IT WAS all over within five minutes. Boydeau and Reid waited in his car where they could clearly see Leece in his Insignia, and watched as Liam Cottrell entered their level of the car park. He walked casually, although a little too shiftily for Boydeau's liking, towards Leece's car and, with a quick check to make sure he wasn't being observed ("He's not very good at this, is he?" muttered Boydeau, eliciting a snort from Reid), opened the back door and slid in.
Not only did Leece have his phone on record, he had his police radio with a channel open and the volume down, so the others could hear what was being said in his car.
With a glance in the rear view mirror, Leece greeted him. "Hi."
"Hey," was the reluctant response. "What d'you need? I ain't got long, you know, man."
"I just need to know if the Parminters have their eye on anyone in particular for Nigel's death." Go Paul, get right to the point! thought Boydeau.
There was a heavy silence. Just when it seemed as if Cottrell was going to leg it, Leece produced a small wad of banknotes and held them where his informant could see them, although out of sight of any passer-by. Cottrell wet his lips nervously, torn between his desire for the cash and the need to remain unseen and unsuspected.
"You never heard this from me, right?"
"Of course not." Boydeau noticed that Leece was deliberately not using the boy's name, to ensure that he felt anonymous and secure. "As soon as you tell me, I'll forget where I heard it."
Cottrell nodded vigorously. "Yeah, yeah. Well..." His hand reached forward to take the money, but Leece moved it out of his reach.
"Information first, then payment. You know how it works."
Reid and Boydeau could hear a sound that at first they couldn't identify. Sheila said, "I don't think he's very happy..." but Reid suddenly hissed, "That's a flick knife opening," and sprang out of the car with more agility than Boydeau had ever witnessed. She followed as he sprinted between the rows of parked cars, and they saw Cottrell making a break for the exit.
"You get him, I'll get Paul!" called Reid, his voice echoing and distorting around the concrete parking structure. Boydeau changed direction and headed for the door to the stairwell, cutting Cottrell off. She still had no idea if he had a knife or not, but she yelled "Stop! Police!" at the top of her lungs, startling him into looking round, whereupon he lost his balance, tripped over his own feet, and went crashing to the ground. Boydeau sped up and pounced, and after handcuffing the escapee, searched him for weapons. Upon finding none, she shouted to Reid, "Is Paul OK?"
"He's fine! Have you got Cottrell?" came the response.
"Yes, can you call for transport?" Boydeau asked, hoiking Cottrell to his feet and dragging him back towards Leece's car. To the would-be runaway, she said, "You're nicked, sunshine."
Reid was holding a flip phone between finger and thumb, searching his pockets for a plastic evidence bag. "No knife, just this," he explained as Boydeau returned.
Leece was saying, "Not very bright, Liam." He looked at Boydeau and said with a straight face, "He was trying to record our conversation and when I clocked him, he did a runner."
"Not very successfully, eh?" grinned Sheila, and Cottrell put up a token struggle as the police van rounded the corner towards them.
"So, any joy?" Reid asked Leece as the prisoner was hustled into the cage in the rear of the van.
Leece fiddled with his phone and played the recording of the conversation, some of which the others had missed as they'd run to his assistance. The noise that Reid had mistaken for a knife opening was heard, then, "They fink Matt Gilbert done it. Disappeared, hasn't he? So they fink it's down to him."
"What the hell are you up to?" Leece had said. The scuffling sound that ensued was Cottrell decamping from the car.
"Who's Matt Gilbert?" asked Boydeau.
"He's a new name on me," Leece confessed with a shake of the head.
"Well, back to the office and we'll check the database," said Reid. "With a bit of luck he's got form."
THE PNC PRODUCED a match for a local man named Matthew Gilbert. Boydeau sent a patrol car to the address on file, but the woman who lived there could barely speak English, and the officers struggled to help her understand that their questions related to the previous occupant, and not her. It was only when she saw Matthew Gilbert's name written down that she realised who they were looking for, and produced a small stack of junk mail with his name on it.
"So nothing doing there, then," said Sheila, glumly, when she heard their report. She stared again at the mugshot on the screen. "I feel like I should know him, but that's not likely given the localised petty thieving on his record."
"Funny, he looks a bit familiar to me too," added Reid. "Mind you, if the Parminters have managed to catch up with him, he could be at the bottom of the canal by now."
Boydeau turned to Strachan and said, "Can you ring round the local hosp..." She broke off in stunned silence. "That's where we've seen him before, guv: Matthew Gilbert – he's Coma Man!"
Leece, Strachan and Reid all craned at the computer screen on Boydeau's desk. Reid frowned. "Can't see it myself," he said, "but then again I did say his own mother wouldn't recognise him."
"Shall I get down to the hospital and fingerprint him, sarge?" asked Strachan, halfway out of the office already.
"Better had," replied Boydeau. "Go." Turning back to the computer, she said, "I wonder if any of Gilbert's relatives are listed here? What you said, guv, about his own mother..." She scrolled through the record and sure enough, a Derek Gilbert was listed as Matthew's father and next of kin. Boydeau lifted the phone.
AS JESS Strachan scanned the patient's fingerprints, with a nurse standing by, she could feel the phone in her pocket vibrating. Having done one hand, she stopped, and asked the nurse where she could take the call. She hurried outside and answered it.
"Jess? Sergeant Boydeau here. Have you taken the dabs yet?"
"Halfway through, sarge."
"Well, better get a hurry on, then, because we've located Matthew Gilbert's father, and he's headed to the hospital now. If it is Gilbert in that bed I do not want the first thing his dad sees to be a police officer taking his boy's fingerprints."
"Understood, sarge, I'll finish up now." Strachan rang off and returned to the bedside, finished the scanning, and said to the nurse, "We think we may have identified this gentleman." The nurse's eyebrows shot up.
"Really?! Wow, that was quick!" she gasped in amazement.
Strachan looked down at the scanner in her hand. "Oh! No, no, I mean, we've identified a missing person and in order to confirm that this is him, we have his father coming to try and make a positive ID. Of course, we may be wrong about that. But this," she waved the scanner, "is just in case he's not who we think he is. OK?"
"Em...OK...I think..." Confused, the nurse re-made the bed for the unconscious man, and checked his drips. Strachan left the room but sat nearby in the ward, where she could also hear what was happening at the nurses' station. She didn't have long to wait. Soon a tall, thin, dark-haired man, looking like an older version of of Matthew Gilbert's mugshot, came almost running into the ICU and, out of breath, asked if his son was there. Strachan stood up.
"Mr. Gilbert?"
When the man nodded, she said, "I'm PC Strachan, I believe you spoke to my colleague Detective Sergeant Boydeau?" Another nod, and she went on. "As she explained to you, we're not sure if the man here is your son Matthew, but if you come over, you can see for yourself." She led Gilbert to the window onto the bedroom; she wasn't going to let him near the patient unless it was definitely the right man. His reaction told her that it was. His hand shot to his mouth in horror as he whispered, "Matty!"
Strachan beckoned to the nurse who was still at Matthew's bedside. She came out and Strachan did the introductions. "Take all the time you need, Mr. Gilbert. Myself or one of my colleagues will want to talk to you when you're ready, and we'll be here." She suspected that once the shock of seeing his son like this had worn off, Gilbert would want to know what had happened to him, and he'd be expecting the police to tell him. She got right on the phone to the guv'nor.
REID DRUMMED his fingers impatiently on the door handle, looked at his watch, then craned his head out of the window in a vain attempt to see past the truck in front.
"Calm down, guv, you'll give yourself a coronary," soothed Boydeau. This, however, only had the opposite effect.
"I am bloody calm! If Strachan can hold onto Gilbert Senior, I'll be as calm as the Dalai Lama!" A few moments' awkward silence in the car was followed by, "Oh sod this, I'm walking...", and then at precisely the point where he made a grab for the door handle, the truck in front pulled forward and Sheila followed suit, mightily relieved. She wound her window down to try and bring some fresh-ish air to bear on the situation.
It wasn't long before traffic was at a standstill once more. Now, though, Reid was lost in thought, staring straight ahead and much less agitated. Boydeau glanced at him and recognised the signs that meant the cogs were turning and it was in everyone's best interests to shut up until he spoke.
"Sheila," he said after several minutes, "when you look at the back of that truck, what do you see?"
Caught off guard by this non sequitur, she attempted to answer. "Err...well, a number plate, of course...some addresses and phone numbers..."
"Yes...and what do those addresses have in common?"
"At the risk of stating the obvious, that they all belong to the same haulage company?"
"Unfortunately, that is the obvious. Think about each of those locations. What are they all near to?"
"Um – Coatley...Marketbridge...Priory Hill...sorry, guv, I don't see it."
"Not just the areas, but those specific streets...come on, it's literally staring us in the face!"
A little ticked off at this seemingly futile exercise in lateral thinking, Boydeau replied, "OK, put me out of my misery, then."
"Terminus Street in Coatley, North Bank Road in Priory Hill, and Bridge Lane in Marketbridge – they're all beside a canal."
Stunned by this piece of useless information, Sheila could only reply, "Oh, right."
"And that's what we've been missing with the crime scenes," finished Reid triumphantly.
"What, that they're both beside canals? I don't think so."
"No! That the crime scene locations have something significant in common, other than the crime itself." He waited to see if Boydeau would catch on.
"Well, they're not far apart..." She knew she was clutching at straws as she put the car into first gear again and they made better progress. The traffic was clearing and the reason for the delay was revealed: a rear-end shunt involving two 4x4s and two very irate mothers on the school run. Both Reid and Boydeau gave involuntary sighs of relief that they weren't having to deal with that incident, and Reid waved cheerily to the uniformed officers in attendance. He was rewarded with a scowl from Con Sullivan, who was fighting the urge to just let the two women get on with it and kill each other.
"Let's look at the sites in reverse order," suggested Reid as Boydeau drove briskly towards the hospital. "Ravenswood Place: what stands out to you about that area?"
Determined not to be beaten on this, Boydeau racked her brains. "Right. It's near the industrial estate; warehouses, workshops, a builders' merchant...that sort of thing." Her brow furrowed. "Nothing like that at Purbeck Crescent, though, is there?"
"No?" challenged Reid, folding his arms and looking at her.
Jeez! It's like being back at school in maths class – only one right answer available! Boydeau ground her teeth as she struggled to reach the conclusion Reid was trying to lead her to.
He tried again. "Nigel Moore had been a van driver with a courier firm, delivering mail order packages. The delivery depot was on the other side of the canal from Moore's home."
"Again with the canal?!" Boydeau couldn't stop herself.
Reid grinned at her frustration. "That's the connection that got me thinking, when I made the link between the three addresses on the truck. That must be a haulage company with serious history if their depots are all canalside - from the days when everything went by barge," he added, by way of explanation.
"So, Moore's body was found not far from his old workplace...and Gilbert was too?" hazarded Boydeau.
Nodding, Reid replied, "That's right. Gilbert works as a driver for a vending machine company, based on the Elmbank estate."
"Did they know each other?" Boydeau surmised, reversing into a parking space.
"We shall find out as soon as Mr. Gilbert regains consciousness, which hopefully won't be too long," said Reid as they got out of the car and walked towards the hospital entrance.
JESS STRACHAN met them at the door to ICU. "The dad's naturally quite upset," she explained. "Matthew doesn't live with his parents so they didn't realise he hadn't gone home or to work in the last few days. Mr. Gilbert says they don't watch the news so didn't see the appeals to ID him."
"What impression do you get from him? Is he on the up, or is he holding something back, d'you think?" Reid asked.
Strachan considered this. "I think he's wary of police involvement, probably because the lad's got a record, and worried that Matthew's got in way over his head this time."
The others nodded in agreement. Boydeau said, "He may be almost as much in the dark as we are. All we can do is run the murder victims' names past him and see if he reacts."
"Good idea," said Reid. "Lead on. Jess and I'll hang back so he doesn't feel crowded."
Boydeau entered Matthew Gilbert's room and Reid and Strachan watched as she sat down beside the distraught father. Her sympathetic body language put him at ease, and they could see him relax and begin to speak. "She's got people skills, all right," observed Reid. "Watch and learn, Jess." After about five minutes Boydeau emerged, leaving father and son alone again. She nodded towards the outside corridor, where they could talk without disturbing patients or being overheard.
She read off her notes. "Parminter's name didn't ring any bells with him, but as you suspected, guv, he did know Nigel Moore. They both used to work for a delivery company called Excel a few years ago, when they left school. Got on all right, as far as the dad knows, but he doesn't think they kept in touch when Matthew left to work for his present employer. He certainly wasn't aware that Moore had changed jobs too. That's as much as he could tell me." Boydeau looked up from her pocketbook. "So it doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to connect Matt Gilbert to the Parminters, via Nigel Moore. And if Gilbert was in some way involved in the double murder, or the Parminters think he was, the assault on him might have been family revenge."
Reid raised a sceptical eyebrow at what he obviously considered a tenuous link. "Well, at least now we have a connection between the two victims that we didn't have before. It may just be coincidence, but..."
"I know," interrupted Boydeau. "You bloody hate those."
REID TOOK the briefing in the CID room. "Now what we need to do is to find a motive for Gilbert to suddenly escalate from shoplifting to double murder." In answer to the sceptical expressions on a few faces, he continued, "Yes, I know, unlikely, but we have to consider it. I've asked the pathologist to liaise with the hospital in trying to determine as exactly as possible when Matthew Gilbert received his injuries. He was discovered unconscious the morning after Moore and Parminter were found dead, two miles away. It would be stupid of us to disregard the closeness in time and distance, not to mention the link between Gilbert and Moore."
Reid went on to task Leece and Strachan with intelligence-gathering among the gangs and criminal fraternity, Panjabi to find out what the Parminter family had been up to in the last 48 hours, and Ferguson and Boydeau to visit the Gilberts and see what else they could turn up.
Penny Taylor appeared, went up to Reid and spoke to him, looking very serious. As she left, Reid called out, "All right, everybody, as you were. New intel." The team reassembled with a palpable air of expectation. "The lab reports that skin cells collected from under Matthew Gilbert's fingernails are a DNA match to Luke Parminter."
A rumble of excitement ran around the office. "Now that obviously puts a different spin on things, but it doesn't conclusively prove that Gilbert is our killer. They may simply have got into a fight unrelated to the murder. There's also the possibility, although apparently it's too close for forensics to call, that Gilbert was beaten up and left for dead before Moore and Parminter were killed. So carry on with what you're doing, but Sergeants Boydeau and Ferguson, obviously you will need to be guarded in what you share with the Gilbert family, OK? And I'll ask the lab to see if they can find Gilbert's DNA on the other two."