Flushed to the roots of her hair, Anna left swiftly.
Outside the house, she found Lewis and Barolli had already gone.
She climbed in the back of the patrol car, waiting for Langton with some trepidation. As Langton exited from the house, she saw Daniels appear at the ground-floor window for a moment, then disappear. Langton opened the front passenger door, got in and then slammed it so hard, the car rocked.
‘What the fuck was that about?’ He spun around to confront Anna.
‘What, exactly?’ she stammered.
As the car moved off, Langton’s face remained taut with anger. ‘You were supposed to be searching his fucking room, Travis. I walk in there: you are standing with his arm around you. I felt like I was intruding. And allowing him to kiss your hand? What the fuck do you think you were doing?’
She swallowed.
‘What the fuck was going on? I have never seen anything so fucking unprofessional.’
‘If you would just calm down and stop swearing at me, I can tell you.’
He glared at her. ‘Asking you out on a date, was he?’
‘No! He was talking about his childhood. He’d opened up. And then, just before you came into the room, he wanted to show me a picture.’
‘What kind of picture, Travis?’
‘Similar to the ones his foster mother showed us: a black and white snapshot. And opposite it, a recent one.’
‘Really? And what do you deduce from that?’ he snapped.
‘He said that one lived inside the other. He also talked about his fear of losing all he had gained. I suspect he fears becoming that wretched child again.’
Langton groaned. ‘Well, that’s fucking brilliant psychology, Travis. I’m glad you compromised your dignity for that nugget of wisdom. He didn’t identify the wretched child as the real serial killer by any chance, did he?’
Sullen, she did not reply.
Several minutes later, Langton turned back to her, more calmly. ‘We found his dental X-rays. So he lied about them being lost.’
She stared out of the window wordlessly. She decided not to say what she thought, which was that Daniels’s compulsive neatness would, in her opinion, mean he knew exactly where everything was. If they were in any way defamatory, he would have destroyed them.
Langton unbent a little more. ‘So, after your tete-a-tete with Anthony Duffy — what do you think?’
She took a big intake of breath. ‘He has too much to lose. I don’t think he would jeopardize the life he has now.’
There was a pause.
‘So, in your humble opinion, is he our man or not?’
‘No, I don’t think he is.’ She leaned slightly forwards. ‘What about you?’
‘I’d like his wardrobe.’ He smiled ruefully.
‘That’s not a proper answer.’ She managed a half grin.
‘It’s all you’re going to get,’ he said. Langton knew they might have come up empty-handed and it hurt.
Peace had been restored between them.
Chapter Ten
Anna was at her desk by nine o’clock the next morning, when Lewis and Barolli strolled out of Langton’s office. Lewis gave her a lewd wink and whispered, ‘Heard he almost got into your pants!’
‘What?’ she hissed.
‘Just a joke, all right?’ Lewis grinned. Suddenly his mobile phone rang and he went into a flap, trying to get it out of his pocket. He listened, then he grabbed his coat, yelling, ‘It’s coming! The baby’s coming!’ and legged it fast out of the incident room, followed by hooting and cheering.
When the noise had died down, Moira looked at Anna. ‘Come on. You can tell me. What happened between you and Alan Daniels?’
‘Christ!’ Anna pushed back her chair in a temper and stomped off to the filing cabinet where Barolli was sifting through the photographs from Daniels’s flat.
Jean called out to him: ‘Hear he’s got a great place.’
Barolli nodded. ‘It was a palace. Course, I didn’t get to see the master bedroom. Travis checked that herself. Right, Travis?’
Anna slammed the filing cabinet drawer closed. ‘What is it with you lot?’
Moira told Anna to ignore them, they were just trying to lighten things up. Barolli grinned in response.
Langton walked in, his raincoat drenched and his umbrella dripping. ‘It’s pissing down,’ he said, unbuttoning his raincoat. Taking some pages from inside his breast pocket, he passed them to the nearest officer. ‘Report says the X-rays are no good; bite won’t match the impressions. It wasn’t Daniels’s teeth that bit Melissa.’
‘We get anything from his laptop?’ Barolli asked.
Langton shook his head. He looked crumpled and badly in need of a shave. Anna noticed he was still wearing the same shirt from the night before.
‘Where’s Lewis?’ he asked.
‘His baby is on the way,’ Jean said, smiling.
‘That’s good.’
Langton walked into his office, the dripping umbrella leaving a trail of water after him and closed the door.
‘Eh, Travis. Come and have a look at this, will you?’
Barolli was holding a magnifying glass. She crossed to Barolli’s desk and bent down to look at the photograph.
‘Is that Julia Roberts he’s got with him?’
Anna turned away. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Jean replaced the phone and announced the commander and the chief superintendent were on their way in. She hurried to Barolli’s desk and took the magnifying glass.
‘No! That’s nobody. It doesn’t even look like Julia Roberts. He’s got a great body, though, hasn’t he? Is he coming in again, Anna?’
Anna switched on her computer and said tersely, ‘I wouldn’t know, Jean.’
‘But do you know, is he or isn’t he a suspect now?’
Anna started typing furiously as Langton put his head around the door. ‘Jean, can you check out the cost of a flight to San Francisco? And internal flights to Chicago and Los Angeles.’
‘Yes, gov. Hotels, as well?’
Langton gave a brief nod before retreating.
Jean started to log on to the internet. As she checked for the airlines, she glanced across to Moira.
‘Be a nice little trip for someone. He won’t go alone.’
‘Not me, I hate flying,’ Barolli said, replacing the photographs into their envelope.
‘Could I see those?’ Anna put her hand out. Barolli, at his desk, tossed the packet across to her.
Suddenly everyone froze. The big brass had just entered the incident room. The commander, two members of the Gold Group and their chief gave frosty nods and muttered a few good mornings on their way towards Langton’s office. Jean grabbed her phone, then replaced it.
‘Shit. I forgot to tell him they were coming in. I’ll get a bollocking.’
The team went quiet as the blinds that covered the window looking into the incident room were drawn down.
‘I think that’s his American trip out the window,’ Moira said quietly.
Barolli took a deep breath. ‘Tenner on it; they’re scaling us down.’
