Cut Dead (35 page)

‘And what did you talk about?’

‘This and that. Science mostly. I teach at Plymouth University. Geology. Dr Wilson is remarkably well-informed on the subject. But then, there’s not much he doesn’t know about.’

‘Dr Wilson talked about geology?’

‘Yes. Especially mining and quarrying. Local history. He is particularly interested in clay mining. Clay and tin mining have played a big part in the local area, forming the landscape and shaping the economy, clay in particular. Without—’

‘Barry!’ The woman waved an arm. ‘I don’t think the police want to hear all this.’

‘That’s not a problem,’ Savage said. ‘Do you know what Dr Wilson actually did?’

‘Serial killers,’ Barry said. ‘He told us when he arrived here. He’s worked with the FBI you know?’

‘Yes. Did he ever talk about his family?’

‘No, he—’ the woman said.

‘He did.’ Barry interrupted his wife. ‘Once. Down the pub. I asked him about his parents and he told me they were dead. Except he said it in a rather strange way. The exact phrase was “Yes, all of them.” I only remember because he was usually so precise with his words. I put it down to the drink.’

Savage nodded and went on to ask some more questions, finishing by asking how long Wilson had been in the area.

‘Well,’ the woman said. ‘He’s Devon born and bred, but in this house only a year or so. He was in America you know. For five years.’

Savage wrapped up the interview and they left.

‘Five years,’ Calter said as they returned to Wilson’s house. ‘The gap between the old killings and Kat Mallory’s disappearance.’

‘I’m interested in his parents,’ Savage said. ‘All of them. Whatever that means.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 26th June. 9.02 a.m.

First thing Thursday, and Savage was in a meeting with Hardin. He leant across his desk, eager for news on Wilson’s house. Wanted to get the full lowdown. The juicy morsels. Was there anything useful, had they unearthed information on Wilson’s past, about his family, his parents? Savage confessed the search teams had so far found nothing of substance aside from the target pistol. Hardin appeared bemused. Serial killers, he’d assumed, had cupboards full of trophies. Not silverware. Body parts.

‘The gun,’ Hardin said. ‘A possible for the murder weapon?’

‘Layton says it’s been fired recently, but to be honest in the grand scheme of things the gun’s existence is circumstantial. You were at Katherine Mallory’s PM. Nesbit concluded the cut marks were made when she was alive. Whether Dr Wilson shot his victims at the end or not doesn’t much matter.’

‘It’s called building a case, Charlotte. The little details.’

‘But unless we can find a shell at the farm or even better, the victims’ heads, the gun has no evidential value.’

‘The heads …’ Hardin bit his lip and leant back. ‘I was at Paula Rowland’s PM yesterday and Nesbit reckons an axe was used again. And this time the knife marks were easy to see. The strange whirling patterns were still there but we might have been wrong about dozens of cuts. The woman had only fourteen.’

‘The number of candles on the cake.’

‘Yes,’ Hardin said. He drew a figure ‘S’ on the desk with a finger. ‘He cuts them once for each year, is that it?’

A knock at the door came before Savage had a chance to answer. Hardin growled out a ‘come in’ and DC Calter’s face peered round.

‘Sir. Ma’am. Sorry to be the bearer of possible bad news but there’s a problem.’

‘And?’ Hardin said. ‘Out with it.’

‘Someone down at the front desk claims to have an alibi for Dr Wilson. A Professor Keith Robson.’

‘
What
?’ Hardin glared at Calter, face askance, then turned to Savage. ‘Know anything about this?’

‘Nothing, sir. I’ll go and see.’

‘Yes, DI Savage. You do that.’

Down at reception a tall, grey man stood perusing the posters on the walls.

‘Professor Robson?’ Savage approached the man, who turned and smiled. ‘DI Charlotte Savage.’

‘Don’t you have nightmares?’ he said. ‘All this stuff is enough to give you them.’

‘A few sensible precautions can cut crime dramatically. These posters make people realise how vulnerable they and their property are.’

‘My point exactly. Fear of God, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘That’s not the intention. You told my colleague you had some information about Dr Wilson?’

‘Indeed. I’m a professor of criminology. I’m visiting Plymouth University to give a talk on the law and migrant workers and … Well, to cut a long story short, I attempted to contact Dr Wilson and discovered to my horror he’d been arrested for these cake killings.’

‘And you have some additional evidence which might help us?’

‘Not quite. Dr Wilson and I are associates. He’s lectured a number of times at Manchester, giving talks on his work with the FBI.’

‘That’s all well and good but—’

‘Dr Wilson could not have taken part in the latest killing. I checked on the web and the girl went missing at the weekend, Saturday, yes?’ Savage nodded. ‘On Saturday Dr Wilson was at a conference in Manchester. He attended a number of meetings and sat on two seminar panels. At three o’clock he gave a lecture to over three hundred people. Afterwards there was a buffet reception which lasted for some two hours.’

‘So he could have returned to Devon after that?’

‘No. A group of us then proceeded to the staff bar where we stayed until after midnight. Dr Wilson was with us. The next morning I picked him up from his hotel – the Radisson – took him to the airport and saw him onto a flight to Exeter. You have quite the wrong man, Inspector.’

As Savage expected, Hardin didn’t take the news well. He summoned Layton and Savage to the briefing room, his face reddening from a hint of pink to a fiery tomato as Savage went through the alibi again. Then he exploded.

‘How the hell could you let this happen, John?’ Hardin banged the table and Layton flinched. ‘And you, Charlotte? I warned you about cross-contamination. You get close and cuddly with Wilson during the week and then on Saturday you look round the crime scene. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what happened. Heavens knows what a half-decent defence lawyer could do with it.’

‘It didn’t happen, sir,’ Layton said. ‘I told you the hair came from near the top of a door, caught under a sliver of wood. I’ll stake my reputation that there’s no way it could have got there accidentally.’

‘John,’ Hardin said with a sneer, ‘it’s not
your
reputation which is on the line.’

‘The hair was left by Wilson.’ Layton sat back and folded his arms. ‘End of.’

‘Unless somebody planted the evidence.’ Hardin’s gaze turned to Savage. ‘Someone who wanted to get Wilson removed from the case, discredit him at least.’

‘Sir, I—’ Savage didn’t manage to get any more out because Hardin thumped the table again.

‘Ex-DCI Walsh. You and him are like that, aren’t you?’ Hardin held out his hand, first two fingers crossed. ‘Walsh never liked Wilson, saw him as a jumped-up quack. He bitterly resented the fact the Chief Constable insisted Wilson be retained last time. I can’t imagine how he was thinking when he discovered Wilson was to be used in the current investigation.’

‘Sir, Walsh hasn’t been near Paula Rowland’s house. Check the scene log.’

‘Precisely. Which can only mean somebody planted the hair for him.’ Hardin leant forwards and smiled. Looked at Layton again. ‘Right?’

Layton unfolded his arms and moved a hand up to his brow as if searching for his hat.

‘You can’t be suggesting Charlotte …?’

‘Sir,’ Savage said. ‘I’d never be involved in anything dodgy. There’s no way I’d plant evidence against Dr Wilson.’

‘Is that so?’ Hardin’s tongue crept out and slid across his lower lip as if tasting the air for the truth. ‘Because the way I see it, considering events at the start of the year, bending the rules a little is exactly the sort of thing you might do.’

‘I resent that, sir. Wilson must have returned here somehow.’

‘Some time after midnight until he was picked up from his hotel in the morning.’ Hardin tapped the right forefinger of his hand on the table several times. ‘Not long. What’s the minimum journey time back from Manchester? No planes or trains that time of night so by road it must be. Four hours by car? Three hours if you’ve got your foot to the floor. But in that case you’d be triggering every speed camera en route and any patrols you passed would be on to you. And anyway, you’re forgetting one thing. Paula went missing some time around four o’clock. Wilson was at a reception up in Manchester, probably trying to get into the knickers of some young student drunk on fizz by regaling them with tales of his FBI heroics. Whatever, he was surrounded by dozens of people and has a perfect alibi. He’s out of the frame. To put it in your words, John: end of.’

Savage made the journey back to the custody centre, using the time stuck in traffic to work out what the hell had gone wrong. Had Layton really messed up? The CSI was so painstaking in the way he dealt with crime scenes, but had he for once let emotion get the better of him and not followed procedure?

Inside Charles Cross the custody officer nodded and led her down the corridor. No smile, but in the interview room Bradley’s grin stretched from ear to ear. Wilson sat impassive, arms folded, feet up on the table.

‘Reason and logic,’ Wilson said. ‘They always win out in the end.’

‘Why,’ Savage said, ‘didn’t you tell us you were in Manchester on the evening of Paula Rowland’s disappearance?’

‘I told you I didn’t do it, Inspector. Was my word not good enough?’

‘You were playing with us. You could have been out of here but you let us go round in circles.’

‘But you had the DNA.’ Wilson smiled, raised the pitch of his voice. ‘Incontrovertible evidence. Do you know I thought I must be losing my mind, that you must be right all along? A split personality. The nice Dr Wilson and – growl – the evil monster. Of course, I am relieved to discover otherwise.’

‘There’ll likely be a compensation claim,’ Bradley said through her grin as she shuffled some papers on the desk and slipped them into her briefcase. ‘I understand Dr Wilson’s garden has been damaged during a search. There’s also a matter of an apology. We’ll work on the wording for that.’

Wilson swung his legs off the table and stood.

‘No hard feelings, Charlotte.’ Wilson held out his hand. Savage kept hers by her side and moved to let him past. ‘And tell DCI Walsh –
ex-
DCI Walsh – how close you were to catching the killer. Sadly, in the same way as he dismissed my advice, you have too. Now the killer will kill again. Pity.’

Wilson glided through the door to where the custody sergeant waited to book him out. Bradley stopped next to Savage. Looked her up and down.

‘You need a break, love,’ Bradley said. ‘Some new clothes, a little time to pamper yourself. Because it’s all beginning to slip away. Such a shame.’

She turned and followed her client down the corridor.

‘There’ll still be charges,’ Savage shouted after her. ‘Assaulting a police officer. Possession of an illegal weapon. Wasting police time.’

Bradley raised an arm in acknowledgement but didn’t look back.

‘Bitch,’ Savage said.

It wasn’t until the weekend that Riley had a chance to continue his unofficial investigation. Thursday and Friday he’d spent with his head down working hard on the Corran investigation as the flak over the arrest and release of Dr Wilson flew around the crime suite. Come Saturday morning he left Julie sleeping in, a note on the kitchen table promising lunch at a country pub, maybe a stroll somewhere. Later, an evening out with friends. Nothing on the note about where he was going.

Riley wondered, as he drove through Plymouth, if the deceit was a bad sign, something akin to cheating. Cross with himself for even going down that route, he flicked the radio on in search of distraction. The callers on the local BBC morning show were having kittens. Wilson’s release meant the Candle Cake Killer was still at large.
What were the police playing at?
seemed to be the general consensus. Ten days ago, at the outset, Riley had been annoyed not to be on the case. Now he could see benefits, one of which was some spare time to do some more digging into the circumstances surrounding Clarissa Savage’s death.

ReKlame Autos.

Kenny Fallon had told him the breakers had supplied a panel for a blue Subaru Impreza one day after the accident in which Clarissa was killed. As a coincidence it seemed improbable.

Riley found the yard at the unloved end of an industrial estate on the outskirts of the suburb of Plympton. Stacks of cars, six or seven high, sat to one side of the front lot, looking for all the world like a cross between an art installation and the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. He pulled his own car in alongside a classic Jag showing more rust than paint and got out.

High double doors to the warehouse stood wide, inside, rows of steel shelving reaching to the ceiling, each shelf stacked with car parts: alternators, shock absorbers, carburettors, brake hubs, cylinder heads. To the right of the main entrance a small door led to an office. Riley opened the door and went inside. Behind the counter a balding man of about fifty looked up from the girlie magazine he was reading. Next to the magazine a ledger book was also open, a pile of receipts to one side. The man nodded when Riley asked him if he was William Hegg.

‘You must be Riley,’ Hegg said. ‘Kenny Fallon mentioned you’d be round. Don’t get many of your type in here as a rule.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Detectives.’ Hegg grinned, flicking the page on the magazine and eyeing the mature blonde sprawled diagonally top to bottom. ‘Just look at her. Full bush, nice rack. Stunning.’

‘I’m more interested in the racks out there,’ Riley said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the warehouse. ‘Specifically something you sold a while back.’

‘Hey?’ Hegg closed the magazine. ‘Oh, wit. Very good.’

‘I’m trying to trace a customer of yours who bought a front wing panel a few years ago.’