One of Us Is Dead

78 Saturday 15 October 2022

‘Just the job I signed up to when I joined the police!’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Did I ever tell you I was a binman once, for six months?’

‘No, I must have missed that part when I read your CV,’ Grace said. ‘Good prep for being a copper though, most of the time we’re just collecting garbage — human garbage.’

There were four wheelie bins in the open-sided brick store behind No. 118 Arundel Terrace. One was for glass, one for recycling, the other two were for rubbish from the five apartments in this building. Grace had radioed for two CSI search officers to attend as soon as possible, but in the meantime he had opened the lid of the first rubbish bin and hauled out a knotted black bag. He and Glenn, now in torchlight in the pre-dawn darkness, wearing their latex gloves, were rummaging through the contents.

Branson pulled up an envelope, with a stain on it, addressed to ‘Anthony & Sara Macaulay, Flat 3, 118 Arundel Terrace.’ He showed it to Grace. ‘Wrong bin bag, boss.’

Grace nodded. He should leave this job to the trained search officers, he knew, this was what they did better than anyone else, but it could be some while before they got here. In the interim, fuelled by disappointment and anger at being outsmarted by Rorke, he pulled out another bag, all the time thinking about him. He was pretty confident a mistake hadn’t been made and they had raided the right apartment, and that Rorke had sensed it coming and fled. After cleaning it to the point of sterilization.

But, Grace knew from long experience, criminals made mistakes. A few years back he’d secured the conviction of a killer who had shot dead a postmaster in a raid, thinking the skin-tight downhill racer suit, balaclava and surgical gloves he had worn would ensure he left no DNA at the scene, either from his skin or hair, and he’d been correct. Then, after fleeing with the cash, the idiot had dumped his gloves in a bin a quarter of a mile from the scene, and James Stather’s forensic team had had a field day with all the DNA inside those gloves.

Which was why, acting on his hunch and past experience, he wanted to go through all the bins now. A call to the Control Room, twenty minutes ago, had established there’d been no pinging on any ANPR camera of the Kingsway Electrical van in the past four days. It could be that Rorke had some other means of transport as well, but he figured it was the van he would most likely have used if he was going to dispose of the bags of rubbish off-site. Which meant they might well be here, in one of these bags, in one of these bins.

‘Ye gods!’ Branson exclaimed, wrinkling his nose as he peered into an opened white bin bag and pulled out the putrid entrails of a chicken, with bits of paper stuck to it.

Grace looked at him quizzically.

The DI held up one strip of paper with printing down it. ‘A Waitrose receipt, boss,’

‘Any name? Credit card details?’

‘Too damp to read.’

‘Bag it,’ Grace said. Then his phone rang. It was Chris Gee, the Crime Scene Manager, telling him that two search officers would be with them in half an hour.

Ending the call, Grace turned to Branson. ‘Let’s try to put ourselves into Rufus Rorke’s mindset. He’s faked his disappearance and thinks he’s got away with it. He changes his name and starts back in business again, bold as brass, advertising his services on the dark web. Something alerts him and he does a runner from his flat, forensically cleaning it first. Who or what has alerted him?’

‘The fisherman in Barbados — John Baker?’ Branson ventured. ‘After I talked to him? Maybe I spooked him?’

‘Maybe. I’m hypothesizing here. Let’s say Rorke kills his old school buddy, by all accounts a total loser, Barnie Wallace. The motive looks like it could be that Wallace was blackmailing him. It would have been the perfect murder. Someone dying from mushroom poisoning — especially a former professional chef — wouldn’t have raised a flag if that Dyke Golf Club captain hadn’t died two weeks later. Then we have Dermot Bryson and his girlfriend, Tracey Dawson, dead in a high-speed smash that clearly is more than it seems. Accidental death, Rorke’s MO. Not to forget the professor, Bill Llewellyn, which might or might not have any relevance.’

He looked hard at the DI. ‘So imagine for a moment you are Rufus Rorke. You’ve come back from the dead and set yourself up in a cushy pad in the city you know. You’ve gone back to your old lucrative business of flogging 3D printed guns, and being a hired assassin who makes his victims’ deaths look like accidents. Something spooks you. Could be a call from the fisherman you gave a big bung to, to give a cock-and-bull story about finding the remains of your jacket, to reinforce the story of your disappearance off the back of a yacht.’ He raised his eyebrows. Branson nodded.

Continuing, Grace said, ‘You figure the police may be moving in on you. Barnie Wallace has told you — and I’m speculating here — that he’d taken a ton of photographs of you. You’ll figure that the police now have Barnie’s camera, laptop and phone, and from your knowledge of technology, you know that the police will be able to pinpoint where you live from the data embedded in these photos. You clean out your rented, fully furnished, apartment to the extent that it looks like no one was ever there. So where do you go?’

‘Abroad somewhere?’ Branson ventured.

Grace nodded slowly. ‘Maybe. And if he has gone abroad he could be anywhere in the world by now. But let’s look at why he disappeared in the first place — it was because he knew he was on the verge of being arrested. He pulled off a pretty fancy disappearance, all belt and braces. Until you showed up and talked to John Baker. So, yes, possibly Rorke has panicked and fled to a bolt-hole abroad. But I’m guessing he’s a raving egotist and narcissist. Who knows how long he’s been doing this? And how many victims there were before the slip-up involving Pauline Ormonde that led to him faking his death as a last desperate throw of the dice? Until now, he’s seemingly not put a foot wrong. My bet is that he’s still around. Just a copper’s hunch, I can’t add any weight to it.’

‘If you’re right, how do we find him? We have to wait for him to make another mistake?’

Grace smiled. ‘There’s a good chance he’s already made one.’ He nodded at the wheelie bins. ‘We just need to find it.’