‘We can’t protect everyone, not even us.’
‘Davies doesn’t understand, up in his ivory tower.’
‘We need to revisit Holland Park,’ Isaac said. He looked up at the clock, saw that it was 2.23 a.m. Jenny would wake when he arrived home, whatever time it was. He had a duty to the murder investigation; a duty to her. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to know which was more important.
‘Armed response?’
‘Will you authorise it?’
‘Phone them, get hold of their inspector, take a couple of men, not the full squad, too expensive, and an overkill.’
‘It’s not,’ Isaac said. ‘I was targeted in Canning Town.’
‘Don’t tell your wife; she’ll freak out.’
Isaac had never had any intention of doing that. He went and made a cup of tea, sat down, put his feet on the table, attempted to ease the tension in his body. It was stress, and it was unhealthy.
The next Isaac knew it was 3.56. He had slept for over ninety minutes. Slipping on his jacket and grabbing his keys, he headed for the door; Jenny would be worried.
***
The revisit to Holland Park proved to be an anti-climax. Larry had expected more, but on arrival at the house, it was soon apparent that the place had been vacated.
After what seemed longer, but was documented as two minutes thirty seconds, one of the armed response officers gave the all-clear.
Larry looked around. Nothing had changed. There was food in the fridge, a good stock of quality wine, and the television was switched on.
‘How long since they left?’ one of the armed response team asked.
‘Long enough,’ Larry’s response.
Ian Naughton and Analyn were gone. Upstairs no clothes remained, only a toothbrush in one of the bedrooms, a solitary earring on the floor.
Gordon Windsor was alerted; his team of CSIs would check out the place, find out if there was anything to give a clue as to who the two people were.
Forty-eight hours after he had been held over, Warren Preston walked out of the front door of the Canning Town Police Station, raising two fingers at Ross, then thrusting his arm with a clenched fist up at an angle to make a statement: up yours, copper, it said.
Bill Ross hadn’t reacted. He was used to it by now.
***
The Durham Arms was quiet, its licence temporarily revoked, although a few more days and the place would be back to normal. Bill Ross wasn’t sure how, but he suspected that money, bribe money, was being handed around. The pub was a goldmine located in the centre of a garbage dump. He rarely visited it, but he had to admit to doing so once or twice when he had been transferred to Canning Town after he had roughed up a couple of suspects who had broken into an off-licence, helped themselves to a few cartons of beer, two dozen bottles of cheap wine.
Idiots, he had called them, plus a few more words that he shouldn’t have. Out on the street, the language was often crude and insensitive, but a police officer was meant to keep his cool, not to offend a criminal, not to subject him to a fist in the stomach, nor a smack in the mouth. How was he to know that one of the two thieves was the son of a local councillor, high on crack cocaine.
The Winstons and the Robinsons bonded more closely, although Tim Winston wouldn’t let Brad over to his house, nor Rose over to his.
Inevitably, the police presence at the school relaxed, and the two youngsters found more than enough places to get some time to themselves.
Nobody in Homicide believed it was over, and still they had not identified the Jane Doe, nor why she had died. The initial suspicion that Naughton and cohorts had been involved in drug importation and distribution had been put to one side. The sighting of Analyn had raised the spectre of sophisticated illegal transportation of women to brothels in England, but no proof had been found.
To Isaac, it seemed more sinister. And now, Jenny and their unborn child. It was starting to show, and he was worried for them as well; worried for everyone, but powerless to do any more.
Whatever the future held, it appeared that it would be Naughton, if he were the main person, to make the running. Which meant only one thing: another death.
The only positive was the BMW.
Warton Road, less than two miles from the Durham Arms, a patch of wasteland used as an unofficial car park, a refuse tip by others.
Larry took one look at the burnt-out but still smouldering shell. ‘It’s the car,’ he said to Bill Ross and Wendy who had accompanied him.
‘No one inside?’ Wendy asked.
‘If there were, there wouldn’t be much left, not now.’
‘Anything to be gained?’ Larry asked Gordon Windsor when he arrived at the scene.
‘We’ll check it out, then put it on a flatbed truck, get Forensics to have a look. They might find something, but don’t expect much.’
***
Holland Park had been canvassed, questions asked on the street outside Naughton’s house. The owner, the name given almost certainly false, due to a complex purchasing route through an overseas trust five years previously, had not been found.
‘We never met the person,’ Agnes Hepplesworth said in the comfort of her plush office in Mayfair.
‘There are still money laundering checks that need to be dealt with if it’s cash,’ Isaac said.
Hepplesworth and Daughter, Solicitors, was a family concern, three generations, Agnes was the first. Seventy-five at least, a pinched face, heavily lined with wrinkles, no makeup, dressed conservatively although expensively.
A hard woman, Wendy thought.
‘All the necessary requirements were dealt with. As you must understand, there is confidentiality that I need to consider.’
