Jigsaw Man, page 14
‘His phone was still switched on?’ There had been no mention of this in the report.
‘Yes. It rang a few times and then went through to voicemail. I left several messages but he never called back. Do you think he was being held somewhere?’
‘We don’t know at this stage. Please go on.’
She sighed. ‘I tried calling again the next day and it still kept ringing. It was a really basic model and it held its charge, unlike mine. But by the evening it was either switched off or had run out of juice. I was worried sick by then, so I called the police again.’
‘What sort of phone was it?’
‘Just an old Nokia. It used to be mine. He didn’t want anything too complicated. He just used it to make the odd call.’
According to the summary that had been emailed to Tartaglia, the full missing person’s report listed both telephone records and voicemail transcripts for the two weeks leading up to Smart’s disappearance. However, he was sure he had seen no mention of phone location analysis. Even if Smart’s phone were too old or basic to be equipped with GPS technology, as long as it was switched on, it would still have been sending out a signal that would give them a rough idea of his movements. He made a mental note to check the file again when he got back to the office, but if it hadn’t been done, he would make sure it was prioritised.
‘Can you tell me a bit about your father?’ he asked. ‘I understand he lived here with you.’
‘Yes. I’m divorced and I’ve got no kids. When Mum died six years ago, he sold their house and I told him he could move in with me. We were always very close. I guess I was a real daddy’s girl. I miss him terribly, you know.’ Her mouth puckered as she tried to stop herself from crying.
‘Is that him?’ He gestured towards a large, framed black and white photograph on a shelf above the counter, next to a handful of cookbooks.
She gave a wan smile. ‘Yes. When he was a bit younger.’
‘His face looks familiar.’
‘Dad was an actor. His stage name was John Sharp. He used to do loads of telly and commercials in the eighties and nineties.’
‘I’m sure I’ve seen him. I spent my life watching the box as a teenager.’ He saw tears in her eyes again and decided to change tack. ‘Your father was in his sixties when he went missing?’
She nodded, looking down at her hands. ‘He was going to be sixty-five the next day. My brother and his family were coming over and we were going to have a celebration.’
‘It says in the missing persons report that your father was a little forgetful.’
‘I suppose so, but it was nothing serious. They tried to make out that he had Alzheimer’s . . .’
‘They?’
‘The police. I guess they were trying to find reasons to explain why he might have gone off and not come back.’
‘But there was no truth in it?’
‘Well, he did have some problems remembering his lines on one particular job. His agent made him go and see his doctor about it, but the doctor just told Dad not to worry, that it was all part of getting older and he just needed to get a bit more rest.’
‘You told the police this?’
‘Yes, but it made no difference. They wouldn’t listen.’
Tartaglia had quickly skimmed the doctor’s report, which had been attached to the summary of the Missing Person’s report. The investigation had considered all the usual angles; all the shops and places John Smart visited on a regular basis had been checked, but nobody had seen him the day he disappeared and the police had failed to find any evidence whatsoever to trigger the launch of a full-scale murder inquiry. As with Richard English’s disappearance, there were no suspicious circumstances or any known threats to Smart. Even though the report had touched on the possible issue of dementia, he wasn’t viewed as being vulnerable in any way. However unreasonable it sounded to his family and close friends, the conclusion was that he had, for some reason, decided to go off of his own free will. There was nothing illegal about that.
‘Did he have any close friends?’
‘You’ll want to speak with Jim and Tony. They were his best buddies. He’d known them both for well over thirty years.’ Tartaglia made a quick note of their details. ‘They’re usually to be found in the Sun Inn,’ she added. ‘That’s where Dad used to hang out even after he’d moved to Battersea.’
‘You mean in Barnes?’
She nodded. ‘I grew up in Bellevue Road, around the corner.’
‘I know the Sun Inn well, our office is just up the road. What about girlfriends? Was your father seeing anybody?’
‘No.’ She replied a little too quickly and emphatically and he realised it was a sensitive subject. For the first time in their conversation, he wondered if she was hiding something.
‘You’re sure?’ he asked, looking at her closely, noting the way she suddenly avoided eye contact.
‘Of course I’m sure. After Mum died, he had quite a few women chasing after him. He was a terrible flirt but he didn’t mean anything by it, he just liked the attention. Said it made him feel alive. I gave his organiser to the police so they could check up on where he’d been and who he’d been seeing. I’d quite like to have it back at some point.’
‘So, there was nothing going on in his personal life? Nobody—’
‘No. He was a family man, Inspector. He also valued his close friends, people he’d known for years. He didn’t need anybody else.’
He still wasn’t convinced, sure that there was something behind her almost prudish reaction. John Smart’s sex life probably wasn’t relevant and Isobel was not a suspect. But he needed the full picture of Smart’s day-to-day life, however uncomfortable it might be for his daughter. If she wouldn’t discuss it, he was sure Smart’s friends would have no such issue. ‘I’ll make sure you get all of his things back when we’re finished with them,’ he said. ‘So what would a normal day look like, for your father?’
‘It depends if he was working, or not. If he wasn’t, he’d be off on his bicycle after breakfast, usually to his allotment. He was very into his gardening.’
‘This was where?’
‘At the back of one of those big houses on Castelnau. The woman who owns it joined the local allotment scheme.’
‘Sorry, you’ll have to explain. I know nothing about allotments.’
‘Dad really missed his garden after Mum died. He tried to get an allotment from the council, but it was impossible. It seems you have to wait for at least twenty years. Then he saw an ad in the local paper about the garden scheme. Basically, residents who have a spare plot of garden and no time to look after it themselves, let other people use it to grow veg and flowers. In return, they get half the produce. It seems to work quite well. Dad was always growing all sorts of wonderful things. I think the lady who lived there must have really loved him.’
‘Do you remember her name?’
‘I think it was Jane, or June, but I’m not a hundred per cent sure. I never met her but he pointed the house out to me several times. It’s one of the big detached ones, a little way down Castelnau on the right if you’re heading towards the bridge. You can’t miss it. It’s got a bright-pink front door. All very sixties, he said.’
‘Apart from gardening, did he have any other hobbies or interests?’
‘He was a keen photographer. He’d often disappear off for the whole day on his bike with his camera. He took it with him everywhere. He loved the river, and all the wonderful old parts of London.’
‘Do you still have his photos somewhere? They might give us an idea of where he went during the few weeks before he disappeared.’
‘They’re backed up on an external drive, with his laptop. I put them in a storage box under his bed when I had a friend to stay.’
‘I’ll take them away and have them copied. I’ll also need any cameras he was using, just in case he hadn’t downloaded all the files.’
‘He just had a little Pentax. My brother brought it back from a trip to Hong Kong for Dad’s sixtieth. We were trying to persuade him to embrace modern technology and go digital. I’ve looked for it everywhere, but I can’t find it. I guess he must’ve had it with him the day he disappeared.’
There had been no mention of the missing camera in the report, as far as Tartaglia could remember, and he wondered how many other little, seemingly unimportant details had been overlooked. ‘Did he use the camera on his phone at all?’
‘No. He said the camera was crap. He usually had the Pentax in his pocket or his backpack.’
‘You said his backpack’s missing?’
‘Yes. I guess that’s why the police thought he’d gone off on a trip somewhere, as if he’d do that sort of thing without telling me.’
‘OK, thanks. Do the names Richard English or Jake Finnigan mean anything to you?’
She shook her head, no flicker of recognition in her eyes. ‘Should they?’
‘Possibly not. Would you mind taking a look at a couple of photos and telling me if either of these two men looks familiar?’ He held up photographs of English and Finnigan for her to see, but again there was no reaction and she quickly shook her head. ‘What about this image?’ He showed her the E-FIT of the man who had approached Tatyana Kuznetsova.
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Before I go, can you think of anybody who might have borne your father a grudge, however stupid or trivial it seems? We need to follow up on absolutely everything.’
Isobel said nothing for a moment, glancing away again towards the window. ‘Of course the police asked me that, when they interviewed me. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that although Dad could be really irritating at times, there was no malice in him. If somebody wanted to rip him off, he’d just shrug and walk away. Life’s too short, was his motto. I keep asking myself why anybody would want to kill him.’ She leaned forwards across the table. ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to substantiate this, but I’ve obviously been thinking about things a lot since he disappeared . . .’ She looked at him a little anxiously. ‘You may think I’m being silly . . .’
‘You have a theory?’ he asked, trying to make it easier for her. She seemed a sensible, down-to-earth woman and it was clear she very much wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened to her father. ‘Whatever you say, I won’t think you’re silly at all. I promise.’
She shifted in her chair, put her elbows on the table and laced her fingers together. ‘Well, it all boils down to the sort of person Dad was. By that, I mean his character. He was a real people watcher. Other people’s lives and business and psychological motivation fascinated him. He said it was all part of being an actor. It used to drive my mother nuts but he just couldn’t switch off. I’ve got a friend who’s a writer and she’s exactly the same. Anyway, I’d be out with Dad somewhere, on the bus or the Tube, or in a restaurant or on holiday, and he’d be listening in on people’s conversations and making up names and backgrounds and whole life stories for them. They were often really funny and sometimes frighteningly accurate.’
‘You think this might have had something to do with his disappearance?’
She spread her hands. ‘Look, I don’t know, but Dad really was very nosy, Inspector. He was like a terrier; a real dab hand at rootling out a secret.’
‘You’re not talking about blackmail?’
She looked shocked. ‘Of course not. He never did anything malicious with it. He just liked to get to the bottom of things for his own sense of satisfaction, a bit like solving the crossword, which he also loved to do. I’m just saying that maybe, in the course of his day-to-day stuff, he saw something he shouldn’t, or found out something bad that somebody wanted to keep quiet . . .’
‘Or saw somebody somewhere where they shouldn’t have been?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But he never mentioned anything like that to you?’
She looked a little deflated by the question. ‘No. I’ve been over everything I remember him saying to me in the week or so before he died, but there was nothing like that.’
‘Maybe he just didn’t get the chance.’
Twenty
Just after eight-thirty that evening, Tartaglia decided to call it a day. He put on his jacket, shouldered his rucksack and walked out of his office into the corridor. Hannah Bird was just coming out of the ladies room. She looked different. Looking closer, he noticed that she was wearing her hair loose for a change, and had put on make-up. It suited her.
‘You off out somewhere?’ he asked, picking up the scent of some sort of fresh, flowery perfume.
‘Just meeting a friend for a quick drink, Sir.’
‘You look nice. Have fun.’
‘Thanks.’ She gave a self-conscious smile.
‘See you in the morning.’
A drink was just what he needed, he decided, as he turned towards the main stairs. Thinking of his conversation earlier with Isobel Smart, he decided to head for the Sun Inn, which was just up the road. It seemed silly going there when he could drink at home, but Donovan would be at the flat and he wanted to be on his own for a while longer, undisturbed. Also, the general buzz of background noise in the pub somehow made it easy to switch off.
‘You going home?’ Chang asked, jogging up the stairs towards him with what looked like a takeaway dinner in his hands.
‘Drink first,’ he said, hoping Chang wouldn’t try and join him. ‘Thought I’d try the Sun Inn. Haven’t been there in ages.’
Outside, he paused on the steps and lit a cigarette. The atmosphere at the briefing meeting that evening had been electric, with almost the entire team packed into the small room. Minderedes had just got back from Winchester, where he’d attended the first hour or so of the post-mortem on the Guy Fawkes remains. Based on a cursory examination, the pathologist had confirmed that the Guy had indeed been assembled from multiple body parts belonging to what appeared to be two adult males and a female. Luckily, the local fire brigade had been on hand at the Guy Fawkes event and had managed to put out the fire relatively quickly. The body parts salvaged from the bonfire were in a better condition than those retrieved from the Sainsbury’s car park fire. Neat, regular stitches were still visible in certain places where the flesh had been laced together with what looked like twine. As with the Sainsbury’s fire, the bones had been sawn through at the joint with a serrated blade. Samples of the twine had been sent off for analysis, and the DNA results from the body parts would come through the following day. They would then be compared with those from the burnt-out car, as well as with the DNA of Richard English’s son. The key question was whether these remains were from the same bodies as before, or whether they were looking at a new set of victims. In the meantime, they had a few hours of peace before the media frenzy would begin.
The news that the Guy Fawkes bonfire appeared to be linked to the Sainsbury’s fire changed everything, as well as complicating the picture. What looked like two multiple killings with a similar MO, in different police jurisdictions, was an operational nightmare for all those involved. Steele had gone to see her superiors at Homicide West Command at the Peel Centre in Hendon, and high-level discussions were now underway between the Metropolitan Police and the Hampshire Constabulary to determine how a joint operation would be run, with a formal press briefing scheduled for first thing the next morning. There was no standard procedure for such circumstances, and Tartaglia wondered what the outcome would be and how it would affect him and his team. In the meantime, it was business as usual, except that there was now an additional fly in the ointment: Melinda Knight, a reporter he knew who worked on the crime desk of one of the tabloids, had been trying to get hold of him urgently and had left several messages. She hadn’t left any details, but it was clear she knew more than she should. Although curious, he had so far resisted the urge to call her back – the less he said to anyone, the better – and she could obtain her information at the briefing the next morning, along with everyone else.
As he crossed the nearly empty car park, he checked his watch. The post-mortem would be over by now and he wondered if there was any further news. He called Ramsey’s mobile and found him at home, sounding a little shell-shocked from the events of the day.
‘It’s definitely a series, then,’ Ramsey said gloomily. The Winchester area was hardly a hotbed of violent crime and at most he probably saw a handful of suspicious deaths in the course of a year. Serial killings, with the attendant media circus, were clearly a new experience for him and it sounded as though he didn’t relish what lay ahead.
‘Looks that way,’ Tartaglia replied. ‘Parts of the London body belong to two men who were reported missing in the last year. So far, it’s the only common link. I’ve emailed you over the E-FIT I showed you this morning. It’s quite possible your man’s beard is a disguise and someone might recognise him without it. We’ll also try re-jigging the E-FIT to see if adding a beard makes any difference. You might want to try both versions. Once we get them over to you, flood the place. Shops, cafés, pubs, B&Bs . . . Somebody somewhere will have seen him, plus he must have local knowledge, to do what he did with that Guy and get away with it.’
Tartaglia heard the clatter of plates in the background and a woman shouting Ramsey’s Christian name. He ended the call and went out through the main gate into the street.
An old white TR6 was parked on a double line just beyond the entrance. As he walked past the vehicle, he was aware of somebody getting out. He heard the clunk of the door, followed by the click of heels on wet pavement just behind him.
‘Hey, Mark. What kept you so long?’
He recognised the husky voice and turned to face Melinda Knight. ‘How’d you know I was here?’
‘You’re not at home, so . . .’
‘Are you spying on me?’
She tapped her small nose. ‘Just an informed guess. Can I have a quick word?’
