Jigsaw Man by Elena Forbes Read Free Book Online

with the strain on their family life, Tartaglia stared
down at the blackened skeletal frame laid out on the gurney in front of him.
    The smell coming from the remains was powerful and made him want to retch. The flesh
on some of the body parts had clearly been decomposing before the parts had been
set on fire. The logistics of assembling a body the way the killer had done, suggested
he must be storing the parts somewhere, most likely a freezer. He recalled the area
of waste ground where the green Fiat Panda had been found, next to the Sainsbury’s
car park in Lambeth, and ran through in his mind the video footage from the crime
scene, taken just after the car had been found. Although the entrance to the waste
ground from the road had been boarded up, part of the fencing between it and the
car park had been vandalised and it was being used as an overspill when the Sainsbury’s
car park was full. The Panda had been reported stolen from outside a house in Tooting
five days before the fire was discovered. They didn’t yet know whether the killer
had transported the body parts in the boot of the car, or covered up on the back
seat, or even separately in bags or a suitcase. An appeal for witnesses who might
have noticed when the car had been left there had so far drawn a blank. CCTV footage,
which barely extended to the outer limits of the car park, let alone the area beyond,
was inconclusive. The best estimate was that the car could have been sitting there
for anything up to twenty-four hours before the fire was spotted and the fire brigade
was called out. It was also unclear if the car had been dumped by joy riders, and
the killer had used it opportunistically, or whether the killer had stolen the vehicle
as part of his plan.
    There had been two possible identities put forward for what they had believed was
a single body in the burnt-out car. The first was a vagrant who went by the name
of Dodger. Described by those who came across him as being anything between the ages
of fifty and seventy, rumour had it that he was an ex-soldier who had seen action
in the first Gulf war. He had been a regular in the area for a while and had often
been seen at the back of Sainsbury’s at night, sitting by the warm air vent from the bakery. He hadn’t been seen since the fire and the first assumption had been
that it was his body in the back of the car. However, they didn’t have much to go
on; just an artist’s impression of him, which revealed little more than a heavily
bearded face. They needed to find out Dodger’s real identity and try to trace any
living relatives to see if they could get a familial DNA match. If he wasn’t one
of the four victims, they needed to find him urgently to ascertain if he had seen
anything suspicious on the night the car was set on fire.
    The second possible murder victim was a businessman named Richard English, whose
wallet containing driving licence and credit cards had been found on the ground beside
the burnt-out wreck, still just about intact enough to be identifiable. A set of
keys had also been recovered close by, the fob bearing the initial ‘R’. English had
been reported missing two years previously and none of the cards had been used since
that time. English’s wife, Lisa, had been briefly interviewed and had given permission
for their young daughter to be swabbed to see if there was a familial link.
    ‘Can you check to see if any of the body parts have been frozen?’ Tartaglia asked
Moran.
    ‘No problem. I’ll get back to you tomorrow, if that’s OK.’
    ‘And we’ll need to establish how old the bones are, although something smells pretty
recent.’
    ‘I’ll call in an anthropologist, if you’re OK with the cost?’
    Tartaglia nodded. ‘Were the bones all cut up in the same way?’
    ‘Yes. As you’ll see when you get the images, they were dismembered quite cleanly
at the joints, using some sort of a serrated blade, probably a hacksaw. There are
also a few traces on some of the