Henley was multitasking while on hold, waiting for DI Clarke to come to the phone. She had it on speaker while she ate her reheated lamb biryani and sent another email to Lewisham Council urgently requesting their CCTV footage of Deptford Broadway from the night Caleb Annan was killed.
“DI Clarke speaking.”
Henley dropped her fork and smiled for the first time that day. She recognized the deep voice of the man who always sounded as though he had just woken up.
“Bloody hell, it is you. Hello, stranger. It’s Henley.”
“Henley,” said Clarke. “Hello, stranger, yourself. The idiot who picked up my phone never said who it was, just that it was another DI.”
“What are you even doing at Forest Gate CID? Stanford and I came to your retirement party.”
Henley could imagine Clarke sitting at his desk, rubbing a hand over his bald head searching for his long-gone hair and wearing a shirt that hadn’t been ironed properly.
“I got bored,” Clarke said. “And I was getting on my missus’s nerves. It was either come back part-time or get a divorce. So, what can I do for you and the Serial Crime Unit?”
“The Jensen murder investigation. HOLMES has you down as the SIO.”
Clarke let out a very loud groan of despair. “Yeah, I am. Which is a bit ridiculous considering that I’m in only three days a week. Why are you interested in it?”
“We think that it may be linked to a murder investigation that we’re working. We’ve got two victims, one alive, one dead. Their injuries are almost identical to Jensen. Both victims had mental health issues and have been linked to the Church of Annan the Prophet in Deptford. The church also has a branch in Plaistow. Not too far from where your victim was found.”
“I see,” said Clarke thoughtfully. “I don’t recall his family saying that Jensen was particularly religious.”
“But they didn’t report him missing?”
“No, his supported-living manager did. But that’s not where he disappeared from.”
“So where did he disappear from?”
“Jensen was last seen on Kingsland High Street in Dalston two hours after he’d left the Cooper Group Therapy Clinic in Forest Hill. We got a statement from...oh bollocks, give me a sec. Ah, found it. Dr. Gregory Jones.”
“What was Jensen doing at this clinic?” said Henley as she tried to speed Clarke along.
“It’s a private mental health clinic, a bit like that posh one that all the celebs go to,” said Clarke. “Every couple of months they take on some charity cases as outpatients, I think that it’s a tax write-off thing, and Jensen was one of those cases. Anyway, the day that Jensen disappeared, he’d had an appointment at the clinic, but he got into a fight with one of the resident patients. Jensen storms off and that’s the last that anyone sees of him.”
“Did you speak to this patient?”
“Yep, but he didn’t leave the clinic that day or any other day until Christmas. He suffers from agoraphobia. We also interviewed a geezer called Samuel Barnes. He was seen fighting with Jensen outside a pub about three days before Jensen went missing, and police were called to Jensen’s flat about a week before that.”
“Why were they called?”
“Jensen apparently kicked off. Samuel turned up at his flat, Jensen accused him of stealing from him and then smashed Samuel on the head with a toaster. Jensen, he locked himself in the bathroom, said that the PCs were secret agents and that he was on a mission for the president and that everyone was mad.”
“So, he was off his meds?”
“Definitely. The post-mortem showed that there were no drugs, illegal or prescription, in his body.”
“The same PM report that’s not on the system?”
“Don’t start. Three days a week, remember. They’re lucky that I even log on.”
“So, what about forensics?”
“We’ve actually got good forensics. We just can’t match it to anyone. DNA from two individuals, and fingerprints. A thumbprint was on his forehead, left behind from some kind of carbon substance.”
“But no matches?” Henley said as she pushed her plate away.
“Not when they were retrieved and checked against the samples on the database three weeks ago,” said Clarke. “The pathologist said that it looks like Jensen was tortured. Someone had literally put his feet to the flames, and you won’t be able to tell from the in-situ photos, but when we took Jensen’s body out of the sleeping bag, his hands had been tied together with red rope and there were fragments of the same rope around his ankles.”
“And you’ve got no leads on where Jensen had been in the six weeks before his body turned up?” Henley asked. She opened a file and pulled out the photographs that had been taken of both Whittaker’s and Hadlow’s bodies. The red rope was visible on both of their wrists. Henley didn’t believe that the rope had been used just because it was available or the nearest thing to hand. She was convinced that there was a deeper meaning behind that specific rope being used to restrain the victims.
“None, and to be honest, with the amount of murder investigations that we’ve got going on, this case isn’t exactly being treated as a priority.”
“So, you won’t say no to me taking the Jensen case off your hands?”
“Be my guest,” said Clarke, clearing his throat. “I’ll clear it with the guvnor, not that he knows his arse from his elbow, but as far as I’m concerned you can have it.”