The Promised Land

by Barry Maitland

  ‘What time was that?’

  Bell checked the computer again. ‘Call came in three-oh-three pm, Jabbar attended at five thirty-six.’

  Giving him enough time to call in at Number One Pond on the way, Kathy thought.

  ‘Guv.’ Birch showed her phone, on which was displayed Jabbar Chaudri’s criminal record—four months’ jail for aggravated assault on his girlfriend, twelve years previously.

  Bell said, ‘What’s this about anyway? Jabbar’s a good worker, a family man. Is he in some kind of trouble?’

  ‘What about last Tuesday? What was Jabbar doing then?’

  Bell checked. ‘He had the day off.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  Another tap on the computer. ‘He’s on a job near here, Harringay Avenue. Want me to call him?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’d prefer you keep this to yourself for the moment, Mr Bell. It’s probably nothing. Just something we need to check with him.’

  Ten minutes later they saw the white van standing outside the address Bell had given them, and as they drew up behind it a man came out of the house, dressed in overalls and carrying a bag. He opened the van door and put the bag inside.

  Kathy and Judy got out of the car. ‘Mr Chaudri? We’re police officers. We’d like a word, please.’

  He looked alarmed. ‘What’s the problem? Is it Trudy? The kids?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Hang on.’ He frowned, peering at Kathy. ‘Haven’t I seen you on TV? You’re looking into the Hampstead Heath murders, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. We’re speaking to everyone we can trace who was in the area on Saturday evening. We believe you were there—is that right?’

  ‘How did you know that? Oh … cameras, is that it? They’re everywhere now, ain’t they? Yeah, I was called out to the old tollhouse on Spaniards Road—leaking pipe.’

  Kathy got him to describe his movements there and back, with times. Then she said, ‘I don’t suppose you were in the area last Tuesday morning, were you?’

  ‘Tuesday? Oh, the first murder, right? No, I was at home, Stoke Newington, day off.’

  ‘You didn’t go out that day?’

  ‘No, I’d got things to do at home.’

  Kathy pointed to the bag Chaudri had put in the back of the van. ‘I’d like to take a look in that bag, sir.’

  Chaudri stiffened abruptly, and Kathy was aware of Judy Birch tensing at her side. The two uniforms from the backup car moved closer. Then Chaudri shrugged. ‘Sure, why not?’ He stepped away and Kathy went over and unzipped the top. It was full of tools, including two hammers.

  ‘I’m going to have to ask you to accompany us to a police station to make a statement, Mr Chaudri, and give us permission to carry out forensic tests on your van and belongings.’

  ‘I’ve got a busy schedule. What if I don’t agree?’

  ‘Then I shall arrest you on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Caroline Jarvis. I should also advise you that you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know.’ Chaudri shook his head in disgust.

  ‘—which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  They took him to Hornsey police station, where Kathy briefed a forensic team for a search of the van and tests of his tools and boots, and for the DNA from Chaudri’s earlier arrest to be checked against the trace found on Caroline’s purse. Then she and Judy began the interview.

  They started by focusing on his movements on the morning of Tuesday, 20 October, when Andrea Giannopoulos was murdered. Chaudri appeared calm, almost resigned. He had left the house at six that morning, he said, and while his wife took the children to school and then went on to work, he went to a hardware store for paint and other materials he would need for the jobs around the house he planned to do that day. He spent the rest of the day at home.

  The first results began to come in at twelve thirty and Kathy broke for lunch, arranging sandwiches and drinks for Chaudri and themselves. The hardware store confirmed that Chaudri’s credit card had been used at eight twenty-three am on the twentieth to buy items that matched the list he’d given Kathy. That left enough time for him to have killed Andrea at around seven am.

  The next result was less encouraging—Chaudri’s DNA didn’t match the trace on Caroline’s purse. Kathy bit her lip with impatience and they returned to the interview room.

  What had Chaudri been doing between six and eight twenty-three?

  His answer was unconvincing. The hardware store hadn’t opened when he first arrived and he had gone off somewhere—he couldn’t remember exactly where—for a coffee and a roll. He gave a vague description of the café and detectives were sent out with Chaudri’s picture to try to find it.

  They moved on to Saturday afternoon. What exactly was Chaudri’s route to the Spaniards Inn? He repeated what he’d told them earlier about coming into Hampstead from the opposite direction to Highgate, and Kathy ordered an urgent search of CCTV to check.

  At four pm she called another break and Chaudri said he wanted to get a solicitor.

  At four fifteen Kathy sat down with the forensics team leader. The results from the van and tool bag were disappointing. They had been unable to find any traces of either Andrea’s or Caroline’s DNA, and Chaudri’s hammers didn’t appear to match the post-mortem evidence for the two murders.

  Chaudri’s solicitor arrived at four fifty, and Kathy and Judy sat down with them soon after. Kathy told them that Chaudri was free to go, but that she wanted to retain his van and tools for further tests, and carry out a search of his home. Chaudri didn’t object, although the solicitor demanded search warrants.

  Kathy checked her watch and realised she was late for a meeting she’d arranged with a criminal profiler. She left Judy to follow up with Chaudri and returned to the Box feeling tired and frustrated.

  She’d first met Dr Alex Nicholson—now Professor Nicholson —a decade or more before. Then the criminal profiler had seemed improbably young and pretty, and her analysis hadn’t been much help. Now she had matured, acquired gravitas, and her manner was more cautious.

  She stared around at the activity in the office and accepted a coffee from Phil. ‘This is an informal meeting I take it, Chief Inspector? I’ve barely had time to read your notes. Haven’t we met before?’

  ‘Yes, with DCI Brock.’

  ‘Oh, David!’ Nicholson brightened. ‘Of course. How is he?’

  ‘Good. Just recently retired.’

  ‘Ah. Give him my best if you see him. So, you’ve been landed with a big one.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Lots of pressure for results?’

  ‘Very much so. I know this is early days for you, but with this second murder we’re seeing a pattern emerge and I’m hoping you can give us a few ideas. Please think freely.’

  The psychologist hesitated, tapped the file Kathy had given her, then finally spoke. ‘Okay. First the location—why Hampstead Heath? Pragmatic reasons—potential victims, plenty of cover? That’s practical, but two murders so close together does suggest something more personal to the killer, something specific. Or, as people are speculating, perhaps a socio-economic reason, because wealthy people live around there? Yet there’s no theft involved. So maybe a personal reason, a personal association with the place. Somewhere the killer was taken as a child? Or maybe where he lost someone close—have there ever been drownings in those ponds? Whatever the reason, I’d assume that he knows the Heath well, either because he’s lived around there or else has scouted out the locations recently.’

  Kathy said, ‘There have been two accidental drownings in those ponds in recent years, but we haven’t been able to make a connection to our cases. I’ll send you our notes.’

  ‘Well, second, the type of assault: very violent, very specific and very unusual, like an attempt to obliterate the identity of the victims, o
r perhaps their intelligence.

  ‘Third, the victims, both women, wealthy, the wives of powerful men. Have you found anything else to connect them?’

  ‘No. They didn’t know each other, nor did their husbands, and as far as we’ve been able to establish they had nothing else in common.’

  ‘Well, there have been plenty of theories to explain male violence against women, if that’s what this is. Assuming it is, we could speculate about a man who was abandoned by his mother, or wife; someone who feels inadequate in the presence of women, impotent perhaps; someone who’s been saturated in a misogynistic culture of some kind.’

  Kathy nodded, unimpressed. This was routine stuff.

  ‘Look,’ Nicholson said, ‘you’ve already thought of all these things, and I’m sure you’re looking into past crimes on the Heath—stalking incidents, assaults—but there’s one thing screaming out at me here, Kathy.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Two identical murders within just five days. That is not a normal pattern for a serial killer. Usually they build up to it, developing over time with weeks or months between attacks, but here we have the fully formed act bursting onto the scene—the same scene—twice in rapid succession. Why?’

  Kathy nodded. ‘Yes, why?’

  Professor Nicholson frowned. ‘This has been stewing inside his head for a long time, and in great detail, but he’s been prevented from implementing his fantasies until now. Has he been overseas, or held in prison or some other institution? Now, suddenly, he’s free to do it. And why should he stop now?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of. Let’s talk about the killer then. Male?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. Statistically likely, but this case is different. Was physical strength involved?’

  ‘The hammer used would have been fairly weighty, maybe one and a half or two kilograms.’

  ‘Quite possible for a woman to swing.’

  ‘Both bodies were dragged a short distance into cover, but they weren’t heavy. Could it have been two killers, or more?’

  ‘Again, I can’t say. It would have been muddy, wouldn’t it? Didn’t the footprints tell you?’

  Kathy explained that the footprint analysis was ambiguous. Heavy rain at the first site had hampered forensics, but recovered prints suggested a match with prints of an Adidas Swift Run sneaker at the second. However, the ground had been much more disturbed at the second scene, possibly as a result of a struggle, and there were many more prints, some of which might have been made by another shoe of the same make, by a heavier assailant. They just weren’t sure.

  Kathy thanked Nicholson and they agreed to meet again in a couple of days, then Kathy returned to her computer and the endless stream of incoming reports.

  4

  Early morning drizzle, Brock shrugged on his raincoat, took up an umbrella and kissed Suzanne goodbye. He made his way up the high street, past the Abbey School and the long stone wall alongside the abbey and the fields on which, in 1066, the invading Norman army won the battle after which the town was named and changed the course of English history. The road continued down Lower Lake to the turning to the station, where he caught the London train. He enjoyed this weekly journey, an hour and a half across the Sussex and Kent countryside and through South London, then the local train to Dulwich and the walk to the archway into the courtyard where the leaves of the big chestnut tree lay thick on the cobbles, and into Warren Lane.

  He opened his front door and climbed the stairs to his living room on the first floor, switching on the lights and the central heating, and settled down to the ongoing chore of culling the filing cabinets and box files, as ever amazed at how much stuff he’d accumulated over the years.

  At midday he abandoned the chore, picked out several novels from the staircase on his way down and caught a train up to Blackfriars. Three stops on the Circle line took him to Westminster and the Two Chairmen, the small eighteenth-century pub at the end of Queen Anne’s Gate. It was a gesture to the past, a visit to their local when they all worked together in the homicide annexe nearby. It was quiet inside and he ordered two pints and took a seat at a corner table.

  After five minutes a familiar figure strode in and Brock got to his feet. Bren Gurney grinned when he saw him and came over, hand outstretched. Formerly a key member of Brock’s team, Bren was now based at New Scotland Yard, a few blocks away, part of a specialist planning and research unit of Homicide and Serious Crime. They ordered lunch and talked, exchanging news. The youngest of Bren’s three daughters had just started at Exeter University, and he talked about their trip down to see her, and his feelings about returning to the county from which his family originated.

  Then, inevitably, the conversation turned to the past, to great times. They bemoaned the loss of their old base, that warren of offices at 9 Queen Anne’s Gate and its well-kept secret, the Bride of Denmark, the snug bar in the basement made up of furniture and fittings salvaged at the end of the war from old bombed-out London pubs by the previous owners, an architectural publisher. And they recalled old murders and their triumphant conclusions, celebrated here in the Two Chairmen.

  Their glasses were empty, and Bren rose to refill them and order lunch. Brock looked around him at the ancient beams, the original fireplace and the painting on the wall of the two ‘chair men’, the sedan chair porters who once frequented the tavern. All so familiar, and yet now somehow remote. And he was seized by a sudden resolution—no more nostalgia, no more grieving for the past. Only the future existed.

  5

  Tuesday, 27 October: D-Day. Kathy woke with a headache, convinced now that she wasn’t going to be able to give Torrens what he wanted by the end of the day. It just wasn’t that kind of a case—there had been no forensic breakthrough, no witnesses, no panicky phone calls from women confessing the ugly truth about their partners. In the end, it would be solved by patiently grinding down the data until something emerged. But what would happen in the meantime? And how could they prevent it? Blanket the Heath with patrols and cameras? He might just move away to another killing ground: Holland Park, Richmond Park, Dulwich Park—there were dozens of parks across London where he might start up again. All the same, they had introduced frequent patrols, together with the City of London Police who, by a quirk of history, were the body responsible for policing Hampstead Heath. They had also mounted extra CCTV cameras on the Heath and were experimenting with regular drone overflights. Sensible precautions, but hardly investigative policing. She felt as if they were just covering their backs.

  She began the day with a big briefing session, hoping that something new might emerge. She was disappointed. Jabbar Chaudri had now definitely been eliminated and no other suspect stood out. It seemed they had thought of everything and achieved nothing. The meeting broke up and she returned to her computer.

  At midday she was still there, eyes glazed, sipping a coffee and eating a sandwich, when her phone rang.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Kolla? I’m the duty inspector at Kentish Town police station, ma’am. I think we’ve got something you need to look at. Sounds like one of yours.’

  She couldn’t understand why this was coming from Kentish Town and not the City of London Police. ‘On Hampstead Heath?’

  ‘Not on the Heath, ma’am. In a house nearby, in Hampstead.’

  In a house? Kathy shook her head. This didn’t sound right. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Parliament Hill Close, number fourteen. Looks like someone was murdered with a hammer. Bloody mess, apparently.’

  Kathy hurriedly wrote down the details and got to her feet, shouting instructions, the office erupting around her. She took the lift downstairs, jumped into the waiting car and they set off, siren blaring. Checking her tablet, she saw that the address was almost exactly midway between the two earlier murder sites.

  She listened on her phone to an update. Two constables had attended a call from a woman at a house in one of the streets on the southern edge of the Heath. In a bedroom upstairs they ha
d found what looked like a scene from an abattoir. Detectives had arrived, found a woman’s body among the blood-soaked bedding and called for backup.

  They arrived at the house, a red-brick Victorian villa outside which several emergency vehicles were double-parked. The Kentish Town detective waiting at the door gave Kathy a quick rundown.

  ‘Crime scene are here, ma’am. They don’t want anyone upstairs at present. Ms Nadia Gruszka made the call, and is in the sitting room with a constable. She comes here every Tuesday morning to clean for the owner, a Mr Charles Pettigrew. She arrived at eight, by which time Pettigrew had left—gone to work, she assumed, to his office in the West End. Her account got a bit confusing after that, but what it seems to amount to is that she didn’t get to the upstairs rooms till about eleven, when she discovered the mess in the spare bedroom at the back. I’ve been up there and it’s a bloodbath. God knows who’s underneath it all, but I thought it might be connected to the Heath murders and asked our inspector to get on to you.’

  ‘Has anyone tried to contact Pettigrew?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. We’ll take over now.’

  Kathy took plastic gloves and overshoes from her shoulder bag and made for the stairs. A figure in forensic overalls and a mask came out onto the landing ahead of her and she introduced herself.

  ‘We’ll be at least another hour before you can come in,’ he said. ‘But the victim is a youngish female, slender build, brown skin, with long wavy hair, very black. Probably South Asian ethnicity. Like the others, no possibility of facial identification. She’s lying in the bed fully clothed in jeans and shirt. The killer covered her with the sheet before attacking her. Massive trauma to the head. No other visible wounds apart from the head. No identification on her person or in this room. She wore glasses—there’s a pair lying on the floor.’

  ‘Time of death?’

  ‘Within the last twenty-four hours. Can’t say better than that at the moment.’