Daniels had been sitting in her vehicle for a good half-hour, observing the entrance to the Regional Psychology Service. In that time, the door had opened only twice, allowing a couple of women back out on to the street.
According to the receptionist, Forster was still inside. Daniels couldn’t bear the thought that he was probably in a room with Jo, sharing the same air, when she now had knowledge that he might conceivably have killed her ex. Wondering how she was coping with that, Daniels glanced at her watch. Forster’s weekly reporting was scheduled to last just half an hour.
He’d be out any second now.
While she waited, the conversation she’d had with Jo following Maxwell’s revelation that she’d been attacked reverberated round her head. After several attempts to call her, Jo had finally answered her phone. But she point-blank refused to discuss the thugs in the alley; refused to be a victim again. The police hadn’t been interested when she reported Stephens for rape. As far as she was concerned, they had nothing more to say to one another. Then the phone went dead.
Daniels willed the door across the street to open again.
It did.
She put her hand to her earpiece. ‘Here we go.’
A scruffy man left the building, hesitating at the gate just long enough to light a cigarette. He set off along the road with an arrogant strut, picking his nose as he went, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans. It was the first time Daniels had seen him in the flesh, though something about him struck a chord. He was a very different person than the one Gormley had described. Not a wimp frightened of his own shadow, but an arrogant, cocksure lowlife with an evil look in his eye.
Gormley’s favourite saying popped into her head at the exact same time it came out of his mouth: If it looks like shite . . .
‘. . . and it smells like shite,’ Gormley said, ‘then it’s probably shite.’
Daniels smiled.
Although it was getting dark, the streetlights were good enough to make the identification. She got out of her car, making sure she wasn’t seen, conscious that Forster might very well be armed. She followed at a safe distance. It looked as though he was heading for the address Jo had given her. He turned right off the main road, in no hurry, stopping to pass the time of day with a young boy coming the other way, a glance over his shoulder forcing Daniels to retreat into the shadows of a shop doorway. She caught his reflection in the glass and thought she saw something change hands. Her earpiece confirmed that Gormley had seen it too.
‘Probably an arrestable offence . . . want me to pick him up?’
Daniels spoke quietly into her sleeve. ‘Negative, Hank. We want to get the bastard for something much bigger than a poxy heroin deal. But first, we need proof. Something concrete we can act on. We can’t risk this thing going tits-up a second time.’
As if sensing their interest, Forster looked back over his shoulder again, then took off downhill towards the entrance to Brandon Towers, a block Daniels knew well. Built in the sixties to combat overcrowding, it had since become home to many of the region’s criminals, the socially disaffected and the downright unfortunate. The exterior walls were covered in graffiti, the whole place in need of pulling down.
Forster went in through the main entrance. Daniels stood a while, considering what to do next. She gave Gormley permission to return to base, watched him drive off, and then turned away.
Ten floors up, Forster stood well back from the window and looked down on the street, watching the good detective walk back in the direction of her car. He raised his gun, lining her up in his sights and feigned a shot. BANG!