The bloodstained leaves were sent off for DNA analysis, and the remaining uniformed cops revisited all the homes that bordered the relevant alleyway, asking once again for witnesses, and permission to search the gardens behind the hedge. Gillard reckoned Kirsty Mockett had been very clever to concentrate on that part of the alley where untrimmed edges closed in so it was little more than three feet wide. It was logical that this was the place where the assailant might not be able to pass through without contact. The fact that the smear was at ankle height might indicate the severed head was being carried in some kind of bag, and the flank of that receptacle would be the widest part of the fleeing perpetrator.
Gillard emailed her his congratulations and copied the photograph to several others on the sprawling inquiry. Tomorrow was Saturday, and as soon as it was light he wanted to be back at the crime scene, looking more closely at the various residential streets which the alleyway led to.
Dr David Delahaye rang Gillard just after he finished the post-mortem on Adam Heath. After exchanging pleasantries, the forensic pathologist said: ‘I don’t suppose you happen to have a spare head lying about the place? It would make the toxicology report a little more comprehensive and a look at his eyeballs for petechiae would be useful.’
This dry comment was the nearest Delahaye ever got to making a joke.
‘Sorry, David, we are doing all we can to try and find it,’ Gillard replied.
‘Well, there is nothing I have found to contradict your theory that the victim was garrotted. There are distended veins in the lower neck, petechiae in the chest and lungs, along with some foam. These are all symptoms of asphyxiation. As you are no doubt aware, a good chunk of the neck was removed along with the head, the cut having been made at the C2 vertebra, so we don’t have the part of the throat that was constrained by the ligature. His left hand shows deep indentations across the index and middle fingertips, which could be evidence that he managed to insert them under the ligature.’
‘Any ideas what was used to garrotte him?’
‘Something quite fine. Possibly fishing line, but more likely picture wire; there is some evidence of twist texture on one of the fingers, which would have me lean towards the latter.’
‘Anything else come to light?’
‘Marks on the remaining vertebrae indicate a serrated knife or possibly a small saw was used as well as a more conventional blade. It must have been sharp because the cuts were quite clean.’
‘Evidence of professional skills would you say?’
‘It’s hard to be sure. A strong stomach, certainly. There would have been plenty of blood.’ The pathologist sighed. ‘Otherwise not much to report. Slight enlargement of the liver, indicative of prolonged alcohol consumption, nothing too unusual for a man of his age. Basic toxicology shows nothing untoward. He was generally in quite good condition.’
‘That fits in with what we’ve heard about him. He was a keen cyclist and had played rugby for a couple of amateur teams up until his forties.’
Gillard mentally ran through what they knew so far about the killer. ‘Whoever it was had an interesting collection of attributes: not noticeable in a school environment, yet able to get into the car and hide there waiting for the victim. Small to medium hands, the good sense to wear gloves, and enough strength and determination to go through with the killing.’
‘I agree with you that from the vantage point of the rear seat, the victim would very quickly have been helpless even against someone much less strong when he was,’ Delahaye said. ‘Have you got anything from the DNA?’
‘Nothing conclusive. Apart from the family, there are quite a few traces inside the car. We’re expecting the matches for various school colleagues and some of the pupils to come back in the next few hours. That should give us a little more to go on.’
‘Are you thinking it might be a pupil or ex-pupil?’ Delahaye said.
‘Reluctantly, I am being dragged in that direction,’ Gillard said. ‘It is the gloves that worry me most. We have so many glove prints we’re really quite sure. A man with big hands cannot squeeze them into child-sized gloves and still do the job. Which leaves a couple of possibilities. A small woman or, just possibly, a child.’
Fresh from her discovery in the alleyway, crime scene investigator Kirsty Mockett had picked her way through Adam Heath’s garden. It was now getting too dark to see much, and as she was finishing her shift in half an hour, there seemed no point in setting up artificial lights. Most of her colleagues were now shrugging their way out of their Tyvek suits and getting ready to knock off. But in her case one discovery prompted a new line of thinking. The back gate from Heath’s garden into the alleyway was a solid six-foot-high hardwood construction, which fitted snugly into the seven-foot box hedge. It was secured with a hefty padlock, seemingly new and uncorroded. The padlock was at waist height, with an older but carefully oiled bolt at the top. She had managed to get prints from both these and had sent them off to Lewes for analysis.
She next turned her attention to the small and secluded summer house, a Swiss-style structure 6’ x 10’ with its own mini balcony and mildewed glass windows in wooden frames. It too was padlocked. A path of flagstones led from the kitchen door to the summer house and then on to the back gate. Kirsty went back to find Yaz Quoroshi, who would have the key. She would just have time to do some DNA samples and collect a few prints from inside.
It was six o’clock on the Friday evening when Gillard got a phone call from Chief Constable Alison Rigby. One of the new wave of assertive female bosses, she had a stellar reputation from her time at the National Crime Agency, where she had broken open a major drug ring. She had taken a keen interest in Operation Whirlwind and the arrest of Bonner, but this was the first call she had made to Gillard in relation to the beheading case.
‘How’s it going?’ Rigby asked. Gillard described the main leads so far and the lack of obvious motivation. ‘Adam Heath looks to have had something of a past, but I’m holding off looking into that too closely until I get the full cross-match results of DNA from staff and pupils, which should come in the next few hours.’
This was exactly the same report that he had given to his direct boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Brian ‘Radar’ Dobbs. Tall and moustachioed, he was considered diligent if unimaginative. Gillard had reported to him for several years, but still didn’t know what exactly his superior did all day besides push paper.
‘Could it be the wife?’ Rigby asked.
‘I can’t entirely rule her out. There is plenty of potential for motivation, but there would be much easier ways for her to have murdered him. The beheading makes it logistically complex and messy, and somebody must have really wanted to do it that way.’
‘I quite agree. However, I’m concerned about the press coverage, which has played very heavily on the potential Islamic element. I want you to make sure that your team are all on the same page about this – there’s enough minority community alarm about this already. Even though there’s no one in the counterterrorism branch involved in the investigation, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are feeding information to the press on the quiet. Reporters have been besieging Mr Afwan.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, ma’am. I can only speak for my officers, but I’ll make sure that we’re singing off the same hymn sheet.’
As soon as he’d finished the call, Gillard rang Sam. ‘I can be away by 7.30 p.m. tonight. Shall we go out to dinner?’
‘That’s great!’ she replied. She’d only been back at work a few days but was already beginning to get into her stride. Her kidnapping ordeal the previous spring had cast a shadow over the entire year, and only now were her energy and enthusiasms beginning to return to those of her old self. With a big case like this, it was extremely rare for her husband to get home at a reasonable time. Sam had now restarted exercise classes and had begun an Open University course in criminology. When they had first met, Sam had been a community support officer, but the work she now did at the control room made her feel at the centre of activities.
They hadn’t been to the Palace Tandoori for over a year, but the owner, a chubby Indian who went by the name Sid, short for Siddharth, remembered them well. They ordered the Friday Feast, which included onion pakoras, shami kebabs, poppadoms and pickle tray, and a mixed tandoori platter of lamb, chicken and king prawns, which arrived sizzling and smoking on a cast-iron dish. They both ate as if starving and were given a complimentary mango lassi each by Sid. As Gillard thanked him, Sid leaned close and said: ‘I’m mortified about this beheading down the road. It’s not good for us.’
‘Why, has something happened?’
‘Dog mess through the letterbox. Flyers returned with racial stuff and “go home” scrawled on it. I’ve been here fifty-two years, and I’m still treated by some people like I arrived yesterday. I’m Hindu not Muslim anyway, but they don’t seem to care.’
‘We’re really sorry to hear that,’ Sam said. ‘People can be so horrible.’
‘What was the response when you reported this?’ Gillard asked.
Sid rolled his eyes. ‘I didn’t report it. Racial hatred works in cycles, and I’ve seen a few of them, I can tell you. But I also know from experience that unless someone is hurt, I don’t get much joy from the local bobbies. Even though I’ve got CCTV which shows a bloke in a baseball cap, jacket and trainers shoving stuff through the letterbox.’
‘If you can email a section of video to me, I can forward it, and then I promise you, there will be some action.’
Once Sid had departed, Gillard shook his head. ‘I know that we’ve had severe staff cuts over the last few years, but this kind of thing really annoys me.’
Sam reached forward and rested her hand on his. ‘I know. But you can’t do it all yourself.’ Then she smiled at him and shook her head.
First thing on Saturday morning a great stack of DNA results came through. It indicated that three members of staff had been in Adam Heath’s car, each in the front seat. The traces found in the rear driver-side seat didn’t match anyone at the school, nor the two troublesome ex-pupils, Kerry-Anne Phelps and Gerald Corbett. Neither of them showed up in any of the DNA or fingerprint matches.
Gillard sat at his desk at Mount Browne with mounting disappointment. He had hoped for some clear evidence. A second sheaf of results from a different lab showed that the bloodstains on the privet hedge sprig matched those in the car. That was something, at least. With them was a series of DNA matches from the summer house in Adam Heath’s garden. Here, as well as Adam and Stella Heath, there were traces that matched a member of staff, Mrs Ingrid Taylor. Looking back to the first results, he saw that her DNA had also been in the car, the only member of staff apart from the deputy head Mrs Squires, and the head of geography, Thomas Murphy.
He called up a staff photograph taken from an online school yearbook, which had kindly been captioned for him by Mrs Squires. Ingrid Taylor was standing on the back row of three, and only her face could be seen. Zooming in as much as he could, Gillard reckoned the woman was in her thirties. Looking back through the statements and background material, he established that she lived some distance away, and was quite a junior member of staff. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but this looked significant. One thing he didn’t want to do at this stage was to upset Stella Heath by asking her if she knew why Ingrid Taylor had been in their summer house.
Instead, he rang the woman herself at home.
After introducing himself, and explaining that he was following up on her statement and samples he asked: ‘Mrs Taylor, your DNA has turned up in Mr Heath’s car and in the summer house in the garden.’ He didn’t ask a question, but left an expanding silence at the other end.
‘Is there something you want to tell me, Mrs Taylor?’
‘Adam gave me a lift home a couple of times.’
There were questions enough about this considering where she lived, but Gillard pressed on. ‘Why were you in the Heaths’ summer house?’
‘Gosh, I can’t think. Perhaps last summer, when they had a garden party.’
‘Do you remember the date?’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘I can tell you that there was more of your DNA found there than that of Stella Heath. And none of any other members of staff at the school.’
‘I can’t explain that,’ she said coolly.
Gillard called an incident room meeting for 9.30 a.m. with an enhanced whiteboard diagram. He had added Ingrid Taylor and ‘Maggie’ to the spokes emanating from Adam Hogarth’s box. Red dots showed where a DNA connection had been made, and green had been added for those, like Kerry-Anne Phelps and Gerald Corbett, who seemed to be in the clear.
It being the weekend there wasn’t a full crew gathered there. DCs Rainy Macintosh and Carl Hoskins sat side by side, sharing what smelled like bacon sandwiches. Research intelligence officer Rob Townsend was there with DS Vikram Singh, who was the evidence officer. DI Mulholland and DC Michelle Tsu were off duty until the evening shift.
‘Okay everyone. We’ve made some good progress forensically. There’s not much mystery now about how Adam Heath died. The post-mortem pretty much confirms what I suspected, that he was garrotted with a wire from behind by someone who was presumably hiding in the footwell of the car.’
‘Someone with tiny wee hands,’ Rainy said.
‘But who knew how to break into a 1985 Jag,’ Hoskins said.
‘Maybe they had a key,’ she replied, taking another bite of her sandwich and looking at her colleague. ‘Or made one, like an evil wee elf.’
‘No, the glove prints seem to indicate it might have been a wire loop break-in,’ Gillard said. ‘As far as we can tell, this person must have been in the car for some time, probably getting in when it was parked at the school. This strongly suggests that whoever did it was not worried about being identified.’
‘Och, are you really suggesting the culprit is a schoolkid?’ Rainy asked incredulously.
‘Or a member of staff, possibly,’ Townsend added.
‘Yeah, but how many schoolteachers know the wire loop trick,’ Hoskins said.
‘No, I’m not saying anything—’ Gillard began.
‘What if Heath had stopped to give someone a lift?’ Singh asked.
‘It’s only a two- or three-minute journey home,’ Hoskins said.
‘Yes, but we don’t know that he went straight home, do we?’ Singh replied.
Gillard nodded. ‘We haven’t had any reports of the vehicle being spotted off its normal route. Indeed, the only corroboration of that short journey we have is the periphery of a piece of CCTV from a parade of suburban shops, which shows the car passing. That footage shows no sign of any passengers, front or back.’
‘It’s the beheading that gets me,’ Townsend said with incredulity. ‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘They’d really have to hate him,’ Hoskins said. ‘And they must have had a strong stomach.’
‘There might be a message there,’ Gillard said. ‘Based on the original name of the school.’
He had everyone’s attention. ‘Has everyone heard of Salomé?’ Gillard asked.
Hoskins whispered something to Rainy. ‘Not salami, yer wee bampot,’ she muttered back at him. ‘It was only sliced once.’
Gillard continued. ‘It’s the biblical account that Herod was so impressed by Salomé dancing, he offered her anything she wanted. And she chose the head of John the Baptist, on a platter.’
Hoskins chuckled. ‘Call me weird, but I would have gone for the prawn dhansak instead.’
‘The school these days is called St John’s Academy, but four years ago it was still called St John the Baptist,’ Gillard said. There was an ‘aah’ of recognition across the assembled detectives.
‘And Adam Heath was the head,’ said Rob.
‘So they didnae just want the head, but the head of the head,’ Rainy said.
‘It’s a very dark sense of humour,’ DS Singh said.
‘Aye, I’m laughing my head off,’ Rainy said.
Gillard held up his hands for quiet. ‘The point of all this is: if this is a deliberate message, who is our Salomé?’
Later that morning, DS Singh arrived back from a trip to the Heath household with a stack of evidence bags and boxes on a trolley. ‘What have you discovered, Vikram?’ Gillard asked.
‘I’ve been documenting the paperwork and non-electronic evidence from the house. I also went into the loft and found a whole treasure trove of other stuff including Adam Heath’s photo collection, and it’s very interesting.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘It’s clear that the Heaths had a very free and open relationship. There are lots of pictures of them at what looks like a naturist camp when they were young, and there are hundreds of pictures of Mrs Heath in the nude. I guess you would call most of it artistic, and he’s certainly a pretty good photographer. But I also found a box of Polaroids, in which Mrs Heath is in compromising positions with a number of different black guys.’
‘You didn’t find any videos, did you Rob?’ Gillard asked.
‘No. There’s nothing digital like that. I think this stuff is quite old, late 1990s or early 2000s maybe. Pre-Internet most of it,’ Singh said.
Gillard sighed. ‘Well, I guess I will have to tackle Mrs Heath about it, because it’s an obvious line of inquiry. While I’m at it, I’m going to ask about Ingrid Taylor. That might come as a bit of a shock to her.’
‘Poor woman,’ Townsend said.
‘Did you find any love letters, Vikram?’ Gillard asked.
‘No. I was looking out for them, after what you said about Mrs Taylor. Of course, he may have hidden them carefully to avoid his wife finding them.’
Gillard became aware that Rainy Macintosh was waiting to speak to him. He had asked her to look in more detail at the idea that the killer was classically educated, and trying to make some sick joke.
‘I’ve looked up the biblical reference, sir. New Testament references say that St John the Baptist was imprisoned by Herod because he had condemned the king for divorcing his wife and marrying his sister-in-law. Salomé was, through this relationship, Herod’s stepdaughter.’
‘Most of what I remember is from the Dance of the Seven Veils,’ Gillard said. ‘Like an early version of striptease in the Hollywood film, I recall.’
‘Aye, that was based on an Oscar Wilde play from the 1890s.’
‘If the murderer is trying to tell us something, apart from how clever they are, what is it?’
‘That the killer is a woman, perhaps?’ Rainy said.
Gillard pursed his lips. ‘Hmm. Salomé ordered the killing, but didn’t carry it out.’
‘Och, maybe there’s a better connection with another biblical beheading. Judith seducing then killing the Assyrian general Holofernes, who enslaved her people. I was gobsmacked when I saw the painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in the National Gallery in London a few months ago. I’ve just emailed you a copy.’
The two detectives called up the image on his screen. ‘Good God, it’s incredibly savage,’ Gillard exclaimed. The Baroque painting unflinchingly depicted two women holding down a struggling man while one of them pulled a sword through his throat. These women were not passive, submissive creatures but powerful and determined, centuries ahead of their time.
‘Aye, and the woman who painted it was just seventeen, destined to become the most famous female painter of the seventeenth century but already a victim of rape. She gave evidence in a trial, but despite conviction her accuser went free with the backing of the Pope.’
‘So she painted her revenge,’ Gillard breathed. He looked at Rainy and said, ‘We’re getting the impression that Adam Heath was a lecherous individual. I just wonder if any of this is connected?’
Gabby Underwood had fed DCI Gillard plenty of useful information about Stella Heath in the two days since the murder. The family liaison officer was looking for details of her marriage which might give a clue to the killer, but her main observation, relayed to Gillard by phone, was the wave of anger breaking through the woman’s grief. ‘There is fury with her late husband, but even more focused on this Maggie woman, whom she is convinced is the killer.’
‘That sounds reasonable.’
‘She is also getting very impatient about not being allowed to return to her home and keeps asking how much longer she will have to wait,’ Gabby said.
At three p.m. on Saturday Gillard joined Gabby in visiting Mrs Heath at the neighbours’ house where she had been staying. Her son Matthew answered the door, and asked if he could sit in on the interview.
‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t allow it,’ Gillard said. ‘I need to speak to your mother alone.’
‘If she’s a suspect, she’d like a solicitor to be present.’ The lad was clearly trying to support his mother, but the last thing Gillard wanted to do was to ask about her sex life in front of him.
‘She’s not a suspect, and this isn’t a formal interview.’
In the end Gillard interviewed Mrs Heath in the chilly sun lounge of the house, where the closed uPVC doors gave them some privacy.
Mrs Heath had made herself up and done her hair. She was a handsome woman, and from the couple of photographs he had seen, she’d been quite something when she was younger.
‘Mrs Heath, I need to ask you some questions of a delicate nature to at least close off some possible lines of inquiry. I will only be making notes by hand, and I can assure you that if this turns out not to be relevant, it will go no further.’
Her face tightened, and she lifted her chin to prepare for the revelation.
‘We have found some intimate photographs. Perhaps you’d like to tell us about them, and when they were taken.’
There was a long silence. ‘There was a brief period in our lives, more than a decade ago, when our marriage was on the rocks. I had suspected that Adam was having an affair, and he admitted to a brief fling, although as it turned out it was more than that. Far more.’ She paused and examined her nails. ‘He said that he needed more adventure in our love life. We talked about things, what he wanted and what I wanted, and with some trepidation I agreed to some threesomes. I’m sorry, this is very embarrassing for me to talk about now.’
‘That’s why I wouldn’t let Matthew sit in.’
She looked up at him. ‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’
‘How did you find the new partners?’
‘Adam found them. He subscribed to a specialist magazine and website. I really didn’t want to know the details, but I did insist that we meet the… candidates in advance at a neutral venue.’
Gillard said nothing.
Stella looked out of the window. ‘I had thought that all three of us would be in bed together, but in the event Adam just watched and took photographs. I think I had some sixth sense about it, because my one insistence was that nothing digital would ever be recorded.’
‘Very wise. Did you keep in contact with any of the men?’
‘There was one very handsome guy, an absolutely charming Trinidadian, who made it clear he wanted to have an affair with me. He approached me a couple of times after it was all over, but I’d gone into this thing to save my marriage, not to destroy it. It was a means to an end, but it was clear that Adam was getting a lot more out of it than I was. He would look at the Polaroids quite a lot and constantly wanted to talk to me about it afterwards, while we were in bed. It really turned him on, and just knowing that turned me off.’
‘You have the guy’s name, the Trinidadian?’
‘Only his first name. Charles. We only used first names. I’ve no address or anything, unless you can find it amongst Adam’s paperwork.’
Gillard finished writing his notes and looked up at her. She was staring levelly at him. ‘That’s really everything I want to say about that subject,’ she said to him. ‘It all finished in 2005 or 2006. I can’t see it’s relevant to what happened to Adam.’
‘Perhaps I can also ask you about Kerry-Anne Phelps…’
Stella rolled her eyes. ‘What a nasty little piece of work she is.’
‘Do you think your husband had an affair with her?’
‘No. He vehemently denied it, and on this occasion I do believe him. Adam may have been a philanderer, but he wasn’t stupid. To have sex with a pupil would be an idiotic thing to do. But it’s certainly true that she used to hang around the school car park to speak to him, wait for him outside his office, send letters to the house. She wrote him poetry which, annoyingly, was quite good. She’s very bright but very disturbed.’
‘How long did it last?’ Gillard asked.
She rounded on him. ‘You make it sound like “a thing”, detective chief inspector. But it is not a single thing, it is two quite separate things, and those things are a long way apart. First thing: a crush, existing only in her head, and probably still there. Second thing: Adam’s awareness of it, as a career headache, dealt with and over, many months ago.’
‘All right, let me rephrase. When did Adam say he was first aware of her interest in him?’
‘About two years ago, Adam found her in tears behind the science block, self-harming with a pair of compasses. She gave him some heart-wrenching tale of the breakup of her parents’ marriage, and begged him not to refer her through the formal channels. She’d had a bad experience with a school psychologist. If Adam made an error of judgement, it was to see her twice more, alone, at the girl’s request, because she felt suicidal. However, he told me about it right from the start, and kept a formal log which Mrs Squires retained.’
‘Sounds squeaky clean.’
‘Oh my goodness, he had to be. Kerry-Anne is very clever, and I think she was trying to blackmail him into having a relationship. I suppose you would say that Adam was a father substitute for her.’
‘Did he ever give her a lift in the car?’ Gillard asked.
‘I’m pretty sure he didn’t, because he knew it would have been stupid. However, the log he left with Mrs Squires would give all the details. He had prepared his defence against Kerry-Anne well in advance, anticipating that at some stage she would claim he had abused her. The whole thing was like a game of chess. He had to choose the moment to exclude her from school very carefully, knowing that she was capable of making some very detailed and believable allegations.’
‘I have a few other details to put you,’ Gillard said. He and Gabby glanced briefly at each other, knowing that this was the critical point of the interview. ‘Do you know Mrs Ingrid Taylor, from the languages department?’
‘Vaguely.’ Her eyes narrowed, trying to work out what was coming.
‘Has she ever been to your home?’
‘We had a garden party in the summer, to which she and her husband were invited. Why do you ask?’
‘A lot of her DNA has been found together with your husband’s inside the summer house.’
Stella Heath gave a sharp cry and let her face fall to her hands. Gillard had often been required to reveal unpleasant truths within relationships. To hapless women, usually. Mrs Heath was a big girl emotionally, and she had clearly made huge personal sacrifices to try to save her marriage. For her to discover that for all her efforts it was not enough must have been shattering.
Gabby put her arm around the woman, who was now sobbing uncontrollably. ‘I’ll go and make some coffee,’ Gillard said, watching while his family liaison officer fed tissues one after another to the distraught woman.
As the detective made his way from the sun lounge into the dining room, letting Stella’s howls of anguish fill the house, Matthew Heath appeared in the kitchen doorway, braced as if for a fight, fists flexing. His stare of hatred directed at Gillard didn’t quite mask the tears in his own eyes.
‘What have you said to her?’
‘I have brought her the truth. I do accept it is the messenger’s job to be shot at.’
Matthew pushed past and went in to comfort his mother. Gillard left the house and walked three doors up to the Heath house, where a female PC was on guard. ‘The family are going to be allowed to come back from tonight,’ he told her.
Gillard returned to his car for the journey back to Mount Browne. He closed his eyes, stretched and sighed. He had immersed himself in the murder of Adam Heath for almost forty-eight hours and was already at the stage where he couldn’t quite see the wood for the trees. There were motives, yes. Two spurned lovers, at least, only one of whom had been identified. Even she was saying nothing. The wife, even. She had a good reason to hate her philandering husband. Certainly, the likeliest motive in the case seemed to be love or jealousy. Money seemed not to be a part of it. If this had been a stabbing, even a poisoning, it might all make sense.
But a beheading?
The biggest mystery of the entire case was the sheer savagery of the killing, a grotesque, unnecessary and risky MO. Where was that head? Two nearby canals had been dragged, underwater search teams had begun to grope their way through ponds, reservoirs and gravel pits as far away as Hampshire. No disembodied head had so far been found. No one had seen the assailant, but he or perhaps she had left clues. DNA, in all likelihood, too. The one so far unidentified trace found in the rear footwell. Then there were the smears of the victim’s blood on the alleyway foliage, and the glove prints.
He’d love to find those gloves.