The Jigsaw Man

by Nadine Matheson

  Henley blinked, thrown by the sudden change of subject.

  Olivier placed a hand under his bib. ‘I didn’t want to squash it, so I kept it somewhere safe.’ He placed a small origami bird, made out of prison-issued writing paper on the table. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘It’s not a swan. It’s an egret. Do you know about egrets, Trainee Ramouter?’

  Ramouter didn’t reply.

  Olivier shook his head and tutted. ‘It’s good manners to reply when someone asks you a question. Egrets are common around the Thames, especially on Deptford Creek when it’s low tide. They like to travel in pairs. I made it for you.’

  Henley refused to look down at the origami egret on the table.

  ‘You could at least look at it.’ Olivier’s voice was harsh, suddenly irritated. ‘Oi, you. Trainee.’

  Olivier slammed his hand on the table with such force that Henley was surprised the formica didn’t crack. She could hear Ramouter’s breathing, shallow but rapid. The sound was familiar to her – the sound of someone trying to control a panic attack.

  ‘Why are you not paying attention, Trainee? Someone cut your tongue out?’

  ‘I’m… I’m not—’ Ramouter stuttered.

  ‘What was that? I’m not. You’re not what? Not worthy of carrying that pathetic badge in your wallet?’

  Olivier placed his elbow on the table and leaned his head against his hand, creating a barrier between Henley and Ramouter. She pulled back quickly as Olivier’s arm brushed against her.

  ‘What makes you think that you’re up to this job? Maybe you should think about going back to where you came from.’ Olivier hissed at Ramouter. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a racist. I just think that our little trainee would be better off playing cops and robbers back on the moors.’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Henley.

  Olivier smiled with satisfaction as he turned his body towards Ramouter. ‘What are you? Thirty-three, thirty-four years old. Married.’ Olivier stretched his long fingers and tapped the solid gold band on Ramouter’s finger. Ramouter recoiled and his hand disappeared under the table.

  ‘I doubt that it can be a very happy marriage,’ said Olivier. ‘Not if you’re spending all your time with the Inspector. Did they warn you about her? She has quite a way with men.’

  ‘I told you to stop,’ Henley interjected.

  ‘No,’ said Olivier. ‘I’m talking to the trainee. Has your wife met the Inspector yet? I would imagine that she would feel a bit threatened. Insecure. Lonely. Or maybe you’re the one who’s lonely.’ Olivier’s face fractured into a smile. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You’re here. Alone. With just me and the Inspector for company.’

  Ramouter’s eyes widened.

  ‘Don’t you think that he looks like him, Inspector?’ Olivier asked as he turned towards Henley and held up eight fingers. ‘Jeremey Hicks. Same build. Same height. Same nervous eyes. Out of his depth.’

  Hicks was Olivier’s fifth victim and had been found in eight pieces by a group of schoolchildren.

  ‘They found him in Bermondsey,’ said Olivier. ‘He begged. Doesn’t Ramouter look like someone who pathetically begs for you not to kill him?’

  Ramouter got up from the table and moved towards the door.

  ‘Going already? I’m not the same man who put a knife into your inspector’s stomach.’ Olivier stood up and Ramouter pressed the red alarm button on the wall.

  ‘Sit down!’ Henley shouted.

  ‘Look at him.’ Olivier slowly sat back down and placed both hands on the table as the alarm rang out. ‘I think that your trainee might need a fresh pair of pants.’

  Henley held up her hand as three prison officers appeared at the door. She indicated for Ramouter to leave. Now it was just her and Olivier. She tried to calm herself as the silence between them stretched on.

  ‘What do you know about these murders?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘I don’t think you should keep him. He won’t last a month.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘That’s why I like you.’ Olivier smiled. It was almost affectionate. ‘You always had a lot of passion. Nice to know that you didn’t lose it when all that blood was spilled.’

  Henley held her breath as the anger raged inside of her.

  ‘You’re shaking, Inspector.’

  Henley looked down at her right hand and saw that Olivier was right. She placed her hands under the table.

  ‘You’ve been talking to someone about what you did. How you killed those seven people, and now that person is mocking you.’

  Henley saw the change in Olivier’s demeanour. The games had stopped.

  ‘It must wind you up,’ said Henley as she pushed on slowly. She wanted it to sting – lemon juice on a paper cut.

  ‘Careful, Inspector.’

  ‘It must be frustrating, to be stuck in here, unable to do anything about this person claiming to be better than you. I don’t know, it must make you feel… impotent.’

  Olivier held her gaze. ‘I told you before; I didn’t do it.’

  ‘You’ve told someone about carving those symbols into your victims’ bodies. Maybe you’ve got Joseph McGrath, sorry, Chance Blaine, helping you out.’

  Olivier’s gaze was steady, unflinching. ‘Get the evidence to prove it and come back to me. I’ll be right here. Waiting for you.’

  Olivier walked around the empty exercise yard. Two prison officers watched from the back. He had demanded to be let out, even though he knew that access to the yard wasn’t allowed until after lunch. They watched him circle the yard, knowing that it was better for him to be outside instead of taking his anger out again on one of the other prisoners. They had learnt their lesson eight months ago, when he had broken the jaw of the inmate who hummed continuously while he ate his lunch.

  Impotent. She had called him impotent. The growing fury accelerated his footsteps. He wanted to hurt someone. He needed to feel the raw pleasure of release as he inflicted pain on Henley. It wasn’t flattering, it was insulting to have someone out there killing people in his name. He didn’t want to be motivating or inspiring anyone. It was his notoriety. His infamy. He was the one to be feared; not a cheap mimic.

  ‘Fucking bitch,’ he hissed. It had been grating on him since Henley had told him about the first victim. One victim he could cope with, but now there were three. He could see Henley’s face as she took pleasure in telling him about the copycat. She was mistaken if she thought that the copycat had more power than him. The fucker wasn’t going to get away with it.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Olivier’s voice penetrated the air, rising above the sound of the crows screeching as they sat on top of the prison wall.

  Chapter 29

  As soon as the fresh air hit Ramouter’s lungs, he threw up. Henley couldn’t blame him. Forty minutes in an airless room with Olivier, she couldn’t wait to get out. She wanted to throw herself into a hot bath filled with Dettol. Olivier’s malicious toxicity had managed to work itself into her pores and fuse with the cells in her bloodstream. She handed Ramouter a packet of tissues. He had been doing fine until Olivier had turned off the charm and switched to venom. He had used Ramouter like a punching bag and she had let him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ramouter said as he wiped his mouth and then looked down at the ground in disgust. ‘I should have been prepared. I knew what was coming. I should have been better.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. To call him the devil would be too kind,’ Henley replied as they walked towards the car park. ‘I know that you’ve thrown up your breakfast and it’s not even ten thirty yet, but I think that we could both do with a drink… Do you drink?’

  Ramouter smiled weakly. ‘Yeah. But we’re still on duty.’

  ‘I’m not going to tell anyone. Come on. I could murder one.’

  ‘Do you want anything to eat? Not that I can recommend anything.’ Henley stabbed at the wedge of lemon in the bottom of her glass. They were at a nearby bar, the Duke of Glouceste
r Carvery, which sat under the flight path of the planes escaping London from City Airport. Their booth had a fantastic view of the dual carriageway and the Tesco Express.

  ‘No, I’m good,’ Ramouter replied as he swirled his tumbler.

  ‘Never took you for a whisky drinker.’

  ‘I’m not but my dad always says that it’s good for a dodgy tummy. Well, that was his excuse. Funny, I spent the first half of the morning looking at decomposing body parts, I’m not saying that it didn’t bother me, because it did, but when he started on me—’

  A group of cheering people barrelled into the bar.

  ‘Justice!’ Someone screamed, as a woman in her mid-fifties began to cry.

  ‘Someone’s happy,’ said Ramouter.

  ‘Jury must have come back with a verdict,’ Henley said, watching the man put his arms around the crying woman.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Social visits don’t start at the prison until 1.30 p.m. It’s Thursday so chances are that the jury has been deliberating for a couple of days and they came back with verdicts this morning. You’re not going to get that excited over a conviction, even if you’re the victim’s family, so odds are that our man in the smart shirt and Marks and Spencer’s suit was found not guilty this morning. Also, he’s local.’

  ‘You can tell?’ Ramouter asked as he tried and failed to discreetly turn around.

  ‘If you had traipsed halfway across London to have a trial at Woolwich Crown Court and had been found not guilty would you want to hang around?’

  ‘God, no. I would get out of here as quick as I could.’

  ‘As I said. Local.’

  Her right hand began to tremble as she raised her glass to her lips. She checked to see if Ramouter had noticed, but he was deep in his own thoughts. She took a quick drink and waited for the vodka and tonic to hit.

  ‘Feeling better?’ Henley asked.

  ‘Yeah. Much. I made a mistake. I underestimated him. I thought after last time that he wasn’t that bad. I shouldn’t have shaken his hand.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered. He’s good at reading people. It’s a skill and he knows how to use it well.’

  Ramouter nodded but he wasn’t satisfied with the answer.

  ‘But you were number one,’ said Henley, trying to soften the impact of Olivier’s attack on Ramouter. ‘Top of your class. Highest marks in the National Investigators exam.’

  A look of surprise mixed with embarrassment flashed across Ramouter’s face. ‘May have been top of my class but they didn’t teach me how to recognise a cold-blooded, psychopathic murderer. There wasn’t a question on the exam papers about that.’

  The Duke of Gloucester Carvery had begun to fill with more defendants and relieved or distraught family members. It was nearly 11 a.m., another two hours before the lawyers turned up.

  ‘He doesn’t like the gaffer much, does he?’ said Ramouter.

  ‘He doesn’t like anyone,’ Henley said. ‘Everything he does, everything he says, is meant to get a reaction. You said that you had read the transcripts, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When Olivier was being interviewed, his answer to every question that Pellacia asked was “cunt”. Can you explain why your thumbprint was found above the left tibia on victim number two? Cunt. Did you send Sergeant Adrian Flynn abusive texts? Cunt. For an entire hour. That was his response. Until he piped up and said that he wanted a solicitor because he was fed up of looking at Pellacia’s cunt face.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘An absolute delight.’

  ‘I didn’t understand why he did that. Ask for a solicitor, I mean.’

  ‘Control. It’s all about control with Olivier. The way he taunted you. He wants to control the narrative. Even his denial is all about control and he hates that Pellacia took that control away from him.’

  ‘But you were the one who apprehended him before he…’ Ramouter stopped. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Henley felt her stomach muscles contract. Her mind flashed back to that moment when she had first tried to place her handcuffs around Olivier’s wrists. She had pushed his face into the mud of the heath and he had kicked out, breaking two of her ribs. She didn’t see the knife in his hand until Olivier had pulled it out and raised his hand. Her own blood had dripped from the tip of the knife and onto her face. She’d screamed out for Pellacia when Olivier had stabbed her again. She’d wanted to fight back but Olivier had pinned her to the ground, whispering into her ear that he wanted her to feel every single part of him and that there was nowhere for her to go. Time slowed down. She thought that Pellacia had abandoned her and left her to die on the heath. She could remember the sharp stabbing pain in her chest every time she tried to breathe, holding a hand to her stomach. Trying to stop the flow of blood. She remembered the flashing blue lights illuminating Olivier’s face when he pressed the knife to her neck. Henley had closed her eyes shut. She didn’t want Olivier to be the last face that she saw when she died. Pellacia shouted out her name and she felt the pressure release from her chest as Pellacia propelled himself at Olivier. Henley had opened her eyes, rolled over to her side and saw Olivier on his back as Pellacia approached him. She had looked into Olivier’s face. His bloodied mouth and broken front tooth. She’d screamed for help as Olivier scrambled up and punched Pellacia, twice, in his face. Olivier had then walked over to Henley, spat in her face and smiled. The last thing that Henley remembered was Olivier screaming out as the two electrified darts from Pellacia’s taser hit his chest.

  ‘Olivier hates me too,’ she said.

  ‘Why? After what he did to you.’

  Henley squeezed her eyes shut as the first signs of a migraine surfaced. ‘I made a promise at the TV conference to catch the monster responsible,’ she said. ‘I called him a pathetic monster and I promised to catch him. He didn’t like the fact that I kept my word.’

  Chapter 30

  ‘You’re back,’ said Pellacia, as Henley entered his office. ‘How did it go with Chance Blaine?’

  ‘He’s smug, nervous and hiding something,’ answered Henley.

  ‘And Olivier?’

  ‘How do you think it went? He was as much use as a chocolate teapot. Too busy playing his stupid games. Today’s gem was that it’s a miscarriage of justice that he’s sitting in Belmarsh doing life.’

  ‘That old chestnut.’

  ‘He took it out on Ramouter. He handled it… well enough.’ She felt the need to protect Ramouter.

  ‘So, we’re back to square one. Where’s Ramouter now?’

  ‘At his desk. Working.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You haven’t seen Olivier for years and now you’ve seen him twice in a couple of days.’

  Henley’s tremors had subsided, but her headache was still there, silently throbbing.

  ‘I’m not going to lie and say that it was fun and games sitting with him,’ said Henley.

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question. How are you?’

  ‘I’m not about to break down in the corner, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘You’re something else, you really are. Did he give you anything that could help?’

  ‘Nope. Denied that he had spoken to anyone. Denied that he had killed anyone, but he did ask Ramouter if someone had cut his tongue out.’

  ‘His tongue? Do you think that—’

  Henley shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t have mentioned it if he knew about the tongue, eyes and ears being taken. Olivier is too smart to give us any reason to suspect his involvement.’

  The report from Sentinel, the company who provided the electronic tagging system and prison officers, pretty much confirmed what Ezra had said. Kennedy had kept to his curfew until 6 September at 11.47 p.m. when the signal had gone dead in Ladywell Fields.

  On the whiteboard were photographs of Daniel Kennedy and Zoe Darego.

  ‘They’re not a bad-looking couple really,’ said Ramouter as
he sat down.

  ‘Are those the itemised bills for both of Kennedy’s phones?’ asked Henley. She pushed the reports to the side and opened up a brown envelope. She pulled out three DVDs. They all contained CCTV footage. One from the bail hostel and the remaining two courtesy of Lewisham Council. She put the DVD from the bail hostel into the disk drive first.

  ‘Yeah, they are. The mobile provider confirmed that Zoe’s phone is a contract. They promised to get her records to me by the end of the day and, before you ask, I spoke to Ezra. He’s a bit limited with what he can do until he gets her phone, but he might have better luck with her laptop.’

  The laptop had been found in Zoe’s bedroom by her grandmother. It had a password, but that was child’s play for Ezra.

  ‘What was her number again?’ Ramouter asked, reaching for a yellow highlighter.

  ‘The last four digits are 7432.’ Henley pressed play. ‘Start from the last entry and work backwards.’

  Henley enlarged the video so that it filled the screen. The cameras outside the hostel hadn’t been working for six months so the only footage they had was taken from the hostel’s reception area. Henley fast-forwarded to the morning that Kennedy broke his curfew.

  ‘Her number doesn’t appear on his pay-as-you-go phone,’ Ramouter mumbled, as he reviewed the call records.

  ‘There he is,’ Henley said. She paused the footage and scribbled down the time on her notepad. Kennedy came into view at 11.43 a.m. He stopped in the hallway and spent two minutes and eighteen seconds talking to another man. He was wearing a Superdry T-shirt and jeans. At 11.46 a.m., he pulled out his phone from his back pocket and looked at the screen. Henley zoomed in. It wasn’t the silver iPhone that Henley had found under his bed.

  ‘Aye. I’ve found her,’ Ramouter said. He was highlighting the pages vigorously. ‘It’s his second phone number.’ There was no mistaking the excitement on his face. ‘Kennedy’s body was found on Monday morning, right?’

  Henley hit pause on the video. ‘Linh says that he’d probably been dead for about forty-eight hours before he was found. So, we’re talking early hours of Saturday morning or late Friday night when he was killed,’ said Henley.