The Jigsaw Man (65 page)

Even so, I wasn’t willing to exclude more than one man being involved.

As the meeting finished, Bayliss turned to me. ‘You’ll want to see the scene.’

‘Yes.’

‘Would anyone else like to come?’ he asked.

There were several who accepted the offer.

The Smith family had moved to the Bretts Hall Estate eighteen months earlier and were well-known in the area. Naomi had two older brothers Andrew and Clayton and one half-brother, David. The curtains were pulled tight at the neat semi-detached house and a piece of paper had been pinned to the front door.

Retracing Naomi’s footsteps in the growing darkness, Bayliss and I reached the post box and he reaffirmed the witness statements.

‘The twelve-year-old lived in the house opposite,’ he said. ‘She was standing upstairs at the bay window.’

‘There is no bay window.’

Bayliss stopped virtually in mid-stride.

‘The only bay window is down there,’ I said, pointing to a house more than 100 yards away.

‘That can’t be right.’

‘Let’s find out,’ I suggested.

The house number corresponded with the girl’s statement which meant that somehow her account had been misreported to the SIO. Bayliss suggested we see if the girl was home so I could evaluate her reliability as a witness. In a neat front lounge, he chatted with the girl’s father before we took her upstairs to her parents’ bedroom from where she’d seen Naomi walking alone on Thursday night.

In her statement, she had said, ‘I could easily make out Naomi from my position, I had a good unrestricted view of her, there was no traffic on the road. I could not see anyone else around…’

After posting the letter, ‘Naomi walked past the bus stop and then up to the big street light and then stopped. Then she turned around and walked back up the pavement in the direction of the post box. By now her walking pace had become much faster, not running but hurried… then saw her look down the jitty. Naomi only stopped for a second or two and then continued at her same hurried pace along the jitty and out of sight.’

As the girl pointed out the post box to me it was immediately clear that she couldn’t have seen anybody’s face, it was too far away.

‘Oh, I recognized her jacket,’ she explained.

I had no problem with her identification of Naomi, but the distance called into question the way she described Naomi walking purposefully down the jitty. She couldn’t possibly be sure of this.

Bayliss and I walked back up the street, stopping to have a few words with a local shopkeeper before turning down the jitty towards The Rec. It was virtually an unmade pathway that provided rear access to the houses and a shortcut to the reserve. After walking a few dozen yards in complete darkness, a passive infrared light suddenly lit up in a starburst of light and night became day. Nobody had mentioned this before. If Naomi had walked down here, the light would have come on. Bayliss made a note to have it checked.

The Rec was so dark it was hard to judge any distances and I contemplated what Naomi would have seen. Whoever was with her had to know the area well enough to navigate without light. In all likelihood they knew about the seat and the Astroturf under the slide. Throughout Friday, police searchers had combed the entire recreation ground, hampered by driving rain. No trace of the knife or the weapon that penetrated Naomi had been found.

Walking back towards Naomi’s house, we were suddenly bunded by another passive infrared light on the corner house of the estate, nearest to The Rec carpark. It looked new and Bayliss decided to ask the householder if the light had been installed since the murder as a security measure.

A lady answered with a toddler clinging to her leg and a baby crawling around her ankles. She confirmed that the light had been newly installed and then said, ‘Did you find those three lads?’

Bayliss asked, ‘What three lads?’

‘The ones I heard running past here on Thursday night.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘I know what I heard. I was in bed and I woke up. Three men were running down there.’

‘What time was this?’

‘At eleven o’clock. I looked at the clock.’

‘And you’re sure they were men?’

‘I heard them talking and shouting to each other as they ran.’

‘Why do you say three of them?’

‘I think it was three. It was definitely more than one.’

Bayliss shook his head. ‘Why haven’t you given a statement?’

She looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, nobody’s asked me.’

The SIO was fit to explode. House-to-house teams had been right through the area and the mobile incident room had been set up in a caravan directly opposite her address. Apparently officers had been going in and out of her house to get water for their kettle, but nobody had thought to ask her.

As we left the house I knew that heads were going to be knocked together back at the incident room. Bayliss was far too hard-nosed and professional to let such an oversight go without explanation. He wanted a statement from the woman on his desk by morning.

It was particularly important because police were already searching for three or possibly four youths seen loitering on the green opposite Naomi’s council house between 10.00 and 11.00 p.m. on the Thursday. Bayliss had several times used media conferences to ask them to come forward.

He had also issued the description of a lone man seen running out of the jitty onto the pavement straight across Ansley Common Road. A cyclist had to swerve and mounted the pavement to avoid hitting him. He described him as being a white male, aged between twenty and twenty-five, six foot tall, with an athletic build and short blond hair that looked bleached and spiky on top.

On the Saturday after the murder, Bayliss also took the unusual step of revealing the extent of Naomi’s injuries in the hope that it would convince anyone who might be shielding the killer to give him up.

‘I think someone probably does know and may even be harbouring him,’ he said. ‘I want that person to think about what has been done - we have an innocent fifteen-year-old girl killed in horrific circumstances. Even though you may have mixed loyalties, I want you to put those behind you and come forward to tell us who is responsible.’

At the same time, Naomi’s half-brother David Freeman tearfully told journalists, ‘Someone must know who this evil person is. She was a beautiful young girl. She was just becoming a young lady. She never harmed anybody.’

The appeals were backed up by a Ł10,000 reward offered by an unnamed winner of the National Lottery.

*

Over the next few days I went over the statements of Naomi’s parents and friends, as well as re-examining the crime-scene photographs. Bayliss had asked for a psychological profile and case analysis but I couldn’t be sure about either until I sorted out the discrepancies in the various accounts. The wheat had to be sorted from the chaff and there seemed to be a lot of the latter.

The inquiry appeared to be taking very seriously details that suggested Naomi had gone out to meet someone. But how reliable was this conclusion? If the evidence wasn’t convincing, it was best to concentrate on those facts that were more certain.

Within the statements of Brian and Catherine Smith I found the complete explanation of what Naomi was observed to do on Thursday night after posting the letter.

Brian Smith, a forty-five-year-old taxi driver who went to work very early each morning, described how Naomi had asked him on Thursday evening if he could call at Emma’s house and wake her up on Friday morning for school. He suggested that Emma should stay the night at their house and told Naomi to nip up to the house to ask her if she wanted to stay. As Naomi was about to leave, Catherine asked her to post a letter on the way. She took the letter, went downstairs and he heard the front door bang.

Catherine Smith, aged forty-seven, gave a slightly different account.

‘She [Naomi] asked me if we could pick up Emma on Friday morning and take her to school as Emma’s father had to go to work early and he couldn’t take her. I asked Naomi to walk to the postbox in Ansley Common and post a letter I had prepared for a Freeman’s catalogue and while she was there to look further up Ansley Common to where Emma’s sister Becky lived with her mother and see if Emma’s father’s car was still there. The object of this was that Naomi could then ask Emma’s father if Emma could stay overnight at our house …’

A great deal of intellectual and investigatory effort had been wasted on the question of why Naomi had been looking up and down the road, yet the answer lay in the statements. Naomi had been looking to see if she could see Emma’s father’s car - not because she was waiting for someone.

At the same time, aspects of her parents’ recollections posed questions, in particular Mr Smith’s account of how he found Naomi’s body. He described how she left to post the letter and he settled down to sleep. An hour later, Catherine woke him and said that she hadn’t heard Naomi come home. He looked at the clock and it was 10.50 p.m. He got up, put on his dressing-gown and went downstairs. The lounge and kitchen lights were still on and he found the front door ajar and the lock on the catch.

Naomi had left the door open - hardly the action of a person who was going out to meet someone. Instead, it suggested that she expected to return in just a few minutes.

Mr and Mrs Smith decided that Naomi had probably got chatting with Emma and they decided to wait a few more minutes. At 11.15 p.m. when she still hadn’t come home, Catherine telephoned Emma’s mother and a family friend Alison Chapman to ask if either of them had seen Naomi. Afterwards, she and Alison went looking in the car, insisting that Brian try to get some sleep because he had to be up so early.

When they returned half an hour later without Naomi - having picked up Emma on the way - Brian immediately got dressed.

‘Emma then said she would go to The Rec, the play area at the back of the house, to see if Naomi was there. She walked out. I said that I would follow her up in my car as it was unlit and very dark on The Rec and she needed the headlights to see.

‘Outside the air was very dark and damp. Emma walked along the driveway situated some twenty yards to the left of our house which leads to The Rec and a small play area which has some swings and slides… I got into my car and drove after her up the driveway as far as I could go up to the fence which borders the play area. As I got to the top Emma was running back towards me screaming and shouting. She was shouting my name and telling me to come quick. As I stopped the car I could see a white shape lying underneath the slide on the playground. I jumped straight out of the car leaving the engine running and the headlights shining directly on the slide.

‘I ran over the grass to the slide and saw Naomi lying on the floor. I immediately recognized her as she was lying on her back with her face towards me. As I ran to Naomi, Emma ran away from me, back down the driveway in the general direction of our house, screaming.

‘Naomi was lying flat on her back, her head was the furthest away from me … it was turned to the right and facing me, both her arms were lying flat on the floor either side of her body next to her sides. Her legs were apart with her feet both flat on the ground, both her knees were up in the air. Her white jumper was pulled up slightly and a small part of her belly button was showing. Her jeans were pulled down around her ankles, I think that both legs were still in her jeans. I am not sure about her shoes but I think she had them on …’

Mr Smith went on to describe how he closed Naomi’s legs and went running back to the house for a blanket to cover her - a father’s attempt to save his daughter’s dignity. Unfortunately, this made it difficult to be absolutely sure of how Naomi had been left by the killer or killers. For example, the crime-scene photographs showed her white jumper covering her breasts. Had she pulled it down after being bitten; or had the killer rearranged her clothes; or, more likely, had Brian Smith tried to spare his daughter further indignities?

Other things puzzled me. Why had Emma Jones suggested looking for Naomi at The Rec? And why had she run on ahead into the darkness instead of waiting for Mr Smith?

Her statement offered only some of the answers. She and Naomi were best friends and had spent the afternoon at a practice session of the Nuneaton Marching Brass Band where Naomi was learning to play percussion instruments. They were both excited about a band competition in London on the following Saturday. Emma’s father had driven them home.

Emma had been in bed at 11.00 p.m. when Mrs Smith arrived looking for Naomi. She got dressed and went with them to look. As they drove, Emma directed Mrs Smith to an alleyway and walked part way along it, calling Naomi’s name. Apparently it led to the house of a young man who had been Naomi’s boyfriend and who she still had a crush on. When no-one answered, Emma turned back.

She said it was Alison who had suggested they search The Rec but didn’t explain why she went ahead.

‘Initially, I walked along by the fence towards the park, it was pitch-black and I was quite frightened. I shouted Naomi’s name several times, saying, ‘If you’re here, tell me.’ I got no response so carried on walking.

‘Without Brian’s car lights I was able to see something white which was under the slide of the children’s play area. At first I thought it was just a carrier bag or blanket then Brian’s car lights shone over towards the slide. Instantly, I recognized Naomi who was lying face up under the slide, her face was turned to one side. I thought that she’d had a blackout which I know that she has occasionally. Brian’s car had stopped and his headlights lit up the park. I ran to Naomi and saw she was half naked. The clothes she had worn earlier were moved, dark blue jeans down to her ankles, long white jumper which was still in place. I could see a cut on her neck. I ran towards Brian and started screaming…’

Later in the statement Emma said: ‘Naomi was my best friend and she would have told me if she was going to meet anyone that night. She walks the dogs over The Rec at night but she wouldn’t go there on her own.’

The more I learned about Naomi’s pastimes, the more complex her life became. Equally, so many different people attached to the case seemed to have secrets and aspects of their lives that were characterized by duplicity and deceit.