Chameleon's Shadow

The small hope the police had had that the phone had been used with a different SIM card after it was taken from Atkins’s house also came to nothing. As did the saliva DNA from the mouthpiece, which proved to be the victim’s. In answer to Detective Superintendent Jones’s question, ‘Why would the killer carry Atkins’s mobile around in public?’ the psychological profiler shook his head and said it didn’t make any sense to him.

‘Is that the best you can do?’

‘For the moment. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single convicted serial killer who carried his trophies with him. The usual MO is to secrete anything incriminating inside an area he controls . . . usually his home. You’ll have to give me a day or two to research it.’

Jones leaned forward. ‘Supposing the boy made a mistake? Supposing he stole the phone from the woman? Would that make a difference?’

‘In what way?’

‘Women are very protective of their bags. If my wife wanted to hide something, particularly something small, she’d drop it to the bottom of her bag and carry it around with her.’

The psychologist shrugged. ‘How sure are you that the lad who stole the phone was telling the truth?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Then I’d talk to him again before you hare off in a different direction. The most obvious reason for a person to be walking around with trophies is because there was nowhere else to put them.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Your killer might be part of the homeless community.’

Arranging another interview with Ben Russell had taken twenty-four hours, and Jones was out of patience by the time the boy’s solicitor agreed to make himself available at five o’clock on Wednesday.

‘Criminals have too many bloody rights in this country,’ he grumbled to Beale as they drove to the hospital. ‘We’d have the story out of the kid in half a second flat if he didn’t have guard dogs to protect him.’

‘We’d have something out of him,’ Beale agreed, ‘but I wouldn’t bet on it being any more truthful than what he’s told us already.’ He broke off as a call came through for the superintendent, smiling when the man punched the air. ‘What’s up?’

‘Tutting’s regained consciousness.’ He tapped in his secretary’s number. ‘Lizzie? Change of plan. I need you to get hold of Ben Russell’s solicitor and tell him we’ll be running late on the boy’s interview. Yeah . . . yeah . . . I know he’s a pain in the arse . . . so tell him I don’t give a damn whether he’s there or not. The kid’s lying through his teeth and we both know it.’

*

Jackson gave a startled jump when Acland disengaged himself from a shadowy recess between two buildings halfway down Murray Street as she approached her car. She hadn’t seen him since driving away from the squat the previous day and, by his unshaven appearance and crumpled shirt, he looked as if he’d slept rough overnight. He certainly hadn’t returned to the pub. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded angrily. He was dangling his jacket over his shoulder in a 1930s-style affectation that didn’t suit him. ‘Hitching a ride,’ he said. ‘Where have you been? What have you been up to?’ ‘Just walking.’ ‘For thirty bloody hours ?’ she said scathingly. ‘Give me a break! Daisy and I have been worried sick. You’re damn lucky the police didn’t decide to question you. You’re supposed to stay put at the pub.’ ‘Sorry.’ He walked round the BMW to open the door for her while she put her case in the boot. ‘If I’d realized it was going to upset you that much, I wouldn’t have done it.’ ‘I’m not upset, I’m angry.’ ‘Whichever.’ He pulled the door wide. ‘It was your night off. I thought you and Daisy could do with some time to yourselves. She makes it pretty clear she doesn’t want me around.’

‘So now it’s Daisy’s fault?’ said Jackson grimly, stalking after him. She wrestled the door out of his hand. ‘Get in,’ she snapped, ‘and stop behaving like Little Lord Fauntleroy. As far as I’m concerned, he was a nasty little brown-noser in a silly suit with a deeply insipid mother . . . and I’m not that easily sidetracked.’

But she was. It certainly didn’t occur to her to question why he chose to open the door behind her and toss his jacket across the back seat.

Nor did she pursue the issue of what he’d been doing, although it wasn’t clear to her afterwards whether it was her choice or Acland’s to steer the conversation towards his mother. She had tried for the last few days to encourage him to talk about his family and his sudden willingness to describe his relationship with his parents took her by surprise.

‘If it takes an insipid mother to produce Little Lord Fauntleroy, then you’re confusing me with someone else,’ he said idly, attaching his seat belt. ‘There’s no way you could describe mine as insipid. In any case, courtesy was drummed into me at school and Sandhurst. Manners maketh man . . . and all that crap...but I’ve never understood why women are allowed to be as rude as they fucking well like.’

Of course Jackson was intrigued, not least because she’d come to recognize that the lieutenant was a puritan. He rarely used vulgar language unless he was angry. ‘You think I was rude?’

‘Yes.’

‘I come from the wrong side of the tracks. You’re looking at the last of a long line of working-class grafters who talked in glottal stops and never had an even break in their lives.’ She flicked him a mocking glance. ‘There wasn’t much cause for my ancestors to say thank you to anyone. They had it programmed into their genes to bow and scrape to privileged types like you.’

‘You haven’t done badly out of it,’ he said curtly. ‘At least your grafters sound genuine. I don’t even know what privilege is except that you get sent away to school at eight so that your parents can claim some cachet from it. Appearance is everything in my family.

As long as the surface passes muster, it doesn’t matter how much dirt is being churned up underneath.’

‘What kind of dirt?’

‘Anything that lets the side down. My father’s father was a chronic alcoholic – he was drunk twenty-four seven – but my mother told everyone he had Parkinson’s disease. I was scared shitless of him when he was in a rage. He kicked one of our dogs to death in front of me when I was ten. I was too frightened to say anything... but I really hated him for it.’