Jigsaw Man, page 3
‘Did you find a knife or anything with a blade?’ he asked.
She shook her head, peering at the marks. ‘Whatever it is, the blade’s really fine and sharp. Like a Stanley knife.’
‘He may have taken it with him, but we should be looking at corridors, bins, stairwells, drains, anywhere close where he might have ditched it. I’ll get a search team onto it right away. Can you read what it says?’
‘ “E” something, then “O” something, then “S” something. The last bit looks like “Som”. She crouched down until her eyes were almost level with the top of the woman’s legs. ‘That’s better. I can read it now. “ERIS QUOD SUM.”’
He squinted, but still couldn’t see clearly. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m pretty sure.’
She passed him the torch and he crouched down beside her, angling the beam until he could make out the letters clearly. Eris Quod Sum. She was right. It was part of a familiar quote, although he couldn’t remember what it was from. Eram quod es. Eris quod sum. He looked up and met her gaze. ‘It’s Latin,’ he said. ‘You find it on gravestones. It’s the dead speaking to the living. “I once was what you are now. What I am, you will be.” Basically, we’re all going to die.’
‘How very ominous. I didn’t know you spoke ancient Italian.’
‘Benefits of a good Catholic education,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Did Arabella see this?’
‘No. She was in and out of here like greased lightning. Sounded like she had the flu.’
‘I’ll catch up with her later, then.’ It would have been useful to have Arabella Browne’s initial input right away, but it could wait.
‘Who’s the message for, do you think? It’s pretty ominous.’
He grimaced. His head ached and he had seen enough for now. ‘It’s probably a wind-up. CSI gives them all sorts of creative ideas. Let’s get her out of here ASAP. I need to get back downstairs.’
They rolled the woman onto her back and as Jamieson moved to bag up her feet and hands, Tartaglia glanced automatically towards the woman’s face. His mind was already sorting through a quick priority list of things to be done next, but something caught his attention, some sort of fleeting impression of familiarity that made him pause. He looked at the woman again, hoping that it was a trick of the dim, shadowy light or his own tiredness and state of mind. Her face was bloodied and disfigured on one side by the beating she had received. Death also had a way of robbing a person of their humanity and turning loved ones into strangers. Still unsure, he moved over to the other side of the bed and as he brushed back the remaining hair from her face, the breath caught in his throat. Unable to speak, he blinked, studying every detail and contour, hoping that somehow he was mistaken.
‘What’s up?’ Jamieson asked somewhere in the background.
He inhaled deeply, then exhaled, staring blindly down at the body before him, automatically noting the cuts to her face, the bruising and swelling and obvious signs of strangulation, wishing that she were someone else. But there was no doubt about it and it was pointless wasting any more time. The hideous consequences started to unfurl in his mind. What should be done, how to handle it, who to call first . . .
He pulled off his mask and rubbed his face with his hands. Even though the room was like a fridge, he was sweating. He felt suddenly feverish and claustrophobic.
‘Mark? Are you OK?’
He looked up at Jamieson and shook his head. ‘No. I’m not OK. I know her.’
Four
The car braked, then swerved to the right, rousing Tartaglia out of sleep. Minderedes leaned on the horn and muttered something unintelligible as he overtook a cyclist who had stopped in the middle of the road. Tartaglia stretched his shoulders, yawned and checked his watch. It was just after five in the afternoon but already dark. The day had gone quickly enough and the events of the morning seemed a distant memory. Gazing vaguely at the lit-up shop windows and passers-by as they sped past, he thought again of the woman whose corpse he had helped to zip inside a body bag that morning. Her name was Claire Donovan and her sister, Sam, had once been a detective sergeant on his team. Working closely together for almost two years, he and Sam had become good friends, although she had left the police a few months before to go back to university to study for a post-graduate degree. He hadn’t seen either her or Claire since. He still felt shaken by the discovery of Claire’s body in the hotel room early that morning and had spent the intervening hours trying to block out the memories, forget the Claire he had known, and do his job as best he could. But disturbing images from the darkened room kept crowding into his mind and he worried about his ability to see things objectively. Sam Donovan was also at the front of his thoughts and he wondered how she was coping with the news.
Other than the identification of the victim, little progress had been made with the case so far. The name Robert Herring had turned out to be an alias and the Manchester address entered into the reception log was equally fake. The mobile number ‘Herring’ had given was still switched off and untraceable and the credit card used to secure the booking had been Claire Donovan’s own. He had checked in just after seven o’clock the previous evening and the video footage taken of him at reception showed a youngish man of medium height and build. He was dressed in bulky winter clothing, with a thick scarf wound around his neck and a beanie pulled down low over his brow. The little that was visible of his face was disguised by dark-lensed aviators and a good few days’ worth of beard. He looked like a wannabe in the music or film business, not at all out of place in a hotel like the Dillon. He wore gloves and was carrying a large, black rucksack. CCTV footage showed him taking the back stairs up to the room and later, just before eight-thirty, Claire Donovan entering the building and going up to the second floor. The handbag she’d been carrying was still missing, but her coat and the shoes she was wearing looked to be the same as those left in the hotel room’s cupboard.
Just before one in the morning, five minutes after making the call down to room service, Herring was filmed leaving the building via the front entrance, walking down the street in the direction of Marylebone High Street and melting into the night. By that time, Claire Donovan was already dead. He was dressed the same as when he had arrived at the hotel earlier, the rucksack – which must have contained Claire’s things – slung over his shoulder. The search for the knife or blade used to cut Claire’s legs had proved fruitless and it looked as though he’d taken that with him too. Tartaglia had watched the footage over and over again, studying the man’s body language and familiarising himself with what little there was to be seen. Herring moved quickly and purposefully, head down, as though he knew he was being observed. He was calm, even-paced, not a man in any hurry or panic, and Tartaglia was struck by how confident he seemed for a man who had just committed murder. It was extraordinary. Why had he made the call to room service? Why not leave it for housekeeping to find the body the following day? Why had Claire booked the hotel room for Herring and what was her connection to him? These, and myriad other mushrooming questions, remained unanswered. Neither her sister, Sam, nor any of her work colleagues that they had so far spoken to, knew anything about this man. Claire’s phone was missing and switched off, but hopefully her laptop might reveal some important clues.
Tartaglia had just started to doze again when the car took a sharp left and a moment later pulled up abruptly.
‘We’re here, boss,’ Minderedes said as Tartaglia opened his eyes. They were outside the small terraced house where Sam and Claire Donovan had lived, which was located in a quiet maze of narrow streets in Hammersmith, close to the river.
‘I’m just nipping over to the office for some things, then I’ll be back. They called to say they need more evidence bags. How long will you be?’
Tartaglia rubbed his eyes vigorously and reached for the door. ‘I dunno. Maybe five minutes, maybe five hours. Just hurry up.’ Their office in Barnes was just over Hammersmith Bridge, on the other side of the Thames, but at that hour the traffic around Hammersmith Broadway was particularly heavy. What should be no more than a ten-minute journey, door-to-door, could easily turn into half an hour and Tartaglia didn’t want to find himself stranded. He was expecting a call any minute from the pathologist’s office to let him know what time Claire’s autopsy was scheduled that evening and he needed to be ready to go over there at short notice. Normally, he didn’t need ferrying around. He had his motorbike, a Ducati 998, which in his view was infinitely better than a car. But he had dropped it off the previous day at the garage for a service and he would have to rely on Minderedes for the next few days.
He climbed out of the warm cocoon of the car, acknowledging Minderedes’s murmured ‘give Sam my condolences and best wishes’ with a nod. Minderedes and Donovan had rarely seen eye to eye in the past, but it didn’t matter any more. Wrapping his jacket tightly around him, Tartaglia looked at the house. The curtains were roughly drawn but he could see light through the gaps and the shadows of people moving around. Donovan was inside, being looked after by Sharon Fuller, the family liaison officer, as well as his boss, DCI Carolyn Steele. Two other detectives from his team, Dave Wightman and Hannah Bird, had already started searching the house and going through Claire Donovan’s possessions, bagging up anything that looked interesting or might possibly give a clue to the identity of the man who had killed her. Tartaglia wondered how Donovan felt about having her home invaded at such a time, even though she knew it had to be done.
As the tail-lights of the BMW disappeared around the corner, he pulled out his phone and texted Steele to say that he had arrived. He crossed the road, sat down on a low garden wall opposite the house and lit a cigarette. When he had spoken to her half an hour earlier to tell her that he was on his way over, she had told him to wait outside. He had spent many a happy hour at the Donovans’ house and it felt odd to be forced to loiter outside like a stranger. He had explained to Steele earlier that day about losing his phone and about having been in the Dillon Hotel at the time of the murder. She had made a couple of sharp comments about needing to have an early night when on call, but otherwise seemed to have taken what he had said at face value. His alibi would have to be checked like anybody else’s, but otherwise it seemed there would be no repercussions. Something else must have happened, but he was at a loss to know what it was about.
A minute or so later the front door opened and Steele came out, bundled up in a long, belted, beige-coloured coat over her usual dark trouser suit. She must have a wardrobe full of them, he often thought. He tossed away the remains of his cigarette and crossed the road to meet her.
‘Let’s go somewhere,’ she said, pulling on leather gloves and knotting a silk scarf tightly around her neck, her voice hoarse from the tail-end of a cold. ‘We need to talk. Did you come by car?’
‘Nick dropped me off. He’s gone back to the office to get some stuff.’
‘Let’s sit in mine, then.’ She walked over to a silver Audi parked on the opposite side of the street and clicked open the locks.
‘What’s up?’ he asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
‘I need to speak to you before you see Sam.’
‘How is she?’
Steele switched on the ignition and turned the heater up to maximum. ‘As you’d expect. I did my best to talk to her and ask if she knew anything that might help us, but she’s in a pretty bad way. The doctor’s given her a sedative to calm her down, plus pills to help her sleep tonight. She and Claire were close, weren’t they?’
‘Up to a point. They got on OK, but they are . . . I mean they were . . . very different.’ Like chalk and cheese, both physically and in terms of character, he’d always thought, marvelling at the vagaries of genetics. Claire, the elder, had been striking, on the tall side, with dark, wavy hair; Sam was small, prettier, with light brown hair. While Claire had been more outwardly confident and gregarious, he had always felt she lacked her sister’s inner core and complexity.
‘Still, they shared a house together,’ Steele said. ‘That must count for something. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to know much about what her sister was up to, or what she was doing in that hotel.’
‘You know Sam’s been living in Bristol for the last couple of months.’
‘There’s the phone, Facebook, email. Surely they kept in touch? You know her better than I do. Do you think she’s telling the truth?’
He looked at her, surprised. Although Steele never socialised outside work, she had a good enough feel for Sam’s character. ‘Sam? Why wouldn’t she?’
‘I have to ask.’
He nodded. ‘I wasn’t that close to Claire, but I’d say it’s perfectly possible she kept things to herself, particularly if the relationship, or whatever it was, was something new. From what I gather, she didn’t have a great track record with men and it was a bit of a sore spot.’
‘Sam said she was bad at picking them. Maybe it runs in the family.’
Her tone made him look over at her again. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She gave him one of her tight little smiles, her pale, cat-like eyes also giving nothing away. She would have done well in politics, he always thought. According to the rumour mill, she was destined for higher places than running the Barnes Murder Squads. ‘I’ll come onto that in a minute,’ she said. ‘Thinking about practical things first, it will be very strange for Sam to be on the outside of the investigation, and probably very frustrating.’
‘Yes, I’m sure. But I shall, of course, keep her on the outside.’ He wondered if this was the purpose of the conversation. Did Steele really think that he couldn’t be trusted where Donovan was concerned?
‘There’s something else.’ She paused, as though choosing her words carefully. ‘You two had some sort of a falling out, didn’t you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Lovers’ tiff ?’
‘We were never lovers. You know that.’
‘When did you last see Sam?’
‘A few months ago. What’s this all about?’
She folded her arms and tilted her head to one side. ‘I need to know exactly what went on between the two of you.’ When he didn’t answer, she added: ‘If you were just good friends,’ she emphasised the words, ‘why haven’t you seen her since she left the Met? What exactly happened?’
Wondering who she had been listening to and where this was going, he said: ‘I don’t really know. We just haven’t seen one another for a while. There was no row, no falling-out, nothing at all like that.’
‘So?’
‘Look, I just got the feeling that she didn’t want to see me.’
‘And you just let it go?’
‘Why is this important?’
‘I need to understand. For professional reasons, of course.’
He looked away but could feel her eyes still on him. He didn’t like discussing such things with anybody, but he knew Steele wouldn’t let it go. ‘I don’t know. I had the feeling that I’d done something wrong, let her down in some way, although she never actually said so. I haven’t got a clue what it was all about.’ Even as he spoke, he knew it sounded odd, but he had never really tried to put it into words before. Besides, it was only half the story.
‘You didn’t try and find out?’
He shrugged. ‘I thought it would all blow over, but it didn’t, then she went off to Bristol and life went on. Does it matter?’
‘Yes. She can’t stay here. We need to search the house thoroughly and it would be much easier if she weren’t there.’
He nodded. ‘I’m sure she, of all people, understands that.’
‘You’d think so, but she’s not rational at the moment. When I told her she’d have to move out temporarily, she was quite resistant and got quite upset. When I insisted that there was no choice, she asked if she could stay with you.’
He looked at her aghast. ‘With me? What about her parents? They don’t live that far away.’
‘It’s not that simple. They’re in Australia, visiting relatives, and her dad had some sort of a heart attack when he heard the news about Claire. Understandably, Sam doesn’t want to stay in their house on her own.’
‘Jesus. Poor Colin. Is he going to be OK?’
She shrugged. ‘He’s still alive, but he’s in intensive care.’
He sighed heavily. He had seen it so many times before. The fallout of a murder was far-reaching, affecting families and loved ones in unimaginable ways.
‘I asked her if there wasn’t some other family member, or friend, she could stay with,’ Steele continued. ‘But she said no. I offered to have her, as did Sharon, but she refused. She was quite definite about it. If she was going to be made to move out of her home, in these “horrible circumstances” as she put it, she wanted to stay with you. Obviously, I said I would have to speak to you first. So – can she stay with you, just for a few days? It would make everything so much easier.’
He gazed out of the window, not sure what to say. He felt deeply for Donovan and had some inkling of what she must be going through, even though he had never experienced such a thing himself. If it had been three months before, he wouldn’t have hesitated to offer her a room, or his whole flat if need be. But things had changed between them. Something had happened and he had barely spoken to her since. It was odd that she wanted to stay with him.
‘Do you have a spare room?’ Steele asked.
‘I have a box room. It’s full of stuff at the moment.’
‘Surely it won’t be too difficult to make some space? After all, it’s only for a few days. Sam can move back into the house as soon as we’re done, if that’s what she wants.’
‘What about Justin?’ he asked, referring to Justin Chang, one of the DCs on his team. ‘They had something going on together at one point, I thought.’
