Showstopper

27

Next morning at the debrief of Operation Showstopper, Paul Gilbert had to endure another ordeal.

“You were crazy riding down those steps without a crash helmet,” Diamond said, “but you’re also incredibly brave. You made the arrest and we salute you.”

When everyone started clapping, Gilbert turned crimson and looked ready for a fresh stunt — jumping out of the window.

Ingeborg said, “Show a moped rider a Harley-Davidson and that’s what happens.”

Diamond shifted the spotlight. “And you, Inge, and you, Jean, earn a gold star each for finding the truth about Greg Deans. Not everyone knows yet, so would one of you like to sum up?”

“Oh.”

Put on the spot, the two women looked at each other. Ingeborg said, “I’ll start, then. After Natalie told us Deans was Romanian, somebody not a million miles from here came up with the idea that all three missing men, Tudor, Nicol and Deans, might be Romanian immigrants. Jean did some digging on the internet and Bingo!”

“Get away,” Halliwell said.

“Check if you don’t believe me. So we took up our theory with the embassy, sent them photos from the Swift and Proud personnel files and they confirmed that Tudor and Nicol had both been born there. Then we got into a long to-and-fro with them because the mugshot we sent of Grigore Dinescu, alias Deans, didn’t match the one they had. If he wasn’t the same man, who was he? Quite a search went on at the embassy and back in their own country. Someone there believed his face was familiar for some reason, but they couldn’t place him. Then Jean had the smart idea of suggesting they checked their criminal records and that’s how we learned his true identity.” She looked across at her colleague. “Come out from behind your screen, Jean.”

The shy member of the team surfaced and cleared her throat.

“Can’t hear you,” John Leaman said.

“I didn’t speak,” Jean said.

“We’re waiting.”

“Well,” she said in her soft, apologetic voice that managed to command everyone’s attention, “the Romanians used biometric recognition software and matched our photo to a known offender called Simion Stoica, who was convicted of three murders in Mangalia, on the Black Sea coast, in the year 2007. He’s known as the Knifeman of Mangalia.”

“Greg Deans?” Halliwell piped in disbelief.

Diamond said, “Can we get the picture on the big screen? It’s an amazing resemblance.”

Leaman switched on and Jean transferred the image. The red hair was cropped and the face clean-shaven. Even so, Greg’s strong features and calculating brown eyes were unmistakable.

“No doubt about that,” Gilbert said.

“The Romanians are confident, or they wouldn’t have told us,” Jean said before launching into the back story. “Stoica was a graduate in drama and he got a job with a theatre company by fatally stabbing the only other applicant. At the time it was believed his victim was mugged in the street. One of the company became suspicious and he, too, was knifed to death outside his house by someone wearing a ski mask.”

“This man feels no guilt,” Diamond said. “He thinks nothing of taking a life. Anyone who stands in his way is at risk of getting killed.”

Jean resumed. “His third victim was a new theatre manager who wanted to make changes Stoica didn’t like. This time the police got enough evidence for a conviction. He was given a life sentence, but he escaped from a working party in 2009 and was never recaptured.”

“How did he turn himself into Dinescu?” Halliwell asked.

“Identity theft. The real Grigore Dinescu was a businessman from a town further up the coast who planned to emigrate to England in 2012. He had no family in Romania apart from a brother who lost touch with him after he left. But it seems the man who flew into London as Dinescu was Stoica. They now believe the passport was a fake one showing Stoica’s photo and Dinescu’s name.”

“Do we need to ask what happened to the real Dinescu?” Paul Gilbert said.

“The Romanian police are investigating.”

“Any of us could tell them.”

“Thanks, Jean,” Diamond said. “You two did a fine job.” Turning to address everyone, he said, “Ingeborg called to update me while I was interviewing Ann Bugg and gave me this man’s record. Three killings in a year in Romania. At least two here. Bugg still doesn’t know how lucky she is to be left alive.”

Everyone fell silent, struggling to understand Stoica’s mindset.

“What got him started on his killing spree here?” Gilbert eventually asked.

“To him it’s as straightforward as deleting words on a computer. He got the job with Swift and Proud and learned he would be working with a fellow Romanian, Dave Tudor, who could well have known about the serial killings in Mangalia. It was a risk he couldn’t take, so he killed him within days.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Leaman, the team’s stickler for facts, said.

“Get real, John,” Ingeborg said. “Tudor went missing shortly after Deans got the job as production assistant. He had to be eliminated.”

“It’s still supposition. The body was never found. All we know for sure is that he failed to turn up for work and when someone eventually went to his lodgings to enquire, it was clear he hadn’t been there for a couple of days. The same goes for Jake Nicol.”

“Not the same at all,” she said. “Nicol’s flat had been emptied as if he’d moved out. And there was blood on the floor.”

“A few drops,” Leaman said.

Paul Gilbert spoke up. “May I?”

“Of course, you may,” Diamond said. “As investigating officer, you know better than anyone about this. You were the one who found the blood.”

Gilbert blushed. “Well, it seemed important at the time because we assumed it was Nicol’s. But there was a lot of difficulty getting a DNA reading and when the lab finally came up with something it turns out the blood was Dean’s. In his hurry to clear Nicol’s things out he must have nicked his hand.”

Leaman was frowning. “No one told me this.”

Ingeborg said, “Because we didn’t know. We only just found out. We didn’t have Deans’s DNA profile until now.”

Diamond interrupted before the spat turned ugly. “Deans had already had a busy night. That’s why he was in the flat so late, after midnight. Let’s go over it. He knifed Nicol to death at the airfield after everyone from the film unit had left. He used the last TV truck to move the body to the pottery.”

Gilbert said, “Will Legat saw the lights of the truck being driven off. That was Deans.”

“Right,” Diamond said. “After unloading the body at Combe Hay, he drove out to Cold Ashton and returned the truck to the Gripmasters depot.”

Gilbert raised a thumb in confirmation. “Yes, the manager told me it was returned there as usual.”

“Nicol had his scooter parked there,” Diamond went on.

“Do we know that?” Leaman said.

Gilbert said, “You’ve got it on file. It’s in the report I gave you of my interview with Able Mabel. He used a blue Vespa and she showed me where it would have been parked.”

Diamond picked up the thread again. “And Deans, well organised as always, had brought Jake’s keys with him and rode the scooter back to the airfield to collect his Range Rover. He then drove home with the Vespa in the back. We already found it in one of the barns at the pottery. After all that, he still needed to make sure there was nothing to connect his victim to Romania, so he drove to Fairfield Park, let himself in with Jake’s door key, stuffed everything into a bag to give the impression Jake had packed his own things, and took off.”

Everything seemed to be explained except the most obvious — and Leaman was quick to seize on it. “So where’s the body?”

“I may have news of that. I’m expecting a call. In fact, I’d better check.” He took out his phone and looked at it.

Ingeborg said, “You’re not switched on.”

Looks were exchanged among the team. Their technophobic boss would never learn.

While the phone powered up, Gilbert said, “We know Jake Nicol was knifed because we found his bloodstained belt.”

“But not the body,” Leaman continued to insist.

Diamond flapped his hand for silence. “It’s a bad line.” He said into the phone, “Can I call you back?... Really? All right, then.” He looked up. “He’s in the building. He’s on his way up.”

“Who is?” Halliwell asked.

“Didn’t I say? Wolfgang, the crime scene investigator.”

Even this bumptious little man might have been surprised to open the door and find the entire murder squad staring at him, ready for his news, but he didn’t let it show. “Have I interrupted something?”

“We’re waiting to hear from you,” Diamond said.

“All of you?”

“Only if you have something for us.”

“I do.” He lifted high the holdall that went everywhere with him. “In here are the remains of at least one individual, presumably the rigger who went missing recently.”

“May we see?”

“There’s not much left of him.” He unzipped the holdall and took out an evidence bag that he displayed to his audience like a market salesman. “To you, it will look like a piece of broken china. To an experienced eye, this is a large chip of human tooth. I also found sixteen other fragments of bone.”

“Where was it?” Diamond asked him.

“At the pottery, where you asked me to go. I had my doubts about this trip after the fiasco at the marina, but this time you got it right. I explained to the lady of the house that I was sent by you and she told me to go right ahead. She said she doesn’t load the kiln herself.

She can’t, being disabled. I gather there’s a man who does the heavy work for her. The kiln is housed in one of the barns. It’s an industrial-sized thing, gas-fired, which means it can heat to very high temperatures. Why a potter needs a kiln as big as a bank safe I have no idea.”

“Natalie creates large ceramic artworks that sell for high prices,” Diamond told him.

“Well, this one is large enough to take a corpse and evidently that’s what has happened at some time recently. I’m glad to say the kiln was cool by the time I examined it.”

“She didn’t mind you poking around?”

“Please, superintendent. I don’t poke. I’m a trained expert.”

“And where did you find the remains?”

“Most weren’t inside the kiln. Some were underneath on the floor and others were lodged inside a machine I first assumed was a pugmill for preparing clay, but turned out to be a pulveriser. You see, the firing process at extremely high temperatures is a good destroyer of organic tissue, but is not all-consuming. Small pieces of bone remain. Your killer’s method was to remove them from the kiln with the ash and put everything through the pulveriser. He was organised, but so am I. I took the machine apart. He didn’t allow for small bits in the mechanism.”

“Or for a dogged crime scene man like you,” Diamond said. “We’re in awe of you, Wolfgang.”

“Have you arrested anyone yet?”

“That’s the final challenge.”

Wolfgang was unimpressed.