When that failed, we still fell back on the almost mythical power of genetic fingerprinting. We’d reveal to the national and local media ‘a positive new lead’ or ‘significant new information’ about a particular case, and that this fresh twist was being subjected to ground-breaking DNA techniques.
We peddled this white lie for good reason: it rattled the perpetrators and any witnesses who’d lied to protect them. We then paid them all a visit and acted as if we’d finally worked out the truth – we just needed the imminent DNA results to confirm it.
The prospect of ‘having to go through it all again’ made many dodgy witnesses and even hardened killers break and confess. Few have the stomach for it, second-time round.
There was a downside to all this, of course. No matter which route we took – testing new science or knocking old doors – we had to inform the families of the murder victims. The effect tended to be two-fold negative. Firstly, by ‘bringing it all up again’ we were forcing these people to re-live the darkest episode of their lives. Secondly, to flush out twitchy witnesses or repentant suspects, we had to play-up our certainty that, this time round, we would get justice for the victim, thus raising expectations that we couldn’t always meet.
Either way, there was little actual ‘investigation’. We spent our days cross-referencing the new with the old, be it science or statements, making our work almost entirely clerical, soulless and solitary. And so the alcoholics in the unit drank more. Those prone to depression or other unspecified illnesses got signed-off more. Whatever dastardly deeds the rest of us had committed to end up here, only the Met’s internal disciplinary board truly knew. But I was the most desperate to get away, to swap cold for hot, to get back on a murder squad.
Now the murder of Elizabeth Phoebe Little presented me with my first real opportunity. If I made a good impression on DS Spence, he might just scout me. I needed to go back through all the unsolved cases and unearth some solid potential leads to present to him.
A chill slithered around my neck. Until now, my work at the Unit had been as a revisionist, correcting history, backdating justice. Sure I’d helped hunt down killers, but they weren’t active, mid-spree like this maniac.
Forget the usual DNA ‘fishing’ or the bluff for buried secrets. This was a murder hunt. I was looking for someone who’d struck before and would almost certainly kill again, soon.
I needed to fillet, dissect, treble check and treble challenge every single detail in our unsolved files that could be pertinent to this murder. If I missed a suspect who then went on to kill again, it’d be on my head.
The air tingled, charged. The lilting plants rallied and those empty white boards pined. I’d found my purpose, my road to redemption.
I reached for a floppy disc marked ‘Unsolved Female Murders – Live’.
The first disappointment: how few of these killings shared characteristics with the Liz Little murder. I thought I’d be spoiled for choice. Instead, only one case screamed out. At first glance, I felt convinced it had to be the same killer.
I scolded my tearaway mind: treble check and treble challenge every single detail.
Eighteen months ago, 43-year-old Helen Oldroyd had been found slashed and stabbed to death at the wheel of her racing-green Jaguar XJS in the car park of a leisure centre in Brentford, West London. That morning, she’d left the family home in Marlow, Bucks at 9.40am, telling builders renovating the property that she was running late for a 10am appointment. She’d been expected at her place of work – a Bureau de Change she co-owned in Paddington, West London – between 10.30am and 11am.
No record of this 10am appointment had been found in her diary or detailed notebooks. She hadn’t mentioned it to her husband, Alistair, colleagues at work or to any friends.
Two swimmers turning up at the Fountain Leisure Centre at 11am noticed the distinct green jag parked at the very perimeter of the car park, facing into an eight-foot-tall hedge. They assumed that the woman sitting in the driver’s seat was taking a nap. An hour later, they came out to find her in exactly the same position and raised the alarm.
Officers found the keys in the ignition. On the console between the driver and passenger seat sat a sample of blue wallpaper and a six-inch piece of wood. Across the back seat of the vehicle, a variety of carpet tiles had been laid out as if on display or up for discussion. Her handbag sat untouched on the floor.
The pathologist reported that Helen had been stabbed 50 times with a knife three to four inches long and an inch wide. Ten of the wounds were slashes to her hands and arms as she fought for her life.
They found no weapon or signs of sexual assault.
The pattern of her wounds showed that the killer launched his attack from the passenger seat, then got out of the car, walked around to the driver’s door, opened it and finished the job.
Detectives interviewed more than 800 people who’d parked at the leisure centre that morning. None of them remembered seeing anything suspicious. Officers were baffled – the attacker must have been covered in blood and either walked to another car to drive away, or left the car park on foot. They’d never know because neither the car park nor the road outside was covered by CCTV.
Helen had lived in a £600,000 detached house with Alistair, an estate agent, and their children Luke, 12, and Martha, 9.
Alistair was interviewed at length and eliminated as a suspect. He insisted his wife couldn’t have been conducting an affair as they were ‘completely open’ with each other. He was unable to offer an explanation as to her presence in Brentford that morning, or who she might have been meeting. Helen had simply indicated that she would be driving to work as usual.
He speculated that she must have received the call to attend this mystery assignation after he’d left for work at 8am. However, the builders working inside their home from 7.30am that morning insisted that the landline hadn’t rung. She didn’t own a mobile.
The wallpaper found in her car was a small sample of a roll brought to her home that morning by the principle contractor. None of the builders had left the Oldroyd home at any time between 7.30am and 4pm.
When news of the murder broke, a man who drove through Brentford that morning claimed that he saw Helen’s Jaguar travelling slowly and erratically along Chiswick High Road, south of the M4 flyover, at about 10am. When he overtook the car, he saw the woman driver wrestling with a man in the passenger seat. It had been a fleeting glimpse, he felt unable to provide a description. Assuming it to be a domestic, he sped on. Intriguingly, he said that at least five more vehicles held up by the Jaguar overtook at the same time, just as it pulled into the leisure centre car park.
The report pointed out that the Fountain Leisure Centre couldn’t have been on any logical route Helen might have taken to work. The centre’s visitor book had no record of her ever attending. They found no swimming costume or towel in the car.
My brain ached. I reminded myself of the goal here: to establish if both women could have been killed by the same man. There were obvious similarities; Helen and Liz had both been savagely attacked with a knife. They had known their killers. Their bodies had been left exposed in public places.
But there were key differences too. Helen hadn’t been held somewhere, tortured or cut up. She’d died in what appeared to be a spur-of-the-moment frenzy, whereas Liz’s murder seemed meticulously pre-meditated.
In fact, Oldroyd’s murder had been so messy that her racing-green Jag interior must be chock-full of DNA. After all, she and her attacker had wrestled for a matter of minutes. She must have grabbed hold of some skin, hair or even clothing fibres that might seal her killer’s fate. She kept herself fit; maybe she managed to draw blood. Perhaps the ferocity of her defence is what caused her killer to ‘flip out’ and stab her in such a blind frenzy.
There had to be evidence of him somewhere in that car.
My finger trembled as I dialled the incident room number.
The meek