Imposition (DI Gardener 5)

“And a minefield to trawl through even if we want to.”

“Not necessarily,” said Gardener. “Maybe she changed her name for a reason. Perhaps she wants to remain invisible so she can catch Robbie Carter herself. Maybe she feels that the police in the past have not done enough for her.”

“In which case,” said Reilly, “she might do our job for us.”

“Or walk right into our hands,” said Gardener. “Dave, did you get a photo?”

“Yes.” He passed it over.

It was a glossy eight by ten. Gardener had no idea when it was taken, but he stuck it on the board. He was about to ask Sharp a question when Mike Atherton suddenly stood up. “She just has.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re right, Mike,” said Emma Longstaff.

“What are you two talking about?” Gardener asked.

“That’s not Grace Browne,” said Atherton. “Unless I’m pretty much mistaken, her name is Jane Rogers, and she works at the estate agent in the town.”

“Yes,” said Longstaff. “I’ve been up most of the night tracking and tracing Robbie Carters on the dating site. But I’ve just seen where I’m going wrong.” She searched through a number of photos before removing one, placing it on the table in front of Gardener. “That’s J on the dating site, aka Jane Rogers aka Grace Browne.”

Then she dropped the other one down.

“Who’s that?” Gardener asked.

Longstaff pointed to the photo of a man. “He’s been contacting J on a regular basis, even setting up meetings with her. They set up a date at a club in Leeds called Silhouettes a couple of nights back.”

“So, what’s his name, and why do we think it’s Robbie Carter?”

“The initials, RC. This is Ronald Critchley.”

The revelation hit Gardener like a sledgehammer. All the time he’d been searching for a link and it had been right under his nose. “Ronald Critchley,” he said to Reilly.

“The Atkinsons,” said Reilly. “They rented out the mill house in Sowerby to him.”

Gardener glanced around the room, his eyes resting on Bob Anderson and Sarah Gates. “Can you two go round to the mill house and see if anyone is home? If there is, call back and keep the place under surveillance until we can join you.” He then asked Maurice Cragg to send a couple of constables around to the estate agent to pick up Jane Rogers.

As they left, Gardener nodded to Sharp. “Colin?”

Sharp stood up and arranged his paperwork. “In view of what we’ve found out today, I don’t think there’s any reason for me to labour this point. I’ll just give you the facts and save time. As you know we’ve been up pretty much all night, and HOLMES has narrowed it down to a small number of victims called Jane that have died or disappeared in mysterious circumstances over a thirty-year period.”

He pointed to the photos on the chart. “That’s Jane Thornton from Scarborough in 1990. When they were married he was called Richard Clayton, and they lived together in a flat near the post office in Flamborough. She disappeared in 1991. So did he.”

“The next one we know about, Jane Browne. She married a Raymond Culver.”

“How many names are we gonna end up with?” Reilly asked.

“There’s one or two more. The next victim was Jane Sullivan in 2003. They met on a dating website. She had long black hair and blue eyes. He lived in Whitehaven in Lancashire. They met at a caravan site on the coast near Cumbria where, get this, Rupert Conway had been booked as part of a small selection of Glam Rock tribute acts.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Reilly. “Harold Shipman’s got nothing on this bloke.”

“At least we’ll go down on record as nailing him,” said Gardener.

“Jane Sullivan was a widower. She’d been left a tidy sum by her late husband, Steven, who had worked as an insurance salesman. She put that into a pub called The Golden Last in a little place on the Cumbrian Coast called St Bees.

“In the early hours of one morning in 2005, there was an explosion in the cellar. He was injured severely enough to land up in hospital. Jane died. He was questioned by the police. They were happy that he had nothing to do with it. Rupert was left alone, but the insurance refused to pay up. He disappeared.”

Gardener continued to write everything down as Sharp was telling him. The rest of the team remained silent.