When Lulu and Conrad arrived in the MIT room it was just after seven o’clock in the morning and Phil was already tapping away at a HOLMES terminal. Lulu was holding two Starbucks coffees and she put one down in front of him. ‘So this is why we can’t have breakfast at the Midland,’ she said. ‘Did you sleep last night?’
‘I got back to the hotel about midnight, grabbed six hours of shuteye and came straight back.’
‘That’s burning the candle at both ends, Phil.’
‘The clock is ticking, Lulu. I really don’t want to go back to London with my tail between my legs.’
She took a bag containing a croissant from her coat pocket and gave it to him. ‘This should keep you going until the canteen opens and I can do a bacon-roll run,’ she said, and sat down next to him. Conrad jumped off her shoulders and landed on the table. ‘We had a brainwave last night,’ said Lulu.
‘We?’
‘Conrad and I.’
Phil laughed. ‘That’s right, Conrad the cat detective. What was the brainwave?’ He took a gulp of coffee.
‘You still haven’t found any links between the victims and our suspects?’
Phil shook his head.
‘And no links between the victims here and the victims we had in London?’
‘Nope. I’ve been all through HOLMES and there’s nothing.’
‘Maybe we’re not going back far enough.’
Phil frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe we’re not seeing any connections because they’re historical.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, it’s a hunch. A copper’s hunch. But look at their ages. The Three Little Piggies are in their late twenties now. They were in their early twenties when we first looked at them. And the victims were all much older. Ian Pettigrew was fifty-two when he died, Nick Hurst was forty, William Eccles was thirty-eight and John Dunne was thirty-seven. We looked at them and found no connections, but did we go back far enough? What if we had gone back fifteen years or so? To when the Three Little Piggies were children?’
‘We checked their schools, remember? They were at different schools in different parts of London.’
‘In their final years at school, yes. When they were sixteen or seventeen. But what about earlier, when they were younger? They could have been at primary school together. Or maybe they were in a social group. Cub Scouts or something like that. A youth club, perhaps.’
Phil rubbed his chin. ‘So you think something happened to the Three Little Piggies when they were kids? Then for some reason they split up, but get back together ten years later? For what? Revenge?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking. And whatever it was happened so long ago that the details aren’t in HOLMES.’
Phil nodded thoughtfully. ‘Then because Butler died and Wallace was in prison, they stopped. And started again when Wallace got out?’
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, boss, perfect sense. So what do we do? How do we fill in the gaps?’
‘We need to get the full employment records of all the victims, going back fifteen or twenty years. And we need to speak to the parents of the Three Little Piggies, to find out where they were when they were kids. We need to identify any overlap.’
‘Do you want to do Butler and I’ll do Parker, and whoever finishes first can do Wallace?’
Lulu grinned. ‘So it’s a race?’
‘Game on,’ said Phil, reaching for his phone.