No Place to Hide, page 3
‘The answer is, yes, I have. I’ve just finished with the other relevant body that’s still here and found a single needle mark.’
‘Another overdose?’
‘Not in the sense you’re thinking and we certainly won’t get a measurement now, but I did a vitreous glucose analysis. The vitreous humour, the fluid in the eye, is about the only reliable source for biochemical levels in the minutes and hours leading up to death. The blood begins to degrade almost immediately post-mortem, so normal constituent levels in it wouldn’t be reliable. The result was 0.4. The only way to get that low is with an insulin overdose.’
‘And I’m guessing your victim wasn’t a diabetic?’
‘Exactly.’
Pete let go a long sigh. ‘Best send me the particulars, then, Doc. Victim file and your report.’
‘Will do.’
Pete chose not to tell Chambers of Silverstone’s reluctance to accept his theory without further evidence. There was no point now. ‘What about the other cases you mentioned?’
‘All in the ground or cremated by now, I’m afraid. I’ll check which is which, but we’ll need exhumation orders to pursue any of them.’
‘OK. Keep me posted.’
‘Of course.’
Pete returned the phone to his pocket.
Two cases didn’t make a serial killer, but they certainly started to look like one. And that was the last thing he needed to get tied up with right now.
*
‘Andrew Michaels was thirty-four years old, five foot nine and weighed seventeen and a half stones,’ Pete read from Doc Chamber’s report to his assembled team a little over an hour later.
Dick Feeney ran a hand down his cheek, skin rasping on dark stubble. ‘Big lad, then.’
‘You really are going have to reset your body clock, mate,’ Dave told him.
‘Eh?’ Jane frowned.
‘Well, look at him. If that’s not a five o’clock shadow, I don’t know what is. And it’s only . . .’ He made a show of checking his watch. ‘Twenty past one.’
‘Damn, no wonder I was feeling peckish,’ Jane said. ‘It’s feeding time.’
‘Talking of food and getting back to the matter at hand,’ Pete said, ‘Michaels worked for eighteen months in a bakery, ending in 2001. He’d been on the dole since then, living at home with his parents. He collapsed in the High Street; keeled over suddenly from a seat across from the Princesshay Shopping Centre. The attending paramedics said that witnesses reported nothing abnormal leading up to the collapse. He had just been sitting there quietly one minute and slumped on the ground the next.’
‘Presumably not from a heart attack from being a lazy, fat bastard,’ Dave said. ‘Or we wouldn’t be talking about him.’
‘Exactly.’ Pete stuck his photo – taken on the steel mortuary table – on the board alongside Jerry Tyler’s. ‘But you’re right about the intended impression. Victim two in the doc’s theorised series. In this case, the needle mark was in the back of his upper arm, the triceps muscle.’
‘So, what was it?’ asked Jane.
‘Insulin, based on the guy’s glucose level, as determined from the fluid in his eye.’
‘Ouch.’ Jill Evans cringed.
‘Why the eye?’ asked Ben Myers, across from her.
Dave glanced at him. ‘You a poet and didn’t know it?’
‘Because,’ Pete said, ignoring him, ‘it’s the one place in the body where levels of several blood constituents are stable for a time after death. It’s a filtrate of the blood serum, but it’s isolated from the bloodstream after death, so it’s not affected by the early stages of decomposition like the blood is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help us with the actual insulin because that’s only stable for a few hours.’
‘And there’s nothing else that could cause the glucose level the doc found?’ Dave asked.
‘No. In the blood, it would drop to that kind of level fairly quickly after death, apparently, but not in the eye fluid.’
‘So, insulin jab, staged accident . . .. We’re talking about a fairly sophisticated perp, here.’
‘And one with access to insulin.’ Jane added. ‘Which suggests a diabetic. Or at least one in the family.’
‘Or peer group,’ Ben put in. ‘He could have borrowed or nicked a dose.’
Pete nodded. ‘We should check GP surgeries, the hospital and the ambulance trust – see if any thefts have been reported. It could have come from one of them as well as a friend or family member.’
‘That’s a big old job,’ said Dave.
‘I’ll do it,’ Ben offered. ‘What about vets?’
Pete frowned. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll find out.’
‘Will you never learn, Spike?’ Dave asked.
‘What?’
‘Never volunteer,’ Dick told him.
‘Right.’ Pete grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. ‘Jill can give you a hand if you need it, Ben. Dick, check out the victim and see if he’s got a record of any kind. I doubt it, but you never know. Jane, you and I’ll go see his parents, see what we can get from them. Come on.’ He headed for the door, Jane’s heels clipping on the lino as she hurried to catch up.
*
Michaels had clearly inherited his height from his father and his girth from his mother. Brian and Kathy sat uneasily in the two armchairs in their lounge, leaving Pete and Jane on the sofa, the TV muted but not switched off in the corner.
‘So, why are the police interested in our Andrew all of a sudden?’ the dead man’s father asked, his hands clasped in his lap as he leaned forward in his chair.
‘The pathologist has come to us with some unusual findings,’ Pete told him. ‘Was Andrew diabetic?’
‘Why would you ask that? Because of his size?’ demanded Kathy, whose greying dark hair wafted in a curly halo around her as she moved, hands wringing in her lap. ‘Not all fat people are diabetic, you know. I’m not.’
‘We don’t judge, Mrs Michaels. It’s not our job.’ Pete felt sympathy with her defensiveness. He was still the same way with Tommy, despite all he’d learned about the boy in the last couple of weeks. All parents would be, he guessed.
After a long pause, she sighed and seemed to slump in her chair. ‘No, he wasn’t diabetic. Why?’
‘One of the pathologist’s findings suggested the possibility. You say you’re not, either. Is anyone in the family, or one of his friends, perhaps?’
She shook her head, unruly strands of hair wafting. ‘Why should it matter?’
‘Talking of friends, did you know most of Andrew’s?’
‘He didn’t have many,’ his father said. ‘Quiet lad, kept himself to himself.’
‘He was bullied at school,’ Kathy said, reminding Pete again of his own son, who was small for his age. ‘Never really got over it. We tried to encourage him to get out more, join a club or something, but . . .’ Her hands fluttered briefly then went back to her lap, where the fingers resumed their random pattern of twining together.
Evidence suggested that Tommy had reacted differently to the Michaels boy. According to both his peers and his teachers, he’d turned things around to the extent that many of the other kids were frightened of him. Too small to fight, he’d become devious, cruel and bitter. Instead of the brawn that he lacked, he’d used his brains to get back at the kids who’d previously targeted him. Not that Pete had ever noticed any of this, he had to admit regretfully. He’d always been too busy working.
‘Did he have a computer?’ Jane asked.
‘Up in his room,’ Kathy said.
‘Could I take a look? It helps to build up a picture of him – his associates, his interests and so on.’
‘He wasn’t into anything mucky,’ Kathy said quickly. ‘You won’t find none of that porn stuff on there.’
‘As I said, Mrs Michaels, I’m just interested in who he was connecting with, what his interests were, what he was like as a person. We didn’t know him, you understand.’
She grunted. ‘I suppose. Come on, then.’ She got up and shuffled towards the door.
Pete waited until the door closed behind them, then turned to Brian.
‘I’m sorry, but it’s possible your son was killed, Mr Michaels,’ he said. ‘We need to know as much as we can about him, to find out who might have done it. If anyone in his life might have had the opportunity or the inclination. Do you have any other family?’
‘I’ve got a brother and a sister, live here in the city. His mother’s an only child. Dave’s got no kids, Beck’s got a son, five years younger than our Andrew, but they don’t see each other except birthdays and Christmas. Her husband don’t come round here, either. He works down the industrial estate. Car mechanic.’
‘And your brother? David?’
‘Retired last year. Done his back in. Been troubling him for years but it finally got too much last spring.’
‘And do you see him much?’
‘Nah. He got himself one of those disabled cars, but he don’t drive it much and we don’t drive, me and Kath. Never did. Like she said – keep ourselves to ourselves.’
‘I understand Andrew was in town when it happened. Sitting on a bench up by the Princesshay.’ Pete’s mind conjured an image of the wide, pedestrianised High Street with the glass and concrete entrance to the covered shopping centre off its east side. ‘Did he do that much?’
‘Every fortnight, when he had to go and sign on, he’d spend a few hours round the centre. Got him out of the house, change of scenery, bit of fresh air, you know?’
Pete nodded. An isolated, lonely life, broken by sitting alone among the crowds on the High Street once a fortnight. Christ, talk about sad.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out, checked the screen and saw the ID flashing up: Doc. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Michaels. ‘I need to take this.’ He hit the button and raised the phone to his ear. ‘Hello, Doc. What’s up?’
‘I’ve just heard back from the lab,’ Chambers said. ‘We have the toxicology from Jeremy Tyler. I was right, unfortunately. He had been dosed. With succinylcholine, so he was paralysed but fully aware as the fire took hold around him.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘So, what did she have to say while you were on your own with her?’ Pete asked as he pulled away from the kerb outside the Michaels’ house.
The sun was low in the sky, hidden behind a mass of heavy black cloud, leaving it near-dark although it was still mid-afternoon. Pete switched his lights on. The beams swept across other parked cars, pavements fronted by stretches of mown grass and low, neat walls protecting tidy gardens in front of suburban houses where situations like this were not meant to arise.
‘She loved her son, boss. Wouldn’t have a word said against him, even hypothetically. My guess – she was the reason he was so withdrawn. Overprotective, you know? Smothering. But essentially, he kept himself to himself. Had interests that most guys grow out of at about twelve. Trains, planes – stuff like that. The only vaguely social thing he seemed to be involved in was the annual model train exhibition at the local school. Has quite a big following, apparently. Draws people in from all over. As far as the West Midlands. And she was right. There was no porn on his computer, or any sign of it in the history log.’
He drove past the school she had just mentioned – the school his own daughter, Annie, attended. The one Tommy had gone to as well until just over a year ago when he switched to the local senior school. Cars lined both sides of the road outside, parents sitting patiently waiting for their offspring to emerge. The bright railings and heavy metal gates made it look like some kind of junior prison. His mind conjured an image of ten-year-old Annie, sitting at her desk, sucking on the end of her pen as she avidly watched the teacher at the front of the class, absorbing every speck of information they could provide.
In a few minutes, the scene would change completely, the ring of a bell releasing a dark tide of noisy humanity onto the quiet streets like a swarm of angry bees.
‘How’s she doing, boss? Annie? She all right?’
Pete blinked. ‘Yes, she’s great. Don’t know what I’d have done without her, the past few months, to be honest.’
‘And Louise?’
Pete glanced across. Saw the genuine concern in her expression. Jane was more than a junior officer. She was a friend. They had been partners for three years before he got the sergeant’s exam. He trusted her like no one else on the force – even their DI, Colin Underhill, who had been both a boss and a mentor through their early years in CID. ‘She’s . . . She seems to have turned a corner. The fact that Tommy was there with Rosie, that he’s still alive . . . It’s given her something to focus on. Some sort of hope. I wouldn’t want to be Simon Phillips if she ran into him, but…’
Jane laughed. ‘Not impressed, eh?’
‘Not really. It’s been almost seven months and the only real evidence he’s got is what we gave him last week, from the Rosie Whitlock case. She’s bad enough with me. Why could I bring Rosie back and not Tommy? Where is he? Why won’t he come home? What are we doing to find him? Not that I can blame her. I just wish I had the answers for her. But, if she got hold of Simon, she’d have his balls for earrings.’ He glanced in the mirror, but the school was gone from sight around a bend in the road.
*
Dave stared up at the castle-like gatehouse of the dark-brick Victorian prison with its huge arch-topped doors of incongruously bright blue.
‘Bugger, that took a can or two of paint, didn’t it?’
‘Just don’t say anything about cheap labour.’ Pete knocked on the man-sized door cut into the big gates.
‘Would I?’
The team had drawn a blank on their search for a source for the suxamethonium and on Tyler’s internet history, so Pete had sought Silverstone’s permission to talk to other people’s arrestees and brought Dave along to lighten the load and speed the job up while the rest of the team continued to search for other clues.
The door in front of them opened and a black-uniformed prison guard asked, ‘Sergeant Gayle?’
Pete nodded and flashed his badge. ‘And DC Miles.’
Dave showed his own ID.
‘Come in, gents.’ He stood back.
‘Yes, you would,’ Pete said to Dave as they stepped through. ‘But if you do, I won’t try to stop them keeping you.’
The door behind them banged shut and a bolt shot across, then another. Despite himself, Pete shivered.
‘This way, gents.’ The guard stepped past them and led them across the wide, blue-brick yard.
They signed in at the reception desk in the main block and Pete was led to an interview room more usually used by inmates and their solicitors.
A table stood in the middle of the room – more of a cell but without the fittings – with a plastic chair at either side of it. In one of them sat the lean, scraggy-looking figure of one of the men who had been arrested in the major anti-drug operation that had brought Pete back to active service two weeks ago. His hands were manacled to a steel ring in the middle of the table, which was bolted to the floor.
‘Afternoon, Stevie. How’s it going?’
‘How do you think?’ Lockwood’s lank blond hair had been cut short, but his attitude hadn’t changed and he still managed to look scruffy, even in prison uniform.
‘Well, it’s not like it’s your first visit here, is it? Should be used to it by now. Anyway, I thought I’d come and brighten your day a bit.’
‘How’s that?’
Pete sat down opposite the drug dealer. ‘Might be able to put in a good word, get a bit shaved off your sentence if you can help me out with something.’
‘I don’t want to get a rep as a bloody snitch, mate. Not while I’m in here.’
Pete shook his head. ‘Where’s your public spirit, eh? I’m not even asking you to snitch on anyone. I just want a bit of info, that’s all. About where I might come upon a certain substance, if I was inclined to.’
Lockwood gave a snort of laughter. ‘What, you getting desperate? I hear you’ve had it a bit rough, lately.’
‘I don’t need drugs when I’ve got the likes of you I can go out and use as punchbags, Stevie. Marvellous release for frustration, that is. But, just for now, I need to know if there’s somewhere in the city a person might get their hands on some sux.’
Lockwood’s eyes widened as he sat back abruptly in his chair. ‘What? I ain’t into weird stuff like that.’
Pete sat forward in his chair. ‘But you probably know who is. Am I right?’
Lockwood frowned. ‘Why would I? I don’t use the stuff and I don’t deal in it.’
‘Like-minded people know about each other, though. It’s a fact of life. Doesn’t matter if you’re into drugs, kiddie porn or model railways, you get to know who else is. The club mentality.’
‘Well, I ain’t the club type. I’m strictly a loner, me.’
‘Oh, well.’ Pete shrugged. ‘You can’t help me, I can’t help you. But the fact that I’ve been here, talking to you, what do you want to bet that’ll stay secret in a place like this, that thrives on gossip? A guard mentions it to another guard, gets overheard by an inmate and soon the whole place knows.’
Lockwood started to look nervous. ‘No, no, no. I’d be dead meat in a week.’
Pete shrugged, pushing his chair back. ‘Nothing I can do about that.’ He waved a hand vaguely at their surroundings. ‘Not my jurisdiction.’
‘Yeah, but . . . That’s setting me up. That’s murder, that is.’
Pete stood up. ‘Nah. It’s just life in prison, that’s all. The way it goes.’
Lockwood peered up at him. ‘You wouldn’t . . .’
Pete chuckled, pushed his chair in under the table and headed for the door.
‘All right, I might have a name I could suggest. But I’d need some sort of guarantee. These buggers don’t piss about. They’d skin me alive, then kill me if they found out I’d talked. Or even suspected it.’
Pete paused, turned back. ‘OK,’ he said slowly. He caught Lockwood’s gaze. Held it. The man looked genuinely nervous. ‘What have you got?’
‘What can you do for me, first?’
