‘Intriguing,’ said Vogel, but he couldn’t let his brain dwell on it. He really couldn’t. He had another case of his own now. He was already having trouble enough moving on from Melanie Cooke, then he remembered Clarke’s opening gambit.
‘I don’t see what it could have to do with the Cooke murder, though, boss?’
‘I’m getting to that, Vogel. You’re ex-Met. I’m sure you know about our DNA backlog. Everything has to be prioritised. A gay boy found dead in a hotel room is pretty low priority round here. My personal hunch that it could have been murder didn’t count for much under the circumstances. This place is still full of homophobes and mysogynists. We didn’t get the DNA back til this morning. My lot wacked it into the national data base and hey presto, there was a direct match with the DNA found on Melanie Cooke.’
Vogel couldn’t believe his ears.
‘What? That doesn’t make sense. The murder of a schoolgirl and the death of a gay man during a sex game just don’t match at all. It can’t be the same perpetrator. How could it be?’
‘People can be bisexual you know, Vogel.’
Vogel thought for a moment.
‘When did you say you found that dead boy?’
‘Nearly a month ago.’
‘Well, I suppose that, technically, Terry Cooke could be your killer,’ said Vogel reluctantly. ‘Melanie died a week ago now and we didn’t arrest her father until four days later, after we got our DNA results back, just a tad quicker than yours.’
‘Stranger things have happened, Vogel. Remind me how old the girl was, will you?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Well our boy is only eighteen. Not quite paedophilia territory, but perhaps your man just likes ’em as young as he can get ’em and of either sex.’
‘Perhaps, but we have no evidence of that. We investigated big time whether or not Cooke had been abusing his daughter on a regular basis, but we found nothing to suggest that. Although the girl’s clothes were ripped and there were bruises around her breasts and her vagina, there was no sign at all that sexual intercourse had taken place. Indeed, she was a virgin, apparently. The favourite theory is that Cooke killed her out of frustration at her behaviour, because she was running wild and didn’t want to know her dad any more. Then he tried to make it look like a sexual assault, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually have sex with her.’
‘She wouldn’t have bruised if she was already dead, Vogel.’
‘Well, maybe at the same time he was throttling her. I don’t know, boss. To tell the truth I’ve never liked this one, but DNA can’t lie or so we are told. Only, now you’ve brought this to the table…’
‘That’ll teach you to boast about compiling crossword puzzles, Vogel.’
Vogel didn’t bother to respond to that.
‘You are sure about the DNA results, aren’t you boss?’ he asked. ‘Not one of forensics’ famous cock-ups is it?’
‘Pretty sure, Vogel. In any case, it’s all being double-checked as we speak.’
‘I just find it hard to believe, boss.’
‘Indeed. I suppose you have yet to consider that there could be a famous forensics cock-up at your end?’
‘The thought was beginning to occur to me.’
‘You’d certainly better do some double-checking too, Vogel.’
‘Yep. I guess so.’
‘Right, then we should reconvene.’
Vogel didn’t respond. He couldn’t quite take in what he had been told. He was missing something important, he felt sure of it. And, if he was right, Nobby Clarke was missing something too.
It was the DS who finally broke the silence.
‘Are you still there, Vogel?’
‘Sorry boss, I was trying to think,’ he said. ‘By the way, I presume you have an ID on the victim?’
‘Yes. His wallet was on the bedside table. Cash, credit cards, students’ union card, bus pass and so on all still in it. His phone was there too. We were able to ID him straight away: Timothy Southey. First year student at LSE. He lived with his parents in Clapham. They were told as soon as the body was found. Not by me, thank God. One advantage of a highfalutin, damned desk job. No more death calls. Apparently they didn’t even know the lad was gay and still won’t accept it.’
‘Which hotel was he found in?’
‘The Leicester Square Premier Inn.’
‘Who booked the room?’
‘Our likely killer, he walked in off the street and paid cash.’
‘Right. He’d still have been asked for a name at least though.’
‘Yes, but he wouldn’t give his real name, would he? Registered as Leo Ovid. Doesn’t even sound like a proper name. There’s not a single Ovid listed in the London phone book.’
‘Curious. People giving false names usually use something common, don’t they? I know John Smith is a cliché too far, but nothing to draw attention, isn’t that the criteria if you’re checking into a hotel and you’re up to no good?’
‘I wouldn’t know Vogel,’ remarked Clarke in a deliberately neutral tone. ‘Not bloody Leo Ovid, though, surely.’
‘You’ve got the boy’s phone. Was this Leo listed on it?’
‘Indeed. Along with more than one contact number. One of them was just a wrong number and the others were all defunct pay-as-you-go phones.’
‘So, no way of tracing him?’
‘No, not from that anyway.’
‘No doubt you’ve checked the records. Read his texts? Listened to voicemail? Hasn’t that lead to anything?’
‘Nope, not really. No voicemail messages and most of the text messages were from Timothy to Leo expressing undying love and trying to arrange a date. The ones from this Leo were all vaguely defensive and there’d been a couple cancelling earlier meetings. The only thing clear to us, was that Leo seemed to be leading our young victim a merry dance, but that’s no surprise given what happened. Maybe murder was what he’d intended all the time, who knows. I’ll email you a transcript. You can have a look for yourself.’
Vogel thanked her and ended the call. He suddenly had a great deal of work to do.
Leo
I suppose it seems crazy to say that killing him hurt me as much as it did him. But that’s the truth, I was quite sure of that. Tim is dead. He is at peace. I now have to live with what I have done and I will never find peace. Never.
I left the hotel in the early hours, hovering by the lift until I was pretty sure the attention of the night staff had been distracted. I had my baseball hat on and was keeping my head down. It was highly unlikely that I would be recognised by anyone or be identifiable on any CCTV footage, but I didn’t wish to be spotted leaving in the middle of the night. I thought it might look suspicious and draw attention to myself, even in a Premier Inn in Soho.
It might have been safer, of course, to have waited until eight or nine in the morning, when my leaving would have been camouflaged by other guests checking out. But I couldn’t spend the rest of the night in a hotel room with a dead body, could I? And his dead body too. My beloved Tim.
I still do not know quite how I managed to tighten that belt around his neck. It was not a problem for me physically. I am a strong, fit man, but I loved Tim. Truly, I did. In as much as I have ever managed to love anyone, of course.