Above Suspicion (4 page)

Anna flew down the narrow stone steps and along a murky corridor. The hubbub of noise drew her easily to the briefing room. Rows of chairs had been placed in haphazard lines and a desk and two chairs faced them. The large dingy room smelled of stale tobacco, even though there were stained yellow notices demanding ‘No Smoking’.

Anna skirted her way along to a vacant chair at the back, where she sat clutching her notebook. Up front, Lewis and Barolli were joined by eight detectives and six uniformed officers. The two female detectives were a large blonde woman who looked to be of retirement age and a tall thin-faced woman in her mid-thirties with badly capped teeth.

The superintendent who had overall charge of the enquiry, DCS Eric Thompson, entered, closely followed by Langton. Thompson had an athletic look about him: his face fresh, his shoulders upright; he stood as if poised on the balls of his feet. His thinning hair was combed back from a high forehead. Langton by comparison looked tired and crumpled and in need of a shave. Barolli was loosening his tie in a seat nearby.

‘Quieten down!’ Langton barked. He perched on the edge of a desk and leaned forward to address the room.

‘The victim was formally identified today by her father. She is, or was, Melissa Stephens, aged seventeen. We suspect she is a “possible”. Her boyfriend’s statement on the night she went missing is all we have to go on so far, but it is my belief that Melissa strayed into our killer’s target area. To date all his victims have been hardened prostitutes, all in their late thirties or early forties. Melissa may be our biggest breakthrough yet. It’s imperative we move like the clappers.’

Anna made copious notes, but not being privy to any of the previous case files, she had no idea what Langton was talking about most of the time. What she picked up was the following: on the night Melissa disappeared, she had an argument with her boyfriend. This had occurred at a late-night cafe close to Covent Garden. She was last seen walking in the direction of Soho. The boyfriend assumed she was heading towards Oxford Circus tube station. He finished his drink and headed after her. But Melissa, it seemed, had found a shortcut, perhaps down Greek Street. Inadvertently, she went through the red-light district.

Though Melissa’s boyfriend, Mark Rawlins, called her mobile phone incessantly from the tube station, it was useless. The phone had been turned off. Frightened for her, he retraced his footsteps, hoping he’d bump into her. After returning to The Bistro, around 2.30 a.m., he went back to Oxford Circus tube station, then on to Melissa’s flat, but she had not arrived home. Neither Mark nor her three flatmates ever saw Melissa again.

The following day, after calling her parents in Guildford and everyone else he could think of, Mark finally contacted the police. Forty-eight hours later, a missing person’s file was lodged and circulated, along with photographs and requests for information.

No one came forward, even after a television reconstruction shown four weeks after her disappearance. They had not one eyewitness who could give a clue to her disappearance, with the possible exception of a waiter who had been smoking a cigarette outside a renowned gay club and who saw a blonde girl talking to the driver of a pale-coloured, or maybe white, car. At the time, he assumed she was a prostitute, he said. Though he didn’t get a good look at her face, he did notice her black T-shirt, which had diamante studs that sparkled in the neon lights outside the massage parlour opposite.

Langton suggested that their killer, who haunted red-light districts, could have mistaken Melissa for a call-girl: outside a strip joint very late at night, a blonde in a sexy outfit, short skirt and strappy sandals - could their killer have been the one to pick her up?

Though the briefing continued for another hour, the super finally insisted they did not yet have enough information for him to take to the commander and request this murder enquiry be handed over to Langton’s team. Hearing this, Langton jumped to his feet, holding the photos of the six dead women like a pack of cards.

‘Their hands tied with their bra, strangled with their own tights. If forensic can verify that the knots around the neck and wrists were tied in a similar way, then Melissa Stephens becomes the latest victim of a serial killing. If we get this case then we’ve some hope of catching the bastard, but we’ve got to move! Any time lost in farting around begging for the enquiry is a fucking waste of time!’

With that, the team broke up; they would simply have to wait until the following morning.

After the team had left the briefing room, Langton sat moodily in a hard-backed chair. He looked up when he heard Anna crossing the floor towards him. He held in his hand the photos of the dead women.

‘They were all alive, once. Albeit in one wretched condition or another, but nevertheless they were alive, with families, husbands, sometimes kids. Now they’re dead and whether or not they were junkies, whores, drunks, or just fucked-up human beings, they have a right to have us hunt down who killed them with as much press as Melissa Stephens.’

He sighed, pinching his nose. “Course, on the other hand, I could be wrong. We won’t know one hundred per cent until we get the forensic evidence back.’

‘But you really do think it’s the same man.’ Anna felt more at ease with him now.

‘Thinking isn’t good enough, Travis. It’s evidence that counts. If they tell me that Melissa’s bra or the tights that throttled the life out of her weren’t tied in the same way as these poor bitches then no, it’s not the same killer.’

‘Was there any DNA?’

Now he turned that laser stare on her. ‘Read the case files; don’t waste my time.’

‘Would it be possible to take a couple home to read? Or I can stay late and do it here, so I’m up to speed with everyone else?’

‘Sign for anything you take out.’ Langton banged through the doors.

Anna shook her head; these guys certainly liked to make an exit. She collected her notebook and pencils. As she walked towards the open door she gave a backward glance to the still-smoky room. The chairs were now even more jumbled, the cups and saucers used as ashtrays overflowed and screwed-up paper and old newspapers littered the floor.

She closed the door behind her quietly. She felt a strange sense of elation to be part of her father’s world.

Chapter Two

It was past midnight when Anna finished compiling her shorthand notes on the Teresa Booth case, and by the time she had finished the file on the next victim, it was after two o’clock in the morning.

Sandra Donaldson, aged forty-one, had a similar background to the first victim: a life of abuse, drugs, alcohol, four children all fostered out and a junkie boyfriend. She was first arrested for prostitution when she was twenty and then numerous times after that for theft and handling stolen property as well as further arrests for prostitution.

According to postmortem reports, she had been more severely beaten than the first victim. Her bruises looked horrific: some old and yellowing, some fresh. Her black bra had been used to tie her hands behind her back and she had been strangled with her tights. When Anna matched the two large blown-up photographs depicting the way the items had been knotted, she was hardly surprised to find they were identical.

Sandra had been raped brutally, with damage to her vagina and anus. Like Teresa’s, her body was dumped and left rotting like rubbish. Anna reflected on this sad end to a sad life. It had taken weeks before anyone claimed her body for burial. The only reason she had been identified in the first place was because her fingerprints had been on file. Anna wrote a memo, reminding herself to check if all the other victims had police records too. It was the last thing she did before she collapsed exhausted into bed.

However, none of this weariness was evident in her face or demeanour the next morning when, just before nine o’clock, she arrived at work in her brand new Mini Cooper. A uniformed officer directed her to a car park round the back of the station, which was completely full with patrol cars. Obviously there had been no space allocated for her, so it took a few tours around the car park before she wedged her car in beside a battered old Volvo. As she locked her car, she prayed that whoever drove the Volvo wouldn’t scratch her baby on their way out.

The incident room was quiet that morning and, with some relief, she noted that the used food cartons had been removed from the desks.

‘Good morning, Jean,’ she said, brightly. ‘Nobody here yet?’

Jean, the only other occupant, returned her greeting with a lukewarm smile.

‘You must be joking. They’ve been in the briefing room for an hour. There’s a big strategy meeting.’

‘Nobody mentioned it last night,’ Anna protested, taking off her coat. She quickly returned the files to the filing cabinet before heading to the door.

‘Did you get permission to take those away? They are supposed to stay here, you know.’

‘I am aware of that, Jean,’ Anna replied, trying to curb her irritation, ‘but I asked DCI Langton if I could take them, to catch up. I signed them out in the logbook and desk diary. Who’s down there at the meeting?’

‘The commander. If DCI Langton can prove our murders are linked to the Melissa Stephens case and we have in-depth knowledge of all the linked offences, we’ll have all the help we need.’

Anna waited for her to explain.

Jean did so carefully, as if dealing with a half-wit: ‘The Department of Public Affairs will liaise with the D-SIO and the SIO and will provide press statements and organize briefings. It’s all political now. Drives me nuts. There’s more and more paperwork required on every investigation.’

‘Has any conclusive evidence come up since last night that links Melissa Stephens to this enquiry?’

‘I don’t know, but the gov was in before the cleaners this morning, so I’d say he’s found something.’

Jean looked smug as she resumed typing on her computer. Anna walked out of the room.

There wasn’t a soul in the corridor or on the stairs; in fact, it seemed almost ominously quiet as Anna made her way to the briefing room on the lower floor. Since this was the headquarters of the day-to-day operations of the station, on a typical morning phones could be expected to be ringing constantly, with the sound of voices wafting up the stone steps to the next level.

Not today, however. The double doors to the briefing room were closed and, unlike the interview rooms, there were no glass panels in them. Anna leaned against the doors, hoping she could hear something, anything. Apart from a low murmur of voices, she heard nothing. She couldn’t bear to barge into the room, so she turned round, planning to head back to the incident room, and almost collided with DC Barolli as he came out of the gents, wiping his hands on a paper towel.

‘How’s it going?’ she said, in a low voice.

‘I couldn’t tell you. The commander’s not one to give anything away.’ He lobbed the paper at a bin, missing it.

‘Did we get anything from forensic?’

‘You must be joking. They take their time.’

‘So, no other details came in?’

‘Not that I know. Those pricks over at Clapham wouldn’t give you a pot to piss in.’

He continued down the corridor, so Anna returned to the incident room, where she read the third case history. This victim’s name was Kathleen Keegan. She was aged fifty, of below average intelligence and illiterate. She had been beaten down by depression and ill health. There had been numerous arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct and, as with the others, arrests for prostitution and street-walking. She had once been a redhead, but the hair in the photographs was badly dyed blonde and in texture resembled frizzy door-matting. The mortuary pictures of her sagging, overweight body and her flattened breasts were depressing. Six babies had gone to care homes, or been fostered, due to her inability to care for them.

When her decomposing corpse was found, it was lying in a public park, hidden under stinging nettles. Her body was tied in exactly the same way as the other victims’, but these pictures were particularly gruesome. The victim’s false teeth were protruding from her mouth, almost as if she was laughing: a hideous horror clown with red lipstick smudged over her face.

It was a repellent, tragic pattern, thought Anna, and even though Kathleen had already been brutalized by life, her death was still a wretched and undeserved end.

It was after twelve when the meeting broke up and Langton and his team returned. Anna noticed he was smiling. While everyone in the incident room grouped around him to hear what had happened, she remained at her desk.

‘Right. We have the case of Melissa Stephens. The commander will instigate bringing in fifteen detectives. We’re still short of legs, but we can’t argue with that. We will also get another office manager, two more admin staff and Holmes Two. The Home Office will back us up and place us now on a major-enquiry system. This will give us greater input to the enquiry.’

Langton hushed the ensuing applause. ‘I want someone over to Clapham to get all the details they have on the Melissa case. While we wait for anything to come in from the lab, we start work.’

He pinned up Melissa Stephens’s photograph. Then he picked up a black marker-pen and ringed the number ‘7′ twice.

‘We know she left her boyfriend at half past eleven and headed towards Oxford Circus tube station.’

Langton instructed his team to cover every route from Covent Garden to Oxford Circus. They were to hound the strip-club joints; often they were kitted out with hidden cameras for their own security.

‘Check out any CCTV footage used in clubs, pubs, car parks, in all the various routes. Get what you can. After four weeks, I suspect most of it will have been destroyed. I want to know the exact route Melissa Stephens walked that night. A witness has come forward, a waiter. He was sure he saw Melissa talking to someone in a car, the make he can’t remember, or the colour — in fact he can’t even be sure it was her - but I want that tape of the reconstruction, I want that driver, I want that car. Because -’ Langton gestured to his wall of death - ‘we have a serial killer. I am hoping to Christ that Melissa’s death was his first and last big mistake. Let’s get moving.’