No, he didn’t remember John Willis in particular. But yes, he always used to ask recruits to take each other’s DNA samples. Two training jobs got done at once that way. And yes, of course he’d always checked that recruits’ fingerprints were identifiable. Only when pressed by Vogel, did Marcus finally admit it.
‘Well, no, I was probably not as thorough as you would be with a suspect. I don’t think anyone was. Not in my day, anyway. I mean, you’re dealing with police officers and it’s a routine process.’
Marcus told Vogel nothing he did not already suspect. Things were going from bad to worse. The DNA must have come from a real person and someone not on the PNC or the national data base. Various scenarios came to mind, all of them chilling. Vogel had read of a case in America where a suspect had paid a down-and-out to allow him to take a DNA sample, which he later substituted for his own. Vogel had no knowledge of any suspect having manipulated DNA that way in the UK, but it would clearly be much easier for a trainee police officer to do so.
Which led Vogel’s train of thought onto the muddle over Melanie Cooke’s father’s DNA. They’d put it down to a rare forensics cock-up. Now it seemed likely that Willis had deliberately substituted his own, previously unrecorded, DNA and prints for Terry Cooke’s. He’d almost certainly done something very like it before.
Willis, at Vogel’s own request, had gone to Patchway to babysit Cooke’s processing. More than likely he took over, thought Vogel. The custody boys wouldn’t have questioned an MCIT sergeant.
Of course, Willis would have known that, sooner or later, it would be discovered that the samples he submitted were not Cooke’s. So why would he do it? Vogel remembered the absolute loathing Willis had expressed for Cooke, the alleged wifebeater. As the son of a mother who had been beaten, that alone could have been Willis’s motive for framing Terry Cooke. Or Willis may have been playing for time, trying to wrong-foot his own team, which he certainly succeeded in doing. Vogel wasn’t sure, but he reminded himself that Willis was mad. He might have switched the samples just because he could.
Whilst he was still contemplating this latest piece of news, PC Polly Jenkins knocked on the open door to his office and entered.
‘Boss, traffic have spotted Willis heading out of the city and onto the M4 towards London. The boys want to know what to do. They are currently following but keeping their distance. They think Willis has spotted them, but he doesn’t appear to be reacting.’
‘Tell them to back off,’ said Vogel quickly. ‘The car’s on a motorway. We can track it without physically following it, make sure we do and make sure everyone knows that no approach must be made.’
‘Right boss.’
‘Most importantly of all, could the boys see if there was anyone else in the vehicle? If Willis still has Saslow with him?’
‘We asked that straight away, boss. They couldn’t say for certain but, if Dawn is in the car, they’re pretty sure she’s not sitting next to him in the passenger seat.’
Vogel grunted. Jenkins looked as concerned as he felt. He knew what the young woman was thinking. Dawn could be lying on the back seat out of sight of the cameras. She could be locked in the boot. She could be unconscious, or already dead.
Vogel shook himself out of it. She could be alive and secreted somewhere Willis/Aeolus was confident she would not be discovered, as the man himself had said on the phone. Aeolus wouldn’t lie, would he? He wouldn’t see the need to lie, Vogel told himself. They just had to find her.
But where was she?
Thanks to the CCTV cameras along the B4057 and Hemmings’s local knowledge, it was strongly suspected that Willis had driven straight to his home, after being alerted by Vogel’s phone call to Saslow. It was reasonable to assume, from the timeline, that Saslow had still been with him and quite probably still with him when he arrived at his home.
Vogel struggled to keep calm. Not for the first time he was glad that he wasn’t naturally an emotional man. Nonetheless, when the life of a fellow officer was at stake, it was difficult even for him to remain composed, and this wasn’t just any officer. This was Dawn Saslow. His Dawn.
He had to remind himself that he didn’t even know for certain yet that Willis had gone to his home, let alone taken Dawn Saslow there. But every instinct, coupled with Hemmings’s irrefutable logic, told him that’s what had happened. If Saslow was no longer with Willis in his car, or heaven forbid, lying dead or injured on the floor or in the boot, then she could still be at the house.
But Willis lived in an ordinary suburban semi. A cursory search had already been completed and the CSIs were now going through the place with a fine toothcomb. Vogel knew all about deficiencies in police searches. The Tia Sharp case came to mind; the twelve-year old’s body, concealed in the attic of her grandmother’s East London home, was missed twice by police searching the premises. Vogel had personal knowledge of CSIs failing to notice an obvious murder weapon, even a bloodied knife, at a crime scene. But this time they were looking for a fellow police officer. Everyone involved was on red alert and hopefully Dawn Saslow was alive. Surely her presence in a three-bedroomed semi couldn’t be overlooked.
Vogel called Vera Court on her mobile. The woman had not quite reached home. She still sounded in shock. Her life was going to change, thought Vogel obliquely. She mightn’t still be married to this monster, who had fooled so many, but she had been once and their children still bore his name.
‘Look, this might seem crazy,’ Vogel began. ‘But is there anywhere at your old, marital home where a person could be hidden? A place that we wouldn’t find, unless we knew it was there?’
‘No,’ replied Vera at once. ‘It’s just an ordinary, small house. I mean, there’s an attic, not much space up there. Then there’s the garage. John was always very protective about the garage. I called it his man cave. Nobody else had a key to it and the kids weren’t allowed in. He kept stuff in it for tinkering with the car, for the garden, just ordinary things. I hardly ever went in there. He kept the car in the garage, but if we were going out together he’d fetch it and drive round the front to pick me up. But I’m sure your people have looked in the garage by now, haven’t they, Mr Vogel? And I expect it was as tidy as ever, too. Not much of a hiding place.’
Willis muttered his agreement.
‘You really can’t think of anything else?’
‘No. Well… just something, but it’s probably nothing…’
‘Go on, Mrs Court.’
‘Well I remember one of the elderly neighbours there, old Willy Fox, who used to talk about playing in the air raid shelter, which was built in his garden just before the war. I suppose it would have been used when the docks were bombed in Bristol. Our house didn’t have one as far as I know. John never mentioned it certainly, nor anyone else, but it’s just a thought…’
Vogel sat up straight in his chair.
‘John lived in the house before you were married, didn’t he? Might he have known things about the house that you didn’t?’
‘I suppose so, but he couldn’t hide an air raid shelter from me and the kids, surely?’ said Vera.
‘I don’t know, Mrs Court,’ responded Vogel. ‘I do know that he appears to have hidden multiple identities and multiple murders from all of us. You said you thought John was capable of anything. He thinks that too. He thinks he is super capable, super clever and that the rest of us pale into insignificance by comparison. That may be his only weakness.’
As he ended the call, Hemmings walked in.
‘The CSIs have been on again to say that there’s nothing at all at Willis’s house,’ said the DCI. ‘A neighbour saw him pull out of the back alley leading from the garage about an hour ago, but couldn’t tell whether there was a passenger in the car. Indeed, they couldn’t actually see Willis, but just assumed it was him. Nobody, that we know of so far, saw the car arrive. There’s no sign of any hurried packing or anything like that and certainly no sign of DC Saslow. They found his passport, in the name of Willis, but we know he has at least one other in another name…’