Lynda La Plante - Above Suspicion

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.’

While the officers grouped to divide up the orders, Anna remained sitting at her desk, feeling like a spare part. No one had acknowledged her, or spoken to her yet. As the room thinned out, she stood up and approached Langton.

‘Am I still attached to the case, sir?’

For a moment Langton looked as if he couldn’t recall who she was, then he tapped his desk with his finger. ‘Go out with DS Lewis, he’s picking up the TV reconstruction.’

‘I think he’s already gone,’ she said, looking around nervously.

‘Then stay with me. I’ve asked for Melissa’s boyfriend to be brought in. You can come to the interview. You had lunch?’

‘No.’

‘Go and get some in the canteen. Be back at quarter past one.’

‘Thank you.’ She headed back to her desk, then turned. ‘I didn’t think forensic had brought in a report yet. Did we get evidence in last night that tied Melissa to our case?’

Langton gave her a strange, cold stare. ‘No.’

Anna couldn’t hold his piercing gaze; she went to her desk, where she didn’t look up, afraid she might find he was still glaring. She walked over to the filing cabinets to replace the Kathleen Keegan file. She was certain he was watching her, which turned her cheeks vermilion red. It made her angry, to feel so inadequate. She couldn’t wait to get out of the incident room.

The canteen on the top floor was small in comparison to the Met stations she’d worked in before. Almost every table in the room had been taken.

Balancing a tray in one hand and her briefcase in the other, she headed towards the far side of the canteen, where some uniformed officers were leaving a table. She pushed the dirty plates aside and opened her yogurt, turning her back unintentionally on the next table where DCI Hedges and two of his team were sitting.

‘All I am saying is, who the fuck does he think he is?’ DCI Hedges continued loudly. ‘That was my case. You tell me how he gets away with saying his six victims, his six ancient hookers, have the same MO? It’s bullshit and he’s the biggest fucking bullshitter I’ve ever come across!’

Anna half turned, in time to see DCI Hedges jabbing his fish and chips with his fork. ‘No fucking way. So her hands were tied? So fucking what? He didn’t have any forensic evidence, no postmortem report, and he gets the full fucking Monty and we are left out of it, like pricks. No way are his old tarts connected to the murder of that little girl. It’s bullshit. Unless he is getting it across with the commander. She was on his side before we even started!’

There was the clatter of their cutlery during a pause while they ate their lunch, but soon Hedges was at it again. ‘He’s going to get all the press, all the media coverage. It’s fucking disgusting!’

‘What if it’s true?’ asked a sullen, pockmarked officer.

‘What’s true?’

‘That he has some serial killer.’

‘Bullshit. No way is that little girl part of his enquiry. Six months he’s been on it, collecting old slags from all over England. I’m telling you, DCI Fuckface Langton is desperate. He won out because he’s brown-nosed the commander, or fucked her, because there’s no other way he could have got this case, no fucking way.’

While Anna finished her lunch, the three men continued to slag off Langton, paying her no attention. She was making her way back to the incident room just after one o’clock when it occurred to her to check whether her new Mini was still intact. It was. She was at the rear entrance of the station when she saw Langton with Commander Jane Leigh, one hand at her right elbow, as if steering her to her waiting car.

Anna watched Langton laughing with the commander as they approached her car. He opened the rear door. There was an obvious familiarity between them. When she got in the back seat, he leaned in to finish the conversation.

Anna got back to her desk just ahead of Langton, who banged into the incident room.

‘Have a good lunch?’

‘Erm, yes, thank you. And you?’

‘Not had time. I’ll get a sandwich.’ He nodded to Jean, who gave him a wry look.

He checked his wristwatch and looked over at Anna. ‘Interview room two. I’m going for a slash.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, getting ready with her notebook and pencils as the doors swung closed after him.

It was almost a quarter to two when Langton walked into the interview room where Anna was waiting. He held a beaker of coffee in his hand, wrapped with a paper napkin.

‘He’s just arrived,’ he said, sitting beside her. ‘His name is Mark Rawlins, student. London University. Business affairs.’

He sipped from his takeaway coffee. ‘You were at Oxford, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jack must have loved that.’

‘Yes. My father was very proud, you know, that I made it to Oxford.’

‘What do you think he’d feel now?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Well, here you are in a rundown station with the Murder Squad, on a case full of tarts and—’

Before she could think of an answer the door opened and Jean, holding a chicken sandwich, peeked in.

‘Your order, sir, minus tomatoes — and there is a Mark Rawlins in reception.’

‘Is he on his own, or with someone?’

‘He’s with his father.’

‘Well, tell his father that I just want to see Mark. No, forget it. Let him bring in who he wants.’

Jean closed the door.

‘Is he a suspect?’ Anna asked.

‘Not yet,’ Langton said, biting into his sandwich. He chewed rapidly; as if he had a train to catch, thought Anna. ‘You look at me as if you know something I don’t. Or you disapprove of me. Which one is it?’

She flushed. ‘Sorry. Just over-eager, I guess.’