‘Can we offer you some tea?’ asked Mrs Hartley.
‘No, no thank you,’ said Jamila. ‘We will not be disturbing you for long.’
‘I have chocolate biscuits, if you’d like some.’
‘No, really, thank you. You’re very kind.’
It was obvious that Mr and Mrs Hartley were still in deep shock after their daughter’s murder. They had cut short their holiday in Tenerife as soon as they had been contacted about it, but Kathleen Hartley’s body was still in the morgue pending further examination. Because of that, there had been very little for them to do since they had returned except to wait for her release for burial. They had been more than willing for Charlie to bring Ghost around.
Ghost was in the dining room now, snuffling around, and occasionally letting out little sneezes.
The Hartleys stood side by side under the reproduction of The Singing Butler, as stiff as two shop-window dummies. Their answers to Jamila’s questions were monosyllabic and expressionless, as if they had learned them from a script.
Did they know of any men friends that Kathleen might have been seeing lately? No. Did she mention that she had argued with anybody lately? No. Had any of her pupils’ parents been aggressive, for instance? Not that she mentioned, no.
Most of this information Jamila and Jerry already knew, since they had scrolled through Kathleen’s phone and laptop to see if she had belonged to any online dating agencies, or if she had upset anybody on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Yet it was always possible that she might have dropped some casual remark to her parents about somebody who wished her harm.
Ghost eventually came panting out of the dining room, pulling Charlie behind him. Jerry recognised that look in Ghost’s green eyes. It was the same concentrated stare that he had given when he had picked up the scent from Adele and Archie’s bedrooms.
‘There, you see? He’s not making a beeline for you two,’ Charlie told Mr and Mrs Hartley. ‘That means he’s identified an unusual smell in there. He can tell that somebody’s been in there who’s not a member of the family.’
He turned to Jamila and Jerry and added, ‘The way he’s been sneezing, I reckon he’s picked up some pheromones too.’
Both Jamila and Jerry knew what Charlie meant by that, and so he had no need to explain himself further. Kathleen Hartley had been sexually assaulted, either before or after her throat had been cut, so it was likely that her assailant had been exuding androstenone, a pheromone given off by men when they become aroused.
‘I can tell that he’s got a picture of the suspect in his head,’ said Charlie. ‘If only there was a way of plugging his brain into a computer and seeing what was in there. Or if only he could draw. Or talk.’
Jerry patted Ghost on the head. ‘If he could talk, Charlie, he wouldn’t be working as a police dog. He’d have his own chat show on TV.’
‘Will he be able to track down who did it?’ asked Mr Hartley.
‘If anybody can, Ghost can,’ said Charlie.
‘Whoever ended poor Kathy’s life needs hanging. It’s time they brought back capital punishment. I talked to your other officer, Detective Inspector Fairweather is it? But he still wouldn’t tell us exactly what was done to her. He said it was better that we didn’t know, but we should just remember her the way she was.’
Outside the Hartleys’ house, Ghost was straining so hard against his harness that he was breathing in high, whistling screams.
‘So what’s the plan now?’ asked Jerry. ‘I’m not sure if I’ve got what it takes for another three-mile hike. My plates are still throbbing from last time.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll follow Ghost, wherever he wants to take me. When we get there, I’ll give you a bell and you can drive there. We’ll need a vehicle anyhow if we’re able to make an arrest.’
‘Okay, fine. But for your sake I hope the perp hasn’t buggered off to Manchester or somewhere like that. You’ll still be walking next Thursday fortnight.’
*
As Jamila and Jerry returned to the station, they were approached by Sergeant Willis, the custody officer. He told them that a solicitor was on his way to represent the men who had tried to abduct Jerry, and that he was expected to arrive in twenty minutes or so. Meanwhile, both men had refused to give their names or addresses, or answer any questions.
‘They’re a right pair though. I don’t expect prisoners to be sociable, but these two… talk about aggressive.’
Jerry checked his watch. ‘Let’s hope it’s not too long before Ghost tracks down that suspect from the Hartleys. Otherwise I might be forced to order a McDonald’s.’
‘They can knock up a cheeseburger for you in the canteen, can’t they?’ said Sergeant Willis.
‘They can. I’ve tried one. But never again. Cheeseburger? More like donkeyburger with melted plastic.’
Jamila and Jerry went back up to their office. Until they heard from Charlie, there was little more they could do. They had received no further updates from the detectives who were investigating the other cases that might have some connection to Scratch.
‘This is doing my head in,’ said Jerry, sitting down and propping his feet up on his desk.
‘Have you heard from your Linda?’ asked Jamila.
‘No, I rang her but she hung up on me. I think I need to go back to charm school.’
‘You know, I find it most difficult to maintain a relationship in this job. It has made me suspicious of all men and their motives. The owner of an Indian cash-and-carry store in Woodford asked me to marry him. He was handsome and wealthy, but for some reason I did not trust him.’
‘You should marry me. Then we could both be suspicious together.’
Jamila looked across at him and raised one thinly plucked eyebrow. For one moment Jerry thought she might say, Why don’t we give it a go? But then she smiled and gave a little shake of her head and turned back to her computer.
Jamila’s phone rang. It was the Martian, calling from Lambeth Road.
‘DS Patel? We’ve carried out some preliminary tests on that Colt .45 automatic.’
‘Oh, yes? And have you found out where it might have come from?’
‘The RAF stamp hasn’t been touched, but there’s been some attempt to file off the serial numbers on the action. That would suggest that at some point the weapon was stolen. We’ve restored the numbers with Magnaflux and I’ll send them over to you so you can have a crack at tracing its origin – which RAF depot it might have been nicked from, for example.’
‘Thank you, Derek. Every little helps.’
‘Ah! But wait! That’s not all, by any means! We’ve examined the rifling on the bullet that was retrieved from the wall in the police station corridor, and guess what? It’s an exact match for the rifling on the bullet that killed Kenneth Treagus. Even if they weren’t fired by the same offender, those bullets were fired from the same weapon.’
‘Really? They match? That could be very helpful. We are still waiting for the suspect’s legal representative to arrive. As soon as he does, though, we can present the suspect with that evidence, and see how he reacts.’
Jamila put down her phone and told Jerry what the Martian had said.
‘Blimey O’Reilly. And we’ve got him banged up downstairs. What a wally. It’s almost like he handed himself in.’
‘Jerry – if he is the perpetrator who shot Kenneth Treagus, you are extremely lucky that he did not shoot you. There are times in this job when I think we should give thanks to whatever higher beings we believe in.’
Jerry pressed his hands together and looked up to the ceiling. ‘Thank you, Magic Uncle in the Clouds.’
Jamila’s phone rang again. This time, when she answered it, she frowned and said, ‘What? What do you mean? Very well, we will come down straight away.’
‘What now?’ Jerry asked her.
‘The lawyer has arrived, but there is a problem. The two men are no longer there.’
‘Sorry, I don’t get it. What do you mean they’re no longer there?’
‘Sergeant Willis said their cells are empty. The doors were still locked, but they have gone, both of them.’
Jerry stared at her. ‘Bloody hell. They’ve pulled the same trick as that Jasper Starke did at Bishopsgate nick, back in 1880. This can’t be a coincidence.’
‘I agree with you. How can it be? They entered the station without being challenged at reception and they left no footprints. Now they have vanished. What other explanation can there be except that they appeared from another world and now they have returned to it? I had my doubts but now I am even more certain than ever that we are looking for offenders from a parallel time. Or times, even – plural.’
They went downstairs to the custody suite. Sergeant Willis was standing there with Simon Fairbrother and a grey-haired solicitor with his glasses perched on the end of his nose, looking more annoyed than mystified.
‘I don’t know what the Met’s coming to these days,’ snapped the solicitor. ‘I cut short a meeting with an important client to come down here, but you’ve let the suspects get away. Didn’t you see them walk out of here, or are you all blind?’
‘I do not think that insults are called for, sir,’ said Jamila. ‘We will be investigating how they managed to escape and if necessary we will be in touch with you again.’
‘Complete waste of my very valuable time,’ grumbled the solicitor, and he left.
Jamila and Jerry turned to Simon Fairbrother and Sergeant Willis and they all looked as blank as each other.
‘There is no way they could have escaped from those cells,’ said Sergeant Willis. ‘The doors are still secure and not even an expert locksmith could have opened them up. Besides, I was here all the time, and if somebody had started fiddling around with the locks, I would have heard them and seen them.’
The cell doors were open now and Jerry peered into both of them. He even ducked down to look under the bunks.
‘Any ideas?’ asked Simon Fairbrother.
Jerry shook his head. He didn’t want to try explaining parallel worlds and string theory. He barely understood it himself, and Simon Fairbrother would probably think that both he and Jamila were losing their marbles. Apart from that, it was perfectly possible that their theory about Scratch and time travel was completely misguided and that the two men had vanished by means of some obscure physics that nobody had ever heard of. Maybe they possessed some way of dispersing their atoms and disappearing through the walls like sand through a sieve.
‘I don’t know, guv,’ he told Simon Fairbrother. ‘All I can say is, eat your heart out, Houdini!’
Herbert Chance joined them. Sergeant Willis briefly explained how he had come to open up the men’s cells to find that they had disappeared.
Herbert Chance listened with a grim expression, and then he said, ‘This doesn’t get out. Nobody gets to hear about this, do you understand? If anybody asks you about those two suspects, you don’t know what they’re talking about. You’ve never seen them and you’ve never heard about them and you certainly didn’t know that they’ve disappeared out of their cells.’
He paused, sucking in his lips. Then he said, ‘DS Patel? Any thoughts on how these two managed to get out?’
‘Not yet, sir. We are still trying to understand how they managed to get in.’
*
Jamila and Jerry returned to their office. Herbert Chance had called for forensic investigators to examine the cells from which the two men had disappeared, although neither Jamila nor Jerry believed they would find any evidence of how they had escaped.
Jerry changed his mind about a McDonald’s and ordered a chorizo pizza to be delivered from Four Hundred Rabbits. Jamila wanted nothing more than a tofu roll and a cup of lemon tea from the canteen. For the next hour they sat in silence. Jamila caught up with her outstanding reports on racial unrest in Redbridge while Jerry played a post-apocalyptic video game, The Last of Us, in which a man has to save a young girl from an outbreak of zombies.
A few minutes after five o’clock, Jamila’s phone rang. It was Charlie, and he sounded out of breath.
‘DS Patel? Ghost’s still going like the clappers. There’s no question about it, the scent he’s after must be really strong. He’s led me all the way up the Kennington Park Road and now we’ve reached the Elephant. Only God and Ghost know where he’ll be heading after that, but I’ll keep in touch.’
‘Thank you, Charlie. We will be waiting to hear from you.’