‘Enthusiasm is terrific, Paul, but in future wait. All right, how much was the property sold for?’
‘Four hundred and fifty grand cash, plus an extra fifty K for renovation work.’
‘Lot of money. Will you now concentrate on the Tech Support information? I want everyone up to speed on it for a briefing later this morning. Also, wait a minute.’
Anna reached for a file and thumbed through it.
‘It’s a report made by Helen. This was to do with me wanting to get the dates when Tina Brooks went on the hairdressing competition forays.’ Anna skimmed down the page and looked up. ‘Okay, this is it. She spoke to Donna because she said Tina had gone out to make a call. Did she mean out of the salon? We’ve so far not been able to make any connection between Tina and anyone else she could be involved with, which for me would be the neighbour Michael Phillips. Can you ask her to re-check with Donna exactly what she meant?’
‘Yep. Anything else?’
‘No, thank you.’
Paul immediately went to talk to Helen. She had not given it much thought and shrugged, saying that Donna probably meant that Tina had simply gone out of the salon, but she would double-check.
Helen then nodded over to Anna’s office. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Bloody hell!’ Brian Stanley blurted out. ‘Any of you up to speed on what the Tech Support got off Alan Rawlins’s hard drive? Fifty-eight homosexual contact websites, and I’m only on page three . . . The guy was into some sex toys, I can tell you. Have you read it yet, Paul?’
Paul glanced in Brian’s direction and returned to his desk.
‘Not as yet,’ he replied coolly, ‘and the Gov says no contact is to be made with the property in Cornwall. She wants to keep the element of surprise, so maybe you should get back onto the estate agents to ask them not to make any approach to whoever is living there.’
‘Does she think it could be Alan Rawlins?’
‘I dunno. But I think we are up for a trip to Cornwall.’
Unseen by any one of them, Langton was standing in the entrance to the incident room listening to their conversation. As he approached the team, Helen quickly put in a call to Anna and then asked if Langton wanted a coffee as DCI Travis was expecting him.
‘Yes, and a bacon toasted sandwich, no tomatoes.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Helen hurried out as Langton made his way to Anna’s office. She was ready and waiting standing beside her desk. He didn’t knock, but walked straight in.
‘Good morning,’ she said brightly.
‘Morning. Your team reckon it’s seaside-time. I overheard that you still want to go to Cornwall.’
‘I think it might be necessary.’ Anna went and sat behind her desk.
‘So you’ve not discussed with them what we talked about last night?’
‘Not yet, no. I wanted to talk to you first.’
He sat down in front of her desk and gave an open-handed gesture. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
‘Let’s just wait for coffee to be brought in so we won’t get disturbed. It’s been quite a busy morning already as we received the tech report from the hard drive off Alan Rawlins’s computer. Makes very interesting reading.’
‘Don’t tell me it throws up yet more suspects to be interviewed?’
‘I think his father attempted to delete a lot of the files, but they were able to retrieve them.’
Helen tapped and carried in a tray of coffee and the toasted sandwich, which she placed on the table between Langton and Anna.
‘Did you call the hair salon?’ Anna asked.
‘I did, but Donna isn’t in until eleven.’
Helen left as Anna passed over his toasted sandwich.
‘Not had breakfast?’ she asked.
‘Nope. What about you?’ He took a bite and cocked his head to one side. ‘You look very pretty. You’ve done something to your hair.’
‘Washed it.’ She picked up her coffee and sipped.
Langton said nothing as he finished his sandwich, eating at his usual rate of knots.
‘About last night,’ Anna said tentatively.
‘Yes?’
‘I do not agree with you regarding the way I have been handling this investigation. For one, you brought up the case my father advised you on because you had tunnel vision and followed the wrong line of enquiry. He told you to focus the investigation and interview all known previous contacts of your victim; the culprit, in his estimation, was close to home and probably her ex-boyfriend. Which proved to be correct.’
Langton nodded, wondering where she was going with her carefully chosen words. She was very tense – he could feel it.
‘I think you brought up this old case you worked on because you believe that I am going in the wrong direction by widening the trace and interview of Rawlins’s contacts to such a degree that it is removing suspicion from Tina Brooks, who
‘Correct.’
‘In your case, James, you had a body. I don’t. I have blood pooling and we have been unable to get a positive DNA result so my victim remains unidentified. As far as I can ascertain, the only similarities with your case were that your victim went from being a nice young woman with a small child to you uncovering that she did have quite a voracious sexual appetite. So she led a somewhat double life, changing sexual partners frequently.’
She sipped her coffee. He stared at her, refusing to interrupt, but becoming irritated by her appraisal of his old case.
‘My investigation is only similar in that one aspect. To all intent and purpose, when we first looked at Alan Rawlins as a missing person, no one had a bad word to say against him. He was a handsome, dedicated, hardworking and caring man. He was consistently described as shy, introverted and a man who loathed confrontation of any kind. It appeared that this gentle, decent and respected man had no enemies and it was possible that his girlfriend, Tina Brooks, had killed him in some kind of rage. The blood distribution was so extensive that even without a body, it was deemed by forensic experts unlikely that anyone could have survived the attack. It is also suspected by Forensics that the victim was dismembered, and again this is supported by the blood spattering and various blood samples taken from the victim’s bathroom.’
Langton sighed and crossed his legs.
‘I’m sorry to take so much time, but I think this all needs to be said because you implied that I was not managing the investigation, but allowing it to spiral out of control.’
‘Correct,’ he said. To make even more of a point he glanced at his watch.
‘I have subsequently discovered that my possible victim, Alan Rawlins, led a double life. He was a liar, he was also homosexual and favoured what can only be described as sado-masochistic one-night stands from men he contacted through the internet or erotic male magazines. He was able to continue this double life by leaving London whenever the opportunity arose to spend time in Cornwall. He was very athletic and an experienced surfer. We now have information that he also accumulated a considerable amount of money, cash payments for vintage cars he customised and sold. We believe he has purchased, for cash and using the name of his old schoolfriend, a sea view property in Cornwall worth over half a million. He also used schoolfriends’ names when he paid for sex. He was able to hide this double life from his girlfriend also. She believed they were to be married, they had a joint bank account for seventy thousand pounds and he had only a small life-insurance policy for fifty thousand. Alan Rawlins lied to Tina Brooks, who had no knowledge of his homosexuality nor that he had substantial cash savings.’
Langton looked on with surprise as Anna opened her desk drawer and took out a packet of cigarettes; she opened it, but then before taking one out she tossed the pack down. He had never seen her smoke. In fact, he didn’t even know that she did.
‘From the files on his computer we have learned that Alan Rawlins was also making more money, again in cash, and he was also paying out large chunks of money whilst living in Cornwall. These are in payments of five to ten thousand pounds and on a regular basis. I think that he was possibly involved in dealing in drugs and the purchase of the house and other cash transactions are a means of laundering the money.’
