The Body on the Island

by Nick Louth

  ‘No. That’s all I remember. I wasn’t suspicious when I first passed him. It was dark.’

  ‘I still don’t get why you had this brainwave. I mean, it’s enough that you assume a vehicle with a defective indicator light is the same one you saw before, but an even bigger leap to assume that every time you see this car and this man he’s got a body to dump. Wouldn’t you say?’

  Jakes just wrung his hands, only stopping to pick at tiny lumps of plaster on his knuckles.

  ‘Did you get the number plate of the parked vehicle?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘What make of car?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t drive, because of my nystagmus. I’ve never really taken an interest in mechanical things.’

  ‘Come on, you must have noticed something. Was it an estate car or a saloon? A big four-wheel drive? Was there a trailer?’

  Jakes’s eye set off on one of its heavenward journeys. ‘There was no trailer, that’s for sure. And the man was at the boot. He was taking off gloves.’

  ‘Gloves, you didn’t mention that. It may be significant.’

  ‘It didn’t seem to me a big car and I thought it was old from the sound of the engine as it overtook me.’

  She turned back to her notes. ‘But the thing you most clearly noticed was the faulty indicator?’

  ‘That’s right. Because it was just like the other vehicle I’d seen in the distance at Tagg’s Island.’

  Claire put her pen down again. ‘Can I ask why you were cycling around at four in the morning?’

  ‘It’s a habit of mine. I can’t sleep sometimes. I have a circuit that goes through Hurst Meadows park, along the edge of the Thames and back to Walton on the A3050 or back the other way along Hampton Court Road. During the summer I do it four or five times a week. It would be far too busy during the day. But ever since the splash I’m always keeping an eye out for the car I saw at Tagg’s.’

  ‘Can I ask again, what made you start looking around in the bushes?’

  Jakes didn’t answer.

  ‘What about this photograph that you say is Rollason? Where did you get that from?’

  He stared down at the floor, wringing his hands again. Getting no reply, Claire left him in the suite and went into the corridor to make a phone call. She got through to Gillard, who was still at the site of the Farnborough raid.

  ‘Just following up from the email earlier, Craig,’ she said.

  ‘Is it Rollason?’

  ‘Could well be. Quoroshi thinks so. Same MO as the previous body, worse if anything.’

  ‘The witness said it was Rollason, that was the message I got,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Yes, Michael Jakes. The splash witness at Tagg’s Island.’

  ‘How on earth would Jakes know what Rollason looks like now?’

  ‘He has a photograph that he claims is him. It looks recent, but I’ve no idea if it is him. I sent it to Graham Morgan, but no reply so far.’

  ‘Didn’t you copy me in? I have seen the brand-new Rollason. He’s got a bit of white hair and wears red specs.’

  ‘That’s what I saw in the pic. So it is probably him.’

  ‘How did Jakes get that picture?’

  ‘He won’t say.’

  ‘All right. Keep him there, Claire. There’s only so many coincidences in life. We should probably interview him under caution.’

  ‘Well, I can’t if it gets formal. I know him. He works with Baz.’

  ‘Okay, if I ever get finished here, I’ll get Hoskins to sit in with me while we interview him. But first I’ve got to go to the mortuary to see the body with Delahaye. Hoskins is going to contact any family Rollason has who would do a formal ID.’

  ‘Okay. Well, I can come along for that.’

  * * *

  By the time the body bag was pulled out on the slab in the mortuary at Kingston Hospital, there was little doubt that the corpse still zipped inside would indeed turn out to be Neville Rollason. DC Hoskins had found an address for Rollason’s daughter, but hadn’t managed to track her down by phone.

  Dr David Delahaye was there with Claire and they were both poring over his iPad, where the two photographs from Jakes’s phone and those from CSI were enlarged. The forensic pathologist swiped to a CSI close-up of the corpse’s face and spread his finger and thumb on the screen to further enlarge it. ‘Dentition is remarkably similar,’ he said. ‘Clearly reconstructed, bleached and so forth.’

  ‘Yes, looks the same to me.’

  Delahaye looked up. ‘I thought Gillard was going to be here.’

  ‘He said he’d be here by nine,’ Claire said. ‘He’s on his way back from a joint operation with West Mercia Police.’

  The forensic consultant looked up at the clock. Ten past. ‘I think I’m going to start anyway.’ Delahaye positioned the overhead mic, suspended by its cable, and the extractor hood. He pulled closer a trolley of wicked-looking medical instruments, some with hooks or curved blades. Another trolley had an electric saw and accessories.

  Claire’s mouth went dry as he undid the zip. Her gasp was involuntary.

  She had seen plenty of dead bodies and been to a few post-mortems, although she usually preferred to leave before the electric saw or scalpels began their work. The grisly photographs of this one had hardly prepared her for the reality. She had never seen a corpse that looked anything like this. The chest, a florid purple, was crushed to half its normal depth on one side; the eyes and mouth were wide open, seemingly caught in a final rictus of agony.

  ‘There are obviously some startling similarities between this case and the body found in the Thames. The cyanosis in this case is even more starkly visible.’ Delahaye leaned close and used a magnifying glass to briefly inspect the eyes. ‘Profuse petechiae in the conjunctiva and strong cyanosis in the head, neck and chest. Compression on the thorax was sufficiently intense to reverse blood flow in veins and arteries, some of which can be seen in the upper body. The jugular vein in the neck is horribly distended, almost serpentine, which again would be caused by excessive pressure.’

  The pathologist pressed gently on the chest with his gloved hands. ‘Both collarbones are broken.’ He pressed and counted. ‘Yes, we have five detached ribs, and another three broken, all on the left side. Unlike the other body, this one seems to have been subject not just to pressure but acts of violence.’

  He shone a torch into the mouth, where Claire could see dried blood. ‘The securing screws for the dental implants have been torn out through the upper jaw, and the lower mandible has been fractured. This is consistent with some hard object being thrust with great force into the mouth,’ Delahaye said, looking at her over the top of his square metallic spectacles. He then gestured at the crushed ribcage. ‘This alone might well have been sufficient to cause death. My guess at this stage is that he had already passed out through lack of oxygen.’

  At that moment Gillard walked into the mortuary, accompanied by a hospital technician. After brief greetings, the detective chief inspector peered at the body.

  ‘Good grief. Just like the other one.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Delahaye said. ‘This time he was clothed. The body is fresher, no water to muddy the evidence, and in my view considerably enhanced pressure was applied. This time we don’t have the diamond pattern of impressions.’

  ‘Proving that the mesh wasn’t instrumental in the pressure,’ Gillard said.

  ‘It looks that way,’ Delahaye said, extracting an arm from the body bag. ‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Look at this contusion.’ He displayed the corpse’s wrist, with a thick band of indentations around it.

  ‘Tied up?’ Claire asked.

  ‘Yes, cable ties. Tight enough to break capillaries. It is clear that at some stage he was restrained.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me, if he’s conscious and about to get squeezed to death,’ Gillard said. ‘He’d fight, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Indeed. I’m going to start on the formal post-mortem in a few minutes;
did you want to stay around?’ Delahaye asked.

  ‘Thank you, but no, I’ve got an incident room meeting at ten,’ Gillard said, then paused. ‘How did things turn out with the cyclist, David?’

  ‘Michael Jakes?’ Claire asked.

  ‘No, I knocked a cyclist off the other day while talking on the hands-free,’ Delahaye said. ‘He threatened to punch me but settled for breaking the Tesla’s wing mirror. Serves me right, I suppose. I have to watch where I drive unless I want to make more work for myself.’

  * * *

  Once they were in the car park, Gillard said to Claire: ‘Normal cases, you get more evidence, it begins to make sense. This one, the more we discover, the crazier it gets. Two bodies killed in similar ways. One we’ve barely got a clue about and the other a notorious murderer just released from prison. The involvement of Jakes doesn’t seem to me to explain what’s going on.’

  ‘He must have some useful information.’

  ‘Maybe. But can you see him as part of AVENGE? I struggle with that. I mean, whoever managed to abduct Rollason knew exactly what they were doing, even if the disposal of the body seemed a bit amateur.’

  ‘Does it link with the raids you were on?’

  Gillard blew a sigh. ‘We found plenty of people who would undoubtedly want Rollason dead. But I’m sceptical as to whether any of those we got hold of were involved. The two we arrested, Terry Dalton and Nigel Chivers, had a consistent story. Dalton even had an alibi.’

  ‘What about Andrew Wickens?’

  ‘That’s gone up to Rigby,’ Gillard said. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.’

  * * *

  Mount Browne was a hive of activity as the two detectives walked into the CID block. Whiteboards were being set up and dozens of chairs set out. Research Intelligence Officer Rob Townsend had set up a videoconference call with West Mercia police for 10:15 a.m.

  After being up most of the night, Gillard had managed to squeeze in a quick shave and clean his teeth in the staff bathroom. He raided his upstairs locker for one of his emergency clean shirts. Once freshened up, he came down to see most of the team assembled in the largest incident room: DCs Carl Hoskins and Rainy Macintosh, financial specialist DC Shireen Corey-Williams, Christine McCafferty from PR, and Special Branch’s Graham Morgan. The one absentee, who would surely arrive at some stage, was the chief constable herself.

  Gillard stood at the front between two whiteboards, each dedicated to a murder victim. Rainy had filled them out with bullet points in marker pen and beneath them taped on photographs of each of the bodies.

  ‘Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a better night’s sleep than I did. We now have two corpses. Men who died in similar fashion, almost two weeks apart, the bodies being found within a mile of each other.’ He pointed to a large map pinned to the wall, then went over the circumstances of the discovery of the first body and the numerous witnesses to the splash, and referenced their witness statements, which were contained in a prepared pack on each person’s desk.

  ‘We still do not know for certain whether the splash was relevant to the body. Up until the discovery of the second body we did not in fact have any significant leads. That has now changed.’ He turned to the second whiteboard and described how Rollason’s body was discovered.

  ‘We’re awaiting a formal ID when we can get hold of his daughter, but there is little doubt from dental records who it is. I think we can all agree that with a common MO we can rule out accidental death in both cases. Neville Rollason looks to have been killed within twelve to fifteen hours of his release from prison. There are impressions of cable ties on both wrists and ankles, indicating he was bound for at least part of that time. Someone used his phone to claim he had been abducted by AVENGE.’

  ‘Are you now doubting that, sir?’ Rainy asked.

  ‘Yes. I’ll cover that in more detail when we have the conference call. The biggest immediate challenge is going to be a public relations one.’ He glanced at DI Morgan. ‘The Home Office in its wisdom sanctioned the creation of a new identity for one of Britain’s worst child-killers. The process that was used was one that had been used several times before and should have been foolproof. When we go public with the news, and I’m afraid we will have to do that within the next few hours, we’re going to need a clear narrative.’

  At that moment the double doors to the room opened and the chief constable walked in. Alison Rigby’s effect was, as usual, to chill the atmosphere. She folded her tall frame onto a seat right at the back of the room.

  ‘Christine, what would you suggest?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘We have to be as transparent as we can,’ the PR officer replied. ‘The coverage is more likely to focus around why he was released in the first place and why we ever use the public purse to build someone like him a new identity. The tabloids will undoubtedly react with glee to the news that he is dead. It’s a huge embarrassment, clearly, but my instinct is that it is the Home Office and the probation people who will get it in the neck more than us.’

  Morgan could be seen shaking his head slowly, more with regret than disagreement.

  Christine continued: ‘The fact that raids have taken place against AVENGE even before the public knew of Rollason’s death makes us look reasonably proactive, which should mitigate criticism.’ Gillard noted a slight nod of agreement from the chief constable.

  The conference call began, and the face of DCS Nick D’Angelo of West Mercia police appeared on the screen. Gillard introduced some of the key players from his team and asked the detective chief superintendent to summarise what had occurred overnight.

  ‘A force of eighty-five officers raided sixteen addresses across the Midlands, with some additional arrests made in Farnborough, Andover and Gateshead. We can call it a truly nationwide operation. Twenty-two people were arrested, including four known active vigilantes. Charges have already been preferred on seven of those people for possession of unlicensed firearms, including a police-issue taser, for assault and for resisting arrest. A number of those held have now been released on police bail, but three are being held in custody pending further investigations.’

  ‘Alison Rigby here,’ the chief constable called out from the back. ‘You probably can’t see me but I hope you can hear me on the speakerphone. Do you have reason to believe that any of those arrested were involved in the abduction of Mr Rollason?’

  ‘No ma’am, in fact we are increasingly convinced that they were not,’ D’Angelo responded.

  Rigby turned her attentions to Gillard. ‘Craig, I believe you arrested one of the AVENGE members here in Surrey. Are you telling me he wasn’t involved either?’

  Gillard smiled and pointed a remote control at the TV screen suspended from the ceiling. ‘This is a short clip from my interview with Nigel Chivers at Aldershot police station just a few hours ago. I think we can judge for ourselves.’

  The black-and-white CCTV image showed a square windowless room with four people around an interview table. Chivers was easily the largest, splayed belligerently across a chair, thighs apart, meaty arms folded across his chest. Next to him the duty solicitor looked like a pale shadow of a man. Opposite Chivers sat Gillard and DC Hoskins, documents open in front of them.

  The clip began with Gillard asking a question: ‘So you are telling me, Nigel, that you tried to get Rollason, but failed?’

  ‘Yeah. As God is my witness, I sat upstairs in his house from seven in the morning until midday waiting for the little bastard, but he never showed up. All I heard was the sound of this woman downstairs, who’d let herself in.’

  ‘How do you know that Rollason wasn’t with her?’ Hoskins asked.

  ‘Because when she came in she called out for him. I hid under the bed as I thought she was gonna come upstairs and look, but she never did. I was trapped in there for a good hour until she left. It was obvious that she was expecting him to be there.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I waited until she’d gone and the
n slipped out the back way. Terry was waiting outside in the car.’

  ‘That is Terrence Dalton, in the Peugeot you previously identified?’ Hoskins asked, looking down at the documents.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Gillard clicked the screen off and turned to his audience. ‘Under interrogation Nigel Chivers readily admitted that he and Dalton had planned to abduct Rollason, with the assistance of others they have so far refused to identify. Somehow, they had obtained the address where the offender was going to be living. Chivers had effected an entry to this property on the Sunday two days in advance of Rollason’s release from prison and, as you heard, was waiting upstairs for him to arrive on the morning of his release.’

  ‘Chivers’ story stacks up,’ Hoskins said. ‘He recalled details of the arrival of the probation officer at Rollason’s address that correspond with her story. Right down to the fact he had a takeaway coffee and left the stirrer and some dregs in Rollason’s kitchen sink. Only somebody who was there would have known that.’

  Gillard took up the story. ‘As we know Chivers was at the house all morning, by definition he couldn’t have been involved in the abduction, because we know Rollason never arrived. There is not a single dab of his DNA anywhere in the house. Likewise, Dalton’s story, that he was in the Peugeot in Wexford Road waiting for Chivers, is consistent and is backed up by the timings on ANPR images.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Rigby asked.

  ‘As we already guessed, Rollason was abducted by somebody else before he even got to his new home,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Who?’ Rigby asked. ‘Any ideas, DCS D’Angelo?’

  ‘I think it was a freelance operation, ma’am,’ D’Angelo said.

  ‘Our errant cyclist, Mr Jakes?’

  Gillard demurred. ‘There are problems with that theory, ma’am, which I’ll come on to.’

  Rigby didn’t look happy. ‘I have an urgent meeting, so I have to go now.’ She stood up. ‘I suppose we can say that we were pretty quickly onto it, if nothing else. Okay, Christine? We’ll have a breakout meeting on the PR angle we take. You, Morgan and Gillard in my office at noon. Thank you.’ She stood up and left the room.