Paul sheepishly walked out. She didn’t actually know anything about Paul’s private life, whether he lived with a partner or not, and she didn’t particularly want to know. All that mattered to her was that he was a valuable member of her team.
Meanwhile the team had worked hard on piecing together the date byline. The information was listed on the board. The holiday periods Rawlins had whilst working with Joe Smedley at the garage were matched with the dates that Tina had given for her hairdressing competitions. Helen had contacted the salon to ask for the details as Tina had not given them to Anna. Donna told her that Tina was out making a call, but she could give the dates, since she had been with Tina on some of them and knew exactly how long they would have been away. It varied from two days to five.
Anna was certain that Alan Rawlins was able to lead a double life because there were so many days when Tina had been away from their flat. His holidays from the garage were always in the summertime. Joe Smedley had said Alan would take no time off for Bank Holidays or over the Christmas period, but liked to have as much time as possible clumped together for his summer sojourns. It had taken considerable effort going through the records and calculating that June, July, and often August were the times Alan Rawlins was absent.
Late that afternoon Silas Douglas had returned Brian’s calls and agreed to come into the station the following morning. It had been a frustrating day as more and more information was collected. The team were still very keen to get the results from the Tech Support unit about the hard drive taken from Rawlins’s computer. Tech Support were dragging their heels and so Anna got onto them and tore a strip off their Head of Department, pointing out it was imperative they get the information as soon as possible; their excuse that they had a backlog of work didn’t wash with her. She angrily insisted that as this was a murder enquiry they should put her at the top of their list.
Langton called just as she was about to leave for the day. She gave him a brief rundown of the developments and he thankfully listened without interruption. He seemed distant, almost abrupt as he finished the call, saying he had someone waiting on his other line. She left the station shortly after, while both Paul and Brian were still working as the jigsaw grew.
Langton drove into the station just after 7 p.m. and went straight up to the incident room. He’d missed Anna, but Brian Stanley was still there. He was about to leave, but Langton asked him to stay behind as he wanted him to talk him through the investigation to date. It was not that unusual. He was, after all, the Chief Superintendent overseeing the entire Murder Squad. He made Brian feel slightly nervous as he fired off question after question and constantly made notes while muttering to himself.
‘How has the search gone trying to find the body?’
‘We’ve had a team looking into it, but we’ve no trace.’
‘And no positive identification of the victim?’
‘Correct.’
‘This woman, Tina – has she moved back into her flat?’
‘I believe it’s on the cards. The scientists are out of there and the SOCOs have completed their work as well. I know she asked the Gov if she could go and collect more clothes.’
Langton paused by the forensic reports from Liz Hawley. ‘Do we know if they could get a toxicology result from the blood pooling beside the bed?’
‘No. The lab said it would be unreliable as bleach was used to try and clean it up, and they couldn’t even tell us how long it had been there,’ Brian informed him.
‘Mmm . . . It’s been about eight to nine weeks, right – from the time Alan was last seen.’
‘Yes, but we don’t know whose blood it is.’
Langton looked at the photographs taken from the Luminol tests. He tapped the pictures.
‘Fucking bloodbath in there and you’ve no body parts turning up?’
‘No, sir.’
‘If Tina Brooks is to be believed, then whoever did the murder had less than a day to clean up. If she’s lying, and she was part of it, then she and any accomplice, had at least two weeks to get rid of the evidence.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No witness saw anything suspicious?’
‘No. We’ve questioned all the residents and the near neighbours.’
‘This Tina woman’s car was clean, right?’
‘Yes, sir. She’s requested it to be returned.’
‘What tests have been done with the semen stains and the hair found in the bed?’
‘Still ongoing with the hair, but the semen isn’t a match.’
‘What – the semen DNA doesn’t match the blood DNA?’
‘Correct.’
‘So someone else, another male, slept in the same bed as the victim.’
‘Right. Our problem is that we don’t have a positive DNA profile for Alan Rawlins so we have been unable to ascertain if the blood was his or if the items from the clean bedlinen were his.’
‘Which would mean either Rawlins was the victim or he killed someone and then did a runner?’
‘That’s what we are considering.’
Langton sighed and moved along the board, looking at the details written up about the gay DVDs and pornographic magazines. He shook his head and moved on to the latest entries.
‘So we suspect that Alan Rawlins led a double life. He used his friends’ names when answering sex adverts, and this guy Ardigo came in and admitted that he’d almost been strangled?’
‘Yes. We got that result today.’
Langton snapped his notebook closed, saying, ‘Fucking Tech Support need a firecracker up their arse.’
‘I think the boss gave them one.’
Langton laughed. ‘I hope she did, because this is looking like a cold case if it goes on any longer. No movement in the joint bank accounts, but if he had access to all this cash he could be anywhere by now.’
‘We’re hoping to get a result from Cornwall and to trace his whereabouts from there.’
‘You’re hoping. Jesus Christ, I’ll get on to the people there, and this Sammy Marsh – he’s got a record, right? Anyone asked if they have
‘I think so. We’re waiting for Liz Hawley to get back to us.’
Langton stared at Brian with a cold glint in his eye and snapped that it was not their job to think, but to get facts. He then walked out leaving Brian, already tired from a long day of making call after call, to go to his desk and leave himself a memo to double-check Sammy Marsh’s record in the morning.
The following day when Anna drove into the station, Brian was just parking his car, and so they walked in together. She stopped abruptly when he said he’d not left until late the previous evening due to Langton’s unscheduled visit.
‘He came here?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. Bad-tempered cuss, isn’t he? He went over every inch of the board. Said we had to concentrate on Sammy Marsh. I told him that Marsh is missing or on the run. Anyway, he wants us to run a check to see if there was a DNA sample taken after Marsh’s arrest.’
Anna spent the morning, a working lunch and most of the afternoon checking over the case-files, all the statements taken and information they had so far received during the investigation. She wrote down copious notes as she went through the mounting paperwork, raising actions where necessary for the team to complete. The initial Misper investigation into the disappearance of Alan Rawlins had, somewhat understandably, been poor as he was not considered a serious or high-priority case. Indeed, she herself had at first thought he had gone walkabout of his own accord, but now had to make sure that every piece of information and possible lead was thoroughly scrutinised and followed up.
By late afternoon, Anna was still thinking about Langton. Why had he come in to oversee the board when she had spoken to him last thing yesterday and had spent a long time giving him all the details already? It felt as if he was sitting on her shoulder, and she didn’t like it; it made her feel inadequate.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the roar of a Harley arriving in the station car park. She looked from the window as Silas Douglas locked up his bike. Anna called out to Paul to go to reception to meet him and take him into an interview room.
Silas was wearing biker’s leathers with a lot of fringe and he carried his black helmet under his arm. He was
