Lynda La Plante - Above Suspicion

‘I would like to talk to you,’ said Anna, astonished she was right.

Red Leather stood licking her lips at the mirror. ‘Well hard luck, sweetheart. I’ve done my good-citizen shit. How in Christ’s name did you find me?’

‘You have a very unusual voice.’

‘Yeah. Comes from a punter stepping on it, squashed me larynx. Tarra.’

As Red Leather walked to the door, Anna hurried after her. ‘Could I just have ten minutes, please?’

Red Leather’s hand was on the door. ‘I felt sorry for the little girl, right? I told them all I saw. I’m not gonna walk out with you. In that suit, those shoes, you got Vice Squad virtually stamped on your forehead. It’d bring me a lot of grief.’

‘I’m not with Vice.’

‘Sweetheart, I don’t give a shit if you’re with the Royal Ballet.’

Red Leather walked out, Anna hot on her heels. ‘I’m with the murder team. Look, don’t make me arrest you.’

Red Leather stopped and snarled, ‘On what fucking charge?’

‘Couldn’t we just have a coffee?’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘I’ll pay you for your time,’ Anna said.

‘Fifty quid. Go back inside the toilets. I’m not being seen out here with you.’

‘You go in first,’ said Anna, sure that otherwise she would walk away the moment her back was turned.

Red Leather sighed noisily and returned to the ladies. Anna followed her.

When Langton finally put in the call to Spain, Southwood’s answering machine was on.

Moira had her coat on ready to leave. ‘All I know, gov, is he was a bent cop. Real piece of work. I was still in uniform; it was that long ago. We called him the Groper.’

‘You think this information he’s got could be for real?’

‘I dunno. It’s not like he called straight away; it’s been weeks. And he kept on about a reward.’

Langton smiled ruefully and told Moira she could go home. He knew he would have to take the call seriously, but his budget was tight. A trip to Spain was the last thing he needed in the report book, especially if it was a waste of time. When he tried the number again, the machine was still on. Depressed, he hung up.

It was almost nine o’clock: the skeleton night shift was on duty. Langton stood in the centre of the room. They hadn’t had a break for weeks. It seemed the case was drying up. Anna burst into the room, her face flushed.

‘Oh, good, you’re still here.’

Langton smiled. ‘I’m thinking of moving in.’

She took off her coat. ‘I found the witness.’

‘What?’

‘At King’s Cross station. One reason we had no luck is that she’s a weekender; gets the train in from Leeds every Friday, leaves on the Monday. She’s not a transsexual, by the way, she’s female, but one of her punters—’ She had to gasp to catch her breath; she was so excited.

‘Take a deep breath, Travis, then give me the details.’

Anna got out her notebook and began flicking through the pages. Langton perched on the edge of her desk. ‘Her name is Yvonne Barber. She’s a prostitute; she shares a room with two other girls above a bondage shop in Old Compton Street. Yvonne was certain the car Melissa got in was a Mercedes, an old one.’

Anna had shown her a clutch of vehicle pictures and she had picked it out, unhesitatingly.

‘It was this one, drophead Mercedes SL; the colour was pale blue.’

Langton clapped his hands. Anna beamed.

‘Her description of the driver is still vague: mid to late thirties, clothes well cut, short, pale brownish or blond hair, wearing dark glasses. But here’s the most interesting thing: she said it looked as if Melissa knew him.’

‘What?’

‘She said Melissa didn’t look afraid; she was smiling and talking to him as she moved round to get in the passenger seat. She said it really looked like she knew the driver.’

‘Knew him?’ Langton was still frowning.

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘That was why Yvonne walked away. She had been going to have a go at her because that stretch of Old Compton Street is her patch, right?’

‘Well, that opens a big can of worms.’ Langton reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘Totally unexpected. Good work.’

‘Thank you.’

It was after half past ten by the time Anna had written up her report. As she left, she saw that Langton’s light was still on in his office. She didn’t get home until half past eleven. As she got into bed, she touched the photograph of her father and whispered, ‘I found her, Dad!’

When Anna went in the following morning, Lewis held up her report.

‘You got lucky.’

‘Yes, I guess I did.’ It wasn’t exactly the reaction she had hoped for. She sat at her desk and asked Moira, ‘Where’s the gov?’

‘At the lab. You know this trip to Spain: do you want to put your name down for it? The gov will choose who goes, but there could be a bit of Euro shopping up for grabs.’

‘Spain? Why Spain?’

‘Call in from an ex-policeman; says he has information on the killer. We think it’s bullshit. He was as bent as a hairpin. So you want to go on the list or not?’

‘Yes, sure.’ There were sly glances around the incident room. No one else wanted it. It meant an Easyjet budget flight, there and back in a day, not to mention the schlep out to Luton airport.

Meanwhile, Langton was impatiently pacing up and down outside the lab. Eventually a gowned-up Henson came out, removing his mask. ‘You can get me at the end of a telephone, you know.’

‘I wanted to see for myself.’

‘See what?’

‘Melissa Stephens’s body.’

In the cold storage area, Henson slowly pulled out the drawer containing her body.

‘We are still waiting for the insect infestation details.’

Langton shook his head. ‘It’s not that. At the post mortem, you said the tip of her tongue had been bitten, possibly by foxes. Correct?’

‘Yes. We have examined her stomach contents; she didn’t swallow it.’

‘What size is the bite?’

‘See for yourself.’

Henson withdrew the sheet covering her head. He used a spatula to open the mouth and then, with an object resembling flat-edged tweezers, he gently prised forward Melissa’s tongue. ‘As you can see, it’s the tip and a fraction more that’s missing.’

Langton cocked his head to one side, then looked at Henson.

‘You sure it was a fox or a dog?’

‘To be honest: no, I am not. I understand where you’re going with this, but I am very doubtful.’

‘Can you run a test?’

‘I’ll get the odontologist to test it for you. We might need to cut her tongue out, so you will need her parents’ permission. They continue to call around the clock; they very much want to bury her. It’s been weeks.’

Langton stared at Henson. ‘I’ll get the permission; maybe say they can have their daughter back if they allow us to do these tests.’

Henson recovered Melissa’s head with the cloth and slid the drawer back.

‘I want this done today,’ Langton said.

Henson nodded. He didn’t like to admit fault, but he knew he should have explored the possibility that it was a human bite even if, as he still believed, it turned out to have been the work of an animal.

Langton was smiling when he banged into the incident room. As he bellowed for attention, Anna anticipated that he was going to tell everyone she had traced Yvonne. She sat back nervously in her chair and heard Langton’s words: ‘We have a big development this morning.’

There were murmurs; everyone gave him their full attention. Expressions of shock showed on their faces when he announced that Henson was doing tests on Melissa’s tongue.

‘If our killer bit off the tip, we might have dental impressions. The family has given permission to remove the tongue. So, we wait. In the meantime, we go back to Melissa’s family: did anyone they know own a blue Mercedes-Benz? We go back to Rawlins, the boyfriend and we tap into all her friends and see if they know of anyone.’