The Body in the Boot: The first 'Mac' Maguire mystery (12 page)

‘And on the other hand?’

‘Dislike is probably too mild, I’d say he really hated them too.’

‘Hated them? What made you think that?’

‘Well the last time I had a drink with him he’d had a few before we met up and he was quite drunk by the end of the night. He’d had some sort of run in with this Professor Ferguson that day and he kept going on about her. Then he said he was going to go home soon but before he did he was going to teach her a lesson, show her what a real man was. I just thought it was the drink talking but the more I thought about it, I mean he didn’t actually say he wanted to rape her, but he was sort of implying it. I never drank with him again after that.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Even though he was drunk there was real malevolence in his voice when he said it. So the next day I went and had a quiet word with the professor and I got the feeling that it wasn’t a total shock to her. I heard later that Matyas had been accused by one of the female technicians of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ I think they called it. I’m not sure what he was supposed to have done but his contract got cancelled and thankfully he went home.’

‘He’s back again,’ Mac stated.

‘Christ!’ Dimitrios exclaimed. ‘I wonder if the professor knows? I can’t explain it but I always thought that Matyas wasn’t the type to forgive and forget somehow. I think he might be one of those people who nurse their grudges.’

‘I know what you mean. He’s probably been in the country for a while now but best not to take any chances.’

Mac got out his phone and called Dan.

‘Perhaps not so squeaky clean after all,’ Dan said after Mac had gone through his conversation with Dimitrios. ‘I’ll check and see if she’s in the area. If she is I’ll get a uniform to her straight away. He can tell her that Matyas is on the loose and to take no chances. Then we’ll get her in tomorrow and see what she knows.’

Mac rang off and turned back to Dimitrios.

‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’

‘Nothing comes to mind.’

‘Thanks, if anything does would you ring Luton Police and ask for DI Dan Carter or leave a message? By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, who were you expecting?’

The smile returned to his face.

‘My boyfriend Max. He’s been working in Germany for the last two weeks, I thought he’d come back early.’

Mac was curious.

‘If you don’t mind me asking how does being gay go down in your family? Please just tell me go away if you don’t want to answer that.’

‘No that’s okay. Well, my mother guessed years ago, before I even knew myself I think, and my other brothers weren’t very surprised when I came out to them. However I must admit I was genuinely worried about telling my Dad. He likes to play the macho, self-reliant Greek patriarch and I genuinely wasn’t certain how he’d take it. Well, after I graduated we all got together and I told him and I was so worried because for a few seconds he didn’t say anything at all. Eventually he said, ‘I want more grandkids so you other seven will just have to work harder.’ Then my Dad’s face lit up and he said, ‘I was just reading about it just the other day, a gay couple adopting a kid. When you meet the right man you can adopt me some grandkids, so that’s alright.’ We had a bit of a party after that. I’ve introduced him to Max and they seem to get on well, they’re both football mad. He’s really something is my Dad.’

‘He certainly is,’ Mac agreed.

Once outside he called a taxi to meet him at his house. He parked his car and climbed into the waiting taxi. A few minutes later he was comfortably seated in the Magnets explaining what had transpired to his friend Tim.

‘So you’ve still got it,’ Tim stated.

Mac was puzzled.

‘Got what?’

‘The old Mac magic,’ Tim teased.

‘Just got lucky,’ Mac said a little defensively.

‘It’s just that you tended to get lucky a hell of a lot when you were in the force, nice to know it hasn’t deserted you then.’

‘Let’s not talk about it. For me it’s like trying to analyse a joke, you can do it but the joke isn’t funny afterwards. Anyway it’s your round.’

While Tim was at the bar Mac became aware of how tired he was and how much he needed to lie down. The pain in his back was getting worse, just one more drink, he promised himself and then it was bed for him.

As Tim made his way back with the drinks Mac’s mobile started ringing. It was Dan Carter.

‘Mac I need you back here as soon as possible. Are you up to it?’

‘Of course,’ he lied. ‘I’ll order a taxi straight away. What’s happened?’

‘Don’t bother with the taxi. I take it you’re in the Three Magnets pub?’

‘Yes, how did you know?’

‘Tommy said you might be. If you go outside now you should find a police car waiting for you.’

Tim put the two drinks on the table.

‘Sorry Tim I’m afraid I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you later and explain.’

On his way to the door he asked Dan, ‘What’s happened?’

‘I sent the uniform over to Professor Ferguson as we discussed. He found her dead. She’s been murdered Mac, quite brutally murdered.’

Outside the Magnets a police car, with its blue light flashing, pulled up. Mac opened the passenger door.

‘Taxi for Maguire?’

‘Yes sir,’ the young policeman said with a smile. ‘You’re for Luton Police Station, is that correct sir?’

‘Yes, as fast as you like.’

‘Fast I can do sir.’

Siren on and blue light flashing they made it to Luton in far less than half the time that Mac could have done it in. Although they were going at a terrific speed Mac felt totally safe, the driver had obviously been very well trained.

Outside the station Mac got out and said, ‘That was great. If you ever do become a taxi driver please let me know.’

‘Will do, sir,’ the young policeman promised with a straight face.

All of the team were there and Mac was just in time to catch the end of Dan’s briefing.

‘Okay just to go over it quickly again, Adil will be in charge on the ground at the professor’s house until I get there and he’ll organise the door to door interviews with the neighbouring houses. We know at least one neighbour saw something so there’s a chance others did too. Buddy’s still got some new coveralls handy so he’ll shadow the forensics team. Mac and myself are going to interview the professor’s boss and see what we can find out from him. We’ll join you at the professor’s house as soon as we can. Okay let’s go.’

Dan waved at Mac to follow him.

‘The forensics people might be a while,’ Dan said as they walked to the car park, ‘Just thought we might be doing something productive while they’re at it. We’re going to see a Professor MacFarlane, he was Professor Ferguson’s boss and the head of the Life Sciences department. Tommy said you’ve met him before.’

‘God yes, he’s the doctor who was going to do the autopsy on Henrietta Lewinton, seems a long time ago now.’

With everything that had been going on Mac had nearly forgotten about Janet and Hetty Lewinton. He made a mental note to pop into the hospital as soon as he could.

‘I take it you’ve spoken to Tommy?’

‘Yes, he said he was going to see the taxi driver and I said he might as well carry on, see what he could find out.’

Mac looked over at Dan and said, ‘You know I’m just wondering if there was another reason why you needed me here.’

Dan glanced quickly at Mac and smiled.

‘Don’t miss much do you? Martin’s done a quick search and Professor Ferguson was a well-known and seemingly quite well liked academic. She’s published quite a few papers and Martin says that she’s cited in a whole lot more which means her work is taken very seriously.’

‘And…’ Mac prompted.

Dan grimaced.

‘And the Chief Constable has a bee in his bonnet about the university and how important it is to his patch. I had to ring him as soon as I heard in case the press find out and he warned me I had to be on my best game…’

…or else you’d get your arse kicked,’ Mac finished for Dan.

‘Spot on. So I asked you along for two, quite selfish, reasons. The first being your undoubted talents at investigation, which we’ll need now more than ever, and the other the undoubted experience you must have with dealing with the idiots upstairs. If this case drags on a bit I don’t want to have to spend valuable time keeping the Chief ‘in the loop’ as he put it, I just want him kept happy and well out of my way while I get some work done. Any ideas?’

Mac gave this some thought.

‘Yes, had the same problem myself once. Eventually I had one of my team who was good on computers put together what we called an ‘Investigation Dashboard’. It looked really pretty with graphs and the like. We used to update it daily, mostly useless stuff, and send it to our boss by email. It kept him out of our hair for most of the time and gave him the illusion that he was fully informed without him having to bother to shift his arse from his armchair. Kept us both happy.’

‘Bloody good idea that,’ Dan said enthusiastically. ‘I’ll get Martin to put one together.’

‘Anyway tell me what you know about Professor Ferguson’s murder.’

‘Okay, I ordered a uniform to her house straight after you called. He found her next door neighbour waiting outside. He was quite impressed with our performance as he’d only rang us thirty seconds earlier. The neighbour said that he’d seen someone leaving the professor’s property over the back fence and assumed it was a burglar. He’d tried knocking at the front door but, when he couldn’t get an answer, he called us. The uniform climbed over the side gate, which was locked, and got inside the same way the intruder did, through the French doors at the back. The intruder had smashed a single piece of glass and unlocked the door from the inside. Once inside the uniform had a quick look around and found the professor in her study. She was lying on her back on her desk and she was naked from the waist down. Her face had been severely beaten on the left hand side only and her throat was cut.’

‘Quite a lot of blood I should imagine,’ Mac observed.

‘Yes that’s what the uniform said in between throwing up.’

‘And you think it’s our man Sandor or Matyas or whatever he’s called?’

‘I think he should be our starting point until we find out differently.’

Mac shook his head.

‘Amazing isn’t it? Five young girls die and one’s vegetating in a hospital and, except for chance, no-one would have lifted a finger. One professor dies however and everyone’s jumping up and down. One life shouldn’t be worth more than another but we all know it is. What a world we live in.’

Mac looked out of the window and, noticing countryside, asked where they were going.

‘A place called Toddington, some really nice houses here but unfortunately they have really nice prices too. I occasionally find some time to take the wife out for a drive and she likes this place. I always tell her we’ll seriously start looking for a house here when I’m Chief Constable. There’ll be no bloody chance of that if we don’t solve this case though.’

They pulled up outside a very large house just off the high street. Mac had to admit it looked impressive but he still wouldn’t have swapped it for his prefab.

The professor opened the door himself. The last time Mac had seen him he’d been in his element, confident and in control. Now he looked shaken and quite a few years older.

After Dan had introduced himself and Mac, the professor led them into a large comfortable lounge and offered them coffee. They both accepted. After bringing in the coffee, the professor poured himself a large scotch and sat down.

He said, ‘I still can’t believe it, Fiona dead and in such a way. Believe me, there’s plenty at the university who I could well believe someone might want to murder, but not Fiona.’

‘Why’s that?’ Dan asked.

‘Generosity I’d say. She was generous in sharing her work with others. She had no ego when it came to her work, she’d often let the research students get sole credit for a piece of work even though she might have contributed greatly to it. She was generous with her time too, a great researcher and a great teacher.’

‘Did she have any enemies that you know of? If not in the university then what about her private life?’

The professor shook his head.

‘No enemies, apart from a jealous few I suppose. Her private life was as uncomplicated as she was. She divorced three or four years ago and seemed to be quite happy leading the single life.’

‘What’s the ex-husband like?’ Mac asked.

‘Oh, I know you people always like to put close family in the frame first and, I must admit you might be right more often than not, but not in this case. Her husband John and she split up well before the divorce. It wasn’t acrimonious and John had been living with his new partner for some time before that. In fact Fiona has been to dinner at John’s quite a few times to my knowledge.’

‘We’ve got his name as John Ferguson. From what you’ve said I take it that’s correct?’ Dan asked.

‘Yes, he works at the university too, in Journalism and Communications. I know Fiona thought about changing her name after the divorce but with all the papers she’d published it would have been confusing so she just kept it as it was.’

‘We’d also like information on all her former students and colleagues. How could we access that?’

‘I can show you some of it from here if you like, apart from emails and of course her private area, I don’t have access to those or to information on colleagues for whom I’m not a line manager.’

‘Who do we need to speak to in order to get full access?’

‘I’ll check now,’ the professor said.

He went over to his laptop which was on a large dining table the rest of which was covered by stacks of folders and documents. It only took him a few minutes to find what he needed before he picked up the phone.

‘Hello, is that the IT Help Desk? My name is Professor MacFarlane, Head of Life Sciences. I urgently need to let the police remotely access a colleague’s work area on the system including all her emails and her private area.’

He listened for a while.

‘No she won’t be able to give permission as she’s been murdered, that’s why the police need access. They may also need to access the records of people who worked with her.’

He listened for a while longer then turned to Dan.

‘They’ll need a formal Data Request Form and they also want to ring the Police Station direct for security’s sake, who should they ask for?’

‘Tell them to ask for Martin Selby, he’s my computer expert. He can supply them with any formal requests they need,’ Dan replied.

Once the professor had finished on the phone Dan asked, ‘Is there anything else you can tell me that might help?’

The professor slowly shook his head.

‘I’m sorry nothing comes to mind but, if I’m honest, I’m not thinking very straight at the moment. Strange to think that, after seeing all those anonymous dead bodies, that someone you know well will end up on the same slab.’

Dan gave him his card.

‘If you do think of anything else, please call me.’

‘I will,’ the professor promised. ‘Are you going to see John now?’

‘Yes, he’s next on the list.’

‘Poor man, he just lost his mother a few months ago. Fiona was at the funeral of course, she got on really well with her mother-in-law. I’m glad he’s got Gerry, he’s going to need someone when he hears the news.’

‘Who’s Gerry?’ Dan asked.

‘John’s partner Geraldine, she works in the university too, a student councillor or something along those lines. Do you need his address?’

‘No thanks we’ve already got it,’ Dan replied.

‘Okay but break it to him gently if you can. Even thought they were divorced I think he still had a lot of regard for Fiona.’

Dan promised he would. Dan and Mac made their way outside.

‘Right we’re off to Barton-Le-Clay, which isn’t too far away,’ Dan said as they got into the car. ‘Another nice little village. They must pay these university people a bloody lot more than they pay us, that’s for certain.’

Dan glanced over at Mac and he could that he was deep in thought. He left him for five or six minutes but eventually he had to say something.

‘Mac, what are you thinking about?’

Mac’s head snapped around as though he was surprised.

‘Sorry I was miles away.’

He rubbed his face with his hands.

‘Bit tired too I should think,’ Dan said. ‘Sorry for dragging you out tonight, perhaps I should have left you in the pub.’

‘Oh no, don’t think that I wouldn’t have missed a minute of this investigation for anything. Anyway you asked me what I was thinking about? I was trying to figure out why our man might have delayed his revenge on the professor for so long.’

‘That’s a good question. Did you come up with any answers?’

‘Possibly, when Dimitrios knew him, he hadn’t yet killed. He seemingly had the hatred but it’s a hard line to cross, taking another human being’s life. Did something happen to him when he went back home? Did he carry out any murders there? His MO was pretty slick so I’m wondering if he’d had practice. Once you cross that line and carry out your first murder, the second is usually easier. We think he may have killed at least five times and would have made it six except for chance. So, now he’s a fully-fledged serial killer, why wait until now to kill the professor? He’s got to have been in the country at least six months or more, so why now?’

‘Any ideas?’ Dan asked, totally absorbed in Mac’s suppositions.

‘I think it’s because he’s going home or at least leaving the country. He’s left her until last because he knew it would cause a big investigation. I’ll bet he’s got his way out of here planned and, as he’s had at least a couple of hours start by now, he might have already left.’

‘I’ll get Martin to send another alert out to all airports and ports.’

Dan pulled over. He got out of the car and made his call as he walked up and down in front of the car. Mac wondered why people had to walk as they talked.   Dan got back in and they got on their way.

‘The university people have already contacted Martin, he seemed really happy to be getting ‘more data’ as he puts it. Any other thoughts?’