DS Gibbs raised his hand. ‘Just a thought, but Jaguar cars are fitted with carpets, right? Would they be similar?’
Lawrence shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not sure, never dealt with a body in an XJ, or been in one for a ride.’
Bradfield rubbed his chin. ‘We need to start doing a bit more to trace this red Jag Eddie Phillips saw Julie Ann getting into. The punter could have had sex with her in the car, then strangled and dumped her.’
‘Are the seats the same sort of fabric as the carpets in a Jag?’ Detective Edwards asked.
‘I think leather is standard, but she could have had sex in the back of the car, taken her clothes off and they came in contact with the carpet,’ Lawrence replied.
Jane realized that Bradfield hadn’t as yet read the reports about the Jaguar cars she’d left on his desk. She held her hand up but Bradfield ignored her. Kath could see something was troubling Jane.
‘What’s up?’ she whispered and Jane told her he couldn’t have read the reports yet and the flying squad ID parade was at 11 a.m.
‘Don’t worry about that – Eddie Phillips didn’t see the driver,’ Kath replied.
‘He’ll be mad with me if I don’t say anything,’ Jane said anxiously.
Kath stuck her hand in the air. ‘Excuse me, sir, but WPC Tennison has made some enquiries about Jaguar cars and I totally forgot to tell you about a red Jag the flying squad recovered yesterday.’
There was tutting and head-shaking from the male officers in the room, and one even commented that ‘plonks’, a male derogatory term for WPCs, were bloody useless.
‘Kath pointed me in the right direction for the Jag enquiries,’ Jane said, trying to ease the situation.
‘Make that your first and last mistake on my squad, Morgan, or you’ll be directing traffic for the rest of your career. Tell me about the flying squad first,’ Bradfield snapped.
Kath recalled as much as she could from what Jane had told her the previous day.
Jane added that the garage sergeant had told her that roughly eighty-one thousand Jags had been manufactured since 1968.
‘Jesus Christ, eighty-one thousand,’ DS Gibbs exclaimed and there were looks of disbelief round the room.
Jane pointed out that the search could be narrowed down if they started with red and variant-coloured cars registered from 1968 in London, and those that were specially ordered with red carpets. She also mentioned that she had contacted a Jaguar dealer for brochures on the two models concerned. Bradfield told her to get on to the manufacturers and make enquiries after the meeting.
DS Lawrence spoke next. ‘You need to consider the Daimler as well.’
‘Why? We’re looking for a Jag,’ Gibbs said, exasperated.
‘Jaguar own the Daimler brand and the car is essentially, in size and shape, the same as the Jag, but more luxurious. A lot of people mistake one for the other and the only differences, as far as I’m aware, are the shape of the front grille and the badge.’
Bradfield remarked that with the Daimler now being a possibility it could mean another few thousand vehicles and owners to try and trace. He told Kath to help Tennison regarding the car enquiries and to get some Daimler brochures as well.
‘That little junkie, Phillips, could be lying but either way he needs to be found asap and leant on. I want more detail about the car he saw Julie Ann getting in. We can show him the brochures and take him out on the streets to point out a bloody car that looks the same. If he was the lookout when Julie Ann made the phone call then there’s a good chance he knows who this “Paddy” is.’
‘Paddy doesn’t sound like a black person’s name,’ a detective remarked.
‘Neither does Anjali O’Duncie,’ Bradfield fired back.
‘Could Julie Ann have said something else that sounds similar to Paddy?’ Gibbs suggested.
‘For Chrissake, cut all this crap with names. Bloody well get out there and find Eddie – that’s the only way we’ll trace who she called,’ Bradfield shouted, and started to delegate tasks to his team.
He told one of them to go over to Stoke Newington and speak with the flying squad detectives about the Jag they had recovered, and the Italian who had been arrested for robbery. He also wanted the house-to-house enquiries extended to all the blocks of flats on the Pembridge Estate and told Gibbs to organize it.
DS Lawrence asked if there was anything else DCI Bradfield needed him for as he’d like to get back to the lab and have a look at the red XJ6 that the Sweeney lads had sent up, to see if the carpet fibres were a match.
Bradfield concluded the meeting and returned to his office to ring George Collins, the victim’s father, and ask him to come to the station as there were a couple of developments regarding the investigation that he needed to discuss in private with him.
