Night Fall (14 page)

‘I remember.'

‘Same MO, wrists bound, tape over his mouth, and a dressing on his forehead. Pushed off the roof of the Freemont Hotel where he was living.'

P
aget drove in alone, thankful that Grace wasn't on call as well, considering the way the rain was pelting down. The less people on the road in weather like this, the better. Detour signs were in place at both ends of Prince Street, and the screens and tent had been erected by the time Paget had driven in from Ashton Prior. SOCO vans were drawn up at the side of the road; white-suited men and women were already at work, and Paget found Tregalles and Charlie Dobbs sheltering from the rain in a shop doorway.

‘I was just warning Tregalles that this rain's going to make it all but impossible for us to gather anything useful off the ground or the roof,' Charlie said as Paget joined them, ‘so don't expect too much from us on this one. Sorry to hear it's one of yours.'

‘Funny,' Tregalles said, ‘but Whitelaw stopped me the other day to ask if there was an A on Moreland's forehead. I didn't think much about it at the time, I thought he was just curious, but it looks like he might have known more than he was letting on.'

Paget pulled the hood of his rain jacket tighter as he stepped out into the street and turned to look up. ‘Is there any doubt that he came off the roof?' he asked.

‘One of his boots is still up there,' said Charlie. ‘It looks to me as if his boots weren't laced up, and he lost one of them when he went over the parapet, then lost the other one in the fall. We found it in the middle of the road.'

Paget ducked back under cover. ‘And Whitelaw was
living
here in the Freemont?' The Freemont was the sort of hotel where they rented rooms by the hour, and no police officer, no matter what his or her rank, should be living in such a place.

‘He was,' Tregalles confirmed, and pointed at a dark, uniformed figure huddled against the rain by one of the barricades. ‘That's Lou Bates,' he said. ‘He was Whitelaw's partner for a while, and he told me Whitelaw's been living here since he and his wife were divorced six months or so ago. She and their young daughter took off for Cardiff, his wife's home town, and he was left to clear up the mess. Seems like the problem was debt. Got in over their heads, according to Bates. He sort of hinted that drink was involved as well. Anyway, he says Whitelaw was living here because it was all he could afford.'

‘Who found the body?'

‘A taxi driver reported what he thought was a drunk,' Tregalles said. ‘He should have stopped to see if the man
was
just drunk or injured, but he said he couldn't, because he was on his way to pick up a businessman at the Tudor Hotel, who wanted to be driven to Birmingham airport, and he wasn't going to be late for a fare like that. He's been told to report to Charter Lane as soon as he gets back.'

‘Right,' said Paget. ‘Wait here until I've seen the body for myself, then I want to take a look at the roof and Whitelaw's room.'

‘He landed right there at the edge of the pavement,' said one of the men squatting beside the body inside the tent, taking measurements. His name was Geoff Kirkpatrick, one of Grace's colleagues. ‘Hard to tell if he bled much because blood would have been washed away by the rain.'

Gavin Whitelaw lay on his back. Paget remembered him from their encounter at the Lessington Cut, but Whitelaw's features were so distorted that he wouldn't have recognized the man if he hadn't been told who he was. Duct tape covered Whitelaw's mouth, and there was a dressing in the centre of his forehead. And, like the others, it was held securely in place by an additional strip of duct tape. ‘Same MO,' Kirkpatrick observed, indicating the dressing. ‘The killer wants to make sure the dressing doesn't come off when they land. Not that it made any difference in this case,' he continued. ‘Looks like he landed on his back and the skull was pushed upwards when his head hit the ground. Shoved the bones up under the nose and rammed his teeth up to twist the mouth as well.'

Paget, never comfortable around such scenes, could have done without the explanation. ‘I take it the doctor's been informed?' he said.

‘Should be here any minute.' The man looked at his watch. ‘I took pictures as soon as we arrived, but Starkie will want more when he turns him over.'

‘You haven't been on the roof yet, I take it?'

‘No need. Fred's up there, getting soaked, I imagine.'

Paget left the tent and rejoined Tregalles. ‘Let's go up and take a look at the roof, and then I want to look at his room. Do you have the number?'

‘Three nineteen,' Tregalles told him. ‘I've got his keys. The only thing in his pockets except for this.' He handed Paget a business card, the name embossed in gold.

‘Mike Fulbright, Sales Manager, Bridge Street Motors,' Paget said. ‘That name sounds familiar.'

‘It should,' Tregalles said. ‘Rugby player. He's been playing for the Grinders for God knows how many years. Built like a brick shithouse; they call him the Avenger. But then, you don't follow sports much, do you, boss?'

‘Not much, no,' Paget said thoughtfully. ‘But I do wonder why this card would be in Whitelaw's pocket when he's living in a dump like this. Can't quite see him being in the market for a new car, can you?'

The Freemont Hotel was one of the oldest, if not
the
oldest, in Broadminster, and it smelled like it; musty and sour, the pervasive odour was enough to sting the eyes. The ceiling in the lobby was high, and the light was poor. It was like entering a cave, and the mustard-coloured paint and years of grime on the walls did nothing to alleviate the feeling of gloom. The carpet in front of the reception desk was worn through to the canvas, and the top of the counter was chipped and scarred and burned. A wizened, bald-headed man, who looked almost as old as the hotel, sat dozing with his chin on his chest in a chair in the tiny office behind the counter. ‘That's Mr Thomas,' Tregalles said. ‘Says he didn't see or hear anything unusual when I spoke to him earlier.'

‘Hardly surprising,' said Paget. ‘I wonder what does pass for unusual in this place?'

The lift wasn't working, and Paget wasn't sure he would have trusted it if it had been. The stairs were made of marble, steep and narrow and deeply worn by the passage of time and thousands of feet, and both men were breathing hard by the time they reached the roof.

Fred Chandler, another of Charlie's men, met them as they stepped out. He wore a clear plastic cape and hood over his white coveralls, and water was literally cascading off him. ‘Could have saved yourself the climb,' he told Paget, ‘because there's bugger all to see up here. If there was anything it's been washed away by the rain. We'll come back again when it stops raining and have another go, but I wouldn't expect too much if I were you.'

‘Charlie mentioned a boot . . .?'

‘Bagged and on its way,' Fred told him. He led the way to the parapet. It was no more than two feet high. ‘For him to land where he did, he must have gone over here,' he explained, ‘but there's no physical evidence that I can see. As I said, we'll come back when it's dry, but . . .' He shrugged and shook his head.

They stood at the edge looking down. Paget calculated mentally. Sixty feet or more to a hard, unyielding pavement. He pictured the scene in his mind and shivered.

Back inside, Paget and Tregalles made their way along an ill-lit corridor to room 319, where a WPC stood guard outside the door.

‘Anyone show any interest?' Tregalles asked.

The young woman shook her head. ‘Quiet as the grave, Sergeant,' she said. Her eyes flicked up and down the corridor. ‘And not much different to being in one, if you ask me.'

Tregalles took Whitelaw's keys from his pocket and opened the door, then led the way inside, only to stop dead a few paces in. ‘God! What a stink!' he muttered, wrinkling his nose in disgust. He pointed to the beer cans and bottles, empty pizza boxes and crisp packets spread over the table. ‘The man was living like a pig!'

‘Doesn't look as if there was any kind of a struggle in here,' Paget observed. ‘I wonder how the killer got him up to the roof.'

‘Could have been someone he knew. Someone he trusted?' Tregalles offered.

‘Whoever he was, he must have been pretty damned persuasive to get him up there at that time of night in the pouring rain,' Paget said as he looked around.

‘Left his wallet here.' Tregalles pointed to a jumble of objects on the top of a cardboard box serving as a bedside table. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened the wallet. ‘Eight pounds ten,' he said. ‘Driving licence, several business cards, including two from lawyers, a two-for-one coupon from McDonald's, a library card, a business card from Kingsway Self Storage, a preferred client card from a video store, and two condoms. But no credit cards of any kind. That's a bit odd.' The sergeant listed the contents in his notebook, then put them back and bagged the wallet.

‘Bring that along but leave the rest for now,' Paget told him. ‘I'll get Forsythe on it.'

Tregalles bagged the wallet and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Sorry, love,' he said to the WPC when he locked the door again, ‘but I'm afraid you're going to be here until we can get someone to relieve you. Shouldn't be long, though.'

The look she gave him said more than words what she thought of that.

‘Quiet, isn't it?' he said as they made their way down to the ground floor. ‘Any other place we'd have people out in the hallways demanding to know what was going on, but not here. It's going to be interesting to see who and what we find when we go through this place and start knocking on doors. My guess is they'll all claim to have been sleeping soundly in their beds and didn't see or hear a thing.'

‘I suspect you're right,' Paget agreed, ‘so let's go and see if Starkie's arrived and if Charlie's people have found anything useful.'

Mr Thomas was snoring gently as they passed him on the way to the door. Tregalles opened the door and was about to step outside, when he paused and stepped back in. ‘Looks like we have company,' he said. ‘Superintendent Pierce is out there.'

‘So, there's absolutely no doubt now that we have a serial killer on our patch,' Amanda said. ‘And this latest victim is one of our own. What do we know about PC Whitelaw, Neil? Do you have any idea how he may be connected to the two previous victims?'

Amanda Pierce and Paget had taken shelter from the rain in her car, and they were having to raise their voices to be heard above the steady drumming on the roof. They were reasonable questions, and Paget dearly wished he had reasonable answers.

‘He was one of the first responders when Travis was killed,' he told her, ‘although I think that was sheer coincidence, but Tregalles tells me that Whitelaw was asking questions about the way Moreland was killed, and he asked specifically about the letter A on Moreland's forehead. But until we have a chance to dig into his background and private life, I can't tell you any more than that.'

‘But living here in this hotel . . .?' Amanda made a face. ‘I know the pay scale could be better, but I didn't think it was quite
that
bad.'

‘According to one of his colleagues, Whitelaw was recently divorced, and he was deeply in debt,' Paget told her. ‘We don't know how accurate that information is, nor do we know if his situation had anything to do with his death, but we'll be following it up. As for the rest of the investigation, as I told you yesterday, we have little in the way of hard evidence. The duct tape and plastic ties can be bought anywhere; the killer leaves no tyre tracks or footprints; he leaves no fingerprints, no hairs, no fibres, nothing. As for the letter A, we don't know if this is his signature, his initial, or if it stands for something else. So far, about the only thing these men have in common is that they're about the same age. But if Tregalles is right, and Whitelaw's interest in the way Moreland died was more than idle curiosity, then Whitelaw either knew or at least suspected what that connection was. So let's hope there's something in his background, or in the things he left behind, that'll lead us to his killer.'

Amanda Pierce looked at the clock on the dashboard. Four fifty-two, and the rain-swept streets were all but deserted as she drove away from the crime scene. Too early to go into work, and too late to get much sleep if she returned to her flat in Albany Place. Three murders in three weeks! What a way to start a new job, especially when you knew there were those who were just waiting for you to fail. Was that what Neil wanted, too, she wondered. Did he hate her that much? She sighed heavily. She could hardly blame him. Reason enough with what had happened in the past, but then, to come along years later to snatch away the job he'd every right to believe was his for the taking, that
would
be hard to take.

The irony was that it was
her
future that was in
his
hands. If he didn't solve these murders, and soon . . . Amanda dismissed the thought. That was no way to think. Neil would do his job, regardless of his personal feelings towards her, because that was the way he was. But if he failed – if the killings continued – then it would be her head on the chopping block, and Chief Superintendent Morgan Brock would be only too happy to pick up the axe.

P
aget had spent what was left of the night in his office, alternately filling in time with paperwork and dozing at his desk, but he was downstairs in the incident room to greet Len Ormside when the sergeant arrived.

‘Human Resources won't be in for another hour, but I want Whitelaw's personnel file as soon as they get in,' he told the sergeant. ‘It should tell us if he has any close relatives here in town who can identify the body, and his ex-wife will have to be notified. I'm told she and their daughter are living in Cardiff. If there's no one here, then we may have to ask her to come back and do it.'