in which he lived on the Westmead Estate in Lynnâs North End. Heâd been strangled with a ligature of some sort, the condition of the body pointing to a time of death between one and seven hours earlier, between 6.00 and 11.00 p.m. on the 25th. DCI Jack Shaw had attended the scene, with the then Detective Inspector George Valentine. They were St Jamesâs senior investigative team, with a record going back nearly a decade including a string of high-profile convictions â notably a clutch of four gang murders on the docks in the summer of 1989 and a double child murder in 1994.
On that night in 1997 they quickly ascertained the facts of the case so far: the boyâs body had been found in the underground car park beneath Vancouver House â a twenty-one-storey block at the heart of the Westmead Estate â by a nurse, parking after her late shift at the local hospital. She said sheâd seen a car drive off quickly â a Volkswagen Polo, she thought â when sheâd got out of her Mini. The fleeing driver had failed to negotiate the narrow ramp to ground level and clipped one of the concrete pillars, spilling broken glass from a headlamp on to the ground.
DI Valentine had radioed an alert on the damaged car to all units. A uniformed PC on foot patrol in the North End found a Polo abandoned on the edge of allotments at just after two that morning, its offside headlamp shattered, the engine warm. A police computer check identified the owner as Robert James Mosse, a law student aged twenty-one who, like the victim, was a resident of Vancouver House. He was studying at Sheffield, but home for the summer vacation. Back at the scene the body had been removed, revealing a single glove below the corpse: black leather with a fake fur lining. Jack Shaw and George Valentine had gone to the first-floor flat Mosse shared with his mother to interview him.
Here the accounts of the night diverge. Jack Shaw and George Valentineâs statements dovetailed: they maintained that they showed Mosse the glove in a cellophane evidence bag before obtaining permission to search the flat. They conducted the search and failed to find the matching glove. Mosse, in contrast, agreed in evidence they had shown him the glove, but only after the search. He also maintained that the glove had not been contained in a bag of any nature, but simply handed to him. His mother corroborated her sonâs version of events, adding that at one point DI Valentine had reversed the fingers of the glove, turning it inside out to display the fur lining inside. Both she and her son denied ownership of the glove. The other glove was never found.
Mosse said his car had been stolen that evening, a crime he himself had reported earlier, as verified by the duty desk at St Jamesâs. He had been at the cinema alone. His mother had accompanied him to the same complex but they had opted for different films: she went to see LA Confidential on the small screen while her son had watched The Full Monty on the main screen. Mosse had produced a half-torn cinema ticket as evidence. His film had finished first and so he had walked back to the flats. His car had been parked outside on the street because thereâd been a spate of vandalism in the underground car park and heâd been worried about the Polo, which was second hand but in good condition. Heâd found the car gone and phoned the police from the flat.
Overnight the smashed glass at the scene was matched to pieces found still clinging to the rim of the headlamp of the abandoned car â Mosseâs car. Three pieces were later found to be exact matches â as good as fingerprints in terms of material evidence. Staff at the cinema were unable to recall Mosse in the audience that evening, despite the fact that the auditorium had been only a quarter full. The cinema ticket did not specify the screen, and Mosseâs mother said she had thrown away her own ticket stub. Mosse was
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