Lulu was trying to decide if she should open a bottle of Chardonnay or make another cup of chamomile tea when her phone rang. It was Phil. ‘Are you still up for dinner at my hotel?’ he asked.
‘I’m not really dressed for the Midland right now – I’ve been doing boat maintenance.’
‘There’s a Marks and Spencer food hall not far away. I could bring nibbles.’
‘Perfect,’ said Lulu. ‘But I only have wine, so bring beer if you prefer.’
‘I’ll be there within half an hour.’
Phil ended the call and Lulu smiled at Conrad, who was sitting next to her on the sofa. ‘Phil’s coming, with nibbles.’
‘I heard. I hope he brings some salmon. I do love Marks and Spencer salmon.’
‘Who doesn’t?’
Phil arrived exactly thirty minutes later, smoking a cigarette and holding a Marks and Spencer carrier bag. He finished his cigarette before boarding. ‘You’ve moved The Lark,’ he said as he climbed on board.
‘I had to. You’re only allowed seventy-two hours in one spot.’
‘So you have to move every three days?’
‘On this part of the canal, yes. In most places you can stay for two weeks. And of course in Little Venice I have a permanent mooring.’
He held up the carrier bag. ‘I come bearing gifts.’
Lulu took the bag from him. It contained a bottle of Pinot Grigio, two bottles of lager, a baguette and a selection of deli items, including tempura prawns, mozzarella sticks, sausage rolls, quiche, coleslaw and potato salad. The last item was a cooked salmon fillet. Lulu showed it to Conrad. ‘There you go,’ she said.
Conrad meowed and licked his lips. Lulu put half the salmon on a saucer and set it down in front of Conrad, who immediately tucked in. ‘This is really good of you, Phil,’ said Lulu as she laid the food out on the small table.
‘Pleasure, boss,’ said Phil.
Lulu put plates and cutlery on the table, then opened a beer for him and poured wine for herself. She sat down on the sofa and sipped her wine. ‘So, how are things progressing?’
‘No joy finding Wallace. He has a probation officer and he’s supposed to be at an address in Bermondsey, but the probation officer went round and there’s no sign of him. He had fixed himself up with a courier job, but he walked out on that last month.’
‘So he’s in breach of his probation?’
‘Definitely. But that doesn’t get us any closer to finding him. We’re not even sure if he’s in Manchester.’
‘And what about Edward Parker? Did you hear back from your Europol contact?’
Phil nodded. ‘Parker was on the Costa, working as a handyman in a place called Fuengirola. But he hasn’t been seen for a few months. He didn’t apply for permanent residence after Brexit; he could well be back in the UK now.’
‘So he could have linked up with Wallace?’
‘It’s possible. But we had no evidence that they knew each other when we investigated them back in the day, and nothing has changed.’
‘Maybe we didn’t look hard enough. And we need to start looking at connections between Wallace, Parker, Sawyer and Robinson.’
‘If there were any connections, HOLMES would have spotted them. That’s what HOLMES does.’
‘Yes, but HOLMES can only make connections if the information is in the database.’
‘So we’re missing something?’
‘There has to be a link between Wallace and the two victims here. And if we throw Parker into the equation, there must be something that links them all.’
‘That’s assuming that Parker and Wallace are working together.’
‘I take your point – it could be a coincidence that Parker vanished from the Costa about the same time that Wallace was released from prison.’
‘DI Friar is checking hotels and guest houses, but if they’re savvy they’ll be using fake names and paying in cash. And there are several thousand Airbnb rooms. He could even be on a canal boat.’
‘Presumably Wallace’s probation officer has a phone number for him.’
Phil nodded. ‘The phone’s been off for a month. It was last used in London.’
‘He clearly knows how to cover his tracks.’
‘That’s why we never caught him in London. And, to be honest, everything we have now is circumstantial. Even if we find him, we don’t actually have anywhere near enough to charge him.’
‘I’m getting a terrible feeling of déjà vu,’ said Lulu.
‘You and me both. DI Friar is doing everything by the book, but she’s no closer to making an arrest than when she started.’
Lulu sighed, then took a sip of wine. ‘And what about this latest victim? It’s definitely Robert Pearson?’
Phil nodded. ‘The wife identified him. Got very emotional, of course, and ended up fainting.’
‘Did she know of anybody who might want to harm her husband?’
‘She said everyone loved him. Not an enemy in the world.’
‘What did he do for a living?’
‘He was a home energy surveyor. One of those guys who tells you how energy-efficient your property is and what you need to do to improve. Lots of travelling, a fair amount of work in the evenings when people are home.’
‘So he was often out at night?’
‘That’s right. But he was always home by ten. When it got to midnight she phoned the police. They took it seriously because his absence was out of character, but there wasn’t much they could do that late at night.’
‘His phone was off?’
‘It was. And his appointments were all on his laptop, which is missing.’
‘What about his car?’
‘The police are looking for it and DI Friar is getting ANPR data.’
Like all UK cities, Manchester had hundreds – if not thousands – of cameras linked to the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system. Cameras across the country fed number plate details to the National ANPR Data Centre in Hendon, north London, from where they could be accessed by police forces around the country. Billions of ANPR hits were recorded every year and the system had become one of the police’s most effective crime-fighting tools.
‘Do they know where his last appointment was?’ asked Lulu.
‘Unfortunately not. His company gives him a list of properties that have to be surveyed but he arranged his own schedule.’
‘Did you see the wife?’
Phil shook his head. ‘She’s at home with a family liaison officer. DI Friar plans to talk to her again tomorrow.’
‘Is she a suspect?’
‘Boss, she’s less than five feet tall and probably weighs forty kilos dripping wet.’ He smiled. ‘That’s ninety pounds in real money. There’s no way she could have dropped the body where it was found, and she wouldn’t have been able to strangle him.’
‘The marks on his neck were made by large hands.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Still, we need to look into Mrs Pearson in more detail. When a husband or wife is killed, the obvious suspect is the spouse, right? Could she have been having an affair?’
‘I’m sure DI Friar is looking at that. But it could be that the killer is totally unrelated to Pearson. It could have been the last job that he did. Something happened, they fight and the guy kills Pearson. In an attempt to throw the police off the scent he copies the knot as detailed in Dickie McNeil’s newspaper article.’
‘I suppose so.’
Phil narrowed his eyes. ‘You think that the wife was involved?’
‘It was a woman who tipped Dickie off about the body,’ said Lulu.
‘Cherchez la femme?’
Lulu smiled as she reached for a mozzarella stick. ‘Exactly.’