No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (44 page)

Walking back to the road, Warren mused aloud.

“If he was going to dump the vehicle, he must have had a way of getting back to civilisation.”

“Either he had somebody give him a lift, he hitch-hiked or he walked,” stated Sutton.

“If somebody gave him a lift, then that implies somebody working in partnership with him. What about his son? He’s already admitted to covering for his old man’s absences — could he have got a call one night asking to be picked up in the middle of nowhere?” Warren chewed his lip thoughtfully.

“It depends on when the car was abandoned,” Sutton agreed. “That old boy claimed to have seen the car Friday. Assuming that he didn’t come and fetch it again, that pre-dates Saskia Walker. If he was correct about it already being covered in leaf-litter and the CSIs are correct in their guesstimates, then that suggests it was abandoned before Monday; Gemma Allen was taken on the previous Saturday.”

“The same day Michael Stockley claimed his old man disappeared.”

“So was this how he planned it? Or was he responding to events?”

By now the two men had reached their car and Warren started up the hot-air blowers.

“It could be that he was just responding to events. How’s this for a scenario? Cameron snatches Gemma Allen. As we know, it wasn’t clean. Maybe there was some blood. More worrying though, for him, the condom splits when he rapes her. He realises that the game is up as when we find her body we’ll surely do a DNA test and link him to the attack. So he decides to do a runner. He hides the Land Rover up here — he knows that it’s a liability now as we’ll be trying to trace it. He has money and so he decides it’s time to go on the run.”

“The idea’s got merit,” conceded Sutton, “but there are still a few holes. If he was going to abandon the Land Rover, why bother hiding it so well? He couldn’t have predicted that those two daft old coots would come down here in sub-zero temperatures to avoid the Christmas shopping. He went to a lot of trouble — he definitely didn’t want it found.”

“Maybe it has Gemma Allen’s blood in the back. Anyone who watches TV knows we only need a pinprick’s worth these days. Her face was pretty messed up — she must have bled a fair bit.”

“I could buy that if he thought he could still get away with it, but didn’t we already decide that he knew the game was up anyway after the condom split? In fact, if he was worried about ensuring there was no link between Gemma Allen and him, his best bet would have been to have disposed of her body fully and the Land Rover.”

“Well, so far he’s shown no interest in disposing of the bodies. He just leaves them in remote enough places that he gets a few days’ head start. Realistically, how long could he have expected Gemma Allen to have been undiscovered? A week or so? He dumped her on the border of two working farms, in the middle of a public right of way. By the very latest you’d have expected some ramblers to stumble across her body as they burned the calories off on Boxing Day.”

Warren shook his head. “I don’t think he was prepared to dispose of her body. How would he do it anyway? This isn’t Hollywood. No matter where he dumped her, she would be discovered eventually. And the ground’s rock hard. He’d have half killed himself trying to dig a decent grave with a shovel somewhere and even then he probably knows that we can spot newly turned earth this time of year using thermal imaging cameras on helicopters.”

Sutton shrugged, unsure about that idea. “So you think he decided to go on the run when the Gemma Allen killing went wrong? I suppose if he is being reactive rather than proactive, then our chances of catching him are better.”

Warren sighed. “Maybe, but I can’t help feel that he just activated a previously worked-out Plan B. His son said that he cleared out their joint account — when did he do that?”

Sutton flicked through his notebook. “The day before. He did it over the counter in branch.”

“Wouldn’t it take both signatures to close out a joint account?”

Sutton shook his head. “Ordinarily yes, but he didn’t quite empty the account. He left a thousand pounds and wrote a cheque to Cash for the rest — twenty-three thousand, five hundred and sixty-nine pounds. Writing cheques that large only requires one signature.”

“He clearly planned this in advance to some degree. Still, the question remains — how did he get from here back home or wherever he went after dumping the Land Rover?”

Sutton pulled out the local map he’d noticed stuffed in the passenger door pocket. After a few moments’ work he quickly identified their location and a nearby village about two and a half miles away as the crow flew. Perhaps an hour’s walk.

A little over five minutes later Tony Sutton and Warren were standing in the centre of the village at the local bus station.

“Shit,” breathed Sutton. “Who’d have thought a tiny little place like this would be so well connected?”

He was right. The village of Tootingbourne was little more than a hamlet, but the confluence of three major roads and the convenience of a large market square without a war memorial in the centre had prompted the local council to build a large bus terminal. From here, one could catch connections heading into each of the adjoining counties, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, whilst National Express Coaches serviced the four London airports and the north of England. Cameron couldn’t have chosen a better spot to disappear.

* * *

Back at the station, Warren called an evening briefing. Nursing a cup of hot coffee, he felt the chill leaving his body. The leads from the
Crimewatch
reconstruction had dried up in the last few hours and morale was sinking again. News that Cameron had ditched his Land Rover did nothing to improve the mood.

“He could be driving anything now. With twenty grand in his back pocket, he could have bought any old clunker and paid enough for there to be no questions asked. It could be weeks before the previous owner realises Cameron hasn’t informed the DVLA of the change of ownership.” Warren turned to Gary Hastings.

“What’s the news on CCTV from the bus shelter in Tootingbourne?”

Hastings shook his head. “Nothing there, I’m afraid. They recycle the tapes after a week. It’s just there to catch out vandals and the like. We’ve got hold of the records from the ticket machines for the past two weeks, but it’s unlikely that he used his credit card. We’re circulating Cameron’s pictures around the different bus companies in case any of the drivers remember him and we’ll have posters up in all of the bus stops but it’s a long shot.”

“Well keep at it and make sure that everything is logged. I’ve let Traffic know that we’re no longer looking for his Land Rover, but I’ve decided to keep that from the public at the moment. We’ll let Cameron think we’re still looking for it — maybe he’ll make a mistake. At least it’ll free them up to look for more leads.”

With nothing else to be said, Warren stood up. The team looked dejected.

“Keep your chins up, people. It’s disappointing that we’re now in a manhunt stage, waiting for information from others, but don’t forget we have an important role to play here. The DNA evidence is good for Gemma Allen and Saskia Walker but we’re still pretty circumstantial as far as Sally Evans and Carolyn Patterson are concerned. We still need good evidence linking Cameron to their murders. And let’s not forget we still haven’t ruled out an accomplice. Cameron is a sixty-year-old man who’s spent much of the past fourteen years in prison. These crimes are pretty sophisticated for such a person.

“Regardless, it’ll be our legwork that secures this bastard’s conviction when we finally catch him. Let’s make sure we can pin all four killings on him, not just two.”

Friday 30
^th
December

Chapter 55

Friday morning greeted Warren with a light dusting of snow and icy patches. Warren and Susan’s street was off any major thoroughfare and so the gritters left them to their own devices. Once he’d made it onto the main road, he was able to drive a little easier, but the wreck of a Vauxhall Nova wrapped around a lamp post was a salutary reminder to take care.

A check with the night shift revealed no new leads and so Warren found himself in his office eyeing the pile of routine paperwork that he’d been putting off for the past three weeks. Unfortunately the fact that Warren’s team were involved in a major murder investigation was of no consequence to the regular criminals that were CID’s bread and butter and he was still expected to keep up with the reports and remain on top of what was happening on his patch.

With an apparent lull in the murders, he knew he should take the opportunity to shift some of the backlog. After the summer’s big case, Warren had been exhausted and the last thing he’d needed was to wade through the two-inch pile of paperwork and the hundreds of emails that he’d shoved to one side as he’d pursued the killer at the university. He’d vowed not to make that mistake again.

He’d kept up with his emails reasonably well, but the dream of a paperless office was as far away today as it ever was and he’d studiously ignored the growing pile threatening to spill out of his ‘non-urgent’ in-tray.

With a weary sigh, Warren took a long swig of his coffee and settled down. After a few seconds’ thought he got up and made sure his office door was partly open — the last thing he wanted was for one of his team to assume the boss was busy and decide not to interrupt him. Please interrupt me, he pleaded silently…

By lunchtime he had received no interruptions and his phone had remained stubbornly silent. On the plus side, he had worked his way through about three quarters of his backlog. Pleasingly, muggings and assaults were down, perhaps due to fewer people walking the streets. Similarly, the increased numbers of people staying in had no doubt contributed to a drop in burglaries — although at least some of that was probably due to a recent high-profile anti-burglary drive by the Communities team. Balancing out the positives was a significant increase in the number of thefts from vehicles. Christmas always saw a spike in such crimes as careless shoppers left enticing packages in plain view or the proud owners of new in-car gadgets installed them then forgot to put them in the glove box when they left the car unattended. However, some bright spark from Welwyn had noticed a possible pattern in such thefts, suggesting an organised gang. Warren signed off on the extra funding requested to allow them to pursue the lead. If they could make some arrests and pin some of these extra thefts on the miscreants, then it would make a nice dent in Warren’s crime figures. And if the courts played their part and locked the little toerags up for a few months, they might even enjoy a dip in recorded crime next year.

Conscious of the amount of food he’d eaten over the past few days, Warren had opted for cheese sandwiches, yoghurt and an apple for lunch. Joining the rest of the team in the briefing room, he saw that most of them were being similarly frugal.

All except for Gary Hastings, who was cheerfully tucking into a bulging turkey sandwich with what appeared to be a pork pie and a wedge of stilton waiting for him in his Tupperware box. A large slab of heavily iced Christmas cake wrapped in tin foil completed the mini-feast. Karen Hardwick sat to his left eating a tomato and lettuce sandwich, a look of barely concealed resentment on her face.

Oh, to be young again, thought Warren with a twinge of jealousy, although he was pretty sure he’d never enjoyed a metabolism quite like the young DC’s. Still, it could be worse, he thought, glancing over at Tony Sutton grimly doing his best to enjoy some Ryvita crackers and extra-light Philadelphia cream cheese.

Warren believed strongly that a lunch break was an important time for the team to unwind and let their subconscious work on problems and for that reason he tried to discourage shop talk. So he was glad when Tony Sutton started an animated debate about which was the best Bond movie shown over the Christmas period. By the time Warren received the message that Forensics were on the line, the table was firmly split into two camps — those favouring the early Sean Connery movies and those taken by the latest Daniel Craig outings. Roger Moore didn’t get much of a look-in, noted Warren as he left to take the call; a pity —
A View to a Kill
had been the first Bond movie he’d seen at the cinema.

* * *

“Cameron didn’t use his Land Rover to transport any of the murder victims,” Warren announced to a stunned team.

“What? Are they sure?” asked Gary Hastings.

“About as sure as they can be. They’ve ripped the thing apart. No signs of any blood, hair or other trace anywhere inside the vehicle. They also can’t find any signs of that strange cardboard residue that the victims must have picked up in the vehicle. Furthermore, they’ve analysed mud and soil residue from all four tyres and under the wheel arches and found no match to the dumping sites. Apparently, the presence of pollen grains suggest that the car hasn’t been cleaned since at least the spring, so they’d have expected to have found something.”

“Damn,” muttered Tony Sutton. “It explains a lot though. The amount of footage Traffic have analysed, it was getting beyond reasonable that we hadn’t spotted the Land Rover near any of the crime scenes.”

“The question remains, then: what was he driving?” Karen Hardwick asked. He must have had something to transport them.”

“It also raises the spectre of an accomplice again,” suggested Gary Hastings.

“But who? And why?” Warren tried to hide his frustration.

“We need to find the link between these four women. I’m sure that’s the key. How could Richard Cameron have come across them? None of them seem to be in his social circle, such as it is. But the attacks are too wel -planned for him to have just randomly snatched women off the street. He knew their routines and we know from his computer that he researched the dumping spots in advance. If there is an accomplice involved, then maybe that person or even persons are the link. If we can find them, then maybe we can find Cameron.”

* * *

Back in his office, Warren couldn’t face returning to the paperwork pile. What was he missing? Somewhere there was a link between these clues. Unbidden, the dream from a few nights ago returned. It was like a jigsaw puzzle with lots of pieces, none of which seemed to fit together. He closed his eyes. There were clues out there, he was certain. But where?