Peppermintz was raided by the police just before Christmas 1997, and Gabe was arrested for possession of cocaine and ecstasy. He pleaded guilty and got a three-year suspended sentence. It looked like he kept out of trouble, because that was the last entry in the police report, and Kate knew that Gabe had gone missing in April 2002.
Kate turned to the second report for David Lamb. In June 1997, just after his seventeenth birthday, he was arrested at a house in a suburb of Bristol in conjunction with the death of a fifty-five-year-old man called Sidney Newett. Sidney’s wife, Mariette, was away on a trip to Venice with the Women’s Institute. Sidney Newett was found dead in the back garden of their semidetached house, naked from the waist down. He had a large amount of alcohol in his blood, and cannabis and ketamine. The police released David Lamb after twenty-four hours. The charges of manslaughter were dropped when the postmortem revealed Sidney had died of a heart attack, but David was charged with possessing an illegal substance, and he got a six-month suspended sentence. He also got a formal caution ten months later, in April 1998, for soliciting, but it didn’t state exactly what the circumstances were or who the other person was.
“What about George Tomassini?” asked Kate.
“There’s no criminal record for George,” said Alan, sipping his coffee. “And you say that these young men are now on the missing persons database?”
“David and Gabe are. I think Joanna Duncan was looking into their disappearances, and had perhaps discovered foul play when she went missing. That’s the theory we’re working on,” said Kate. Alan nodded.
“What else do you need?” he asked, seeing Kate was poised to ask a question.
“It’s very broad. I’m thinking the bodies of these guys might have been found. They had no dependents, so they may have gone unidentified.”
“Did you know, on average, around one hundred and fifty unidentified bodies are found every year in the UK?”
“That’s less than I thought. The missing person statistics each year are off the chart.”
Alan nodded. “Yes. Some of the bodies found are complete, and sometimes it’s just parts. Did you know it tends to be dog walkers, joggers, or mushroom foragers who find them?”
“Mushroom foragers? Is that a thing?”
“Of course, especially here in the countryside, outside big cities. You don’t find many people doing it in Mayfair or Knightsbridge. The majority of bodies, or body parts, are found in autumn or late winter, when the foliage has died back.”
Alan had been scratching Quincy’s fluffy belly the whole time he was talking, and the little dog was now snoring.
“Would you be able to do a search for me, from 1998 to 2002, for unidentified remains?” asked Kate. “That would cover the time period when David and Gabe went missing.”
“Over that time period could mean over six hundred bodies and remains,” said Alan. “I do have an awful lot of work trying to keep up with current deaths and postmortems.”
“I know, but what if I could give you very specific criteria within that time frame? The search area would just be the southwest of England. Males, between eighteen and twenty-five. Over six foot tall, with dark hair, who might have been sexually assaulted. Who might have had a criminal record for soliciting or drugs. And good looking. Maybe not that last one. You can’t put ‘good looking’ into a database. It’s subjective . . .”
Kate could see that Alan was sitting up in his chair. He got up, went over to the window, and stared out over the garden. He looked troubled.
“I did a postmortem on a young man last Thursday,” he said. “Body found dumped in the remains of a recently fallen tree on Dartmoor. He’d only been dead for thirty-six hours. The police identified him from fingerprints . . .” He looked back at Kate. “He matches the description that you’ve just given me. Matches down to a T, apart from the hair color, which is blond. He had a prior arrest for soliciting.”
“How did he die?” asked Kate, her heart thumping in her chest.
“Repeated strangulation. The petechial hemorrhages, which look like a red rash, show that he was strangled and then revived several times. There was Rohypnol found in his blood, along with alcohol, and evidence he’d been bound and sexually assaulted. There was no DNA evidence found on the body.”
“What have the police said?” asked Kate.
“Nothing to the media, and as far as I know, they don’t have any witnesses or suspects,” said Alan.