‘That’s good,’ Paula declared. ‘You’ll have a familiar face alongside you when you see them. It sounds like an unpleasant task.’
‘Telling a couple their son was half eaten by foxes? “Unpleasant” could be an understatement.’
Thirty-three
‘Dominic Padstow,’ Tarvil Singh growled. ‘Just who the hell are you?’
‘You not having any luck?’ asked Griff Montell.
‘Not so far. There are no Padstows in the phone book for Edinburgh. There are none of them on the electoral roll, or on the valuation roll. This guy might have been in the city once, but he’s no’ here now.’
‘Not necessarily: he could be registered to vote somewhere else, he could be living in digs, and he could have a mobile rather than a landline. How about criminal convictions? Does he have any of them?’
‘Where d’you think I checked first?’ the big Sikh snapped.
‘Sorry. How about the Passport Office?’
‘Done that too, but the Data Protection Act restricts the information they can give us. The guy isn’t a suspect; and so he has rights to privacy.’
‘Where do you go next? Inland Revenue?’
‘I’d run up against the same problems there. No, I’ll try the Gavin parents, like the DI said.’
‘Good luck, mate!’ Montell exclaimed, with feeling.
Singh picked up his phone, checked a number scrawled on a pad on his desk, and dialled. He hoped that his sigh of relief did not show, when Russ Gavin, home from work for lunch as usual, answered the call. Mrs Gavin was a nice woman, totally overwhelmed by a loss that no mother ever deserved, and she had the sympathy of all the detectives who had come in contact with her. However, they were all agreed that she was, as Ray Wilding had put it, ‘as much use as a chocolate teapot’.
‘DC Singh,’ said Stacey’s father, ‘what can I do for you? Two calls in two days, first Mr Montell, now you: the investigation seems to be picking up pace again. It’s tragic that it’s taken two more deaths to do it, though.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, sir.’
‘Hey,’ he exclaimed, ‘don’t take that as a criticism. I’m not getting at you, honest, or at Mr Montell. The only guy I’ve got a down on was that clown in uniform who accused Stacey of being a junkie. I appreciate that you and all the rest of the CID team are doing your best.’
‘No problem, sir. We’re our own worst critics, I promise you. I want to ask you about the second victim, Miss Boras. She and your daughter were both young full-time artists working in Edinburgh. We’re looking for any links between them, and we need to start by establishing whether they ever met, whether they knew each other.’
‘Not to my knowledge,’ the man replied. ‘Hold on, though, my wife’s here. I’ll ask her. Doreen, the police need to know if Stacey was acquainted with the second girl who’s just been murdered.’ Singh heard an indistinct mumble in the background. ‘Boras,’ said Gavin, across his living room. ‘Zrinka Boras.’ The detective waited, but the answer came quickly. ‘She’s shaking her head. No, it doesn’t mean anything to her either. I don’t think it’s a name we would have forgotten if Stacey had ever mentioned it.’
‘No, sir, I don’t imagine so.’
‘What was she like?’ asked Gavin, quietly.
Singh thought he heard his voice falter slightly. ‘She seems to have been a very nice woman,’ he told him. ‘Just like your Stacey,’ he added. ‘Killed for no reason that we’ve yet been able to establish. She came from a wealthy background; her dad’s a famous man but she wouldn’t use his name to get on. She wanted to make her own way in the world, with little or no help from her parents, and like your Stacey, she was succeeding.’
‘God, it’s tragic, isn’t it?’ Gavin sighed. ‘Can you imagine the mind of a man who would do something like that? Oops, sorry, I should have said “person”. I’m jumping to gender conclusions.’
‘No, you’re all right there, sir,’ the detective reassured him. ‘We’re more or less certain that we’re looking for a man. The way the third victim’s. . the boy’s. . body was concealed would have taken a lot of strength. But, no, I can’t imagine his mind. That’s one of the reasons he’s been difficult to catch so far: we’ve got no idea what his motive is.’
‘He’s an art critic.’ Singh could almost hear Gavin wince as soon as the sentence had escaped from his lips. ‘Jesus, that sounds terrible coming from me. You don’t want to see the way my wife’s looking at me.’
‘That’s been said already, sir, among our lot, and it’ll be said again too, so don’t give yourself a kicking over it. Anyhow, it’s right, in a way: the link between the victims’ occupations gives us a line of enquiry. For now, though, we’re concentrating on finding personal links between them, mutual acquaintances, and so on. I’d like to put a name to you, to see if it means anything.’
‘Fire away.’
‘Dominic Padstow.’
‘Dominic Padstow?’ Russ Gavin repeated. ‘Dominic Padstow.’ The detective constable sat patiently through a long silence. ‘There was a Dominic, once, a year or so back, when Stacey was still at art college, but I don’t remember his surname. . if, indeed, I ever knew it.’
‘He was a boyfriend?’
‘I suppose so. She was living in a student flat in town at that point, so Doreen and I weren’t really up to speed with her, er, romantic life. She did bring him to the house once, though.’
‘You met him?’
‘Yes, it was at the weekend. They arrived out of the blue, she introduced him as her friend Dominic, then whisked him up to her studio in the attic.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Roughly, I suppose. As I recall, he was a bit older than Stacey; yes, I recall mentioning that to Doreen at the time. I said that he was getting on a bit to be a student. . although to be fair to the chap she didn’t introduce him as such.’
‘How much older?’
‘He’d be about thirty.’
‘Did he look like a student? Was he dressed like one?’
‘A bit smarter than that, I suppose. He wore denims and a check shirt.’ There was a sound in the background. ‘What’s that, dear? You sure? Okay. Doreen says that the shirt was Paul Smith. She noticed the label; she says they’re pricey.’
‘I’m an M amp; S man myself, sir,’ Singh volunteered. ‘Can you give me a physical description?’
‘He was around the same height as me, I’d say, five ten, well built, but not fat, strong-looking, well groomed. . By that I mean he was clean-shaven and his hair was longish, but properly cut. Now that I think about it, he didn’t really look like a student. He had a more affluent air than that.’
‘She never mentioned a surname? You’re sure?’
‘Certain. She only ever called him Dominic, or Dom.’
‘How long did they see each other?’
‘A few months.’
‘Might it have carried on up to the time of her death?’
‘No,’ Gavin replied firmly. ‘When Stacey graduated and moved back in with us to save money while she built up her reputation, and established regular sales, I asked her about him, “How’s Dom?” just casually. She just smiled and said, “He’s off down the road,” her way of saying that it was all over. She wasn’t upset, though,’
‘Mmm.’ Singh paused. ‘I don’t suppose you found a photo of him, sir, among your daughter’s personal stuff? Maybe something taken in a group?’
The father chuckled. ‘No, but I can do better than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘His portrait’s upstairs. Stacey painted him. That’s what they were doing up in the attic: he was sitting for her. That’s how I know he’s well built: it’s a nude.’
‘She kept it?’
‘Yes. I was up in the studio one day and she showed me it. She said that she’d have given it to him, but that he didn’t stick around long enough.’
‘Is it. . how do I put this, sir? Is it a good likeness of him?’
‘I can only speak for the part above the neck, Mr Singh, but if the rest of him is as near lifelike as that, he’s an impressive bloke.’