I guess it’s a journey back across the Severn Bridge for you and me!’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Inside Amy’s head

  The journey to the Bristol Royal Infirmary was uneventful and they made good time, being frustrated only by the extra twenty minutes it took them to find a parking space when they got there.

  They arrived at the Intensive Care Unit, where a rather gorgeous nurse with a surprising but unmistakable French accent told them that Amy had been transferred to an area known as the High Dependency Unit.

  ‘She is out of any immediate physical danger and no longer needs us, but where her mind is, and what she will need to repair – that is another story.’ In typical French fashion the nurse put equal stresses on all the syllables of each word, emphasising the last full syllable of the longer words. The result was pleasing to the ear, and Martin had the feeling that his DS would have been happy to stay indefinitely and forge a new Welsh/French connection. But they had work to do.

  The HDU was close by, and it looked as if there were two separate areas, each with four beds and a central area where what looked like workstations housed computers and clinical monitors. As they entered one of the four-bedded areas a young man got up from his chair and came forward to meet them.

  It was impossible to distinguish who was who, as every member of staff wore pale blue cotton trousers and loose-fitting tops. However as the man walked towards them they could very clearly see ‘PAUL’ embroidered in large bold letters on his uniform top.

  He followed their gaze and he spoke. ‘Yes, I’m Paul, one of the charge nurses, and you must be the detectives from Cardiff – Staff Nurse Lefevre just phoned to say you were going to pay us a visit.’

  Martin made the formal introductions, with the aid of his warrant card, and asked if it was possible for them to interview the patient, Amy Wilson.

  Charge Nurse Paul looked towards the bed in the left-hand corner that was surrounded by curtains, and told them they would have to wait about ten minutes as some of the nurses were attending to Amy and she was proving to be a bit of a handful. ‘Come into the staff room and have a cup of coffee,’ suggested Paul. ‘We’ve just discharged two of our patients and most of us are having a five-minute breather before the next two are transferred down f
rom ICU. Your Amy has been giving us the runaround – screaming and talking non-stop since she became conscious – but we don’t know how much sense she is making. Perhaps it’ll mean more to you.’

  The cramped staff room was shared with the staff of ICU, but Paul clearly knew his way around, and within a couple of minutes the three of them had mugs of half-decent coffee and a place to sit.

  ‘Is there anything in particular that Amy’s been saying?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Not really,’ Paul replied between mouthfuls of coffee. ‘At first it was just a string of foul language – and I mean foul language. We hear a lot of it here, as I’m sure you do in your line of work, but her language is amongst the juiciest I’ve heard in a long time.’

  Martin reflected on what he knew about Amy’s background, and was not surprised that she had picked up a few choice expletives during her lifetime.

  ‘The main butt of her anger and verbal abuse seems to be someone called Mark, and sometimes it’s aimed at a Jack, but we think she seems to be apologising to him, in a funny sort of way.’

  Paul’s pager summoned him and he got up, leaving his coffee half-drunk. ‘Story of my life,’ he said. ‘Our new patients are on the way so I need to get back. Just finish your coffee and by then it should be OK for you to interview Amy, and good luck with that.’

  Paul left them with three members of staff, all of whom it was easy to recognise as, like Paul, they had their first names embroidered on their tops. Matt got into a conversation with, according to her embroidery, SARA. He discovered that this fashion of having whatever name the member of staff liked to be known as embroidered on the uniform top dated back to a patient satisfaction survey conducted by the hospital two years previously. Apparently before that, the staff had had a habit of forgetting their name badges, or sometimes they were torn off by patients or had to be taken off to avoid patient trauma. A patient had come up with the idea, and the staff liked it because it ensured that they had their own sets of uniform that were likely to fit.