The Blood Detective

'We don't know,' Foster said, back in the present.

'That's why I asked you to come and do this. We hope it'll help.'

In less than five minutes the hair was neatly cut.

Then she produced a bar of shaving soap and a brush and with some hot water lathered up the man's beard.

With a few gentle strokes of a razor, she began to remove it.

'Why not just use an electric shaver?' Foster asked, marvelling at the almost tender way she cupped the man's chin in her hand as she shaved him, a world away from the clinical way that bodies were usually dealt with in the morgue.

'Never shaves as close,' she added, the serene smile still on her face. Soon the beard was gone. 'There you go,' she said.

Foster said goodbye, showing her out.

He returned and stood at the end of the table, by the man's feet. He looked at his face. The jawline was firm, the cheekbones prominent, not sunken. He was looking at the face of a dark-haired man in his mid-forties. The state of the hands and feet, his teeth - yellow-tinged but well-maintained - the shape of his face, all indicated a man who had taken care of himself before he fell into disrepair. Foster guessed a white-collar worker of some sort - a man who, until recently, lived in comfort.

At the incident room Foster pinned two pictures of the tramp - one unkempt, one groomed - and one of the unknown dead woman to the whiteboard. The room was quiet, most of the team out pounding the streets around the previous night's crime scene in search of a break. The morning had brought nothing new: no witnesses, though Drinkwater had brought in the garage owner and Foster was waiting for news on his interview.

After fetching a coffee, he went to his desk and sat down at his computer. He called up the missing persons database. Beside his keyboard he laid out a freshly printed picture of the groomed corpse. He narrowed the search by entering what he knew of the body: male, Caucasian, aged between forty and fifty, black-grey hair, five feet ten inches in height, brown eyes, average build. Under distinguishing features he mentioned the birthmark on his back, thankful for the latter detail because it would take thousands off the search results.

There were fifteen hits.

He called them up. All but one carried photos.

Each time the image loaded on the screen, Foster enlarged it and held up the picture of the tramp to one side, eyes flicking between the two. Most were palpably different men, but the two he thought might possibly match up were put aside for closer inspection.

Then he saw him. Graham Ellis. A passport picture. The similarities between the two men were striking. The shape of the face, the thin lips . . .

There was a knock on his open door: DS Jenkins.

She nodded a wordless greeting.

'How's Barnes?' he asked.

She shrugged. 'Pretending he's fine. He needs time to digest it all. I offered him counselling . . .' Her voice tailed away, sensing his distraction.

'Look at this,' he said, turning his screen to face her.

She came forwards and leaned on the desk.

'Now look at this.'

Foster held up the photograph of the unknown corpse. Heather's eyes flicked between the two for some time. She stood up.

'They look alike,' she said. 'Who's the dead man?'

'That dead man is the same tramp we found swinging in the playground in Avondale Park.'

'He scrubbed up well.'

'Well, he's no tramp, that's for sure. Or if he was, not for very long.' He looked at the screen once more. 'And if he's the same guy as the one here, then two months ago he was working at a firm of solicitors in Altrincham.' He continued to look at the screen.

'What I don't understand is why he was hanging in the first place. Postmortem says he was dead fifteen hours before we found him, so he was killed a fair few hours before he was strung up. In which case, why do it?'

'To make it look like it was suicide, not murder?'

'But where does that fit in with everything else we know about the killer? He carves references into his victims for us to see. Why be shy about actually killing someone?'

'It was his first. Perhaps he wanted to put us off the scent for a few days. It worked.'

It was a pertinent point, delivered with no sense of self-justification, though he would not have blamed her if she had. But he did not agree.

'No, he wasn't trying to cover anything up. The opposite, I reckon: the hanging tells us something.'

'What was the cause of death?'

'Heart failure. Cause unknown. Tox might tell us more.'

He made a mental note to chase up the toxicology report on Darbyshire. They had had long enough; it was time to start shouting at them to get their arses in gear.

'Do we have any ID yet on last night's victim?'

Heather asked.

Foster shook his head slowly. 'Carlisle's doing her as we speak. There's a whole pile of missing person reports out there. Start with the most recent. Call Khan back in to give you a hand.'

Soon after Heather left, his phone rang. It was Drinkwater calling in from Acton. The garage owner was proving of little use. He had an alibi that stood up.

'Get a list of everyone who's ever rented the place,'

Foster said.

They were still looking for the way in. Something had to give somewhere, he thought, if they kept pressing.

He looked once more at the details of the missing solicitor on screen: 'There is great concern for Graham Ellis, who has been missing since 25 th January. He was last seen drinking in a pub near his home in Altrincham, Cheshire.'

His firm was Nicklin Ellis & Co; he was a partner.

Foster rang directory enquiries and was put through to their offices. It was Sunday, but he thought it was worth a try.

The message kicked in. The office was closed, as Foster expected. However, as he hoped, there was a number to ring in case of emergency. He dialled it.

'Tony Penberthy.'

The voice was eager, young.

'Hello, sorry to trouble you on a Sunday.'

'No worries,' Penberthy replied, with a hint of an Australian accent. 'How can I help?'

'I was hoping to have a word with my usual solicitor, Graham Ellis.'

'He's not on duty at the moment, sir. But I'm sure I can be of service. What's the problem, Mr . . . ?'

'Foster,' he answered, seeing no reason to lie. 'It's a bit delicate. Without sounding rude, I'd rather chat to Graham about it. Should I call back tomorrow?'

There was a pause at the other end.

'Look, Mr Foster, there's a problem here. You see, Graham Ellis has gone missing.'

'God. When?' Foster winced at his poor acting skills.

'A little over two months ago. Came as a real shock.'

'I bet it did. He just vanished?'

'He was drinking in the pub across the road after work with a few of us. Seemed fine. Left to go home.

Never seen since.'

'We were friends in the past. Lost touch. No one's heard anything?'

'Nothing.'

'I hope he's OK,' Foster added, remembering he was posing as a concerned member of the public, not a detective.

'Yeah,' the Australian said.

'You don't sound too convinced.'

There was a pause. Foster wondered how far to push it. The Australian seemed garrulous and he knew that, as a breed, solicitors weren't allergic to the sound of their own voices.

'Well, the word here is that he's taken his own life.'

'He didn't strike me as the suicidal type,' Foster added, wondering what the 'suicidal type' actually was. It didn't matter. It kept the conversation going.

Better this than being passed around the local nick in search of whichever copper took the report and filed it in the bottom drawer.

'Yeah.'

He sensed the solicitor's unease; he changed tack.

'I'd like to send his wife a card, share her concern.

Do you have an address?'

'He was divorced.'