‘Already told them.’ He took her elbow and guided her out. It didn’t feel right. It felt as if he was pushing her.
They hardly spoke during the short walk to the restaurant and he no longer held her arm, but walked quickly. As always she had to speed up to keep up with him.
Sole Mio was a small restaurant furnished with checked tablecloths and candles stuck into wine bottles. The owner greeted Langton like an old friend and asked if he’d like his usual table. As it was virtually empty being so early, they had a choice, but Langton went to a small booth at the side and eased himself in, leaving Anna to sit opposite. He picked up the menu, glanced at it briefly and suggested that she have the house special.
Anna hid herself behind the menu. She was feeling very nervous and unable to read. Langton took out his reading glasses to look over the wine list.
‘I’ll have the sea-food spaghetti,’ she told Langton as he signalled for the waiter. He ordered the food, asked for a bottle of Chianti and then removed his glasses, tucking them into his pocket. He then spread out his cutlery, leaving a larger space in front of him.
‘Anna,’ he said quietly.
She glanced up and gave a shaky smile.
‘How you doing?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘Remember I once told you that I’d worked with your father? I’m going back quite a long time now – fifteen years or more . . . Anyway, I got my first murder enquiry as a DCI. Jack wasn’t on the case with me, but I’d just been working alongside him learning the ropes so to speak.’
He paused as the waiter showed them the bottle of wine and then uncorked it and poured a drop for Langton to taste. He swirled it around the glass and then drank it.
‘Lovely, thank you. Just leave the bottle on the table.’
The waiter poured a glass for each of them and did as requested.
‘The case was a murder enquiry, obviously. The victim was a twenty-two-year-old waitress – a single mother with a little girl aged three. She was found in an alleyway not far from where she worked; her throat had been cut and she was almost decapitated. She was or had been a very pretty woman, but the unusual thing about the case was, she had not been raped and her handbag, with her wages in, was still beneath her body. So robbery was not the motive and we could find no one who had a bad word to say against her. The first suspect we looked at was her ex-boyfriend. He was a pleasant enough guy and—’
Anna interrupted. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Just listen, will you?’
He sat back as his starter was brought to the table, a shrimp salad.
‘Did you order a starter?’ he asked Anna.
‘No, just the sea-food pasta.’
‘Do you want that brought now, or will you wait until my main course is here?’
‘I’ll wait.’ She took some bread and buttered it, watching as he ate at his usual fast pace, jabbing at the salad with his fork.
‘Okay, where was I . . . the boyfriend was not the father of her little girl, so I traced him, a Spanish waiter, and I discovered that he had quite a history of petty crime. He’d also legged it to Marbella so I went over there and questioned him, and he gave me three or four names of men he knew my victim had been seeing. I came back and I tracked down all four of them, questioned each one, and they gave me two more names. Seemed my innocent little single mother had quite a sexual appetite.’ He took some bread and wiped around the salad bowl, then picked up his wine glass and sipped before placing it carefully down beside his plate.
‘I schlepped from one end of the country to the other. Was into the case four weeks when the parents admitted they had kicked her out when they discovered she was pregnant. I had a slew of ex-boyfriends, plus women who had known the victim, but what I was still trying to uncover was a motive. Who, out of all these people I’d interviewed, would have sliced her throat and left her dying in this back alley? I checked into her bank accounts, all the boyfriends’ bank accounts; she had a pittance of a savings, so after another two weeks the case was getting cold. I had nothing.’
Langton stopped speaking as his starter plate was removed and he began to twist his napkin.
‘I was having a drink and Jack Travis came into the bar. He asked how it was all going. This was my first solo DCI case, right, and I wanted to make an impression. I said to him, “I’ve fucking turned over every possible stone and got zilch.”’
Their main courses arrived so he remained silent until the waiter had left, pouring more wine for himself and topping up Anna’s glass. She waited, toying with her pasta. Langton had a Saltimbocca alla Romana with vegetables and again ate hungrily before he continued.
‘Your dad listened. I’d had a few beers and then he asked if I minded if he gave me some advice.’
Langton held up his hand and pointed his index finger.
‘He said that one – in a murder enquiry, always look close to home. Someone had hated my victim enough to slash her throat – not to take her money, not to rape her – but just slash her and walk away.’
He ate another mouthful and then held up his hand again.
‘Two – the motive was hatred. It wasn’t robbery, it wasn’t sexual. It had to be someone who knew her, knew what time she left her job, knew she walked up that alley as a shortcut to the bus stop.’
He ate more, chewing his meat, and gestured towards her plate as she’d hardly touched a morsel.
‘Is that all right?’
‘It’s fine.’ She took a mouthful, but the food felt greasy and she could hardly swallow. Langton repeating her father’s words had made her feel very emotional.
‘Three – by looking at the kill, it had to be someone close to her. She had no defence wounds, no struggle, no blood or skin under her fingernails, which meant she faced her killer and wasn’t afraid of him.’
Again he paused to eat. Anna just moved her pasta around the plate.
‘Four – he said I should return to anyone close, particularly the ex-boyfriend. Next day I brought him in again and after two hours of interrogation he gave it up. He admitted to the murder. He said she had kicked him out. By this time he had grown to love her little girl and wanted to marry her, but she had rejected him.’
Langton drained his glass. He then stared hard at Anna, wiping his lips with his napkin and tossing it down.
‘You want to know why I am telling you all this?’
She nodded, pushing her food aside.
‘Anna, you are bringing in how many fucking links and suspects? You’ve got a board that looks like the train timetable at Euston station, with links and arrows and possible connections. You’ve got homosexual contacts from magazines; you’ve got a whole slew of suspects connected to drugs in Cornwall. You keep opening up avenues of probable suspicions when what you have is a bloodbath at that flat Alan Rawlins lived in. You’ve got no body, you’ve got evidence that another male slept in that same bed where you believe the murder took place, a victim you have yet to even bloody identify.’
‘I am aware of that,’ she said stiffly.
‘You can’t keep chasing all these probable connections. You have to get to grips with this Tina Brooks woman. She’s lived with him, but she only admitted he was missing after his father reported it. She could have disposed of the body with help maybe, so I’ll give you that, but the whole reason I am talking to you is because I think you have started to open up a can of worms that may wriggle and look suspicious, but you haven’t hit close to home. It doesn’t matter if Alan Rawlins led a double life, that he was homosexual with a nasty streak to him. The basic facts are that someone was brutally murdered in that flat. Tina has to be your prime suspect and all this surfing stuff, this drug dealer Sammy Marsh, is making the enquiry look like a trainwreck.’
‘I don’t know if it was Alan Rawlins who was murdered in that flat.’
‘But
