The scene of crime was a narrow alley off Southwark Park Road in Bermondsey. It was wedged between two boarded-up shops and crammed with half a dozen large wheelie bins.
Anna and Walker arrived just before six p.m., having driven through the parts of South London that had suffered the most damage at the hands of the rioters. Sweeny and Mortimer had been instructed to go back to HQ and brief the rest of the team on what had happened at the house in Dulwich.
The focus of Anna’s attention now switched from Neville Quinlan and Craig Sullivan to Roy Slater, the man whose wife had an affair with Jacob Rossi’s dad, Mark. She’d been told that DI Benning and DS Prescott were already on their way to his home in Rotherhithe with a couple of uniforms to force their way inside.
‘The body was found two hours ago by a shopkeeper dumping some rubbish in one of the bins,’ said Detective Inspector David Bolt, of Bermondsey CID. ‘The poor sod was stabbed in the neck and beaten about the face and head. We were able to identify him as Roy Slater from the driving licence in his wallet, which was lying on the ground next to him. His name was flagged up as soon as I called it in and I was told that he was a suspect in the Jacob Rossi investigation. So I made sure that your people were informed straight away.’
Bolt had been told they were on their way and had been waiting at the mouth of the alley to greet them. He was a large man in a crumpled grey suit and he had a belly that flopped over his belt. He and his colleagues had already sealed off the scene and begun talking to people living and working nearby.
‘The body is still in situ because we’re waiting for forensics and the pathologist to get here,’ Bolt said. ‘But I’ve been told we’re likely to have a long wait because of all the aggro that’s going on elsewhere. I just hope we can clear off from here before it gets dark and the rioters come back, as I expect they will.’
‘The officer you spoke to at our office told me that you suspect Mr Slater was killed by a bunch of them,’ Anna said.
Bolt nodded. ‘That’s correct. It was mayhem here late on Friday afternoon and well into the evening. A mob about a hundred strong stormed along Southwark Park Road smashing their way into shops, starting fires, and mugging people they didn’t like the look of. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume Mr Slater was one of those people. From the look of the body, I think it’s fair to say that it’s been here since then. But because of the disturbances many of the shops around here were closed for business yesterday so these bins didn’t get used much, if at all.’
Anna looked along the alley, which ran for about thirty yards before arriving at a brick wall.
‘You can tell us what else we need to know while we take a look for ourselves,’ she said.
Bolt raised the crime scene tape and Anna and Walker ducked under it.
‘As you can see we’ve pulled the last bin on the right away from the wall,’ Bolt said. ‘The body was stuffed behind it and was barely visible.’
Roy Slater was lying on his back. His eyes were closed but his mouth was open. He was wearing a black quilted jacket and denim jeans.
The stab wound was on the right side of his neck and the blood that had spilled from it had left a big stain on the ground. His face was badly bruised and there was a nasty gash in the centre of his forehead.
‘Are there any wounds that we can’t see?’ Walker asked.
Bolt shook his head. ‘We lifted him off the ground slightly so that we could have a look at his back, but it seems he was stabbed only the once in the neck, and probably died pretty quickly.’
Anna hunkered down next to the body, careful not to disturb anything around it. She was in no doubt that his was the face she had seen in the photo on the evidence board that morning.
‘So it appears that Mr Slater was the victim of a random act of violence,’ she said. ‘That would mean his death was not linked to Jacob Rossi’s abduction.’
‘But it doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved,’ Walker said.
Anna stood back up and asked Bolt if Slater’s pockets had been searched.
He nodded. ‘We found a set of car keys and a couple of betting slips that were issued on Friday by a bookies’ just down the road from here. I reckon he must have been attacked shortly after leaving there. He’d placed four bets and laid out a total of two hundred pounds on horses that were running yesterday. There was no cash in his wallet so I’m guessing that the guys who did this made off with it. There were no credit cards either.’
‘We know that his Visa card has been used since then on contactless machines, but only up to thirty quid a time,’ Anna said. ‘If you access the details you might be able to track down whoever has it.’
‘We’ll get straight onto that,’ Bolt said.
‘Have you found his mobile phone?’ Anna asked.
‘Not yet. It wasn’t in his pockets and it’s not in the alley. It could be in one of the bins. We’ll go through them once forensics are here.’
‘Now what about his car?’ Anna said. ‘Do you know where it is?’
‘We do. He had a Renault key ring, so I got one of the uniforms to have a look around and he spotted it in a small car park behind the shops. We’ve had a look inside and didn’t see anything suspicious.’
‘We’ll need to take a look ourselves,’ Anna said. ‘And I’ll want forensics to examine it as well.’
They then walked back to the pavement and Anna felt a shivering unease when she saw that a group of youths had gathered on the other side of the road. They were shouting and making abusive gestures at the uniforms who were standing around the entrance to the alley and the two marked patrol cars at the kerb.
‘That’s all we need,’ Bolt said. ‘I guarantee there’ll be a lot more of them soon and they’ll start taking liberties.’
‘You need to request more support,’ Anna told him. ‘I’ll do the same from my end and stress that we need to protect the crime scene.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Bolt said.
‘Have you sussed out CCTV?’ Walker asked him. ‘There must be plenty of cameras around here.’
‘It’s in hand,’ Bolt said. ‘If we get a result I’ll let you know, but there’s a big backlog of tapes from all over the city that haven’t yet been viewed.’
Bolt then asked Anna why Slater had been in the frame for the Jacob Rossi abduction.
‘His wife had an affair with Jacob’s father,’ she explained. ‘He was then paid not to go public with it, but he had a gambling addiction and not long ago he went back to Rossi to ask for more money and was turned away. So we were working on the basis that he could have taken Jacob out of revenge or to squeeze more money out of the dad.’
‘I get the picture,’ Bolt said. ‘Have you guys been to his house?’
‘We went there last night,’ Anna said. ‘When there was no answer, we applied for a warrant that we won’t need any more. MIT officers are on their way there now. I’ll get them to tell you what they find. We will obviously have to liaise closely on this one. If we rule Slater out as a suspect in the Rossi case we’ll step back and leave it to you.’
Anna then got Bolt to take them to Slater’s car, a light blue Renault Clio. She donned rubber gloves to check inside the boot and glove compartment, hoping to find something that would link its owner to Jacob Rossi or The Falconer’s Arms pub in Camberwell. But there was nothing.
After that she saw no point in hanging around.
‘We’ll head back to Wandsworth,’ she said to Bolt. ‘Please call me later with an update. Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can to get you more support down here just in case things turn ugly.’