AS HE DROVE to Llanelli, DC Kevin Wallace dreamt of his promotion following his contribution to this case. He was in great spirits when he arrived at the B & Q store, but his hopes were soon dashed when the store manager said:
‘I’m sorry if you’ve had a wasted journey.’
After this jolt of disappointment, Kevin listened with growing impatience while the manager explained about the store policy of employing staff with special needs, and it was unlikely that Mr Edwards would remember who he sold the wrecking bar to. Yes, he had a great memory for every character and scene in every Harry Potter film, but as for remembering information such as Wallace wanted….
To his disappointment, this was confirmed when the young detective visited Gareth Edwards at his home. The young man could provide no information, had no clue what a wrecking bar looked like, and was only intent on barcode scanning and the operation of the sale itself.
As he headed back to Swansea, he cursed his luck.
After attending two post mortems, Lambert couldn’t face lunch. It wasn’t so much the dissection that was nauseating but the lingering smell that left an indelible stain on the memory. With a stomach that grumbled loudly, he drove quickly from Cardiff to Bridgend, parked outside the Science Support Building, which was all part of the same complex at Bridgend Police HQ, and phoned the incident room to see if there were any developments. He stopped himself from swearing when he received the news of Mayfield’s escape, followed by a request from Marden to visit him in his office once he had met with forensics.
‘I’m not happy about this situation with Mayfield,’ was Marden’s opening line when at last Lambert entered his office.
Lambert shrugged and affected a mystified expression. ‘Neither am I.’
‘Then why did you let him go?’
‘We had nothing to charge him with.’
Marden made a snorting sound in the back of his throat. ‘He was a convicted paedophile, Harry, who lied to you when questioned. And now we have a helicopter search going on because his boat’s gone.’
‘Yes, that was bad luck about the patrol car being called to another incident.’
Marden’s face reddened. ‘You’re missing the point, Harry. If you hadn’t let the bastard go, this might never have happened.’
‘True.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’
Lambert couldn’t resist adding, ‘Well, there’s no point shutting the stable door, as they say.’
Marden’s voice had an icy edge to it. ‘I can’t believe you let this man go before you heard what forensics and the pathologist had to say.’
‘We had no reason to hold him, sir. With all due respect, what would you have charged him with?’
Marden gave Lambert an acid look and chose to ignore the question. ‘I find it difficult to believe that someone of your experience and record let a suspect go. Were you distracted by the other murder in Carmarthen? Is that what it was? You took your eye off the ball?’
‘Far from it, sir. The reason Mayfield lied to us was because of his past, and because he was scared. He knows he could become the killer’s next victim. He had absolutely no motive for killing his friend Titmus or the man in Carmarthen. The reason Mayfield’s scarpered is because he fears for his life. But that boat has to moor at some other port or seaside town. He won’t have gone far in that thing.’
‘Presumably this Mayfield knows a lot more than you got out of him during your questioning.’
Lambert hesitated. Should he tell him about Thorne being on a missing persons list since 1991? He decided against it, as that would only give the chief super fuel for his argument about hanging on to Mayfield. Lambert chose to change the subject instead, and had just started telling him about McNeil and the vigilante group when the phone rang. Marden picked it up hurriedly, barked his surname, and then listened intently, his face a picture of troubled management. He sighed deeply and ended the call.
‘That was the ACC. The chief constable wants a thorough briefing. This has become a major headache. The press are going berserk on this one, and it’s thrown up all kinds of issues. It’s fast becoming political.’
‘I know,’ Lambert said. ‘It’ll be a fight between freedom of the press and the civil liberties of our poor sex offenders.’
Ignoring the comment, Marden crossed to the door. ‘Let me know, as soon as you can, what we need to tell the press.’
As he was being ushered out of the office, Lambert said, ‘We know the store where one of the murder weapons came from. DC Wallace went over to interview the bloke on the checkout who sold it. And if he can’t ID him, we may need to issue press details in case there’s someone else in the queue who can.’
Marden, who was taller than Lambert, peered down at him like a headteacher staring at a troublesome boy. ‘I hope for your sake, if you do get an ID, he doesn’t bear any resemblance to this Mayfield.’
‘I think someone with white wavy hair and a pitch-black moustache would be rather noticeable. No, it won’t be him. I guarantee it.’
‘We’ll see,’ Marden said then turned and headed off down the corridor.
Lambert glanced at his watch. It was time to get back to the incident room at Cockett, and he wanted to view the TV documentary which Ellis had managed to get downloaded on to their system from the producer of Green Valley Productions.
As he walked along the corridor, in the opposite direction from the chief superintendent, he thought about the way Marden had trusted him with the case, even though he had found fault with his handling of the Mayfield interrogation. He knew Marden appreciated his unblemished police record, but their mutual dislike of each other boiled down to something deeper. Something personal.
But he didn’t think Marden would let it get in the way of the investigation. At least the man was professional, he grudgingly admitted.
When he arrived back at the incident room, Lambert found DS Hazel alone, busy collating all the recently acquired information while he munched his way through a Mars Bar.
‘There’ll be a day of reckoning,’ Lambert said.
‘I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes.’
‘You might be crossing it sooner than you think, when you notice how tight your trousers feel.’
Hazel grinned and patted his trim waist. ‘I think you might be a bit jealous, Harry. How did the post mortems go?’
Not wanting to be reminded, Lambert muttered, ‘OK,’ and changed the subject. ‘How about this TV documentary?’
‘Tony managed to track Gavin Lloyd, the MD of Green Valley Productions, to his home. The guy couldn’t do enough to assist us, and drove into Cardiff where his office is based and loaded the film on to their website for us.’
‘Did Tony say what this Gavin Lloyd thought about his researcher downloading child porn?’
‘Yeah, he said the guy was disgusted, and appreciated that there might be a connection between Mark Yalding and the murdered paedophiles, and agreed to do all he could to help.’
‘Very public spirited.’
‘Tony got the impression he was an “I” specialist. Liked the sound of his own voice.’
Hazel waved a hand towards one of the computers. ‘It’s ready and waiting for you. Let me know if it’s better than last night’s EastEnders.’
‘Thanks, Roger.’
Lambert sat at the computer that Hazel had indicated, expecting to view cutting-edge, sensational television journalism; instead, he found it was quite the opposite and was rather pedestrian. There was no presenter, a voiceover provided the narrative, and it began with shots of the youth custody centre that Titmus had run, and spoke about society’s responsibility to protect its young, asking questions about professional youth workers and social workers. The voiceover was distrustful, wondering how these evil men came to be in charge of such an institution. This was followed by street shots, ordinary two-up-two-down houses in one of the Valley towns, and an out-of-shot presenter asking residents how they felt about a released sex offender living in their neighbourhood. The response was predictable, so Lambert fast forwarded. As soon as he saw a shot of the marina he clicked the cursor back onto play. Here the presenter, again out of shot, talked to a man whose face was pixellated to disguise his identity, but Lambert could see the name of the boat and where it was moored, so he knew it was Titmus.
The presenter, somewhere behind and to left of camera, asked Titmus the questions that had been asked of Mayfield in the interview room. Why was he living on a boat and not at his home? Titmus’s voice was authoritative, with just a trace of Welsh accent, sounding affronted as he replied, saying he had served his time and paid the price for his transgression.
Transgression. Not crime or offence or felony. But transgression. Clearly Titmus thought of his crimes as a mild form of misbehaviour.
Next, the presenter asked Titmus if he was in touch with any other convicted sex offenders, to which he replied, ‘Of course not. I thought I had made it quite clear that I will commit no further misdemeanours.’
There it was again. The word playing down the enormity of the crime.
The rest of the footage showed three other paedophiles: the first, Jarvis Thomas, whose face was also hazed out, but Lambert was able to identify him from the interior of his mobile home; the second was a man in Birmingham, whose immediate neighbours knew he’d been in jail, but thought it was for theft; and finally a man who lived in a hostel in Cardiff who was selling Big Issue on the streets. There was nothing about Gordon Mayfield, who had either slipped under the TV researcher’s radar or been excluded for editorial reasons.
The scaremongering conclusion of the programme was that in the programme makers’ opinion these men would undoubtedly re-offend, but for legal reasons they could not be identified as it could never be proven that they might commit similar crimes at some time in the future.
But the Sun had no such qualms, for which Lambert felt grateful as he clicked onto their website. He could either get the article online or at least get them to email it to him so that he would know the identities and rough whereabouts of the other sex offenders.