Above Suspicion

Chapter One

Detective Chief Inspector Langton stared at the women’s dead faces. All six of them appeared to have the same joyless, haunted expression. They were all of similar ages and worked in the same profession. The first victim on the file had been strangled twelve years ago.

It was six months ago that the last victim was found; she had been dead for at least eighteen months. Langton had been brought into Queen’s Park to oversee the case. Without a suspect or a witness, he had begun to cross-reference the way the victim had been murdered, and subsequently discovered five identical unsolved cases.

He was certain that they had all been killed by the same person, but to date he had no clues as to who that person might be. It was turning into the most frustrating, dead-end case he had ever worked on. The only thing he was sure about, and that he and the profilers agreed on, was that there would be another victim.

Due to the length of time between each gruesome discovery, there had been little media coverage. Langton wanted to keep it that way; hype and panic would do his investigation more harm than good, and police warnings usually had little effect on the prostitutes. Despite the Yorkshire Ripper being headline news for years, he was finally caught with a tart about to do the business in his car. Police warnings didn’t mean much to the street girls when they needed money for drugs or rent, or their kids or their pimps.

Langton leafed through the latest batch of missing persons’ files. A photograph caught his eye. ‘Melissa Stephens’, he read. According to the report sheet, she was seventeen. The photo showed a stunningly pretty girl with shoulder-length blonde hair and the sweetest of smiles. Compared to the other women on file, this girl looked like an innocent angel. How had the photo ended up in this folder?

Langton put the girl’s details to one side and went back to the files of missing prostitutes in their late thirties and early forties. He studied the photos of their beat-up looking faces intently. He took note that many of the women in this file were European; some were Russian.

Langton’s detective sergeant, Mike Lewis, interrupted his concentration. ‘She doesn’t fit the profile.’ He leaned across the desk and picked up Melissa’s photograph.

‘Yeah, I know. That’s why I put her to one side.’

At first, the team had concentrated their search on the local area, but now the net had spread to include Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. They were monitoring missing persons for women with similar profiles to the victims. It was sick, but it was all Langton could do; a fresh victim might provide the vital clue that would lead them to the serial killer.

‘Did you hear about Hudson?’ asked Lewis.

‘No. What about him?’

‘He called in sick. He was taken to hospital. May be serious.’

‘Shit! The Boss is already checking us out. We’ll lose half the team if we don’t get a result soon.’

‘He might be out for a while.’

Langton lit a cigarette. ‘Get someone in to cover him, and fast.’

‘OK.’

An hour later Lewis placed half a dozen folders on Langton’s desk.

‘Christ! Is this all you could come up with?’ Langton complained.

‘It’s all they’ve got.’

‘Leave them with me. I’ll get back to you.’

Lewis shut the door and went back to his desk. Langton started to glance through possible replacements for Hudson. The first file belonged to an officer he had worked with before, and didn’t get along with. He opened the next one.

Detective Sergeant Anna Travis’s file was certainly impressive. After graduating from Oxford University in economics she had done the usual eighteen weeks’ training at Hendon, then taken a uniform posting with a response team. Towards the end of her probationary period she had been attached to the local borough CID Robbery and Burglary Squad before switching to the Crime Squad. A memo from her superintendent underlined in red that Travis was a very ‘proactive’ officer.

Langton flicked through the rest of her CV with less interest. Travis had moved quickly up to the Home Office’s High Potential Scheme. The list of attachments she had covered made him smile: robbery, burglary, CID, Community Safety Unit. About the only thing she hadn’t worked on yet was a murder team, though he noticed she had applied three times without success.

He was beginning to feel his age. Slightly depressed, he read on. The glowing recommendations from her superiors he took with a pinch of salt; he needed someone with street knowledge and initiative, not just an impressive CV. It was the last paragraph that seized his attention. He straightened up as he read the words: ‘Anna Travis is the daughter of the late Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Travis’. Langton started tapping the file thoughtfully with his pen: Jack Travis had been his mentor.

In the outside office, Mike Lewis answered the phone promptly. Then put his head through the open door of Langton’s room.

‘Gov?’

Langton looked up from his desk, distracted. ‘Who is it?’

‘Wouldn’t say. You want to take it or not?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Langton, reaching for the phone. ‘Stay.’

Mike leafed through some paperwork while Langton spoke tersely: ‘How old? Who’s on it? OK, thanks. Get back to me. I appreciate it.’

Langton put the phone down. ‘Body just found on Clapham Common. I don’t think it fits with any of ours - she’s young, apparently - but they’re only just on the callout.’ He rocked back in his chair thoughtfully.

‘Mike, do you know DCI Hedges? Crew-cut, square head, and full of himself?’

‘Yeah. A right arsehole.’

‘It’s his case, his area. I want you to stand by. If we get any more details I might want to crash in on it.’

Lewis looked at the photos spread out on the desk: ‘Are you thinking maybe it’s the missing angel?’

‘Maybe.’ He held out a file, and stood up. ‘Get this Anna Travis on the team.’

‘What, the rookie?’

‘Yep.’

‘She’s never been on a murder team.’

Langton shrugged himself into his coat. ‘Her father was Jack Travis. Maybe taking on his penpusher of a daughter will be good karma.’

He stopped at the door. ‘Anyway, rate we’re going, we might not even have a case. If the chief puts them all on file, we’ll be stuck with a skeleton team until they’ve all been shelved and sent over to the dead file warehouse. G’night.’

‘Night.’

Lewis returned to his desk in the incident room and dialled Anna Travis’s number.

By quarter to eight the next morning Anna Travis was sitting in a patrol car speeding to the murder site. Although all she had been told was that she was replacing an officer on sick leave, Anna was excited to be finally working in the field for which she had trained so hard.

With Anna in the patrol car were Lewis and another seasoned detective, DC Barolli. Mike Lewis had square shoulders, and a body running to fat. His round face and red cheeks gave him a look of perpetual good humour. Barolli was smaller, with dark, Italian looks but an East London accent.

As they drew up to the Clapham Common parking area, she noticed the presence of the forensic van, and numerous unmarked cars. Although police cordons allowed no one but officers entry, an exception was made for the catering van which was already in place and serving pies and sandwiches to the teams setting up the base.

What surprised her was the lack of a sense of urgency. Lewis and Barolli went straight from the car to ‘Teapot One’ to get some coffee. Unsure of the procedure, Anna just hovered nearby. When she looked further across the common towards the yellow ribbons cordoning off the car park, she could see white-suited forensic officers moving around.

‘Is this the murder site?’ she asked Lewis.

‘Pretty obvious. Yeah.’

‘Shouldn’t we go and sort of make our presence known to DCI Langton?’ she said hesitantly.

‘You had your breakfast, then?’ Lewis asked.

‘Yes, before I got the callout.’ Actually, she’d had just a cup of black coffee; she had been too nervous to eat. Anna waited while Lewis and Barolli queued up for their bacon sandwiches. They made short work of them, after which the three began to make their way to the murder site. Anna let them lead, deliberately falling behind. After eight hundred yards, they slithered down a sloping bank. She noticed both officers tense up. Lewis removed a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it out; Barolli unwrapped chewing gum.

They approached a group which stood by a clump of trees in a small hollow. There the forensic officers were kneeling or moving deliberately around the area. Anna stepped onto the duckboards placed strategically along the muddy incline. Though the two detectives nodded towards various people, no one spoke. The quiet was unsettling. Then it hit her. The smell was like dead flowers left too long to rot in water, when their stems become soggy and discoloured. Soon it was overpowering.

‘You took your time,’ DCI Langton barked at the two detectives. He turned to light a cigarette and she saw a tall rangy man in a forensic-issue white paper suit, five o’clock shadow already breaking the surface of his angular chin. Langton had a hawk nose and hard piercing eyes which made it difficult to meet his gaze. Neither detective answered him now, both turning to look instead towards the white tent which had just been erected. Langton inhaled deeply, then the smoke streamed from his nostrils.

‘Is it a possible?’ she overheard Lewis ask his superior quietly.

‘Yeah. But you watch. The dickhead in charge is going to hang on to the case if we can’t prove it — and fast.’

Now Langton’s gaze fell on Anna. He stared un-apologetically at her.

‘You the new DS?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I knew your father. Good man.’

‘Thank you,’ she said softly.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Travis had retired two years ago, only to die from cancer six months later. Anna still missed him terribly. She had adored her generous, loving and supportive father, and it was a source of grief for her that he was gone before she made it in plain clothes. She felt that grief even more keenly now that she was on the Murder Squad which had become such a prominent part of his adult life. His nickname had been ‘Jack the Knife’, for his ability to cut through the dross. More than anything, Anna wanted to be as successful as Jack Travis.

The smoke trailed from Langton’s cigarette as he pointed to the tent. ‘I think it might be our angel, the missing girl.’ He headed towards the open tent flap. ‘Want to take a look?’ he asked Anna over his shoulder.

Lewis and Barolli were given white paper suits and overshoes so as not to contaminate the area. ‘They’re short of masks,’ Langton explained as he delved into a cardboard box and handed Anna her suit packet. ‘Gown up, then keep to the duckboards.’ He squeezed the butt of his cigarette, placing it in his pocket.

Anna hastily opened the packet and removed her paper suit. She hauled it up over her skirt and jacket, then closed the Velcro, which stuck to her tweed jacket. As she balanced on one foot and then the other to fit the overshoes over her low-heeled court shoes, she kept taking deep breaths to ward off the strong stench, breathing through her mouth in short sharp intakes, then hissing out the air.

Behind her, she was aware of one officer grumbling to another.

‘What’s he doing here; this isn’t his turf, is it?’

‘No, but he wanted to take a look. He’s handling that dead-end case over at Queen’s Park. Cheeky sod; I’d like to know how he got here so fucking fast. Plus he’s got those two goons with him. Don’t know who he thinks he is. DCI Hedges is going apeshit.’

When Anna stepped into the tent, she remembered what she’d been told: no training ever prepares you. They can show you mortuary shots, you can discuss post mortems (she’d even been present at one), but not until you confront your first real corpse does the impact hit you. They always say it’s the first one that stays with you for the rest of your career.

‘You think it’s her?’ she heard Lewis whisper.

‘Maybe,’ Langton said. ‘Right age, right colouring.’

‘She’s been here for a while.’ Barolli was sniffing with disgust. ‘In pretty good shape, though. No decomposition. It’s the bad weather. She’s been covered in snow, but yesterday was a freak day, almost seventy degrees.’

While Langton chatted with his two detectives, Anna edged across the duckboards to move closer.

‘We think she’s maybe a student, reported missing six weeks ago,’ Langton broke off mid-conversation to explain to Anna, ‘but we won’t know for sure until they’ve done the post mortem.’ He turned back to address his detectives. Langton became a blur; she could see his lips moving, hear him faintly, but as those in front parted ranks to give her a clear view of the corpse, Anna wanted to vomit. Now she was close up, the stench was thick and heavy, worsened by the confines of the tent.