Evil in Return (4 page)

For a moment, he struggled to picture Maggie with dark hair, then it came to him. The chocolate commercials: the silly little romantic soap that had gone on for several years, played out between a man, a faceless cipher as far as he was concerned, and a lovely dark-haired woman, all over a box of chocolates.

He’d watched them as a young teenager and fancied her rotten, although she must have been nearly twice his age at the time. He’d seen her in other things too, but it was the chocolate commercials that had stuck in his mind. How funny that, after all those years, he was sitting here with her now.

The small brass carriage clock on the side table started to chime. He looked over and saw that it was eight o’clock.

‘Would you be able to do an e-fit of her, do you think?’ he asked, hurriedly getting to his feet and tucking his notebook and pen away.

Smiling, she hugged her knees tightly to her ample chest. ‘I can do better than that as a matter of fact. I’m afraid again I was curious, maybe even a little jealous, if I’m totally honest. Certainly interested, anyway. So, with a bit of subterfuge, I got him to tell me her name and then I googled her. She used to have a column in one of the dailies. Her name’s Anna Paget.’

4

Tartaglia folded his arms and met DCI Carolyn Steele’s eye. ‘Cause of death was a single contact shot to the head.’

‘What sort of weapon?’ Her accent was a flat, generic southern, with no noticeable regional quirks.

‘They think some sort of nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistol, although without the bullet it’s impossible to be more precise. The head x-rays were clear. No fragments left inside, so ballistics have absolutely nothing to go on.’

It was well past midnight and Tartaglia had only just returned from Joe Logan’s post mortem. They were in Steele’s cramped, threadbare office back at headquarters in Barnes. The DCI sat hunched deep in her chair, stockinged feet up on the edge of her desk, swivelling slowly from side to side and sucking thoughtfully on the end of a pen. For a woman who hadn’t been home since early morning the previous day she looked remarkably untouched, still in the same pristine, fitted white blouse and dark grey pinstriped trousers. She had a broad, handsome face, her skin pale even in summer, as though she rarely saw daylight, and chin-length, layered black hair that emphasised her pallor.

‘What about outside in the graveyard?’ she asked.

‘They’re still working it, but so far there’s no sign of any blood anywhere. It’s looking like he was killed elsewhere. One of his wrists was fractured and his hands and feet show quite deep restraint marks and bruising, as though he’d struggled hard against whatever was used to tie him up. He’d also been punched in the face before he died and his nose is broken. But there are no defence wounds, which is odd. No obvious needle marks either. He was fit and healthy, by all accounts, and certainly no weakling. It’s not clear how he was overpowered.’

‘Maybe the tox results will come up with something.’

‘Perhaps the gun was enough to make him cooperate. And there’s something else. The poor bugger was castrated.’

‘Castrated?’

‘Yes. Arabella found his dick stuffed down his mouth.’

Steele blinked and exhaled loudly. ‘Jesus wept. They’ve got too much bloody imagination these days. So, we’re looking at something really unusual, then. Last time I had a body mutilated like that were those gay murders three years ago in Soho.’

‘This is different,’ he said, remembering the case she was referring to. ‘This wasn’t a frenzied attack. If anything, it seems pretty cold-blooded. Mercifully Logan was dead when it happened.’

‘I thought you said his trousers had blood on them?’

‘Arabella said there’d still be quite a bit of leakage even after death.’

‘So he’s shot, then castrated.’ She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, then slid open one of the filing drawers and pulled out a full bottle of Laphroaig and a couple of plastic cups. Without a word, she poured out two decent measures. ‘Here.’ She thrust one of the cups towards Tartaglia as though he had asked for it. ‘Sorry there’s no ice.’

He took it without question, trying to hide his surprise. She was not a heavy drinker, as far as he knew, and in the six months or so they had worked together she had never offered him anything stronger than a cup of tea or coffee; nor had he ever seen her have a drink with anyone else in the office.

Occasionally she would join them in the pub after work and buy a round, but her preferred tipple was diet coke or slimline tonic with ice and lime. The idea of her keeping a bottle of good single malt stashed away in her desk drawer was intriguing.

‘Sláinte.’ He tipped his cup to her and leaned back against the wall, enjoying the smoky taste of the whisky. The air conditioning in the building was on the blink again and she had opened the Seventies picture window as far as it would go. The gentle, dusty breeze felt good on his face, bringing with it the smell of dry grass and earth from the Common nearby. The usually busy road below was silent and he heard the bark of a fox somewhere nearby.

Steele took a gulp of whisky, coughed as though unused to it, and set the cup down on the desk, eyes watering. ‘That’s better,’ she said, hoarsely, clearing her throat. She rocked back in her chair and looked up at him. ‘So where are we at? What do you make of things so far?’

Tartaglia massaged his chin, suddenly aware of the thick growth of stubble and wishing he had had time for a quick shave. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.

‘The CCTV footage from the cemetery has gone off for analysis, but from what I saw we’re looking for a pretty athletic man and, given the logistics, it’s possible more than one person’s involved. The forensic team have been all over the roof but nothing interesting has turned up. The bloke on the tape was wearing gloves, so I didn’t expect any prints, but they say it also looks as if the roof has been swept.’

She nodded. ‘So we’re dealing with someone organised, who plans ahead. But what’s it all about?’

He shrugged. ‘When I heard Logan had been castrated, my first thought was that the motive was sexual, particularly given the connection with the Brompton Cemetery and all the shenanigans that go on there. Like you, I thought of the Soho murders, but so far there’s no reason to think Logan was gay.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Nothing yet to indicate it. At the moment the only possible gay connection is the choice of dumpsite. The killer clearly knows the area but a lot of people use the cemetery who aren’t gay. Problem is, we don’t know where or how Logan met the killer. The last sighting we have of him is around five in the afternoon, pushing his bike along the towpath on his way out to meet someone.’

‘So why the castration, do we think?’

He grimaced. ‘Could be all sorts of reasons. Even if he isn’t gay, it could still be sexual – a mark of contempt, or punishment. Maybe someone was trying to make an example of him as a warning to others. He was certainly left where he’d be found, and the choice of the crypt is striking though I haven’t a clue what it means.’

‘You’re thinking it’s drugs or gang related, some form of organised crime?’

‘It would tie in with the method of killing. From the little we know, Logan was a writer and a teacher, though he’d been an actor. We don’t yet know what else he was involved in, but if he was dealing it wasn’t from the boat. The neighbours would have picked up on it, plus we found no physical evidence.’

‘Hopefully his papers or bank records will reveal something.’

He nodded. ‘Maybe it’s a simple crime of passion, maybe he was messing around with someone else’s wife or girlfriend, someone who has a gun.’ He paused, then decided to go further. ‘But it was all carefully planned. Logan was taken somewhere, beaten up and executed. Whoever did it stood right in front of him as they delivered the
coup de grace
. They looked him in the eye. Whatever the motive, it’s got to be personal.’

He watched Steele’s face for a reaction, but there was none. According to the office rumour mill, Steele’s direct superior, Superintendent Clive Cornish, had put forward the wild theory that Logan had been picked off the street at random by some gun-toting whacko. Cornish had come up through the ranks in uniform and had no hands-on experience of murder investigations in his career; he was best known for his expensive suits and smooth political skills. Tartaglia had no idea if Cornish had actually expressed this view, although from what he knew of him, it rang true. Nor had he any clue what Steele’s opinion of Cornish was; as with everything else, she played her hand close to her chest and he had never felt sufficiently at ease with her to express his views freely. But he wanted to hit the theory on the head right away. If not, they would lose precious time and resources on what he was positive was a non-starter.

She rubbed her bottom lip thoughtfully with her finger and he caught the flicker of a smile. He wondered if she, too, was thinking of Cornish. ‘No,’ she said, with a quick nod of the head. ‘Whatever happened, it certainly wasn’t opportunistic.’

‘But there’s one thing that doesn’t add up,’ he added, relieved that she seemed to agree with him. ‘The killer chooses to dump the body in a disused crypt in Central London, right in the middle of about forty acres of public land. Apart from anything, it’s taking one hell of a risk. A pro wouldn’t go to so much trouble.’

Steele nodded slowly. ‘Unless it was part of the contract, for some reason. What about Logan’s phone?’

‘Still hasn’t turned up, but one of his neighbours gave us the number and we’ve traced it back to the provider. It’s switched off, so it could be anywhere, but we should have all the details and a cell site analysis of his calls by tomorrow morning, plus the lab will report back on his computer.’

She turned towards the window, eyes half closed as though she was picturing something far away. He wondered if she was having personal problems, or if it was just the stress of the job, but he knew better than to ask. She never brought her private life into work. Even her office gave nothing away, with no photos or personal items of any sort on show. Apart from the fact that she was single and lived alone in a basement flat in West Hampstead, a detail that had come to light accidentally in a previous investigation, he realised how little he knew about her. She was only a couple of years older than he was and she wasn’t unattractive, far from it in fact, but she had an aura about her that said ‘keep off’. It was a self-protective mechanism he had come across a lot with police women in what was still very much a male-dominated world, but with Steele there was more to it, he felt, and he was curious.

He followed her gaze through the window. Immediately opposite, a terrace of low-built Victorian houses backed onto the road that led from Barnes village green to the Common and mainline station. The odd light was still on here and there, revealing sleepy little snapshots of domestic life. In one house, he saw the flicker of a television; in another, he watched a dark-haired woman in a pink dressing gown make her way slowly up the stairs with a mug of something in one hand and a black cat draped over her shoulder. The sight brought on a sudden wave of tiredness and he stifled a yawn. The day’s adrenaline high had evaporated and he wished that he could be back in his flat, about to crawl into bed. But the immediate prospect of that was a remote one.

After a moment, Steele gave another hearty sigh and turned back to him, fingers steepled under her chin, fixing him with her strange green eyes. Her mouth softened unexpectedly into a smile. ‘I agree with everything you’ve said, Mark. It looks like a cut and shunt. Maybe someone’s messing us around.’

Her unexpected warmth surprised him. She wasn’t usually so easy to convince. If it had been anyone else, he would have been tempted to say that she was flirting with him, or at least trying to win him over, but Steele wasn’t that sort of woman, and she’d taken no more than a mouthful of whisky. Something else must be behind it and he felt instantly wary.

‘It’s personal,’ she continued distantly, still gazing at him, seemingly unaware of her body language. ‘The answer’s buried somewhere in Joe Logan’s life, if only we can find it.’

There was a rap on the open door and he turned to see Minderedes.

‘Sorry to interrupt. But someone’s using Logan’s phone.’

5

‘If I catch you nodding off, you’re for the high-jump, lassie,’ a deep Scottish voice said immediately behind Donovan.

She started, but didn’t turn around. Along with a waft of coffee, she had caught a trace of DS Justin Chang’s familiar aftershave. She shook her head. ‘I know it’s you, Justin, and Mark doesn’t talk like that anyway. I’ve had about two hours’ sleep, so don’t blame me if I’m a bit dopey.’ She carried on tapping at her keyboard, inputting a witness statement from the previous evening.

‘I’ve got you a coffee,’ he said, in his normal voice. She looked around. The expensive aftershave was an incongruous touch in someone who usually dressed like a student. Today, though, he was wearing a suit, although it looked as though it had seen better days. His tie was loosely knotted and the top button of his collar was undone. But in spite of the fact that he too had been up most of the night, his expression was irritatingly cheerful.

‘Here.’ He handed her a cup from a paper bag, which came from The Food Gallery, her favourite deli in the High Street, where they made the best coffee in Barnes. ‘I told them to put an extra shot in it. Thought you’d need something to keep you on your toes.’

‘Thanks. I need all the help I can get today. What do I owe you?’

He waved her away. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

Too tired to argue, she shook her head and removed the lid to take a sip. But the coffee was piping hot and she put it down to let it cool. Chang had joined the murder team less than two months before and had taken to bringing her coffee most mornings, so far refusing to let her pay him back, or return the favour. In the small, open-plan office, with its central bank of desks, nothing went unnoticed for long. Jane Downes, who was sharper-eyed than most, had already made a couple of teasing remarks about special treatment. Luckily Downes was away from her desk and the other members of the team were either busy on their computers or the phone. But Donovan decided that she was going to have to say something to Chang.

He removed his jacket, threw it over the back of his chair and sat down at his desk, which was next to hers, rubbing his hands briskly. He opened the bag and took out another coffee, a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel, an apple and a large chocolate brownie, which he laid out in a row in front of him.

‘Breakfast,’ he said, tugging his tie undone and dropping it casually into a drawer.

‘You mean lunch.’

He gave her a broad smile. ‘Dinner, actually, if you really want to know. By the time I realised I hadn’t eaten last night, it was already morning and I was too tired to do anything about it. Is it always like this?’

She nodded. ‘It’s always crazy at the beginning of a major new case. The DCI before Carolyn Steele kept a sleeping bag in his office for overnight stints.’

‘Rather him than me,’ he said. ‘I like my home comforts.’

‘Well you’d better get used to it. At least there’s the overtime to think of.’

‘What about my social life?’

‘You’re not allowed one. Didn’t they tell you?’

‘Just as well I don’t have one then.’ He took a large bite of the bagel.

‘You’ll have me feeling sorry for you in a minute. Where’ve you been?’

‘On a wild goose chase trying to follow up on a man Nick interviewed yesterday. Wasted most of the morning.’

As he spoke, Tartaglia entered the room and came over to Donovan.

‘Karen just called in,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘She’s on her way back from NatWest now. She’s been through Logan’s bank accounts for the last year and so far it all looks kosher – no big deposits, except via his agent, no other sources of income, no large outgoings or cash withdrawals or anything out of the ordinary. He was also pretty frugal on the expenditure side. Apparently he had a very healthy current account balance and an even fatter deposit account.’

‘So much for impoverished writers.’ He sat down on the corner of her desk and folded his arms. He looked tired and was badly in need of a shave. She wondered if he had made it home the previous night. ‘I guess it demolishes one theory,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Unless Logan had another bank account tucked away somewhere, it looks as though we can rule out gambling or extortion.’ He looked over at Jane Downes, who had just come into the room. ‘Any luck tracing Logan’s next of kin?’

‘Not yet,’ she said, sitting down at her desk opposite Donovan. ‘But one of his neighbours has ID’d the body.’

‘What about the victim profile?’

‘Coming along slowly. I’ve spoken to Actor’s Equity and Spotlight and I finally managed to track down his acting agent, but he wasn’t very helpful. Apart from being very sorry to hear what had happened and a load of stuff about Logan being a decent bloke, seems he hadn’t spoken to Logan for several years. He had nothing to do with the publication of the book. I’m waiting for the headmaster from St Thomas’s to call me back. Hopefully, he’ll be able to fill in some of the gaps.’

As she spoke, Minderedes entered the room and Tartaglia stood up. ‘Come over here for a minute,’ he said, beckoning everyone over. ‘Nick’s been chasing down Logan’s phone. I want you all to hear what he’s got.’

‘Where shall I start?’ Minderedes asked, as they gathered around.

‘Go from last night.’

‘OK. As you know, Logan’s iPhone was missing and switched off. About midnight last night, someone turned it on again. The provider contacted us immediately. We eventually traced it all the way from Covent Garden to a B&B in Victoria. Just after four this morning, we raided a room and unearthed a spotty little git called Chester. He’s on holiday from Seattle with his parents and younger brother and claims to have found it in the gents at a Pizza Hut near Leicester Square at around eleven-thirty. He was using it to text his girlfriend back home.’

‘They were up late,’ Downes said.

‘Jetlag, apparently, and they’d been to see a show. The little bugger got the fright of his life when we burst in, which serves him right for not turning it in. The long and short of it is he seems to be telling the truth, which means the killer must have deliberately left it there to play silly buggers with us. The place was full. No cameras in the gents, of course. We’ll appeal for witnesses but it’s unlikely anyone noticed the phone being left.’

‘It’s gone off for testing,’ Tartaglia added. ‘But I expect it will have been wiped clean before it was dumped. Let’s go back to Logan’s calls.’

‘OK. We now have a log of everything going back over the last six months, including transcripts of any voicemails still on the service provider’s server. The call volume is pretty low. Doesn’t seem like he had many friends, or at least didn’t like talking to them. But in the days just before he died, three numbers come up more than once, both incoming and outgoing, and all three callers left voicemails. The first is a woman called Jana Ryan.’

‘Logan’s publisher, judging from the transcript,’ Tartaglia added.

‘She called twice and left a message each time, asking Logan to call. There’s no record of his returning the call. Next is a man named Alex. In the week Logan died, he called four times and left two voicemails, one three days before Logan died, another on the day of Logan’s death asking Logan to return the call, which he did. Each time they talked for several minutes. The last call was timed at four thirty-three in the afternoon. Judging from the cell site analysis, Logan was calling from on or near the boat, which corroborates what we’ve been told about his movements that day. Alex was somewhere close to the main mast in Kentish Town. We’re trying to trace him through his mobile, but so far no luck. It’s a pay-as-you-go and it appears to be switched off. The last caller is a woman named Anna. She rang and left a message two days before Logan’s death, saying she had some further questions. Logan called her back. They talked for a couple of minutes and it seems they arranged to meet. The evening of Logan’s death, she leaves two voice-mails, one at seven forty-five saying she’s in the bar waiting for him, and another at eight-twenty, saying she’s going home and asking him to call. She thought he’d stood her up and she sounded quite pissed off. Both calls were made within a half-mile radius of the mast at Earl’s Court.’

‘We think she’s a journalist called Anna Paget,’ Tartaglia said. ‘According to one witness, she was interviewing Logan for some newspaper. We’re trying to trace her now.’

‘We’ll be checking every number on the phone list, but these three callers are a priority.’

‘Any news on the laptop, Dave?’ Tartaglia asked, looking over at Wightman, who was sitting opposite and was the youngest member of the team. He was short and stocky, with thick blond hair and glasses. He had a degree in computer science and was usually tasked with anything related.

‘They’re sending over a copy of the hard drive within the hour,’ Wightman said.

‘Good. What about you, Jane?’ he said, turning to Downes. ‘How are you doing with Logan’s papers?’

‘I’ve been through his files and what was in his in-tray. It’s mainly bills, bank statements, that sort of thing, plus some fan mail that had been forwarded from his previous address. Nothing particularly interesting. There was also a whole load of stuff printed off the internet about Thailand and Malaysia. Looks like he may have been planning a trip, although I couldn’t find a booking confirmation or an e-ticket or anything. But I did find this.’ She held up a sheet of paper. From what Donovan could see, it looked like an email, with a paragraph of tightly spaced, strange-looking black type below the address. ‘This was sent to Logan’s Mac account just over a week ago,’ Downes said. ‘The address is a bit odd for starters: [email protected]. And it gets even weirder.’ She started to read:

and laughed conspiratorially as they stumbled down the steep spiral stairs together. The candlelight flickered on the bare crumbling brickwork and the gauzy spiders’ webs. She heard footsteps and voices from the others just behind. At the bottom was a heavy wrought iron gate, decorated with an ornate coat of arms. The metal was badly rusted and part of the shield fell away as she touched it. She was sure there were rats in such a place and she held on even more tightly to his arm. He was still laughing and the sound echoed around the small subterranean chamber. She suddenly wanted to whisper. A drop of icy water fell onto her bare shoulders and looking at her intently, he slowly wiped it away with his finger. The floor below was flooded with an inch or so of water and she got her feet wet as she stepped down. A giant key sat in the lock invitingly. She held up the guttering church candle and peered through the bars of the gate into the gloomy darkness beyond. A small stone altar lay immediately in front and on either side were rows of ancient coffins. The ones at the bottom sat in the water. She wondered if they would float if the water rose some more. ‘Have some more wine, my pretty,’ he said, filling her glass to the brim. ‘I like the way it

‘It stops there, in mid sentence. There’s no beginning or end. No greeting, or anything.’ Downes looked from one face to another and shrugged. ‘Given where Logan’s body was found, I thought it was worth mentioning.’

‘He was a writer,’ Minderedes said.

‘Are you saying he had second sight?’ Downes replied sharply. ‘It mentions a crypt.’

Minderedes shook his head sceptically. ‘Looks like a piece from a book. Must be something he wrote.’

‘And emailed himself?’

‘Sounds like part of a gothic novel,’ Donovan added.

‘More like Hammer Horror,’ Chang muttered under his breath.

‘Whatever it is, I can tell you it’s not describing the crypt at the Brompton Cemetery,’ Tartaglia said. ‘Although, I agree it’s a coincidence and worth looking into. Was there anything else like this amongst his things?’

‘No.’

Tartaglia turned to Wightman. ‘Get onto the techies and tell them I want the email traced, plus copies of any other emails from the same source. Anyone else have something?’

Chang raised his hand. ‘I’ve just come back from Maida Vale. I was following up on a witness statement Nick took yesterday, a man called Tim Wade, who was hanging around the boat and said he was a friend of Logan’s. Anyway, the phone number and address he gave are false. The number belongs to a traffic warden in Doncaster, who’s never heard of a Tim Wade, and there’s nobody of that name living at or anywhere near the address he gave.’

‘I remember him,’ Minderedes said. ‘He had blood on his face and shirt. He said he’d had a nosebleed.’

‘What did he look like?’ Tartaglia asked.

Minderedes narrowed his eyes. ‘Tallish bloke, about six feet, medium build, red hair. Brown eyes, I think. He was wearing jeans, a baggy blue and white striped shirt and trainers. He was very keen to know what was going on and what had happened to Logan, even though he said he didn’t know him that well. He seemed quite edgy, couldn’t stand still, and he was sweating heavily. I thought it was the heat. It all seemed a bit odd but there wasn’t a lot I could do.’

‘If the phone number and address are false, I’m betting the name is too.’ Tartaglia turned to Chang. ‘A red-haired man was seen having a drink with Logan on the boat three nights ago, the night before Logan was murdered. Get onto the council and pull all the local CCTV footage for yesterday. There are a couple of cameras along the canal and check the tube stations. If that doesn’t get us anywhere, I want the buses checked as well. We’ve got to find him.’

Just as he finished speaking, DS Sharon Fuller, the office manager, poked her head around the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Sir. I can’t get hold of Anna Paget, but I’ve set up an appointment for you with Jana Ryan. She’s Logan’s editor. She’s expecting you at her office in an hour.’