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 l
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.'
'Really?'
'Last year. Very messy.'
Foster scribbled a note. 'Poor bloke,' he muttered.
'He had a tough time of it,' the Aussie replied.
'He was always a big drinker.'
'He was still putting it away. Especially during the last year or so. We reckon after leaving us he went back to his local and sank a few more, then decided he'd had enough and got a train somewhere.'
Foster knew that if the man downstairs was Graham Ellis, then whatever problems he'd found in the bottom of his glass that evening, he'd been going home to bed when he left that pub. But he never made it. Foster badly needed an ID of the body.
He ended the call and set about contacting West Midlands Police. But just as he was about to dial, the phone burst into life. It was the desk sergeant at Notting Hill police station. They'd had a walk-in, a man claiming to know about a possible murder. He was insisting on speaking to someone senior.
