Jigsaw Man (22 page)

‘Yes.'

‘Did you ask him what he was doing?'

‘No. The minute he saw me, he disappeared off. It was all I could do to keep up.
Then he drove away in a car. He'd left it parked several streets away, which is pretty
odd, unless he was trying to cover his tracks.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘Tall, Caucasian. Dark clothing and a hoodie. That's as much as I could tell.'

He unzipped his jacket and sank down on the sofa opposite. ‘I'm pretty sure it was
a journalist.' A look of horror crossed her face. ‘Nothing to do with Claire, don't
worry. Melinda Knight was hanging around my office when I left. She probably sent
somebody to watch my home too, which explains something she said. The case I'm on
is about to break big-time and she's ahead of the pack. I don't know how she found
out, but there's a link between our case and one that's just happened down near Winchester.
I was there this morning and either somebody spotted me, or more likely there's
been a leak. I'm afraid it means no peace for a while.'

‘Oh . . . OK.'

She looked a little relieved, he thought, although he was surprised she didn't instantly
ask him about the case. He wondered if he should tell her about it. Maybe it would
be good to involve her, keep her mind off things to do with Claire. When they worked
together, she had always had something interesting to say or a new and unexpected
angle. As he thought about sharing things with her, it suddenly dawned on him how
much he missed her company and her companionship. ‘Do you want to hear about it?
It might interest you. It will be all over the papers tomorrow morning.'

‘I'll head off to bed, then,' she said, getting to her feet, her face blank, as if
she hadn't heard him. ‘Is there any news? About Claire, I mean?'

‘I'm afraid not. I've just had a drink and a quick bite to eat with Steele. I asked
her about progress but there's nothing new to report, no breakthrough yet on the
horizon.'

She gave him a hard look. ‘The trail is cold, you mean.'

‘Sam, you know what it's like. Unless you get a break in the first twenty-four hours,
it's usually a long, hard slog. We're doing our best, I can assure you.'

She said nothing. Her face was white and pinched-looking and she had a glazed look
in her eyes. Maybe she was just tired. She turned away and walked out of the sitting
room. A moment later, he heard the bedroom door close behind her.

Twenty-three

Adam lay in bed, drifting towards sleep. He had shut the curtains tightly across
the window and there was barely a glimmer of light from outside. His thoughts turned
momentarily to stupid little Hannah Bird. The short drink had been a success and
he had left her wanting more – a dinner date arranged for later that week. He was
a good listener and she seemed to want to talk. He had learned more than enough about
her, the basics of her family background and schooling in Reading, that she had read
geography at university and that she shared a flat in north Finchley with someone
she knew from uni who was training to be a doctor and working all hours of the day
and night. She was new to London and he had also eventually established that she
was new to the Barnes murder squad. He sensed that underneath her excited chatter
about working for a murder squad, she felt out of her depth and was struggling to
cope. He could also smell her loneliness a mile away. For a policewoman, she seemed
naive, but then even the best had been taken in by him in the past. It was a surprise
to learn that she was no longer involved in the Dillon case, but as a result she
was less wary. Eventually, she confirmed that Sam Donovan was staying temporarily
in Shepherd's Bush with ‘the boss'. She had also let slip that Sam would probably
be allowed back to her own house in the next day or so.

He blocked out Hannah's face from his mind and allowed the darkness to envelop him,
imagining a hot summer's night,
somewhere far away. He was lying on a pile of cushions
in a boat, floating along a canal, little bridges passing by intermittently above
him. Stars filled the sky, moonlight shimmered on the water, and he felt the gentle
lulling movement of the boat as Pink Floyd's ‘Us and Them' played in his head. He
imagined Sam lying beside him, eyes closed, arms at her sides, still and cold to
the touch. All his. He tried to picture her as he remembered her, but still she
evaded him. Her pale heart-shaped face became interchangeable with others. Nameless
others he didn't want to see. Others who kept forcing themselves into his thoughts
and dreams . . .

He heard a noise, a light tapping sound on the window, and opened his eyes. Someone,
or something, was trying to get in. The curtains billowed as though in a breeze.
Was the window open? He was sure he had shut and locked it. As though by an invisible
hand, the curtains peeled back and he saw the window silhouetted against the sky,
suddenly glowing bright in the darkness. Through the clouds, the shifting faces swam
into view, the evil old hag followed by the younger ones, pressing their damp, mouldy
flesh against the glass, covering it with a foul mist until he couldn't see out.
Like smoke, the edges of the faces blurred as they started to squeeze through the
cracks; white vapour curled into the room, re-forming in front of him. He knew what
was coming and he felt the usual dread. He closed his eyes, waiting, every muscle
tensed until eventually he could smell the stinking, icy breath, felt the bony fingers
first stroke his throat then grasp it, tightening their grip little by little like
a vice. He choked. The fingers loosened for a second or two then tightened again.
He screamed, or tried to, but no sound came out. Teasing him, the fingers gave a
little. He screamed again and again. It sounded like someone else's death rattle
. . .

‘What the fuck's up with you?' a deep man's voice said.

Adam screamed. This time he heard his own voice deafeningly loud. The overhead light
snapped on.

‘Are you on something?' the man asked.

Panting, it took him a moment to focus in the dazzling light. He was in his bedroom.
The narrow little guest bedroom on the ground floor of Kit's house. The chair he
had put against the door to secure it had been knocked over and swept to one side.
Gunner stood a few feet away at the foot of the bed, dressed in nothing but a pair
of boxers. His face, neck and forearms were tanned, but the rest of him was white
as snow. An enormous tattoo of a crow pecking a skull decorated his broad chest,
with something written beneath it, which Adam couldn't make out. How long had he
been there? How much had he heard? Was Gunner spying on him? Then another thought
occurred. Did he want a shag? Was that what it was all about? If so, he was barking
up the wrong tree. Not for Kit, not for anyone, and certainly not a ten-foot tall
Norseman who looked like a baddie from a
Die Hard
film.

The room was oppressively dry and hot. Adam's heart flapped inside him like a wounded
bird and he was bathed in sweat. He badly needed a pee. ‘I was dreaming, that's all,'
he said, shuffling up in bed, his head pressing back against the wall. ‘I'm fine
now.'

‘Bloody funny dream, if you ask me. You were screaming the house down like a bloody
whore. I don't give a fuck what you get up to in here by yourself, but if you don't
keep the volume down, we'll have the fuzz knocking on the door. They'll think someone
was trying to bloody murder you.'

Someone was, Adam thought, looking at Gunner's large hands. He was sure it hadn't
been a dream. His throat felt dry as dust, his neck sore, the skin already starting
to bruise where
fingers had pressed and squeezed. The window was shut, the curtains
drawn. The only way into the room was through the door, and the only other person
in the room was Gunner. Being semi-asphyxiated was no joke. Unlike some poor, pathetic
idiots, wretched Kit included, he didn't find that sort of stuff remotely a turn
on. Was Gunner just another fucking pervert? His gun was locked in a rucksack under
the bed, but there was no way he'd be able to get to it with this man looming large
above him, studying him as though he were a specimen.

Suddenly aware of his own nakedness, Adam clutched the sheet to his body. ‘Get out,'
he shouted. ‘Get the fuck out and leave me alone.' Gunner continued to stare at him
for a moment, ice-blue eyes like mirrors. ‘I said,
get out
.'

Gunner raised one eyebrow as if it was all a joke, then turned and padded out of
the room, leaving the door wide open, the light still blazing. The pattern of creaking
floorboards indicated that he had gone downstairs to the kitchen. Adam jumped out
of bed, closed the door and moved the small chest of drawers up against it. It wasn't
strong enough to hold it, but if Gunner tried to come in again, at least he would
have some warning. It was one thing fighting Kit off on the rare occasions that things
had ever gone that far – a quick few shots of alcohol and a sedative all that was
needed to cool his pathetic lust – but Gunner looked a different kettle of fish,
probably not the type to care if something was consensual or not. Leaving the light
on, he got back into bed and closed his eyes. In the morning he would call a locksmith
and get a lock put on the door. Then he would work out how to get rid of Gunner.

Twenty-four

Rain spattered the dirty glass of the window. It was nine in the morning and just
getting light. Tartaglia lobbed the newspaper into the bin, the headline ‘Jigsaw
Killer' still dancing in front of his eyes. The phones were ringing ceaselessly in
the main office next door, but there were not enough hands to answer them. He had
taken his off the hook temporarily so that he could concentrate, but it was impossible.

‘How are you doing with John Smart's photos?' he asked Dave Wightman, who had just
come into the room. Short, stocky and blond, Wightman's earnest, boyish face belied
a cynical mind and sharp brain. He was the youngest member of the team and the in-house
technology expert.

‘I've downloaded all the stuff on the hard drive and sorted it into files week by
week, going back six months from when he disappeared. I've set it up in the meeting
room, if you want to take a look?'

‘Give me a minute.' Tartaglia reached for the half-drunk cappuccino on his desk.
It was lukewarm but he needed the caffeine. He drained it and threw the empty carton
in the bin, then gathered up the papers he had been reading and put them back in
the file. He had found the tracking analysis for John Smart's phone for the day of
his disappearance and the following day. It was an old model that used GSM technology,
which gave them only a rough location to within three quarters of a square mile.
According to the analysis, the phone had started off in the Battersea area first
thing in the morning and by
mid-morning had moved to Barnes, where it stayed until
either it had been switched off or the battery had run out, the following day. The
fact that Smart had lived in Barnes for the best part of forty years had given weight
to the view held at the time that he had probably gone back there and stayed of his
own free will, possibly being put up in secret, either by a friend or a lover. Based
on what Tartaglia knew of Smart, it seemed unlikely. His family and friends mattered
very much to him and he would not have gone off without telling anybody.

He had spent the remainder of the previous evening going through Smart's diary and
address book, trying to get a feel for the rhythm of his life, the day-to-day patterns.
They were contained in an old-style Filofax binder, the entries made in a neat hand
with a blue fountain pen. There were only eight months' worth of diary entries to
look at, but it didn't matter. Eight months was more than enough, if what Isobel
had said about her father was correct. If he had accidentally stumbled upon somebody's
secret, it would have been in the recent past before his disappearance.

The week before had followed a predictable pattern. He had met up with his friends
Jim and Tony on the Saturday, and gone for lunch at his son's house on the Sunday.
On the Monday, the only entry was a dentist's appointment. He had been working Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday at the BBC. On Friday, he had disappeared. There was a note
in the Missing Person file to the effect that a number of people had been spoken
to at the broadcasting studio but nobody remembered anything having been amiss with
the actor.

The entry for the previous Friday read
4.00pm. The Bourne Legacy. R.
The Missing
Person report made no mention of this having been followed up. Looking at Smart's
address section, there were a large number of people whose name
started with the
letter ‘R'. He had called Isobel that morning and asked her who ‘R' might be, but
she said she hadn't a clue and had no memory of her father having been to see the
film. She said emphatically that when he went to the cinema, it was always with her.
Something about her tone told him she was lying. He was sure now that Smart had got
himself a girlfriend and Isobel was jealous. Whether or not it mattered was another
question. He was due to see Jim and Tony later and would get to the bottom of it
then. In the meantime, Hannah Bird had been tasked with going through the address
book and speaking to everybody whose name – first name or surname – began with an
‘R'.

He was about to go when Sharon Fuller put her head around the door. ‘Do you have
a minute, Sir?'

‘Any news on Finnigan?'

‘I'm going over to the Scrubs in half an hour to interview one of the warders and
a couple of inmates who knew Finnigan when he was inside, but I wanted a quick word
about Sam.'