by Ellis, Tim
‘What do you think?’
‘Okay,’ Parish said. ‘You’d better lock the shop up and come with us.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Wendy Sowden, and don’t you dare say anything about it being a good Polish name. I married a man whose mother was Polish, but who married an Englishman called Sowden. My maiden name is Vojticek, and that is a good Polish name.’
‘Do you own the shop?’
‘My father does, I manage it.’
‘What about the flat upstairs? Does your father own that as well?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you know about Kasia Plaziuk?’
‘I’m surprised you would even ask that. She paid the rent on time that’s all I knew about her. Landlords don’t go busybodying into people’s lives once they rent a flat out, you know. I thought as police officers you’d know something about the law.’
‘You never saw her with any men?’
‘I never saw her except when she paid the rent on the last Friday of each month.’
‘Do you know anything about the baby?’
‘What baby?
‘You didn’t know she was pregnant?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got a key to the flat?’
‘You want to go up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re making me close the shop anyway.’
Richards looked around the empty store. ‘It’s not as if you’re busy.’
‘It’s this shitty English weather.’
‘Isn’t the weather worse than this in Poland?’
Wendy Sowden kept her mouth shut for once.
***
‘You ain’t got more than four children then?’
‘No. Well, except for the ten in Broxbourne, the fifteen in Chigwell, and then there are a significant number in Harlow...’
‘If’n you and me is gonna be partners you ain’t got to tease old Lola. I’d hate to have to stick pins in your poppet.’
‘Okay, no teasing, but you’re not to mention babies again – deal?’ He held his hand out.
She shook it. ‘Deal. What case we working on then?’
‘Follow me.’
He led her along the corridor to the incident room that he hadn’t set foot in since Nash had left.
‘Oh Gawd! Is this your incident room?’
‘Well, it’s ours now. Why?’
‘You investigating the flowers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lola came in here by mistake yesterday. I saw about the flowers, and I remembered something about them that I seen before.’
‘You mean there’s been similar murders?’
‘I think so, but I can’t remember where I seen it.’
Why hadn’t he checked? Ed would have carried out a database search as a matter of course. Since Nash had gone he’d been so busy, but that was a lame excuse. The truth was, he’d relied so much on Ed to do the bread and butter stuff that he’d forgotten what needed to be done himself.
‘You know how to search CrimInt?’
‘You think I been sleeping under a dewberry bush? Of course I knows how to use CrimInt.’
‘Okay, let’s go and do a search and see what we can find.’
They returned to the squad room. Lola made herself comfortable in Ed’s old chair while she waited for the computer to crawl through the login process.
Eventually, she was able to input key words that Kowalski had written on a sheet of paper such as “head trauma”, “flowers”, “dead flower”, “female victim”, “public house”, and “metal bar” into the query dialogue box, and then pressed the “Search” button.
‘There. You want coffee while we waiting?’
‘Are you any good at making coffee?’
‘Lola makes the best coffee in the whole world.’ She dived in her bag that resembled a rucksack that climbers used to scale Everest, and pulled out a small glass bottle with a glass stopper – a purple liquid sloshed about inside. ‘Lola’s elixir of life.’
‘Why not,’ Kowalski said. ‘I can only die once.’
‘You ain’t gonna die. This’ll make you twenty years younger.’
‘I wish.’
While Lola was gone the database began pumping out the results of the query.
He sent them to the printer.
‘You were right, Lola – a success on your first morning. It can only go downhill from here.’
She passed him the steaming coffee mug. ‘What you found?’
‘Three more murders with a similar MO.’
‘They got the flowers?’
‘Yes, but not a dead white rose. On two of the victims the flower isn’t identified, but the third one was a white carnation.’
Lola sat in her chair again. ‘You like Lola’s coffee?’
‘My tongue is starting to swell up.’
‘That’ll pass. There are some other effects, but they’ll all pass.’
‘You’ve turned me into a zombie, haven’t you?’
Lola laughed and he thought there was a herd of elephants running through the squad room. ‘If’n you were a zombie you wouldn’t know nothing about it neverways.’
She did a search on the Internet. ‘A white carnation means pure love.’
‘Yes, but a dead white carnation means rejected love like the dead white rose.’
‘You thinking it’s this Jeremy Kincaid who’s killing all these women?’
‘Let’s just say that I’d very much like to interview him.’
They walked back to the incident room and put the information on the whiteboard.
‘No wonder we didn’t connect them up,’ Lola said. ‘They all in different counties.’
Julie Watson lived in Devon and owned an off-licence. Gail Whittle ran a 24-hour Mart in Oxfordshire, and Brenda Clements was another pub licensee who lived in Hertfordshire. They were all single or divorced women, and they had all been found murdered in their own beds with serious head trauma, The murder weapon – a metal bar – had been left at the scene of the crime, together with a dead flower inserted into the victim’s vagina.
‘Have we got to go and see these places?’ Lola asked.
‘In this weather? I doubt we’d get to any of them, or if we did we’d probably be stuck somewhere inhospitable until the snow had gone.’
‘You want Lola to ring them up, and see if they got anything else they ain’t put in the reports – like the flowers?’
In each case, no suspects had been identified. Two of the murders had been classified as victims following a robbery.
‘No, I don’t think so. The first murder was in Devon, and they might say that it was their case and put together a task force to track a cross-county serial killer. The thing is, we’ve done most of the work for them. We have a suspect. Now, we just need to find him.’
‘We don’t even know whether Kincaid knew these other women.’
‘And that’s exactly what you’re going to find out while I go up to forensics and see if we can’t locate him. I put an alert out for his Range Rover, but no reports have come in. I need to check his mobile records and his credit card usage. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find that he’s just used his credit card in a shop on the High Street.’
‘And his wife is missing as well?’
‘I don’t know whether “missing” is the right word, but I can’t find her.’
‘Mmmm. You think he’s killed her as well?’
Kowalski shrugged.
***
They had to walk round the back to reach the entrance to the flat. As soon as Wendy Sowden opened the door they could smell the damp.
‘The stupid woman hasn’t had the heating on.’
They walked up the wooden stairs. It was colder inside than it was outside, and the smell of damp became overpowering.
Inside the one-bedroom flat, further smells invaded their nostrils, especially the acetone and faeces from disposable napp
ies – the place stank. It also looked as though there had been a struggle, or someone had searched the place.
‘How could she let it get like this?’
Richards had a hand over her mouth. ‘She clearly hasn’t been here for a few weeks.’
‘Where is she? Where is the stupid cow?’
‘Probably dead,’ Parish said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re here because we’re murder detectives.’
‘Oh God! The dead body in the sewer?’
‘We don’t know anything yet, that’s why we’re here investigating.’ He said to Richards, ‘ Escort Mrs Sowden out, we’ll get forensics up here.’
‘What does that mean?’ Wendy Sowden asked.
‘It looked like something happened here. As such, it can be considered a crime scene. Forensics will come here and see what they can find to help us either locate Miss Plaziuk, or find out what happened to her.’
‘My dad’s not going to be happy.’
He passed her his card. ‘Ask him to ring me if he has any questions.’
Once Richards had taken Mrs Sowden out of the flat he rang Toadstone.’
‘Hello, Sir. I expected you to come up here this morning.’
‘Too busy, and it’s generally a waste of my time because you never have anything for me.’
‘That’s not...’
‘Anyway, Richards and I think we might have identified the second victim. I’m in her flat now. Can you get over here and do the business?’ He gave Toadstone the address.
‘I’ll send...’
‘No, I want you to come. You’re my forensic officer, not Di. Have you become workshy all of a sudden?’
‘I’m utilising the department’s resources to maximise efficiency and productivity.’
‘Stop talking gibberish and get over here, Toadstone.’
He ended the call.
‘Who was that?’
His heart skipped a beat. ‘Will you stop creeping about, Richards. You nearly had to call for an ambulance, and in this weather they probably wouldn’t get here in time. I’d be a statistic. My son would be fatherless. Your mother would be husbandless, and you would be partnerless.’
‘So, who was that?’
‘Who do you think it was?’
‘Paul?’
‘Then why ask?’
Chapter Thirteen
‘Hi, Di.’
‘You say that to get a response out of me, don’t you?’
‘That could be one reason. Another reason might be that I’m just being friendly.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard about your friendliness.’
‘Good news travels far and wide.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Tell me you’ve got the phone records of The Snooty Pig?’
‘I’ve got them.’
‘You know what, I have no idea how you go about getting phone records. Aren’t they protected by the Data Protection Act, or the Human Rights Act, or some other legislation designed to prevent us from doing our job?’
‘Since when have you ever worried about the law?’
‘Well I don’t usually, I was just wondering because I want Jeremy Kincaid’s phone and credit card records.’
‘We have to get a warrant from a Magistrate showing just cause.’
‘That’ll take forever. I need the information now.’
‘And you think this Kincaid is your killer?’
‘If he’s not I’m in trouble. He’s the only suspect I have.’
‘There’s a fast track.’
‘You’re speaking in a language I understand now.’
‘We fax through the details to a Duty Magistrate, and they authorise a warrant.’
‘A Duty Magistrate! What will they ever think of next? Do you want me to dial the number for you?’
‘I have people who do these things, you know. Come with me.’ She picked up the phone records of The Snooty Pig and thrust them at Kowalski.
They walked along the spotlessly clean corridor to a laboratory with a bank of computers, gizmos, and electronic gadgets.
‘A nerd’s paradise,’ Kowalski said.
‘And the resident nerd is Erin Donnelly,’ Di Heffernan said.
A woman in her mid-twenties swivelled on the stool she was sitting on and smiled. Her light brown nearly blonde hair was haphazardly tied back. She wore dark-rimmed glasses, a button-up top that only had three of the middle buttons done up, and a pair of jeans that showed off her flat stomach. But the thing he noticed most about Erin Donnelly was her perfect breasts. He was a breast man through-and-through – it was what had attracted him to Jerry right from the start. He had to force himself not to look.
‘I’m in love.’
‘Not again, Kowalski? Take no notice Erin. He has a wife and four children, his past is a landscape littered with broken hearts, and he’s twice your age. Have I forgotten anything?’
‘The heart attack.’
‘Oh yes, don’t get him over-excited because you’ll probably kill him.’
‘You’re spoiling all my fun, Diane.’
Erin held out her hand. ‘Hello, Inspector Kowalski. I’ve seen you in the canteen, and heard a lot about you.’
He took Erin’s hand in his and kissed it. ‘You don’t want to listen to what other people say. I’m warm and squishy inside.’
‘What can I do for you...? No, that doesn’t sound right. What do you want...? No...’ Her face and neck reddened.
‘Get a hold of yourself, Erin. Inspector Kowalski needs a warrant to access someone’s telephone records and credit card statement.’
She pulled a form from a tray on a shelf above her computer. ‘Fill in the blanks and sign it, please.’
‘While I’m doing this could you see if you can locate Jeremy Kincaid’s phone?’
He did as he was asked.
She put the completed form in the fax, dialled a number, and into the machine it went.
‘No location on that number. It’s either switched off, or the SIM card has been removed.’
The phone rang.
Erin wrote down a number in a book, which she said was the reference number for the warrant. She then logged onto a gateway site that gave her access to all UK telephone suppliers. A search for Jeremy Kincaid revealed he was with Orange, and she brought up his call records for the past three months. He’d made seven phone calls to Lisa Taverner at The Snooty Pig over the past four weeks. Prior to that, they found calls to Julie Watson at the Jolly Vintner in Tiverton, to Gail Whittle at the Kingham Village Store in Chipping Norton, and to Brenda Clements at the Cask & Stillage public house in Potters Bar.
The phone calls in themselves were not evidence that Jeremy Kincaid had killed any of the women, but Kowalski would need to travel far and wide to find another man that knew all four of these women. Admittedly, one could argue that he’d known the women due to his work, and Lola would confirm that fact or not when he went back to the squad room.
When he looked more closely at the calls made to The Snooty Pig, and cross-referenced them with the pub’s incoming calls, he found that the duration of the conversations were considerably longer than what was intimated about the calls from Lisa Taverner’s secret admirer. Again, none of that was evidence, but it lodged a doubt in his mind.
He had Erin check all the numbers listed from which calls had been made to The Snooty Pig, but the only thing of interest was a series of five calls from public phone boxes of around a minute’s duration. If that was the secret admirer, then they had no chance of discovering who it was. He could put a case forward for Kincaid using the phone boxes to disguise who was actually calling, but even he didn’t believe that. The notable thing was that no calls had been made from Kincaid’s phone in the last twenty-four hours. Where was he?
He tried the mobile number again, but was diverted to voicemail. He didn’t leave another message.
The more he examined Jeremy Kincaid, the less he was convinced that he was the killer.
The trouble was, if it wasn’t Kincaid, who the hell was it?
Next he turned to Kincaid’s credit card expenditure. Erin obtained a large map of Britain, and they plotted the locations where he had bought items. What they found was that Kincaid had been to Tiverton, Chipping Norton, Potters Bar, and Wormley – in some cases twice. The dates coincided with the dates the women were murdered.
‘There are two cards being used,’ Erin pointed out.
‘Yes, the second one is his wife.’
‘While he’s in Chipping Norton, she’s in the supermarket at Broxbourne.’
Which eliminated Karen Kincaid as a suspect. They crossed out items of expenditure from the second card.
‘Mmmm, there’s been no expenditure on Kincaid’s card since Tuesday. She’s still spending. Stocking up for Christmas by the looks of it, but he’s gone quiet – no phone calls and no expenditure, which means we can’t track him.’ He stretched his neck back, and rotated his shoulders.
‘Do you want me to massage them for you?’
He would have liked nothing more, but he knew it could only end in disaster. ‘Thanks, I’ll manage. The mounting evidence is circumstantial, but overwhelming. Jeremy Kincaid appears to be my killer.’
‘He’s certainly got the ideal job,’ Erin suggested.
‘Yes, but I just wonder why he would make a point of buying something on the date and in the location where he killed each of the women.’
‘Maybe it’s a keepsake of where he’s been. You know, like people buy little shields to nail on walking sticks, or thimbles, or...’
‘I get the idea. Oh well, if I ever find him, I’ll have to ask him. Thanks very much for your help Erin, you’ve been great.’
She wrote something on a post-it sticker, folded it in half, and passed it to him. ‘Call me.’
He stared at the number. ‘What for?’
She shrugged. ‘I like older men.’
‘You’ve been sent to kill me, haven’t you?’
Her eyes creased up. ‘I don’t think you’d die. You might feel weak at times, but I have certain skills in that respect – I’d revive you to mint condition.’
He shook the stupidity from his head. ‘I’m flattered, but as Diane said, I’m married – happily.’