The Jigsaw Man (59 page)

‘How do you feel about the verdict in the Rachel Nickell trial?’

‘I’m awfully sorry, but you’ll have to direct that question to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.’

‘Oh, come on, Mr Britton, you can speak for yourself, you must have some feelings on it.’

I kept walking and the cameraman continued filming as I got in the car and drove away.

There was no escaping the fallout. The weekend newspapers carried long wrap-ups of the Nickell case, stirring the controversy even further. Commentators began asking whether offender profiling had been dealt a crippling blow. My sense of disbelief and outrage hadn’t diminished but for Marilyn I think it was worse. She couldn’t believe how wrong the stories could be and how isolated I had become. Why hadn’t the police set the record straight?

‘How can they do it?’ she asked, almost in tears. ‘And after all you’ve done. When I think of all the hours you’ve spent helping the police - all the weekends you’ve had to work and the holidays we’ve never had. You’ve never asked for a penny and this is what happens. Those, those, those …’ she couldn’t think of what to call them and finally said, ‘It’s just not fair.’

I tried to help her understand. ‘Has there ever been a case in which I have been involved that has been reported accurately?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Then why should we expect it to be any different now?’

She shrugged. ‘There’s no reason.’

Ironically, when my closely guarded anonymity had first been blown during the Stephanie Slater kidnapping, the stories about me were quite positive. However, I knew then that eventually someone would bite me. Australians call it the ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ where anyone who is perceived as having grown too tall is hacked down.

Marilyn would have been quite happy if I walked away and never again looked at another crime scene or drew up another psychological profile. For quite a while we’d been making plans for the future that didn’t involve giving my spare time to the police. I’d actually decided that the trial was going to be the last time I offered advice to the police in murder cases.

This had all been turned on its head. If I stopped now, people would draw the wrong conclusions and think that I’d gone away with my tail between my legs. If the Nickell verdict was going be seen as a setback for offender profiling then I would carry on to help people understand that this shouldn’t be so. There were too many positives to allow the outcome of a single case to damage an important investigatory tool.

I explained this to Marilyn and said that our ‘normal’ life would have to wait. Although disappointed, she understood. I think she suspected as much when I agreed to help on the Wardell case.

I’d already spent several days immersed in the statements and pictures of the abduction, the robbery and the murder scene. The overall impression these created was of a crime that was hopelessly inept when viewed as the work of a professional team. At the same time, it was so complex and so demanding as a solo undertaking. I told myself that I’d know a lot more after visiting the scenes.

Bayliss and I left through the back entrance of the police station, avoiding any journalists. We first looked quickly at the Woolwich branch less than 100 yards from the station. A pyramid of flowers rested against the front window and occasionally pedestrians would pause and glance down, paying their respects. Carol Wardell had been a popular figure.

Afterwards, we took picturesque B-roads through Warwickshire, past pick-your-own farms and orchards before reaching Meriden, a small village twelve miles from Nuneaton. Early autumn is my favourite time of year but there was nothing enjoyable about the drive.

Bonneville Close is part of a relatively new estate with rows of similar looking houses lining quiet streets. The Wardells lived in a two-storey red-brick cottage with pretty leaded-pane windows and a neat garden. A ceramic butterfly perched on a wooden beam near the front door.

Stepping out of the car, I noticed how fully we were on display; not much was going to escape the attention of neighbours. A burglar alarm box on the front wall and security lights indicated that the occupants had been extremely security conscious. Friends had told police how Carol feared that someone might follow her home and snatch the building society keys. She had even mentioned the possibility of not being a key-holder.

This added to the mystery of how the gang got into the house. Carol wouldn’t have opened the door to a stranger, yet there were no signs of forced entry or evidence of glass being taken out of the windows.

Police duck boards formed stepping stones across the floor of the garage as we entered through a rear door. It looked very orderly and tidy. Everything had its place - the tools, glues, sealants, string, sandpaper, flex and pieces of rope - with no obvious evidence of rummaging or disturbance.

It was the same through the rest of the house. The kitchen benches were spotless, with no sign of someone even pouring themselves a glass of water. On the dining room table a fruit bowl sat undisturbed. Every cupboard door was closed and all utensils neatly stored.

Entering the lounge, I saw where the settee had been pushed against a far wall and faced the wrong direction. One armchair had been picked up and put upside down on top of the other.

Certain things didn’t make sense. Wardell described being jumped by two men - one on each side of him - as he entered the lounge, yet there was no room for someone to stand behind the door. And why had the furniture been rearranged in such a way?

The metal-framed refuse sack holder still lay in the centre of the floor and nearby a yellow plastic ratchet-type tie. It was an unusual way to bind someone, I thought. Elsewhere in the room, a hearth rug had been tossed aside and the contents of Carol’s handbag spilled out on the carpet. Gordon’s clothes and shoes lay on the floor nearby. Yet the scene looked ever-so-slightly wrong. The handbag hadn’t been rifled vigorously, instead the contents seem to have been almost spread out. Similarly, Gordon’s clothes looked as if someone had carefully placed them before getting into the shower rather than flung them aside as they bound an unconscious man. His shoes and Carol’s slippers lay in pairs.

The small knick-knacks and bric-a-brac of their lives still sat neatly on the mantelpiece and window-sill. Flowers stood in vases and a jardiniere with a delicate stand had been moved four feet into a congested part of the room, but had not been smashed or even chipped. Absolutely nothing had been shattered, soiled or stained in the violence.

My task was to look at the house in terms of the account given. A violent, brutal gang of four men had overwhelmed a woman; beaten, drugged and stripped her husband before tying him to a metal frame they found in his garage. This gang had been in the house all night but hadn’t been tempted to have a glass of water, piece of fruit or to open the drinks cabinet.

Where was the evidence of violence and struggle? I asked myself. The hallway bore no signs of someone overpowering a woman and the lounge looked rearranged rather than rifled - as though someone had been cautious about not making a mess. Meanwhile, Gordon Wardell had spent nearly sixteen hours lying on the floor yet there was no evidence of him having lost bladder control.

At the top of the stairs, on the landing, was a sanitary towel box. It jarred because Carol Wardell had obviously been so tidy. Where did it come from? Who put it there? Perhaps it meant nothing but in trying to make sense of what happened, every detail counts.

The questions began coming quickly. Why would robbers take nothing from the house? They didn’t even bother to search it. Why use a bin frame dragged from the garage? And why strip Mr Wardell?

Upstairs in the second bedroom, I saw a computer and small printer. A job application lay beside it, with a curriculum vitae. The police had no reason to be particularly interested in these items but a ‘cv’ could tell me a great deal more about a person than simply their work experience. It made it possible to match what people say about themselves against what is actually known about them. You then begin to get some idea of how much deception they use and perhaps how grandiosely they view themselves.

Glancing at the first page, under the sub-heading ‘Personal Profile’, Wardell had described himself as a ‘first class leader with excellent communication skills. Highly motivated energetic character with a hands-on management style, creative and visionary, versatile achiever, disciplined, strategic, analytical approach with a proven track record in warehousing and distribution.’

After listing his previous employers, he had written the sub-heading ‘Professional Qualifications’ and underneath - ‘Member of Institute of Logistics’. When Bayliss saw my reaction he immediately asked me what I’d found.

‘This is the key,’ I said, showing him the words. ‘If Mr Wardell did kill his wife then this is how he made it work. It’s in his background.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve looked at what’s happened and at Mr Wardell’s story and we agree that it doesn’t square up,’ I said.

Bayliss nodded and I continued, ‘At the same time, it looks too big for one person - too many miles have to be covered and obstacles overcome. But really it’s been a logistics problem - getting from point A to point B to point C and back again in a particular time frame and solving certain physical and technical problems along the way. It’s like a project management exercise, being able to conceptualize and plan a series of simple actions that will achieve a complex goal when they’re linked up.’

Bayliss soaked up the information, trying to relate what I was saying to the forward progress of the investigation.

On the drive back to Nuneaton, I began reflecting upon the vast array of facts, reports and observations from neighbours, friends and workmates of Carol and Gordon. Having sifted through all of these, I knew that a lot of them made little sense in the context of Carol’s death but every piece had deserved equal weight at the beginning. Now I had to allocate each piece into categories, deciding which bits were reliable and could be corroborated; and how they related to the various accounts.

Bayliss had invited me to join the crime advisory team which meant having an on-going involvement and formal responsibility in the shaping of the inquiry. Outsiders rarely get this close to the beating heart of an investigation and I regarded it as a significant compliment. In many ways I had an advantage. Unlike officers who may already have invested hundreds of hours in an inquiry and were faced with pressures of time, money and media scrutiny, I could step back and look at the big picture.

One of the easiest traps that detectives can sometimes fall into is developing a notion or hypothesis about what happened and then trying to find facts that fit it. Incoming information is treated differently in their minds, depending on whether it fits or not, and the problem is magnified when you have dozens and dozens of officers all working with a common purpose and all with a high investment in time and effort. If a piece of information suddenly emerges that doesn’t fit, there is a tendency to devalue it. They find reasons to discount the source or convince themselves the lead isn’t trustworthy.

Another difficulty that can affect a large investigation occurs when individual detectives feel that their own inquiries are of greatest importance because this is where their own investment lies. I remember during the Stephanie Slater abduction, I was at the incident room in Nechells Green where various detectives had been tasked to follow up different possibilities, such as checking prison release files, local intelligence and other estate agents. At least three of them came to me separately, convinced that the answer to the abduction lay in the work that they were doing.

Tony Bayliss knew how easy it would be to focus exclusively on Gordon Wardell because of his previous conviction and the anomalies in his statement. Yet I agreed that there should be a deliberate policy of not focusing just on him. Every line of enquiry had to be kept alive, otherwise potentially vital information might be missed. Just because Mr Wardell had a violent offence in his history, it didn’t make him a killer and nor did it protect him against bad luck. Offenders get robbed, mugged and run over by buses just like the rest of us.

Carol Wardell had been born and bred in Coventry and worked her way through the ranks of the Woolwich Building Society from cashier to assistant manageress of the Nuneaton branch. An ex-Sunday school teacher, she was considered quite timid and nervous, not assertive in physical situations and very security conscious, especially at home.

She had met Gordon at a local ten pin bowling league when he was twenty-five and she was twenty-three and they married four years later at the Holy Trinity church in the heart of Coventry on 17 April, 1982. They were regarded as a quiet, loving couple who entertained regularly at home.

According to Gordon, Carol was his only intimate girlfriend and there had never been any infidelity or physical violence in the marriage. He said that Carol knew about his previous conviction and that he still used his prison number (522537) as a combination on his briefcase so he wouldn’t forget what he’d done.

On the Monday before Carol’s death, he had gone to work and complained of feeling sick and having diarrhea before going home to bed. The following day he was still unwell and spent the day wrapped up at home while Carol went to work in her grey Peugeot 106. On Wednesday he got up at about midday and went for a job interview on an industrial estate in Coventry. He said he was unhappy at Veng UK because of the company’s attitude ‘to their legal responsibility and safety of workers’.

He had another job interview on Thursday, leaving home at 10.00 a.m. and driving to Keighley in Yorkshire, a distance of 140 miles. He left a note which read: ‘To Carol, popping out, back at 6 o’clock.’ This was odd. Why would a man seek a new job in a different part of the country and not tell his wife about it?

Carol had last been seen alive by a work colleague June O’Connell and her husband who dined with the Wardells on Saturday night. There were no obvious signs of friction between Carol and Gordon and as the O’Connells left, they saw their hosts arm in arm at the front door waving them goodbye.