‘Mrs Grunwell, in whose wheelie bin the body was found, says that she put the rubbish out at ten o’clock on Sunday night, as usual, and she heard a car nearby between eleven and eleven-thirty that same night. She also thought she heard someone kick or bump into the bin about the same time. She’s eighty-five, but in my estimation, we can take her as a reliable witness on these points. We also got confirmation of the car and the bump from two other houses at that end of the street, so we can probably accept that the body was dumped between eleven o’clock and eleven-thirty on Sunday night. Not so late that there might not have been someone about, but it was a Sunday, and things tend to get quiet fairly early then, even on the East Side Estate. What we don’t know, in addition to who dumped him, of course, is where he came from or how far he was driven. Gerry, any theories?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t want to drive very far with a body in your boot, would you, guv? Or in your back seat. I mean, you might get pulled over for speeding or driving through a red light or something. It’s risky. There’d also be traces in the car. Blood, for a start, if he was stabbed. You know how hard it is to get rid of those sorts of things completely.’
‘You’re saying you think he wasn’t transported far, then?’
‘That would be my guess.’
Banks nodded. ‘OK. Sounds reasonable.’
‘That may indicate that whoever did it knows the area,’ said Annie. ‘Its reputation. Knows that we might not be too surprised to find a dead drug user dumped there.’
‘Good point.’
‘What about CCTV?’ Gerry asked.
‘There isn’t any functioning CCTV on the East Side Estate and not a hell of a lot nearby, either. Right now, it’s important for us to keep circulating the computer-generated photo. We’ve already been sending copies around the media and liaising with local police and representatives from Middle Eastern communities and mosques in Bradford, Dewsbury, Leeds, Huddersfield and other nearby towns and cities. The problem is that we don’t know whether he’s from Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or any of the dozen or more other countries that make up what we call the Middle East. We don’t even know if he was a Muslim, though we are making inquiries in mosques. It could be a lengthy process, or we could get lucky.’ Banks paused and sipped at his bitter, tepid coffee. ‘We also need to know why he was dumped. And perhaps more specifically, why he was dumped in Eastvale.’
‘You think it was personal, guv?’ Gerry asked. ‘Something to do with the owner of the bin?’
‘No. As I said, Mrs Grunwell is eighty-five, and I think we can pretty well rule out a vendetta or gang war involving her. No, I think we need to look elsewhere. And why a rubbish bin?’
‘Well,’ said Annie, ‘it might simply have been convenient for someone passing the end of Malden Terrace on the way out of town. I suppose if you had a body in your car and you were after somewhere to dispose of it, a wheelie bin’s as good a place as any.’
Banks nodded. ‘It would help if we could determine whether it was a warning or a statement,’ he went on, ‘or simply a matter of arbitrary convenience, as you suggest. Could there be some other reason? It’s not as if whoever killed him could hope to conceal the crime for very long by dumping him there.’
‘Unless they didn’t know which day was bin collection day,’ said Annie.
Banks smiled. ‘There’s always that. We should be glad they’re not on strike right now, too.’
‘Could it be a hate crime?’ Gerry suggested.
‘It’s a possibility we should keep in mind,’ said Banks. ‘There’s certainly plenty of casual racism. Even Mrs Grunwell referred to “darkies”.’
‘He could have been dumped as a warning,’ Annie suggested.
‘Yes. But to whom? And about what? I mean, if his murder and placement in a rubbish bin was a warning of some kind, the person being warned had to be made aware of it, didn’t he? That would surely be the point?’
‘Can we be absolutely certain that there’s no connection with Mrs Grunwell, like Gerry suggested?’ Annie asked.
‘I very much doubt it,’ said Banks. ‘You’ve talked to her. You know what I mean. I doubt that referring to “darkies” necessarily leads to murder.’
‘Even so, guv,’ Gerry said. ‘Maybe she caused some trouble for someone? I mean, old people can be pretty wrong-headed or stubborn sometimes. Cantankerous, even. Maybe somebody wanted to do something and she wouldn’t give way? Does she own her house? Did someone want very badly to buy it?’
‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to get rid of her in that case?’ said Banks. ‘Surely a fragile old woman is far easier to kill than a fit young lad?’
‘Less likely to merit an investigation, too,’ Annie added. ‘It wouldn’t be hard to make it seem like she had an accident.’
‘I suppose so,’ Gerry said. ‘But I’m only speculating on possibilities. If it’s a warning, it might just be to say to the old lady “be careful or this could happen to you”.’
‘I still don’t get the connection,’ said Banks. ‘A Middle Eastern boy and an elderly woman. And what about the coke?’
‘Maybe it’s not relevant,’ Annie said. ‘Just a small amount for personal use, like a packet of cigarettes or a hip flask. And perhaps the warning wasn’t for Mrs Grunwell specifically, but for someone else on the street. It might have been giving too much away to dump the body in the bin of the person they really wanted to rattle.’
‘It’s possible,’ Banks said. ‘In which case, whoever it was meant for will have got the message. We’ll re-interview all the people from Malden Close and Terrace, see if we can find a chink in someone’s armour. Stefan? Do the CSIs have anything for us yet?’
DS Stefan Nowak, Crime Scene Manager, shook his head and spoke for the first time. ‘We’ve just about finished with the scene. The rain didn’t leave us a lot to go on. No footprints, no tyre tracks, nothing like that. Vic Manson worked his magic with the fingerprints on the bin, but they didn’t match any on the databases we have access to. The only prints on the cocaine packet are the boy’s. The coke’s at the lab. We’re analysing his clothes. They’re pretty generic. The spectrograph might show up something, traces he might have picked up from somewhere.’
‘Right,’ said Banks. ‘Basically, we shouldn’t be wasting our time having meetings. We should get out there and get on with the job. There is just one more thing.’ Banks had another taste of his coffee, grimaced and went on. ‘I had a brief and unscheduled meeting with DI Joanna MacDonald from County HQ yesterday evening,’ he said. He noticed Annie roll her eyes. ‘As a matter of fact, she got in touch with me when she heard about the body. It seems that Criminal Intelligence have their eyes on a property developer called Connor Clive Blaydon, head of Unicorn Investments International, one of the companies behind the new Elmet Centre development. Lives down Harrogate way. Apparently, his car was picked up by ANPR on the way out of Eastvale around a quarter past eleven on Sunday night. As of yet, we have no reason to link him with the murder except the timing and proximity, but DI MacDonald seems to think he’s up to no good wherever he goes, that his interests include drugs and that he might have friends on the inside, so let’s keep this to ourselves.