Lewis persisted. ‘Looks like the same bloke to me, way he tied her hands.’
Barolli chipped in. ‘I agree.’ Anna noticed he was still chewing gum. ‘They only found her last night. How did you call us here so fast? You get a tip-off?’
‘Heard the callout over the radio. Got here almost the same time as the SOCO lads.’
Lewis knew his gov wasn’t telling the truth, because he’d been with him at the station when he had received the tip-off. It was obvious he was protecting his source.
‘I’ve already had a run-in with DCI Hedges.’
Both detectives followed his gaze to the blond man getting coffee at Teapot One. Feeling their scrutiny, the man glanced their way before returning to his mug of coffee.
Anna wanted to say something, but felt too wretched even to attempt to string a sentence together. They drove towards the station. Queen’s Park was a good distance from Clapham Common. The police station local to the murder site would automatically be setting up their own incident room.
Anna had never been to the Queen’s Park station, so she had no idea where she was going when she followed Mike Lewis up one flight of stairs towards the incident room. The station itself was old and rundown; the walls of the stone corridors were painted in lavatorial green, as were the stone stairwells. The second floor had worn lino on the floors and paint peeling from the ceiling and walls. Numerous offices led off to glass-panelled doors, interview rooms, filing sections. There was a sense that things were up in the air, with filing cabinets left at various intervals down the corridor. It was all confusing and bore no resemblance to the training manual, nor to workshops she’d been in at the college.
Barolli had disappeared to the toilet; she had no idea where Langton had gone.
‘You’re replacing Danny, aren’t you?’ Lewis panted as he reached the top of the flight of stairs.
‘I think so,’ she answered.
‘He got some kind of stomach bug. One minute he was fine, next buckled up in agony. I thought it was appendicitis, but it’s some intestinal bug. Did you know him?’ Now Lewis was barging down the narrow corridor.
‘No,’ she said, trying to keep up.
Lewis reached double doors at the end and banged them open. The doors swung back and Anna would have been clipped if he had not grabbed a door in time.
‘Sorry,’ he said absent-mindedly.
Anna had not anticipated the number of people she found working on a case where the body had only just been discovered. Eight desks were lined up, four to four on either side of the room. The desks were manned by male and female uniformed officers and two clerical workers. There were stacks of filing cabinets, overflowing files and masses of paperwork. Running along the length of one wall was a whiteboard covered in dates and names scribbled with felt-tip pen by various hands. Besides this was the unnerving display of numerous mortuary and life shots of the different women.
On one desk was a missing persons file. Anna opened it and found herself staring at a photograph of a stunning-looking young woman, Melissa Stephens — age seventeen, last seen in early February. There was a list including her eye colour, clothes she was last seen wearing and other details.
‘Has the victim from this morning been identified?’ she asked Mike Lewis. He was sitting on the edge of a desk, talking to one of the female officers.
‘Not yet,’ he replied over his shoulder, then went back to his conversation.
Anna moved along to the board to look at the other photographs. Side by side were six photographs of victims. Beneath them were descriptions, locations and ongoing enquiries. These women’s faces were hard and old compared to Melissa Stephens, with tough-eyed stares.
‘Are these all ongoing cases?’ she asked Lewis.
He did not hear her as he was talking to Barolli, who had just arrived.
Anna continued reading. Each of the victims had been raped and strangled and their bodies dumped in various local beauty spots: Richmond Park, Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath. All of them had their hands tied behind their backs and they had all been strangled with their own tights.
‘The victim this morning and all these victims ? are these ongoing cases? I mean, are they connected?’
Barolli came over to join her. ‘Hasn’t anyone filled you in on why the governor got us out of bed so early this morning?’
‘No. I was just called at seven to say I’d be joining Langton’s team. Nobody’s told me anything about the enquiry.’
‘You’re replacing Danny, aren’t you?’
‘Mike mentioned he was in hospital.’
Barolli indicated the victims’ photos. ‘This investigation has been going on for months; six months to be precise. Five of the cases are years old. Their cases were left on file, until the gov dug them up.’
‘Six months?’ she said, shocked.
‘Yeah.’ He jabbed the board. ‘This was our most recent victim and by the time she was found, she’d been dead over a year. We started grouping them together a few months back: they’ve got the same MO, as you can see.’
‘You mean it’s the same killer?’
‘We think so, though so far we’ve come up with fuck all. But if the stiff found this morning is connected, we might get some leads. There again, we might not and we won’t get the case. The gov is really wanting it as we’ll be bound to get more evidence with it being fresh.’
Then the swing doors banged open and all eyes turned towards Langton.
‘It’s Melissa. The dental records match.’ Langton moved further into the room, which fell silent. He looked haggard, his eyes sunken and his five o’clock shadow was now even darker. ‘They moved fast for us, but we’ll have to wait for any further results. I’m going over to the lab now. Until we get those details, I won’t know if I need to set up a strategy meeting with ACPO. Mike, you want to come with me?’
Feeling a bit like a schoolgirl, Anna raised her hand. ‘Could I come too, sir?’
Langton gave her a slow, studied stare. ‘You been to a post mortem before?’
‘Yes.’
‘You keel over on me and I’ll send you packing, understand?’ He pointed at Barolli. ‘You handle things for me here. Anything they get in, we need to know immediately. Start up a board.’
Barolli’s black stencil pen was in his hand as he looked at Melissa’s photograph. He made a note of the dental records on the board as identification, then he wrote Melissa Stephens in large letters, Victim 7, with a question mark.
Langton sat in the front seat of the car, head leaning on the headrest, his eyes closed. Anna wondered if he was asleep. She leaned back, intent on keeping her mouth shut. Finally, he spoke. ‘This will be a big media show. She’s young and she was beautiful. I’ve got to convince the commander in charge of Pan London Homicide to award me the case. What we’ve been working on isn’t exactly high profile — six old tarts, or old drippers as your dad used to call them, don’t warrant Crime Night specials or reconstructions — but if they give it to me, I’ll get the team I need and with the Holmes database to help, I’ll get a result.’ Anna nodded, still a little confused. ‘Thank you.’ Anna and Langton walked across the car park to the hospital. He knew exactly where he was going and walked fast, pushing doors vigorously without looking behind him, expecting her to make it through after him. Finally, they reached the mortuary, where Langton pointed to a door marked ‘Ladies’.
‘Gown up in there and then come straight through,’ he said.
Anna tied a mask around her head, slipped her feet into overshoes and then tied the green ribbons of her protective gown. She entered the morgue, shivering. It was freezing cold.
Though recently modernized, the morgue had retained its Victorian tiles, though the swill area and the steel tables and equipment were up to date. At one table a group of assistants cut away the filthy, torn clothes from the corpse of a junkie found that morning. The floor was white tiled and slippery. A second table was empty, being swilled down with a high-powered water jet. On the third table, or ‘slab’, lay their victim, covered by a green plastic sheet.
While his assistant listed the victim’s clothes, the pathologist, Dr Vernon Henson, spoke quietly to Langton. Anna watched as a black T-shirt and pink skirt were placed in an evidence bag for the forensic lab.
‘No underwear?’ Langton said quietly.
