Lulu woke at sunrise. She pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans and made herself a cup of coffee. Conrad sat on the sofa and watched her. ‘So what’s the plan for today?’ he asked.
‘We have to move The Lark,’ she said. ‘We’re only allowed to moor here for seventy-two hours and this is our third day here.’
‘What happens if you don’t move? Do they clamp you?’
Lulu chuckled as she poured milk into her coffee. ‘No, but I’d receive a strongly worded letter from the Canal and River Trust. And if I continued to flout the rules, they could take away my licence.’
‘But how would they know?’
‘Oh, they check. They have people patrolling all the time, checking that boats have valid licences and that they aren’t abusing the mooring restrictions.’
She took her mug of coffee out onto the rear deck and started the engine. A cloud of grey smoke billowed from the exhaust and then the engine settled into its comforting phut-phut-phut sound, like the resonant heartbeat of some giant mythical creature. Conrad followed her. The Bee Happy had moved and two other narrowboats had moored on the right-hand section. There were four boats and plenty of spaces on the left-hand section.
‘Can’t you just move over there?’ asked Conrad.
Lulu looked at him in surprise. ‘You just read my mind again.’
Conrad sighed. ‘I read your body language,’ he said. ‘You looked at where the Bee Happy was, then you looked over at the boats on the right-hand side and frowned. It wasn’t hard to follow your train of thought.’
Lulu laughed. ‘You do read me like an open book,’ she said.
‘So can we do that? Just move The Lark over there?’
‘I’m really not sure,’ said Lulu. ‘You’re not allowed just to move back and forth between mooring spots, that much I do know. And I know that the Canal and River Trust have to be satisfied that you are continually cruising. But their guidance is that you must travel at least twenty miles over the duration of your licence. Obviously The Lark has done way more than that.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘I can’t moor in the basin because that’s only for permanent licences. I suppose I could take her back down the Bridgewater Canal, but it is so convenient here. And there are plenty of moorings – it’s not as if we’d be taking someone else’s space.’
‘Plus you are here for a very good reason,’ said Conrad. ‘You’re trying to catch a killer.’
‘The Canal and River Trust doesn’t take things like that into consideration,’ said Lulu. ‘But I don’t see that we’ll have a problem. If they do check, they’ll see that at least I made the effort to move.’
She put down her mug of coffee and jumped off The Lark to untie the lines. It took her less than three minutes to move the boat to the left-hand section and another minute to tie up the lines again. ‘Job done,’ she said, stepping back onto the rear deck.
‘I wish I could help,’ said Conrad.
‘Oh, you help me in lots of ways,’ said Lulu. She looked at her watch. ‘Right, I’ll shower and change, then we can go and have breakfast with Phil.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Conrad. ‘I shall have a cat wash while I’m waiting.’
Lulu spent a few minutes tidying up the saloon and bedroom, then she showered, towelled herself dry and pulled on a Ted Baker dress that she used to wear when she was a detective chief inspector. She took pride in the fact that it still fitted perfectly. She topped the dress with a Burberry jacket.
‘Well, you look amazing,’ said Conrad when she went back onto the rear deck.
‘Why, thank you, kind sir,’ said Lulu. ‘I thought I should try to look as professional as possible.’
Lulu locked the doors and stepped off the boat, then bent down so that Conrad could jump onto her shoulders. She walked to the Midland and joined Phil in the hotel’s restaurant. They both had the full English and coffee and chatted about the Choker case. Lulu’s memory was generally razor-sharp, but it had been five years since she’d had any involvement with the case, so she had quite a few questions for Phil, some of which required him to dip into his briefcase. Conrad lay under her chair and Lulu slipped him a saucer with a piece of sausage and a strip of bacon on it. They were just finishing when Phil’s mobile buzzed. ‘DC Townsend is outside,’ he said.
‘I thought we were cabbing it,’ said Lulu.
‘Sorry, he sent me a text earlier saying that he’d pick us up and show us the sites where the bodies were dumped. Superintendent Knight has given us the green light.’ He signed the bill and they headed out. DC Townsend was waiting for them in a white Toyota Corolla. Phil climbed into the front passenger seat and Lulu got into the back with Conrad.
‘So how is it, the Midland?’ asked DC Townsend as he pulled away from the kerb.
‘Perfect,’ said Phil. ‘You know it’s where Mr Rolls met Mr Royce?’
DC Townsend laughed. ‘I’m afraid that might be apocryphal,’ he said as he braked to allow a tram to go by.
‘There are two plaques to that effect.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen them. But if you do a little digging it seems not to be as clear cut as that. The man who originally went public with the meeting was a friend of Rolls and he actually said they went to Great Central Hotel. No one mentioned the Midland Hotel by name. But there never has been a Great Central Station in Manchester. So people assumed that he had meant the Midland. But, as we all know, assumptions can often be wrong. The man who relayed the story said that Mr Rolls caught the morning train from London, which would have arrived at what we now call Piccadilly Station. Traffic back then was way worse than it is now; it would have been a half-hour taxi ride from there to the Midland. But across the road from the station was the Great Central Refreshment Rooms, so it’s much more likely he met Mr Royce for lunch there and that the guy who told the story just mixed up the names.’ He grinned. ‘But who knows?’
‘You seem to know an awful lot about this,’ said Lulu.
DC Townsend chuckled. ‘I did it as a history project at school,’ he said. ‘I was car-mad in those days and heard the story about Rolls and Royce and decided to do it for my history project. It made me realize that just because someone says something is true doesn’t mean it’s necessarily so.’
‘That’s very true,’ said Lulu. She smiled. ‘Though of course I see the irony in my saying that.’
‘But you know what I mean, right?’ said DC Townsend. ‘Eyewitness testimony is the most unreliable of all. People believe that something happened but often there is no way that it could have taken place in the way they remember. It happens all the time with road traffic accidents. Eyewitnesses will swear blind that a white car crashed into a blue van but in fact it was a white van hitting a green minibus. It’s actually what made me become a police officer.’
‘The search for the truth?’
‘I know, it sounds ridiculous when you say it that way. But, yes, looking at the whole Rolls Royce thing was like an investigation and I had so much fun doing it that I began to think about becoming a detective.’
‘And now, here you are,’ said Lulu.
DC Townsend nodded. ‘Yes, indeed. Here I am.’
‘Is this your first murder investigation?’
‘Gosh, no. My fifth, actually. Well, fifth and sixth, since we have two bodies. We have more than ninety homicides a year in Greater Manchester, more than half of them in the city itself. Not far behind London and about the same as Birmingham.’
‘Most of it gang- and drug-related?’ asked Phil.
DC Townsend nodded. ‘Unfortunately, yes.’ He stopped at a red light. ‘So, we’ll drive south to Stretford Meadows, where the first body was dumped. Then I’ll take you to Heaton Park golf course. I’m not sure there’ll be much to see: our forensics people are finished with both scenes. Then DI Friar said I should run you back to HQ and we’ll see how they’re getting on with the HOLMES data dump.’
‘What I’d really like to do is talk to the relatives of the victims,’ said Lulu. ‘Ideally the ex-wife of Fraser Robinson and the wife of Sergeant Sawyer.’
‘Widow,’ said DC Townsend.
‘Yes, right. Of course. His widow.’
‘I’d have to check that with DI Friar.’
‘Of course, yes. It’s just that, as we’re out and about, it might make sense to get everything done on the one day.’
‘I’ll call her,’ said DC Townsend.
They drove for fifteen minutes, heading south on the M60. When they left the motorway, they drove for almost a mile, then pulled into a parking area. DC Townsend stopped the car and switched off the engine. ‘So, here we are,’ he said. ‘We’re actually in Stretford now, which is in the borough of Trafford, but it’s still Greater Manchester. We’ve got the River Mersey to the south and Stretford to the north. The park covers about fifty hectares and has meadows, woodland and wetland.’
‘What is fifty hectares in old money?’ asked Lulu.
DC Townsend frowned. ‘Old money?’
‘Acres,’ said Lulu. ‘I still think in acres.’
‘Fifty hectares is about a hundred and twenty acres, boss,’ said Phil, twisting around in his seat.
‘The park is popular with birdwatchers, walkers and cyclists,’ said DC Townsend. ‘It was a dog walker who found the body.’ He climbed out of the car and Lulu and Phil followed him. Conrad jumped out too and padded behind them. It felt as if they were in the countryside; they were surrounded by high hedges and trees and the ground was muddy underfoot, but they could hear the hum of traffic on the motorway behind them. Phil lit a cigarette and blew smoke up at the clouds. ‘First today,’ he sighed.
‘I thought you were giving up,’ said Lulu.
‘Cutting back rather than giving up,’ he said. ‘I’m down to ten a day. I was on two packs a day when I was working with you.’
‘Working with me was that stressful, was it?’
Phil laughed. ‘Nah, they were just a lot cheaper then. Six or seven quid a pack. Those were the days.’
‘My dad was a smoker,’ said Lulu. ‘Park Drive. A pack of twenty used to cost five bob. He’d send me to the corner shop to buy them when I was a kid.’ She laughed. ‘Can you imagine doing that now? Sending your kids to buy cigarettes. You’d have the long arm of the law knocking on your door before you could say “exploitation of minors”. The world was different back then.’
‘Yeah, lung cancer rates were a lot higher, for one thing,’ said Phil. He held out his cigarette. ‘But smoking makes me feel good. It just does.’
‘Five bob?’ said DC Townsend.
Lulu chuckled. ‘Five shillings. That’s twenty-five pence in new money.’
‘And they really let kids buy cigarettes?’
‘If they knew your parents, sure. As I said, it was a different world back then.’
‘I’d say so,’ said DC Townsend. He gestured ahead. ‘This way,’ he said. He took them through a gap in a hedge and along a path that led through a grassy field. In the distance was a clump of trees. Lulu began silently to count off her footsteps and she had reached fifty-eight by the time they arrived at the trees. DC Townsend stopped and pointed. ‘The body was found here,’ he said. ‘We had crime scene tape up for a couple of days but the forensic team didn’t find anything so it was reopened to the public.’ He pointed at a dozen or so bunches of wilting flowers leaning against a tree. There were cards on several of the bouquets. RIP Fraser. Gone But Not Forgotten. Taken Too Soon. ‘Those are from well-wishers.’
‘Did you check them out?’ asked Phil.
‘We send someone up every evening, and if there’s a card we try to find out who left it. We did have the area under surveillance for a couple of days in case the killer came back to reminisce, but nothing came of it.’
‘And is there anything special about this bit of the park?’ asked Phil. ‘Anything happen here before?’
DC Townsend shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
Lulu looked around. The road and the parking area were out of sight but she could still hear the traffic. ‘So this is, what, fifty yards or so from where their car would have been parked?’
DC Townsend nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘And was Mr Robinson a big man?’
‘I’d say average. Eighty kilograms. Eighty-five maybe.’
Lulu looked over at Phil. He grinned. ‘A hundred and eighty-five pounds, boss. Give or take.’
‘So about thirteen stone, in old money,’ said Lulu. She grinned at DC Townsend. ‘Do you know what a stone is?’
He pulled a face and shrugged. ‘Sorry.’
‘A stone is fourteen pounds, two stones make a quarter and four quarters make a hundredweight.’
‘I have no idea what any of that means,’ he said.
‘And don’t get me started on threepenny bits,’ said Lulu. She looked at the grass between the trees and the car park. ‘Were there any drag marks?’
‘No,’ said DC Townsend. ‘We think he was carried here.’
‘That’s a long way to carry a body weighing a hundred and eighty-five pounds,’ said Lulu.
‘I agree, but it’s possible. What about your victims? How far were they carried?’
‘About the same,’ said Lulu. ‘And we did wonder if there might be two people doing the carrying.’
Phil nodded. ‘In all four cases it was doable,’ he said. ‘Remember, we had one of the PCs do a fireman’s lift to see if it could be done?’
‘That’s right,’ said Lulu. ‘I’d forgotten that. Ricky Landers. Who did he carry?’
‘Joe Carter. Joe was about the same build as the victim. It was at Wimbledon Common, remember? Ricky managed it but he was complaining about a bad back for weeks afterwards.’ He looked over at DC Townsend. ‘Any footprints?’
‘It was drier than it is today. No prints that we could see. We think the body was under the trees for twelve hours, so any grass that was disturbed was back in place.’
‘Were you one of the first out here?’ asked Lulu.
‘Yes, the case was assigned to DI Friar and I was her scribe. The dog walker who found the body called 999 and a patrol car came out. As soon as they saw the condition of the body they cordoned off the area and called CID.’
‘So the body hadn’t been disturbed by the time you got here?’
‘No.’
‘And the crime scene photographs I saw on HOLMES, they were exactly as the body was when you arrived?’
DC Townsend nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘The body was on its back, and no attempt had been made to conceal it? And the rope was around the neck and lying next to the body?’
‘That’s right.’
Conrad began walking around, sniffing the ground as his tail swished from side to side.
‘It was the same with our four killings,’ said Lulu. ‘The bodies were dumped almost carelessly. A lot of effort went into cleaning the bodies to make sure there was no forensic evidence, and they were dumped well away from any roads, but there was no attempt made to hide them.’
‘The killer wanted them to be found, you mean?’
‘Or he just didn’t care. It was all about the killing. Once that was done he just wanted the body out of the way. And the fact that he made no attempt to cover their faces suggests that there was no personal connection. The killer didn’t care about how they were found.’
‘I couldn’t understand why he left the rope on,’ said DC Townsend. ‘That’s forensic evidence, isn’t it?’
Phil nodded. ‘We wondered that too. In all cases the knot was really tight. Maybe it was just more convenient to leave it on.’
‘We wondered if it was a message, maybe,’ said DC Townsend. ‘He dumps the bodies where he knows they’ll be found, and the rope is – I don’t know – some sort of warning.’
‘You think that someone might recognize the knot?’ asked Lulu. ‘It might mean something?’
‘It was just a thought.’
‘No, it’s a good thought. It’s a common knot among the boating fraternity, but perhaps it does have a special meaning to someone.’
Conrad had his head up now and was sniffing the air.
‘There’s nothing to connect this parkland with the area where Sawyer’s body was dumped?’ asked Lulu.
‘Heaton Park golf course? No, nothing.’
Lulu nodded. ‘That was the same with our disposal sites. The killer never used the same area twice, and there was nothing to connect them other than that there was always a safe place to park a vehicle and the area was secluded, with grass and trees.’
‘The grass because it would make it difficult to find footprints?’ said DC Townsend.
‘Exactly.’
‘And the trees?’
‘We never worked out why he always left the bodies under trees,’ said Phil. ‘Are there trees at the golf course?’
‘There are,’ said DC Townsend.
‘Let’s have a look, then,’ said Lulu. She gathered Conrad up and put him on her shoulders and they walked back to the car.