Harinder chuckled. ‘You’re never satisfied.’
Karen shrugged. ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get.’
‘The driver number is here, and that area is particularly stained and degraded,’ Harinder said, opening up another file, which displayed a larger fragment of the licence. ‘I need to work on it some more, but I may be able to get you the address, or at least part of it. God knows what’s leaked on to this driver’s licence. It’s definitely been stained with some kind of liquid.’
Karen pulled a face and wondered how much Raj had told Harinder. Did he know where the licence had been found? She knew the stains were likely to be putrefying fluids, which wasn’t the nicest thing to dwell on. She decided not to mention it.
‘Right,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Excellent work, Harry. Please do your best to get us an address. It’ll make our life a lot easier. I’ll send Sophie down later to see how you’re getting on.’
‘Mm-hmm,’ Harinder mumbled, but his attention was focused on the screen.
‘Thanks again,’ Karen said.
Karen rushed back to the main office, eager to give DI Morgan the good news. Now they had a name, they could get their teeth into this investigation. The victim’s ID had opened up a wealth of information.
She saw DI Morgan walking towards her as she entered the office.
‘I was just coming to find you,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing from the beaming smile on your face that Harinder has come through for us?’
Karen grinned. ‘He certainly did come through. He’s still working on the driver number and address, but he’s given us a name. Oliver Fox.’
DI Morgan followed her over to her desk.
‘Does the name ring a bell?’ he asked.
Karen nudged the mouse on her desk, bringing the computer screen to life, and then quickly typed in her password. ‘No, his name isn’t familiar to me, but if this crime happened decades ago, it would be long before my time.’
She logged into the system. ‘I’m going to see what I can find about Oliver Fox. He could be entered in our database. If not, I’ll try press archives, and if Harinder gets another good result, we might be able to use the driver number to check with the DVLA.’
‘I’m amazed he got anything from that tatty old licence,’ DI Morgan said. ‘Let’s hope someone filed a missing persons report on Oliver Fox, at the very least.’
Karen nodded as she typed the name into the search bar.
‘I’ll leave you to it and go and update the superintendent.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Sophie should be back soon. With three of us going through the records we should get a quick result. Have you heard anything from Rick?’
Karen shook her head but kept her eyes fixed on the screen. ‘Not yet. The hospital could be giving him the runaround. They just see Albert Johnson as a frail, elderly man that the police are harassing.’
‘Rick is quite capable of turning on the charm when he wants to,’ DI Morgan said. ‘Let’s hope that works to our advantage this time.’
After DI Morgan left, Karen completed the search and waited for the results to populate on her screen.
‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘Tell me your secrets. It’s been decades, but we’re finally going to find out what happened to you.’
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk, and held her breath when she saw the top result on the screen.
It had to be him. A forty-five-year-old Oliver Fox from Skellingthorpe had gone missing in 1988. A missing persons report had been filed, and an officer was assigned to the case to investigate his disappearance.
Karen exhaled a long breath and clicked on the link to open the report.
Nineteen eighty-eight would be in the right time period. It would fit with what Raj had told them. There was a very good chance that this missing person would turn out to be the body in the suitcase.
She gritted her teeth when she realised that the report was only a covering page, which consisted of a few typed lines of information and a case reference number. The record hadn’t been fully digitised yet.
Great. This was a complication they could do without. It would take time to acquire the original report, and the clock was ticking. They couldn’t talk to their main suspect until he regained consciousness, they had no idea who’d sent Albert Johnson the threatening note, and to top it off, she couldn’t even access the files she needed.
Still, she now had an address and a date of birth, so that was a start. She made a note of the case reference number and checked her watch. Sophie would be heading back now from her appointment, so perhaps she could pick up the records on her way.
Karen only hoped they were still at the local police station and had not yet been taken to the main depository.
She picked up the phone on her desk and dialled Sophie’s number.
Sophie answered on the second ring. ‘Hello, Sarge, I’m just in the car park.’
‘Sorry, Sophie, I’m going to need you to get back in the car and head over to Skellingthorpe.’
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Sophie said, ‘Okay, why?’
‘We’ve had a development. A good one. We now have a name for our victim – Oliver Fox – and there’s a missing persons report filed for him. I have the reference number here, but it’s not been digitised, which means we need to get the paperwork from Skellingthorpe. I’ll email you the reference number, okay?’
‘All right. I’ll head there now.’
‘Thanks, Sophie. I’ll give the station a ring and let them know you’re on the way. Hopefully, they’ll get the files ready for you.’
After she hung up, Karen stared at the screen. This man, Oliver Fox, had to be their victim, didn’t he? She bit down on her lower lip. Should they go and talk to the family before the full results from the lab were in? Or should they wait for the dental records? There was a minuscule chance the man could have been carrying somebody else’s wallet and driver’s licence.
Karen sighed and leaned back in her chair. How on earth had forty-five-year-old Oliver Fox ended up in Albert Johnson’s house in a suitcase?
She scribbled the names Oliver Fox and Albert Johnson on the notepad beside her keyboard, and drew an arrow linking the two.
She then put in a call to Skellingthorpe station and gave the reference number, telling them that DC Sophie Jones would be by shortly to pick up the records. Karen hung up and picked up her pen again. There was something about having a pen in her hand that helped her to think.
It was different now, for younger generations. They’d grown up with screens and computers and typed everything. But when Karen was at school, everything had been written by hand, and she still found the writing process more natural than typing.
She tapped the pen against her notepad. How was Albert Johnson involved? Was he a killer? Had he covered up the death of Oliver Fox after an accident? But that didn’t make any sense. If Oliver had died of natural causes or by accident, then surely Albert would have reported it to the police.
The phone on her desk rang, and she snatched it up. ‘DS Hart.’
‘Karen, it’s Darren Webb. We’ve finished looking around the loft at Albert Johnson’s property. I thought you’d want to know it looks like things had been moved around up there. It’s my opinion that the suitcase was brought down from the loft very recently.’