Night Fall

by Frank Smith

  ‘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.

  TWELVE

  Paget 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.’

  ‘It’s not as if we don’t know who he is,’ Ormside pointed out. ‘I mean the man has worked here for something like ten or twelve years.’

  ‘Still has to be done, though, doesn’t it?’ Paget said. ‘And speaking of that, I want to talk to everyone he worked with. One of his colleagues hinted to Tregalles that Whitelaw was having money and drinking problems, so let’s bring in his mates and his sergeant and find out what they can tell us about him. Including why he was still a PC after that many years on the job.’

  The corridors were crawling with uniformed police and plain clothes detectives going from door to door when Molly arrived, but the lone WPC was still there in front of the door to room 319. ‘Thank God,’ she said when Molly identified herself and told her she could go. ‘The rotten sods wouldn’t even stand in for me when I said I needed to go for a pee. They seem to think it’s funny.’

  ‘Better get going now, then,’ said Molly. ‘Wouldn’t want you contaminating this nice clean carpet, now would we?’

  ‘Bloody toilet down the hall’s a disgrace anyway,’ the girl said. ‘I took a look when I came in.’ She shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Any chance I could use the one in here? It’s got to be better than the one down there. Besides, it’s unisex and you know what some of the men are like, spraying all over the place.’

  Molly hesitated. ‘Do you have any gloves?’ The WPC shook her head. Molly reached into her bag and took out a pair of latex gloves. ‘Put those on,’ she said. ‘It probably doesn’t matter, but try not to disturb anything while you’re in there. OK?’ She unlocked the door, and the girl shot past her and disappeared into the tiny bathroom.

  Molly paused to take stock. The room was small. A bed, a table, two wooden chairs and a small padded armchair, a sink, a two-burner stove, an under-the-counter fridge, a shelf, a small chest of drawers, and a painted wardrobe whose door wouldn’t close properly.

  Molly’s nose twitched as she pulled on a second set of gloves. SOCO would be coming in later to do a thorough search, and she’d mentioned that to DCI Paget, but he’d said, ‘Take a look round anyway. Having been involved in the other crime scenes, you might spot something that might not mean anything to them.’

  The place smelled of stale beer and smoke. She walked over to the window and tried to lift it, then saw that it had been nailed shut. So much for that idea. Slowly, she began to circle the room.

  ‘Sarge . . .?’ a plaintive voice called from behind the bathroom door. ‘Is there any toilet paper out there?’

  Paget closed the file and handed it back to Ormside. ‘Frequently late, questionable sick leave, out of contact on numerous occasions, and still a constable after twelve years on the job?’ he said. ‘This man should have been disciplined if not sacked long ago. And he’s not the only one,’ he continued ominously. ‘Someone above him has been covering for him, and I’d like to know who it is. Tal
k to some of his colleagues, see what they can tell us about him.’ He turned to Tregalles. ‘If Bates is still here, let’s have him in first.’

  PC Lou Bates was wet and tired, and wanted nothing more than to go home, dry off and get some sleep, so he was pleased when Paget said, ‘I’ll try not to keep you any longer than necessary, but we need information about Whitelaw, and I understand you were a friend of his.’

  ‘I was partnered with him for a while, sir,’ Bates said carefully. ‘It was while he and his wife were going through the divorce, but I wouldn’t say I was a friend.’

  ‘But you knew him well enough to tell DS Tregalles that the man was in debt and had a problem with drink. Right?’

  Bates nodded. ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but he did have a problem with drink, and it got worse after the divorce. And I know he was in debt because he used to talk about it all the time.’

  ‘What kind of debt? Credit cards? Gambling?’

  ‘I don’t know about the gambling, but I know he was so deep in debt with his cards that they forced him into some sort of payback programme, and he said it was going to take him something like three years to clear what he owed. I believe he was having to pay child support as well.’

  ‘So what had he been spending it on? Or was it his wife? Did she have expensive tastes?’

  Bates shifted around in his chair as if suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Don’t know exactly,’ he said, but his eyes told another story.

  ‘I think you do,’ Tregalles said, ‘and this is not the time to be holding anything back. Three people have been killed, and this may be our best chance to track the killer down. So I’ll ask you again: where was the money going?’

  Bates drew a deep breath. ‘Women,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t stay away from them. Prostitutes mostly.’ Bates hesitated. ‘I don’t know this for sure,’ he said carefully, ‘but from some of the things Whitelaw said, and from phone calls he used to make from the car, I think he was having it off with a married woman as well. In fact, I believe that was what the divorce was all about. Well, that and the debt.’