‘Sure, why not? We’ve got plenty of time, six weeks of it in fact. I won’t divulge the victim’s real name, so just treat this as a story that I’m telling you.’
Amrit sat back and waited with anticipation for the story to be told.
‘I suppose it was around seven or eight years ago now when the body of a man was found in an alley that ran along the back of one of the big hotels in Central London. A member of the hotel kitchen staff had gone out for a cigarette and he noticed the body. It had been dumped on top of a pile of black plastic refuse bags and, seemingly, no attempt had been made to hide it. The hotel called us immediately. It was the body of a man in his late thirties. He was muscular and had lots of tattoos. We identified him by the contents of his wallet which also contained a debit card, a credit card and eighty pounds in cash so robbery as a motive seemed unlikely. Forensics concluded that it was murder. Not a hard call as he had four bullets in him, two in the heart and two in the head.’
‘Oh, it was a contract killing then?’ Amrit asked, her eyes widening.
Mac smiled.
‘Yes that’s more or less what we thought too. To me it looked like whoever had done it was almost trying to advertise the fact. Placing the body where it was sure to be found fairly quickly and the professional manner of the killing made it feel like it was some sort of warning. But who was the warning meant for and why? We wouldn’t have been surprised if the tattooed man turned out to be a minor gangster of some sort but we were all a bit flummoxed when it turned out that he was a dustman. We investigated his immediate family and friends first and found nothing, not even the faintest motive for murder. They were all from the Paddington area and, while some were a bit shady, they didn’t look like the type of people who would be up for using guns. Anyway Mr….let’s call him Mr. Binman, anyway Mr. Binman seemed to be generally well liked and liberal with his money. Eventually we had to look elsewhere and it was the money that gave us our first clue. There was just too much of it. Some of it was in his bank but when we searched his house we found over twenty five thousand pounds in notes hidden under the mattress.’
‘Under the mattress? Not exactly the last place you’d look is it?’ Amrit commented.
‘Well, I guess his wife wasn’t the brightest as she seemed as surprised as we did when we found it. Anyway we felt that if we could find out where the money came from then it might get us a bit closer to identifying a motive for the murder. We decided to look at his job next and interviewed all of the bin crew he worked with except for one who had gone missing. They all seemed quite baffled as to why anyone would want to kill their driver. I thought they seemed quite genuine so our next job was to find the missing member of the bin crew. He wasn’t at home so we had to spread our net a bit wider and we eventually found him at his younger sister’s house. He was hiding under the bed.’
‘Under the bed! Really?’ Amrit asked in some disbelief.
‘Yes, sounds daft I know but sometimes people are just daft. Anyway we questioned him and discovered what it had all been about. Mr. Binman and he had been running a little scam for some years. Part of their round covered one of the most expensive parts of London, an area where only the very richest lived, and that’s how they made their money. They sold what they collected.’
‘They sold rubbish?’ Amrit asked, her face crinkling in puzzlement.
‘Yes, literally. It’s really amazing what you can learn from a person’s rubbish bin. It’s often one of the first things we look at if we want to know more about a person. It’s not only food that gets thrown away although that can tell you a lot by itself.’
‘How?’
‘Well for a start it can usually tell you how many people are in the house, their ages and where they’re from.’
Amrit gave it some thought.
‘Yes I guess that the number of people might be easy to guess, then the remains of burgers and chips and takeway cartons might hint at the age and, if it’s a particular type of food, then that might tell you where the people are from.’
‘That’s right and besides that private papers, draft contracts, letters, even financial ones believe it or not, can all make it into the rubbish. People also regularly throw out clothes labels, receipts and tickets stubs so you can even tell what they’ve bought and where they’ve been.’
‘Ah I see, they were selling the rubbish to reporters,’ Amrit said excitedly.
‘For the most part yes but recently they’d taken on a new contract as it were. They had no idea who they were dealing with but the money was really good and so they took it. They were given an address but neither of them had any idea who lived there. They just took the rubbish and placed it in a certain bin in an alley in Central London and that was that.’
‘Was this the same alley that Mr. Binman was found in?’
Mac smiled.
‘Got it in one. Yes, Mr. Binman had been delivering the rubbish when he ran into someone he wasn’t expecting.’
‘Who was it?’ Amrit asked excitedly.
‘It took us quite a while to find out. The house was owned by a company registered in Panama but we put a couple of people from the Fraud Squad on it and they managed to follow the paper trail to a shell company owned by a well-known Middle Eastern arms dealer.’
Mac went quiet for a moment.
‘So what happened then?’ Amrit eventually prompted him.
‘Oh I’m sorry I was just thinking. What happened? Nothing happened.’
‘Nothing?’ Amrit asked with a disappointed look.
‘Unfortunately we don’t get to solve every case but in this instance we weren’t given a chance to. Only a day or so after we’d identified the arms dealer my boss had a visitation from the men in suits and we were taken off the case.’
‘Men in suits?’
‘Yes, it’s what we used to call them years ago, SIS, MI6, the intelligence services or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays. Anyway after they had a word with my boss that was that, case closed.’
‘So you never got to find out what happened?’
‘Well, I’m afraid that curiosity got the better of me and I did a little quiet digging around on the side anyway. I found that Mr. Binman had in actual fact been employed by a tabloid newspaper to pass on the rubbish of a certain film star who was very hot news at the time but he made a mistake. Unfortunately for him he was a bit dyslexic and he wrote the address down wrong. He reversed the house number and ended up stealing the rubbish from a house at the other end of the street instead. A simple mistake to make perhaps but it turned out to be a fatal one in his case.’
‘That’s a good story but it doesn’t really help us with Mr. Paterson’s case, does it?’ Amrit asked.
Mac smiled at the ‘us’.
‘No it doesn’t.’
‘So what do you think?’
‘If you want my honest opinion I think there’s still an outside chance that it might be an accident,’ Mac said.
‘Really? How could that be though?’
‘Well, I remember a case that one of my colleagues from the traffic division told me about some years ago that might be relevant. A lady in her seventies somehow managed to have eight separate collisions with parked cars as she drove home one night. When she was finally stopped she said it was because it was dark and she wasn’t used to driving in the dark. However when they examined her they found out that she was wearing her reading glasses by mistake. She was basically as blind as a bat.’
‘But in this case wouldn’t the driver have noticed the impact when they hit Mr. Paterson?’
‘Not necessarily. In the case I just told you about she thought she was just hitting the kerb and that was good she said as she knew it was keeping her on the right side of the road. Perhaps in Mr. Paterson’s case that driver also thought they’d hit the kerb, even if they looked in their rear mirror they probably wouldn’t have seen anything as he’d have been on the floor.’
‘That’s bizarre,’ Amrit said.
‘Yes life is sometimes and, if this was the case, we’ve got zero chance of ever finding the truth. Anyway it seems as likely an explanation as murder as far as I can see.’
‘But what about the car speeding up and crossing over to the other side of the road? How could it have been an accident?’
‘Perhaps the driver dropped something and, in bending over, he moved the wheel and accidentally stepped harder on the accelerator.’
‘But how likely would that be?’ Amrit asked looking somewhat unconvinced.
‘Something similar happened on a motorway near London a few years ago, it caused a fatality and several serious injuries.’
‘What did they drop?’
‘A packet of mints.’
‘Now that really is bizarre.’
Mac noticed that Amrit looked a bit disappointed.
‘Maybe the next case might be a bit more yielding to our detective skills.’
‘What is it?’ Amrit asked looking a bit more animated.
‘It’s the case of a university lecturer who disappeared in Cambridge in very suspicious circumstances. The police suspected murder but a body was never found.’
‘A bit like Morse then?’ she asked with a smile.
‘Yes but that was Oxford, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t real.’
‘I’ll leave you to it then. Just shout when you need me.’
Chapter Three
Mac read on and quickly became so engrossed in the case that even the thought of pain didn’t cross his mind for well over two hours. He’d finished reading and was deep in thought when he heard a tentative knock on the door.
‘You don’t have to knock, just come in.’
‘I was just wondering if you were alright, you’ve been so quiet. Would you like a cup of tea?’ Nurse Amrit asked.
‘Oh yes and please have one yourself and join me. This case has some interesting points to it.’
She gave him a big smile.
‘It’s as good as the telly this. I’ll be right back.’
She came back with a cup for her and a spill-proof plastic beaker for Mac. She saw him scowl at it as she handed it to him. She made a mental note.
When she was seated comfortably Mac explained the circumstances of the case while she sipped her tea.
‘Mr. Rupert Quarry-Parker was a Professor of Sociology at one of the big universities in Cambridge. He was forty two at the time he disappeared, married with two children, both of who were away at university. One went to Edinburgh and the other to Glasgow which might tell us something.’
‘That they liked Scotland perhaps?’ Amrit tentatively ventured.
‘Well maybe but there could be another reason why they picked places as far away from Cambridge as possible. I’m thinking that all might not have been well at home and being so far away gives you a good excuse for not going back very often. Anyway Mr Quarry-Parker, God that’s a bit of a mouthful isn’t it? Let’s call him Mr. QP instead. So Mr. QP went out one evening just over nine years ago to visit a student he was mentoring, a Mr. Daniel Guilden, and he never came back. Mr. Guilden had a room in a shared house in one of the cheaper districts of Cambridge, one that’s also a high crime area. He’d been having some personal problems and was thinking about leaving his course. Mr. QP made the appointment himself but then he never turned up.’
Mac made a note on the computer.
‘What are you writing?’ Amrit asked.
‘Just making notes as I go. I suppose I’m always a little suspicious when there isn’t a body. So why did the investigators think he’d been murdered? On the same evening he disappeared he took the maximum amount out of his account using an ATM not far from where Mr. Guilden lived. CCTV footage showed Mr. QP at the ATM with a hooded figure behind him. It looked like the figure could have been holding something against Mr. QP’s back, most likely a knife they thought. Then Mr. QP’s wallet was discovered a couple of days later in the cistern of a toilet at a nearby pub, a well-known thieves den apparently. Of course all his cards and his money had gone. Mr. QP’s car, an Audi, was involved in a car chase the evening after he disappeared. The police eventually used stingers to stop it and they found a large consignment of cannabis in the back. The driver admitted stealing the car the night before from a road close to where Daniel Guilden lived. So it looks like Mr. QP had actually made it to within a few hundred yards of where Mr. Guilden lived. The theory was that, after getting out of his car, someone accosted him at knife point and marched him to the nearest ATM. They had no evidence for what happened after that until they found his shoe.’
‘His shoe?’
‘Yes it was found by the side of the rail tracks underneath a bridge by a maintenance worker. The bridge was no more than two hundred yards away from the ATM machine.’
‘How did they know it was his?’ Amrit asked.
‘DNA. The worker who found it said he wouldn’t have bothered handing it in except for the fact that he’d heard about the lecturer’s disappearance. That and the fact that the shoe was brand new and from a well-known designer label. Mr. QP had bought them just two days before. The question I’m asking myself is why he’d want to wear such an expensive pair of shoes in that neighbourhood? It’s like asking to be mugged.’
Mac was silent for a while.
‘Sorry, where was I?’ he asked.
‘Shoes,’ Amrit prompted.
‘Yes. Anyway the theory was that Mr. QP had been killed by his assailant who dragged his body to the railway bridge and dumped it over the wall and on to the tracks. This theory was supported by the fact that traces of Mr. QP’s blood were found on the brick work of the bridge as were some of his hairs. The investigators thought that his assailant may have gotten lucky and that the body landed up in one of the numerous freight trucks that go underneath the bridge day and night. So, if they were right, he could have ended up anywhere and, if it was a coal truck, there’s a chance that it went straight into an industrial furnace somewhere and so his body and all the evidence would have been destroyed. They searched all along the tracks but found nothing else.’
‘Sounds straight forward enough to me,’ Amrit said.
‘Perhaps, but perhaps not. The insurance is the thing that bugging me.’
‘Oh did he get himself insured just before he disappeared?’ she asked excitedly.
‘No, exactly the opposite, he let it lapse. He’d kept it up for over fifteen years and then let it lapse a couple of months before he disappeared.’
Mac went silent again.
‘Can you hand me my phone?’ he eventually asked. ‘I’m going to call someone who might just be able to give us the answer.’
‘How?’ Amrit asked as she passed him the phone.
‘Well technology has moved on a bit since the time Mr. QP disappeared. Now let’s see.’
Mac dialled a number.
‘Martin, how are you?’
‘I’m fine but how are you doing Mac? I heard you’ve been ordered to rest for a while.’
‘That’s true but I’m helping Dan with some cold cases. Can you do me a favour? Do you know of any way that you can use facial recognition on social sites such as Facebook? I’m sure I read something about an app that could do this quite recently.’
‘Why yes, funnily enough I was talking about this to someone only yesterday. There’s a newish Google app that’s really good, I’ve already used it on one case.’
‘Well this will make two then. If I send you a photo can you see what you can find?’
‘Of course, no problem.’
Mac said his goodbyes and put down the phone. Seeing Amrit’s puzzled expression he thought he’d better explain.
‘Martin’s a policeman, he’s a computer specialist and really good at what he does. I’m going to email him a picture of Mr. Quarry-Parker and see if he can find him on social media.’
‘You think he’s not dead then?’
‘Yes that’s exactly what I think.’
Mac busied himself sending the email
off and then thought he’d probably be in for quite a long wait. He got a reply just over an hour later. The email from Martin contained a single URL. He clicked on it. He was smiling when Amrit came into the room.
‘Have you found something?’ she asked excitedly.
‘Here,’ Mac said moving the laptop so she could see.
‘That’s not him though is it?’ she said peering at the screen.
‘No, that’s the newly appointed Professor of Sociology at UCLA Daniel Guilden and there, behind him, is his life partner Roger Stanton.’
Amrit’s face showed her surprise.
‘That’s him! That’s Mr. QP, he’s alive!’
‘Yes, alive and well and living in California. He’s done well to keep himself off social media all this time but I suppose this was one occasion he just couldn’t turn down.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Amrit asked with wide eyes. ‘What are you going to charge him with?’
Mac was thoughtful for a while.
‘Nothing I should think.’
‘Nothing?’ Amrit asked, her face dropping.
‘If he’d defrauded the insurance company that would be another thing but, apart from wasting police time which we’ll never get back anyway, who would gain from his being charged? His wife’s re-married as he’s been officially pronounced dead and, as she started going out with her current husband only weeks after Mr. QP disappeared, then perhaps wasn’t that much of a marriage left anyway. I’d bet that his children know that he’s alive anyway. He’s built a new life in America now so what would be served by destroying it all?’
It was Amrit’s turn to be thoughtful.
‘Justice perhaps?’
Mac shook his head.
‘And what’s that exactly? In my time I’ve heard a lot of talk about the concept of justice and I’ve often found that the definitions totally contradict one another. My old boss taught me to be pragmatic, to identify exactly who had been injured, what the injury was and what would be gained by charging someone. I’ve found it as good a guide as anything else I’ve come across. In this case it could be argued that the only injured party at this moment in time would be the police whose time had been wasted. So in order to serve the cause of justice would you destroy the lives of Mr. QP and his partner as well as upset the rest of his family while actually wasting even more police time and taxpayers’ money by bringing it all to court? Does that make any sense to you?’
23 Cold Cases (The Mac Maguire detective mysteries Book 5) Page 2
