No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2)

by Paul Gitsham

  “Well, we know at least one person who is pretty good at avoiding leaving any clues behind. I think it’s time for another visit to the farm, don’t you, DCI Jones?”

  * * *

  “I’ll bet he’s got an alibi, probably from that sleazy son of his,” opined Sutton as they headed out to Richard Cameron and Michael Stockley’s farm.

  “I suspect you’re probably correct, but we still need to ask him,” Warren agreed.

  “What do you think the chances are that he’s the perpetrator?” asked Sutton.

  Warren paused, thinking. “I honestly don’t know. All we’ve really got is that the person committing these crimes is using a method to avoid leaving trace that was a signature of Richard Cameron a dozen years ago, and the fact that he was released back into this area last year.

  “Taking a step back, it looks weak, even on paper. Remember, we’re basing this similarity on how there is a lack of evidence — the world has moved on since Richard Cameron came up with his flash of sick genius. TV scriptwriters, authors and film-makers are constantly coming up with new and inventive ways to try and fool forensic investigators and the police. It’s not impossible that somebody else hit upon a similar idea to Richard Cameron to avoid leaving trace evidence behind. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the exact details of how he did it aren’t sitting on some crime blogger’s website, just waiting for some deviant to stumble across them with a Google search. Most of it will have come out at trial and be part of the public record.

  “Plus, it’s hard to believe that he’d be foolish enough to kill Carolyn Patterson twenty-four hours after we questioned him over Sally Evans’ death. Taking the two murders separately and ignoring Cameron for the moment, there are definitely valid alternative suspects in both of these cases.”

  “So you think it might be worth discounting Cameron for the time being?” Sutton sounded sceptical. “Don’t forget, we pretty much know that these two murders were committed by the same person and the method leads us right back to Cameron.”

  Warren raised a hand. “Bear with me for a moment; if we discount Cameron that leads us with two murders committed by the same person. I suggest that if we can find what links these two cases together, then it will lead us to the killer. Or killers.”

  “Killers? You think there could be more than one person involved?”

  Warren shrugged. “I suggest we keep all possibilities open at the moment. We mustn’t run the risk of becoming closed to other ideas — translating what we see through a filter based on our preferred theories.” He didn’t need to remind Sutton of the problems that could lead to — the past summer’s events were fresh in both men’s minds.

  “Besides, if Richard Cameron is responsible, then finding a link between these two victims will strengthen our case against him.”

  Sutton grunted, clearly not entirely convinced yet. “It’s a good theory. But what if there is no link between these girls? What if he really is just a sick pervert who selects his victims based on nothing more than their appearance and vulnerability? What if these truly are ‘stranger’ killings?”

  To that, Warren had no answer.

  * * *

  Richard Cameron was not happy to see Warren and Tony Sutton appear at his front door, accompanied by another marked police car. Nevertheless, he knew that he had no choice and so assented to being driven to the station. Again, Richard Cameron’s lawyer met them there.

  As before, it was his lawyer that opened proceedings.

  “Chief Inspector, you are bordering on harassment here. You’ve had my client in for questioning before over the death of that unfortunate young woman and been supplied with an alibi for that time. As I recall, you had no evidence whatsoever of my client’s involvement. I suspect that if you had any evidence now, you would have arrested him immediately.”

  Warren ignored him; he was just doing his job.

  “Mr Cameron, what were you doing on the night of Thursday eighth December, from about nine p.m. onwards?”

  Both men looked surprised at this. Grayson’s press conference had been pretty low-key and it was possible that the lawyer had missed the announcement that a second body had been found. Warren kept his gaze resolutely on Cameron. The surprise appeared genuine enough, but the man in front of him was a convicted rapist so who knew how his mind worked?

  “Can I ask what this is about, Officer?” interjected Cameron’s lawyer immediately.

  Warren ignored him. “Please just answer the question, Mr Cameron.”

  “No comment.”

  Warren sighed, exasperated.

  “We’ve been down this road before, Mr Cameron. Now you are just wasting our time.” He turned to Cameron’s lawyer. “Can you advise your client that if he has nothing to hide, then this ‘no comment’ business is just a waste of everybody’s time. If he can’t produce an alibi, fine, just say so and we’ll eliminate him from our inquiries by other means.”

  “I most certainly will not. Mr Cameron is not under arrest and has a perfect legal right to refuse to answer a question, particularly when he is kept in the dark about why he is being asked such a question.” The response was exactly what Warren expected. The lawyer could also have berated him for addressing him instead of his client, but he let the breach of etiquette slide.

  “I’d like a private conversation with my lawyer, please.”

  Nodding, Warren turned off the tape and left the room.

  He walked down the corridor to Sergeant Harry Kumar, the custody sergeant for the shift, who informed Warren that Tony Sutton was still trying to track down Michael Stockley, Cameron’s son.

  A few moments later, Richard Cameron’s lawyer poked his head out of the interview suite to inform Warren that the client conference was over and they were ready to continue.

  Despite his protestations to the contrary, Cameron’s lawyer clearly had suggested that there was probably little to be gained by stalling with ‘no comment’.

  “On Thursday night, I felt tired. I went to bed early, about seven o’clock. I didn’t wake up until about five the next morning.”

  Warren let his scepticism show. “Another early night? You must really need your beauty sleep.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not as young as I used to be. Besides, I do a proper hard job. I don’t spend all day sitting behind a desk,” snapped Cameron.

  Warren let that last comment ride, before standing up abruptly and pausing the tape recording. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.” He left the room immediately.

  The rapid exit was necessary. Cameron was under no obligation to remain and if he felt that the interview was over, he might make noises about leaving. Warren didn’t want him going anywhere until he had spoken to Tony Sutton about verifying Cameron’s alibi with his son.

  Sutton was standing in the corridor waiting. The two men ducked into an empty room for privacy. “What have you got?” asked Warren.

  “No joy. Stockley is out of the office at a meeting up in Liverpool. His mobile’s off and he isn’t expected to be back before tomorrow.”

  Warren cursed quietly.

  “We can’t keep Cameron locked up until then and we can’t risk them colluding over his alibi.”

  “Can we get Merseyside to bring him down here for questioning?”

  Warren thought for a moment. “Tricky. We’ve not got any grounds to arrest him and I can’t see him voluntarily coming all the way down here, abandoning work. Plus, it’ll be pretty expensive. I can’t see Grayson signing off on the expense willingly.”

  “Day trip?” Sutton didn’t look enthusiastic. With no direct train routes from Middlesbury to Liverpool, they were looking at multiple connections and a seven or eight hour round trip at least or a similar length journey by car. Warren felt the same.

  Warren pinched his lip thoughtfully. “I have an idea.”

  * * *

  “Pretty much matches what Cameron told me himself. Lights out about seven. Either he’s telling the truth or the two of them co-
ordinate their stories.”

  “You’d think if they were making something up, they’d try a bit harder though?”

  Cameron and his lawyer had been extremely unhappy about the four-hour suspension of his interview and continued custody, but it had taken that long to arrange for Merseyside Police to persuade Michael Stockley to attend a local station for questioning on behalf of Middlesbury CID. The subsequent digital recording of the interview had been emailed to Warren and Sutton, who had listened to it in Warren’s office.

  Warren shrugged. “My gut tells me there’s something fishy going on there, but I don’t know what it is.” He sighed. “There’s nothing we can do though. Cut him loose. But let’s keep on digging.”

  Tuesday 13th December

  Chapter 31

  Warren was sitting at a large table. In front of him was a box of jigsaw pieces. He poured them out and started to turn them over, one by one; each piece had a picture of a person. Sally Evans, Carolyn Patterson, Darren Blackheath, Bill Evans, Alex Chalmers, Tony Sutton, Karen Hardwick… There were dozens of them. As he turned more and more pieces over he saw that there were also pictures of clues: footprints, a muddy crime-scene tent, the ligature used to strangle Sally Evans. He tried to fit the pieces together, but it was no use. None of them seemed to want to slot together. Looking at the edge of the box, he saw it was a thousand-piece puzzle; looking back at the pile, he estimated that there couldn’t be more than a few hundred — where were the rest? How the hell was he supposed to solve it with only half the clues? He felt a surge of frustration, his breathing becoming more rapid. He knew his blood pressure was rising — maybe that was the ringing in his ears.

  He closed his eyes, tried to calm himself down. To look at the problem from a different perspective. Maybe he didn’t need to solve the puzzle piece by piece? He was just looking for the big picture — maybe he could work backwards. If he knew the picture then he could find the clues he needed individually. He turned the box over — nothing. The front of the box where the final picture was normally displayed was just a blank piece of white cardboard. With a scream of frustration, he hurled the box across the room. The ringing in his ears intensified and he heard himself sob. Weeks of working and he was no closer to finding the answer to his questions. Waves of exhaustion and a sense of failure washed over him like the sea crashing against the beach.

  He felt the gentle caress of a pair of hands on his shoulders and the whispering of his name.

  Susan.

  All of his cares melted away. He leant back into her embrace as she continued to whisper his name… “Warren, Warren…”

  “WARREN!”

  Susan’s voice jerked him awake like a slap. The ringing in his ears became the ringing of his mobile phone. The light was on and Susan was lying across him, trying to reach the flashing phone on his nightstand. The splash of cold water as she accidentally knocked the glass off the stand and over him chased away the last remnants of the dream.

  Grabbing the phone, he glanced at the screen before he swiped the answer icon. 2:14 a.m.

  * * *

  Warren arrived at the accident and emergency ward at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge just before three a.m. He’d phoned Tony Sutton, dressed quickly and raced out of the house. It had been quiet that night and he’d made very good time up the A10.

  His ‘Police Business’ card in the windscreen and the early hour meant he’d had no need to circle the sprawling hospital campus looking for a parking space. He’d pulled in between a North Herts police patrol car and Sutton’s Audi right outside the main doors to A and E. The DI lived to the north of Middlesbury and had probably arrived a few minutes before Jones. Even if he didn’t live closer, he drove fast and would still have beaten his boss in.

  Entering through the double doors, Warren spotted Sutton immediately, talking to a couple of uniformed officers and a paramedic next to the reception desk. The rest of the waiting area was quiet, the number of bruised and troublesome drunks lower than it would have been at the weekend.

  “Obviously, we wouldn’t normally have been called, guv, but the call centre have been advised that we should be given first dibs on any murders, particularly of young women. It sounds as if somebody in the centre used their initiative and decided that a blatant attempted murder was good enough to fit the bill.” Sutton looked as tired as Warren felt.

  “Take it from the top, please.”

  The paramedic, a middle-aged black woman wrapped up as if she were doing a tour of the Arctic, spoke up. Her tone was confident and efficient; she knew exactly what the officers wanted and was clearly eager to get back out on duty as soon as possible.

  “We received a call shortly after midnight that a young woman’s body had been found in an alleyway off the back of Truman Street in Middlesbury.” Warren nodded knowingly. Although not his area of specialty, he was well acquainted with Truman Street. It and the surrounding areas were about as close to a red-light district as Middlesbury got. At any one time a half-dozen or so sex workers could be found plying their trade around its dingy back alleys. The police worked closely with the council and the sex workers themselves to manage the area. Prostitution was certainly not tolerated — too many Daily Mail readers lived in Middesbury for that to ever happen — however it was controlled and the girls and their clients followed certain informal rules. In return, social and health workers, with the aid of the police, supported the girls, keeping them as healthy and safe as possible.

  “When we arrived, the caller had vanished — not unusual around there — but we found her behind some large wheelie bins at the back of a greasy spoon café. At first glance, we thought she was dead too.” At this the woman’s professional façade cracked just a little. “In twenty-two years, I’ve never seen a beating like it. Whoever did it took a cricket bat or something similar to her head, repeatedly. If it wasn’t for the way she was dressed, I’d have struggled to decide if she was male or female.

  “Anyway, I checked for a pulse as a matter of routine and was amazed when I found one. She was barely breathing, so we intubated her and radioed ahead to warn that there was a serious head trauma coming in. There’s nowhere to land an air ambulance, so we stabilised her in the back of the van. Lister is dealing with a multiple car accident south of Stevenage, so we were directed to Addenbrooke’s. We got here at about half-past midnight. She’s been in surgery ever since.”

  “So you think it might be attempted murder?”

  The paramedic shrugged. “Not really my place to say, but, like I say, in twenty-two years I’ve never seen anything like it. Whoever took that bat or whatever it was to her head was playing for keeps. And to be honest, she probably should be dead. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much. I don’t rate her chances of surviving.”

  After thanking the paramedic for her time, Warren joined Sutton at the coffee machine. Wearily saluting him with the plastic cup, he broke the silence.

  “What do you think, Tony?”

  Sutton looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, guv. On the one hand it sounds as if it was definitely attempted murder, the call-centre worker was right to flag it. On the other hand, it doesn’t really fit the pattern. Firstly, the previous two victims were chosen as they walked home from work or the gym — if we assume that she was a sex worker, then his choice of target has changed. Second, the last two girls were dumped somewhere remote — presumably to buy him some time before we started investigating. Even if she hadn’t been found by chance tonight, it sounds as if whoever put the bins out from the café the next day would have had a nasty surprise.”

  Warren nodded his agreement. “On top of that the previous two attacks have been meticulously planned. He took great lengths to avoid any contamination of the scene. And he subdued his victim with solvent beforehand. Without wanting to second-guess Forensics, I’m going to suggest that he went in swinging this time with little care — why?”

  Sutton shrugged. “Like you said, let’s not second-guess Forensics.” His expres
sion darkened more. “If things are as bad as that paramedic suggested, we may even get results from an autopsy.”

  * * *

  It was six a.m. before Sutton and Warren arrived back at Middlesbury. At five a.m., the lead trauma surgeon, Mr Hira-Singh, had met the officers to discuss the young woman’s prognosis.

  “It’s a miracle she survived. Remarkably I think we can probably thank her poor health overall and the freezing conditions, although I don’t think she would have lasted much longer if she hadn’t been found when she was.”

  Prompted by their surprised looks, he explained, “The human body is a remarkable thing and the human brain even more so. In recent years, we’ve found that much of the damage caused by traumatic brain injury or strokes actually occurs in the days or weeks after the initial insult. Cells surrounding the original injury site can be damaged or destroyed as a side effect of the body trying to repair the original injury or at least limit its effects. We’re only just starting to understand what is actually happening at a cellular level, but in recent years it’s been found that inducing a state of controlled hypothermia in patients can slow down cellular metabolism enough to buy us time to work on repairing the damage without the body’s own mechanisms getting in the way.” He removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

  Close up the man had a neatly trimmed beard and still wore an elastic cap over his head; perhaps he would replace it with a full turban at the end of his shift.

  “Well, the young woman in there — and she is young, no more than twenty, I’d say — was probably halfway to hypothermia before her attack even started. I didn’t get much of a chance to perform an examination, obviously, and it’s outside my expertise even if I did, but from what I saw she was very underweight for her height. If it wasn’t for the obvious signs of drug abuse I’d say she was anorexic. She may still be. Either way, she has no body fat to speak of and she was dressed in skimpy clothes in a temperature of minus five at least. Her metabolism was probably so low, the very worst effects of the trauma may have been avoided. One thing’s for certain — she won’t have put up much of a fight.” For the first time a note of anger crept into the man’s voice. It was clear that after hours of battling to save this young stranger’s life, he’d grown attached to her.