Collins waited until Medina put the cigarette back in his mouth before asking her question. ‘How can you be sure it was one of yours?’ She waved a hand at the walls surrounding them. ‘You’ve obviously done so many.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, a stream of wispy smoke emerging from his thin lips. ‘But this particular one stands out. That’s what’s so weird about it. Before I opened up this place I had a parlour down in Brixton. That’s where I was living when I first came to England. There’s a big Brazilian community there. We’re talking nine, maybe ten years ago.
‘The guy I did the work for, he seemed well enough when he first came in, but, looking back, I guess I must have missed the warning signs somewhere along the way. I remember I could smell beer or something like it on his breath, but a lot of people have a drink or two in order to dull some of the pain so I thought nothing of it. And it’s not like he was really drunk or anything like that.
‘He looked through a few samples, then said he wanted me to combine a couple of my own original designs to create something unique – that’s another reason it stands out. So anyway I did the job and then a few days later, just when the first scabs were starting to form, the guy comes back into the store with his girlfriend and starts having a go at me while I’m trying to work with another customer. He started ranting and raving, complaining that I tricked him into getting it done.
‘I’d never had a complaint like it before so I really didn’t know what to do. He was saying he was going to sue me and that he would shut my business down. The guy was going crazy. At one point I thought he was going to start to trash the place. And his girlfriend, she wasn’t saying anything, but it was like she was urging him on. I think she was just as upset about the tattoo as he was, maybe more so.
‘I told the guy there was nothing I could do about it. He’d signed the consent form and that was that. But I ended up giving him details of a place where you could undergo laser treatment to have tattoos removed. I don’t know if he ever followed it up. I spent the next few months living on tenterhooks, waiting for a solicitor’s letter in the post. But it never came and eventually I managed to put the whole thing out of my mind. Well, until now.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Anderson, seemingly bracing himself for a potential disappointment, ‘you kept a record of the man’s name or address, did you?’ Medina nodded. ‘Of course! In the old days anyone could walk in and out and you’d have no idea who they were. But ever since AIDS we have to keep records of everyone, partly because of the risk of infection but also to prove consent and that the client is over eighteen. I dug out his old form for you already.’
Medina picked up a sheet of paper from the table beside him and handed it to Anderson. He scanned the contents before passing it on to Collins. The top of the form was taken up with a medical-history checklist, asking if the customer had a history of heart disease, low blood-pressure and a range of allergies. Below this was a section taken up with the customer’s name and address, their date of birth and the location of the place where they wanted the tattoo to go. Collins focused immediately on the spidery handwriting that gave the name: James Gilbert. It seemed that at long last, they had a name for their third victim.
Back at the incident room, Collins, Anderson, Hill, Porter and Woods crowded around a computer terminal as DC Cooper entered Gilbert’s details into the missing persons database.
It took only a few moments for the system to come back with a match. The screen was suddenly filled with the image of a clean-cut young man. He had a boxer’s nose and dark, intense eyes. His wavy, bushy, black hair was piled untidily on top of his head and a wispy beard and moustache covered his chin and upper lip. He wore an open-neck shirt and a tiny silver crucifix was visible at the base of his neck. He was half smiling and one eyebrow was raised in a quizzical manner as if he wasn’t a hundred per cent comfortable with having his photograph taken.
‘That’s our man. James Gilbert,’ announced Cooper. ‘Unmarried. No siblings. No kids, both parents dead. Lived alone. Reported missing by his boss, a Mr Roger Wincup, just under eight years ago.’
Anderson sighed as he read through the on-screen details to the right of the picture. ‘Not much to go on there. No grieving widow, no heartbroken mother, no brother or sister wondering what happened to him. Looks like it’s going to be something of a dead end so far as our investigation is concerned.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Collins. She reached forward and touched the bottom-left corner of the screen with the nail of her little finger, distorting the image slightly. ‘Look at where he used to work.’
Anderson peered forward. ‘The Penvsey Private School in Dorset,’ he read out loud. ‘Sorry, I don’t see the relevance.’
‘That’s because you haven’t spent the last three days going through shed-loads of records from ViSOR the way that Woods and I have. It’s been driving me absolutely barmy having all this stuff going through my head all the time.’
As Woods and Anderson looked on with confused expressions on their faces, Collins made her way back to her desk and began sorting through the large pile of files that she had brought back from ViSOR. She smiled triumphantly as she located the set of records she had been looking for, then quickly made her way back over to the others.
‘Here you are,’ she said, holding open the relevant pages. ‘I came across this case yesterday. Five years ago, they uncovered a paedophile ring based at the Penvsey School made up of staff and outsiders who worked together to procure children to be abused. The whole thing was thought to have been run by one of the senior teachers, a certain Roger Wincup, who, it turns out, had prior convictions for possession of child pornography.’
She pointed at the picture of Wincup in the file. His face was far more youthful than would have been expected for a man in his late fifties. He was looking off to one side, the light reflected in his round silver glasses. His neatly trimmed hair was greying a little at the sideburns and his face had a few dimples and liver spots towards his chin, but he looked to all intents and purposes just the way a teacher should. Strict but fair. Trustworthy.
‘He resigned in disgrace and was charged a few weeks later. He served three years and was placed on the register after he was released but vanished into thin air a few weeks later. No one has seen hide nor hair of him since. Now, take another look at the missing person record DC Cooper has up on her screen. James Gilbert worked at that same school before the scandal broke and was there when he went missing. It has to be more than a simple coincidence, don’t you think? I really think we’ve found our connection.’
Anderson shook his head. ‘It’s not exactly rock solid, is it? There’s no evidence at all that Gilbert was involved in any kind of abuse.’
‘But I don’t think there would be any evidence,’ said Collins. ‘If whoever is behind these murders is doing what I think they are, they’re going after people who have managed to get away with their crimes. The ones who perhaps should have been convicted but got off due to a lack of evidence or the fact that their victims were too scared to come forward. That was what happened with Miller. Maybe it’s what happened with Gilbert too. We’re not going to find any hard evidence of involvement because it’s unlikely to exist.
‘The way these rings operate, they’re so far underground they’re almost impossible to locate. It’s the CSI effect. These guys watch TV, they read books, and they follow other court cases. They know what we’re capable of and the methods we use to try to track them down. And that means they know how to avoid coming up on our radar. Miller, Chadwick and Gilbert could all have been working together and we’d never have any way of proving it.’