‘Fine. I might just do that. If that’s what you really want, I’ll call them tomorrow!’
‘You know what Mary, I don’t care what you do about my bloody birth mother and my bloody half-sister. I’m too tired to care. I just want to go to sleep and I’m sleeping right here.’
He pointed at the sofa.
Mary said nothing more. She simply headed for their bedroom in silence.
Vogel curled up on the sofa as he had threatened, wrapping himself in his coat.
It was not the first row Mary and David Vogel had had in their marriage, but it was the first ever to end with them sleeping apart.
Twenty-Three
The next morning, Vogel remained more than a little preoccupied with the events of the previous evening. This was most unusual for him when he was working and on such a major case, especially one so disturbing in so many ways. He had just decided that he would call Mary and try to put things right, when his desk phone rang. His mind was still largely on Mary as he answered it.
‘Vogel,’ he said absent-mindedly.
Within seconds, his whole body language changed. He sat bolt upright in his chair, clearly listening intently.
‘My God,’ he said. ‘That’s extraordinary.’
Then he added: ‘Right. Yes. It gets curiouser and curiouser, indeed.’
He spoke for a few minutes more, before replacing the phone in its holder, then he called Willis and Saslow into his office.
‘I’ve just had a call from Bob Farley at Trinity Road,’ he began. ‘He’s now leading the team over there on the Thai girl murder case. They’ve just had the DNA results back. Another direct match. Actually two direct matches — with both the DNA taken from Tim Southey and from Melanie Cooke.’
‘Jesus,’ said Willis.
‘Are they sure they’ve got it right, boss?’ asked Saslow.
All three knew that was a rhetorical question. A mistake within forensics on the scale they had witnessed was not going to happen twice, let alone three times.
‘So, boss, we are looking for just one perpetrator for all three murders,’ said Saslow.
‘It would seem so.’
‘But they’re so different. I mean, you’d come up with a totally different profile for each, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Vogel concurred. ‘Firstly, we have someone whose target was a gay man. But, from what we know, Tim Southey’s killer is a homosexual himself, as there was plenty of evidence of sexual activity. We don’t know for sure how Southey met him, but the lad did have gay dating apps on his phone. Secondly, we have a killer who murdered a young Thai woman. One whom he had contacted through the net, allegedly with a view to a long-term relationship. The woman apparently thought she was coming here to marry him. Meanwhile, our third killer is a paedophile weirdo, who also met his victim through an online dating site. So, besides the DNA matches, the use of dating websites is the only thing we have so far that might remotely link the three killers. If it really is one man, then that’s extraordinary. It’s quite unheard of.’
‘Presumably there are no other DNA matches on record?’ queried Saslow.
‘No,’ Vogel agreed. ‘No matches and our perpetrator clearly knows there won’t be. He has not exactly been careful about avoiding giving us samples. Although, if the paedo is the same man who’s been staking out primary schools he always kept his stolen vehicles free of prints for some reason. Habit maybe. Or just good paedophile practice.’ Vogel stretched his lips into a humourless smile.
‘He’s an arrogant bastard, all the same,’ muttered Saslow.
‘Or just confident,’ offered Willis.
‘Let’s hope to God he’s overconfident, Willis,’ responded Vogel. ‘We need him to trip himself up, because right now we are going nowhere with this investigation.’
‘That’s what usually happens in the end, isn’t it, boss?’ commented Saslow.
Vogel grunted.
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing “usual” about this case, Dawn,’ he said. ‘There’s something else that’s odd, too. The bastard’s choice of names. Trinity Road just heard from Thailand again. When Manee Jainukul’s sister was interviewed a second time, she remembered this Saul’s last name. Homer. Saul Homer. And we also have Leo Ovid. Both of possible classical derivation.’
Willis and Saslow looked blank.
‘You two need to read more. Ovid, the Roman poet? And Homer, the Greek author?’ Vogel sighed. ‘Look them up. And let’s feed all this new information into what we have compiled already.’
After a brief silence, Vogel continued. ‘Willis, get the whole team checking and double-checking everything. You can brief them. You know as much as I do. I need to think all this through.’
Willis nodded his understanding.
After the two officers had departed, Vogel tried to do what he did best: study and assimilate. But he couldn’t put his personal dilemma out of his mind; the awful and completely needless row with Mary lurked on the fringe of his thoughts, blurring his focus. He shook his head and looked at the names again: Leo. Al. Saul. Surely there had to be significance in the choice of the unlikely names of Homer and Ovid, he thought, both with that classical association? But the significance evaded him. Until things were set right with Mary, Vogel knew he wouldn’t feel right in himself.
Vogel called Mary then, told her briefly what was happening and apologised for the night before.
‘I can’t believe I behaved so badly,’ he said. ‘I’m so very sorry, sweetheart.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ Mary responded at once.
‘You didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘I just took everything out on you, just like you said.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It really is, David.’
He had known it would be, of course. Nonetheless, he breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ Mary continued, ‘Eytan called this morning, soon after you left.’
Vogel thanked her for telling him. They both knew he was far from ready to return the call. He was also far too busy. Vogel was about to say goodbye, when Mary suddenly said,
‘I was just thinking about the names you mentioned: Leo Ovid and Saul Homer and how you thought that they must be connected in some way. You don’t suppose that your killer likes word games just as much as you do, David?’
That turned on a switch in Vogel’s mind, which — now his argument with Mary was behind them — was suddenly clearer than ever. Vogel said a hasty thanks and a swift goodbye to Mary. He couldn’t wait to follow up her idea.
Like many compilers of crosswords, Vogel was a classicist and more than moderately familiar with ancient literature. He knew that Homer, the legendary writer of The Iliad and The Odyssey, was often considered to be the father of Greek mythology. Then there was Ovid, an important mythographer of the Virgil and Horace era. He felt so certain that those names hadn’t been picked at random. The two surnames held a direct link to ancient mythology and perhaps that was the biggest clue. Homer and Ovid were writers, they were creators of characters. Maybe what Vogel needed to look for was a mythological character with some, yet to be revealed, relevance to all that had happened.
He began scribbling the names on a piece of paper, jumbling them up, transposing letters. He kept thinking about what Mary had said: might the killer also like word games? As a crossword compiler, he was an expert juggler of letters and words. He played with all five names at first — an awful lot of letters, even for him. Then he separated the last names from the first names. He got nowhere with Homer and Ovid, so he started to concentrate on Al, Leo and Saul. He felt quite sure there was an anagram there somewhere.