Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [54]
It was more than enough to jar him to action.
He bent on one knee to gather up the photos, and once he had them back on the desk he started again.
The cause of Willis’ death had been strangulation: a dog’s chrome choke chain, still lodged around the throat, had exerted sufficient pressure on the windpipe to crush it. No one seemed to have missed Willis, and therefore identification might have taken longer if Mill Road’s community beat officer, PC McKendrick, hadn’t recognized him from one of the morgue shots.
On the scale of parasites and predators, Willis had been somewhere between house mites and head lice: a persistent but manageable irritation. He’d been a dabbler; he’d dabbled with handling stolen goods and with selling cannabis, and when money became short he’d even dabbled with work. Once or twice, he’d tested the water by offering the police tip-offs but, despite his bold talk, Willis knew very little, and was taken into people’s confidence even less.
An exact date of death had never been determined but, according to the pathologist, the body had been left submerged for several weeks. Willis’ landlord hadn’t received rent for all of February, not in itself unusual, but he’d stuck to his routine of weekly visits to every tenant who owed him money and had not seen Willis since the first Friday in February.
On the 21st of that month, the residents of Fen Ditton had reported an abandoned vehicle, and on the 26th, the untaxed and inaccurately registered van had been impounded. It was only proved to be Willis’ after his DNA was matched to the DNA found in the pick-your-own snot collection Willis had been accumulating in the driver’s side door pocket. This narrowed the time of Willis’ disappearance and death down to weeks two and three of February.
Goodhew searched the file for any connection to Lorna Spence, or even any mention of Bryn O’Brien, but, much like the investigation itself, he drew a blank. The popular theory among the investigating team was that Willis had pissed someone off badly. Amazing the results a couple of centuries of police expertise can produce.
It turned out that Colin Willis had no friends or relatives pushing for answers, and it was clear that the killing had been considered a one-off. The perpetrator was assumed to be someone busy committing other offences: the type of criminal that would either get grassed up at some point, or drop himself in it when committing another unrelated crime. Therefore the case remained open and active. But clearly not that open and not that active.
Once Goodhew was sure that there was nothing in the file to affect his immediate plans, he turned his attention to his first visit of the day: Richard Moran.
TWENTY-TWO
Twenty minutes later, Goodhew left Parkside station for the short walk towards the city centre and another visit to Moran’s home.
Faith Carver, the Excelsior Clinic’s stern-faced receptionist, had informed Goodhew that Mr Moran had not been into work all day, and had cancelled his imminent appointments.
Goodhew decided not to phone ahead to the house, but to take his chances on finding Richard at home. As he approached the front door, two scenarios flashed into his mind: one where Alice was also home and he might struggle to speak to Richard privately, and the other where Alice was out and he was faced with dealing with Richard alone. As he waited for the door to open, he tried to imagine how he would deal with Richard’s histrionics if they kicked off again while the two of them were by themselves.
Goodhew checked his thinking: histrionics maybe wasn’t the right word. It hadn’t felt like watching a display of over-acting; there had been