The Body on the Island

by Nick Louth

  ‘I’m not saying that you are wrong, but I don’t want you to close off your minds to other possibilities.’

  ‘We’ve only been going where the evidence is leading,’ Cottesloe said.

  ‘Speaking of which, did the divers find anything, sir?’ Wickens added.

  ‘Nothing of interest so far. They’ve still got another day.’ Gillard looked down at the statements again. ‘I see that you have dug up quite a few criminal records and were particularly interested in Anton St Jeanne. He had a few minor skirmishes with the police in his teens. A bit of drug possession, but nothing for over a decade.’

  ‘There were three people seen in his car by a witness,’ Cottesloe said. ‘He claims there was only him and his girlfriend. I still think we need to get to the bottom of that.’

  ‘The guy on the houseboat has a few convictions and his girlfriend had a police caution a couple of times, all cannabis possession,’ Wickens added.

  ‘It might be that whoever was in the car was at the party,’ Gillard said, looking through the printouts. ‘Gary Tilling is clean. He runs a laptop repair business from home, and perhaps you don’t know this, but he has helped us on a few occasions over child pornography that he has spotted on customers’ machines. He’s mildly autistic, as you may have gathered.’

  ‘I thought it was something like that,’ Wickens said.

  * * *

  Gillard sat in his office with DC Macintosh. Spread out over the desk were all the photographs that had been taken of the body by CSI as it was recovered, and by Dr Delahaye while conducting the post-mortem. ‘Okay, Rainy,’ Gillard said. ‘Seeing as you are a former medic, I’d like to pick your brain. We know that a lot of force was exerted on this man, something that stopped him breathing. We also know that there are deep impressions on him all over, like he was caught in a net. But Delahaye is insistent he didn’t drown.’

  ‘But why was he naked if he wasn’t in the water?’

  ‘It’s a great question. Along with, why wasn’t the net or mesh found wrapped around the body?’

  ‘Someone tore it off?’ She was tapping a biro against her teeth.

  ‘Absolutely. And that could only have happened before he was chucked in.’

  ‘So it proves the poor wee bastard was dead before he hit the river, right?’

  ‘Proves is a strong word at this stage. Delahaye has been at pains to stress how many ways there are of dying in water aside from drowning. But yes, unless the netting is found in the river, we’re going to assume he was already dead. That would accord with the splash, heard by so many, and the vehicle on the bridge.’

  Rainy was now sucking the biro. Gillard could see a fleck of ink on her lip where the top seemed to be leaking. He had heard on the grapevine that Rainy’s partner Ross had stayed in Glasgow when she moved down to join the police training scheme at Hendon two years ago. She had brought her fourteen-year-old son Ewan with her. He didn’t know exactly whether the relationship was in crisis or not, but either way it must be tough for her. She was a real asset, one he wanted to nurture. Far too many female officers dropped out early in their career.

  ‘I can’t think of it being an accident,’ she said.

  ‘Neither can I. But let’s concentrate on what we can see in front of us. I quite liked the idea that this was a net, but there’s a problem.’

  ‘Something fishy?’ she asked, grinning. There was a smear of ink on her incisor. Gillard pointed it out, and she laid down the leaking pen and got a tissue from her bag.

  He passed across one of the 8 by 10 inch enlargements of the victim’s torso. ‘Think about any net, around its catch, so to speak. If the force is applied at one end, it wants to equalise the stress by enclosing a sphere. On a body, which has odd shapes, there will always be parts of it slack and parts taut. Some parts of the net would be stretched. Yet this is different. It has a certain rigidity. There’s some distortion, but not much.’

  ‘Maybe it is chain-link fencing, that’s more rigid.’

  Gillard nodded. ‘Okay, that might fit the bill. The problem with the fence idea is that neither the gauge nor the pattern of the impressions here matches the most common chain-links. It’s typically 50 mm gauge, but the marks on his flesh are smaller and a different shape.’ He pointed to one picture of the victim’s upper arm, which showed a very deep cyanosed indentation, a tracery of purple. ‘Chain-link is a diamond pattern, but not this elongated.’

  She looked closely at the photograph. ‘Aye, sir, you’re very observant.’ She continued to dab at her lip with the tissue. ‘So maybe it has the tensile characteristic of chain-link, but not the pattern.’

  Gillard looked at her appreciatively. ‘We’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘Are we? I’m just confused.’

  ‘Think about it. This mesh doesn’t distort much, so it might be wire or plastic-coated wire.’

  ‘Or rigid plastic.’

  The detective nodded, and slid her another picture, of the back and buttocks of the victim.

  ‘Although the deepest indentations are on his front and back, there’s clearly enough to go right around him. Under his arms, inside of the thighs there are some fainter indications. But nowhere do we see any overlap, with two or more sets of impressions superimposed.’

  ‘That’s a canny observation.’

  ‘If he’d stumbled into this mesh, somehow, or been casually chucked in a roll of this stuff by an assailant, however it’s done, it would be messy, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, sir. So you’re saying it was like a wire body-stocking or something.’

  He nodded. ‘Made to measure.’

  ‘Fuck, that’s scary, sir.’

  Gillard nodded, his speculation reaching a terrifying conclusion. ‘Gangland punishment, something like that. Ever heard of the iron maiden?’

  Chapter Ten

  Leticia Mountjoy came to the station at five p.m., just an hour after Anton had left by taxi. He had rung her to tell her what he had said and that she should expect a fairly hostile reception.

  ‘Anton, I’m a probation officer,’ she’d said. ‘I cannot perjure myself. You have to understand that. I’ve got a really big case coming up that could be great for me.’

  ‘Tish, please. Don’t drop Leroy in it. We’re in the clear anyway, it just risks complications.’

  Leticia was totally stressed out by the time she walked into Staines police station. Anton and Leroy had a friendship going back to childhood. He was a big guy, charming but intimidating, and she had never trusted him. When Anton had set up his restaurant he’d admitted he’d borrowed some money from Leroy. Leticia really wanted Anton to succeed but there was some kind of taint about Leroy and some of the unsavoury characters he hung around with. She had brought it up with Anton, who had become quite defensive. Her fear was that Anton’s loyalty to his childhood friend was stronger than his connection to her.

  Now, she really didn’t know what to do for the best. The same two uniformed police officers that Anton had mentioned, PCs Cottesloe and Wickens, were there. They offered her coffee, which was vile, and took her into a rather pleasant interview room, all pot plants and fabric settees, which sounded quite different from the dark basement in which Anton said he’d been questioned.

  ‘Ms Mountjoy,’ Cottesloe began. ‘Thank you for making time to help us try to get to the bottom of what happened to this unfortunate man in his last few hours.’

  ‘No problem, happy to help,’ she said. This wasn’t at all what Anton had described happening to him.

  ‘I understand you are the girlfriend of Mr Anton St Jeanne?’ Cottesloe asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I ask for how long you two have been going out together?’

  ‘About eighteen months.’

  The two policemen went through the arrival and departure times of the car, which Leticia knew only hazily, and then asked her whether she had heard a splash just before two a.m.

  ‘I can honestly say that I didn’t. The music was quit
e loud.’

  ‘What was playing, do you remember?’ Wickens asked.

  She hadn’t expected this. ‘I couldn’t tell you, to be honest. It wasn’t my kind of thing.’ It was a lie, but a harmless one surely. She just couldn’t be sure what if anything Anton had been asked about this.

  ‘Where were you sitting, Ms Mountjoy?’

  ‘In the front seat, next to my boyfriend.’ A small lie, but surely not important. She had been sitting in the back, behind the driver’s seat.

  Cottesloe was reading a handwritten document in front of him and looked up. ‘Had you met the Chinese man in the back seat before?’

  Her look of bafflement must have been obvious. She had no idea what Anton must have said. After what seemed an age she said, ‘There was no Chinese man in the back seat.’

  ‘You don’t seem very sure,’ Cottesloe said.

  ‘It’s a pretty simple question, wouldn’t you say, Jim?’ Wickens asked, earning a nod from Cottesloe. The cops both stared at her, looking down at the papers in front of them and up at her. ‘No one in the back seat,’ Wickens began to write.

  She licked her lips. Perjury starts with small beginnings.

  ‘That’s right,’ she whispered.

  She submitted to the cheek swab and gave various details about her address and contact numbers. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask this,’ Wickens said, finally. ‘But may we borrow your mobile phone for half an hour?’

  ‘Why do you need it?’

  ‘It’s actually to help you,’ Wickens said, with a smile. ‘We’ll use cell site analysis to prove your location. It just helps us be sure that you have been telling the truth.’

  ‘But you only need the number for that. You want to look at my messages and emails as well, don’t you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Cottesloe said. ‘But it would make things faster.’

  Leticia looked from one to the other. Anton hadn’t mentioned having to hand over his phone, so she didn’t understand why they would pick on her. She brought out her phone, and then realised that she couldn’t hand it over. She had exchanged a couple of emails with Jill Allsop about Neville Rollason. She was pretty certain that those emails didn’t include any of the confidential details, but she was going to try something.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you my phone.’

  ‘That’s very unfortunate, Ms Mountjoy,’ Cottesloe said. ‘It doesn’t look good does it? What have you got to hide?’

  Leticia delved into her handbag, and finally found the business card that DI Morgan had given her. ‘Ring him first, he’ll explain.’ She hoped that she had done the right thing. The card mentioned his rank but made no mention of the fact that he was Special Branch.

  The two police officers looked at each other and, excusing themselves, walked out of the room.

  * * *

  ‘She must be a snitch, and Morgan is her handler,’ Cottesloe said, as he took out his phone.

  ‘That makes me more suspicious, not less,’ Wickens said. ‘I don’t know what she could be doing that is more important than us investigating a dead body.’

  Cottesloe made the call and got straight through to Morgan. ‘Sir, sorry to bother but can I just ask whether you are running an informer called Leticia Mountjoy?’

  Morgan seemed confused for a minute. ‘The name’s familiar, hang on. What’s it about?’

  Cottesloe explained where she had been seen. ‘She may be a witness to a death, you know that body in the Thames, but she doesn’t want to hand over her phone.’

  ‘I remember now. I’m sorry, Constable, you have to lay off her. Let her keep her phone.’

  Cottesloe tried to suppress his groan of disappointment. ‘Sir, may I ask what your interest is in her? It’s just that it may impede our investigation.’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you why, except to say that it is a Special Branch matter. I’m not sure who you are reporting to, but if you want to contest this, it needs to go up to the chief constable.’

  * * *

  Gillard, tipped off by the two PCs, had emailed a request for details of the Special Branch interest in Leticia Mountjoy from Chief Constable Alison Rigby. If there was something bigger going on involving her, he needed to avoid treading on any sensitive toes. He assumed it was unlikely to concern her involvement in probation work, but couldn’t imagine what else it might be. Witness protection was a possibility, perhaps. He waited in his office doing paperwork after the end of his shift, hoping for a reply. It was gone seven and he was about to give up when the chief constable rang him. ‘Craig, I’m sorry I can’t give you the information you requested. But trust me, it’s much less exciting than you might imagine.’

  Feeling frustrated and dissatisfied, Gillard logged out, locked his office and drove home. When he got there at eight o’clock, Sam was sitting in front of the TV, fully dressed. This was good news. The last few times he’d come in at this hour, she’d been in a bathrobe with little sign she’d strayed far from bed. ‘How was your day?’ he asked.

  ‘It was good. I’ve been to the gym, and my one-to-one psychotherapy was really helpful today. Have you made any progress on the dead man in the river?’

  He was pleased that she had begun to ask about his work again. Sam’s near-death experience in an abduction a few months ago had put her into a very dark place mentally. The psychologist said that her therapy was going well, and the group PTSD talk sessions were certainly helping to exorcise her personal demons. He had noticed that she seemed a little less clingy than she had in the early weeks, too. He adored holding her, and feeling her close, but sometimes her need for it had been a little too intense.

  ‘Are you feeling well enough to come with me to see Trish tomorrow?’ he asked. Gillard’s elderly aunt had been in a coma in Redhill Hospital for weeks. The bleed on her brain had been stopped, but she was still in a critical condition. Although the nursing staff said she was completely unaware of her surroundings, Gillard had found time to drop in to see her twice a week. She wasn’t his favourite person, but even when unconscious she managed to exert a powerful feeling of guilt over him.

  ‘Yes, why not?’ Sam said. ‘I’m prepared for horror stories. I’m going to watch Panorama tonight, about Neville Rollason,’ she said proudly.

  ‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay with that? He’s a nasty piece of work. I read what he did to some of his victims and believe me you don’t want to know the details.’

  ‘It’s BBC One, it’s not going to be too graphic,’ she said. ‘But I’m amazed they’re letting him out.’

  Gillard sighed. ‘The canteen is full of talk about it. In the end it’s a question of quid pro quo. If a killer finally decides to let a family know where their child is buried, there has to be some kind of reward.’

  ‘But to let him out!’

  ‘I know, I know. The Parole Board say he’s better. Won’t reoffend. But who knows.’

  Sam harrumphed, and pulled her knees up onto the settee. ‘Come and watch it with me.’

  When the programme started it showed a presenter standing before the brooding front gate of HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire.

  ‘Later this week, from this grim high-security prison behind me, one of the most notorious killers Britain has ever seen will be released. Neville Rollason, now in his sixties, will once again be free to roam the streets of Britain.’ A black-and-white mugshot of Rollason filled the screen. It was one of the many pictures taken at the time of his arrest, and showed his lips curled and dark eyebrows flexed as if in some private joke.

  ‘The question has to be: is there ever a right time to release a prisoner like this?’

  Chapter Eleven

  The man now known as Neil Wright was watching the same Panorama programme at Spring Hill open prison and enjoying it. On the screen were his own features from decades before. The presenter then described several of the murders of which his alter ego Neville Rollason had been convicted. Images of the streets in the north-east of England from which the v
ictims disappeared were shown, streets that were still familiar to him. Places that he visited frequently in his dreams, where he found himself cleaning away in retrospect the forensic clues that in the 1980s had sunk him.

  The presenter was now in full condemnatory style. ‘Is it right to release this man, a man who has only recently shown any remorse for the brutal killings he committed more than thirty years ago in a different century? I put this question to a senior retired judge, Lord Waverley, who as Mr Justice Waverley put away many of Britain’s most notorious criminals.’

  ‘Not that idiot,’ the prisoner muttered to himself. He toyed with muting the TV so he didn’t have to listen again to the voice of the appeal court judge. Waverley had chaired the Parole Board hearing in Wakefield Prison in 2004 that quashed his first appeal for release. He was on his little list, near the top. Wright knew the chambers in London’s Lincoln’s Inn where Waverley had worked and still occasionally returned for drinks and meals with former colleagues.

  The patrician features of the elderly lord showed him sitting in a book-lined study. ‘It’s entirely understandable that many people say that a dreadful offender like Rollason should never again see the light of day. However, we have to balance society’s need to punish this man against the important goal of rehabilitation. We must hold out the hope of release for those who admit their crimes and show some remorse. It may not be the most important point, but it is still essential to note that Britain’s overstretched prisons would become ungovernable if those within were offered no hope of release.’

  ‘Too bloody right,’ muttered Wright. He didn’t yet have a residential address for the noble lord, but once he got to use the Internet, that shouldn’t be too hard.

  ‘But for some,’ the presenter said, turning back to the camera, ‘revenge is much more important than rehabilitation.’ The screen then showed a silhouette of a man against a drawn curtain. He appeared to be wearing a jacket and a baseball cap. The presenter’s voiceover lowered to a conspiratorial whisper: ‘This man, who we are calling Dave, is a vigilante. He belonged for several years to one of many organisations that are involved in the entrapment of child abusers. These organisations normally pass on information to the police. However, Dave and some of his friends have a more radical agenda, one which would put them the wrong side of the law. I arranged to meet Dave in the back room of a pub in the Midlands. His words are spoken by an actor to protect his identity.’