The first workers left, the sybarites returned.
Heather came round and poured two cups of stewed coffee from a flask.
'What do we do?' she asked.
'We wait,' he said. 'There is nothing more we can do.'
His phone rang. Andy Drinkwater.
'You're up early,' Foster said.
'I never went to bed. Big development last night.
About three it came through that they'd found a knife similar to the one that may have stabbed two of the three vies in Terry Cable's garden, beneath the rosebushes or something. It's with forensics now.'
For a second, Foster was speechless. 'That's bullshit,' he blurted out.
'What do you mean? I'm only telling you what I know.'
'I know, Andy,' Foster said. 'It's just that I'll bet you all the blow in Amsterdam that the knife they found did not stab James Darbyshire or Nella Perry.
And if it did, then it was planted in the garden to fit him up.'
'Everyone here thinks it's a breakthrough,' Drink water muttered. 'No sign of any action your end?'
'None,' Foster grunted. He knew that every minute that passed without a fourth victim would harden Harris and his cronies' conviction that the right man was in custody. He ended the call, still shaking his head in disbelief.
'What's up with you?' Heather asked.
'The past does repeat itself.'
'That's a bit cryptic. What you on about?'
'In 1879, as you know, there was a series of murders in Kensington. The newspapers went ballistic, the natives got restless and the cops panicked; they arrested a guy to stop bucket after bucket of shit being tipped over their heads. Then they realized they'd better get a case against the man they'd chosen to be their suspect. So, lo and behold, a knife turns up in his lodgings.'
'You've told me all of this.'
'Yes, but what I haven't told you is that, lo and behold, a knife has turned up in Terry Cable's garden, just when the press were beginning to get a bit restless about the lack of any charges.'
He could see Heather take this in. Ready to play devil's advocate.
'Have you considered the idea he might actually be guilty?'
'Considered it. Dismissed it. Come on, Heather, you can see what's happening here as clearly as I can.
They're so desperate they've convinced themselves that he's guilty. It doesn't follow that, because he's the only suspect, he's the right suspect. No one has given me any indication of a possible motive.'
'What about the GHB?'
'That's coincidence: detail, not motive. Why did he kill these people? Why did he remove parts of their body? Why did he leave them in those exact same places on those exact same days? They have no answers to those questions. We know why -- the killer's following a pattern. And because of what happened during and after the trial in 1879, we may even know the motive.'
'So they have a suspect and no motive; you have a motive and no suspect.'
'I know in which position I'd rather be,' he muttered.
'You hope we find a body, don't you?' Heather said, turning to face him, a smile on the corner of her lips. 'Proves you right if we do.'
'No,' he maintained. 'I think we'll find a body different from wanting to. And we might find the killer. But we would have had a damn sight better chance if we had more manpower and if everyone had not been scattered to the four winds trying to fit up some sleazeball to deter a shitstorm in the press.'
His gaze returned to the tower block. Inside, the lights were coming back on.
Noon came. Foster was still there, spent by lack of sleep. He was beginning to doubt whether it was worth it. Cable seemed certain to be charged; a fourth body had not turned up, after all. Had he been wrong?
Heather might have been right: Cable could be their man. He shook his head to clear it. However blurred his thinking had become, he still refused to accept Cable's guilt. Of course, if Barnes called and told him that Terry Cable was a descendant of Eke Fairbairn, that would change everything; until then he would not move.
He had sent Heather home to grab a couple of hours' sleep. She was reluctant, but he needed someone with energy at his side when the names came through from Barnes. He sat there, window open, a cool breeze helping keep him awake, blowing in more sounds from the street. For the past half-hour loud music had been blaring from a window high up in the tower block, indistinguishable white noise save for the thump of a bass and what sounded like handclaps.
There was something familiar about it, Foster thought, but from a hundred feet below it was impossible to assign any tune to the rhythm. Whoever lived in the flat obviously loved the song because each time it ended, it would start again.
His arm was out of the window, absent-mindedly tapping on the car door, beating time along with the percussion and bass. After a few repeat hearings he thought he'd found the rhythm, and it was possible to make out the melody carried by the singer. Foster started to whistle a tune. A disco song, he was sure.
Not his favourite genre; he was more a loud guitar and sneering, disenchanted vocals man, but there were a few disco tunes he'd admit to liking. What was this one, though? It was bugging him so much he felt like climbing out of his car, jumping in the lift and asking whoever was playing it to death.
Each time the rhythm changed to indicate the chorus, he started to whistle the hook. The singers were a group of women, though a hazy recollection suggested there might have been a bloke with them.
It rhymed with 'boots', the only word of the chorus he remembered. Then it came: 'Going Back To My Roots', by Odyssey. Got it, he thought, content to have scratched that itch.
Then he stopped, sitting forwards, as if an ice cube had been put down his back.
He sprang from the car, jogged to the tower-block entrance, through the doors and punched the lift button. It clanked into action, but he couldn't stand the wait. He took the stairs, striding up two at a time, adrenalin overriding fatigue. By the time he reached the tenth floor he could feel his heart pumping in his ears. Through a door he reached a dim corridor, lit only by grubby windows at each end. There was no need for him to follow the numbers on the door; he could follow the noise. As he strode down the corridor it got louder and louder, more and more distorted.
A straw-haired woman in a worn red dressing gown over jeans and a T-shirt, her face creased by smoking, stepped out of her door into the corridor.
She saw Foster, clocking his suit.
'Are you here about whoever's making that bloody noise?'
'Who lives there?'
She shrugged. 'Bert died six weeks ago. I thought it had been empty since. Council's probably given it to some fucking kids who're gonna make my life a misery.'
'Go back inside,' Foster said. 'I'll sort it out.'
'You better,' she said and disappeared, though Foster noticed she left the door slightly ajar.
He stopped at number 65; the bass was making the door hinges rattle, as if they might blow. He knocked loudly. No response. He tried once more.
No answer again.
He took a step back, lifted his foot and crashed his heel against the door. It failed to budge, but he sensed another attempt might break the lock. It didn't, but on his third kick he heard a splinter, and with his fourth attempt it flew open.
He walked in to be faced with three doors. The noise was coming from the one in front of him. He opened it and was almost floored by the wall of sound. In the middle of the room on the floor was a small, round chrome CD clock radio. The LCD
display showed 12.15. Save for the clock, the room was unadorned. A grubby net curtain barely covered the window, through which he could see the outline of central London. He made for the stereo and, covering his hand with the sleeve of his shirt, he bumped the off switch. At last, silence.
Now that one of his senses had been restored, he looked around. The place stank. The flocked white wallpaper was stained and grey, bearing the shadows of old furniture. To one side was a kitchen. He walked in;
