His death was an ordeal for me too. I had to watch the light fade from his eyes, the colour from his cheeks, as I pulled the belt tighter and tighter through its buckle. He struggled too. He was almost as strong as me, but not quite. I had persuaded him to allow me to tie his hands. All part of the game, I’d assured him.
But, as he began to realise that what was happening to him was no kind of game, he thrashed around with his legs, nearly kicking me in the face more than once. I just managed to avoid contact. At the very least, I would have been badly bruised and that might have been hard to explain away in my day-to-day life.
He made terrible gurgling sounds as he died. I shall never forget those sounds, but I did not allow myself to be deterred from my deadly and unavoidable purpose. I’d switched the TV to radio and tuned into a music station on high volume. To drown the sounds of our love-making, I’d told Tim. He’d smiled and accepted it. He’d trusted me totally, my young lover. In the physical sense, at any rate.
God knows, I hadn’t wanted to kill him, but I cannot kid myself that it was an accident, nor even that it wasn’t premeditated. I’d planned every bit of it. I’d had to. Tim had got too close to me. He knew about me. He knew who I was. If only he’d been prepared to step back, to stay away from my other side, but Tim was incapable of that. He’d wanted what he called a ‘normal relationship’. I didn’t have the faintest idea what a ‘normal relationship’ was. Not with a man or a woman. Not with anyone.
But I knew that, in Tim’s case, it represented a huge threat to everything that I was. Everything I had become. I had to remove that threat. I had no choice.
Twenty-One
Vogel went to see Hemmings straight away to bring him up to speed with the news from the Met. The shocked DCI agreed that the Melanie Cooke investigation must be reopened and that Vogel should drop the St Pauls murder case to divert all his energies back to it.
‘This could leave us with more egg on our faces than you and I are likely to eat in a lifetime,’ muttered Hemmings.
Vogel could only agree.
Supported by Saslow, he spent the rest of that day and most of the following morning re-interviewing Terry Cooke. He was still being held in a police cell at Patchway, awaiting transfer to prison where he would be held in custody until trial. Unless the charge against him was dropped of course, thought Vogel.
When questioned closely about his movements at the time of Timothy Southey’s death and whether or not he had ever met the young man and so on, Cooke grew more and more bewildered.
Eventually, Vogel told him about the DNA match with samples taken from Southey’s body.
‘I don’t believe this,’ said Cooke. ‘It’s some sort of fit-up, stuff like this doesn’t happen to blokes like me. I’ve told you, I’ve never been to any Premier Inn anywhere, let alone one in Soho. I’ve never even heard of Timothy Southey. I’m not an effin’ shirtlifter, for fuck’s sake. Anyway, it’s bloody simple now, you’ve got to do another DNA test on me right away. The stupid bastards have got my sample mixed up. That’s all it can be.’
Cooke’s brief stepped in for the first time then.
‘Clearly you should arrange that at once, Mr Vogel,’ she said. ‘And you should know that I shall also be advising my client to undergo a private and independent DNA test.’
Under the circumstances, Vogel didn’t blame her and Cooke’s request for a second DNA test hadn’t actually been necessary. It had always been Vogel’s next move.
Vogel was well aware that mistakes of this magnitude were, as they used to say in the Met, rare as a silent cabby. But everything about Cooke and the way he dealt with each questioning session was leading the DI to strongly suspect that one had been made in this instance.
DNA was generally regarded as a magic bullet by police forces throughout the world and with good reason, but laboratory error was not totally unknown. If that was what had happened in this case, then Vogel had never had personal experience of anything so major.
He suspended the interview. He and Saslow, accompanied by a uniformed officer, took Cooke around to the custody suite and supervised the second DNA test, taken by the custody sergeant himself. Then they headed back to Kenneth Steele House.
The transcripts of Tim’s text exchanges with his probable murderer and the records of phone calls to and from unidentified pay-as-you-go phones, still lay on Vogel’s desk. The DI prepared to go through them again, and every report, and every bit of evidence compiled on the Melanie Cooke murder too.
Logic told him that the Terry Cooke DNA match had to be a massive blunder by forensics. The results of the latest DNA test would be at least a couple of days, even though a request had been made at the highest level for fast-tracking. But, until Vogel knew for sure that Cooke’s DNA had been a mix-up, he intended to check and double-check every possible detail of Melanie and Timothy’s murder cases.
Al
I had waited anxiously, at our appointed meeting place. It was a bar which was always busy, not just at weekends, and where I knew there was no CCTV. I made sure I was there early and bagged a table by the door. I spotted Melanie as soon as she walked in. She looked all around, her eyes searching faces. They swept over my face and onwards. She did not recognise me and I had not expected her to, not from that photograph.
I stood up and took a few steps towards her. Her back was turned to me by then.
‘Melanie,’ I said quietly.
She swung around to face me, her smile of greeting quickly fading.
‘You’re not…’ she began. ‘You can’t be…’
I nodded.
‘You are Al?’
I nodded again, smiling.
‘But…’ She let the word fade away.
She didn’t really need to say anything else.
‘I’m Al and I am so pleased to meet you at last,’ I said, reaching out to shake hands with her. She ignored my hand.
‘You don’t look much like your picture,’ she responded sharply.
That was an understatement.
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to sound friendly and reassuring and nothing more. ‘Not close up enough and a bit whiskery, I fear.’
‘So are you,’ she said.
Razor blades for breakfast, I thought. I tried to rise to the challenge.
‘I was afraid you wouldn’t meet me, if I sent you an up-to-date photo.’
She didn’t reply. She looked uncertain and suddenly very young, in spite of the provocative way she was dressed. That reignited my interest, of course. I saw her glance towards the door. I couldn’t let her go, not now I was so close.
‘Don’t leave,’ I said. ‘Just have one drink.’
‘Uh, I shouldn’t have come.’
‘Yes, you should. Look, I really like you. I’m not so bad am I? Still fit?’
She pursed her lips and half smiled.
‘Just the one,’ I coaxed. ‘What do you like to drink?’
‘I’m underage.’
I damned well knew that, didn’t I? That was the whole point.
‘So have you never had an alcoholic drink, then?’ I asked in a teasing voice. ‘Not even an alcopop?’
She bristled.
‘Of course I have,’ she said. ‘And wine, well, just once or twice.’
‘So is it an alcopop then?’ I persisted.
‘All right.’
‘Any particular flavour?’
She shrugged.
‘How about blackcurrant? I’m told that’s very nice.’
She nodded.
I led her to the table by the door, where I’d been sitting before and where I’d left my pint of lager. It was as far way from the bar as possible. I didn’t want the staff questioning her age. From a distance, dressed the way she was, she could pass for late teens. I hoped so anyway. I went to the bar to order, keeping one eye on her as best I could, just in case she decided to leave. Not that I had any idea how I was going to stop her, if she simply stood up and went. I could hardly wrestle with her in a busy bar. I would just have to hope for the best.