Wendy had thought the woman like a crab, with her sideways glances down the road, trying to see what was going on.
‘She was a one, that Amelia Brice,’ the old lady had said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Her men friends, all the time.’
‘How many?’
‘All the time.’
‘Specifically.’
‘I saw her there once with a man on the doorstep; they were kissing.’
Wendy checked it out, found no verification, only that the mother of the dead woman had died five years before her daughter in a car accident in Greece, apparently drunk according to the police report.
Chapter 3
The pathologist, Graham Pickett, a tall, thin man in his late fifties, confirmed that the two women had died in the same manner. The amount of pressure applied to the neck, the securing of the plastic bag over the head, administered first to confuse and then to prevent screaming, had all the hallmarks of a professional. Isaac knew that whatever the motive, it was not minor.
The fact that the two women were almost certainly killed by the same person offered some clues as to who it was. The murders didn’t, nor the manner in which they were committed, but whoever it was, that person would have had to be able to move freely in upmarket Holland Park and in a council tower block in Notting Hill. An Anglo-Saxon, white male in a suit would have been out of place in the vicinity of Christine Devon’s residence and would have raised suspicion.
‘Why these two women?’ Isaac asked at the department meeting. It was early, six in the morning. Larry was still struggling to wake up, Bridget was wide awake, as was Wendy. Isaac was the senior investigating officer. His idea of a well-managed investigation came with long hours, early starts, and professional policing.
The early starts did not concern him as back at his flat in Willesden, it was just him and his pillow. The would-be wife from Jamaica, looking for a husband or at least residency in the UK was gone. He had enjoyed the nights with her, but the bond between them wasn’t there. She was looking for a better life than in Jamaica, and with a police inspector in London, she wasn’t going to get it. She had turned up her nose when she had first seen his flat, smaller than the room he had rented at the hotel in Montego Bay. He had tried to explain before she arrived on his doorstep that rainy evening in London that a holiday fling in Montego Bay was not the same as his usual life, the life of a police officer on a salary.
‘If it’s the same person who committed both murders, that means at least a time difference of thirty-five to forty minutes,’ Wendy said.
‘How long to drive from one to the other?’ Larry asked. He was slouching in his chair, the result of his burgeoning weight. Isaac looked at him, realised that it was up to him to have a word about it. Larry’s wife, an advocate for healthy eating and a healthy mind, always ensured that he had a balanced diet for his lunch, carefully packed in a plastic container, though he didn’t eat it with relish, and most days it would lie discarded on his desk until the cleaning staff came and took it away.
‘Twenty minutes, give or take a few minutes either way,’ Isaac said. ‘And then there’s the time to park a vehicle.’
‘Not if there’s another person.’
‘Are we agreed that these murders are the work of a professional?’
‘According to Gordon Windsor.’
‘Then why? What’s the information on the two women? Bridget, what do you have?’
Bridget, a woman who loved computers and being in the office, had prepared summations on the two women. ‘Amelia Brice, thirty-one years of age, the daughter of Jeremy and Sue Brice. The father is the well-known social commentator. Amelia, educated privately, travelled extensively, fluent in French and English. Her occupation on her passport is listed as a model, but there’s little evidence of that. However, I did find some articles in various magazines that show her at Ascot, the opening of a fashion show. As you can see from the attached photos to my summary, she was an attractive woman. We also know, evidence at the murder scene, that she was using cocaine.’
‘And we know that Samuel Devon, the son of the other murdered woman, was involved with a gang that traded drugs,’ Isaac said.
Bridget continued. ‘Amelia Brice, one of the idle rich, not a person that Wendy would admire…’
‘You’re right there,’ Wendy said. All of the team in Isaac’s office knew of the sergeant’s disdain for those who took what life gave them and did nothing more, and in the case of the dead woman she had been given plenty.
‘As I was saying,’ Bridget continued. ‘Amelia Brice has no history of working, other than on a couple of occasions as a model, once or twice for a fashion magazine.’
Larry had drawn himself up on his chair, the first pangs of early morning hunger setting in. He knew where to go once the meeting concluded to get a full English breakfast.
‘We know about the cocaine use from the crime scene examiners, and also I’ve found
