Colin checked his watch. The woman was almost a quarter of an hour late. He glanced around the bar again. He had been told to look out for a tall redhead. Her name was Rachel — but don’t approach her, she’ll come to you, Paolo had instructed. There were only two women in the bar, neither was a red-head, and they were both with men.
Colin began to fidget with his shirt collar. He was a smart dresser, but he liked casual gear best. He didn’t wear a tie very often and he had feared his collar would prove too tight. Seems he had been right. He was sweating. The bar was hot and stuffy, and that added to his discomfort. He looked around him. Bored now. Impatient. He ate a lot of peanuts, for something to do.
Eventually he became aware of the barman looking at him. The man had just answered the telephone and was nodding into the receiver. When the call was over he ducked under the bar and walked briskly across the room.
‘Are you Colin?’ he asked without much interest. ‘Rachel says she’s been delayed. She’ll pick you up by the back door to the car park in five minutes.’
‘Right, thanks mate,’ said Colin, thinking ‘At last!’
He paid for his Coke — he hadn’t done so before because he had assumed Rachel would pick up the tab. You had to watch the pennies in this game just like any other business. He made his way through the hotel foyer and opened the door at the rear which led into the car park.
Outside the change in temperature was dramatic. He shivered as the cold of the damp November night engulfed him. He wished he’d brought an overcoat. He peered around him. The car park was ill lit, shadowy.
A female voice called his name. Where was she, for goodness sake? He couldn’t see her. Then he spotted a dark saloon car with its side lights on, the motor running and the passenger door open. His name was called again. Yes, the voice came from the car, he was sure of it. He walked over to the motor and bent down to look inside. As he did so he felt a vicious punch in the small of his back. His knees buckled. His vision began to cloud. And his last coherent thought was the surprisingly clear realisation that he hadn’t been punched at all. He had been stabbed.
Within less than a minute Colin Parker was dead.
Colin’s body was found shortly after his death by a porter who nipped out into the car park for a quick smoke. No attempt had been made to conceal the body which lay, almost certainly as it had fallen, spread-eagled on the ground only a few yards to the left of the door into the hotel.
‘I know I shouldn’t have touched it, but I didn’t realise he was a goner, you see. I went to help like. And he was still warm, I mean, it was a second or two before I realised he’d snuffed it.’
Young Micky Peters, a skinny undersized lad who didn’t look strong enough to be employed to lug suitcases around, gave the impression that he was enjoying every moment of being the centre of attention when Rose Piper and DS Mellor questioned him. Indeed, thought Rose, it seemed as if finding the body was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in his entire nineteen years.
Once more the scenes-of-crime boys were already at work by the time Rose arrived. By unhappy coincidence she had again been forced to interrupt an evening with Simon at San Carlo. She had been in the process of buying him dinner in a bid to make amends for having walked out of his birthday party when her mobile phone had rung and she had learned of the second murder.
Ironic really. History repeating itself. She winced at the memory of Simon’s glum resignation and made herself concentrate on the task in hand.
For once the internal communications of the Avon and Somerset force seemed to have worked pretty smoothly. DI Pearson from Bridewell nick had been the first senior officer called to the scene — the Portway Towers was squarely in Bridewell territory — but had made contact with Rose’s murder unit as soon as he saw what had happened. Pearson, a very experienced officer, realised at once that the circumstances and manner of death were similar to the case already being investigated. And as he was nearing retirement, and as the city centre Bridewell was always considered ill-equipped and badly situated for major crime inquiries, there had been none of the behind-the-scenes power struggle which might have occurred with a different investigating officer from a different station.
DI Pearson had been quite happy to hand the case on. Relieved almost. He had priorities other than battling to make his name on a big murder case. Those kind of ambitions were long buried in DI Pearson, if indeed he had ever experienced them. It was his pub quiz night, he explained to an amused Rose, when he eventually excused himself from the scene.
Carmen Brown was crouched by the corpse, her bag of tricks at her side. And there was really only one question Rose wanted answered right now.
‘So come on Carmen, is it the same killer? Do we have a serial or what?’
Dr Brown leaned back on her heels and looked up at the Detective Chief Inspector. Her face was pinched with the cold.
‘It’s the same method, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘He’s been stabbed through the small of the back — almost certainly by a knife with a long sharp blade. See?’
The victim was lying on his front, the ragged hole in the back of his jacket clearly apparent. As before, there was not a great deal of blood, but the light material of the jacket had not trapped and stemmed what bleeding there was in the way that Marty Morris’s heavy leather jacket had done. An ominous dark bloodstain had spread over the pale tan of the suit jacket.
Rose struggled to control her breathing. Steeling herself, she focused her gaze on the man’s face. Again the victim was lying with his head to one side. His eyes were locked open and in them Rose could still see terror. It may only have been a fleeting thing, but it was there all right, and remained frozen with death. She was beginning to get used to it. Once more this was a good-looking young man. His hair was clean and shiny, his skin unseasonably tanned as if he had either recently been on a sunshine holiday or had been using a sunbed.
Rose looked around her. ‘No sign of a murder weapon again, then?’ she inquired of a passing SOCO.
The white-suited officer shook his head mournfully. A team of four SOCOs were already at work examining the entire area, three of them on hands and knees. It was going to be a long night.
The Cataldi brothers arrived around 2.00 a.m. and were quite quickly authorised to take the body away.
‘You know, I’ve not been able to look at a bin liner since I started this job,’ remarked Ron Cataldi conversationally as he and his brother loaded the corpse in its body bag into their van.
At Southmead Hospital an exhibit officer as usual supervised the removal of the dead man’s clothes and other effects which were all bagged and labelled ready for forensic examination.
Rose Piper and Sergeant Mellor arrived soon afterwards, just as the body was being fingerprinted. Rose had given up on sleep for that night. In any case her adrenalin was pumping. She doubted she could sleep and she was quite happy to delay going home to Simon. She suspected that Mellor would have been glad to escape for a few hours — but he had apparently not dared to suggest it.
Without comment, the exhibit officer handed Rose an evidence bag containing the contents of the dead man’s pockets. She peered at the various items through the transparent plastic. There was a handkerchief, a pack of Marlboro, a small quantity of marijuana, a packet of Rizla cigarette papers, some loose change and a wallet containing fifty pounds, a Barclays Visa card and a driving licence. The latter two items identified their holder to be Colin Parker, of 1 Park Terrace, Bristol West.