Frozen (24 page)

But knowing that she was safe did little to dispel her fears about him striking someone else while Leverton wasted his time with Donalsen.

Reaching into the glove compartment, she pulled out a street map of Birmingham. She gasped when she realised where Franco Rossi's house was. Right in the heart of the red light district. She must have driven past it at least twice last night. And it was only round the block from Inkerman Place. How convenient for dumping poor Donna Fieldhouse's body.

As she pulled out of the car park the faces of Donna, Natalie, Tina and Maria filled her mind. There had to be
something
at Franco's house. Some clue, however small or obscure, to the identity of the other killer.

She pictured that faceless man sitting somewhere cosy, wrapping presents. Alongside, someone who had not the slightest idea what kind of monster he really was.

Chapter 15

When Megan arrived at the house she was unnerved to see that architecturally, it was very much like her own. But this once-graceful Victorian terrace had been boxed in by ugly factories. Paint was flaking from the window frames and filthy net curtains obscured the interior from prying eyes.

The houses on either side were boarded up. How easy it must have been to commit murder in such a god-forsaken dump, Megan thought. At night you could scream yourself hoarse and no one was likely to hear. Neither was anyone likely to be watching if someone emerged from the narrow alley at the side of the house with a large, bulky parcel to load into the boot of a car.

There was a twisted kind of justice in the fact that Franco Rossi had ended up in the same car boot that he had stuffed Donna, Natalie and Maria into. Megan shuddered when she thought about Maria Fellowes' feet lying in a garden shed at the other end of that dingy alley. Maria wasn't all that tall, so it must have been the stiffness of her body, from a combination of rigor mortis and the freezing weather, that made Franco mutilate her legs.

Whoever killed Franco must have put his body in the boot almost immediately after death, bending the legs and spine into a foetal position. The killer would have to have done it under cover of darkness. So, Megan estimated, the earliest Franco could have been murdered was about four o'clock on Friday afternoon.

She fished in her bag for her mobile. Had anyone bothered telling Delva that her tormentor was dead? She was certain it wouldn't have crossed Leverton's mind.

‘Delva – it's Megan.' She could hear music in the background and the sound of people talking and laughing.

‘Hello?' She sounded as if she was struggling to hear.

‘We've found him, Delva. The guy who was sending you the letters.'

‘What? Oh my God, that's fantastic! Who is he?'

‘He's – was – one of the security guards at BTV. He was called Frank. Frank Ross.'

‘Bloody hell! He was on duty the night I got that photo! He was one of the pair I caught slobbering over that newspaper. Have they arrested him?'

‘Didn't have to. He's dead.'

‘Dead?' Delva repeated the word as if she didn't think she'd heard right.

‘We think he was killed by the man who murdered the woman they found in the skip.'

‘But – why?' Delva stammered, ‘What for?'

‘We think he was linked to the killer in some way. He was a local pimp.'

‘A pimp?' Delva snapped. ‘What the hell was a pimp doing working as a security guard?'

‘Good question. The police have arrested one of their own people – a sergeant in the Vice Squad. But I think they've got the wrong man.'

‘Why?'

‘It's complicated. Anyway, I just wanted you to know the good news. I'll catch up with you when you get back, okay? Have a good Christmas.'

‘I will,' Delva said with feeling. ‘You too. Thanks, Megan.'

Megan got out of the car and rang the bell.

Franco's killer had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to erase any physical traces of what had gone on in the house. As she picked her way across the duckboards to the kitchen she noticed that the floor and the yellow formica table looked newly-scrubbed. The cutlery, too, was gleaming, probably leaving little clue as to whether any of the selection of sharp knifes in the drawer had been used on Franco.

Most of Franco's scant possessions had already been bagged up by the SOCOs. Megan sifted through the bags with gloved hands, pausing to inspect Maria Fellowes' moneybelt and the BTV publicity shot of Delva Lobelo.

She wondered if Franco Rossi had developed his obsession with Delva before or after getting the job at BTV. Possibly before, she reasoned, because there didn't seem to be any other good reason for him working there. It didn't make sense in financial terms; the money he made from pimping and drug-dealing would have far outstripped the wages of a security guard.

Megan thought about the letters and cuttings Delva had shown her. Teenage girls like Donna, Natalie and Samantha had been nothing more than commodities to Franco, picked up to provide the ready cash to finance his drug deals. In sexual terms they were almost the exact opposite of what he was into.

Megan studied Delva's face. The high cheekbones, the strong jaw, the overwhelming sense of confidence exuded by her eyes.

Franco had wanted domination. Domination by a strong, sexually experienced woman. But it was unlikely that any woman of that type would want someone like him. Hence his fixation with Delva, the authoritative voice of BTV news, who smiled at him every night from his TV screen.

Megan replaced Delva's photograph and picked up a plastic bag containing a plain gold chain and a pair of gold hoop earrings. She asked one of the SOCOs if the shamrock pendant belonging to Tina Jackson had come to light.

‘Not yet, no,' the woman replied, ‘but we've got a couple of cupboards to go through yet.'

‘What about the security video that went missing from BTV?'

The woman shook her head.

Megan moved to a low coffee table to inspect another collection of bags. It was curious, she thought. Franco's killer seemed to have obliterated bloodstains and fingerprints but he had left several really obvious pieces of evidence lying around. Megan had the distinct impression that he was playing games again.

She glanced at the covers of the various pornographic magazines arrayed in plastic bags on the coffee table. Some of the more hard-core publications looked like foreign language imports. She peered at the lettering. Dutch, she thought, and some German too.

At the bottom of the pile was something slightly different. Italian, she guessed, looking at the name of the magazine. There was no picture on the cover, just chunks of text.

Megan had only the barest grasp of the language – a legacy of the brief visits from Granny Pezzotti, her mother's mother – but there was one word that leapt out at her:
CARABINIERI.
The Italian police.

She asked the SOCO if she could remove the magazine from its bag. It was clear from the pictures inside that this was some sort of internal publication for members of the Italian police force. What was Franco Rossi doing with a copy of it? She looked at the date on the cover. It was published last year.

‘Any idea how long he'd been living here?' Megan asked the SOCO.

The woman looked up from the cardboard box of CDs she was carrying across the room. ‘At least five years – maybe longer. We found a pile of old council tax statements in the kitchen drawer.'

Megan replaced the magazine in its bag. ‘Have you found an address book, diary, passport, anything like that?'

‘No. Whoever killed him made sure he didn't leave anything like that around.'

‘And no-one's reported him missing?'

The woman shook her head.

Megan stepped out of the room and made her way up the stairs. Crossing the landing she glanced into one of the bedrooms. She tensed when she saw the bed. It was the one in the Polaroid photograph. She realised she was probably in the exact spot the killer had stood when he took it.

The SOCOs had not yet started on this room and Megan crossed from one duckboard to another, her eyes darting this way and that. The wallpaper looked as if it hadn't been changed in thirty years. It was a brash, abstract design in orange, brown and yellow. She turned to the window and shuddered. There, at the end of the snow-covered garden, was the shed.

The slanting rays of the setting sun lit up the door as she walked towards it. Amongst the jumble of tools on the workbench inside she could see an axe in a scenes-of-crime bag.

How long had Maria Fellowes lain in that shed before Franco dumped her in the skip at BTV? If she was murdered on the night she disappeared, it would have been three days. Why had the body been hidden away like that? It certainly wasn't consistent with the other murders.

She began asking herself if there had been some ulterior motive. What would the killer have gained by telling Franco to wait three whole days before disposing of the body?

‘Doctor Rhys!'

Megan turned to see the woman SOCO she had spoken to earlier leaning out of the back door of the house.

‘Something here you might be interested in.'

Megan hurried back towards the house. ‘What is it?' she said, following her into the kitchen.

‘This.' The SOCO picked something bright and shiny from the table and put it into Megan's gloved hand. It was a large, gold wedding ring. A man's wedding ring.

‘We found it in one of the cupboards. Look inside.'

Megan held it between her finger and thumb, angling it so that the inside of the gold band caught the light. Alongside the hallmark was an inscription.
Robert and Helen, married 2.7.94, St. Stephen's.
As Megan stared at the graceful italic engraving her stomach began to churn.

‘It's Rob Donalsen's wedding ring,' the SOCO said matter-of-factly.

‘Are you sure?' Megan was unable to take her eyes off the names on the ring.

‘As sure as I can be,' the woman replied. ‘I was at the wedding.'

*   *   *

It was getting dark as Megan drove away. She sped through the deserted streets of the red light district, feeling a sense of relief when she hit the wide road of post-war semis that led to less dangerous territory. Only superficially less dangerous, though, she thought grimly, as she turned a corner and pulled sharply to a halt outside Tina Jackson's house.

She needed time to think things out. The evidence against Rob Donalsen seemed overwhelming. From a dark corner of her mind, she could hear Leverton's sneering voice. How could Rob Donalsen's wedding ring have got into Franco Rossi's house if he was not the killer? There had to be some explanation.

Megan thought about the conversation she and Leverton had had with Samantha at Leamington police station. The girl had referred to Donalsen as ‘that dope head'. Had she seen him at Franco's house buying cannabis? Could the ring have slipped off his finger then?

No, Megan thought with a sinking feeling, it didn't make sense. If Franco was supplying Donalsen with drugs, it would be ridiculous to believe he had any fear of being arrested for pimping. There would be no reason for him to have ferried girls like Natalie to different areas of the West Midlands to do their soliciting, as she knew he had done.

So how had Samantha known Donalsen took dope then? Perhaps it was common knowledge to the women on the beat. After all, she reasoned, Eileen Bunce seemed to have known all about his liaisons with prostitutes. Word probably travelled fast.

Megan started up the engine, a look of determination on her face. What if someone had planted that ring in Franco's house? What if the real killer had decided to set Rob Donalsen up? He was separated, so there was a good chance he'd discarded the wedding ring. She had to find out who could have got hold of it.

Megan pulled over a couple of times to look at her street map. Leverton had been driving when they went to Helen Donalsen's house and it wasn't in an area of Birmingham she knew.

In the end, it was the snowman that told her she was in the right road. The woolly cap on its head had shifted to a jaunty angle and someone had stuffed a beer can in its pebble mouth.

The dappled light of Helen Donalsen's Christmas tree shone through the curtained window of her front room, but there was no reply when Megan rang the bell. She waited on the doorstep for a couple of minutes and then got back into the car, wondering what to do.

It was pointless hanging around. Helen had probably gone to spend Christmas Eve somewhere else, leaving the lights on to deter burglars. Megan wished she had the woman's telephone number. She tried directory enquiries but it was unlisted. Bloody typical, she thought. Reaching into her bag, she fished out a pen and notebook.

She worded the note carefully, saying simply that she needed to speak to Helen urgently and giving the telephone number of Ceri's house and the cottage at Borth as well as her mobile number.

She pushed it through the letter box, ringing the bell one last time as she did so. No reply. She sighed, watching her breath swirl smokily in the cold night air. There was nothing more she could do. Not tonight anyway. She shivered. Not from the cold, but from the thought of
him.
Nameless, faceless and deadly. He could be cruising the streets at this moment, looking for another victim.

As she drove away, she grated the gearbox and swore loudly. She flicked on the radio in a half-hearted attempt to ease her frustration. Slade were belting out the chorus of
Merry Christmas Everybody.
‘Merry Christmas,' Megan muttered under her breath. ‘Merry bloody Christmas!'

*   *   *

‘Auntie Megan! Look what Father Christmas brought me!' Emily's little body landed on the bed with a thump. Through bleary eyes, Megan could see a Barbie doll with improbably long red hair waving about a few inches from her face. It made her think of Eileen Bunce and in the few seconds it took to wake up properly, she found herself speculating what the woman might have looked like when she was young.