Deathly Affair

by Leigh Russell

  ‘What about in school?’

  ‘No, he was fine. He seemed to like teaching here. I never heard him complain anyway.’

  ‘What about his mental state? Did he show any signs of depression?’

  ‘If he was suffering from depression, I knew nothing about it. Nothing at all. He was regular in his attendance here, kept his records up to date and, well, he seemed perfectly sound in every way possible, really.’ He pulled a face. ‘It’s terrible, what happened to him. He was the most unlikely victim, if anyone can be an unlikely victim of murder. I mean, I’d be astonished if this was anything other than a tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know what else to say. If he was unstable, we didn’t see any evidence of it here. He always seemed cheery enough, without being over the top, you know. I mean, he wasn’t one of those over-excited happy blokes who make you think he must have his darker moments.’

  The teacher glanced at his watch. Remembering that the school day had finished, Geraldine thanked him and left.

  ‘Do you think he was killed by one of the women he was seeing?’ Ian asked.

  He and Geraldine were discussing what they had discovered that day with a group of their colleagues while they waited for Eileen to arrive for a briefing.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Geraldine said. ‘But I don’t think we can draw any conclusions from what we’ve found so far.’

  ‘Anything’s possible,’ Naomi said. ‘He could have been killed by a jealous lover.’

  ‘You mean a crime of passion?’ Ariadne shook her head. ‘It seems to have been a bit too carefully planned for that.’

  ‘Passion can be a slow burner,’ Ian replied.

  He looked at Geraldine as he spoke and she dropped her eyes, hoping he had not guessed how she felt about him. They had been friends for a long time and she would hate to jeopardise their relationship by betraying her true feelings for him. The discussion was interrupted by Eileen’s arrival.

  They all agreed with her view that Mark’s murder had not been a one-off crime, sparked by jealousy, but part of a campaign targeting rough sleepers. Mark had been mistaken for a tramp after somehow starving himself and getting so filthy that he looked homeless.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Naomi said. ‘A crime of passion is much more understandable. And how unlucky for Mark that he was mistaken for a rough sleeper when he had a perfectly good job and somewhere to live.’

  ‘Whichever way you look at it, there’s something odd about all this,’ Geraldine said.

  Eileen agreed with her. ‘Mark was killed with the same kind of noose used on the two rough sleepers, but he was a very different kind of victim. Why was he targeted?’

  ‘That’s obvious. The killer made a mistake,’ Ariadne said. ‘He thought Mark was homeless.’

  Eileen nodded. ‘That’s what we thought too, to begin with, before the victim was identified.’

  ‘We thought that because Mark was dehydrated, starving and dirty when he died,’ Geraldine said. ‘But the real question is: why had he got himself in such a bad way? He wasn’t suffering from depression, as far as we’ve been able to ascertain.’

  ‘I think you might be making more of this than it warrants,’ Eileen replied. ‘He must have had mental problems. Just because there was nothing recorded in his medical history, doesn’t mean he didn’t have issues.’

  Geraldine nodded. ‘You could be right, but it’s odd that there’s no record anywhere of any issues like that, and everyone we’ve spoken to seems to think he was perfectly stable.’

  ‘No one knows you have mental issues if you don’t choose to share them,’ Eileen replied, echoing what the doctor had told Geraldine.

  Although Geraldine knew her colleagues were making sense, it was hard to believe that a man could be so close to the edge that he would leave home and forget to eat and drink, while no one who knew him had the faintest suspicion that he was ill or in trouble, and there was no evidence of drugs in his system. Her sister had not sat around covered in her own excrement, even after she had been using heroin for years.

  ‘I just can’t believe he would deteriorate to such an extent in so short a time,’ she said.

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’ Eileen asked.

  Geraldine shook her head. ‘Only that we need to give this a lot more thought before we go jumping to conclusions.’

  Eileen gave her a worried frown. ‘Very well,’ she replied. ‘Why don’t you go away and think about it?’

  38

  While Mark’s flat was being searched, the van his body had been recovered from was also being examined. So far, as well as finding Don’s fingerprints, hair and skin cells, the forensic team had found evidence of a woman whose fingerprints and hair matched those found in his flat. As well as fingerprints on the door and a few long hairs on the back of the passenger seat, a tissue with lipstick on it had been picked up off the floor, as had a woman’s earring. In addition to the evidence of a female passenger, several other sets of fingerprints had been detected. Most were unidentifiable, but one set matched the prints of a man called Guy Sampson who had been convicted of shoplifting seven years earlier. He was easily traced and was now working as a mechanic at a local motor repair workshop.

  Geraldine was sent straight to the garage to question him. His fingerprints on the van meant he was a potential suspect, even though there was nothing else to link him to the case. The manager of the workshop wiped his hands on a rag blackened with oil and grease before leading her into the small makeshift office. Without mentioning Guy’s name, Geraldine enquired about the van and he checked their records and found that the van had been brought in there for an MOT three weeks prior to the murder. When she asked to see the certificate, the manager gave her a filthy look. For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, but he handed it over and she saw the test had been carried out by Guy Sampson. With no trace of his prints or DNA in the interior of the van or anywhere on the body or carpet, Geraldine had to accept this was probably a false lead and on balance decided not to stop to question Guy. If any other evidence turned up that pointed to him, the police had his address. In the meantime, if he did have something to hide it was best to avoid alerting him to the fact that the police might be interested in him in relation to a murder investigation.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to the manager. ‘That’s been very helpful.’

  ‘He was told quite clearly that his tyres needed replacing,’ the manager said.

  His belligerence had evaporated now that she was preparing to leave but he still looked anxious, clearly under the impression that she had been sent to query why a certificate had been given to a vehicle that blatantly should have failed its MOT. Geraldine did not disabuse him but left him to stew, hoping her visit would deter them from giving out dodgy MOT certificates in future. Just to be sure, she made a quick call to the traffic department and alerted them to what was going on at the garage.

  Meanwhile the carpet had been sent off for forensic examination. They had no clue yet where it had come from, but it looked like the end of a roll, and was a common enough brown colour. The pile had been analysed but although it was possible to be fairly sure where it had been manufactured, there was no way of establishing where it had been bought. A few threads from other carpets found on the surface had probably been there since the carpet left the warehouse or shop it came from. They had been unable to find any of Don’s prints or DNA on the carpet itself, although they were all over the van. The absence of evidence was not conclusive, but it was frustrating to find nothing that could definitely pin the murder on the suspect.

  Leaving the garage, Geraldine set off to speak to Don’s girlfriend. Jessica worked in a picture framing shop that sold all sorts of prints and greetings cards, as well as original artwork by local artists. A sample of her shoulder length blond hair had been taken from the flat and matched with the ones found in the van. S
he was a short dumpy woman, with a face that would have been beautiful had it not been scored by a scar that ran from below her left eye, across her rounded cheek, down to her chin. The scar itself was not unsightly, but it pulled her eye out of shape which gave her whole face a slightly grotesque twist when she smiled.

  ‘What’s happening to Don?’ she demanded the moment Geraldine introduced herself.

  She sounded angry, but Geraldine could tell she was frightened.

  ‘Don needs your help,’ she replied. ‘Can you remember where he was on these dates?’

  She showed the woman a list of the dates when the three murders had been committed. Jessica was vague about where Don had been on the night of the first murder.

  ‘He was at home with me, I suppose,’ she said. ‘That’s where we always are at night. We might have been in the pub for the evening, I don’t know, do I? I don’t keep a record in my head of everywhere we go.’

  ‘And what about Saturday night?’

  ‘Last Saturday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jessica screwed up her face and her scar puckered. ‘We were in Leeds, weren’t we? Didn’t Don tell you?’

  Surprised, Geraldine kept her face impassive. ‘In Leeds? What time did you get home?’

  ‘We got back about midday on Sunday. We stayed there overnight. It was a birthday bash for Don’s cousin. We spent the night at their place.’

  ‘Do you have any witnesses who can confirm where you were?’

  ‘Are you joking? Only about twenty people who were at the pub, and Don’s cousin and his wife. We stayed there because we knew it was going to be a late one and we thought it might be an all-nighter.’

  ‘Did you drive there?’

  She shook her head. ‘We got the train.’ She paused. ‘Don only uses the van for local deliveries. He doesn’t like to take it far.’

  Geraldine nodded. Given the state of the van, she could understand why.

  She reported back to Eileen who arranged for local constables to question Don’s cousin and his wife, who were both able to corroborate Jessica’s story. With nothing to link Don to the bodies and confirmation that he had been in Leeds on the night of the second murder, it seemed that once again the wrong man had been arrested. What no one could understand was why Don had not told them he had been in Leeds that night.

  ‘So, Don – why didn’t you tell us?’ Ian asked.

  Don, a suspect no longer, shrugged. ‘I didn’t want my cousins to get involved. Now they’ve been questioned all my family are going to know about it. Being accused of murder isn’t the sort of thing you want people to hear about, is it? You know, it’s going to be all around the family by now. And Jessica’s mother’s bound to hear about it. Even though it’s not true, some people are only too happy to believe the worst of you, aren’t they?’

  Remembering how Ian used to complain about his former mother-in-law, Geraldine glanced at her colleague who was sitting at her side, rigid with anger.

  ‘We could charge you with wasting police time,’ she said. ‘This is a murder investigation. I don’t think you appreciate how serious it is.’

  ‘You could have been locked up for weeks, months, while you were withholding the truth from us,’ Ian interrupted her. ‘For what? So your girlfriend’s mother didn’t hear that you’d been charged with a crime you didn’t commit?’

  ‘Yeah, I can see I was an idiot, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. It’s not every day you get banged up on a murder charge. I didn’t know what I was doing.’

  There were actually tears in eyes.

  ‘Oh, let him go,’ Ian said crossly.

  ‘What about my van?’

  ‘You’ll get that back when we’ve finished with it, and not before.’

  It was irritating having wasted so much time on another false lead, but there was nothing they could do about it. They just had to keep looking and hope a witness would come forward with new information, or the forensic search would throw up a new lead.

  39

  Nearly a week had passed since Molly had witnessed the fatal attack on another rough sleeper. During the day she managed to forget about it, preoccupied with the business of surviving: eating, washing, and begging when she could. But huddled in her shop doorway at night, she was afraid to close her eyes in case the killer came for her. There had been no mention of any further attacks, but she knew from talking to the rough sleepers at the breakfast centre that the old man was the second recent victim. She tried to banish the image of the killer from her mind, telling herself the memory would fade in time. But when she went along for her free breakfast on Friday morning, she found the hall buzzing with chatter about another death. No one was sure who the victim was. All they knew was that there had been another murder on the streets of York the previous night.

  ‘It was Andy got himself killed,’ a stout woman announced. She folded her thick arms and glared around, as though daring someone to challenge her. ‘Serves him right. He was a tosser.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ a man replied. ‘I saw Andy this morning, as alive as you or me. I asked him if he was coming to breakfast and he said he’d already eaten somewhere else.’

  ‘Yeah, he told me he breakfasted at the Hilton this morning,’ a woman said.

  ‘I heard it was the Marriott,’ another voice piped up.

  Although the discussion was good natured, it was clear that they were all edgy and the conversation soon moved on to the topic that was uppermost in everyone’s mind.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going to put my name down for a room in Fishergate as soon as I’ve finished here,’ one of the men said.

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  ‘Fat chance of getting in,’ someone else chipped in. ‘They’ll be inundated.’

  ‘True, they can’t take us all.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sleeping on the streets again until all this has blown over,’ the stout woman said.

  ‘Blown over?’

  ‘Until they’ve caught the killer and put him behind bars where he belongs.’

  ‘Prison’s too good for him.’

  ‘So which hotel are you planning on staying at then, Bess?’

  The woman shrugged her ample shoulders. ‘It’s back to sofa surfing for me. It’s starting to get cold anyway.’

  ‘That’s all right if you’ve got friends who’ll put you up,’ one of the men said.

  Molly did not join in the chatter. She felt as though a net was closing around her. When she had finished her breakfast she left, still keeping quiet about what she had seen. Walking back towards Coney Street, she bumped into Rose.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked.

  Rose’s face looked pale and grey, and she seemed to have difficulty focusing on what Molly was saying. ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m good. You?’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  Rose nodded, her eyes staring past Molly’s shoulder.

  ‘What would you do if you knew something?’

  ‘What?’ Rose laughed, rocking unsteadily on her skinny legs. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant. What I mean is, what would you do if you knew something about the killer?’

  Rose drew back in alarm. ‘It’s not you, is it?’ When she tried to speak quickly, her speech became slurred to the point of incoherence.

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘It started when you turned up.’

  ‘Listen, Rose, it’s not me. That’s a stupid thing to say. But the thing is, I may know something about it.’

  Rose’s eyes were focused on Molly now and she spoke in a hushed tone. ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘I don’t know who it was, but I saw him.’

  Carefully, Molly described what she had seen.

  ‘Holy shit!’

  ‘Do you think I should I go
to the police and tell them what I saw?’

  Rose nodded and then, without a word, she turned and walked away.

  ‘Wait,’ Molly called after her. ‘Don’t tell anyone what I said.’

  She was not too worried; the chances of Rose remembering what she had just heard were remote. Having shared her secret with her new friend, Molly decided to tell the police as well. With so many rough sleepers being murdered, she could no longer remain silent. She nearly lost her nerve when she stepped off the bus outside the police station in Fulford Road, but she could not afford to spend money on a second bus fare. If she did not go in now, she never would. She owed it to the poor old man who had been killed, and to all the rough sleepers she had met, to tell the police what she had seen. And she owed it to herself to try and make the streets safe. But she would make sure they did not tell her mother where she was. Taking a deep breath, she marched into the police station.

  A sergeant behind the desk looked up at her with a blank kind of smile, as though he had attended a training course on how to look friendly but had not yet mastered the technique.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have – I may have – I think I might have some information about the killer who’s killing people,’ she babbled, conscious of how stupid she sounded. ‘I mean, about the killer.’

  After taking her name, the policeman asked her to wait while he called someone.

  ‘Please, take a seat, Miss,’ he said.

  If he had not spoken so respectfully to her, she would probably have run out of there without a backward glance. As it was, she sat down on one of the chairs that were lined up against a wall. There was no one else there but, even so, she was kept waiting for a long time before someone arrived. At last a tall woman with short dark hair emerged through an internal door and approached her.