LAUGHTON STARES OUT THE SQUAD car window at the gray smear of London outside. The siren is on and the slow London traffic parts before them as they duck into bus lanes and push through red lights on their hurried way back to Kentish Town. Tannahill sits beside her in the back seat, phone clamped to his ear, getting the latest updates on the case.
Tannahill ends his call. “We have a couple of new leads, one really good one by the sounds of it, and the Millers’ cleaner just called to say she remembered something that might be important. She’s heading in to give another statement now.”
Laughton listened to the audio of the cleaner’s first statement sometime in the small hours of the night and remembers how uncomfortable she’d been talking about her employer. Toward the end of the interview she had hesitated before answering a question about the Millers’ relationship and Laughton had made a note that she was probably holding something back.
“She’ll tell you the Millers weren’t as happy as she previously implied they were,” Laughton says. “She’ll tell you they argued sometimes, maybe quite bad arguments. I think she almost told you in the first interview, but she was still being loyal and professionally discreet. Now that the news has broken that her boss was having an affair and was also an infamous scumbag, I imagine she no longer feels the same need to protect him.”
Tannahill smiles. “Maybe I’ll tell her not to bother coming in then, seeing as you already know what she’s going to say.”
Laughton shrugs, already tired and wrung out from the day. “I’m just thinking out loud.”
They stare out their respective windows, the siren filling the silence between them as the driver continues to thread his way through the gridlock.
“I wish I could have one of these all the time,” Tannahill says. “Usually it’s either bus, tube, or bike.”
“What are the new leads?” Laughton says.
“OK, first, the DFT have managed to extract the serial number of the laptop the killer used to store the photographs and email them to Slade. It’s an old Compaq model, bought as part of a large consignment for a UK-based limited company that’s no longer trading. The company’s assets were sold at a liquidation auction, which unfortunately means the purchase trail goes cold at that point. Want to have a guess what the name of that company was?”
Laughton thinks for a moment, then shakes her head.
“It was SunnySet, the company Mike Miller ran when he was still Mark Murphy. It won’t help us catch our man, but it will help convict him once we do catch up with him. But we’ve also found another SunnySet connection. After the first murder we ran a check on the medals we found balanced on Kate Miller’s finger and found one of the ribbons was wrong. It was actually the ribbon from a VC, the Victoria Cross, highest award for bravery. They’re so rare, only 182 were issued in all of World War II and the last surviving recipient, a merchant seaman called Cyril Lawson, died just over a year ago in less than heroic circumstances.”
Laughton nods, already seeing where this is heading. “He died in a SunnySet care home.”
“He did, and his grandson was not at all happy about it, guy called Neil Lawson, fifty-three. He was one of the plaintiffs in a big class action lawsuit suing both SunnySet and Murphy personally for huge damages and compensation on the grounds of gross negligence, industrial manslaughter, financial misconduct, a whole heap of grievances. Then Murphy vanished with all the cash—end of civil case, lot of seriously pissed-off people, including one Neil Lawson, also ex-army, who saw two active tours of duty in Afghanistan before being demobbed as part of the austerity cuts. Also his wife divorced him two years ago, citing irreconcilable differences and incidents of domestic violence. He’s been picked up twice for brawling, several times for D and D, and once for vagrancy when he was found living in his car. Each time he got fines and suspended sentences, but there’s definitely a pattern there. His combat experience also means he’s been trained to kill.”
“Everyone in the military is trained to kill,” Laughton replies. “Few ever do.”
“True, but our man here actually did. On his last tour his unit was ambushed outside Kandahar and apparently Corporal Neil Lawson’s rifle jammed, but get this, he managed to battle his way to safety using only his knife and actually killed one of his attackers in the process by stabbing him repeatedly.”
“Jesus! Any idea where he is now?”
“Currently of no fixed abode. London is the closest guess we have so far based on the fact that the vagrancy pinch was in Acton. His name has also popped up a few times at a couple of British Legion shelters in South London, though nothing more recent than two months ago. We’ll find him. He had the advantage when he was flying under the radar, but now that Mike Miller’s been crossed off the list, he’s our main person of interest, so we’re throwing everything we have at finding him. He certainly has the motive and the means. Judging by the two bodies, he also found the opportunity.”
Laughton continues to stare out the window but is no longer seeing the blur of the outside streets. She’s lining up the new information with what she already knows, looking for the patterns, the points of connection, and also the gaps. “What about Kate Miller, what was his motive for killing her?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully he can tell us when we find him.” He looks up ahead. “Listen we’re nearly there. If you want we can drop you off at Kentish Town tube.”
Laughton thinks about the day stretching ahead of her. Her first lecture isn’t until after lunch and she’s too tired and too frazzled to reengage with any of her ongoing research projects.
“Or you can hang around the station for a bit and sample the delights of police vending machine coffee,” Tannahill offers, seemingly reading her mind. “You can sit in on the interview with the cleaner if you like, see if your prediction is correct.”
Laughton sees Kentish Town tube up ahead and growing nearer. In her mind the gaps and the questions continue to swirl. Stepping away from the investigation won’t change anything. Not really. It will only ever give her the illusion of separation. Those newspapers with her name in them will still be stacked at the feet of a corpse. The stories inside them will still be true. She can deny her past all she likes. But she can never, ever change it.
“Exactly how bad is this coffee?” she asks, turning to Tannahill.
He smiles. “You’ll see,” he says.