Death Toll

On that night in 1997 they quickly ascertained the facts of the case so far: the boy’s body had been found in the underground car park beneath Vancouver House — a twenty-one-storey block at the heart of the Westmead Estate — by a nurse, parking after her late shift at the local hospital. She said she’d seen a car drive off quickly — a Volkswagen Polo, she thought — when she’d got out of her Mini. The fleeing driver had failed to negotiate the narrow ramp to ground level and clipped one of the concrete pillars, spilling broken glass from a headlamp on to the ground.

DI Valentine had radioed an alert on the damaged car to all units. A uniformed PC on foot patrol in the North End found a Polo abandoned on the edge of allotments at just after two that morning, its offside headlamp shattered, the engine warm. A police computer check identified the owner as Robert James Mosse, a law student aged twenty-one who, like the victim, was a resident of Vancouver House. He was studying at Sheffield, but home for the summer vacation. Back at the scene the body had been removed, revealing a single glove below the corpse: black leather with a fake fur lining. Jack Shaw and George Valentine had gone to the first-floor flat Mosse shared with his mother to interview him.

Here the accounts of the night diverge. Jack Shaw and George Valentine’s statements dovetailed: they maintained that they showed Mosse the glove in a cellophane evidence bag before obtaining permission to search the flat. They conducted the search and failed to find the matching glove. Mosse, in contrast, agreed in evidence they had shown him the glove, but only after the search. He also maintained that the glove had not been contained in a bag of any nature, but simply handed to him. His mother corroborated her son’s version of events, adding that at one point DI Valentine had reversed the fingers of the glove, turning it inside out to display the fur lining inside. Both she and her son denied ownership of the glove. The other glove was never found.

Mosse said his car had been stolen that evening, a crime he himself had reported earlier, as verified by the duty desk at St James’s. He had been at the cinema alone. His mother had accompanied him to the same complex but they had opted for different films: she went to see LA Confidential on the small screen while her son had watched The Full Monty on the main screen. Mosse had produced a half-torn cinema ticket as evidence. His film had finished first and so he had walked back to the flats. His car had been parked outside on the street because there’d been a spate of vandalism in the underground car park and he’d been worried about the Polo, which was second hand but in good condition. He’d found the car gone and phoned the police from the flat.

Overnight the smashed glass at the scene was matched to pieces found still clinging to the rim of the headlamp of the abandoned car — Mosse’s car. Three pieces were later found to be exact matches — as good as fingerprints in terms of material evidence. Staff at the cinema were unable to recall Mosse in the audience that evening, despite the fact that the auditorium had been only a quarter full. The cinema ticket did not specify the screen, and Mosse’s mother said she had thrown away her own ticket stub. Mosse was charged with the murder of Jonathan Tessier at three thirty on the afternoon of the 26th. Bail was denied at a hearing the following day. Analysis of skin residue found in the glove was ordered through the Forensic Science Service, an agency of the Home Office. The report estimated that there was a chance of only one in three billion that the residue came from anyone other than Mosse.

The trial began in October. The case was thrown out of Cambridge Crown Court at the first recess on the first day. The judge agreed with the defence’s claim that Jack Shaw and George Valentine had made a basic error in taking forensic evidence from the scene to the suspect’s flat, and then compounded that error by exposing the forensic evidence to potential contamination. In dismissing the charges he went further, suggesting that, given the apparently flagrant disregard for police procedure shown by the detectives involved, he was unable to ignore the possibility that they had deliberately falsified the evidence. While the defence accepted that the glove had been found at the scene — a forensic officer confirmed the item was under the body — it was possible they’d taken it to Mosse’s flat to expose it to dust and skin residue. The shadow was cast, and would always be there.

‘And that’s where this case should have rested,’ said Warren, cracking his fingers and wincing as the force helicopter swung over the building towards the St James’s rooftop helipad. But the case hadn’t rested there, and Warren knew that as well as they did.

Following a decade of exile in north Norfolk, the demoted George Valentine had been reassigned to the serious crime unit at St James’s two years ago. It was his last chance to regain the rank he’d lost. His superior officer was DI Peter Shaw — the son of his former disgraced partner. Between them, sometimes acting in concert, sometimes alone, they had tried to build again the case against Robert ‘Bobby’ Mosse. Three months ago they’d made a major breakthrough in the case and Warren had reluctantly given them clearance to push on — to try one last time to get Robert Mosse back in the dock. It was a decision that still rankled, because he was as aware as they were that he’d had little choice.

Shaw stood and walked to Max Warren’s window, then he turned to face his superior officer, effortlessly in control.

‘As you know, we made some progress last year. Since then we have been waiting for one last development to fall into place before coming back to you. We now believe we understand the motive behind this crime. I’d like to get you up to speed now, sir, briefly.’

Warren glared at them. ‘Just get on with it.’ A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead, catching the light.

‘The key, sir, to what really happened on the night Jonathan Tessier died lies in a road-traffic accident a few days earlier, just after midnight, on the edge of Castle Rising. The spot is a lonely T-junction. A speeding Mini shot out across the intersection and hit a Ford Mondeo. There is CCTV footage of the accident, although it’s very poor quality. There were kids in the Mini. They got out and examined the wreck of the other car, then they drove off. A motorist came upon the scene thirty-five minutes later and called an ambulance. Both passengers, two OAPs, were dead. The driver was seriously injured. There is evidence on the CCTV that at least one of the passengers was alive when the joyriders left the scene.’

‘Bastards,’ said Warren, interlocking his fingers. ‘So?’

‘Well, we now believe that Robert Mosse was at the wheel of that car. His passengers were the other three members of a group who had — over a period of several years — meted out rough justice on the Westmead Estate. A gang, if you like. Mosse had left the Westmead the year before to go up to Sheffield to study — but he was back for the summer holidays and we believe he’d linked up with his old mates for a night out on the town. One member of that gang — probably Alex Cosyns — looked inside the wrecked Mondeo that night and retrieved a puppy from the back seat. We’ll never know why: maybe it was the one thing he thought he could do to make things right — other than doing the decent thing, which would have been to ring 999.’

‘So he was a dog lover — big deal.’

Shaw held up both hands. ‘The key to this is that one of the victims in the Mondeo was Jonathan Tessier’s grandmother. The dog was hers. Jonathan was fond of his grandmother — but fonder of the dog. After the accident he pestered his parents to have the dog — a request they couldn’t meet. They told him the dog had died in the accident. The investigating team had kept the truth under wraps — a detail they’d use to weed out false witnesses and crackpot confessions. And I think they were troubled by the detail too — because it didn’t, and doesn’t — seem to fit the picture.’ Shaw got up and walked to the window.

‘Go on,’ Warren said, forced to push his chair back and swivel it to see Shaw clearly.

‘OK,’ said Shaw, turning to face them. ‘So, the gang drove off in the car that night from Castle Rising. Every uniformed officer on the force was out looking for a two-tone damaged Mini. The CCTV didn’t give us a plate number, so that’s all they had to go on. We now know that Cosyns’s family owned two of the lock-up garages on the Westmead — numbers 51 and 52. Last September, as you know, inside those lock-ups, George and I discovered the rusted body of a two-tone Mini — partly resprayed an industrial yellow. It’s undoubtedly the car from the accident. The paint they used for the respray came from a factory where three of the gang worked — Askit’s Engineering. Flecks of yellow paint were found on Jonathan Tessier’s clothes and there are traces of the same paint still on the rusted Mini in the lock-up. There was also a single paint fragment from the Mondeo on Jonathan’s football shirt. Two pieces of unique forensic evidence, sir, which link the crash to the murder.’

Shaw perched on the window ledge.

‘This is what we think happened on the day Jonathan died. It was three days after the crash at Castle Rising. He was playing football on the grass below the flats, sent out for the day because his grandfather was with his parents — in the middle of a breakdown in the aftermath of his wife’s death in the hit-and-run. Someone boots the