‘Drop me here,’ Tartaglia said to Minderedes, as they turned the corner of Shepherd’s Bush Road into Brook Green. It was just past seven in the morning. The sky was dark and heavy with cloud, a light drizzle falling. He had been cooped up in overheated, airless rooms all night and he wanted to walk the last few blocks to his flat in order to clear his head. He was looking forward to a shower and maybe a quick nap before the questioning of Simpson resumed later that morning. He hated all-night sessions but it had been worth it.
He had arrived at Sam Donovan’s house to find her alive and Zaleski dead. Donovan had been taken to Hammersmith Police station, along with a man called Peter Ward who had also been at the house, and who claimed that Zaleski had murdered his uncle out in Thailand. Ward was an officer in the Parachute Regiment, lately returned from Afghanistan. He had an unblemished military record, according to his direct superior, who had been woken up in the middle of the night to confirm his story. Ward described how his mother, his uncle’s much older half-sister, had become worried when she had failed to speak to her brother on his birthday, something which she had done every year. When she tried to contact him via email, the replies had been uncharacteristic and had set off alarm bells, but the local Thai police had said there was nothing amiss. They had sent somebody over to Kit’s house and been told that Kit had gone away. They didn’t seem to want to inquire further. Next thing Ward and his mother heard, the shutters in the house in Bedford Gardens were open and lights were on in the house, as confirmed by one of the next-door neighbours who used to keep an eye on the place when Kit was away. When they had tried ringing the house, a strange man had answered, saying that Kit was still out in Thailand. Ward had then watched the house on and off for a couple of days and had seen a man coming and going, and sleeping in his Uncle Kit’s bedroom at the front, but there was no sign of his uncle. Deciding to find out more, he had moved in and shared Kit’s house with Zaleski for a few days, while keeping him under surveillance with the help of some friends. He had given the police a log of some of Adam Zaleski’s movements over that time, which included a visit to his former home in Ealing. There, just a year before, he had attempted to murder Sam Donovan, before setting fire to the house and disappearing abroad, his last recorded whereabouts being on a plane out of Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport bound for Indonesia. Tartaglia had also nearly died in that fire at Zaleski’s house and he wondered what Zaleski had felt as he sat, apparently for nearly three quarters of an hour, in Kit’s car outside the burnt and boarded-up shell of the home where he had lived for almost all his life.
The little they had managed to piece together previously of Adam Zaleski’s background revealed that he was the child of a young woman of Polish descent who had committed suicide shortly after he had been born. He had been taken in by elderly grandparents and there was anecdotal evidence of Zaleski having suffered physical abuse, both at home and at the Catholic school where he had been sent. By all accounts he had hated his grandparents, and it seemed likely that he had murdered at least one, if not both, of them in that house, as well as others too. Tartaglia couldn’t begin to imagine what memories the house must have conjured up for Zaleski, as he sat in the fading light gazing at what was left of it. But he had no interest in whether it was nurture or nature that had shaped Zaleski into a predatory and cold-blooded killer. Endless analysis of a killer’s background and childhood often missed the point: some people simply enjoyed killing.
What exactly had happened at the Donovans’ house was still unclear, but he had managed to speak briefly to Sam before she was taken away to be interviewed formally by others elsewhere in the building. He was struck by how normal she appeared, all things considered, and he felt deeply relieved. Rather than scar her, the horrifying events leading up to Zaleski’s death seemed to have had a cathartic effect. The dark cloud that had hung over her had lifted. Although exhausted, she seemed more positive than he had seen her in a long while, much more like her old self. She had actually smiled at him and allowed him to put his arms around her. Speaking to Steele later, the general view was that in the circumstances, Donovan had used reasonable force to defend herself and was unlikely to be charged.
Rounding the corner into his street, he saw the familiar white TR6 parked half up on the pavement immediately outside his house. His first instinct was to turn away, but it would just be putting off the inevitable. He jogged up to the car and peered in. The windows were misted with condensation but he could just make out the shape of Melinda fully reclined in the driver’s seat, apparently asleep. He rapped on the glass and saw her start. Peering dazedly up at him, she cranked down the window.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
Melinda yawned. ‘You woke me.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘You know why. We need to talk.’ She stretched her eyes open wide, blinked a couple of times, then rolled the window up again. Gathering her things together, she climbed stiffly out of the car and he held out his hand to steady her. She wasn’t dressed for the cold and she shivered, pulling her short leather jacket tightly around herself as she locked the car.
‘I’ve been here for bloody hours,’ she said plaintively, licking her finger and rubbing away smudges of mascara from under her eyes.
‘You should get yourself a transit.’
‘Ha, ha. Why wouldn’t you return my calls?’
‘I’ve been a bit busy.’
‘I thought we had a deal. What’s been going on?’
How much should he tell her, he wondered, as he turned and walked away towards the front door.
She followed him inside, into his flat.
‘Sit there,’ he said, pointing to the sofa. ‘I’ll make us some coffee and then we can talk.’
Melinda sank down in the middle of it, proceeding to unzip her ankle boots and rub her feet. He went over to the player and selected some music, then walked down the corridor to the kitchen. He packed some coffee into a pot, filled it with water, and put it on the stove, replaying in his mind the events of the night as he worked out which parts he should tell her and which to edit out. There would be an official briefing later, but he had no problem giving her a lead. If it hadn’t been for her, they might still be scrabbling around in the dark.
The fire at the house in Castelnau had been put out quite quickly. The main structure of the building appeared relatively undamaged by the explosion, which had been set off in a dustbin just outside the back door, more as a diversion than anything else. A thorough search revealed a maze of passages and small, windowless coal cellars leading from the garage to the basement of the house. An old-fashioned wooden workbench was pushed up against a wall in one of the cellars and although it had been scrubbed clean, the surface tested positive for blood, which they assumed was human. Beside it, stowed in a small tool chest, were a series of very sharp knives, an electric saw, a hacksaw with a serrated blade, and a couple of pairs of meat shears, along with several long upholstery-style needles and butcher’s twine. In a small fridge they found an opened bag of Transglutaminase – known as TG, or meat glue, in the catering trade – used to bond flesh together. There were more bags in the two freezer chests alongside, which also contained a selection of human body parts, all neatly dated, vacuum packed and labelled: Jane. Jake. John. Marek. The body parts would be subject to a series of post-mortems which, in the absence of a full and detailed confession from Simpson, might at least offer some idea of how they had died. DNA testing was also expected to confirm that they matched the body parts found in the Sainsbury’s and Aldford fires. They would try to trace Nowak’s family in Poland for DNA confirmation. According to Chantal, she had only started coming to the house a few months before and claimed not to know anything about what Simpson had kept locked up in the garage. She looked so genuinely horrified when Minderedes told her, that Tartaglia decided to believe her.
He generally avoided speculating about why a killer behaved in a particular way. Sometimes their actions were designed to play games with the police and media and also to shock. It was often just a smokescreen. But he didn’t feel this was true of Simpson. His behaviour shed some genuine light on his personality. In the absence of any insight yet from Simpson himself, it was all they had. If he had been asked to characterise Simpson, he would have described him as angry, vengeful and damaged, yet his actions spoke of an orderly, practical mind. In spite of everything that had happened to him, Simpson had sobered up and reinvented himself after coming out of jail. Maybe the regeneration wouldn’t have been complete without getting even with English. One thing then led to another. Perhaps killing English had failed to satisfy him. Or maybe the opposite was true: perhaps it had given him a taste for revenge, a desire to put his chaotic world back into some sort of order. However much emotion had played a part in the murder of Richard English, the planning and execution of Jake Finnigan’s murder showed all the cold, calculating traits of a psychopath.
Why Simpson had dismembered Jane Waterman’s body when she had been so kind to him, Tartaglia couldn’t fathom. But maybe as far as Simpson was concerned, the answer was purely practical. She was dead, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was used to butchering the carcases of dead animals during his daily working routine and it was just a way of dealing with the awkward question of what to do with her body so that he could remain undisturbed in the security of the house. That had been his overwhelming priority. It then made sense to do the same with the bodies of John Smart, Marek Nowak and Jake Finnigan. Why Simpson had chosen to sew the body parts together and set fire to them in a public way could only be guessed at. Was he seeking some sort of recognition for what he had done? Why else leave Richard English’s wallet at the scene of the Sainsbury’s fire? English’s murder would never have been discovered without it. Perhaps Simpson was just thumbing his nose at the authorities. Or, in mixing the parts up together, he was trying to depersonalise the victims and render them anonymous. In any event, it was about power and taking control, something that had been badly lacking in Simpson’s own life. He thought of what Melinda had said. Like Frankenstein, the composite bodies that Simpson set on fire had become his creations. God-like, he could give and he could take away. Remembering the way the boy had described him at the Aldford fire, he had probably taken pleasure watching them go up so publically in smoke.
They would be running a full background check on him in the morning, but Tartaglia was sure that Simpson must have been in care at some point in the Aldford area and had attended the annual Guy Fawkes Night celebrations. Only somebody with local knowledge could have done what he did. However, the choice of the Sainsbury’s car park location had probably been one of practicality rather than anything else. The size of the car park was the important factor, as well as the relative lack of security. It was a good twenty minutes from Choumert Road, as well as from the flat that Simpson had shared with his family when he first came out of prison. The Internet would have given him more than enough information to make his choice, followed by a quick recce in person. He wondered, as Melinda had suggested, whether Simpson had planned another two fires, which would have used up the remaining body parts in the freezers. Would he have stopped at that point? Would it have been enough? Somehow, he doubted it.
Tartaglia smelt coffee burning and saw that it had boiled over. He grabbed a cloth, took the pot off the stove and poured out two small espresso cups. There was no milk in the fridge, so Melinda would have to have it black. Back in the sitting room, the Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash version of ‘Girl from the North Country’ was playing. Melinda had taken off her jacket and was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sofa in a half-lotus position. ‘I love this song,’ she said, looking a little more alert than before.
‘Me too.’ He handed her a cup and sat down opposite with his.
‘If you had to think of one song that sums you up, what would it be?’
‘I don’t know.’ He was not in the mood to play games.
‘I’d say it’s ‘Free Bird’. You know, Lynard Skynyrd.’
He said nothing, letting the music wash over him. ‘Free Bird’. One of the great lead guitar solos. He didn’t remember all of the lyrics but he got the gist. A man who wanted to be free, who wouldn’t change. What was wrong with that? And as for her, she was hardly one to talk about a failure to commit, if that’s what she was getting at. She was like a butterfly. But she didn’t seem to be complaining.
She smiled contentedly. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’
‘Thanks.’
After a moment she said, ‘You know, I’ve decided to call you the Jigsaw Man.’
‘What?’
‘Think about it. It’s what you do for a living, piecing together stuff. Don’t you like it? I was thinking of doing a nice little profile on you.’
He sipped his coffee, too tired to respond. In her world everything, however complex or subtle or extraordinary, had to be reduced to a song or a tag. Like ‘The Jigsaw Killer’. It sensationalised Dave Simpson but it didn’t do him justice, let alone capture the abuse and harm that had driven him to coldblooded murder. He drained his cup. Maybe a detective was nothing better than a robotic Jigsaw Man, a puzzle solver, but he begged to differ. When he was feeling more awake, he might take it up with her.
‘We make a good team, you and I,’ she said, raising her cup.
He shook his head. ‘We are not a team. Don’t go getting any ideas.’
‘Why not? I like to aim high. It always gets me places. Now give me the damn scoop.’
Tartaglia couldn’t help laughing. ‘Of course, that’s all you’re really interested in.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What else is there?’
He was just wondering if he should take her at her word when the doorbell rang.
‘I hope that’s not another journalist,’ she said sharply.
‘Unlikely.’
‘Well, tell them to go away. You’re busy with me.’
Having no idea who it could be at that hour, but half grateful for the interruption, he got up and went outside to the front door. He opened it to find Sam Donovan looking up at him from the path.
‘Sam . . .’ He fought back a yawn, generated as much by confusion as tiredness. She hadn’t been far from his thoughts all night and delighted though he was to see her again so soon, words failed him. His first instinct was to go to her, put his arms around her and hold her close, as he had done a few hours earlier in the small, dingy interview room in Hammersmith Police station. Not caring who might see them, he had hugged her tight to his chest and closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of her, thinking how much she meant to him and how much he had missed her. He had so nearly lost her. The awkwardness between them had melted away momentarily and he had thought back again to the time, not so long ago, when Zaleski had tried, and nearly succeeded, to kill them both. Their relationship had been simpler and easier then. If only . . . But there was no point dwelling on the past, the missed opportunities, the mistakes, or longing for that land of lost content. Aware again of the gulf that separated them, he stayed where he was.
‘I know it’s early,’ she said. ‘But I hoped you might be awake.’
‘I’ve just got in.’ He scanned her pale face with concern. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Better than I’ve been for a long while, in fact.
She was still dressed in the same clothes she had been wearing several hours before in the police station and it dawned on him that she, too, hadn’t been to bed yet.
‘Come in. You must be shattered. I’ll make you some coffee, although I’m afraid there’s no milk.’ What she would think of Melinda being in the flat was neither here nor there, he decided. He was past feeling embarrassed about such things and he had never held himself out to be a saint. As for Melinda, things with her would just have to wait until later.
‘That would be nice, but there’s something I need to say first.’ Leaning against the porch, she looked up at him intently. ‘I owe you an apology, Mark.’
‘An apology? What for?’
‘Before Claire died, when we last saw each other back in the summer . . . I said some things. I just wanted to tell you I didn’t really mean them.’
He remembered their conversation in the bar that night and the bitterness of her words. They had hurt him more than he cared to admit, but with the benefit of hindsight he knew they had also been fair. ‘Well, thank you, but it’s OK. Really. I deserved it all.’
She shook her head. ‘No. I was just angry and I was being stupid. There was a lot going on and I wasn’t myself. I’ve had time to think and I just wanted to say I’m sorry. That’s all.’
He shrugged. ‘You don’t need to, but thanks.’
‘And thank you also for putting up with me, having me to stay . . .’
‘It’s what friends are for,’ he interrupted, feeling awkward. He wished he could articulate it better. If only he didn’t feel so tired. There was a lot he, too, wanted to say, but where to start? He hadn’t been a particularly good friend. There was so much more he could have done. She had trusted him, she had tried to tell him what she knew about Zaleski. If only he had listened to her and taken her seriously, things might have been different . . . At least she was safe.
‘Are you coming in?’ he asked, sensing there was more she wanted to say and wondering what other of his inadequacies would be touched on.
‘Yes. I’d like to. The thing is, I’ve got a favour to ask. And please feel free to say no, if it’s not convenient. As you know, my house is a crime scene now and I’ve been kicked out again. I could go to a hotel, but . . .’
Relief flooded him and he smiled. ‘Of course you can stay. As long as you like. But let’s go inside, it’s freezing out here.’ He put his arm around her.
‘Mark, are you coming?’ Melinda called out in the background. ‘What’s going on out there?’
Donovan hesitated. ‘Sorry. Didn’t know you had company. I’ll come back later.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s fine. Melinda’s an old friend. I only got home ten minutes ago and I’m happy to welcome all sorts of waifs and strays at this hour. It’s great to have you back and I really mean that. Although this time, you can take the sofa.’
She laughed as he ushered her inside and the sound warmed his heart. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘That’s the least I can do.’