DELAHAYE READ AGAIN THE INITIAL Missing Person report: Mickey was last seen behind Deelands Hall at 8.30 p.m., half an hour before the disco ended. His friends had told the police that Mickey had been his usual self, unworried by anything or anybody. Then he’d left, gone somewhere on his bike without telling anyone. He wasn’t seen alive again.
WDC Olivia Gibson approached his desk with her notebook in her hand. She was a thorough and resourceful detective who always managed to find out information that eluded other officers, and he suspected it was because her previous job had been an investigator for a lost-heir-and-inheritance solicitor. The forensic analysis of the fibres found under Mickey’s fingernails verified they’d been clawed from a purple carpet, and Gibson was assigned the exhaustive task of finding possible matches to it. ‘Skip, about the purple fibres – I’ve been out and about in the local areas and in the city centre, visiting flooring stores and none of them has ever sold a carpet that colour . . .’
Delahaye sighed but Gibson hadn’t finished.
‘I have a friend in West Mercia Constabulary who owed me a favour and she asked around carpet shops in Bromsgrove. One of them had fitted this colour carpet in a fashion boutique in 1972 but when she visited the shop, it had been refurbished and was now a café. The manager said they’d chucked the carpet in a skip . . .’
‘So, it’s lost to landfill,’ Delahaye said, disappointed.
Gibson shrugged. ‘People pinch stuff from skips especially if it’s in good nick. It could have been cut down into mats or the whole roll could have been recycled as a carpet.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Sorry it’s useless info but you had to know, Skip.’
‘Thank you, Olivia,’ said Delahaye. He checked his watch and caught Lines’ eye – it was time to talk to Mickey’s closest friend, Dan Laws.
* * *
Mickey’s older brother, Joe, had told Lines that he didn’t know if Mickey had had a den, but Dan Laws informed Delahaye that, until the summer holidays of last year, they’d hung out in one of the lock-ups beside Quarry House block of flats.
‘I think he had another hang-out but I don’t know where,’ said a tearful Dan. ‘He’d started taking long walks by himself and when I asked him where he was going, he’d say, “somewhere else”.’ The boy shrugged. ‘If I tried to follow him, Mickey would double-back home or I’d lose him in the gulleys.’
‘Gulleys?’ Delahaye repeated.
‘The little passageways between back gardens,’ said Dan. ‘He said he wanted to be on his own more. I don’t know why. But he was getting matey with a couple of the older kids like Karl Jones.’
* * *
Lines intercepted Karl Jones on his way to school, which plainly irritated the boy. Karl was tall, blond and good-looking, wearing an expensive pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and an air of superiority. He didn’t know anything about Mickey’s ‘other’ hang-out because he didn’t hang out with Mickey. ‘I talked to him when he talked to me but that’s about it,’ Karl said to Lines. ‘We weren’t, like, mates.’ He sighed as if the interrogation was just too much. ‘Can I go now?’
When Lines returned to the car, Delahaye smiled at his colleague’s scowling face. ‘How was your little chat with the Aryan Dream?’
‘Moody little shit,’ Lines muttered.
They drove up Cock Hill Lane and turned off at The Dowries, a short road of maisonettes and small semi-detached houses dominated by the apartment block. The wind whistled around the tall building as the two men exited the car and walked towards the cache of battered garages at its rear.
‘Dan said third one along?’ asked Lines.
Delahaye nodded. They faced the garage then entered its dingy interior. There were a couple of deck chairs, an old footstool, numerous cigarette butts as well as sweet wrappers and pop bottles.
‘There’s nothing here but rubbish,’ said Lines, kicking a can into a dusty corner.
‘Let’s visit Mr Aster,’ said Delahaye.
As with such cases, when it was acknowledged that the child victim hadn’t run away but might have been abducted, the immediate suspects after the family were those people living within the county with criminal records pertaining to paedophilia – The Nonce Network as DC Lines charmingly referred to them. They had to be questioned about their whereabouts at the time of Mickey’s disappearance. Detective Constable Kilborn had interviewed Bob Aster at the station after Mickey’s disappearance during initial inquiries. According to DC Kilborn, Aster was very polite but aloof yet his alibi had appeared sound. His neighbours had no complaints about him because he kept ‘himself to himself’. Six-foot tall, grey-haired and blue-eyed, Aster had once been a handsome man, but had been disfigured in an altercation while in prison. After a decade in prison, he’d lived the last four years in a secluded bungalow near the Lickeys. When local people initially discovered his address, his home had been vandalised and he’d been threatened. Because he went out in the daytime to go shopping once a week and went out on Friday nights to buy lager and cigarettes from the Village off-licence, he was mostly left alone except for the occasional altercation with local men when they were drunk. He also had a track record for occasionally living rough in squats or camping out in the more rural areas when he found the attention unbearable. He told Kilborn that he’d refused to move out of the area because he was ‘too old to keep running’. He was on the dole but often worked as an odd-job man, and was an experienced gardener.
Uniform had searched around the house and property and found no evidence connecting him to Mickey Grant. Kilborn had written a concise report but Delahaye had noticed a slight inconsistency in the neighbours’ statements. Both witnesses pointed out that Aster’s routine of going to the Village off-licence at the same time every Friday night never changed. Aster’s neighbour to the right, however, a Mrs Ellen Cutter, had noted a different time Aster had returned home from that of his left-side neighbour, a Mr Tim Hodder.
‘Mr Hodder had stated that Aster had left his house at his usual time on a Friday night, about seven forty-five then had returned “around his usual time” which was habitually eight thirty. Yet Mrs Cutter reported that Aster arrived home “a bit later than usual, about nine thirty or so”,’ said Delahaye to Lines as they drove to Aster’s address. ‘His house is only a mile and a half away from Deelands Hall. A physically fit man like Aster could make the walk there if his intention that evening was to go that part of Rubery, and not the off-licence.’
‘True,’ said Lines. ‘However, it stretches logic that Aster could make it to Rubery, kidnap and murder a teenage boy, dump him somewhere that wasn’t where he was found, then race back home as if nothing had happened,’
‘That’s more than an hour’s work, although if he’d had an accomplice with a vehicle . . .’ said Delahaye.
‘Not impossible,’ agreed Lines. ‘If he’s given a lift most of the way home and walks the rest then he’d be a little late but not enough to concern the neighbours.’
‘The trouble is still the complete lack of witnesses,’ said Delahaye. ‘He’d be recognised. Aster’s pretty distinctive to look at anyway without his vile reputation.’
‘His track record is befriending boys then luring them back to his home or an abandoned building to be assaulted,’ said Lines. ‘Snatching from the street isn’t his MO.’
‘It might be a recent development if he’s recently acquired an accomplice with a car,’ said Delahaye.
‘Or he’s the accomplice snatching a lad for someone else,’ said Lines, a theory that Delahaye loathed to even contemplate. ‘Or he has his own vehicle which he is driving illegally. Aster hasn’t had a driving licence since his arrest in 1967.’
They were driving along roads with detached bungalows with long front gardens, and surrounded by trees.
‘Aster had motive to target Mickey,’ said Lines. ‘Mickey spat at him. I want to hurt people who spit at me.’
‘But kill them?’ Delahye asked.
Lines shrugged. ‘Those discrepancies in the times weren’t viewed as suspicious until those bites were found on Mickey.’
‘Yes, but dental casts taken of the bites haven’t matched any dental practice records yet. It doesn’t help advanced decomposition distorted the imprints and made it difficult for accurate comparisons,’ said Delahaye. ‘Those bite marks are interesting because Bob Aster had bitten his victims during the sexual assaults. It was part of his MO and unfortunately there were no photographs taken of these wounds. Aster has never visited a dentist because he’s never established the habit, having been born before the founding of the NHS and learned to live without dental care, free or not.’
‘He could have gone to see a dentist in prison,’ said Lines.
‘According to WDC Gibson, who checked for that very detail, he never did because he apparently never had to. We’re here.’
Aster’s bungalow was secluded from the main road. The neighbours either side were close but far enough apart to almost mind each other’s business. The property appeared well maintained to Delahaye as he and Lines approached the low-slung building.
‘If he’s in, be nice,’ Delahaye said to Lines.
Lines tut-tutted. ‘I’m always nice, Sarge.’
In Delahaye’s experience cordiality always worked better than disdain and sarcasm – especially with paedophiles. DCI Brookes had wanted to bring Aster to the station again for questioning but DI Perrin suggested that DS Delahaye go to the man’s home as a ‘normal door-to-door’ because he’s more likely to answer questions with more than just ‘no comment’.
Delahaye clattered the letter box and stood back. There was no boundary wall or fence separating the front and the rear of the property so Lines checked along the side passage in case Aster made a run for it through the back garden.
Bob Aster answered the front door. He was, even in his early sixties, powerfully built. His clothes were well worn but clean and his hair was clipped short. One side of his head was misshapen – his left brow bone was bulbous and slumped over his eye, reminding Delahaye of Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in the old The Hunchback of Notre Dame film. Aster had been attacked by another prison inmate wielding a hammer but the surgeons had managed to save his sight, and the sagging eye glittered as much as the other in the undamaged half of his face. He didn’t look too perturbed by their presence on his doorstep.
‘Good morning, Mr Aster,’ said Delahaye as he and Lines showed him their warrant cards. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Delahaye and this is Detective Constable Lines.’
Aster crossed his arms. ‘Good morning.’
‘Just routine inquiries,’ said Lines.
Aster looked him over speculatively. ‘Aren’t they always?’
‘We just wanted—’ Delahaye began but Aster cut him short.
‘You just wanted to have a word with Bob the Nonce because he’s the only suspect you have even though he’s got an alibi?’ Aster drawled. ‘I answered police questions at the station when the boy went missing.’
‘There are two reasons why we want to speak to you,’ said Delahaye. Aster was obviously not going to invite them in for a cup of tea. ‘The first is that there are time discrepancies in your neighbours’ accounts of your whereabouts the night Mickey Grant went missing.’
Aster crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. He regarded the detectives warily.
‘Mr Hodder said you arrived home from your weekly visit to the Village off-licence around your usual time of eight thirty on a Friday night but Mrs Cutter stated that you arrived home about a full hour later than that. Can you account for what you were doing during that time, Mr Aster?’
‘It’s only an hour,’ said Aster.
‘A lot can happen in an hour, Mr Aster,’ said Lines.
‘It can,’ said Aster. His crystalline gaze flickered from Lines’s mouth to crotch then back again, a ploy to rile the young policeman, and Delahaye was relieved his colleague didn’t rise to the bait. ‘But it doesn’t matter what I say, does it?’
‘Can you account for that hour, Mr Aster?’ asked Delahaye patiently. ‘If so we can possibly dismiss you from our inquiries.’
Aster sighed, rolled his eyes. ‘I was late back because I had to hide in the alley next to the outdoor while waiting for a bloke called Alan Shelton and a couple of his mates to leave the shop before I went in. They’ve roughed me up a few times before. They were in there a while, chatting to the manager, while I was next to the bins. It’s Friday night and it can get busy, too busy if you’re me.’
‘Have you ever fought back?’ asked Lines.
Aster tut-tutted. ‘If I do then I go back to prison, DC Lines.’ He pointed to his disfigurement. ‘And I don’t fancy it.’
‘Can anyone verify you doing this?’ asked Delahaye.
‘Yes, the outdoor manager, Cal Mulligan. He commented on my tardiness, actually. You can ask him.’
‘Mickey spat at you once, didn’t he, Mr Aster?’ said Lines.
‘I’m used to it,’ said Aster. ‘I wouldn’t murder anyone because they spat at me, Detective Sergeant. I’d be a very busy bee if I killed every spitter.’
Delahaye was aware of Aster’s gaze on him as he wrote everything down in his notebook.
‘You said there were two reasons why you were here, Detective Sergeant?’ Aster’s tone had become subtly smug and, when Delahaye looked up from his notepad, he saw it in his expression too.
‘Mickey Grant was your “type”, wasn’t he? Blond and athletic. Early teens.’ Delahaye kept his voice kind but the smugness had disappeared from Aster’s face. ‘During the post-mortem, human bite marks were found on Mickey Grant’s body, Mr Aster. And biting was part of your original MO, was it not?’
Aster had blushed from neck to hairline. ‘Bloody hell, I had nothing to do with that boy’s murder . . . ’
‘No new accomplice then? With a vehicle of some kind?’ asked Delahaye. His straightforward questions visibly rattled Aster.
‘I’ve never . . . I would never . . . ’ Aster blustered and he couldn’t make eye contact with either detective.
‘Do you know anyone with a similar MO perhaps? Heard of someone with a penchant for such . . . behaviour?’ Delahaye snapped his notebook shut. ‘Perhaps while in prison? Or members of your old peer group?’
‘No. Er . . . Look . . . I don’t have any contact with anyone like that anymore . . .’ Aster was withdrawing into the house.
‘All right Mr Aster, such things have to be asked,’ said Delahaye. Though statistically most paedophiles were loners, Aster had historical connections to a particularly vile paedophile ring in the South-East, supplying them with pornographic images of his young victims.
‘Would it be possible for you to attend an appointment with a forensic dentist to take a cast of your teeth so we can eliminate you from our investigation once and for all?’
‘Er . . . yes,’ said Aster reluctantly. ‘When . . . ?’
‘We’ll sort it out for you, Mr Aster,’ said Lines. ‘Do you have a telephone?’
‘No, but Mrs Cutter next door does,’ said Aster, retreating into the hall.
Delahaye pulled one of his contact cards from his jacket and handed it to Aster who took it gingerly at arm’s length. ‘Call me if there’s anything you want to share, Mr Aster. We’ll let you know about the dental appointment. Thank you very much for—’
The door slammed shut on them.
‘What do we think?’ Delahaye asked Lines on the way back to the car.
‘He’s up to something,’ said Lines. ‘But pervs always are.’