Dillon’s eyes narrowed. “Why were you talking to the rubber heelers?” he asked, suspiciously. Like most rank and file officers, he instinctively distrusted anyone connected to the Complaints Investigation Bureau.
“We were just catching up,” Deakin explained, “and when I asked him what case he was working on at the moment, he told me he’d just been assigned to look into an FME who works in East London. Apparently, the General Medical Council are conducting an investigation of their own following an anonymous tip off from a woman that a London based doctor is supplying drugs to local addicts in exchange for sexual favours. Obviously, as the man in question was one of our FMEs, they were obliged to notify the MPS.”
“I don’t suppose you managed to get this doctor’s name?” Tyler asked.
“I did, actually,” Deakin said, snatching a chip from under Dillon’s nose and smiling triumphantly. “It was James Sadler.”
CHAPTER 26
Friday 5th November 1999
Friday morning began as every other morning did during a live enquiry, with an office meeting. They were six days into the investigation, but they were no nearer to catching the elusive killer than they had been on day one. Still, that was the way it went sometimes, Tyler told his team. The trick was not to let it get you down, which was easier said than done when your suspect was still out there killing people.
Office meetings could sometimes run for an hour or more, but today there was nothing majorly new to discuss, and it only lasted twenty-minutes. After going through the latest developments, and receiving updates from his team on how their growing piles of actions were progressing, Tyler adjourned to his office to update his Decision Log, leaving Dillon to task the team with today’s priorities.
He sat at his desk, pen poised. It was important that he marshal his thoughts properly before documenting an investigative strategy around Dr Sadler, and he took a few moments to do this.
Clearly, there was no evidence against the man, just an uncorroborated allegation from someone who wouldn’t even provide their name, let alone make a statement, and therefore there was no justification for making him a suspect. However, given what Deakin had told them last night, Tyler thought that it was appropriate to declare him a Person of Interest.
He was mindful that he needed to tread carefully. According to GMC statistics, malicious allegations from disgruntled addicts were becoming more common, and he didn’t want to set off a chain of events that could ultimately tarnish a good man’s reputation without having something more substantial to go on than an anonymous tip off.
However, the tip off had been made just before the murder spree began, and it was too much of a coincidence for him to ignore, so although investigations by Complaints and the GMC were already underway, Tyler wanted his own people to check it out thoroughly.
With that in mind, he had instructed Chris Deakin to contact his friend at Complaints straight after the office meeting in order to set up an urgent conference. Ideally, he wanted all the information that CIB had on Dr Sadler to be made available to the enquiry team by close of play today.
Steve Bull had been tasked to touch base with the GMC and to grab everything that they had. Tyler was particularly keen to establish the date and time of the anonymous call. It was probably too much to hope that the GMC had logged the telephone number the informant had called in from. However, if they did have it on record, there were immediate lines of enquiry that Jack needed to set in motion.
First on the list was a subscriber’s check. From this, they should be able to obtain the user’s name and billing address. Even if the number belonged to an unregistered pre-pay mobile, the owner might have been dumb enough to have purchased the handset, or a subsequent text and minutes bundle with one of the major networks, with a credit card.
Secondly, there was a chance that if the anonymous call was made from a London phone booth the informant would be captured on CCTV. If they were able to get actual footage of the caller, and if it turned out to be either Geraldine Rye or Alice Pilkington, James Sadler would certainly have some very awkward questions to answer.
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Charlie White stood outside the surgery entrance, waiting impatiently for it to open. He turned up his collar, tucked his hands into his pockets, and stamped his feet to ward of the cold. There was a biting wind sweeping down the High Street, and the recessed door of the surgery provided scant protection from it.
The sign on the door, which he could hardly read through the grime stained window, proclaimed that the surgery opened for business at eight-thirty, but that was still fifteen-minutes away.
He considered popping into a local café to grab a quick bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee, but he decided it would be more prudent to get the request in first. He knew from experience that attempts to obtain a victim’s medical records tended to go one of two ways, depending on the attitude of the practice manager and the relevant GP. Sometimes, they were quite happy to hand the information straight over, but there were occasions when a practice manager could be awkward to the point of being obstructive, forcing the requesting officer to obtain a court order before they would release any personal information. Charlie was hoping everything would go smoothly this morning; otherwise he would be tied up all day sorting out the paperwork required to apply to a court for a production order.
It suddenly occurred to him that there was probably a staff entrance at the rear, and that he might be able to have a quick word with the practice
