Carrie laughed.
The other two smiled politely.
Gayther turned back to Thomas and Cotton.
“Anyway, Halom? The drag act fellow. Is he still playing at being Danny La Rue?”
Thomas and Cotton looked blankly at him.
“Oh, forget it. What have you got on him? Is he still doing his act?”
Cotton spoke this time. “He’s got a record as long as your arm, sir. Handling stolen goods going way back, also credit cards in his parents’ names, fraud too. All low-level, petty stuff. Most recently, past couple of years, he set up fake profiles on Facebook and sold non-existent goods. Took money from people and then tried to disappear. Not very successfully. He was sentenced to twelve months’ suspended in May and a hundred hours of community service.”
“So, we’ve got his DNA and fingerprints then, in case we need them. Do we know where he’s doing his community service?”
“No, sir, not yet, but he’s based up the road in Wickham Market and does a karaoke evening at a caravan park in Great Yarmouth Friday evenings. We made a call, sir, and he’s on this Friday … if you want to have a word. He’s up and down the A12 fairly regularly. His mother, who gave a statement about the credit cards and then withdrew it, lives in sheltered housing in Leiston. We were wondering, sir …” Cotton turned to Thomas, “… whether, given her age, she’s in her eighties, Halom might have been looking at Kings Court for her, sir …”
“Yes, good work, one to follow up, too. And Burgess, what about Burgess? Looking at the case history, if I had 50p to spare, he’d be the man I’d put it on. What’s on the computer?”
“Nothing on the PNC, sir,” Thomas answered. “But, and this is odd, sir, certainly a coincidence anyway. He … from Google … appears to have moved from wherever he was, Sussex, to Aldeburgh in the early 1990s and became a wedding photographer for a while. Bit of a shift, but we’ve cross-referenced and it’s definitely him.”
“Go on,” said Gayther.
“He then seems to have retired recently, sir, past year or two, and has vanished off the radar as far as we can see. Nothing online we can find. But his wife, Angela, appears to be still living just outside of Aldeburgh on her own.”
Carrie leaned towards Gayther, pushing his cup to one side. “So, it should be easy for us to start by checking to see where Challis and Halom were on the night that Reverend Lodge died … then get their DNA and see if we can match it with what we can find at the care home, sir.”
Gayther turned back to Cotton and Thomas. “Well, one step at a time, before we think about interviewing anyone, trying to get DNA, checking cars and CCTV and so on. We can sort this quickly. Are there photos anywhere of Challis, Halom or Burgess? On social media? Facebook? A poster of Halom dancing about at the caravan park? If so, we can show them to Karen Williams and see if she recognises any of them as this John Smith character. Job done. Can’t get simpler than that.”
“Is that legal, sir? Doing that?” Thomas asked.
“PACE. Aren’t we supposed to follow some sort of procedure on that, sir?” Cotton echoed.
Gayther sat down, tapping his fingers, thinking of the right words to put into his next sentence; a sentence that, ideally, he thought, should not include the words ‘snowflakes’, ‘millennials’, ‘PC bloody crap’, ‘balls’ or ‘bollocks to all that’.
After an awkward pause, he concluded, “We’re trying to catch a serial killer … Thomas … Cotton … kindly go and find a computer and see if you can, somehow or other, get photos of the three of them. Print them off, just the photos, no names or identifying material, and bring them to me as soon as you’ve done that. Thank you … Carrie, you wait here please, I want a word with you…”
* * *
“Kids, eh, guv?” Carrie smiled at Gayther. “Fifteen-year-olds. What can we do with them?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Gayther caught Carrie’s eye. “Oh, you’re quoting my own words back at me … from … whenever … so many possibles … yes, very good, well done, Carrie. Very droll.”
“They’re good lads, guv – clever, smart, that’s why they’ve been fast-tracked. They know how to do desk research.” She paused, a worried look on her face. “What about PACE, though, guv. This is hardly by the book, is it?” She looked at Gayther, clearly not happy.
“Carrie,” he said forcefully. “We have a serial killer on our hands … who may kill again at any moment. So, we can do this by the book, line by bloody line, and shuffle bits of paper … whatever, these days … around and by everyone … tick all the boxes … wait forever for the go-ahead … or until someone else is murdered. Or we can crack on, do it like we used to do in the old days. It’s quick. It’s effective. We’ll catch him. But I’ll make a note you’re not happy.”
She smiled at him, not sure what to say.
He smiled back, waiting for her. Another awkward moment.
And then she nodded her tense agreement.
“You know what, Carrie. This … this Scribbler business … it’s an outrage. The way it was all downgraded because it was ‘only’ gay men being killed. The world’s moved on since then, thank God, and the police have, too. But there’s still that sense of LGBTQ+ people somehow not being quite as important. The world’s got to change more.”
He paused, before going on, his voice rising.
“There must be damned few people these days who don’t have an LBGTQ+ loved one … son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, work colleague.” Gayther stopped, emotional. “… Sorry … rant over … I just hate homophobia
