Jigsaw Man (29 page)

‘I saw him in the street on his bicycle one day,' she said thoughtfully. ‘It was
getting dark and I was dusting the windowsill in the front room. He comes along and
stops right in the middle of the street outside his old house, just looking at it.
It was all boarded up by then. I knocked on the glass and called out his name, but
he didn't look round and a minute later he's off again.'

‘This was when?'

‘A few days after the inquest. I was surprised he left it so long after the fire
to come back. I mean, he must've heard what happened. But maybe he didn't want to
risk being spotted and having to give a statement and all of that business. I suppose
he must've felt a bit guilty. After all, it was his room and his stove that caught
alight and burnt that poor bugger. It might've been him on that mattress, but for
the grace of God.' She peered up at Tartaglia with pale, watery eyes.

‘He was just looking at the property, then? He didn't try to get in?'

‘Perhaps I put him off. He didn't even get off his bike. Don't know what he was doing.
He must've known all his stuff 'd gone up in smoke. Maybe he was feeling sentimental.
But you know, maybe he did come back again later.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, someone broke the lock on the fence a couple of days after. They had to send
somebody out to repair it, to stop the bloody kids getting in and playing in there.'

He thanked Mrs Tier and caught up with Minderedes in the street.

‘I showed Leonie the E-FIT,' Minderedes said. ‘She
thinks
it could be Spike.'

‘Thinks?'

‘Well, more or less.'

He sighed. ‘I suppose it will have to do for now. When we're done here, I want you
to go and find Tatyana and bring her back in. Get her to do the whole thing again.'

Minderedes checked his watch. ‘I'm supposed to see Marek Nowak's girlfriend in an
hour.'

‘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.