Tartaglia walked into Steele’s office. She had been out all morning but was now back behind her desk and on the phone. It sounded as though she was talking to somebody in the Press Office. She motioned Tartaglia to take one of the chairs on the other side of her desk and he sat down, half listening to what she was saying as he watched the rain spatter and streak down the grimy window behind her.
The autopsy report on the unknown man in Peckham had proved an interesting read. Sufficient tissue had survived to show that the victim had been drinking heavily before he died. The blood alcohol concentration level was 0.26 per cent, roughly three times the legal drink/drive limit, not that he had been driving anywhere. On its own, it was probably sufficient to render him unconscious eventually, but the results also showed traces of the sedative Temazepam. It was a lethal combination. The pathologist had removed samples of lung tissue to check for evidence of smoke inhalation. In the process of opening up his trachea, he had found scar tissue, indicating some form of surgery to the man’s neck, the details of which he had fully documented. He also noted a tibial shaft fracture to the left leg, with a metal rod inserted into the bone. Results from the lung tissue samples showed that the man had been alive when the fire started, and the conclusion was that in his drunken, uncoordinated state, he must have knocked over the stove before passing out on the mattress.
Steele put down the phone and swivelled around in her chair to face him. ‘Any news?’
‘It looks like it’s Richard English,’ he said.
‘What, a part of him?’
‘Possibly his entire body, although until we exhume him we won’t know for sure. But Ian Armstrong confirms that English broke his neck ten years ago in a skiing accident and had major surgery. I’ve managed to speak to the consultant who performed the operation and he said that what the pathologist found at the autopsy tallies with the procedure he’d done. Armstrong also remembered that English had once broken his leg – he thinks it was the left. Apparently, the pins used to set off metal detectors at the airport.’
She sat back in her chair and exhaled. ‘So it looks as though the MO changed. Nothing new in that, I guess.’
He nodded. It would keep the press busy with endless speculation, once they found out. He could already picture the interviews with various profilers trying to make sense of the killer’s actions. But from their point of view, with so little to go on, there was no point wasting precious time thinking about it. Often it was best just to stick to the facts. ‘We’re trying to track down the lung tissue samples that were taken, so that we can confirm the DNA.’
‘Where’s the body?’
‘In a pauper’s grave in Camberwell New Cemetery. I’ll hold off on an exhumation order until we see if we can find the samples.’
‘What about the body on the south coast?’
‘I spoke to Ramsey and he’s looking into it.’
‘OK, assuming it’s Richard English in the Peckham fire two years ago, why plant his wallet and keys at the Sainsbury’s fire?’
‘My guess is the killer wanted to draw attention to what he’d done. He wanted it known that Richard English was dead and that he’d killed him. Maybe he was disappointed that the fire had been dismissed as an accident. He must’ve really hated English to do what he did to him, to know that English was alive, even if he was drugged, when he started the fire. So maybe by putting the wallet and keys where we’d find them, he’s saying, “I nailed him.”’
‘What’s the connection between English and the others?’
‘Still unclear.’
‘Then this needs to be kept out of the press domain for now, certainly as far as any connection with the Jigsaw murders is concerned. I’ll call Ian Armstrong and explain.’
He nodded. ‘I need to borrow Nick’s car, then I’m off in a minute to see a man called Colin Price who may be able to help. He used to be the manager of one of English’s hotels until he was sacked. When he threatened legal action, he was paid off. It sounds as though English may have wanted to hush it up, for some reason. Since then, Price has been running a hotel near Oxford.’
‘Tell me about Richard English,’ Tartaglia asked.
Colin Price folded his hands primly in front of him on his leather-topped desk. ‘You want the honest truth?’
‘Yes. Warts and all, please.’
‘He was a hateful man. He may have been a successful businessman, but I haven’t got a good word to say about him as a person, even knowing now that he’s dead. There was no kindness, no humanity.’
They were sitting in Price’s tidy, spacious office in the basement of Bletchingdon Manor Hotel, a neo classical mansion surrounded by parkland, close to Blenheim Palace, just over an hour’s drive from Barnes. Price was dressed in a dark suit and tie and looked to be in his early forties. Slim and of medium height, with thinning fair hair, he sat upright behind the desk, as though at an interview, his soft-featured face tense with emotion, small beads of sweat peppering his high forehead.
‘You clearly feel strongly about him. What exactly did he do?’
‘On the surface, it was all very businesslike. He wasn’t violent and he rarely shouted. It was all far subtler than that. If he took against you for some reason, he’d find your weak spot and hound you.’
‘He was a bully?’
Price nodded. ‘Luckily he wasn’t around all the time, but I used to dread his visits. It’s why there was a high turnover of staff. I suspect he was homophobic, although of course he tried to appear the opposite.’
‘What did you do wrong, in his eyes?’
‘He found out I was in a relationship with somebody else who worked at the hotel, one of the sommeliers.’
‘Which hotel was this?’
‘Stoneleigh Park, near Dartmoor. It’s the flagship hotel in the group.’
Tartaglia nodded. He remembered the brochure in Armstrong’s office.
‘The restaurant’s got a star, or at least it did when I was there,’ Price continued. ‘We managed to keep things quiet – it was nobody’s business and I don’t like staff gossiping about my private life. We were always careful to meet outside the hotel but someone spotted us in a pub on our night off. Anyway, it was all around the hotel by the next morning. From then on, things between Richard and me changed. He never mentioned that he knew, but it was obvious. He made things very unpleasant. Luckily, I started to keep a note of things he said and did, and when it got worse, I bought myself a little hidden recorder. I knew he was trying to get rid of me and I didn’t want it to ruin my chances of getting another job. They followed the correct dismissal procedure, of course, but it was all a tissue of lies. When the final warning came, I had already contacted a solicitor. To cut a long story short, I threatened to publicise the notes and recordings I had, as well as publicise some other things I’d seen Richard do. His partner, Ian, sorted things out in the end.’
‘He offered you money to keep quiet?’
‘Yes. Quite a large sum. He also provided me with a reference saying I’d resigned. At least I left with my reputation intact.’
Tartaglia nodded. It explained why Ian Armstrong had been keen to stop McCann from speaking to Colin Price. The incident had been an embarrassment for the company and was not the sort of thing they would like widely known. But perhaps McCann had read a little too much into it. As far as Tartaglia was concerned, Price looked nothing like the description of Chris aka Spike – the name they were now calling him – and wasn’t a likely suspect.
‘Do you have any idea who might want to kill him?’
Price smiled. ‘When I heard he’d disappeared, well . . . But there’s a big difference between wishing someone dead and actually doing something about it. Has he been found?’
‘Possibly. Do you know who this man is?’ Tartaglia pulled out the E-FIT of the man called Spike.
Price studied it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Wish I did. If he had anything to do with getting rid of Richard English, I’d like to buy him a drink.’