Jigsaw Man, page 22
‘This is more important. Get somebody else to speak to her, maybe Hannah. Tell her it doesn’t have to be today, if she can’t fit it in. Mrs Tier said she saw Spike in the street after the inquest and that the property was broken into a few days later. I wonder why he bothered to come back. If he’d left something behind, it wouldn’t still be in the house. I’ll speak to Steele and see if she thinks it’s worth searching the garden, although my guess is he probably found whatever it was he was looking for. In the meantime, get hold of a copy of the autopsy report and find out what happened to the body. Also find out what was done with the stuff recovered from the basement. There was apparently a suitcase with men’s clothing in it by the front door.’
As he turned away, his phone started ringing. He saw Melinda’s name on the screen and let it go to voicemail. Deal or no deal, he was nowhere near ready to talk to her yet.
Thirty-three
Gunner had been up and about relatively late that morning, thundering down the stairs past Adam’s room to the kitchen, the smell of bacon cooking and coffee wafting upwards about twenty minutes later. Just after ten, Adam heard him galloping back upstairs. Five minutes later the old pipes, which ran down the back of the house, started shuddering and clunking away as Gunner took a bath and, no doubt, emptied the entire contents of the small hot-water tank. He would have to wait to have his shower later. Every so often, he heard the sound of water being run again, as though the bath was being topped up. He imagined Gunner wallowing in the water, no doubt smoking one of his foul cigarettes as he listened to Kit’s radio. It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that he heard the sound of the bath being emptied. He got dressed quickly and waited. Eventually he heard Gunner come back down the stairs, thud along the hall, then bang the front door shut. Careful to make sure that he locked the bedroom door behind him, Adam put on his jacket, shouldered the small rucksack he carried everywhere with him during the day, and followed Gunner out into the street.
Dressed casually in a leather jacket and jeans, Gunner marched towards Kensington Church Street, then turned left towards Notting Hill Gate. At that time of day there were enough people around to make it easy to blend in, but there was no need to worry; Gunner didn’t look back once. He walked with the easy, purposeful stride of somebody who knew where he was going and wasn’t particularly bothered by his surroundings. He seemed oblivious to the fact he was being followed.
He crossed over Notting Hill Gate and headed north along Pembridge Villas, then turned down the Portobello Road. It was market day and the street was thronged with tourists milling around the antiques and bric-a-brac stalls. It was difficult to walk through the crowd, but Adam had no problem keeping track of Gunner. He was a head taller than most of those around him. He headed downhill, pausing at a food stall to buy a cup of coffee, then at another to buy a pastry, as though he had no plan. Adam was beginning to feel he was wasting his time and he felt hungry. Unlike Gunner, he had had no breakfast, let alone anything extra. The smell of coffee wafted from one of the stands, followed by the fresh, doughy smell of pancakes. Someone else was selling roasted chestnuts, something that reminded him of his childhood, when his witch of a grandmother used to cook them on a shovel over the fire. He could see Gunner a little way in front, stopped again in front of a second-hand bookstall. He was deep in conversation with the owner and looked as though he would be there for a while. Unable to resist any longer, he dug his wallet out of his rucksack and bought a bag of chestnuts. When he looked up again, Gunner had gone.
He stood eating the chestnuts, watching the road in front, but Gunner was nowhere to be seen. The chestnuts had barely made a dent in his hunger and he decided he needed a proper breakfast. He went into one of the antique markets, followed the signs up the stairs to a little café on the first floor, and sat down and ordered a full English breakfast. It was only when he came to pay that he realised his wallet, with two hundred pounds in cash and a couple of Kit’s credit cards, was gone.
Thirty-four
Tartaglia walked into Steele’s office. She had been out all morning but was now back behind her desk and on the phone. It sounded as though she was talking to somebody in the Press Office. She motioned Tartaglia to take one of the chairs on the other side of her desk and he sat down, half listening to what she was saying as he watched the rain spatter and streak down the grimy window behind her.
The autopsy report on the unknown man in Peckham had proved an interesting read. Sufficient tissue had survived to show that the victim had been drinking heavily before he died. The blood alcohol concentration level was 0.26 per cent, roughly three times the legal drink/drive limit, not that he had been driving anywhere. On its own, it was probably sufficient to render him unconscious eventually, but the results also showed traces of the sedative Temazepam. It was a lethal combination. The pathologist had removed samples of lung tissue to check for evidence of smoke inhalation. In the process of opening up his trachea, he had found scar tissue, indicating some form of surgery to the man’s neck, the details of which he had fully documented. He also noted a tibial shaft fracture to the left leg, with a metal rod inserted into the bone. Results from the lung tissue samples showed that the man had been alive when the fire started, and the conclusion was that in his drunken, uncoordinated state, he must have knocked over the stove before passing out on the mattress.
Steele put down the phone and swivelled around in her chair to face him. ‘Any news?’
‘It looks like it’s Richard English,’ he said.
‘What, a part of him?’
‘Possibly his entire body, although until we exhume him we won’t know for sure. But Ian Armstrong confirms that English broke his neck ten years ago in a skiing accident and had major surgery. I’ve managed to speak to the consultant who performed the operation and he said that what the pathologist found at the autopsy tallies with the procedure he’d done. Armstrong also remembered that English had once broken his leg – he thinks it was the left. Apparently, the pins used to set off metal detectors at the airport.’
She sat back in her chair and exhaled. ‘So it looks as though the MO changed. Nothing new in that, I guess.’
He nodded. It would keep the press busy with endless speculation, once they found out. He could already picture the interviews with various profilers trying to make sense of the killer’s actions. But from their point of view, with so little to go on, there was no point wasting precious time thinking about it. Often it was best just to stick to the facts. ‘We’re trying to track down the lung tissue samples that were taken, so that we can confirm the DNA.’
‘Where’s the body?’
‘In a pauper’s grave in Camberwell New Cemetery. I’ll hold off on an exhumation order until we see if we can find the samples.’
‘What about the body on the south coast?’
‘I spoke to Ramsey and he’s looking into it.’
‘OK, assuming it’s Richard English in the Peckham fire two years ago, why plant his wallet and keys at the Sainsbury’s fire?’
‘My guess is the killer wanted to draw attention to what he’d done. He wanted it known that Richard English was dead and that he’d killed him. Maybe he was disappointed that the fire had been dismissed as an accident. He must’ve really hated English to do what he did to him, to know that English was alive, even if he was drugged, when he started the fire. So maybe by putting the wallet and keys where we’d find them, he’s saying, “I nailed him.”’
‘What’s the connection between English and the others?’
‘Still unclear.’
‘Then this needs to be kept out of the press domain for now, certainly as far as any connection with the Jigsaw murders is concerned. I’ll call Ian Armstrong and explain.’
He nodded. ‘I need to borrow Nick’s car, then I’m off in a minute to see a man called Colin Price who may be able to help. He used to be the manager of one of English’s hotels until he was sacked. When he threatened legal action, he was paid off. It sounds as though English may have wanted to hush it up, for some reason. Since then, Price has been running a hotel near Oxford.’
‘Tell me about Richard English,’ Tartaglia asked.
Colin Price folded his hands primly in front of him on his leather-topped desk. ‘You want the honest truth?’
‘Yes. Warts and all, please.’
‘He was a hateful man. He may have been a successful businessman, but I haven’t got a good word to say about him as a person, even knowing now that he’s dead. There was no kindness, no humanity.’
They were sitting in Price’s tidy, spacious office in the basement of Bletchingdon Manor Hotel, a neo classical mansion surrounded by parkland, close to Blenheim Palace, just over an hour’s drive from Barnes. Price was dressed in a dark suit and tie and looked to be in his early forties. Slim and of medium height, with thinning fair hair, he sat upright behind the desk, as though at an interview, his soft-featured face tense with emotion, small beads of sweat peppering his high forehead.
‘You clearly feel strongly about him. What exactly did he do?’
‘On the surface, it was all very businesslike. He wasn’t violent and he rarely shouted. It was all far subtler than that. If he took against you for some reason, he’d find your weak spot and hound you.’
‘He was a bully?’
Price nodded. ‘Luckily he wasn’t around all the time, but I used to dread his visits. It’s why there was a high turnover of staff. I suspect he was homophobic, although of course he tried to appear the opposite.’
‘What did you do wrong, in his eyes?’
‘He found out I was in a relationship with somebody else who worked at the hotel, one of the sommeliers.’
‘Which hotel was this?’
‘Stoneleigh Park, near Dartmoor. It’s the flagship hotel in the group.’
Tartaglia nodded. He remembered the brochure in Armstrong’s office.
‘The restaurant’s got a star, or at least it did when I was there,’ Price continued. ‘We managed to keep things quiet – it was nobody’s business and I don’t like staff gossiping about my private life. We were always careful to meet outside the hotel but someone spotted us in a pub on our night off. Anyway, it was all around the hotel by the next morning. From then on, things between Richard and me changed. He never mentioned that he knew, but it was obvious. He made things very unpleasant. Luckily, I started to keep a note of things he said and did, and when it got worse, I bought myself a little hidden recorder. I knew he was trying to get rid of me and I didn’t want it to ruin my chances of getting another job. They followed the correct dismissal procedure, of course, but it was all a tissue of lies. When the final warning came, I had already contacted a solicitor. To cut a long story short, I threatened to publicise the notes and recordings I had, as well as publicise some other things I’d seen Richard do. His partner, Ian, sorted things out in the end.’
‘He offered you money to keep quiet?’
‘Yes. Quite a large sum. He also provided me with a reference saying I’d resigned. At least I left with my reputation intact.’
Tartaglia nodded. It explained why Ian Armstrong had been keen to stop McCann from speaking to Colin Price. The incident had been an embarrassment for the company and was not the sort of thing they would like widely known. But perhaps McCann had read a little too much into it. As far as Tartaglia was concerned, Price looked nothing like the description of Chris aka Spike – the name they were now calling him – and wasn’t a likely suspect.
‘Do you have any idea who might want to kill him?’
Price smiled. ‘When I heard he’d disappeared, well . . . But there’s a big difference between wishing someone dead and actually doing something about it. Has he been found?’
‘Possibly. Do you know who this man is?’ Tartaglia pulled out the E-FIT of the man called Spike.
Price studied it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Wish I did. If he had anything to do with getting rid of Richard English, I’d like to buy him a drink.’
Thirty-five
Adam had found it impossible to leave the café without paying. No amount of explaining that his wallet had been stolen and that he would come back later with the money had made any difference. A large man wearing a ponytail and a sweat-stained denim shirt, who claimed to be a security guard for the antique arcade, had appeared from nowhere and blocked the doorway. Clearly burned by previous experience, the middle-aged female owner had threatened to call the police until he handed over his watch. Nothing else he had offered had been acceptable. The watch was a black-faced Rolex Submariner, which had belonged to Kit and was worth several thousand pounds, even in its battered state. It irked him to have to leave it behind, even for half an hour until he came back with some cash, but what else could he do? He certainly didn’t want the police called. All for a measly fucking twelve quid fifty. The food hadn’t even been that good. He made the woman sign a full receipt with her name, address and phone number. He wished he could make her write it in her own blood.
As he marched back up the hill towards Notting Hill Gate, he tried to think back. The last time he had the wallet was when he bought the chestnuts. After paying for them, he remembered holding the burningly hot bag in one hand as he struggled to push the wallet into the zip pocket of his jacket with the other. People were milling around him all the time, but he wasn’t aware of anybody bumping into him or trying to distract him, while somebody else dipped his pocket. Maybe the wallet had just fallen out somehow, but instinct told him otherwise. It was annoying about the cash, but he could afford to lose the two hundred pounds. There was the cash in the rucksack under his bed, and more still in the lockup. It was also annoying to lose Kit’s credit card, although it was near its limit, as anybody trying to use it would soon find out. He had others to fall back on, safely stowed away from Kit’s house and Gunner.
Five minutes later, he was in Bedford Gardens. He opened the front door and found a letter for Kit inside on the floor. It looked like some sort of boring circular and he tossed it onto the hall table on top of the small pile of Kit’s accumulated post. He would go through it all later, once he had sorted out Gunner. As he shut the door, he noticed a brown padded envelope lying behind it on the mat. Turning the package over, he saw with surprise that it appeared to be for him, the name Tom printed on the front in black felt tip. There was no address or postmark. It had been hand delivered. It felt like a book and he tore open the package. Inside was a hardback copy of The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The red dust jacket was dog-eared and foxed, and it smelt musty as though it had been kept somewhere damp. The drawing on the cover showed a pair of spectacle frames and the outline of a dead man.
He felt the blood rush to his face as he stood staring at the picture, wondering what to do. He hadn’t read the stupid book, but he had seen the film and remembered the plot clearly enough to know that somebody was trying to make a point. Somebody was pulling his chain. Was it Gunner? Had he bought the book at the market stall? If so, he must have raced back to Kit’s house to put it there, although why go to the trouble of putting it in an envelope and shoving it through the door? The only other person who knew him as Tom was Hannah Bird, but she didn’t know where he lived.
There was a parallel of sorts between Ripley’s situation and his, and between Dickie’s death and Kit’s, although that little godforsaken pocket of Thailand where he had holed up for a few weeks with Kit was nothing like San Remo. There the similarities ended. Ripley was a low-life conman and Dickie’s killing was amateurish. By contrast, he had planned Kit’s final moments down to the last detail. Nor had he scuttled the boat. It would have been a waste and what would have been the point? He had made sure nobody saw them go off in it. There was nobody waiting for their return who would notice, let alone care, that only one person came back; there was nobody to miss Kit. And even if one of the locals did remember him, he was just another in a long line of drinking buddies and hangers-on that lonely Kit had picked up at one of the many nearby tourist bars. Adam had allowed himself to be picked up. His money was running out after many months of travelling and he needed somewhere to stay while he worked out what to do next. Some drunken Aussie in another bar had told him about the Englishman with more money than sense and it hadn’t been hard to find Kit and get his attention. Kit must have thought he’d struck it lucky that night with Adam, but the boot was on the other foot. The reality had probably only dawned in Kit’s pickled brain weeks later, on the afternoon he died.
Each moment of that day was still sharp in his mind. It had been Kit’s forty-second birthday. Adam could still feel the shimmering heat, taste the salt in the air. Kit didn’t get up until almost midday, which was normal. When he eventually struggled out of bed, he was in a funny mood and couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to do. Adam remembered getting increasingly angry as time passed. The plan they had made the night before had been to go snorkelling on the reef, then have a light snack on the beach with cocktails, and watch the sun go down. It had a romantic appeal, even for cynical old Kit. The reef was one of the best in the area, but being small and remote, it was rarely visited. The drop-off where the reef met the ocean was steep and the water around it incredibly deep, going from a bright turquoise to an inky blue-black in about thirty metres. Few people ever bothered to venture far down the outer wall and whatever was at the bottom remained hidden in darkness. It was the perfect place to dispose of a body.
Even Kit, who hated most forms of physical exertion, liked snorkelling and had agreed to the idea with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Adam had the picnic basket packed and ready for loading by the little jetty, along with the snorkelling equipment. He had also prepared a bag with some other necessary items. But it had all been too easy. As if Kit had suddenly developed a sixth sense about what lay in store, he tried to back out at the last minute. It was his birthday, after all. He could bloody well do what he wanted. Adam had been a little too forceful trying to make him cooperate and Kit had got quite nasty, calling him all sorts of unpleasant things and threatening to throw him out on his ear if he didn’t shut up about the bloody snorkelling. In the end, an apology and the sight of Adam stripped down to his tight white trunks, his body oiled and brown, had grudgingly calmed him down. With the hint of something more to come in the physical line (‘at long, bloody last’) once the snorkelling was over, Adam finally managed to get him on board.
