Friends to Die For (42 page)

Late that afternoon George was released. Vogel had attempted to persuade Nobby Clarke that an appeal should be made to magistrates court for a further period of detention.
Under the Police And Criminal Evidence Act, magistrates have the power, when it can be effectively argued that a suspect’s further stay in custody is both necessary and potentially
productive, to authorize detention in police cells, without charges being brought, for up to four days. But Clarke and her superintendent at Homicide Command refused even to apply for a magistrates
order, saying it would be a waste of time. They had no evidence that could convince the court there was sufficient cause to detain George Kristos a moment longer. Vogel had no choice but to concede
defeat. In truth, he knew his superiors were right, but he felt he had to at least make the attempt.

George went straight home. He made no attempt to contact any of the remaining friends. Unaware that some of them would have been unable to take his call in any case because they had been
re-arrested, he simply assumed they wouldn’t want to speak to him. Any more than he wanted to speak to them. Besides, the police still had his mobile phone. He did, of course, have a house
phone, and it started ringing soon after he returned to his flat. He ignored it. George was in a state of shock. He felt tense and, for perhaps the first time in his adult life, threatened. He
needed time to himself. Space to think things through. He was aware that he had become Vogel’s prime suspect, but he had no idea what influence this third violent death would have on the
detective’s thinking. After all, there was no way anyone could accuse him of killing Karen Walker. Not when he’d been banged up in a cell at Charing Cross nick when it happened.

There had been times in the past when I felt that God had deserted me, turned his back on me in my hour of need. My faith had been tested, it had weakened, but He had never
forsaken me. For the righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.

Despite my best-laid plans, I had made mistakes as I sought to fulfil my mission. Mistakes that had resulted in my being delivered unto my enemies and looked set to allow those enemies to
reveal me for what I was. That man Vogel, the one poor little Michelle so revered, thought he had the measure of me. But he’d understood me not at all. He thought he was so clever, and yet he
had failed to spot so much.

But neither he nor I could have foreseen the divine intervention that lay in store. For He was watching over me. After all, I am His instrument of destruction. Through my flesh His will is
channelled and implemented irrevocably. And so He brought me forth, He delivered me, for He delighted in me. What other explanation could there be?

Thanks to the hand of God, I was now beyond suspicion in the eyes of Vogel and his self-important cohorts in the Murder Investigation Team. And that was how I hoped to remain.

The deed was done. I had been avenged. There would be no more pranks, no acts of vandalism afflicting the shattered and scattered remnants of the ill-fated Sunday Clubbers. There would be no
more muggings, no more murders.

It was over. I am a creature apart and will stay that way. A creature it is impossible for others to grasp. I am, it seems, as elusive as ever. My very being is impenetrable. I wonder if
they will ever find me now. But in any case, it doesn’t matter. I have triumphed. His power and His glory abide with me.

Not long after George’s release Vogel received the telephone call from Dr Patricia Fitzwarren which changed everything. She had begun the post-mortem examination on Karen
Walker immediately after Greg Walker had left the morgue. She now had the results.

‘I’ve checked and double-checked, Vogel,’ she said. ‘It seems quite incredible in view of all that has happened, but there’s no doubt about it: Karen Walker was not
pushed and neither did she jump.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ said Vogel.

‘Mrs Walker suffered a massive subarachnoid haemorrhage, caused by an aneurism in the brain,’ Pat Fitzwarren announced. ‘You know what an aneurism is, don’t you, Vogel? A
bulge in an artery, a swelling. It can cause headaches but generally there are no symptoms significant enough to cause alarm, no warning signs. Indeed, an aneurism doesn’t cause any trouble
worth mentioning unless it bursts. And that’s what happened in this case.’

‘So are you saying she died of natural causes?’

‘No doubt about it. Mrs Walker’s aneurism burst, resulting in a fatal brain haemorrhage, enough to kill her almost instantly even if she hadn’t been unlucky enough to collapse
onto the track in the path of an oncoming train. It may not be possible to ascertain whether she was actually dead when the train hit her, but I guarantee she was as near as damn it.’

‘My God,’ said Vogel.

The implications of the pathologist’s verdict were immense. George Kristos had been released from custody not only because of a lack of hard evidence but because it was believed that there
had been another murder, one for which he couldn’t have been responsible.

Vogel was still trying to assimilate what it all might mean, when Parlow came into his office.

‘What are you doing here?’ Vogel demanded. ‘You’re supposed to be on family liaison duty with Greg Walker.’

‘I know, guv. But he didn’t want me with him. Said he needed time on his own.’

‘Parlow, for God’s sake, didn’t they teach you anything on that fancy course you went on? What Greg Walker does or doesn’t want isn’t the bloody point. The
job’s not just about playing nursemaid to the bereaved. It’s a watching brief. The man’s already threatened to take the law into his own hands. And now it seems his wife
wasn’t murdered after all. You’d better go find him. Fast.’ Vogel sprang to his feet and hurried towards the door. ‘First though, let me get Nick Wagstaff –
you’re going to need some back-up.’

‘Right, guv.’

Chastened, Parlow followed Vogel into the outer office. Not seeing Wagstaff seated at any of the desks, Vogel shouted his name. A head turned.

‘Yes, guv,’ it said.

Vogel frowned, confused. For a split second he had no idea who was addressing him. Then light dawned. It was Wagstaff. But his former grey hair was now a rather unnatural bright and evenly
coloured brown.

‘Bloody hell!’ said Vogel. ‘What have you done to your hair?’

Wagstaff flushed. ‘It’s the missus, guv,’ he said. ‘Reckoned I was looking old.’

‘Right. Well before you retire to your vegetable patch, I need you to team up with Parlow. He’ll fill you in.’

Despite the enormity of unfolding events, Vogel couldn’t help smiling as he turned towards his office. It was hard to believe that a simple change in hair colour could so dramatically
change Wagstaff’s appearance.

At the door, Vogel turned suddenly. ‘Wagstaff, don’t you usually wear glasses?’ he asked.

Wagstaff paused, his arms half in and half out of the coat he was pulling on. ‘The missus again, guv,’ he said. ‘Got contact lenses now. Damn things are bloody irritating to
wear too, and if you ask me . . .’

Vogel had nothing more to ask Wagstaff. He had stopped listening.

He returned swiftly to his desk and from the top drawer removed the photograph that had been bothering him. He scanned into his computer the picture of a young woman George Kristos claimed to
have found in a magazine, then opened it in Photoshop, where he began to adjust the hair colour from blonde to black, then brown. He played with the colours, darkening and lightening them. He added
a touch of red, removed it, and settled, for the moment, on a kind of mousey brown. It looked right somehow. Then he changed the style of the hair, made it less contemporary, longer, with some
width. He made it curly. That seemed wrong. Didn’t suit the face. He waved it, just a bit. Added a fringe. Removed it. Put it back in again.

The eyes were blue. He changed their colour too, turning them hazel, then dark brown.

Finally he added spectacles, experimenting with different kinds of frames. Wire ones, round ones, oval, black ones, red ones. Then he tried tortoiseshell.

A frisson of excitement began somewhere in Vogel’s lower abdomen and expanded slowly through his body. His mouth was dry. His fingers were trembling. He had it – or at least part of
it. He knew who that woman was. And she certainly wasn’t a Polish wannabe student.

He printed his doctored version of George’s photograph, googled a name, brought up another picture, printed that too, and used the Met’s recently acquired facial recognition software
to make the final comparison.

Then he hurried along the corridor to find Nobby Clarke.

The DCI was on the phone when Vogel barged through her door. Clarke looked up, unimpressed. Vogel didn’t give a damn.

‘It’s urgent, boss,’ he said.

Frowning, Clarke ended her call. Vogel slapped the three photographs onto her desk: the original photo taken from George’s wallet, the version he had just photoshopped, and, uncannily
similar to the second, the third which he’d just downloaded. He tapped it with an extended forefinger.

‘Alice Turner,’ he said. ‘Remember her?’

Then he pointed to the photograph he had doctored. ‘An amended version of the picture of George Kristos’s alleged girlfriend,’ he said.

Light dawned on Nobby Clarke’s face.

‘Bloody hell!’ she said. ‘I remember Alice Turner. Who doesn’t?’

She glanced down again at the pictures before her.

‘And that photograph. It was iconic. In all the papers. My God, I can’t believe none of us saw this before. These are pictures of the same woman.’

‘Yes, and facial recognition software backs it up. The proportions and so on are identical.’

Vogel would have bet his life that Clarke would remember Alice Turner. There were images that stuck in your mind forever. The criminals evil beyond comprehension. Myra Hindley, half-pouting,
staring challengingly at the camera. Fred West, plump-cheeked and boyish. And then there were the innocent victims, their lack of foreboding making their eternal pictorial presence all the more
poignant. Little James Bulger, holding the hand of one of his killers. Milly Dowler doing the ironing. Beautiful Anni Dewani, murdered on honeymoon, in her Indian wedding dress. And Alice Turner.
Even after twenty-three years, her face was instantly recognizable.

Vogel supposed it was the same for everyone, but he always felt these things meant more to police officers. Maybe they cared that bit more. If not, why would you join the police force? Vogel
glanced down at the picture. Alice Turner’s kindly eyes seemed to gaze reproachfully back at him. But what happened to her had not been Vogel’s fault. It hadn’t been
anyone’s fault, really, except the young bastard who’d attacked and maimed her.

Alice had somehow survived, but was unable to cope with her terrible injuries. Two years later she committed suicide.

Vogel had been a probationary PC when it happened, a new recruit. He guessed Clarke must be three or four years older than him, in order to have been a contemporary of Forest’s, and
therefore almost certainly a serving officer at the time. The Alice Turner story had sent shockwaves through police forces nationwide. People in all walks of life had been shocked, of course, but
the general public had been spared the gruesome details.

Alice Turner had been brutally attacked at her Edinburgh home. Her tongue had been hacked off and both her eyes gouged out. Her attacker had pounced in the early hours of the morning while she
was asleep in bed. Without the advantage of surprise, he would have struggled to overpower her, for he had little physical strength. He was after all, just a boy. A boy ten years old.

It had been 1990, three years before poor James Bulger was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys. In 1990 the police and the great British public had found it hard to believe
that a ten-year-old child could be capable of such violence. The horror of it had transfixed the nation, and Alice Turner’s photograph had featured on every front page and news bulletin. The
‘before’ photograph, that was. And it was impossible to look at it without imagining what the ‘after’ must resemble.

The press were forbidden by law from revealing the identity of the child responsible. Not only could they not name him, they were prohibited from publishing any details that might lead to him
being identified. This meant they could not reveal that the boy in question was Alice Turner’s foster son. But Vogel had known. It had been common knowledge throughout the police forces of
the United Kingdom. Even amongst rookies like him.

‘And this picture that none of us can forget, albeit significantly altered, was in George Kristos’s wallet?’ mused Nobby Clarke. ‘Turned into the fictional Carla
Karbusky. She looks a bit younger than Alice does in the un-doctored photo.’

Vogel nodded. ‘Alice was forty when she was attacked. I reckon Kristos has deliberately made her look younger and more contemporary. Turned her into someone suitable to be his girlfriend.
Also someone you wouldn’t immediately recognize as Alice. But Alice all the same.’

‘Pretty damned twisted,’ muttered Clarke.

‘No doubt about that, boss,’ agreed Vogel.

‘What was the name of the boy? Something Scottish, as I remember . . . Rory, Rory something?’

‘Rory Burns,’ said Vogel. ‘As I recall, he’d been badly injured in a motor accident when he was very young. His mother had been killed in the crash and his father
couldn’t cope, so little Rory was put into care and eventually fostered by Alice Turner and her husband. He’d been with the couple for about six years and seemed quite settled. I
don’t think they ever found out what made him turn on her.’

‘“Like a rabid dog” – that was how the prosecution counsel described the boy,’ murmured Clarke. ‘It’s all coming back to me now. Edinburgh High Court,
wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, boss. Just like Venables and Thompson, the Bulger killers, Rory Burns was tried in an adult court because of the severity of his offence.’

‘Didn’t he say something quite chilling when he was arrested, something biblical? It came up in court and was quoted everywhere.’