‘I’ll ask you again: would you recognize him again, if you saw him?’
McDowell puffed out his cheeks. ‘It would depend.’
‘Depend on what?’
‘Well, you’ve got to find him first. After that, I don’t know.’
Barolli signalled to Anna in the waiting area. ‘They got a result; they’re up on the next floor.’
Anna grabbed her briefcase and followed Barolli. Eagerly she caught up with him and then overtook him, heading up the stairs through the swinging door into the laboratory.
Towards the end of the lab, amidst rows of high-powered magnifying equipment, two scientists stood side by side, looking at their light boxes, on which sections of a single strand of hair were displayed.
‘You have a result?’ Barolli asked nervously.
The younger of the white-coated men pointed a thin marker at the first light box. ‘This is the hair from the Mercedes. We sliced it into four sections. Though one sample was lost, fortunately we retained three sections.’
He moved to the second light box. ‘This is the single hair taken from the victim, Melissa Stephens; here we have a seventy-five per cent match.’
‘Seventy-five,’ murmured Barolli.
‘The hair follicle was weak. But the DNA match proves without doubt that the hair taken from the car seat of the Mercedes came from Melissa Stephens.’
Anna could feel her legs shaking. She looked at Barolli, moved.
‘Brilliant,’ he said.
Langton was so fed up with McDowell that he called it quits for the day. As Lewis and he were discussing whether to put Daniels in a line-up, Moira picked up the phone. She stood up from her desk and looked to Langton with some emotion. ‘The labs have finished their tests of the hair.’
Langton stiffened, expecting the worst.
‘It’s a match. It belonged to Melissa Stephens.’ Their eyes met. As soon as she had spoken the words, she put her hand over her mouth. He gave a brief, meaningful smile, then turned to Lewis. ‘Get the warrant ready.’ Then the roller coaster started.
Tension built throughout the afternoon. Everyone was waiting to hear when they would pick up Daniels, but Langton tried to remain calm, one eye on the clock. It was late. If he arrested Daniels now, an all-night session would not even get started, as he was certain his solicitor would demand sight of statements. With a case of such magnitude, Langton would refuse, but he would have to indicate what areas of questioning would be forthcoming.
When Barolli banged into the toilets, Langton was standing at the basin splashing cold water on his face.
‘Put it there,’ said Barolli, with his hand outstretched.
Langton slapped his hand.
‘How did you go with McDowell?’ Barolli perched on the counter.
Langton straightened his tie, explaining about McDowell’s so-called foreigner possibly being Daniels. ‘We might think about getting Daniels into an ID parade.’
While Barolli used the urinal, Langton washed his hands.
‘I want Travis to be on the arrest.’ He was avoiding Barolli’s sour look, not wanting to be drawn into an argument.
Barolli, not liking it, muttered, ‘OK.’
‘If anyone deserves to see the bastard cornered, she does.’
‘Right.’
‘Give her a break. She’s given us a hell of a lot.’
‘Good.’
Barolli almost collided with Lewis as he walked out. Langton followed him out and held eye contact with Lewis until the door had shut behind him.
‘Well?’ asked Langton.
‘Last night, I went round to talk to the kids that rent out Daniels’s basement and?’
‘You got a result?’
Lewis took a deep breath, slowly releasing it. ‘Yes. We’ve got him, Mike. We’ve bloody got him.’
When Anna walked into the office to present Langton with her latest report, he startled her by asking, ‘You want to be on the arrest?’
She chewed her lips and nodded.
‘Good. We’ll pick him up at dawn.’
‘Dawn?’ she repeated.
‘Yes. Go home and get some sleep. It’ll be one hell of a long day tomorrow.’
She was packing up when Barolli passed her desk.
‘I hear you’re on the arrest?’
‘Yes. He just told me,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t, uh …’
She was aware that the pecking order decreed it should be Barolli and not her, but he winked.
‘You deserve it. You won’t ever forget your first murder. A word of advice? Watch his eyes. They’re always the giveaway for fear.’ He indicated the noticeboard, their victims’ faces lined up in rows. Anna thought their dark, dead eyes looked different now, somehow.
‘They’re smiling,’ Barolli whispered, before he walked away.
Chapter Twenty
Anna was unlocking the front door when her neighbour appeared, carrying a bouquet of two dozen red roses. Taking them, Anna thanked her and once inside the flat, tore open the note. Happily she read the words: ‘Thank you for breakfast. Love, James’.
After she had undressed for bed, she huddled beneath the duvet, holding tightly to a pillow that still smelled of him. Though she doubted she would be able to sleep, sleep she did and so soundly that when the alarm went at four o’clock, she woke to find her bedside light still on.
It was the day they had all been working toward and she found it hard to keep calm. She showered and washed her hair, then dressed carefully in her new suit and blouse, with smart black shoes. As she scrutinized her appearance in the dressing-table mirror, the adrenalin started pumping again and she couldn’t wait to get to the incident room.
At the station, the same feeling was prevalent. She saw that everyone had made more of an effort than usual with their appearance.
While Langton, Anna and Lewis and a uniformed driver took one car, a second car followed with two uniformed officers inside. They headed down Kensington High Street, then turned right into Queen’s Gate. Langton used the radio mike to contact the patrol car behind.
‘OK, let him know we’re coming.’
Then he sat back and, with a quick look at the others, switched on the flashing blue fight. Sirens started wailing from their back-up vehicle and the two patrol cars now sped down Queen’s Gate. As they double-parked beside the residents’ parking bays outside Daniels’s house with the blue lights still flashing and the sirens still wailing, passers-by gathered to watch.
‘Still inside?’ he checked with the surveillance car.
‘Affirmative,’ came the response.
Langton gave the surveillance officers across the street the all clear and they moved out to return to base. Anna noticed a plain patrol car entering the road from the mews behind Daniels’s house.
The two back-up officers stood on the pavement by their cars.
Flanked by Anna and Lewis, Langton moved up the steps to the front door.
