He pushed back from the table, the chair legs screaming against the stone. ‘I just did what I was told. It’s my job.’
Time to press harder. She sensed he was close to cracking. ‘Are you saying the nuns asked you to dig a whole other set of graves? Because we already know these aren’t girls from the children’s home. Are you trying to tell me you had a bunch of homicidal nuns here? Or was it just one serial killer nun?’
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he shouted. He crossed his arms, clutching his shoulders in a tight embrace.
‘So it wasn’t the nuns? Was it you, then, Jezza? Are you the serial killer?’
He stood up, backing away. ‘I never killed anybody. I just did my job, I swear. You’re not going to pin this on me.’
Paula got to her feet. She hadn’t expected this to go so far so fast. ‘Give me one good reason why I should believe you, Jezza.’
31
The greatest handicap in profiling is the same as it is for any investigator – we need full disclosure of the evidence, however insignificant a particular element might seem.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Before the day was out, Carol was reminded of Bronwen Scott’s perennial refusal to take no for an answer. Her phone had rung while she was working her way through the background reading on Saul Neilson. As soon as Carol had answered, Bronwen had launched straight into her pitch. ‘I thought it would be good for you to meet some of the other people involved in the project, so I invited a couple of the girls around for this evening. We’ve got a little office at the university, courtesy of our DNA expert, Kit Salvesen, but I thought it would be good to meet more informally. So, my place, half past seven. I’ll text you the details. You can park in one of the guest spaces under the building.’
‘I can’t make it tonight, I’ve got something else on.’
‘You can’t postpone it?’ Bronwen sounded astonished. ‘Email me your availability, then, we’ll sort out another time.’
‘I’m not sure I—’ But it was too late. The line was dead. Bloody woman. But in spite of her irritation with Bronwen, now she’d had the chance to drill down into the file Carol had to acknowledge she was intrigued by the slenderness of the case against Saul Neilson. According to Lyle Tate’s phone records and the text messages on the phone the police had recovered from Neilson’s flat, Sugar Lyle – as he was known – had been summoned there eight times in the six months leading up to his disappearance and presumed death. That was the first brick in the shaky wall.
One evening, he’d told his flatmate he was going to see a regular who liked it ‘full on’. A bit rough, though he paid well. Sugar Lyle never returned to his flat. Second brick.
The flatmate, a fellow sex worker, reported him missing two days later. The investigation had been fairly desultory at first. Lyle was an adult, he lived on the margins, he had no real ties to the flat or the area. It wasn’t hard to make the case that someone might have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. For all the police knew, Sugar Lyle was sunning himself in Ibiza with a sugar daddy. They’d found a notebook in his bedroom that listed the names and addresses of his clients along with the dates he’d been with them. That eventually took them to Saul Neilson, who was clearly freaked out by their visit. At first he denied ever having met Lyle Tate or having heard of him, but faced with the evidence of Tate’s list, he capitulated. A palpable lie always added an extra course of bricks to the wall of evidence.
One of the officers found the twitchiness of his reaction suspicious. She knew nothing of Neilson’s closeted state; she assumed his panic was to do with what had happened with Lyle Tate rather than fear of his parents finding out he’d been paying for sex with a male prostitute. So she’d asked to use the bathroom and had a good look around while she was in there. And behind the pedestal of the sink, she spotted what looked like a streak of blood.
She said nothing at the time but as soon as they’d left, she was on to her DCI, suggesting they should get a warrant for Saul Neilson’s flat. It was the last place Lyle Tate was known to have been, Neilson had lied about him, and there was blood in the bathroom. It was thin, but cops always knew which magistrates to go to when they wanted a warrant based on thin.
The forensic techs did their thing with different coloured lights and found a substantial amount of blood spatter traces that had been cleaned up in the bathroom. There was evidence of a spray of blood on the laminate wood floor of the living room too. Because Lyle Tate was no stranger to selling sex and buying drugs, his DNA was on the database. It was a match with the smear of blood behind the sink pedestal.
And Lyle Tate was still missing. Nobody had seen him since he’d gone to Saul Neilson’s for sex. A more thorough search of his room revealed that he’d left his passport, his driving licence, three wraps of cocaine and £735 in cash in the zipped pocket of the backpack in the bottom of his clothes cupboard. So he obviously hadn’t been planning to go anywhere other than his next job. He was a potential threat to Saul Neilson’s lovely life. And his blood was all over the flat. Well, in the bathroom and the living room. You’d have to stand on tiptoe to see over the wall now, even if it was highly circumstantial.
Neilson’s version of events was that they’d been wrestling on the living room floor. Foreplay masquerading as horseplay. Or vice versa,
