Out of Sight

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘They’ve had plenty of time to dispose of anything,’ pointed out Hardwick.

  ‘True, but as the saying goes, every contact leaves a trace,’ said Pymm. ‘They’re going to dismantle their plumbing and washing machines to look for Anish’s blood. A dog team are on their way in case there are any blood spots too small to see.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope they get lucky,’ said Warren, looking at his watch. ‘In the meantime, Gotam Patel’s day is going to get even worse. A team from Trading Standards are due any moment to have a little word about those dodgy cigarettes that his sons have been selling under the counter.’

  Chapter 39

  ‘The hoodie found at Leon Grime’s allotment is from the same batch as the one Anish bought from Middlesbury Sports and Leisure,’ Sutton told the afternoon briefing. ‘If what we believe is true, and Anish was murdered on the Thursday night, then that’s his killer wearing his clothes on the hotel reception CCTV. Forensics are looking for any trace DNA or other evidence they may have left behind, but it’ll likely be a mixed profile; it’ll take time to separate the wearer from Anish.’

  ‘What about the rest of the clothes that were found?’ asked Warren.

  ‘The jeans look similar to the ones on the CCTV,’ said Sutton, ‘but we can’t be certain they’re his without matching the DNA. But any foreign DNA will be hard to explain away.

  ‘And his shoes?’

  ‘That’s more interesting,’ said Sutton. ‘Andy is pretty confident that his shoes match one of the sets of footprints on the grass verge next to where his body was dumped.’

  ‘Well, we know that Anish was dead before he was laid in that ditch, so he can’t have been walked down there,’ said Warren. ‘Which means that there were definitely two people, because one of them was wearing Anish’s shoes. Anything from his wallet and keys?’

  ‘Nothing useful,’ said Sutton. ‘There’s no cash but his bank cards were there. No surprise; his bank records show that nobody was foolish enough to use a dead man’s credit card. His driver’s licence was also present, so the killer knew his address and could send those text messages from nearby.

  ‘Unfortunately, Forensics haven’t found any useful trace evidence yet. The backpack is the wrong type of material to easily retain fingerprints and the wallet doesn’t even have Anish’s on it, so the killer clearly made the effort to clean it.’

  ‘Which does beg the question why Leon Grime still had it?’ said Warren. ‘You’d think if he was that forensically aware he’d have ditched it – cut all the cards into small bits, scattered them in waste bins around town then stuck the wallet in a plastic bag with a brick and chucked it in the river.’

  ‘You should have been a criminal, Boss, you’re a natural,’ said Sutton.

  ‘What about the keys?’ asked Warren, after the laughter had died down.

  ‘Again, no fingerprints. Two of the keys matched Anish’s flat’s front door. There was no car key, which makes sense given that he left his car at Middlesbury Rental Vehicles.’

  ‘So, what are we missing? We have his outer clothing, wallet and keys stuffed in the backpack he was using that night,’ asked Warren.

  ‘Just his phone,’ said Pymm. ‘That’s been off the network for two weeks, handset and SIM.’

  ‘It was a nice one as well,’ said Sutton. ‘This year’s latest model. Maybe the killer will try to sell it?’

  ‘We can only hope,’ said Warren. ‘Unfortunately, there is little of any use from any of the cars being investigated. No trace linked to Anish in Leon Grime’s car. Similarly, nothing of any interest in Anish’s Mercedes, which is hardly surprising. The GPS shows that it never went anywhere near the Easy Break Hotel that night, or any other night. Nicholas Kimpton doesn’t own a vehicle.

  ‘They’re still finishing up the hire car, but it had been given a really good clean, inside and out, with the couple that hired it next saying it smelled strongly of cleaning products. Theirs are the only fingerprints. Mr Latham, the owner of the hire car firm, confirms that he hasn’t valeted it for weeks, so it’s suspicious that there’s no trace of Anish or previous customers. Even the keyfob is spotless. There are some fibres that are being checked against the other customers to see if they can isolate anything from the killer.

  ‘We know that whoever drove the car on the Friday morning was wearing Anish’s clothes, and we’re fairly certain that there were two people at the dumping site. Any fibres that don’t match Anish or other customers could be from the second person.’

  ‘I’ve had no luck tracking down where the car was cleaned,’ said Hardwick. ‘Nothing on the CCTV from local garage forecourts, and if the killer used a hand carwash, they either can’t or won’t remember him,’ she said. ‘Interestingly though, the carpet covering the spare tyre is missing. Latham is confident it was there when Anish hired the car.’

  ‘Which suggests that they may have placed Anish in the boot to transport him,’ said Sutton. ‘Can we rule out that he died in there? He had a dicky ticker; if they were kidnapping him for money, they could have driven him somewhere, opened the boot and had a nasty surprise.’

  ‘I’ll check with Prof. Jordan,’ said Warren. ‘But aside from the bump on the back of his head, he reported no other fresh bruising; you’d have thought he’d have been bouncing around in there. Either way, we need to find that carpet; they got rid of it for a reason.

  ‘Where are we with the tyres, Moray?’

  ‘Forensics believe they have identified the tyres that were replaced on the hire car,’ said Ruskin. ‘Mr Latham confirms that it should still have had the original Goodyears that it came with; he was not impressed that they were replaced with cheaper Runways. The good news is that the original tyres are caked with mud. The soil specialists are doing a comparison with the dumping site, but the tread patterns match. I think we can be pretty certain that the car was used to dump Anish’s body, and then had the tyres switched to hide that it had been there.’

  ‘Speaking of the killer, what can the garage owner tell us?’ asked Warren.

  Ruskin scowled. ‘Two-thirds of bugger-all. He reckons it was still dark that time of morning, and the guy was wearing a black hoodie and gloves; he claims not to even remember if he was white, black or Asian. The customer handed over the keys and the cash outside, then disappeared off for twenty minutes or so. When the job was finished, Johnson left the keys in the ignition. Easy money.’

  ‘And that’s all he saw?’ Sutton’s tone was sceptical.

  ‘So he says, although he’s agreed to look at some headshots after I hinted that our forensic accountants might need to look closely at his paper ledger,’ Ruskin smiled. ‘Just as a point of interest, I walked to Anish’s flat and back to the garage within twenty minutes.’

  ‘So the same person could easily have sent that text,’ said Sutton.

  Warren looked back over his notes. ‘This customer rang Mr Johnson’s mobile to open up early. Do we have his number?’

  ‘Johnson claims that the number was withheld,’ said Ruskin.

  ‘I’ll bet he does,’ muttered Warren. ‘OK, raise a warrant for his phone records. In the meantime, I need to have a conversation with the CPS about Leon Grime. We’ve got until tomorrow to decide if we have enough to charge, or if we have to release him again.’

  Saturday 10th December

  Chapter 40

  Warren wasn’t sure exactly what he was expecting when the man known as HotnReady on the Rainbow Hookups dating site dropped by the station, after being told that the police were looking for him. His profile on the website and the account of his neighbour had certainly painted a different picture to the smartly dressed research scientist that had been signed in at the front desk.

  ‘It sounds as though Dr Stewart Fallon leads a bit of a double-life,’ relayed Hutchinson to the team briefing. ‘He’s openly gay and certainly not ashamed of it, but he’d rather his co-workers and friends and family don’t see his online dating profile.’

  ‘I’ll bet,
’ said Sutton.

  ‘Anyway, he says that’s why he uses a burner phone; he likes to keep that side of his life separate.’

  ‘Do you think he might be a sex-worker?’ asked Hardwick.

  ‘I don’t think so; he was somewhat affronted when I dropped a hint that he might be. He admits to enjoying “the single life” as he puts it, but he thinks the old lady downstairs, who he says is “as blind as a bat”, probably mistakes his brothers staying over, or work colleagues crashing on the sofa after the pub, for sexual conquests.’

  ‘What did he say about Anish?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Straight up admitted to meeting him, no pause,’ said Hutchinson. ‘He said that the two of them had a few drinks, then Anish came back to his. They had sex and he stayed a few hours and then they went their separate ways. Both of them were after nothing more than a bit of fun, and that’s all they had. No more contact since then.’

  ‘Well, that fits the mobile phone activity and location data,’ said Pymm. ‘They contacted each other mid-week at the end of September with a couple of texts, then Anish’s handset co-localised with Fallon’s handset on the high-street just before 7 p.m. on Saturday October 1st. Anish turned his phone off, but Fallon’s phone does a circuit of the bars, before going back to his flat where it stayed. Anish’s phone turned back on just after 1 a.m., outside his own flat. There was no more contact.’

  ‘I’m getting tired of asking,’ said Sutton, ‘but did they communicate via WhatsApp or other apps?’

  ‘He claims not,’ said Hutchinson with a shrug.

  ‘So, what about an alibi?’ asked Warren. ‘And where has he been the last couple of weeks? His neighbour claims he disappears a lot.’

  ‘The regular disappearances are to do with work apparently,’ replied Hutchinson. ‘He’s a physicist and he often travels abroad to conferences. As to the last couple of weeks, he and a dozen of his university friends were having a final blow-out in the Canaries before two of the group have a baby and they have to start acting like grown-ups.’

  ‘Yeah, kids will do that,’ interjected Pymm. ‘We haven’t had a week of hedonism and drunken debauchery since I got pregnant with Tilly. She’s thirteen now; God, I’m sick of Center Parcs.’

  As the laughter died down, Warren put a line through the man’s name. He’d turn it into a cross when they’d finished checking out his story.

  ‘What about Mr Brown Bear and Blondie92?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘No luck with either yet,’ said Pymm. ‘The mobile phone companies report that neither men’s SIM cards or handsets have been used recently, so we can’t locate them.’

  ‘Any luck tracing Mr Brown Bear’s partner?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Her house hasn’t been let since she left, as it’s being renovated. The neighbour says that Ms Weybridge had lived there long before Brown Bear — or rather Deepak — came on the scene. He thinks he was some sort of casual labourer. It was rented in her name, and he wasn’t on the electoral roll or council tax records, presumably so they could claim the twenty-five per cent single adult discount. She paid that in cash at the Post Office, and the landlord’s name was on the utilities bills.’

  ‘What about a forwarding address?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘None for Deepak, which is not surprising,’ said Pymm. ‘If he was dodging council tax, he was probably flying under the radar. The landlord also claims not to have anything for Ms Weybridge. He reckons she agreed to give up her deposit in lieu of her final month’s rent and then cleared off. He said that she had a Liverpool accent, and mentioned “going back to live with her mam”. Either way, nobody with that surname has appeared on the electoral register this year at a new address.’

  Warren chewed his pen thoughtfully. ‘She must have been paying her rent somehow. Does her landlord have her bank details?’

  ‘Nope, she paid by cash, and before you ask, she paid her TV licence at the Post Office the same way.’

  ‘DVLA?’ suggested Richardson.

  ‘Neither of them owned a car,’ said Pymm.

  ‘It’s the twenty-first century, how can someone be untraceable when we have their full name and their last known address?’ asked Ruskin.

  It was a rhetorical question, but Pymm answered anyway. ‘Not everyone has a bank account that lets them pay by direct debit, so companies still have to accept cash or cheque. I’ll bet there’s a substantial difference between the amount of rent she paid and the rent her landlord declares for tax purposes.’

  ‘Not unheard of that end of town,’ said Sutton.

  Ruskin snorted. ‘Alex used to rent a room in a four-bedroom house at uni. There were actually five rooms, with the bloke in the box room paying his rent in cash.’

  ‘She had kids,’ said Hardwick. ‘They must have been at a local school. Could we find her that way? Even if the kids had their father’s surname, she would be registered as a contact. What about the doctor and dentist or even benefits?’

  ‘If their home life was that unsettled, they may have been known to social services,’ suggested Richardson.

  ‘Well, that’s given you plenty to keep busy with,’ said Warren. ‘We still don’t have a clear motive yet and there’s no guarantee that the Patel brothers were involved in Anish’s death, so keep on looking. In the meantime, Leon Grime is due in court this morning after we charged him last night. I need to go and plead our case to the magistrate, otherwise our number one suspect will get bail.’

  ‘Remember that helpful neighbour of Manoj Patel’s with the CCTV camera?’ said Richardson, as soon as Warren returned from court. The magistrate had been sympathetic to the CPS’s decision to charge Leon Grime and had remanded him in custody for conspiracy to commit murder. They couldn’t prove that he was the one who had killed Anish Patel – and the cause of death was still outstanding – but the court had agreed that there was sufficient evidence linking Grime to the events that night for a case to be answered. Grime had been led away still protesting his innocence.

  ‘The neighbour that showed Manoj Patel was lying about his whereabouts the night that Anish was killed?’ Warren answered her.

  Richardson passed over her tablet computer. ‘This is a log of every car entering or leaving the house. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: Manoj coming and going around the time he says he leaves for work, his wife’s car doing the school run and after-school clubs. Then the usual to-and-fro you’d see from a family with young kids at the weekend.’

  ‘Go on.’ He’d heard Richardson’s stomach rumbling as she entered his office; she wouldn’t postpone her lunch break without good reason.

  ‘This is from the day that the family were told about Anish’s death.’

  Richardson switched to a video clip. Warren watched as a car pulled into Manoj Patel’s empty driveway, the rear of the vehicle just visible. A few seconds after stopping, someone – presumably the driver – appeared in shot. Only the person’s lower torso was visible, making identification impossible. But it wasn’t necessary; they had the car’s licence plate.

  Opening the boot, the person reached inside and pulled out a cardboard box. Warren squinted at the logo on the side of the box.

  ‘Now we know where he got those dodgy fags from.’

  Chapter 41

  ‘Sir, you have a visitor downstairs. They’re quite distraught and insist that they need to speak to you now,’ Janice was standing at the office door. ‘Do you want to talk to them, or shall I tell them you’re busy?’

  After Richardson’s revelation, Warren was busy, preparing for another interview with the Patel brothers. Nevertheless, in his experience, people tended not to walk into the station without good reason.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Janice told him.

  ‘On my way.’

  The two brothers weren’t going anywhere and he really wanted to hear what his visitor had to say.

  The face of Reva Vasava, Anish Patel’s sister, was puffy from crying. Unlike the last time she had arrived at the station unannounce
d, she wasn’t wearing her expensive cashmere coat and jewellery. She also had her solicitor in tow. The lawyer held a thick manila envelope in one hand and a laptop case in the other.

  ‘I wish to make a statement,’ she said, the moment Warren greeted her at the front desk.

  ‘Follow me then,’ said Warren, heading towards interview suite one. ‘Have DI Sutton meet me,’ he instructed the desk sergeant. The timing couldn’t have been better. The team had planned on bringing her in after they had interviewed her brothers again, to address the issues raised in her father’s interview the previous day.

  ‘You’ve arrested my brothers over Anish’s murder,’ she started, after Sutton had joined them. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Warren, eyeing her carefully.

  ‘May I ask why?’ Her voice betrayed her lack of confidence.

  ‘I’m afraid that I can’t give details of an ongoing investigation.’

  Vasava bit her lip, before taking a deep breath. ‘My brothers cannot account for their whereabouts on the night of Anish’s murder.’

  Warren said nothing.

  ‘You have also found a significant number of illegal cigarettes in Manoj’s garden shed.’

  Again, Warren said nothing. Apparently, Vasava had more to say, and he was interested to know how much of what she told him she knew for a fact, and how much she had worked out. It was clear that the family’s solicitors were pooling information, making Warren doubly wary about how much information to disclose in each interview.

  The question on his mind was, why was Vasava here? Did she have information that she wished to share? She had, after all, been the one to first draw their attention to the clause in Gotam Patel’s will that effectively cut Anish out of his inheritance – a revelation that now raised more questions than it answered.

  On the other hand, was she simply on a fishing expedition? Or was it something more devious? Was she trying to muddy the waters to protect or even implicate her brothers and father?