by Nick Louth
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think it’s pretty obvious,’ Hoskins said. ‘We’re detectives, and we add up the clues. You already had the opportunity to kill this man, given that you were found by the body. Now you say he is your father, we have a motive too.’
* * *
Michael Jakes was released on police bail. He had to catch the bus back home, as the police had retained his bicycle in the search for evidence; and he was told to phone them from home every evening. The police seemed to think it was a coincidence that he had stumbled across the same car that he had seen that first night on the bridge. But it wasn’t that much of a coincidence. He had had a feeling that he was on to something right from the start, from the first splash. It was a premonition that came into his dreams that very night. Nietzsche had come to him, in the darkness: You will be the instrument of salvation, not just for yourself but for others. But you must look. He had cycled every night, sometimes twice a night, in a big figure of eight from Walton-on-Thames to Hampton Court Bridge looking for that car, looking for a murderer. And in the end he had found him. And in doing so he had found himself.
* * *
Leticia was on the lunch run, queueing for sandwiches at Eileen’s Deli in Staines High Street, enjoying the cafe radio. A couple of regulars, painters and decorators by the look of their overalls, were ahead of her, ribbing the woman behind the counter, who hadn’t yet finished making an elaborate salad for someone sitting down. ‘Come on, Eileen,’ one muttered, echoing the 1980s hit that had just been playing. The woman, whose name was Pat, rolled her eyes at the tired and endlessly repeated joke. The hourly news bulletin kicked in, announcing the discovery of another dead body between Staines and Walton-on-Thames.
The police for the moment are declining to give details, but a source close to the investigation told Surrey FM that the victim was the notorious murderer Neville Rollason, only released from prison yesterday.
The two tradesmen ahead of Leticia turned to each other in apparent joy. ‘Yes! Fucking result, my son,’ one said, proffering a clenched fist. His mate clapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘Sorted. In double-quick time.’
By the time Leticia got back to the office, the news had already electrified the place. She distributed the sandwiches she had got on behalf of Tina, Jill and Adrian. An impromptu meeting was called in Jill’s office while they all munched through their lunch. ‘So they really did have him,’ Leticia said.
‘It certainly looks that way,’ Jill said. ‘We of course must institute an immediate and thorough enquiry into our actions and re-evaluate our procedures. As I said yesterday, please continue to refer all press calls to the Ministry of Justice media team in London. If you’re asked a question, just act dumb. Pretend to be a temp. Don’t give your name, but most importantly, at no stage should any of us confirm Rollason was on our books.’
They all nodded in agreement.
‘This is a better result, frankly, than the other kind of surprise, which would be to discover that Rollason had reoffended,’ Richards said.
Jill turned to him. ‘Adrian, a man we were supposed to be rehabilitating is dead. It is absolutely not good news.’
Richards shrugged, his indifference lost in the noise as Verity crashed through the door, late as usual, and dumped her bag on the table. ‘I got caught in a half-hour jam near the crime scene. There were half a dozen police cars. There were people picnicking by the roadside to watch.’ She looked excited, her face lit up.
‘People are nothing but ghouls,’ Richards said.
Leticia then relayed the reaction of the tradesmen in the sandwich queue. ‘They were delighted.’
Jill shook her head. ‘I think we have always recognised that the great British public do not appreciate a lot of our work. It only makes it harder.’
Thursday evening
Gillard’s wish to learn a bit more about the first victim was answered sooner than he had expected. The detective chief inspector was still sitting at his desk at 6:45 p.m. the same day when an email arrived in his in-box, headed ‘missing persons’ and written by the chief international liaison officer at Taipei police HQ. There, in excellent English, was a list of the several thousand male Taiwanese citizens who had bought air tickets to London since March. The liaison officer had helpfully flagged up those who had already returned, which left 485. Even more useful was the appending of the date of birth of each person, based on passport details. That allowed Gillard to exclude those who were clearly too young or too old to be the man they had found. Leaving a wide age window of 40 to 65 gave them 117 citizens. The officer apologised profusely for not yet having linked the supplied list to those who had been reported missing but promised it for the next day.
DC Hoskins came over to see what his boss was so excited about. ‘That’s fast,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got an answer from the Border Force yet about who arrived in Britain.’
‘Well, we can help them,’ Gillard said. ‘Send Border Force those 117 Taiwanese passport numbers, see which of them did indeed arrive and how many have left. I want it by tomorrow morning. I’ll ring Rigby at home to see if she can add her authority to it.’
Chapter Twenty-six
Friday
By the time the main incident room meeting was convened the next morning a lot more information had arrived. Only one of the Taiwanese travellers had been reported missing, and that was quite recently. He was Dr Wei-Ling Chen, a well-known academic in the field of nanotechnology who was supposed to be attending a conference in Oxford early in June.
He had never checked in.
Gillard had appended printouts of everything he’d received from Taipei, and the confirming information from the Border Force onto the whiteboards that had for so many days only had speculative information scrawled on them. ‘Hopefully, we can make a very quick breakthrough on this,’ Gillard said. ‘Dr Chen was reported missing by his sister just a couple of weeks ago. She said that her brother had been depressed and might not have caught the plane to Britain at all. In fact, as we can see here, he did arrive at Heathrow on June seventeenth.’
‘Do we have a mobile phone number for him?’ asked Rob Townsend. ‘That would be the quickest way of checking where he went.’
‘Yeah, way better than trying to wade through CCTV cameras at Heathrow,’ muttered Hoskins.
‘That would be a great start, Rob. We’ve got one additional line of enquiry,’ Gillard said. ‘Attached to the documentation of the e-ticket he bought is the booking of a hire car through Avis at Heathrow. Rainy, I’d like you to follow that up and see whether the car was ever returned.’
‘Okay boss.’
‘The Taipei police have been incredibly thorough already,’ Gillard said. ‘They have given us an entire data dump from the phone service provider for his work and personal phones. That includes all the messaging by text or email, although not WhatsApp. Most of what we have now is in Chinese, but they have offered to translate it into English.’
‘Top marks,’ said Hoskins. ‘That’s above and beyond.’
‘I get the impression that considering the prominence of the man, they want to get a fairly rapid result,’ Gillard said. ‘I told them we did too.’
* * *
Gillard was waiting for Rainy Macintosh to get off the phone to Avis car rentals when Research Intelligence Officer Rob Townsend beckoned him over to his computer, on which was displayed a high-resolution map showing a faltering yellow trace heading west from Heathrow airport. ‘This is the journey of Dr Chen’s phone on the morning of June seventeenth,’ he said. ‘The mobile was on presumably from the moment he arrived. He headed down behind Heathrow, through Hounslow and Feltham. He certainly looks like he was heading for our patch. But then the signal stops, and never goes on again.’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s not the way that the satnav would take you if you’re heading to Oxford,’ Gillard said. ‘And I’m guessing, but I don’t think he would have known the backroads and rat runs in that area.’
>
Before Townsend could give his own response Rainy called over, having just finished her call. ‘He booked the hire car, but cancelled on the day by phone,’ she said.
Gillard and Townsend stared at each other. ‘So maybe someone gave him a lift?’ Townsend said.
‘Seems the most likely. With luck, we’ll know when we get the contents of his phone.’
‘How long do we have to wait for the translation?’ Rainy asked.
‘They promised us a day,’ Gillard said. ‘But you know, if he was messaging somebody about a lift from Heathrow, it would probably be in English, wouldn’t it?’
The three of them crowded around Gillard’s screen while he downloaded a PDF from the Taipei police email. Most of the messages were in Chinese script, but as the data was sorted by date and time, he was able to home in on a message sent soon after the Taiwanese man landed at Heathrow.
Dear Mr Chen, the driver will be in arrivals with a card with your name on it.
Looking forward to seeing you.
Penelope
The only later text messages in English were ones from the Oxford conference, welcoming him to the country, and some from the phone service provider about roaming services. Gillard scrolled back in time, looking for anything from Penelope in the preceding days. There was nothing.
‘There must have been other messages on other phones, or emails, something like that,’ Gillard said. ‘Arrangements must have been made before he set off.’
‘It might be easier for us to trace Penelope’s email,’ Rainy said.
‘Rob, I’d like you to make that your top priority,’ Gillard said. ‘First of all to see if we can find out who sent the email, and secondly to see if anyone called Penelope is connected with the conference organisers.’
Townsend nodded. ‘It’s probably a false name,’ he said.
* * *
It was only another hour later when another raft of translations from Dr Chen’s laptop arrived from Taipei. ‘Oh, this is it, the motherlode,’ said Rainy Macintosh, who was sitting next to Carl Hoskins.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked.
‘An English precis of each of the twenty most significant Chinese-language documents from Dr Chen’s laptop. It’s a canny piece of work. They must be working into the wee hours over there in Taipei.’
Hoskins called up the master list of all documents on the laptop. ‘There are still thousands of others they haven’t done. And they could have done it on Google Translate.’
Rainy looked at him over her glasses. ‘Och, Carl, I’ve got a new career for you: gift horse’s dental consultant.’
‘What?’ Hoskins said.
‘Never mind. The value is in the precis as much as the translation. Look at this one: “personal correspondence with sister arranging lunar New Year holidays.” That saved translating a 600-word email.’
‘See what you mean,’ Hoskins conceded.
‘I’ll send half the translations to your terminal, for you to take a wee look.’
‘Like I didn’t have enough work to begin with,’ Hoskins muttered.
The two detectives sat in silence scanning through the list. Hoskins found a document that was already fully in English. He started to read it.
Memorandum of agreement
Charon Stichting, Singel 893 Bis, Amsterdam (the agent)
Chen, Dr Wei-Ling of San Shia Campus: 151 University Rd, San Shia District, New Taipei City, 23741 Taiwan. (The client)
This agreement concerns an arrangement made under the auspices of Dutch and European law to govern a private and confidential contract between the client and the agent.
The agent agrees to fulfil the client’s requirements as set out in the addendum (‘The service’). The agent will locate, brief and introduce the supplier of the service. The agent will check that the supplier is qualified, prepared and able to provide the said service in a timescale compatible with the client’s requirements.
The client agrees to pay in advance by banker’s draft the full and final fee for the service without deduction, and agrees to indemnify without limit the agent, for any additional costs incurred in transferring the said amount. This fee will then be held in escrow pending confirmation that the service has been provided.
The agent will retain thirty-five per cent of the fee, plus any applicable taxes.
The agent agrees to oversee the execution of the post-provision codicil, including without limitation the return/and or disposal as stipulated of the client’s corporea, possessions and effects by international courier.
The document went on and on. Hoskins’ eyes glazed over, and he moved on to something less dull. The cogs must’ve been grinding slowly because he suddenly realised there was something significant in point five: client possessions and effects. Was this an international removals agreement?
‘Rainy, take a look at this would you? I’m no good on legalese, but this looks to me like a physical transference, maybe a removal job.’
The Glaswegian detective looked over his shoulder and scanned the wording.
‘Do you think he was going to live in Holland?’ Hoskins asked.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Rainy breathed. ‘There’s one word there that does not belong at all. I did enough Latin in my medical training to know what we’re talking about here.’
‘Which word? I don’t know what half of them mean.’
‘Corporea, Carl. It means bodily remains. This contract appears to be about the movement of a dead body.’
‘Time to get the boss back in,’ Hoskins said.
* * *
Gillard had just returned from a meeting with the chief constable and DI Graham Morgan when DC Macintosh called him over.
‘What is it, Rainy?’
She showed him the screen and pointed out the fifth clause. ‘I agree it looks strange,’ he said. ‘Where’s the nearest lawyer? There’s bound to be a duty solicitor somewhere in Mount Browne who can explain this contract.’
It took fifteen minutes, but Rainy managed to find a solicitor from the Crown Prosecution Service who was at police HQ for another matter. The South Asian-looking woman agreed to leave her meeting for ten minutes to assist them. She looked at a printout of the contract and agreed that it was extremely strange. She backed up Rainy’s interpretation of the word corporea. ‘Do you have the codicil, the legal appendix referred to?’ she asked. ‘That would certainly shed further light.’
‘No,’ Rainy said. ‘There don’t seem to be any of the other documents here.’
‘Hmm. There’s an unidentified third party referred to, the supplier. It could be a funeral home or crematorium I suppose, though I have to admit it would be an unusual contractual arrangement to go through a third party.’ She looked at her watch, and said she had to be getting back to her meeting.
‘The third party, is that Charon?’ Hoskins asked, as she started to walk away.
‘Yes. Now that in itself is interesting,’ the lawyer said. ‘In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman of the dead. He carries the souls of the newly deceased across the River Styx into the underworld.’
Gillard thanked her, and turned to look at the other two detectives.
‘The ferryman of the dead! It’s nae P&O and that’s for sure,’ Rainy exclaimed.
‘Yeah,’ Hoskins said. ‘Roll on, roll off, roll over and die.’
Gillard rolled his eyes. ‘Rainy, ask the Taiwanese if they have any more related documents. I’m going to get Rob to investigate the Dutch firm.’
Suddenly Rainy gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘I wonder if the man knew he was dying. That might explain everything.’
Gillard looked at her quizzically.
‘Dr Delahaye’s post-mortem report mentioned a huge tumour in the man’s liver,’ Rainy said. ‘Delahaye assumed that he wouldn’t have known, because liver cancer can get quite far before you notice it. But maybe he did know. Maybe he was making arrangements in advance.’
Gillard conceded that this was an interesting ne
w angle. ‘Why come to Britain to do it though? Was there some special requirement?’
‘Maybe the Oxford conference,’ Rainy said.
Hoskins leaned back in his typist’s chair with his hands behind his head, and yawned. ‘So are we really talking about a funeral firm that squashes people to death? And then takes it upon itself to squeeze a particular murderer who has just been released from prison?’
‘Yes, I admit as a theory it doesn’t exactly hang together. At least not yet,’ Gillard said. ‘But I’m sure Charon, ferryman of the dead, has the answers.’
* * *
A Skype call with Dr Chen’s sister in Adelaide, Australia promised to clear up some of the contradictions. Mrs Wendy Ho had first requested to speak to British detectives early that morning, but because of its multiple addressees the email had dropped into Gillard’s junk mail folder. Although it was three p.m. in Britain when the detective responded, Mrs Ho got straight back to him. She had clearly been awake even though it was 11:30 p.m. in Adelaide.
The woman who Gillard saw on the screen was a bespectacled middle-aged Chinese lady with a kind face. Behind her was a wall hung with family photographs.
‘Mrs Ho, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us at such short notice. I hope you don’t mind but I am recording this to help with the case.’
‘No worry,’ she said, with a twang of Australian showing through the Chinese accent. ‘I no sleep so well since I told he dead.’ The woman lifted to the screen a framed photograph of a handsome and confident-looking naval officer in a white uniform and peaked cap, with golden epaulettes. ‘This is my brother Wei-Ling. Is this man you found?’
Gillard could see that the portrait had been taken decades ago. ‘Do you have anything more recent?’ he asked.
