The Body in the Boot: The first 'Mac' Maguire mystery (13 page)

‘Just thinking how much of what we ‘know’ is just assumptions. Do we know that this Matyas/Sandor character even killed the girls? We have an idea he might have abducted them but no direct evidence for him killing them. Is there someone else involved, something bigger going on than just a one man string of serial killings?’

‘What makes you think it isn’t just him? Most serial killers work by themselves after all.’

‘True but here’s two things that bother me and one just occurred to me while you were phoning Martin.’

Dan turned in his seat and looked at Mac intently.

‘Tell me.’

‘The first is the hibernation drug. The experts I’ve spoken to haven’t heard of anything like it and the doctor at Luton Hospital said that it wasn’t something you could cook up in your kitchen.’

‘Doesn’t our man have a degree in biomedicine though?’

‘Yes, and he worked in a biomed lab for a year but my feeling is that something like this drug is way beyond him. It’s got some really top medical people scratching their heads.’

‘Okay I’ll buy that. And the second?’

‘The time the girls went missing for.’

‘Well, three or four weeks is a long time but it has been known for women to be kept that long and then murdered.’

‘Yes but unusual. Anyway it’s not that, did you notice that three of the girls were missing for around four weeks while for the other two it was only three weeks?’

‘Yes I saw that but…’

‘It’s just occurred to me that the two girls who were missing for only three weeks weren’t drug users.’

Dan gave thought about this for a few seconds.

‘Yes, I’m wondering why I didn’t see that too now you’ve pointed it out. Do you think he kept the other girls longer to get the drugs out of their systems?’

‘It’s a good hypothesis. Now if our man was only keeping the girls for his own gratification it wouldn’t matter if they had drugs in their systems. If Professor MacFarlane is right though, and someone is using them as human guinea pigs, it might make a big difference.’

‘Christ, you might be right, bloody chilling thought though. Anyway our best lead, our only lead is this Hungarian, we can only hope that if we follow him he’ll lead to anyone else who’s involved,’ Dan said as he started up the car.

‘If he isn’t halfway across Europe by now,’ Mac muttered.

Dan had to stop a couple of hundred yards down the road as his phone went off.

All Mac heard of the conversation was, ‘Yes….. yes…. bloody hell! Where are you?  Okay we’ll be there as soon as we can.’

Dan turned and with a shocked expression said, ‘That was Tommy. There’s been another murder.’

Dan drove back to Luton sirens howling and blue lights flashing.

‘Who?’ Mac asked.

‘Stelios Andreou, the taxi driver. He was run down just a few minutes ago.’

‘No chance of it being an accident?’

‘Not according to Tommy but we’ll know more in a few minutes.’

A short while later they were back in the built up suburbs of Luton. Dan made for the ring road and soon pulled off down a side road that seemed to be mostly small industrial units. Mac knew they’d arrived when he saw Tommy on the side of the road waving them down.

A small crowd of people had assembled outside of the building behind Tommy. Mac had witnessed scenes like this many times before, friends and bystanders, milling aimlessly around because they didn’t know what else to do. On the other side of the road an ambulance was parked and its back door was open. A body lay covered by a red blanket, the paramedics weren’t attempting resuscitation.

As Mac got out of the car a lightning bolt of pain went down his left leg. Not now, he said to himself, not now. Luckily, once the sudden pain had dissipated, he found he could still walk but only just.

‘What happened?’ Dan asked Tommy as he led him away from the crowd.

Mac was pleased that neither seemed to have noticed anything untoward.

‘It’s bloody unbelievable,’ a shocked Tommy said. ‘I was just talking to him outside the taxi office here and one of the operators shouted that he’d got a job. His car’s parked over the other side, the black one there but he never made it. A silver coloured BMW came out of nowhere, no lights and went straight into him.’

‘No chance of it being an accident?’ Dan asked.

‘The BWM stopped, backed up and ran over him again and once again as he went forward. No, I don’t think it was an accident.’

‘Me neither,’ Dan conceded. ‘Did you get the plate?’

‘Sorry, I couldn’t. The light isn’t that great around here but even so I should have gotten something. It was like the plates were covered with mud or something.’

‘But you managed to have a word with this Stelios before…’

Dan was interrupted by a car screeching to a halt behind the ambulance. The driver left his door open, lights on and the engine running and made straight for the ambulance. Mac recognised Spiros, he still had his white apron on. Mac figured he must have come straight from the kebab shop. He was having an argument with the paramedics, so Mac crossed the street.

He flashed his warrant card at the paramedic who was stopping Spiros from getting in the ambulance.

‘He’s the father,’ Mac said. ‘Let him see his son.’

Spiros followed the paramedic inside and he pulled the edge of the blanket down so that he could see the face. Spiros looked and motioned for the paramedic to put the blanket back. He turned and gave Mac a look so bleak that it chilled his bones. He suddenly wanted to ring Bridget to make sure she was safe and sound.

‘We’re going now,’ the paramedic said to Spiros. ‘Do you want to stay?’

‘He’s my son,’ was all Spiros said.

The paramedic folded up the step and closed the back doors and they drove off. They drove slowly, no lights flashing. Mac turned Spiros’ car engine and the lights off and locked it up. Then he re-joined Dan and Tommy.

‘Was that his father?’ Dan asked.

Mac nodded slowly. He handed the car keys over to Dan.

‘Can you get one of the uniforms to drop them back to the family?’

Dan nodded solemnly and pocketed the keys.

‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ Tommy said, still looking quite shaken. ‘It just happened so quickly. Should I have done something? I thought about trying to follow the car but I had to see if Stelios was all right first and…’

Dan interrupted, ‘Tommy, I know we’re trained to always act, to respond in lots of different ways, but sometimes there’s just absolutely nothing you can do.’

Tommy was thoughtful for a few moments.

‘I pretty sure it’s our man who did this.’

‘Tell me,’ Dan ordered.

‘Stelios told me what happened while Matyas was working here. I think it would be fair to say he didn’t leave on good terms. He said that when he first took Matyas on he seemed really grateful for the work, he was always on time and never missed a shift. Then, about six months after he’d started, Stelios asked Matyas to help him out with some ‘special’ jobs, in other words ferrying around prostitutes for a local pimp. The driver who normally did this was in hospital and Stelios thought that Matyas, being so polite, might be okay with the girls. Everything seemed fine for a few weeks but then he started getting complaints from the girls. They were saying that he was rude to them and one said he tried to touch her up. Finally one of the girls told him that she wouldn’t get in a car with Matyas again, she said he’d tried to rape her. She told Stelios that if he didn’t get rid of Matyas she’d tell her pimp. Stelios knew that, if she did tell, there was a good chance that both he and Matyas would be joining the other driver in hospital, and so he had no choice but to sack Matyas.’

‘How did he take it?’ Mac asked.

‘Stelios saw a different side of Matyas that night. He totally lost it, used just about every swear word in the book and a few he hadn’t heard before. He said that Stelios wasn’t a real man if he took the word of a whore over his and he swore he’d get even.’

‘Did Stelios ever tell his father?’ Mac asked.

Tommy shook his head.

‘He knew his father liked Matyas and, as he was also living over the shop, he decided to let sleeping dogs lie. Then he got the job at the university and, from time to time, he’d ask his father about Matyas but everything seemed okay. He said that he thought Matyas was probably all mouth but he wasn’t sorry to see the back of him when he heard he was going back to Hungary.’

‘Dimitrios!’ Mac said.

‘What about Dimitrios?’ Dan asked.

‘He was the one who warned the professor about Matyas. Can you get a car around and see if he’s okay? Probably best if they could give him a ride to his father’s house, he should be safe enough there.’

Dan rang and arranged for a car to pick him up.

‘Good thinking,’ Dan said. ‘He’s got two tonight, perhaps he’s going for a hat trick.’

He turned back to Tommy.

‘Anything else you can tell us?’

‘Yes, apparently our man had some unusual skills. Not long after Matyas had started one of the drivers had left his keys in his car and somehow managed to lock the doors. He didn’t have a spare and, as the car was a few years old, he thought he’d have trouble getting another key from the dealers. He and Stelios thought the best thing might be to smash the glass on the passenger side and then claim it on the insurance. Of course the driver wouldn’t be able to work until he got the glass replaced. Matyas asked them to wait and a few minutes later he returned with a piece of stiff wire. Stelios said he couldn’t see exactly what he did with it but it took him less than ten seconds to get the door open.’

‘It all fits, doesn’t it? I’d better check in with Adil,’ Dan said as he took out his phone and walked a little distance away.

‘Are you okay Tommy?’ Mac asked.

‘Not really. It’s not exactly something you see every day is it, someone dying right in front of your eyes? He seemed such a nice man too, I felt so bloody helpless, Mac.’

‘I know the feeling well. The only way we can help Stelios now is to catch Matyas and anyone else who’s involved with him. It might help his father a little too.’

Dan returned. ‘I’ve asked Adil to handle everything at the professor’s. He’s sending the team home now and he’s going to debrief us tomorrow morning at nine thirty, we’ll all need our beauty sleep tonight. Unfortunately before we can get to bed we’ll need to interview that lot over there,’ he said gesturing towards the small crowd still waiting in front of the taxi office. ‘There’ll be a couple of uniforms coming to help us but it will have to be all hands to the pumps. Will you be okay to help us for a couple of hours Mac?’

‘Of course,’ Mac lied.

His back was getting more painful by the minute but he couldn’t refuse.

‘Are you looking for anything special?’ Mac asked.

‘I don’t expect they’ll be able to add any more about what’s happened tonight but they may know something about this Matyas and a few more clues definitely wouldn’t hurt.’

A police car pulled up and two uniformed officers stepped out. Dan used them to make sure no-one left until they’d been questioned and to get their names, addresses and contact details. Altogether there were twenty two people so Dan took eight and Mac and Tommy seven each.

In between the second and third interviews Mac went into a little kitchen area to get a glass of water as he needed to take a pill. Through the window he could see the Road Traffic Accident team in their fluorescent jackets, flashes flickering as they measured and photographed the tyre marks. Like a photograph he once again saw the anguish in Spiros’ face in his mind and he made himself a promise.

It took over two hours to finish the interviews and towards the end Mac was flagging, only just about managing to keep the pain at bay.

As they drove back to the station Dan said, ‘Did you ask anyone to come in and make a statement?’

Tommy answered first.

‘No, three of the drivers only started recently and didn’t know Matyas and the other four couldn’t add anything new. None of them actually witnessed the murder.’

‘Just asked the one,’ Mac replied. ‘He was having a smoke outside and saw the BMW run Stelios over. He couldn’t add anything about Matyas and neither could the others. Looks like he didn’t make any friends, ‘He kept himself to himself’ one of them said. Did you find anything?’

Dan shook his head.

‘No, I drew a total blank too. It seems most of the drivers were out on jobs, they only came back to the office when they heard about Stelios on their radios. The operators couldn’t see anything from where they sit and none of them had anything to add about our man. He was very nice and polite, one of the operators said. She obviously hadn’t heard about his wandering hands.’

‘Our man obviously has a real problem with women,’ Mac said. ‘It was also interesting what Stelios said about our man being able to break into a car so easily. He must have learnt how to do that when he was in Hungary, perhaps he has a record there for car theft or joy riding?’

‘Good thinking,’ Dan said. ‘I’ll get Martin to check tomorrow.’

He looked at the clock on the dashboard.

‘God, it’s nearly one, it’s been a long day. Still okay Mac?’

Mac nodded. He couldn’t speak because another bolt of pain ran down his left leg, if he opened his mouth Dan would know.

Dan dropped Mac and Tommy at the car park.

Mac waited until Dan had driven off and then, with an effort, said, ‘Tommy, I’ve got a problem, I can’t walk and I won’t be able to drive.’

Tommy looked concerned.

‘Why didn’t you tell Dan?’ Before Mac could answer he added, ‘You’re afraid he’ll take you off the case, aren’t you?’

Mac nodded.

‘Okay wait here,’ Tommy ordered.

A few minutes later he returned with an office chair that was on wheels.

‘Your taxi,’ Tommy quipped.

Mac gingerly sat down and Tommy slowly pushed him up the ramp into the station. He could feel every little jolt along the way and he only just about managed to keep from making a sound.

He rolled Mac along a corridor and stopped outside of a door.

‘Your room is ready.’

He opened the door and wheeled Mac inside.

The room was a medical recovery room. It had a desk and a couple of chairs, a big first aid kit and a defibrillator. However Mac wasn’t interested in any of these, he was looking lovingly at the bed that was pushed up against the far wall.

‘Will this do?’ Tommy asked.

‘You’re a genius Tommy.’

Tommy pulled back the bed sheets and helped him up out of the chair into a sitting position on the bed. He removed Mac’s shoes and jacket so he could lie down and then covered him with the sheets. Mac couldn’t help letting out a loud grunt a few seconds later.

‘Don’t worry,’ Mac said, ‘when I lie down it always gets a little worse for a few minutes but it will ease off soon.’

‘Is there anything you can take for the pain?’ Tommy asked.

‘Yes, here.’

Mac took out his wallet and pulled out a small flat plastic pack.

‘Can you cut the top off with a pair of scissors, just where the little arrow is?’

Tommy did as ordered and returned the opened pack to Mac. He took out a small, clear rectangle of plastic. He undid the top three buttons of his shirt and removed another small plastic square from his right shoulder blade. He stuck it to the outside of the pack. He then carefully removed the two clear plastic wings that protected the gluey surface of the patch and stuck it on his left shoulder blade. He gently patted down the surface of the patch with his finger.

‘Do you do that so it will stick better?’ Tommy asked.