The Jigsaw Man

by Nadine Matheson

  ‘Is it a body? I didn’t think that Doug was the type, but then again if I had her as my girlfriend…’

  ‘Mr…?’

  ‘Bellamy. Ian Bellamy.’

  ‘Mr Bellamy, we don’t want to take up your time, but we noticed that you have CCTV cameras set up outside your house.’

  ‘Yeah, had them put up when I was getting some work done. Got fed up with people trying to dump stuff in my skip. Then there were a couple of break-ins last summer. All about security.’

  ‘They’re not just for show?’

  ‘Definitely not. Top-of-the-range. My grandson used to work in Maplin. Got me a staff discount.’

  ‘Do you mind if we come in and take a look at the footage?’

  ‘What, now?’ Bellamy looked nervously into his house.

  ‘We don’t care about the cannabis. We’re only interested in the footage. This is a murder investigation.’ Henley bent down and stroked the top of the dog’s head.

  On the living-room coffee table was an ashtray with the remains of a spliff, a couple of empty snap bags and an open bag of tobacco.

  ‘It’s for medicinal purposes,’ Ian said. ‘For my back. Sciatica. Herniated disc. Haven’t been able to work for years.’

  ‘The footage,’ Henley said, ignoring him and his small collection of Class B drugs.

  ‘Over here. It’s hooked up to my computer. I’ve even got an app on my phone. I’ve got four cameras. One over my driveway, two focused on the street and the back garden.’

  Ian walked, almost dragging his leg, over to the large iMac in the corner of the room and pulled out a battered office chair. Henley pretended not to notice the porn site that Ian quickly shut down.

  ‘I usually delete the footage at the end of the week.’

  ‘We just need to see the footage from last night,’ said Henley.

  ‘From about 10 p.m.’ Ramouter pulled a chair from the dining table nearby and placed it next to Ian. Henley remained standing.

  ‘That’s Doug and that’s his girlfriend,’ Ian said as the footage filled the screen.

  ‘It’s really good quality,’ Ramouter said to Henley.

  ‘Top-of-the-range, 1080p camera, two-way audio, night vision. It’s like Blu-ray.’

  Henley watched as Doug and his girlfriend walked past the van and up the street. ‘OK, can you speed it up a bit?’

  Ian nodded and increased the speed. A couple of kids rode by on mopeds at 10.30 p.m. and the front door to number 37 opened at 11 p.m. A woman stood on the step smoking a cigarette. At 11.15 p.m. Doug and his girlfriend came back and then the street was quiet for one, two, four hours.

  ‘Stop,’ Henley said. The clock in the top right-hand corner of the screen showed 3.18 a.m. She looked closer. A man in a black hoodie and jeans stopped at number 39. He wore a rucksack on his back and pulled a large wheeled duffle bag.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Ian as he looked across at Henley.

  ‘Let it play,’ was all Henley said. She gave Ramouter a knowing look. Even though the man was wearing a hoodie, they had both seen enough of his side profile to know that Henley had been right. It was Olivier.

  The man walked up to the back of the van and placed a large duffle bag and rucksack on the ground. He opened the car door without issue.

  ‘It wasn’t locked.’ Ramouter shook his head. They continued to watch as the man checked both ends of the street before taking off his rucksack. Henley felt her shoulders tighten as, with some effort, he threw the rucksack and duffle bag into the van. It didn’t take a genius to work out what was in there.

  ‘Do you know what, that’s enough. Thank you. I’m going to be sending another officer round to take a copy of the footage and a statement from you. Is that OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean… That’s fine. Will you tell them about the weed?’ Ian looked over Henley’s shoulder and towards the coffee table.

  ‘Just the footage and a statement, Mr Bellamy. You don’t have to worry about anything else.’

  ‘I need coffee,’ said Henley as they walked back towards the car. The activity in front of number 39 was still ongoing. Henley saw Linh walking into the forensic tent.

  ‘How can you want anything after being in there?’ Ramouter nodded towards the forensic tent.

  ‘I’ve seen worse,’ Henley replied, pulling out her car keys.

  ‘Have you? Because I haven’t,’ said Ramouter.

  Anthony’s trainee approached with a camera in his hand. ‘Inspector Henley.’

  ‘It’s Samuel, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘Anthony asked me to find you.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘No, everything is fine. Well, as good as it can be. Dr Choi is in there now, but it will be a while before they move the body. Anthony wanted me to show you this.’

  Samuel turned the camera screen towards Henley. ‘They found it in her—’ Samuel looked away. ‘It was in her vagina.’

  Henley zoomed in on the pink driving licence. ‘We’ve got ID.’ Henley handed the camera to Ramouter. She watched as Ramouter’s expression darkened. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked as Ramouter handed the camera back.

  ‘I recognise the name,’ Ramouter said. ‘I’m sure that I’ve seen it before,’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I think she’s one of the women who’s been writing to Olivier.’

  Chapter 76

  Henley had sent Ramouter straight to the address on Lauren Varma’s driving licence. He should have been feeling pleased that Henley was trusting him to go off on his own, to check out Lauren Varma’s flat, but he couldn’t help but feel that he was being sold a dud. That Henley had just found the perfect opportunity to get him out from under her feet. Disgruntled, he turned the volume up on the radio. He bopped his head as grime artist Giggs rapped about ‘talkin’ da hardest’ on the streets of Peckham. The Rotherhithe Tunnel was closed, causing the traffic to build up in east London.

  He turned on the sirens. His stomach flipped with nervous excitement as the cars in front of him began to manoeuvre out of his way. His phone beeped. He looked down to see a message from DC Swanson from the local nick. Henley didn’t trust him enough to go poking around Lauren’s flat without some kind of back-up, or before the family members formally identified the body, though they hadn’t found any family members yet.

  Ramouter met DC Swanson in the parking bay.

  ‘Sorry, I’m a bit late. Not used to London traffic. Satnav said fifteen minutes,’ Ramouter said in an effort to break the ice.

  ‘This is London, mate. You need to add another twenty minutes to whatever those things tell you.’

  ‘Will bear that in mind,’ Ramouter replied.

  ‘Tell Henley that she owes me one for doing babysitting duty.’

  ‘It’s not like that. Just making a few enquiries and I drew the short straw,’ Ramouter said.

  ‘Course it ain’t, mate.’

  The communal doors to the Kingfisher building had been propped open by a plastic crate. They took the lift to the fourth floor. Ramouter was surprised that it didn’t smell of urine.

  ‘This is quite a nice block of flats,’ he said as they stepped out and walked along the carpeted corridor.

  ‘One of the better ones. Still wouldn’t live here though.’

  They stopped outside flat 4F.

  ‘So, what are we doing?’ said Swanson. ‘We’re not breaking the door down, are we? Because, in case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t got a battering ram on me.’

  Ramouter didn’t answer as he knocked on the door of 4F. Just to check. He pressed his ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything. He pulled out the small bunch of keys that were in an exhibit bag and one of the few items not covered in Lauren’s blood.

  ‘Are you looking for Lauren?’

  Behind Ramouter a slim white man in his early forties stood in the doorway of 4G. ‘I think that she’s gone away for a couple of days.’

  ‘Is that what she told you?’ Ramouter asked.<
br />
  ‘Yeah, I’m Gio. We’ve been neighbours for about five years. About time she got a boyfriend, if you ask me. She certainly looked a lot happier. Funny thing is, I always thought that she was a lesbian and then I thought she might be asexual.’

  ‘Right,’ said Ramouter as he and DC Swanson shared a look. ‘We’ll arrange for an officer to take a statement from you, but when was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Hmm, I think it was Wednesday night. Yeah, it was definitely Wednesday, because it was Champions League and I popped out to get some beers. When I came back there was man outside her door. I remember thinking, good for her. And then about an hour later, I could hear them… You know… Doing it. These walls aren’t exactly soundproof, you know.’

  Probably had his ear to the wall more like, Ramouter thought to himself as he put the key in the lock.

  It was odd that the over-accommodating neighbour hadn’t even asked if Lauren was OK, if anything had happened to her. From the looks of things, once she was formally identified, Gio would be the first one standing in front of the camera telling the world how shocked he was, how this was a quiet area and that she kept to herself.

  The flat was small. The corridor was tiny. On the wall was a key rack with no keys next to a framed poster promising that GOOD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN. Ramouter shook his head at the tragic irony. He walked into the small open-plan living room and kitchen. Dirty dishes filled the sink. On the small dining table were two bottles of wine, one empty the other a third full and a tipped-over wine glass, a large red stain on the floor beneath it. Ramouter jumped as the automatic air freshener squirted the overpowering vanilla aroma in his direction. The bookcase was a mixture of chick lit, true crime paperbacks, CDs and DVDs all covered with dust.

  Ramouter looked around for family photographs or anything to show that there was more to Lauren Varma than second-hand books and cheap air freshener, but found nothing. He examined the bedroom door, which was warm and stuffy. A blue duvet lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. An empty red condom box rested on the chipped bedside table, its wrappers on the floor. Ramouter checked the wardrobe and pulled open the drawers. In the second drawer he found Lauren’s diary. The last entry was dated Tuesday night:

  I know that it’s a risk, but you have to take a risk in life, don’t you? I can’t believe that after all this time I’m finally going to meet my Peter. Once we’re together, properly together, in each other’s arms, everything will be better. We all make mistakes…

  ‘Not as big as this,’ Ramouter muttered, putting the journal back.

  ‘What was that, mate?’ Swanson was hovering by the doorway.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ said Ramouter as he picked up a pile of letters that had been hidden beneath her underwear. They were all the same standard envelopes kindly provided by Her Majesty’s Prison Service. Ramouter opened the first one, silently impressed by Olivier’s penmanship. He was a sadistic monster but you wouldn’t guess that from these pages. Olivier quoted Shakespeare’s sonnets. He wrote about his devoted love for Lauren and how the crumbling justice system had made a terrible, tragic mistake.

  As Ramouter pushed the bathroom door open, he was struck by the pungent scent of rotten meat. Stale and coppery. The fumes soaked into the grooves of his throat. Blood mixed with flesh, and bone covered the floor and stained the grout. The white porcelain bathtub was covered in dark streaks of blood and congealed hair.

  A bloodbath. That was the term people used, without really thinking about what it meant, but now Ramouter was seeing it for himself, for the first time.

  Chapter 77

  Karen Bajarami pushed the food tray away. She’d managed to eat a couple of spoonfuls of mashed potato and some kind of meat pie before giving up. The painkillers had stolen her sense of taste, but only slightly dulled the throbbing pain around her right eye. She put her hand to her still swollen cheek and wiped away the infected discharge that had soaked through the bandage. This wasn’t the plan. She thought back to their conversations. She thought about Ade, how his head had been crushed into the ground, and how no one would tell her how he was doing. The nurses thought that it was the pain that kept her awake at night, but it was the sound of his breaking bones that gave her nightmares. She was changing the channel to the news when her door creaked open.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Karen whispered as Olivier walked into the room. Her eyes filled with tears again as Olivier walked over and kissed her forehead.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here. They’re looking for you. Everyone is looking for you,’ she said.

  ‘Shh. I brought you a present,’ Olivier replied. ‘Close your eyes… sorry, I meant eye.’

  Karen did as she was told. She trembled as Olivier put his hand around her neck. She felt the coolness of a necklace, a metal chain, rest against her skin.

  ‘Can I look?’ Karen asked, fingering the pendant.

  ‘Not until I’ve gone, but you can look at me.’

  Karen tensed. The tenderness in Olivier’s voice had gone jagged.

  ‘I thought that there was a policeman outside,’ Karen said. ‘I was supposed to have security.’

  ‘Are you scared,’ Olivier asked, ‘of me?’

  Karen’s heart beat faster as Olivier brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead.

  ‘No. Of course not… I just. What if someone finds you here? I don’t want anything to happen to you. We have plans.’

  ‘If it makes you feel better, I’m not staying. I just wanted something from you. I’m running low on cash. I thought that you could give me your cash card. It’s not like you’re going anywhere for a while.’

  ‘You want… money? Is that why you came here?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Amongst other things.’ Olivier walked to the cabinet. ‘Is it in here? Your purse?’

  ‘It’s next to my phone.’

  ‘I need your pin number.’ He removed the card and placed it in his back pocket.

  ‘Four-eight-seven-three.’

  ‘Right, I’m going to leave but before I do I need to ask you something else.’

  Karen froze as Olivier placed his calloused hand on her chin and lifted her head up. No emotion in his gaze, only a steely determination.

  ‘You’ve already spoken to Detective Inspector Henley,’ Olivier said as he squeezed Karen’s cheek.

  ‘She… she came by but I didn’t say anything to her.’

  Olivier squeezed harder. ‘She’s going to come again to talk to you. She’s not stupid. She’s probably already worked out that you’ve been helping me.’

  ‘But I was careful and you… you hurt me, when—’

  Olivier pushed his hand against Karen’s mouth, trapping the breath in her throat.

  ‘You will tell her nothing. You promised me that you would always be loyal. Do you remember that?’

  Karen tried to turn away from him, to escape his terrible gaze.

  ‘I’m not sure if I believe you,’ Olivier said as he jammed his fingers into Karen’s bandaged eye, the other hand covering her mouth, suffocating her screams.

  Karen grabbed handfuls of the blue blanket as red-hot shockwaves of pain coursed through her body.

  ‘What are you going to tell Inspector Henley when she comes?’

  Karen coughed and gasped for breath as Olivier released his hands. She tried to speak as her damaged eye bled. ‘Nothing,’ she finally said. ‘I promise.’

  Olivier stood up with satisfaction. ‘Loyal,’ he said.

  ‘Loyal,’ Karen whispered back.

  Chapter 78

  ‘I was right. Lauren Varma,’ said Ramouter.

  Henley and Ramouter were back at the SCU with hundreds of letters to Olivier spread across a desk.

  ‘I just don’t get it. How could anyone in their right mind want to be in a relationship with Olivier?’

  ‘You met him,’ Henley replied, unwrapping her bacon roll. ‘He has a way about him.’

  ‘But he’s a murderer. Surely at some point
something would click in your brain and tell you that writing to him and agreeing to meet him may not be a good idea.’

  ‘What did Mark call it again?’ Henley flipped through the notes from her conversation with Mark earlier when he had been stuck in traffic on the M6. ‘Hybristophilia. People who are sexually aroused and attracted to people who have committed cruel, gruesome crimes, for example, murder and rape.’

  Ramouter pulled a face.

  ‘Maybe she thought that she could fix him,’ Henley said solemnly. ‘People get into relationships with all sort of strange people. Some people like a project. Turn them into something different. For all we know Olivier could have persuaded Lauren to help him.’

  ‘You think that Varma, Bajarami and maybe Blaine were working together?’

  ‘Right now, nothing would surprise me.’

  ‘Ah, I found it. Her last letter to him.’

  Ramouter handed the letter over to Henley. It was dated a few months ago and there was a slight whiff of perfume on the lined pages. The letter was written in purple ink with hearts instead of a dot above the letter ‘i’. It reminded Henley of letters written by lovestruck teenage girls in the back of their school notebooks. She began to read out loud:

  ‘My darling, I was so happy when I received your letter and it was even better to hear your voice. That was the best surprise and really made my day. I wish that I had recorded our telephone call. I love you so much. I miss hearing your voice. It would be nice if I could actually see you and touch you. It upsets me that I may never be able to hold you in my arms. I’ve been shopping and I’ve bought you a tracksuit and a pair of trainers. I’ve booked a few days off work next week, so I will come down to the prison…’

  ‘God, this is nauseating,’ Henley said. ‘How many more are there?’

  ‘From her? Another eight that I’ve found. She’s been writing to him for about a year.’

  ‘Poor delusional cow,’ Henley said as she picked up the ringing phone on her desk. ‘DI Henley,’

  ‘Hey, it’s Linh. Didn’t get a chance to speak to you earlier.’

  ‘How’s it going down there?’