Page 81 of The Chapel of Bones

‘Did Carlo ever mention having a sister?’ said Wesley softly.

‘Not to me.’

Wesley said nothing. In his experience, suspects found it hard to resist the urge to fill a silence. The tactic worked.

‘There is something I remember. He had a dragon tattooed on his back. He had a thing about dragons. Said they were dispensers of justice. Don’t know about that, but I do know the Chinese think they’re lucky.’

‘Do you think Carlo’s still in Africa?’

Baker thought for a moment. ‘Dunno. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he was dead. He always struck me as the type who’d die young.’ He began to rise from his seat.

‘Just one more thing,’ said Wesley. ‘You told us no work was carried out in the dining room at St Julian’s while you were there. Were you lying?’

Once more the colour drained from Baker’s face. ‘I don’t remember. I was doing a lot of drugs back then, so things are pretty hazy. Can I go now?’

They’d already held him for a while, and if they wanted to keep him any longer, it would involve applying for an extension. Wesley looked at Gerry. It would be his call.

‘OK. But don’t go far. We’ll need to speak to you again.’

Baker rushed out as though some ferocious beast was pursuing him.

As soon as he’d gone, Gerry stood up, his chair legs scraping on the hard floor.

‘I want Jon Gadson – or Carlo, or whatever he’s calling himself – found.’

45

After bringing the team up to date with the new developments, Wesley and Gerry went over what they knew so far. They’d managed to get more details from the university and found that Jon Gadson had changed his address from East Burrington to St Julian’s in late February 2011, which seemed to confirm once and for all that Carlo Lanzani had been an assumed name. He had lived at St Julian’s at the same time as Jim Baker. He’d been Aleric Donnal’s student and was also their latest victim’s half-brother. In addition, he’d had a sister, very close in age, who’d committed suicide, allegedly because her stepmother had killed her beloved dog. They now knew that the stepmother, Tina, had been Sue Potter’s cousin. Jon Gadson was the common denominator between all the deaths. And he had to be found.

When Wesley left Gerry’s office, he walked over to Rachel’s desk. She seemed to be concentrating on her computer screen, but the distant look in her eyes told him her mind was on something else. When he came into her peripheral vision, she looked up and gave him a weak smile.

‘I heard you’ve let Jim Baker go.’ There was a hint of reproach in her words.

Wesley sat down on the other side of her desk and steepled his fingers. ‘That’s right. But the boss says we can bring him back if necessary.’

‘Unless he does a runner.’

Rachel’s fears echoed his own, but he didn’t comment. ‘He gave us some new information.’

‘What did he say?’

As Wesley outlined the conversation, he could tell from Rachel’s expression that her initial scepticism was fading.

‘Now that we have a proper name for our man, we can start tracing him. He must be in official records somewhere. I’ll get the team on it,’ she said with fresh enthusiasm.

He strolled back to Gerry’s office, surprised to find the DCI looking cheerful.

‘A report’s just come in from forensics,’ Gerry said as he rose from his seat, stretching and placing his hand in the small of his back. It was clearly still bothering him. ‘Fingerprints found in Sue Potter’s kitchen match those found on that knife Neil discovered at St Julian’s.’ He paused. ‘And the matching prints at Sue Potter’s are a lot newer. That’s the good news. The bad is that they’re not on record. And they’re not a match for any of our suspects, including Jim Baker.’

‘But I bet they’re a match for Jon Gadson.’ All the leads they’d followed had come to nothing, and there was no sign of Gadson, the person they really needed to speak to. Wesley’s mother had always told him that the darkest hour came before dawn. He only hoped she was right.

‘There’s one person we haven’t spoken to, and that’s Tina Gadson.’

Trish had been charged with tracing Tina, but so far she had nothing to report. There was no record of Tina returning to the UK, and tracking her down if she was living abroad, oblivious to the drama unfolding in her native land, might prove tricky. But Trish was soldiering on. Of course there was always the possibility that the woman was dead, but so far there was no proof of that either.

As Wesley was pondering the problem, his phone rang. It was Neil, and he sounded frantic.

‘Wes. You’ve got to come over. We’ve found human remains.’ From the tone of his voice, Wesley guessed that he hadn’t just stumbled upon another medieval skeleton near the ruined chapel. This was something far more worrying.