by Tim Ellis
He laughed. ‘I doubt that, DI Holm.’
‘It’s true. Anyway, why are you ringing me?’
Her heavy breathing, and the flip-flop of her training shoes on the ground, ricocheted down the phone. ‘How’s the investigation going at your end?’
‘After some digging around, we finally got hold of the police file relating to Leonard and Fanny Tomkins’ deaths.’
‘That’s good to know.’
‘Not really. There wasn’t anything in there that we didn’t already know.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about the investigating detective?’
‘Because the deaths were considered to be suicides there was no murder investigation initiated and hence – no detective allocated to the case.’
‘Someone must have carried out an initial investigation?’
‘The local plod – a Sergeant Thomas Elder.’
‘He might be worth speaking to. If you let me know where I can find him, I’ll call in and talk to him while I’m in Hastings again.’
‘You’re going back there?’
‘Yes, tomorrow morning. I’m going to see what I can find out about Sally’s parents. All we know is that they committed suicide, but there must be more to it than that.’
‘I’ll call you in the morning and let you know how you can contact Sergeant Elder.’
‘That’ll be great. I went to see Carol and Kenneth Hughes in East Dulwich . . .’
‘Oh yes?’
‘They had a daughter called Caitlin . . .’
‘Sally Tomkins?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Their own daughter was called Caitlin. She was killed in a hit-and-run.’
‘Murdered?’
‘That’s my guess.’
‘For her identity?’
‘You’ve done this before, DI Holm?’
‘A few times. So, Sally Tomkins was never fostered by Carol and Kenneth Hughes?’
‘No.’
‘That ties in with what my team found out about the two Social Workers who you said were named in Sally’s Social Services file – Martin Webster and Heather Drake. No such people were employed by Eastbourne Social Services. The names did, however, appear in the obituary section of the local paper at the time.’
‘I think we can safely assume that they worked for Lancer Communications. It also begs the question: Where did they take Sally Tomkins? Or . . . as she was probably called by then – Caitlin Hughes?’ He heard a grunting noise. ‘Are you all right, DI Holm?’
‘Yes . . . yes. I’ve just stopped to catch my breath. Running is bad enough without trying to hold an intelligent conversation at the same time as well.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault, Rodney. If anything, it’s my fault for being so unfit.’
‘I would have said you were fitter than a butcher’s dog.’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’
‘What about the DNA comparison of Sally and her parents?’
‘Leonard and Fanny Tomkins were cremated, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t you have a DNA database?’
‘Yes, but . . . Ah! I’ll come back to you on that one, Rodney. I didn’t ask my support team to check the database, so I don’t suppose they did. Sometimes, I wonder if they have a brain cell between them.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow morning.’
‘Have a good run, DI Holm.’
‘Thanks.’
Now, he’d just joined the A22 at East Grinstead. There were still a good few miles to go, but he’d avoided most of the traffic and it was turning out to be an easy run.
His phone activated.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s DI Holm, Rodney.’
‘Good morning. I hope you’ve recovered from your run?’
‘I run most nights, so recovery is an ongoing process. Anyway, I have an address for Sergeant Thomas Elder.’
‘That’s great.’
‘He’s been retired for seven years and lives at 114 Dittons Mews, St Leonards-on-Sea, TN38 4QT.
He pulled onto the hard shoulder and wrote the address down in his notebook. ‘I’ll call you later and let you know what he said.’
‘And I’ll find out if Leonard or Fanny Tomkins’ DNA is on the database.’
‘I’m certainly no expert on DNA, but when they ran Sally’s DNA through the database weren’t they looking for a matching profile to find out her identity?’
‘That’s right.’
‘They obviously didn’t find a match, but would the search also have identified any familial matches?’
‘I doubt it. My understanding is that the database queries have to be quite specific. I’ll ask them to run a familial search as well.’
‘I’m just covering all the bases as the Americans say.’
‘And it’s appreciated, Rodney.’
‘I’m glad.’
The line went dead.
He flipped his indicator on, but before he could join the flow of traffic his phone vibrated again.
‘Hello?’
‘We didn’t iron out any details, Rodney.’
‘Good morning, Sandrine.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I feel like the man who found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What about you?’
‘I feel like the pot of gold.’
‘So I wasn’t a complete disappointment?’
‘Far from it. What are we going to do in the future? We can’t keep using the photocopier room – there isn’t enough paper.’
They both laughed.
Rodney considered the options available to them. Sandrine was right, the photocopier room was a one-off. Besides the heavy use of paper, there were other people to consider – colleagues, clients and members of the public – it was a workplace after all. There was a hotel room, which would be ideal as long as he didn’t have to pay for its use every time. Also, it would soon become obvious what they were doing in the room. And then, of course, he had his own flat in Shepherd’s Bush. It wasn’t the Ritz. In fact, it wasn’t even the local bed-and-breakfast. It was merely somewhere to keep his stuff and rest his weary head between cases. But it could be a place where he kept Sandrine happy. ‘I have my own flat. It’s not ideal, but we could meet there.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. I never know when or where I’m going to be . . .’
‘Which reminds me – where are you today?’
‘I’m on my way to Hastings again. Some loose ends to tie up.’
‘Okay. Well, we’ll just have to meet at your flat when the urge comes over us.’
‘We can’t spend all day every day in bed, Sandrine.’
‘Are you having urges?’
‘I’ve been having urges since I first met you.’
‘It’s nice for a woman to be wanted, Rodney. Call me later.’
‘Will do.’
As he readjusted his erection, he pulled out and wedged the Ford Ka between an old metal-grey Mercedes and a rusty white van with an imperious-looking Staffordshire pit-bull terrier in the passenger seat.
***
‘All right,’ Quigg said. ‘What do we know?’
They were in the incident room. It had been after midnight by the time he’d finished moving the furniture, sweeping up the dust and removing the cobwebs in the station attic. He was tired, deflated and filthy by the time he’d got back home and crawled into his own bed. Not only had he not explored what Miss Tinkley had to offer, but he’d also had to cancel his treatment session with the naughty nurse – Celia Tabbard. The Chief had a lot to answer for.
He was a Detective Inspector after all, not some station odd job man at the Chief’s beck-and-call. He was a senior police officer the Commissioner held in high regard as someone who could solve complex cases. But then his mind drifted to the chart in the women’s locker room and his ego deflated like
a burst balloon.
And then, to top it all off, while he’d been eating his breakfast Ruth and Duffy wanted to know if he’d booked an appointment at the local surgery to arrange a date for his vasectomy. It had put him completely off his toast and marmalade. Severing tubules was not a topic for discussion over a man’s breakfast.
‘We don’t know the victim’s name?’
‘Write that down.’
‘Write what down? Are you listening? I said we don’t know the victim’s name.’
‘And I asked what we do know, not what we don’t know.’
‘Knowing what we don’t know, is as much a part of knowing what we do know, isn’t it?’
He ached all over. Well, not exactly all over. The place he should have been aching was pain-free. ‘Let’s focus on the victim first. Why was she using someone else’s identity?’
‘As far as we know she didn’t have a record, there was no DNA or fingerprint match, which suggests that she was unknown to the police.’
‘What about the new facial recognition software that the Met is evaluating?’
‘NeoFace?’
Quigg nodded. ‘That’s the one.’
‘No specific match. And no familial match either.’
‘No leads from the public?’
‘No.’
‘Are we thinking her murder is maybe something to do with her unknown identity?’
‘We’ve discarded all the other motives. Although there’s still the possibility that she was murdered because she may have known something she shouldn’t have known.’
‘Such as?’
‘If we knew that, we’d have the motive.’
Quigg’s face creased up. He wasn’t really in the mood for word fencing. ‘So what are you talking about?’
‘I watched the DVD of the orgy at the LC Club last night.’
‘Really? While you were watching all that cavorting, did you regret not saying yes to Lilith’s kind offer yesterday?’
‘Is that all you think about?’
‘It’s not every day that we’re given the opportunity to participate in an orgy, Sergeant. We should have grabbed it with both hands . . . metaphorically speaking, of course.’
‘You need therapy.’
‘And don’t think it hasn’t been offered. So, what did you think of the orgy?’
‘You wanted me to watch it to find possible leads, not offer commentary on it.’
‘Surely you formed an opinion? You know, marks out of ten that type of thing?’
‘No. There was a lot of people having sex. Baglio was right though, Emilia – or whatever her name is – definitely seemed to be enjoying herself.’
‘No sign that she was being coerced?’
‘Not that I could see. She was – as you so quaintly put it – grabbing the opportunities presented to her with both hands.’
‘I see. Well, did you find any leads?’
‘Yes.’
‘Such as?’
‘You know Lilith said there were some high-profile people who were club members and took part in the orgies?’
‘Yes.’
‘I recognised three of the people who were having sex with our victim . . . and – it has to be said – others as well. In fact, it was difficult to know where one person ended and another began. Also, those three people weren’t the only ones having sex with her on the DVD.’
‘So, who were they?’
‘Judge Veronica Phillips . . .’
‘She must be over ninety or my name’s not Elma Fudd.’
‘Your name’s not Elma Fudd. She’s forty-seven.’
‘That judge’s wig must add a few years.’
‘There’s Andrew Cuthbert . . .’
‘What – the Member of Parliament for Shepherd’s Bush?’
‘That’s him.’
‘But he’s a Liberal for God’s sake. Surely there’s a conflict of interest between Liberalism and Satanism? Not only that, I voted for Cuthbert. And he never declared his interest in Satanism or orgies on his election leaflets. I feel cheated, hoodwinked, double-crossed.’
‘That’s not the worst of it though.’
‘It’s bad enough.’
‘Michael Scott-Simpson.’
‘We have an Assistant Commissioner by that name.’
‘The very same.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Watch the DVD for yourself if you don’t believe me. He’s certainly well-hung.’
‘I don’t think I need to know that, Dwyer.’
‘Also . . .’
‘There’s more?’
‘He left three minutes after our victim.’
‘Are we the only people who know about this?’
‘Unless you’ve told someone else.’
‘How is that possible? You’ve only just told me.’
‘There’s your answer then.’
‘Why do I get the feeling you’re warming to me, Dwyer?’
‘Maybe the air-conditioning is playing up.’
‘That must be it. So, does the DVD show him extricating himself from the orgy three minutes after her, or leaving the club?’
‘Both, but I was referring to him leaving the club.’
‘Does it show him getting into his car?’
‘No, that’s out of the picture.’
‘So he could have sat on a wall for three hours, gone shopping, or walked home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, you say nothing to no one about Scott-Simpson. I’ll run what we’ve discovered past the Chief and see what he recommends we do next.’
‘I hear a cover-up galloping towards us.’
‘Let’s not pre-empt the Chief’s decision.’
He looked at the incident board, at the array of photographs of the dead young woman, at her outstretched arm with its finger pointing at the catacombs. He had the eerie feeling she was pointing an accusing finger at him. It wasn’t his fault the investigation was going nowhere, or maybe it was going somewhere – maybe it was going round and round in circles, up in a puff of smoke, or disappearing like butter on a hot crumpet. Who was she? Was finding out the woman’s identity the key to this murder? Was AC Scott-Simpson involved in her murder? Was it possible that the marks on her neck were the result of a vampire bite? Is that who they were looking for – a vampire? Why couldn’t Doc Solberg identify the fluid surrounding the two wounds? What was the poison that had killed her?
He looked at the main points from the post mortem: The time of death between midnight and three on Monday morning . . . ‘We have a problem, Dwyer.’
‘Which is?’
‘What time did she leave the LC Club?’
‘Three thirty on Monday morning.’
‘And time of death was when?’
‘Between midnight and . . . Mmmm! It seems that she was dead before she left the club, doesn’t it?’
‘Very much so. If she wasn’t carried out of there in a coffin – Either Doc Solberg has her time of death wrong, or someone is lying at the club.’
‘The date-time stamp is on the security recording . . .’
‘They can be altered.’
‘I find a conspiracy hard to believe. The computer records at Metro Minicabs verified the driver picked up our victim at three-thirty.’
‘Well, they can’t both be right. Get onto the Doc and ask her to check her findings. We’re not out to trick her, so tell her about the security footage and the taxi picking the woman up at three-thirty.’
‘Will do.’
‘Also, while I’m briefing the press and the Chief, have James Baglio brought in for questioning. He can come to us for a change. Let’s ask him why he didn’t know his fiancée wasn’t who she said she was.’
‘Okay.’
‘Did you find anything worthwhile in the old newspapers and video accounts of the Highgate Vampire?’
‘Nothing that we didn’t already know. Except . . . one name cropped up that we haven’t come across before.’
&n
bsp; ‘Oh?’
‘Melissa Hornsey. Dr San Romani used her as a psychic throughout his investigation.’
‘A psychic! You know the police don’t use psychics, Dwyer.’
‘All I’m suggesting is that we go and talk to her.’
‘We could do that, I suppose. But we keep it just between you and me. If the press get wind of it . . . Well, I don’t need to tell you how we’d be portrayed in the media.’
‘I think I can guess.’
‘And I’m a bit fragile at the moment, so the last thing I need is people laughing at me because I’ve spoken to a psychic.’
‘Understood. Those bastards always connect a few dots and then make up their own story.’
‘Right, I’m going to my office to collect myself for five minutes before the press briefing. I’ll meet you there at ten o’clock, and we’ll go down and interview James Baglio.’
He wandered along the corridor, went into his office, shut the door and called the Duty Sergeant.
‘Duty Sergeant speaking.’
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s your shower buddy, Inspector Quigg.’
‘Abby Marsh.’
‘You remember me?’
‘I remember that mole on your backside.’
‘I’m sure you remember a lot more than that, Inspector. We haven’t seen you in the ladies’ locker room lately.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Well, you know you’re always welcome.’ She laughed at her own joke. ‘What can I do for you today, Sir?’
‘You have two uniforms at a crime scene in Highgate Cemetery.’
‘That’s right. You’re not the most popular Inspector at the moment because of that, you know. In fact, come to think of it, you’ve never been the most popular Inspector.’
‘I’ll just have to live with that. You can tell them that DS Dwyer and I will be there at around five o’clock to make a decision on whether to continue with a police presence. I’m inclined to call it a day, but they’re not to leave until I get there.’
‘Understood.’
‘Which two officers will be on shift?’
‘Just a minute . . . PCs Colin McPhail and Elizabeth Wood.’
‘Okay. Thanks, Sergeant Marsh.’
‘Always a pleasure, Inspector Quigg.’
The door opened as he put the phone down.
‘Spector Quigg! I wasn’t ‘specting to see you in your office this morning.’