The events of the evening and night of 27 to 28 November remained a mystery, every avenue of the inquiry seeming to go nowhere. Every time Warren and his team thought they were getting warmer their leads fell through. Impossible to ascertain the whereabouts of the dead man’s mobile phone, or the sharp instrument that had ended his life. The police would have revisited the scenario of suicide but for the fact that no such instrument had been found at the scene.
No knife at the scene. No farewell note left anywhere either. No history of previous suicide attempts or even of depression. No hesitation marks on the dead man’s throat. That Warren should mentally rehearse all these points spoke to the sombre mood in his team. If any of his overworked colleagues was thinking of moving on, who could blame them? And it was also true that, in his final months, Jasbir’s position had become parlous, not to say desperate. Warren and his team were learning just how parlous from their inquiries. For years he had been borrowing money from family and friends; he was thousands of pounds in debt.
On the snowiest days Warren and his team reviewed CCTV recordings of the hours preceding Jasbir’s death. Seven hundred hours of tape taken from forty-six locations around the area. It would take a person one whole month non-stop to view all the footage, two if they blinked, three if they ate and slept – so Warren’s colleagues focused their attention on the time and sites closest to the incident. They watched and watched and watched the sleeping streets that circled the park, and they did not see anyone running, or even walking, away.
As for Warren, he was never out of patience and he watched one tape in particular, rewinding and pausing, rewinding a little more, then a little bit more again …
✲
Our lives are lived forwards but understood backwards.
This thought, and others like it, came to Warren as he wandered in a churchyard in Bromsgrove. Certain free days, he liked nothing better than to drive over there and read the gravestones. The oldest had been weathered near illegible, but he would stop and crouch, brush away the dirt and moss and recover a name, an age, a date of death, occasionally, a brief tale – clues to a prior existence that had otherwise vanished without a trace.
On one stone he read:
TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SCAIFE.
Late an Engineer on the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway who lost his life at Bromsgrove Station by the Explosion of an Engine Boiler on Tuesday the 10th of November 1840.
He was 28 Years of Age, highly esteemed
by his fellow workmen
for his many amiable qualities, and his
Death will be long lamented
by all those who had the pleasure of his acquaintance.
…
THIS STONE WAS ERECTED AT THE JOINT EXPENCE OF HIS FELLOW WORKMEN 1842
The stone was black and white and chipped and scraped in places, and Warren noticed how it must have been repainted and restored several times down the years. He was moved by the tale it told, the desire to keep alive a friend’s name, and impressed that the workmen had paid out of their meagre wages, over a period of two years, to do so.
He stood before the grave for some time, his trilby lowered, before he left the yard.
✲
The images on Warren’s screen didn’t seem to be the wisest use of a detective’s attention. Colleagues had already looked at this residential camera footage: dingy white cement render with a small green metal gate to the right. Hours of nothing to meet the eye but this side of a house and its green gate. But Warren, rewinding, had an idea that there might be something more to see. You just had to go back far enough. He rewound the hours until, at last, he stumbled on the minute when a bow windowpane came into view. Unpeeled eyes could easily have missed that pane, as it was near the periphery of the image.
The house had moved several inches. The observant camera must have swivelled. But no gust of wind could have done that – only a human hand. Warren timed the change in angle to the start of the evening of 27 November – six or so hours before Jasbir’s death.
He continued to rewind and pause and play the tape. More side wall and gate, but now with the bow windowpane on the far right side of the picture. Once in a while a neighbour’s car could be seen passing the wall, in either direction, to park behind the house or to drive away. Warren was more interested in the pane. Because just beyond the pane, and the rest of the bow window, there would be the front door. So that anyone entering or leaving flashed in the corner of the camera’s eye. A marginal shadow, a fraction of a second, but the movement was recorded. Unless and until, that is, someone thought to avert the camera’s gaze.
The house was on Salisbury Road. Warren had rounded that same side wall and gate to inspect the Mercedes van. He returned now with a search warrant. He’d realised at long last what it was a penniless man could leave to his killer.
His name.
There was a life insurance policy found stashed away in Jagdev Rai’s affairs; Warren knew that there would be. Rai had secretly taken out the policy in 2008 using Jasbir’s full name and birth date. Jasbir was living in Canada at the time. Rai had only to pretend to be a man two years his junior, thirty-seven, whose thoughts, entering midlife, were turning to mortality, to providing for a loved one in the unlikely event something happened to him, since, despite excellent health and high spirits, you never knew, right?
The moment he’d come off the phone he became Jagdev Rai again. ‘The beneficiary’ Jagdev Rai.
Ever since, he’d been paying a £20 monthly premium for a policy presently valued at £318,913. Add to that the mortgage on a small house in Wednesbury he’d also taken out in the name of Jasbir Singh Bains. The accompanying life insurance was valued at a further £56,703.
In all, Jasbir’s name, on Rai’s papers, was worth over £375,000. Rai had been biding his time until the investigation blew over and he could put in his claim.
He was arrested in early April 2013 for the murder of Jasbir Singh Bains.
Warren and his team had learned that Jasbir had borrowed thousands of pounds from Rai, not long before flying to Canada. The flight had infuriated Rai; he’d made it known around town that he was more than unhappy about the debt. Now the police discovered that in June of the same year – 2006 – he’d used a deed poll to create a parallel identity for himself in the name of his future victim.
The accused refused to cooperate with the police. There’d been no hard feelings between him and the victim, he claimed. He would not say what he had done with the blade brought to the park that night, or with the dead man’s phone he’d carried away. He would not say with which fateful words he’d texted Jasbir an invite to the park – perhaps something like, ‘Meet u at the lake Jas, for old time’s sake. Got some cans from the outdoor.’
Police used mobile network records to link Rai’s text to around the time of the killing. Their search of his house uncovered the phone packaging and SIM card holder of the device used to send the invite.
In January 2014 Rai’s trial came to court and Warren was called to give evidence. The accused’s continued denials did not surprise the detective. He’d seen and heard it all before. The lengths to which they would go to lie. Even when caught red-handed, even when in court, up before the judge in a borrowed suit and tie, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they would lie. Stupid lies. Transparent, contradictory lies.
From the BBC News website, 21 February 2014:
A man has been jailed for life for slitting his friend’s throat and dumping his body in a lake.
Jagdev Singh Rai, 44, of West Bromwich, was convicted of murdering Jasbir Singh Bains, 41, at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
Mr Bains was found floating in a lake in Dartmouth Park, West Bromwich, in November 2012.
Mr Rai, also known as Jamie, was sentenced to a minimum term of 27 years. He had denied the murder but was convicted on Thursday.
✲
