Chapter 58
It’s a cold case.
In the first few days, the ex-detective explains, his parents assumed Edward had simply taken an extended trip and not come across a payphone.
After he failed to turn up for work the next week, they involved the police, who began to develop a theory that he had fallen while hiking alone.
Subsequently there was speculation that he may have deliberately harmed himself, or even taken his own life.
There is an uncomfortable echo in his words, a reminder of Adrian Parish and the police theories that he too had come to harm by his own hand.
Webber unfolds a creased sheet of paper from his briefcase, four images photocopied onto the same page: a young-looking guy with a shy smile and wavy dark-blond hair. In two of the pictures he’s wearing a yellow waterproof jacket, a rucksack on his back.
“It was five months before his body was found,” Webber says, “in a shallow grave in woodland north of Derby. Decomposition made the autopsy more difficult, but cause of death was eventually determined as a single stab wound in the back. Most likely with a serrated hunting knife. No defensive wounds that they could find. It was one of the first cases I was put on when I made the murder squad, one of the cases we never closed. The unit I work for now, we do what’s called ‘historical review’ of specific unsolved crimes. ”
“Cold cases.”
“Exactly.”
I think back to my own life in 2001. I had been finding my feet in my first year at university in Aberdeen, when life revolved around new friends in my hall of residence, around sport and music and nights out at the students’ union, with a few lectures on the side.
A fairly typical self-absorbed eighteen-year-old.
“I was a teenager when he died,” I say. “But I don’t remember ever hearing about it.”
“It was a strange one, right from the off,” Webber says.
“There was no obvious motive; the victim didn’t appear to have any enemies, no criminal record, no prior contact with police that we could find.
The body was fully clothed when they found him—his wallet was there, cash, credit cards, car key, all untouched.
The only thing missing was the watch. Never recovered from the scene, from his house, his car, his work. We searched everywhere.”
“And you’ve been looking for it ever since?”
He nods. “I had a feeling it would turn up sooner or later; a piece like that is too fine to just throw away. And yet it hadn’t surfaced in more than twenty years,” he says. “Not until you strolled into that jeweler’s shop last week.”
I swallow, the coffee suddenly bitter in my mouth at the full, stark realization of what I had done, what I had set in motion.
“But this means something, doesn’t it? A lead—I mean, you can talk to your former colleagues in CID, right? Refer it on to them.”
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “When the time’s right. Not yet. I need to establish some of the wider context first.”
“Surely you can just give them a ring? Have an off-the-record chat?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” he says, eyebrows drawing together in frustration. “I need more to justify a full reopening of the investigation.”
“But surely—”
“And I need the rest of it too,” he says, more forcefully.
“I need all of it, to make a compelling case. Everything you found in that room. Anything short of that is not enough—you know that as well as I do. You’ve already tried to get the police involved.
Have they shown the slightest interest in reopening anything from twenty-three years ago? ”
I put my coffee cup down and push it away. “Well, no, not exactly.”
“They’re barely treading water as it is, dealing with the workload they have day to day let alone restarting an old case that’s been stone cold for more than two decades. Have they even come back to you on that number plate you gave them?”
“Not yet. But it was only last night.”
“Let me see what I can do,” he says. “I’ve still got a few contacts, could pull in a favor or two.”
I select the camera roll on my phone and show him the image of the Volvo’s registration, which he jots down in a small black notebook.
There is an intensity in his eyes, a look that I’ve recognized all too often in myself: a desire to know. To find the answer. To solve the puzzle.
“Why this case?” I say. “You say it was your first murder, that it was never solved, but why this one in particular?”
He takes another hefty swallow of his pint, which is already almost half gone. Putting it down on the table between us, he glances over at the other customers.
“Because it wasn’t just one case, it was only the tip of a very dark iceberg.” He leans in closer. “What I’m about to tell you is confidential, for background only. It was never official, never confirmed.”
“OK.” Unconsciously, I find that I’ve leaned in closer too, my arms crossed against the warm wooden table.
“There was circumstantial evidence linking this case to others.” He lowers his voice.
“Fibers found on Stiles’s body that potentially linked him to the death of another man the year before, a 39-year-old recovering alcoholic by the name of Dean Fullerton.
Then there was an eyewitness that possibly linked Fullerton’s death to the case of a teenage runaway nine months before that.
But it was never enough; it was all circumstantial, like I said.
Nothing that we could use to identify a suspect in those or a number of other disappearances and unsolved murders over a thirty-four-month period between 1998 and 2001. ”
“I don’t remember ever hearing about any of this.”
“That’s because they were never formally linked, not by us, not by the media, not by anyone.
I always believed there were connections but the top brass didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to frighten the public with talk of a serial killer on the loose.
Of course, it didn’t help poor old Edward Stiles that his body was found not long after 9/11, when people’s attention was elsewhere.
He never really got the attention he deserved, poor bugger. None of them did, if I’m honest.”
“And no one was ever even arrested?”
His features cloud for a moment. “Plenty of arrests. Never a conviction.”
“And your colleagues never accepted that there was a link between the cases?”
“The killer was way ahead of us for a long time. He was smart. A couple of victims here in Nottinghamshire, then Stiles over the border in Derbyshire, plus at least one on the coast in Lincolnshire, Fullerton down near Market Harborough. No pattern in place or weapon or motive, minimal forensics, no real similarity between the victims that we could ever establish. Basically, your worst nightmare as a detective. Different police forces, different teams, and trying to get cooperation just slowed everything down to a crawl. Fullerton’s death was prosecuted as a domestic situation—his ex-wife’s new boyfriend got fourteen years, served two before the conviction was overturned on appeal.
Another one was treated as a suicide at first and by the time it was reinvestigated months later, the cremation had already taken place and any leads had gone stone cold. ”
I tell him about Adrian Parish while he takes notes, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.
“So what happened?” I say. “With your theory? Your boss wouldn’t listen?”
“He was more interested in toeing the party line. You have to understand that it took a long time to connect the dots, start linking these killings. I was on my own—my colleagues thought I was wasting my time. By the time Stiles’s body was discovered, by the time I’d finally made some progress, I started to realize something else about the killer. ”
“What?”
“At a certain point not too long after that,” Webber says, “he just stopped.”