Dead on Demand (A DCI Morton Crime Novel) (7 page)

This meant that there were a huge number of CCTV dead spots throughout the park. The major entrances were covered, but there were numerous points of egress around the park that were not. The killer could easily have slipped in, and then out again, at any one of those points. Even if the killer had been caught on CCTV, the tapes showed hundreds of individuals in the vicinity at any time. That might mean witnesses could be found, but Londoners were prone to look the other way. It was instinctive in a big city; people were loathe to get involved.

Signs had been put up anyway asking for witnesses, but Morton doubted the free phone number would get anything other than the usual conspiracy-nut time-wasters calling in.

He was more interested in finding the victim on the CCTV. After all, she would have no reason at all for evading the cameras. With a snap of Morton's fingers an audio-visual technician appeared in the doorway.

'I've got an image of our Jane Bloggs here' – Morton indicated the morgue photos on the desk – 'and I've got CCTV in which she will probably have appeared. Can you use facial tracking to find out where she appears on the tape?',

'Yes, sir, but it will take a little time.'

'Do it.' With that, Morton went to find a cup of tea and a custard cream.

***

The tech had worked quickly. Morton was only gone for twenty minutes and by the time he got back the tech was leaning back in a leather office chair playing Angry Birds. He jumped to his feet as Morton entered the room.

'Inspector, I've isolated the instances of the victim appearing on CCTV. She came in here;' he pointed at the first screen, which showed the north-east entrance to the park. 'It looks like her route brought her over the Chelsea Bridge, down round the east of the toilet block closest to the entrance, and then south towards the duck pond, where she disappears from CCTV. She seems to have avoided the main jogging paths, preferring to run freeform. We get another glimpse of her as she passes the boating lake, and then again here.' This time he indicated an intersection of pathways in the centre of the park near an ice cream van. 'After that, nothing.'

'So she jogged in a "U" shape around the park, which means she was probably going to exit in the north-west entrance or return via the north-east entrance.'

'It's north-west, sir. I checked footage from earlier in the week.'

'Good lad. So she probably lives on the north bank, in or around Chelsea, Pimlico or Kensington. Fits with her clothing, I suppose. Odd no one has reported a middle-aged white woman from the rich burbs missing though.'

'Someone did, sir. This morning one Eleanor Murphy was reported missing.'

'Where's she from?'

'Belgravia, sir.'

'That fits too.'

'Yes sir, and one more thing...'

'Yes?'

'When she entered the park, she was carrying a key. The morgue didn't find any possessions on her.'

'Good work. It might have been removed at the Royal London, but I'll look into it.'

***

Edwin made the tactical decision to report Eleanor missing.

If he didn't, the police would want to know why. Even if they weren't together Eleanor was his wife, and the mother of his beautiful little girl. It would look guilty if he didn't.

Edwin had expected it to be a difficult task, but was pleasantly surprised to find that he could do it by phone. It had been straightforward enough, almost as if the policewoman who took down the details was simply reading a script and recording his responses.

'Any relatives in the area?' she asked

'Her parents are about two hundred miles away, and her brother is currently staying with them.'

'Is there anywhere she typically frequents?'

'Her gym. It's the Fitness First round the corner from our townhouse.'

'Anywhere else?' the WPC ventured, moving beyond the standard script.

'She likes to run twice a day. I'm not entirely sure of her route. It changes so often.'

'Does she suffer from any health problems?'

'Stress, maybe. She is a lawyer after all.'

'Finances?'

'What about them?'

'Who does she bank with?'

'HSBC. It's a joint account.' Edwin had not got around to changing this yet.

'Any activity on her cards?'

'None, but she doesn't really trust cards. She tends to stick to cash when she can.' Edwin had pulled up their online banking statement before the call.

'So I'm guessing she isn't on benefits?' The woman carried on down the checklist.

'No. Well, not unless you include child benefit.'

'We don't. Do you have a recent photograph?'

'Yes.'

'Do you have email access?'

'Of course.'

'Email one to us. [email protected].'

'OK. I'll do that at the end of this call.' Edwin scribbled down the email address.

'We'll also need your consent to search your home.' Edwin paled. Did they know something? Of course they meant the townhouse, not his flat.

The policewoman continued. 'It's standard procedure, sir. We will also need a DNA sample; a toothbrush or hairbrush should suffice. We'll collect that when we conduct the search. I assume you are happy to consent to publicity too. The media can be helpful.'

This question shook Edwin. A search was one thing; they wouldn't find much at the townhouse, but if he started going on television to plead for her to come home... Well, that was another thing entirely. It might get him caught in a lie.

'I'll think about it. It's only been a day, and she might have just vanished for personal reasons, right?' Edwin hoped this sounded plausible.

***

The laptop message indicator was still lit. Some were nonsense. Even Edwin couldn't decode
'I wn2 hlp u bt nd drg muni irtn. wl dnefin.'
And one of his undergraduate modules had been on cryptography.

Others were far more straightforward.

'Will eliminate your problem if you sort mine.'

The time limit for the hit he had agreed to was fast approaching. What if he let another one of these crackpots carry it out for him? Then he'd have no link to either kill. He could even be sure to have a firm alibi just in case.

He picked the most promising message, and typed out a brief reply:
'Happy to oblige. Let me know details.'

Maybe he wouldn't have to kill anyone after all. If he just stiffed the second guy he could get away with it all.

CHAPTER 10: A BROKEN MAN

Barry Chalmers stared at his lap. His waiter came by every few minutes asking if he was ready to order yet. Each time, he said no in a small voice.

But after three hours, the waiting staff were beginning to talk. His date wasn't turning up. He wished he knew what he was doing wrong. His mother always told him to be the perfect gentleman: to buy dinner, to open doors. It never did him any good.

When he'd met Jessica at a music bar in Basildon, she'd seemed cute. She was a bit coy, and it took him most of the night to work up the courage to say hello.

She wasn't even conventionally beautiful. Barry could understand when the supermodel types turned him down.

When he'd finally got to the end of the night, Barry jumped the gun and went for the kiss a bit too fast, clumsily bumping into her neck.

Somehow, she agreed to go out again. To Barry's amazement, they spent most of the summer together. He didn't even mind that he somehow ended up paying for everything.

Half of the restaurant bill or the whole thing made little difference, and he had asked her out so he gladly paid. Only then she came to expect it, as if he owed her.

Still, he spent the money. Tonight was the night he intended to ask her a question. His friend, for he only had one, had told him it was too soon, but Jessica felt like his last chance at finding love.

Barry absent-mindedly turned the ring box over in his pocket as the clock struck ten. Three hours.

Where was she?

***

Barry learnt the ugly truth the following weekend. He was out of London to visit his mother in hospital when Jessica called and said they needed to talk, urgently, face-to-face. He figured it was serious, and rushed back to Basildon.

He took her out to a nice restaurant, expecting there to be news. He half wondered if she might be pregnant. He pulled out her chair so she could sit down, gave her a bunch of flowers that he'd picked up at the station kiosk, and proceeded to order a bottle of Bordeaux.

'What's up, babe?' he had asked.

'I don't think this is going to work.'

'We can always go to another restaurant.'

'No, Barry, I mean us. It's over.'

'Why?'

'No reason. We just drifted apart. It's not you, it's me.'

Barry's cheeks flushed red. He'd heard that line before. The next line was a classic too.

'We can still be friends, right?'

CHAPTER 11: CONFIRMATION

The search of the Murphy residence performed by Missing Persons was cursory at best. They picked up a recent photo, supplied by the husband, and obtained a DNA sample from a hairbrush in Eleanor's en-suite.

Nothing was missing from the house, suggesting robbery was not the motive despite Eleanor's door key going missing. It would have been a plum target for a daytime robbery; the Murphys lived a comfortable lifestyle.

The order had come from above not to waste too much time. The legendary DCI David Morton was almost certain that the missing person in question was his Jane Bloggs. The Missing Persons team got in and out, and sent the sample straight to Forensics for analysis.

***

Morton's BlackBerry beeped loudly. He hated carrying two phones, but the force insisted. Everywhere he went he was at the Met's beck and call.

'Detective Chief Inspector Morton, this is Stuart from Forensics. I compared Jane Bloggs with a photo of Eleanor Murphy obtained from the husband by Missing Persons so I went ahead and performed DNA analysis. DNA confirms our Jane Bloggs is Mrs Eleanor Murphy. All sixteen alleles match.'

'Good work. Call the husband in to ID the body – and video his reaction for Dr Jensen to analyse.' Reaction filtering was a new technique. Potential suspects in violent crimes such as the husband, ex or other persons of interest would be targeted with visual stimuli such as the body or photos of the crime scene. This would be caught on camera, and the resident psychologist would then review the footage to determine if the reaction was normal, and if not, why not.

It was a technique Dr Jensen had pioneered during his PhD in Forensic Psychology. It certainly wasn't mainstream yet, but Morton was willing to try anything that would give him an edge.

***

The police had called about an hour earlier. They thought that Eleanor's body may have been found, and needed next of kin to identify the body. What Edwin didn't know was they were recording the phone call. It was expected he would be under stress but Dr Jensen wanted to use the pitch, tone and timbre of his voice to record which parts of the call he found most stressful.

'Hello?' Edwin's voice was rich, melodious, with a slight hint of that singsong lilt many of Irish descent possess.

'Good morning, Mr Murphy. This is Missing Persons.'

'What can I do for you?' His voice was slightly faster now, a little higher. It wasn't much, but Dr Jensen set this as his baseline, the stress level against which the rest of the conversation would be measured.

'We may have found your wife's body, Mr Murphy. I'm sorry.'

There was a telling delay before the sobbing began. It was only microseconds, and a normal person would never have picked up on it, but the software was exacting. It was the same software used by insurance companies to weed out fraudulent claims.

'Oh, oh God. What happened?' Murphy was pretty convincing, but Dr Jensen's gut reaction was that Edwin Murphy knew his wife was dead, but he didn't know the circumstances of her death. That didn't quite make logical sense yet, but it was his instinctive take on the situation. Dr Jensen was the first to admit his potential fallibility, but he was right more often than not.

'We're not entirely sure yet I'm afraid, Mr Murphy. DNA isn't back yet,' Jensen lied. 'Are you available to come down to the station to ID the body?'

'Yes, yes, of course. Let me drop my daughter at a friend's house, and I'll come straight down.' The concern for his daughter was touching, but the good doctor wondered if this might simply be a ruse to distract the police.

An hour later Edwin Murphy walked into New Scotland Yard, and took the lift down to the morgue. It was recessed in the basement, and the only foot traffic in the area was the coroner, his assistants and technologists as well as the occasional cop.

He was led to a viewing window by the WPC who had phoned earlier, and could see a body underneath a cotton sheet on a gurney. Once he had assured the WPC he was emotionally prepared, the coroner's assistant pulled back the cover. He was careful to show only the face, and not the neck wound.

'That's her. That's my Eleanor.' Edwin's eyes began to water, and he sank to his knees in a fit of sobbing.

***

Most people cannot distinguish fact from fiction, as long as the deception is plausible. Dr Jensen was not most people. As well as being trained in forensic psychology, he had appeared on television as 'the human lie detector'. He was one of the rare individuals who could recognise micro expressions, visual clues that appear on the face for a fraction of a second.

With the subject filmed, and the video played back in slow motion, this could become deadly accurate. He had been thrown out of court for trying to testify as an expert witness, it was true, but that didn't diminish the accuracy of his work. The police knew how valuable his opinion was, and so he spent his days locked up at Met HQ reviewing videos, audio recordings and even photographs to see if he could discern the truth contained within.

'So what are we dealing with, Doc?' called a deep voice from behind.