“Any updates on this Rodent character that the pilot put up?” he asked them.
Wendy shook her head regretfully. “Afraid not, guv,” she said. “I was certain he would be in the system, but he isn’t, so whoever he is, he hasn’t got any form and he hasn’t come to the attention of the locals.”
“That’s a bit of a bummer,” Tyler said. “I was really hoping something would come up regarding him.”
“Me too,” Wendy confessed. “I feel like I’ve let you down.”
“Don’t be daft,” Dean said, looking up. “We can only mine the databases for what’s in them. If he isn’t there, we can’t do anything.”
“Dean’s right,” Jack said. “We can only do what we can do.”
◆◆◆
Dick Jarvis and Paul Evans had driven down to Vicarage Lane, E15 to keep an eye on the squat where Angela resided.
In order not to stand out, they had been forced to park in Byford Close, which was so far away from the address that it was nigh impossible to recognise any individuals entering or leaving, even using binoculars.
“Well, this is a complete waste of time,” Evans moaned. He had the car radio tuned into talkSPORT and was currently listening to a bitter dispute between a couple of Arsenal and Spurs fans who were at loggerheads over who the history books would see as the rightful kings of North London.
“Anyone could go into that place and we would be none the wiser,” he pointed out.
“I think Steve just wanted us to get a feel for how much movement there was,” Jarvis said, trying to remain positive. “Besides, if we hadn’t been sent here, we might’ve been lumbered with something far worse.”
“True,” Evans allowed, “but you’ve got to admit, this is so boring.”
“What’s boring is that rubbish you’re listening to,” Jarvis said, pantomiming a yawn.
“You think football’s boring?” the Welshman eyed him as if he had suddenly sprouted a second head.
Jarvis shrugged. “Prefer cricket myself.”
“At least tell me you like rugby,” Evans pleaded after a moment’s reflection.
Jarvis turned his nose up. “Not really.”
“Bloody heretic, you are,” Evans said, shaking his head in dismay. “How can you not like rugby?”
“I don’t dislike it,” Jarvis explained. “It just doesn’t do anything for me.”
Evans didn’t know what to say. Growing up in the valleys, he didn’t think he’d ever met anyone who didn’t like rugby before; it wasn’t normal. “You’re not - you know…”, he flapped his wrist effeminately, “…batting for the other side, are you?”
Jarvis rolled his eyes in exasperation. “No,” he said with studied patience. “And what’s not liking rugby got to do with my sexual persuasion anyway? For your information, Mr Neanderthal, I have a gay friend who loves football and rugby and is bloody good at both, so don’t be so closed-minded.”
Evans blushed. “Well, I…”
“I like boxing too,” Jarvis added as an afterthought.
Just then, a figure appeared at the top of the road, walking straight for the target address.
“Here we go, posh boy,” Evans said, nudging his colleague’s arm.
Jarvis raised the binoculars to his eyes and twiddled the focus. “This is NOT easy,” he complained as the figure moved in and out of sharpness. “Right, we’ve got an IC3 female, slim, wearing a green Parker with the hood up. Can’t make out her face yet.”
Evans was writing the time of the sighting and the woman’s description down in the log.
The woman stopped outside the street door and banged on it with her fist.
“Whoever she is, she doesn’t have a key, so unlikely to be our girl,” Jarvis said, sounding disappointed.
The door opened inward and the caller’s face was suddenly bathed in bright light. At that exact moment, she pulled down her hood and shook her hair loose. To Jarvis’s shock, the woman had a deep scar running down the right side of her face. He gripped the binos tighter, virtually screwing them into his eye sockets in order to get a better view. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed, astonished. “You’re not going to believe this, but I think that’s Angela Marley.”
Evans snatched the binoculars from his hand. “What? Are you sure?” he gasped, trying to adjust the focus. “Gordon Bennett!” he said a moment later, “I think you’re right.”
Handing the binoculars back to Jarvis, he pulled an A4 sheet of paper from his daybook and stared at the image on it. “It’s her,” he said with confidence. “We need to phone this in.”
Chapter 22
Jack Tyler was back in the CCTV viewing room talking to Darren Blyth about CCTV from the area where the HEMS bird had been forced to put down. He knew it had been collected but he wanted to know if any of it had been viewed yet.
“Afraid not, gov’nor,” Blyth said in his deep Mancunian voice. “Bearing in mind the murder only occurred yesterday, Mr Quinlan wanted me to focus on the hospital stuff today so that the interview team could show it to that toe-rag, Mullings.”
Jack thought that he sounded overly defensive, “I accept that,” he said, trying not to lose his temper, “but someone else could and should have been tasked to start checking the Canning Town footage for the Red Rover’s index while you were sorting out the hospital stuff.”
“But I’m the CCTV officer,” Blyth protested. “That’s my job.”
Jack knew he could be a hard taskmaster; when a new job broke, he invariably wanted everything done at warp speed. His team was used to the way he worked, and they understood that the first few days of any new case with him at the helm were going to be gruelling, but they didn’t mind because Jack Tyler got results, and he tended to get them quickly. Andy Quinlan seemed to have a very different work ethic, and that reflected in the way his team worked.
“Okay, leave it with me,” Tyler said
