cases didn’t make a serial killer, but they certainly started to look like one. And that was the last thing he needed to get tied up with right now.
*
‘Andrew Michaels was thirty-four years old, five foot nine and weighed seventeen and a half stones,’ Pete read from Doc Chamber’s report to his assembled team a little over an hour later.
Dick Feeney ran a hand down his cheek, skin rasping on dark stubble. ‘Big lad, then.’
‘You really are going have to reset your body clock, mate,’ Dave told him.
‘Eh?’ Jane frowned.
‘Well, look at him. If that’s not a five o’clock shadow, I don’t know what is. And it’s only . . .’ He made a show of checking his watch. ‘Twenty past one.’
‘Damn, no wonder I was feeling peckish,’ Jane said. ‘It’s feeding time.’
‘Talking of food and getting back to the matter at hand,’ Pete said, ‘Michaels worked for eighteen months in a bakery, ending in 2001. He’d been on the dole since then, living at home with his parents. He collapsed in the High Street; keeled over suddenly from a seat across from the Princesshay Shopping Centre. The attending paramedics said that witnesses reported nothing abnormal leading up to the collapse. He had just been sitting there quietly one minute and slumped on the ground the next.’
‘Presumably not from a heart attack from being a lazy, fat bastard,’ Dave said. ‘Or we wouldn’t be talking about him.’
‘Exactly.’ Pete stuck his photo – taken on the steel mortuary table – on the board alongside Jerry Tyler’s. ‘But you’re right about the intended impression. Victim two in the doc’s theorised series. In this case, the needle mark was in the back of his upper arm, the triceps muscle.’
‘So, what was it?’ asked Jane.
‘Insulin, based on the guy’s glucose level, as determined from the fluid in his eye.’
‘Ouch.’ Jill Evans cringed.
‘Why the eye?’ asked Ben Myers, across from her.
Dave glanced at him. ‘You a poet and didn’t know it?’
‘Because,’ Pete said, ignoring him, ‘it’s the one place in the body where levels of several blood constituents are stable for a time after death. It’s a filtrate of the blood serum, but it’s isolated from the bloodstream after death, so it’s not affected by the early stages of decomposition like the blood is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help us with the actual insulin because that’s only stable for a few hours.’
‘And there’s nothing else that could cause the glucose level the doc found?’ Dave asked.
‘No. In the blood, it would drop to that kind of level fairly quickly after death, apparently, but not in the eye fluid.’
‘So, insulin jab, staged accident . . .. We’re talking about a fairly sophisticated perp, here.’
‘And one with access to insulin.’ Jane added. ‘Which suggests a diabetic. Or at least one in the family.’
‘Or peer group,’ Ben put in. ‘He could have borrowed or nicked a dose.’
Pete nodded. ‘We should check GP surgeries, the hospital and the ambulance trust – see if any thefts have been reported. It could have come from one of them as well as a friend or family member.’
‘That’s a big old job,’ said Dave.
‘I’ll do it,’ Ben offered. ‘What about vets?’
Pete frowned. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll find out.’
‘Will you never learn, Spike?’ Dave asked.
‘What?’
‘Never volunteer,’ Dick told him.
‘Right.’ Pete grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. ‘Jill can give you a hand if you need it, Ben. Dick, check out the victim and see if he’s got a record of any kind. I doubt it, but you never know. Jane, you and I’ll go see his parents, see what we can get from them. Come on.’ He headed for the door, Jane’s heels clipping on the lino as she hurried to catch up.
*
Michaels had clearly inherited his height from his father and his girth from his mother. Brian and Kathy sat uneasily in the two armchairs in their lounge, leaving Pete and Jane on the sofa, the TV muted but not switched off in the corner.
‘So, why are the police interested in our Andrew all of a sudden?’ the dead man’s father asked, his hands clasped in his lap as he leaned forward in his chair.
‘The pathologist has come to us with some unusual findings,’ Pete told him. ‘Was Andrew diabetic?’
‘Why would you ask that? Because of his size?’ demanded Kathy, whose greying dark hair wafted in a curly halo around her as she moved, hands wringing in her lap. ‘Not all fat people are diabetic, you know. I’m not.’
‘We don’t judge, Mrs Michaels. It’s not our job.’ Pete felt sympathy with her defensiveness. He was still the same way with Tommy, despite all he’d learned about the boy in the last couple of weeks. All parents would be, he guessed.
After a long pause, she sighed and seemed to slump in her chair. ‘No, he wasn’t diabetic. Why?’
‘One of the pathologist’s findings suggested the possibility. You say you’re not, either. Is anyone in the family, or one of his friends, perhaps?’
She shook her head, unruly strands of hair wafting. ‘Why should it matter?’
‘Talking of friends, did you know most of Andrew’s?’
‘He didn’t have many,’ his father said. ‘Quiet lad, kept himself to himself.’
‘He was bullied at school,’ Kathy said, reminding Pete again of his own son, who was small for his age. ‘Never really got over it. We tried to encourage him to get out more, join a club or something, but . . .’ Her hands fluttered briefly then went back to her lap, where the fingers resumed their random pattern of twining together.
Evidence suggested that Tommy had reacted differently to the Michaels boy. According to both his peers and his teachers, he’d turned things around to the extent that many of the other kids were frightened of him. Too small to fight, he’d become devious, cruel and bitter. Instead of the brawn that he lacked, he’d used his brains to get back at the kids who’d previously targeted him. Not that Pete had ever noticed any of this, he had to admit regretfully. He’d always been too busy working.
‘Did he have a computer?’ Jane asked.
‘Up in his room,’ Kathy said.
‘Could I take a look? It helps to build up a picture of him – his associates, his interests and so on.’
‘He
