The Body on the Island

by Nick Louth

  ‘You’re lovely,’ he said, as she began to reverse the car out. That sceptical eyebrow again, twitching. She seemed to be breathing heavily. Her diaphragm was moving. It was the kind of thing he had trained himself to notice, inside. To detect liars and to predict imminent attack. But that was inside, and he was out now. He trusted her. God, she was lovely.

  They drove for only a few minutes before she took a left turn down a narrow country track.

  ‘You can pee behind the hedge here,’ she said.

  He scrambled clumsily out of the car. For some reason he had trouble with his flies, and settled for undoing his belt and letting his trousers fall to his ankles. Hot urine poured out of him into the nettles behind the hedge, splashing his trainers. It took a while for him to hoist his trousers back up, and somehow he made a mess of getting the belt hitched correctly.

  As he turned back to the car, he saw she was standing by the open boot.

  ‘Come and have a look at this,’ she asked. It felt like an order. He was happy to comply. He looked into the boot and saw a big canvas bag, a builder’s bag.

  ‘What’s that for?’ he asked.

  ‘Did you not see the car, going past on the main road?’

  ‘No.’ For the first time a little tickle of anxiety pierced the swoon of well-being.

  ‘Vigilantes. I recognised two of them. If they see you, you’re finished. They have guns.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Hide in the boot, they won’t see you. You’ll be safe.’

  He looked at the builder’s sack and the cavernous interior. ‘It’ll be dark. I don’t like the dark. I get panic attacks. Ever since I was in solitary and the power failed.’

  ‘Just try it. There’s a little light I can turn on. It will only be for a few minutes.’

  He looked again. He wasn’t sure. It felt wrong. Something cautionary was trying to emerge in his befuddled brain, to warn him. ‘I will if you give us a kiss, pet.’

  She hesitated. ‘Okay, I will if you behave. Lean back against the car and close your eyes. Properly shut.’ He did so, resting his hands behind him on the lip of the boot, and waited for contact from her lips.

  Something was clamped over his mouth, and as his eyes flew open he saw her jump at him, her knee swinging. His groin exploded like a supernova. An enormous inhalation, to power a scream, was blocked by the damp pungent rag clamped tightly over his face. He sucked in some oddly perfumed liquid and the excruciating pain transmuted quickly into darkness. The last thing he felt was that he was toppling backwards into the boot.

  * * *

  Verity Winter tipped the unconscious man on his side and folded him up, knees to chest. She had hoped to persuade him to climb in, but had to admit to enormous satisfaction from using her knee, holding his shoulders down to get her full weight behind it. That one long-practised movement alone had justified the self-defence courses she had been forced to take in her teens, back in the darkest days when all was fear and foreboding. From a small plastic bag under the canvas sack she brought out a dozen foot-long cable ties. She bound his wrists and ankles, making them wickedly tight, so they cut into the flesh.

  She had been fretting about every detail of this for days. The stress had been making her ill. But the plan she had been so dubious about had worked far more easily than she’d anticipated. She had seen him at the bus stop, and when she stopped the car he accepted the explanation that she had given him: that there had been a change of plan to keep him safe, and she was to give him a lift. The fact that he recognised her undoubtedly helped; she had met him briefly once before, when he was first moved to Spring Hill, and of course her probation service ID card and lanyard proved that she could be trusted. The thing she had fretted about most was the mobile phone, but he had handed it over immediately when she asked, claiming he didn’t even know how to use it.

  Trust. She permitted herself a small grin of satisfaction at having turned the tables. Rollason had himself enticed teenage boys into his car with a computer games console, and had doctored alcohol. She had lured him with the promise of safety.

  Despite the flunitrazepam she’d dropped in his drink on the way back from the bar into the garden, and the liquid GHB in the handkerchief, there was a possibility he might wake during the journey. He’d have to be kept quiet. She stuffed his mouth with a rag, and gaffer-taped it closed, encircling his head three times. She was supposed to bring him in alive, but if Rollason came round and threw up before she delivered him, then he would drown in his own vomit.

  Tough. She just hoped he wouldn’t make a mess in her boot while doing it.

  He was going to die anyway. But that wasn’t her department and she didn’t want to know any details. She turned Rollason’s phone on and checked for messages. There were three, all left in the last hour by Leticia, asking where he was. She turned it off and dropped it into her bag. Now she had to make a delivery. That’s when her involvement ended. She hoped it would finally be enough, and this thirty-four-year agony would be over.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Wednesday morning

  It was a quarter past four in the morning and the first glow of midsummer dawn was seeping above the horizon as Alan Wilson walked his black labrador on the verge along the A3050. He was heading for the Molesey Reservoirs Nature Reserve, hoping to get a good early walk for Lucky before the business trip to Scotland. He was in a good mood. The normally frantic road was almost deserted. The reserve would not be open yet, but Lucky had on a previous excursion found a good wide gap in the railings and seemed anxious to do some more exploring. What Wilson did not expect to see by the side of the road at that time of the morning was a young man wearing a bike helmet with a head-torch, bending over as if winded. Just a few yards away a bicycle was chained to a road sign. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, from a safe distance, tightening the extendable dog lead. He hoped the man hadn’t been sick. Labradors have a habit of eating anything, however revolting.

  ‘He’s dead,’ the young man said, standing up, wiping a string of saliva from his mouth. He had a very odd movement in his eye.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Through there,’ he said, pointing through the gap in the railings that Wilson had intended to use. ‘We need to call the police.’

  Wilson peered through the fence. There was a dark shape ten yards away under the bushes. In the twilight it was hard to say what it was. Wilson considered going with the dog to investigate, but didn’t quite trust this scruffy individual, with his dirty shirt, head-torch and a cycle clip on only the right leg of his grubby trousers.

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘The murderer, Neville Rollason.’

  Wilson knew exactly who he meant but was sceptical of this young man’s claim.

  ‘Just killed him, then, have you?’ He asked the question in jocular fashion, but the answer was straight.

  ‘No, no, I found the body.’

  ‘Is that his bike or yours?’

  The young man stood up to face him. ‘No, that’s mine.’

  He wondered quite how a passing cyclist could have made this alarming discovery. The body, if that’s what it was, was not visible from the road. Lucky, sensitive as ever to the mood of her master, began to bark at the man.

  ‘Are you sure that’s actually a dead body?’ Wilson asked.

  In answer, the young man proffered his phone, a photo luridly displayed.

  ‘Christ almighty!’ Wilson recoiled at the image. ‘Okay, I’ll call 999. But I don’t think you should go anywhere.’ As he put the phone to his ear he knew there was zero chance now that he would be on time for his train.

  * * *

  It was just before seven a.m. when Baz Mulholland took the call. Claire was in the shower, and emerged just wearing a towel. ‘Vince Babbage at Staines,’ he said as he handed her the cordless phone.

  The duty sergeant at Staines police station came quickly to the point. ‘Sorry to disturb, ma’am. Control room picked up a 999 call. Two witnesses reported
a body found in the Molesey Reservoirs Nature Reserve, and you’re the closest senior detective. I know you’re not on duty for another hour in theory, but CSI is already there and I thought…’

  ‘That’s no problem at all, Vince.’ She put the phone on speaker, walked into her bedroom, tossed the phone onto the bed, dropped the towel onto the floor and began to dress rapidly. ‘Do we know anything about it?’

  ‘Well, the cyclist who first spotted it says it’s definitely Neville Rollason.’

  ‘I’ll take that with a pinch of salt,’ she said, as she buttoned up her blouse. ‘Almost nobody knows what he looks like these days. I certainly don’t.’ She slid on a pair of jeans rather than work slacks, thinking of mud, blood and mess at a nature reserve.

  ‘That was my feeling, ma’am. Wishful thinking maybe. Still, the witness was very distressed and the control room operator didn’t feel it was a hoax.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Do me a favour. Email DCI Craig Gillard, and DI Graham Morgan in Special Branch. If there is even a chance it’s Rollason, they’ll need to know.’

  ‘Righto, ma’am.’

  Claire hung up and yelled for Baz. On his reply, she shouted: ‘Sorry, no lift today. Can you grab me a couple of cereal bars?’

  There was an answering grunt from downstairs. She made a pout, grabbed a lipstick and with a rapid and practised movement circled her mouth. She squirmed her feet into a pair of pre-laced trainers. She’d settle for rubbing some toothpaste round her mouth with her finger in the car until she had time to use the toothbrush she kept in her desk at work.

  She thundered downstairs, scooped up car keys, phone and briefcase from the hall table and then glanced at herself in the mirror. Her hair was a post-tornado haystack. She gave a brief scowl and looked for her brush. Not there, so she attacked it with Baz’s own plaster-spattered comb. Better than nothing. ‘Baz!’ she called again. He emerged from the kitchen, a slice of toast jammed into his face, a plastic bag with her on-the-go breakfast in his hands.

  ‘Time to clean this,’ she said, swapping the dirty comb for the bag. ‘Have you fed Dexter?’

  ‘What d’you think that chomping noise is?’ he replied cheerfully.

  ‘Don’t forget – when you pick up the car, there’s my dry-cleaning to get too. The ticket’s behind the clock. Make sure they got rid of the stain on the trousers, blood on the left knee. Pick up Dexter’s tablets from the vet, and don’t forget to wheel the bin out. Recycling not green waste.’

  ‘Right.’ She watched her husband’s face veer to panic at the prospect of inheriting this Gordian knot of multitasking. ‘See you later, love.’

  She kissed him on the cheek and stopped in the utility room to pick up her grab bag. Wellingtons, torch, and fresh packets of plastic gloves and booties.

  Once in the car, routine returned. She checked in on the comms system, hit the blue lights and left rubber on the road. At least the blues would get her past the roadworks on the main road.

  * * *

  Traffic on the A3050 was stationary in both directions. Claire had to take ownership of the middle of the road with sirens and lights. Motorists were hanging out of their windows taking photos on their phones, and others had even parked on the verge in order to get a closer view. A couple of uniformed officers were dealing with it. Two patrol cars and a CSI van were also parked on the grass. Crime scene tape ran back from the forty limit sign a good fifty yards, and a crime-scene tent was already visible inside the nature reserve. She recognised Yaz Quoroshi, talking to another CSI technician.

  As she added her own vehicle to the melee, she spotted PC Jim Cottesloe talking to a scruffy young man wearing a cycle helmet while a middle-aged man with a black labrador stood by. She got out and went over to the group. The younger man turned to her. It was Jakes, her husband’s colleague on the zoo job.

  ‘Small world, Michael,’ she said. ‘Are you our witness again?’

  ‘Hi, er…’ He clearly recognised her but was struggling with her name.

  ‘Claire Mulholland, Barry’s partner. Detective inspector.’

  He nodded. ‘I remember.’

  ‘So, you were a witness on Tagg’s Island the other week, and now you’re here.’

  ‘Bit of a coincidence, I’d say,’ Cottesloe volunteered, staring hard at Jakes.

  ‘Yes.’ There was a waft of vomit about him.

  ‘And you are a witness too?’ Claire turned to ask the dog walker.

  ‘Not exactly. I just found this young man in a state of distress. I haven’t seen the body, just his picture of it.’

  Claire called over a uniformed officer to look after him and turned back to Jakes.

  Cottesloe handed Claire a phone. ‘Mr Jakes took these photographs of the dead man.’ Claire recoiled at the graphic images. The entire face and neck was purple and swollen, the eyelids inflated and the eyeballs themselves almost popping out of his head. Clearly, he had sustained very similar injuries to those of the body on the island, though this victim was still clothed. The pictures showed a short-sleeved shirt and blue trousers.

  ‘May we keep this for now to help with the identification?’ she asked Jakes.

  ‘No need. I’ll tell you who it is, it’s Neville Rollason,’ Jakes said.

  ‘Did you know Mr Rollason then?’ Claire asked.

  ‘Not exactly know, seeing as he has been inside for decades,’ Jakes said. ‘But I know what he looks like.’ He reached for his phone, and she gave it back to him. He swiped through, and then turned the screen back to her. ‘This is him,’ he said. The picture was of a smiling white-haired pensioner with red-framed spectacles, resting his chin winsomely on one hand. The interior background was more convincing than the subject. It looked institutional, with just the kind of unbreakable plastic furniture she had seen in prisons.

  Claire had only seen the same historic images of Rollason as every tabloid reader. The scowling goblin was stuck in every mother’s imagination and she was one of those, too, as well as being a cop. She’d seen nothing recent. This picture could be anybody. She doubted Jakes and had growing concerns about his mental stability. She reached for his mobile and, before bagging it for evidence, took a snap of the image of the older man with her own phone. She left Jakes with the uniforms while she made her way over to Yaz Quoroshi inside the crime tent.

  Quoroshi greeted her warmly, then added. ‘Looks like he’s struck again.’ The snap judgement from the CSI chief was that the body had been at the site only a very short time, the time of death probably a few hours before.

  ‘So that fits with the witness who claims to have seen a car with its boot open just before?’

  ‘Yes,’ Quoroshi said. ‘On the face of it. But I gather our principal witness is a little on the tainted side.’

  ‘And not just by puke,’ she said. She was going to make sure that he was taken to Staines police station in a patrol car. She didn’t want him in hers. Especially before she had a chance to finish her breakfast. The first thing she had to do was to send off Jakes’s pictures of the older man and the body to Special Branch to see if either of them really were Neville Rollason.

  * * *

  Michael Jakes was brought to Claire after he had been swabbed for DNA, fingerprinted and had his phone sent for analysis. Sergeant Babbage had given him the opportunity to sponge his shirt and trousers down before bringing him into the interview room. Jakes, while not exactly fragrant, looked less like a vagrant now. He still had his cycling helmet on, as if he was expecting to leave in a couple of minutes. He stared around at the two low settees, the potted plants, and the view of shrubbery through the partially drawn venetian blinds. Claire had chosen the rape suite on a hunch. She sensed a vulnerability in him and thought quicker progress might be made via a more sensitive approach.

  She patted the sofa opposite. ‘Sit down please, Michael.’ She got Babbage to bring in a coffee and offered him one of her own cereal bars. ‘I expect you need breakfast before telling me ever
ything you’ve seen.’ Claire tried not to stare at his errant eye.

  He thanked her.

  ‘So how did you discover the body?’

  ‘Like I told the PC, I was cycling back home when I saw a car on the other side of the road with its boot open.’

  ‘The nature reserve side? So you were heading towards Walton.’

  ‘Yes. There was a man at the boot. I thought nothing of it as I went past. About a minute later, the car overtook me, and I noticed the indicator flashed a bit fast. So I turned around…’

  ‘Sorry, what was the significance of the indicator?’

  ‘The car I saw at Tagg’s Island also had a defective indicator. I thought it might be the same one.’

  ‘So you stopped cycling?’

  ‘Well, not at first. I tried to give chase but he was too fast.’

  Claire smiled, imagining a bicycle trying to overtake a car and force it off the road. The ultimate have-a-go fantasy.

  ‘I went back to where he had been parked. There were fresh tyre tracks. I saw there was a gap in the railings, so I went through.’

  Claire looked up from her notes. ‘I’m sorry, Michael, I don’t quite understand what led you to turn around, cycle back and go into the nature reserve just because you’d seen a car with a defective indicator.’

  Jakes was wringing his hands. ‘When I saw the car at Tagg’s Island the other week, I thought the splash I heard was a man dumping a body. So, when I saw the man at the boot so early in the morning, I thought he might be dumping another one.’

  Claire put down her pen. ‘That’s quite an intuitive leap. Why were you expecting there to be another body?’

  ‘I wasn’t, particularly.’

  ‘You just said you did. All right, did you recognise the man at the boot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could you describe him for me?’

  Jakes rubbed his chin. ‘He was big.’

  ‘Just big? Anything else?’