suffocating and asking the same question three or four times was driving him to distraction.
McDowell admitted he was an acquaintance of the three victims whose handbags had been found in his basement flat, though he insisted he did not place them there. When he learned the women were dead, he shouted, ‘I haven’t seen none of them for fucking years and that’s the God’s honest truth. I dunno what you are trying to make me say, but I never killed any of these slags. But I would have done, if I’d got my hands on that bitch Kathleen Keegan. She should have been hung, drawn and quartered; she was a disgusting woman. Used her own kids. She used Duffy’s boy.’
‘Are you referring to Anthony Duffy?’
‘Yeah, she used him.’
‘Are you saying she was procuring children for someone?’
‘For herself; for anyone. She sold her kids, one only four years old. And she was forever making that boy do stuff.’
‘Anthony Duffy?’
McDowell sighed with impatience,
‘Yes, yes. I just said so, didn’t I?’
‘And you are sure that Lilian Duffy let her use her own son?”
‘Yes, YES, Lilian’s kid. Don’t you listen? Why don’t you check on the Social Service register and stop wasting my fucking time? They was always taking him away.’
As the evidence stacked up against McDowell, he became more and more angry. His solicitor had to tell him constantly to keep seated.
‘I’m being set up for something here. Now I admit to the drugs; I admit to having them, but not this fucking stuff? these handbags and gear. I never seen any of these women in ten years or more.’
‘Can you explain why they were in your flat?’ Langton asked, forcing himself to be controlled, his voice quieter.
‘No! I bloody can’t tell you anything about them. My place has been broken into Christ knows how many times.’
‘Did you report it?’
‘Fuck off, course I didn’t. I’m only crashing down there myself. I’m hardly ever there.’
‘Where do you go, if you’re not at home?’
‘I sleep in me car. But the fuckers towed it away.’
‘Do you go to London?’
‘Sometimes, yeah.’
‘So, having denied you ever went to London, now you admit that you did.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you recently, or in the past few years, been to the United States?’
‘Never been.’
Langton put the photograph of Melissa Stephens in front of McDowell but he claimed not to know her. Desperate for a result, Langton then displayed the pillowslip full of women’s underwear taken from McDowell’s room. It was only then that the big man cracked. He sobbed that the underwear belonged to Beryl Villiers. He had kept it because he loved her.
McDowell’s solicitor requested they break for lunch.
While the interview progressed, a forensic team was stripping down McDowell’s squalid basement flat. By eleven o’clock they had not discovered any other handbags or female belongings.
Langton met up with the head of the Manchester forensic team. They turned their attention to his Mercedes. The engine was a wreck and there was so much rust under the bonnet that the car was a hazard. It had no MOT, no insurance, no tax. Two rugs were being tested. In the boot, they found some of McDowell’s clothes; these were also being examined.
The tests to determine how long the handbags might have been there had not been completed. They were so mouldy that they could have been hidden away for years. Or had they been brought in from some other place? Langton sighed; could someone have planted the evidence? It was a possibility. The handbags had been found outside McDowell’s own padlocked room. Vagrants and junkies had easy access to the common areas of the basement.
McDowell was charged with drug-dealing, possession of narcotics and, at half past four, with the murders of three of their victims. Langton decided to remove McDowell from custody of the Manchester Police and have him transported to Wandsworth Prison in London for further questioning.
Tired out, Langton and Lewis caught the six o’clock train back to the capital. In the dining car they ate dried-out hamburgers and had a couple of been. Their result had come with so many loopholes it didn’t bear thinking about. However, it did show they had made some progress. For a while at least, it would take the heat off them.
A press release was issued to confirm that they were holding a man for questioning.
The incident room had significant new information for Langton on his return. The local Brighton press release had brought a result: Yvonne Barber, their ‘deep throat’ witness, had been seen drinking in various bars within the Brighton Lanes, then outside a disco, close to the sea front. A woman recalled seeing their witness walk past her with a youngish man. She had been shouting and laughing drunkenly.
A description of a man in his early twenties with crew-cut hair, wearing jeans and a leather bomber jacket, was circulated. Since this fitted neither Alan Daniels’s nor McDowell’s description, it was surmised that the murder of Yvonne was not connected to the ongoing case; it was just a sad coincidence.
Anna did not sign in until midday. When Barolli had a go at her, saying that the gov’s absence was no reason to take liberties, she replied, uptight, that she was actually working. However, she had lost his attention by then, since he was on the phone to Manchester. Anna typed up her report of the morning at the breakers’ yard. She put in two calls to Croydon; there was a fault on their line.
In the meantime Barolli was on the phone to Langton about whether to pull off the night-time watchdog on Travis. To his surprise, Langton said it should stay on her until he returned. Likewise, the phone tap should remain in place.
‘We’re not home and dry with this one yet.’
‘So Daniels is still in the frame?’ Barolli asked.
‘Maybe. Anything come in from the prints?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Talk later.’
Langton hung up.
‘Travis?’ When Barolli turned to speak to Anna, he found himself addressing an empty desk. ‘Where’s Travis?’
‘She just left,’ Moira said.
Barolli spread his arms. ‘What the hell does she think she’s doing?’ He crossed to Anna’s desk and picked up the folder that lay there. ‘Where’s she gone?’
‘She didn’t say.’ Moira returned to her work. Barolli grunted and perused Anna’s half-completed report. Then, irritated, he checked the filing cabinet and dug out the officers’ report on the breakers’ yard.
Hudson’s Motors was behind a warehouse, in a small mews made up of garages. Cars were lined up everywhere; a few mechanics were working on various sports cars. Anna approached a boy in a stained overall. ‘Is there an office for Hudson’s Motors?’
‘Last one along, right at the end.’ His head disappeared back under the bonnet of a Bentley Continental.
The only occupant of the office was a man dressed in a blazer, grey slacks and a striped shirt, sitting at his computer. When Anna tapped on the open glass door, he turned around.
‘Mr Hudson?’
He smiled. ‘He died ten years ago. I’m Martin Fuller. How can I help you?’
When she showed her ID, he reacted with surprise.
‘Do you know you have a fault on your phone?’ she asked, as he quickly gestured for her to sit down.
‘Tell me about it. My computer cut out this morning as well.’
She opened her briefcase. ‘You bought some items from Wreckers Limited in Watford.’ She took out her
