The incident room was flat out when I got there. It was jamming with the sound of phones ringing, printers running and detectives shouting to be heard above the racket. The new equipment had been installed and the room was full, junior detectives sharing phones and desks. Andy led me through to his workspace, which was right in the middle of the mayhem, partitioned on three sides.
It was two hours since Andy had called me at the airport and he was apoplectic at the delay, that I’d left him hanging. He himself had just got back from Exmouth Market, where he’d been talking to Max about the graffiti his cafe had been daubed with. Forensics were still there. I tried to stay calm. I tried not to give way to the cold sickness sitting inside me that still made me want to vomit. Andy pushed a seat towards me and I sat next to him, a rash of Post-its saluting from his desktop, fag burns already lining the edges like dead fingernails. Andy was brisk, decisive, his eyes alive, the sluggish aura that usually surrounded him gone. This was a break. Someone had been linked to all three killings. The random element that made catching serial killers such a problem was removed. Andy made no reference to what I might be feeling about it, but though I was pissed off at that I tried to match him. To stay cool, to realize that he was right, that having something to go on meant that we had a greater chance of preventing any more deaths. But when I thought of Sharon it all dissolved.
Andy pointed out a few of the key people to me, told me what they were doing, and then turned me towards the board. A picture of Ally smiled out at me and I looked away. Next to it was a shot of Josephine Thomas. I handed Andy a copy of the shot of Denise Denton that her husband had given me and he stuck it up there too. I looked at the girl with the spiky black hair and shook my head. Jared hadn’t told me she was pregnant. Maybe he hadn’t known. That was probably why she’d left him.
I felt helpless, confused, my mind churning with all that had been shoved into it. I kept reaching out in every direction for some kind of meaning. Raising his voice against the racket surrounding us, Andy immediately told me to think back.
‘Some old case, someone with a reason to come back at you like this. You must have some ideas.’
‘Me?’ I said. ‘You think. In case you’ve forgotten, you were on most of my cases. So which of the fucks we sent down would want to do this? None of them? All of them? I don’t know. Practically nine out of ten promised to come back at us but you used to laugh, you used to say it was bollocks, something to impress the missus. None of them ever did anything.’
‘Until now.’
‘OK. But how am I supposed to know who it is any more than you are? What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been racking my brains and I’m nowhere. I could understand either of us getting a bullet in the kneecap one dark night, but this? This is specific, particular, and I can’t think of anything.’
I took a few deep breaths and relaxed my arms. I wasn’t proud of my eagerness to pull Andy into it. Maybe it was about him too, but if it was, why had the killer only gone after women I knew? Not even knew, had some sort of connection with. I still couldn’t believe someone had done what they had to Denise just because I’d passed her picture round. I asked if Denise’s identity was a hundred per cent and Andy told me that it was. I nodded but then shook my head and then I had another thought. When Andy and I had worked together he’d pushed the envelope far further than I ever had. If this was about something he’d done without telling me, I’d kill him for it. I would. Andy flipped a page of his daybook.
’Listen. If you haven’t got any definite ideas, we’ll leave it, we’ll go over who the bastard might be in a minute. In the meantime, I need to ask you. Do you know any other pregnant women?’
I hesitated. I had to decide. Instinctively, I knew. I couldn’t trust Andy. Sharon was right: it was still a secret. The fewer people who knew the better.
‘No.’
‘Because, if you do, they are in serious danger.’
I shook my head.
‘Good. But what about women you might have just spoken to, not friends as such but in your local pub? The bookie you use, stuff like that. Bumped into. Anyone.’
‘I don’t know. You’d better send a squad out to check. Places near my flat, near the Lindauer.’
‘OK. Let’s start with them. Whoever’s doing this needs only the slightest connection. That Denise girl, you weren’t shtuping her or anything?’
‘I told you. I never even met her.’
‘Right,’ Andy said. ‘Let’s concentrate, OK? Women you might have any sort of link with.’
‘And women you know, too.’
‘Of course,’ Andy said. ‘Them as well.’
When I’d run out of places where I hung out, where I’d been in the last few months, Andy wrote his own list. He handed both to a DC and told him to get some uniforms out. I then gave Andy a detailed rundown of my hour spent in Brixton, finishing with the skeletal hooker I’d tussled with. We agreed that the killer must have followed me, must have picked up Denise there. I hadn’t handed out pictures of her anywhere else. I gave a description of the girl who’d tried to knife me and he took it down, nodding like what I was telling him was his favourite tune. I could see the connections knitting together inside Andy and I felt them too, but it didn’t stop me feeling that my whole life had fallen apart.
After I’d told Andy what I could about the apparition I’d seen on the street corner that afternoon, he made me go through it again with a police artist, sitting next to him at his Mac. I rejoined Andy and told him that, as well as the hooker, a woman in the traffic had seen me too. She’d given me the evil eye. She might have noticed something. Andy asked me if I’d pegged anyone following me but I said I hadn’t. I’d been in my own little world, preoccupied with thoughts of Sharon and how wonderful my life was going to be.
Andy and I hit it back and forth for another exhausting, frustrating hour. It was more French Open than Wimbledon, each point taking a hell of a long time to get made. Apart from finding the girl, the other route in was CCTV from the Lindauer. I needed to go through it for the last six months. See if anyone stood out. I wanted to get to that straight away but Andy said that all the clear facial images from it were being isolated by a team of officers. It would be far quicker for me to go through the stills than sit through hours of tape, my finger on the pause button. It was frustrating but he was right, six months was a hell of a long time. Andy said he’d have most of them for me by tomorrow lunchtime at the latest.
When we came to a natural pause Andy asked a DC to get us some coffee and we didn’t speak for a while, letting our thoughts sink to the bottom of our minds to see what we were left with. The rest of the room still hummed. This was what you prayed for on the Met. This was what got you through the interviews with teenage car thieves, helped you take the abuse as you led single mothers out of Tesco for slipping jars of baby food into their bags. I breathed in the activity, the concentration, also noticing how I was being eyed up furtively, a room full of detectives all wondering what the hell I’d done to bring this on. Rucker. One of us, wasn’t he? Left when his brother got put in a coma. Couldn’t hack it after that. Tell you what, I’m glad I’m not him. Someone slicing up women he knows, some twat those two put away on a plant, something dodgy? I bet he hopes we catch the fucker pretty quick. He won’t get laid again until we do, will he? Birds’ll run a bleeding mile from him.
When the coffee came Andy took a sip and then ran his fingernails hard across his scalp. He told me that he’d ordered copies of the files on every case we’d ever worked. Some had already come up and we started to go through them, looking for any sign of someone whose grudge against me might have taken this particular form. It took us another two and a half hours and we couldn’t find anything, though Andy did order a couple of cross references, wanting to know release dates, things like that. He said that he was going to give the rest of the files to his team to look at.
‘What about the profiler?’ I asked. ‘Where’s he?’
‘On the M4 by now, I should think.’
‘Huh?’
‘Heading back to Oxford. He wanted his own office and secretary, and five detectives to chase up his leads. Watches too much Channel 5, I think. Condor sent him packing.’
‘Psychiatrists?’
‘We’re putting the word out, hoping that any quack treating a nutcase who’s expressed a desire to cut up pregnant women will call us on the QT. I think it’s a dead end, though. If our boy was going to seek help, I just don’t see him doing this, do you?’
Flipping the last file closed, Andy put a foot up on his desk and I sat back in my chair. We were finished. We couldn’t do any more. Andy folded his arms and yawned.
‘New bird then?’ he said.
I hesitated. ‘Sorry?’
‘You. New bird? Well? Have you got a new girlfriend?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You were at the airport when I called. I could tell. You weren’t going anywhere so I assume you were meeting someone.’
I could have thought of any number of reasons to be there but Andy had thrown me. When he saw me hesitate he smiled and went on.
‘You don’t meet people at the airport unless you’re shafting them. And then only if it’s a recent acquisition you want to hang on to. So, Watson, I surmise there’s a woman involved.’
‘You should be a detective.’
‘I know. Instead of someone who sits at a desk filling forms in.’
‘That hasn’t changed then?’
‘It’s got worse.’
‘I wouldn’t have believed that was possible.’
‘Believe it.’ Andy yawned again, wider this time. Then he laughed. ‘So?’
‘What?’
‘The airport. Who were you meeting?’
‘Just an old friend.’
‘Why didn’t you get back to me then? Old friend would have understood, something as big as this.’
‘I needed to think. I was freaked out. Anyway, am I done?’
‘It’s OK, Billy, you don’t have to tell me. Scared I’ll steal her away, I know. But, yes, you’re done for now. Just don’t go far. And keep your eyes open. You’re at the centre of this. This nutter has killed women only so far but that’s not to say he won’t want to get to you. We’ve put a van outside your flat but Clay says you can have a safe house if you want one. How about it?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Good. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the perp decided to knock on your door, would it? Just be very careful, as I say.’
‘They armed? In the van?’
‘Tooled like Tarantino. He comes, they’ll get him.’
‘And you’ve given them a photo, right? So they don’t just open up on me when I get home?’
‘No need,’ Andy laughed. ‘Carpenter said he remembered you well enough. He’s on the first shift with three others, poor bastards. Imagine being cooped up twelve hours straight with that smelly twat.’