Jigsaw Man (25 page)

When the meeting was over, Tartaglia headed back to his office just in time to see
Chang bounding down the main stairs two at a time towards the exit. He found Fuller
standing by the coffee machine further along the corridor, punching buttons.

‘Where's Justin off to so fast?' he asked.

‘Keeping an eye on Sam. It's his turn tonight.'

Twenty-eight

Adam closed the front door quietly behind him and took off his coat. He had waited
at the café for well over an hour for Gunner to come out, but in the end he had given
up and spent the rest of the afternoon walking aimlessly around the streets north
of Oxford Street, wondering what to do. Gunner's presence in the house threatened
everything, but getting rid of him wasn't a simple matter. The sheer practicalities
of killing him and disposing of his body might be overcome – he had thought about
several ways he might manage it, even given the man's strength and size. He could
spike a bottle of his favourite drink, which appeared to be either whisky or Red
Bull – and sometimes a mixture of both – with an elephant-sized dose of Rohypnol.
When mixed with alcohol, it could paralyse even somebody with Gunner's physique quite
quickly. And there were also other drugs he had used that had a similar effect. Once
Gunner was out of it, killing him would be child's play, although he would have to
think carefully about how to deal with the body. But would killing Gunner be enough?
He somehow doubted it would end there. The questions kept gnawing away at him: Who
else knew Gunner was there?
Why
was he there? Was it to do with Kit or something
else?

The hall was dark and he paused just inside and listened. Was Gunner home? After
a moment, he picked up the sound of the TV coming from the basement sitting room.
He had been planning on watching a film. They were showing
The Runaway Jury
, followed
by
The Fifth Element
on Film4. His
mind was churning and he needed the distraction.
Fucking Gunner. It was the only television, and more importantly the only comfortable
place to sit, in the whole house. But he had no desire to be in there with him.

He decided to go and make a cup of tea. On the way downstairs, he stopped outside
his bedroom and put the key in the lock. It wouldn't turn: the door was already unlocked.
He had rushed out of the house in such a hurry earlier; had he forgotten to lock
it? He didn't think so. He opened the door, went inside and scanned the room. Superficially,
it looked undisturbed. The top two drawers of the small chest were exactly as he
had left them, a couple of millimetres open, and the bottom drawer fully pushed in.
He checked inside. Nothing seemed out of place. Using his phone torch, he knelt down
and checked under the bed where he had stowed his rucksack. He could see the padlock,
still intact, the numbers scrambled in the order he had left them. Then he noticed
a faint line in the dust, only visible because of the angle of the light. It looked
as though it might have been made when a loose strap brushed along the floor as somebody
carefully lifted out the rucksack from under the bed. It hadn't been there that morning.
The rucksack contained his most important possessions: his gun, his grandfather's
hunting knife, sharp as ever, which the old man had used to scalp more than one Nazi
in the war, and the rest of his basic kit – the disposable gloves, the plastic ties,
the handcuffs and the Rohypnol. There was also five thousand pounds in cash, in fifty-pound
notes. He undid the padlock and took out the two fat wads of money. He counted them
out three times before he was satisfied that not a single note was missing. But maybe
Gunner wasn't after his money . . .

Adam sat back on his heels. Even if Gunner had somehow picked the lock, got into
his room and been through his things,
and also had the skill to pick the padlock
too, did it matter? It was against the law to keep a gun under the bed, but that
was about it. It wasn't a hanging offence. There were no papers or other forms of
ID in the rucksack. He kept what he needed on him at all times, and the rest in a
lock-up elsewhere, in case he needed to leave suddenly. There was nothing in the
room, or amongst his things, that could identify him. But if Gunner had gone to all
that trouble to snoop, why had he made the mistake of leaving the door unlocked?
Was he just careless, or was it deliberate? Did he want Adam to know that he'd been
in there, that nothing was out of bounds and that he could get access whenever he
liked?

Rage filled him and he dug his nails deep into his palms. Something had to be done.
He would make a plan that night. In the meantime, he needed a drink; something stronger
than tea. He went downstairs to the kitchen, deaf to the sound of the TV blaring
from the room at the front. Ignoring the pile of dirty dishes that Gunner had left
in the sink, he grabbed a glass, hand trembling, and filled it with water. He knocked
it back and started looking in the drawers for the key to Kit's small wine cellar,
where he also kept some bottles of half-decent brandy. As he hunted around, he noticed
a business card sitting on the counter and picked it up. His heart skipped a beat.
The name
Detective Sergeant Kevin Moore
was printed underneath the Met Police logo.
It didn't say which section he worked for but the card was crisp and pristine. Fresh
out of the wallet. He felt the blood rush to his head and stood still for a moment,
trying to calm himself. It might not mean anything, he told himself. No point jumping
to conclusions. He went into the sitting room, where Gunner was stretched out on
the sofa in a pair of Calvin Klein briefs and socks, watching some sort of war movie.

‘What's this?' Adam asked, holding up the card. The sound was so loud, he had to
repeat himself.

‘Copper came by today while you were out,' Gunner shouted without looking up.

‘And?'

‘You need to call him.'

Again he felt the rush of heat to his face, sweat breaking out across his back. ‘Me?
Why?'

‘Because he wants to speak to you.'

‘I don't understand. Why does he want to speak to me?'

‘He was asking about Kit. I said you could help.'

‘Why the fuck did you say that?'

Gunner looked around and gave him a dead-eyed stare. ‘Because you've seen him more
recently than I have,' he bellowed. He went back to watching the screen, as a helicopter
exploded in mid-air.

‘Why the hell's he asking after Kit? What's Kit done?'

Gunner turned to look at him again, this time giving him a curious look. ‘Kit hasn't
done anything. Apparently, Kit's disappeared.'

Twenty-nine

Back in his office, Tartaglia stood for a moment looking out of the window at the
houses opposite. Lights were on here and there, curtains still open, revealing people
going about their evening routines. For a moment, he wished that he, too, could go
home, open a bottle of wine, maybe listen to some music. But he was too wired to
relax, there was too much to do. Yet he felt in limbo. A lot appeared to be happening
with the case, with a myriad leads being followed and potential connections being
turned up, but he felt they were barely inching forwards at best. They still hadn't
found the key to it all, the one detail that, however small, brings everything suddenly
into focus and makes sense of the rest. Had there been another fire that they hadn't
yet found? They were already stretched to the limit with the existing workload and,
by the sound of things, it might take Chang days to go through the all the records.
Perhaps there was a shortcut.

He took out his phone and dialled Melinda Knight's number. She picked up in a heartbeat,
as though she had the phone in her hand.

‘Hi, Mark. I was wondering when you'd call,' she said.

He heard the buzz of voices in the background. It sounded as though she was in a
bar or pub. ‘Are you busy?' he asked.

‘Nothing that can't be put on hold. For you, at least.'

Half an hour later, Tartaglia joined Melinda in a wine bar just off Kensington High
Street, near her office.

‘Before we start, this is off the record,' he said, handing her the large glass of
chablis she had requested and sitting down on the stool beside her at the bar.

‘That's fine. But if anything comes of it, I want an exclusive. OK?' She fixed him
with hard blue eyes.

‘You mean you can't rely on your deep throat to tell you what we're up to?'

She smiled. ‘Don't be cheap. Anyway, I'd rather it came from you. Do we have a deal?'

He nodded. If she helped to find the killer, she could have all the exclusives she
liked. ‘Now, tell me what you know about old fires.'

Melinda shifted in her seat, took a large sip of wine, then put down the glass. She
folded her arms on the counter, clearly enjoying the moment. ‘Where shall I begin?'

‘Just get on with it.'

She smiled. ‘I think this bloke, our beloved Jigsaw Killer, has done this sort of
thing before. Why?' She held her finger up in the air, like a teacher asking a question.
‘Because he's damn good at it, he's fluent. I can't believe the fire in that supermarket
car park was his first. It was all so well researched, even down to the car he stole.
Don't you think?'

‘Maybe.' He couldn't disagree, although nothing surprised him any longer where murder
was concerned. Sometimes a killer got it right first time, either through careful,
methodical planning or just sheer luck. There was no point reading too much into
things at this stage.

She gave him a sideways look. ‘Have you found the tramp, by the way?'

He sighed. Was there nothing she didn't know? ‘No. We're still looking.'

‘Who do you think he is?'

He shook his head. ‘That's not why I'm here. Now either get on with it, or I'm off.'

She grinned. ‘OK. We've pulled all of the coroners' records for the last three years,
which I think is enough for now. I've had two people working on it night and day
and it's taken sodding ages . . .'

His phone was ringing. ‘I need to take this,' he said, seeing Dr Moran's name flash
on the screen. ‘I'll be back in two ticks.' He answered the call and went outside
to the street as he listened to Dr Moran rattle through the results of the DNA comparison.

‘The samples sent over from Winchester match with victims A, B and C from the Sainsbury's
fire. There's no other DNA present.'

‘You mean, no match with Richard English's son?'

‘That's right.'

He thanked Moran and hung up. He called Steele but she wasn't answering. He left
a message, telling her what Moran had said, and went back into the bar.

‘What's up, Doc?' Melinda asked, swinging around to face him, eyes alight with curiosity.

‘Nothing that concerns you,' he said, sitting down again.

‘Everything to do with you concerns me,' she said, prodding him gently with the pointed
toe of her boot. ‘Anybody ever tell you that you look like Robert Downey Jr?'

‘Just you.'

‘Only taller, of course . . .'

‘Get to the point. You were telling me about your search.'

She rolled her eyes. ‘OK. We've been through every fire involving human fatalities
in the UK, looking for something out of the ordinary or unexplained. I'm assuming
there's nothing flagged up on your system as suspicious, otherwise you'd
know about
it. Right?' She looked at him for confirmation and he nodded. ‘So, if there's another
body fire, it's slipped below the radar. The only way that would happen is if it
looks like an accident, the victim is unknown or unidentifiable, and there are no
suspicious circs so nobody bothers to delve a bit deeper. Am I making sense?'

‘Perfectly. Go on.'

‘Of course, that makes it all a heck of a lot more difficult to find, but I think
we've got two possibles so far. Both look a little different from the norm. One's
in Peckham and one down on the south coast, not a million miles from Winchester.
The weird thing is that neither autopsy picked up anything suspicious about the bodies.'
She sat back on her stool and folded her arms, chewing her bottom lip in a playful
manner.

‘So they don't conform to the pattern?'

‘You mean they weren't a mixture of body parts? As I said, open verdicts were recorded
on both, so of course there's nothing exciting. Maybe the pathologist was just sloppy.'

He made no comment, wanting to dampen her enthusiasm. The pathologist didn't need
to be sloppy to miss a body assembled from multiple parts. In the normal course
of events, without anything else to arouse suspicion, only a single DNA sample would
have been taken, usually from a long bone or a tooth.

‘Whatever, I still think the circs of both are a bit odd,' she said, still looking
at him, trying to gauge his reaction. ‘And everything's worth looking at, isn't it?
I mean, you don't even have a suspect, do you?'

‘Are you going to tell me anything else?' he asked, refusing to be needled. He wasn't
prepared to justify their lack of success to her, although if there was no further
progress soon, Steele and the review team would be on his back.

‘Maybe. I'm not sure I trust you.'

‘You'd better trust me or I'll make you hand over what you have.'

‘That'll cost you quite a bit of time and you're not the sort of bloke who likes
to wait, are you?' She smiled. ‘It's also amazing how files can disappear.'

‘Melinda—'

‘There's no need,
if
you play fair. You can have it all. Do I have your word?'

‘As a gentleman?'

She waved him away. ‘You're no gentleman, which is what I like about you, Mark. But
yes, let's do it the old-fashioned way. Let's shake on it. If I give you what we
have and you turn something up from it, you promise to give me an exclusive. Will
you pick up the phone and call me straight away? And I mean
only
me?' There was a
determined gleam in her eye as she held out her small hand.