by Luke Delaney
“Now what?” Templeman asked.
“No doubt you’d like another private consultation with your client, and then he’ll be returned to his cell while we decide what’s going to happen to him.”
“There’s no reason to keep Mr. Hellier in custody any longer. He’s answered all of your questions and should be released immediately. Without charge, I should add.”
“I don’t think so,” Sean said, dismissing him.
Templeman was still protesting vigorously as Sean and Donnelly left the interview room. A uniformed police constable guarded the door. Sean and Donnelly headed back to their murder inquiry office.
Sean felt deflated. The interview hadn’t gone well. Except for one thing. Why wasn’t Daniel’s name in Hellier’s secret book? That made no sense. Somehow and in some way it was another piece of the puzzle.
CHAPTER 13
Sally quickly studied the man who opened the front door of the detached Surbiton house. He looked about fifty years old, five-nine. His slim arms and legs, combined with a beer belly, reminded her of a spider. His hair was thick and sandy colored, his eyes green and sharp. Sally saw an intelligence and a confidence behind them. She reckoned that Paul Jarratt had been a good detective during his years as a Metropolitan Police officer.
“Mr. Jarratt?” Sally held out a hand. Jarratt accepted it. “DS Sally Jones. Sorry to call unannounced like this, but I was in the neighborhood and wondered if you wouldn’t mind helping me out with a case I’m working on.”
“A case?” Jarratt was surprised.
“A murder, actually,” Sally told him. “A few years ago you dealt with a case involving a man who could be a suspect for our murder.”
“You’d better come in then,” said Jarratt.
She entered the tidy house and followed Jarratt to a large, comfortable kitchen. “Tea? Coffee? Or something cold?” he offered.
“Tea would be good. Milk and one please.”
“I’ll make a pot,” Jarratt said, smiling, flicking the kettle on and gathering the things he needed to make the tea.
“So how long’ve you been out for?” she asked. Half the force dreamed of being out. The other half dreaded it. Which was Jarratt?
“About four years now. Ill health. An old back injury finally caught up with me five years short of my thirty. I qualified for a full pension and some medical benefits, so I’m not complaining. I get a bit bored at times, but you know. . Anyway, what can I help you with?”
Sally recognized the cue to get down to business. “I’m investigating a murder. A bad one. Young gay man, Daniel Graydon, stabbed and beaten to death.”
“A homophobic attack?” Jarratt asked.
“No, we don’t think so. Something else, although we’re not quite certain what. Which is where you may be able to help.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that,” Jarratt answered. “I spent most of my time on the Fraud Squad. Number crunching was my game. Not murders.”
“I appreciate that, but other than working on the Fraud Squad you also did a spell in the CID office at Richmond.” It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t.
“Yes. That’s right. From about ninety-five till about ninety-eight, as best as I can remember. Then I got back on the Fraud Squad.”
“It was a case you dealt with at Richmond that interests me-a man called Stefan Korsakov, back in ninety-six. He’d been arrested by Parks Police for-”
“Raping a young boy,” Jarratt interrupted. “He bound and gagged him in Richmond Park. Threatened him with a stiletto knife, then raped him. I shouldn’t think I’ll ever forget Stefan Korsakov. And if you’d met him, you wouldn’t either.”
There was silence in the kitchen. The comment was unusual. Police officers never exaggerated the impact criminals had on them. Sally wondered what it could have been about Korsakov that had Jarratt so spooked. She tried hard to think when a suspect had ever affected her in that way. Nothing came to mind. She sensed that Jarratt’s fear of Korsakov was personal.
“What made him so memorable?” she asked.
Jarratt poured two cups of tea, adding the milk and sugar to the one that he placed in front of Sally before answering her question. “No remorse. Absolutely none. His only regret was that he got caught. And that only bothered him because it meant he was off the street and wouldn’t be able to do the same thing again to someone else.
“He never said so during the interview-in fact, he never said anything during the interview-but I knew he would have killed that young lad if he hadn’t been disturbed. There’s no doubt. It was a hell of a blow when the boy’s family wouldn’t let us prosecute him for the rape. I can still remember the smirk on Korsakov’s face when I told him the charge had been dropped. Talk about the devil looking after his own. It would have been better for everyone if he’d taken a long fall from a high window. Know what I mean?”
Sally smiled uncomfortably, but didn’t answer. Jarratt sensed her reaction. He stood and moved to the sink, pouring his tea away as Sally watched him and tried to sense his emotions. Jarratt’s nausea looked real enough.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what it feels like to watch an animal like Korsakov walk away, knowing it’s only a matter of time before he rapes again, or graduates to murder.”
“But he didn’t walk,” Sally reminded him, “he went down for the fraud. I hear you made certain of it.” It was a compliment.
“Yes, I made certain he went down for something. I got a sniff of Korsakov’s little fraud operation and dug in. He went down, all right, but it was a hollow victory. He got four years. That was all. All those people he screwed. And we never recovered the money. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t find it.
“I even had a couple of old friends from the Serious Fraud Squad in the city who owed me a favor help me look for it, but nothing. He was a clever bastard. I’ll give him that.”
Sally was interested in the fraud. It helped build the picture of Korsakov. But she was more interested in his violent nature. That was the road that could lead to his capture.
“Did he show an awareness of forensic evidence or police procedures?” Sally asked.
“Definitely,” came the unhesitating reply. “The clothes he wore, the use of a condom, the victim he picked, and even the venue was pretty good. He just got unlucky, and thank God he did.
“And he would have learned. He would have gotten better and better. He was clever enough to learn from his own mistakes. Very organized too. His frauds were brilliantly simple. And as I’ve already mentioned, clever enough to hide the cash where no one could find it.
“That’s not easy to do these days,” Jarratt continued. “Billionaire drug dealers, bent City accountants, corrupt governments-they all spend fortunes trying to hide the money in the legitimate banking system. You can’t keep millions of pounds under the mattress and, even if you could, no one accepts cash anymore, not for major purchases. Cash makes people nervous. You’ve got to get it into the banking system. That’s where we so often catch them out and recover the money, but not with Korsakov. He was too cunning.
“So tell me, DS Jones. He’s committed another rape or murder, hasn’t he?”
Sally hesitated before answering. She was unsure why. “We don’t know if it’s Korsakov. There are similarities between your case and one we’re investigating. So we’re doing a little background digging. One thing’s bothering me though.”
Jarratt looked at her, expressionless. “Go on.”
“Everything points to Korsakov being a repeat offender. You said it yourself, that he’d offend again.”
“Yes.”
“Yet he hasn’t come to police notice at all. No convictions, no arrests, no information reports. Nothing.”
“Then he’s either out of the country or he’s dead,” Jarratt answered. “Only pray it’s the latter.”
“Or maybe we just haven’t caught him.”
Jarratt gave a low laugh. “I know we’re not perfect, but there’s never bee
n a repeat offender who hasn’t been caught within a couple of years. Even in the dark ages, before computer cross-referencing, DNA, Crimewatch, we still caught the people eventually. They would always make a mistake.
“No. If he was in the country, he would be offending. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself any more than we could stop treating everybody with suspicion. It’s in his nature. Or he may have become a ghost, never keeping one identity too long, never staying in one place longer than a couple of months. He’s capable.”
“I’ll check with public records,” said Sally. “See if they have anything on him. And thanks to you, we’ll have a set of fingerprints for him. I’ll have them compared to any marks recovered from our scene.”
Jarratt’s eyes narrowed. “If it’s a death certificate or fingerprints you find, then please call me. If he’s sunning himself in Thailand, I’d rather not know.”
Sally thought Jarratt suddenly looked old. She wouldn’t push him any further. “Well, thanks for your time,” she said, and stood to leave. “Oh, one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“You did take photographs of Korsakov, when you charged him?”
“Of course.”
“It’s just, when I checked his intelligence records at Richmond, there were no photographs attached.”
“Unfortunate, but not unusual,” Jarratt replied.
“Can you think of anyone else who may have wanted or needed photographs of Korsakov?” Sally asked. “Maybe I can still track them down.”
“Not really,” Jarratt answered. “No one’s ever approached me about him.”
Sally sighed. “Oh well, never mind.”
Jarratt led her to the front door. His hand rested on the handle, but he didn’t turn it. “Can I ask what put you on to Korsakov?” he asked. “What put you on to me?”
“Method Index,” Sally told him. “You were down as the officer in the case.” Jarratt said nothing. “Oh shit,” Sally suddenly said, fumbling in her handbag. “I almost forgot. Could you do me a favor and have a look at this photo?” She pulled the surveillance photograph of Hellier out and handed it to Jarratt. “Do you recognize him?”
Jarratt held the photograph and looked at it without interest. Sally saw nothing in his face. “No,” he said. “Is it someone I should know?”
“Just a loose end I wanted to tie up, and now I have. Anyway, thanks for your time.”
“Anytime,” Jarratt said. “It’s nice to feel useful again.” They shook hands before Sally left and headed to her car.
He’s a sly one, all right,” Donnelly said, “thinking on his feet. Covering our evidence as we find it.”
“Then we’ll have to find more,” said Sean.
“How about DNA? Body samples?”
“Irrelevant,” Sean reminded him. “He admits to having sex with the victim, and now he admits to being in his flat-any samples we find prove nothing. That wouldn’t matter if we were to find the victim’s blood on Hellier or his clothing, but it’s going to take the lab days to process the things we seized today.”
“So what are we going to do-just let him walk out of here?”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Sean answered. “We charge him now, we’re saying we’ve got enough evidence to convict him. We both know that’s the rule. Once he’s charged, we lose the right to question him further or to take more samples. We charge him now and we couldn’t even make him take part in a fucking identification parade. I’ve made that mistake before. I’m not going to make it again. We have to come at him from another angle. One he won’t be expecting.”
“You’re talking about identifying another crime he’s committed?” Donnelly asked, without enthusiasm.
“I am,” Sean confirmed, noting Donnelly’s skepticism. “Something occurred to me during the interview. What if he’s making it up-the whole story about having an ongoing client-customer relationship?”
“I don’t follow.”
“What if he wasn’t having any sort of relationship with Graydon? What would that mean?”
Donnelly shrugged in confusion.
“It could mean he’d selected Graydon. Simply picked him from the crowd and killed him. All this bollocks about seeing him every few weeks, Graydon taking care of his physical needs, it’s all a smoke screen, trying to confuse us-throw us off the scent. He’s trying to lead us by the nose in the wrong direction. Maybe it’s so much simpler than we were thinking: he went looking for a victim and found one, then he killed him. But he made mistakes-he was recognized in the club and he left a single print at the scene. Now he’s covering his tracks, trying to make up for those mistakes. He knows that if he admits he’s only ever seen Graydon once, then he’s flagging himself up as a predator. He’ll bring us right down on top of him. Much better this way. He thinks he’s smart enough to get away with it, and that will be his downfall.”
“But we know he did see the victim at least once before,” Donnelly reminded him. “The doorman, Young, saw them together outside the club, remember? He was a distance away, but he was sure it was them and he was sure they headed off together, so he couldn’t have just picked him up the night he killed him.”
Sean had already considered everything Donnelly had said. “Of course he’d seen him before. Been with him before. That was important to him.”
“Why?” Donnelly asked.
“Because that made the victim real. He needed to taste him and feel him. Fantasize about him. So he picks him up inside or outside the club, it doesn’t really matter, and they probably go back to Graydon’s. They have sex. Hellier drinks it all in-absorbs everything-and once he’s sure Graydon is worthy of his special attentions he leaves, but watches him. He watches him for days, his excitement building, the fantasy in his mind growing increasingly violent and depraved until he can stand it no more, so he waits for him, outside the club. When Graydon eventually appears, alone, he follows him. Stalks him. Maybe he followed him all the way home or maybe he stopped him in the street-the victim wouldn’t be too afraid; after all, they’d already had paying sex together. But whatever happened once they were back at the flat, Hellier made his fantasy come true. Only, as we know, he made two mistakes: the fingerprint and being seen with the victim. So he spins us this story about some sort of relationship he was having with the victim and has us chasing our tails, desperately trying to establish some logical reason for why he would want to kill Graydon, knowing we’ll never find one, because there isn’t one. And while we’re looking for it we’ll miss the real reason he killed Daniel Graydon-because he wanted to. Because he had to.”
“Christ,” Donnelly cursed. “So what now?”
“Take someone with you and bail Hellier out. Tell him to come back in two weeks. His attorney will ask why he needs to come back. Tell him we’ll be checking his story. That Hellier hasn’t been eliminated yet.
“And scramble the surveillance team again. I want Hellier picked up the second he steps out of the station. We run twenty-four-hour coverage. We keep the pressure on and wait for him to drop the ball. Sooner or later he’s going to hang himself. Who knows, maybe he already has.”
Hellier stood in the corridor of the police station, waiting to exit the building. First Templeman went outside to ensure no one was about. When he returned, the news wasn’t good.
“I’m sorry, James. Looks like the media’s gotten hold of this.”
“What?” Hellier snapped. “You sure they’re here for me?”
“I’m afraid so. They’ve already asked me for a statement. They know you’ve been arrested on suspicion of murder.”
“That bastard Corrigan. He told them. He’s trying to destroy me.” Hellier’s words were venomous.
“Listen,” said Templeman, “you need to stay calm. I’ll speak to them, deny you’ve been arrested, tell them you’re helping the police with their inquiries. You stay in here until I’m finished, then I’ll bring the car around. And I also recommend you cover your face when we leave.”
“What?” Hellier’s voice was raised.
“Just in case there’s a photographer sneaking about. You can use my raincoat.”
“You want me to crawl out of here with that over my head, like some pedophile? You might as well tell them I’m guilty.”
“Please, James, try and stay calm.” Templeman almost had his hands on Hellier’s chest. “A name’s nothing if they don’t have a face to go with it.”
Hellier sounded cold. “Fine, but hear this. No one humiliates me without paying the price.”
“I wouldn’t be talking about revenge if I were you, James,” Templeman advised.
A look of disgust spread across Hellier’s face. He put his face close to Templeman’s. Templeman could smell a virile, animal stench on Hellier’s breath. “You do as I fucking tell you and get me out of here. I’m expected at the damn industry awards dinner tonight. There’ll be hell to pay if I’m not there. Sebastian’s already on my back.” Hellier stretched the stiffness out of his neck, the cracking noise making the lawyer shudder. He snatched Templeman’s coat from him and gave him a final order. “Get me a damn taxi.”
By the time Sally arrived back at the murder inquiry office, it was already early evening and she was keen to catch up on developments. The place was all but deserted, except for Sean, who sat alone in his office. Sally knocked on the door frame, making him look up. “Everything all right?” she asked.
“Wonderful,” Sean answered sarcastically.
“I take it Hellier didn’t confess then.”
“Correct.”
“And his fingerprint in the victim’s flat?”
“Said he’d lied earlier. He now admits to having been there on several occasions in the past.”
“That’s exactly what I’d say if I was in his position.”
“Me too,” Sean agreed. “We bailed him, pending further inquiries. Anyway, how did you get on with what’s-his-name?”
“Korsakov,” she reminded him. “I managed to track down one of the original investigating officers, which was interesting enough, but he couldn’t tell me much more than Method Index had. The intelligence record at Richmond was a bit thin, no photographs either.
