He also looked married, and Corla Revelation had experienced umpteen men who had said they were single when they were not. So much so, she could spot them a mile off. It wasn’t him, she would have liked it to have been, and fleetingly that potential reward money came back into her mind, but all to no avail. There would be no bounty paid out on bouffant man.
Another pace to the right. Another bland man’s face, Iain Donaldson, the geography teacher, though Corla was not to know that. He was the right height and almost the right build, but the wrong body shape and the wrong body language, as if he didn’t believe in himself. He wasn’t broad enough or strong enough, but he was involved in the case all right, her gifts told her that, but he was not the man confidently strolling down Berryland Avenue in the wee small hours.
Another step to the right, and there was Flanagan, and there was danger. Here was a man who could kill women, she instinctively knew that, but had he killed Belinda Cooper? Maybe. It was possible. The height was right. The build was right. The body language was spot on; this was a man quietly confident in his own skin, a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it. The best looking man there by a distance, in Corla’s eyes, the kind of man she could have fallen in love with, even if he was a little younger than her.
A dangerous man too, that was self evident, but also an incredibly exciting man, the kind of guy women gravitate towards in pubs and clubs, maybe without even realising it. She stood stock-still and stared into his face. His neat hair looked recently cut, his dark eyes staring directly ahead, rarely blinking. Number seven was a man she would have liked to have known, but was he a killer?
Had he murdered Belinda Cooper with a baseball bat, as the press said? Was he the man who had looked straight at her in Berryland Avenue before turning and walking away? She so wanted it to be number seven, but she couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t positive, as Walter had reminded her that she must be. She couldn’t possibly ID him, she couldn’t pick him out.
Pity really, for she already knew through her peripheral vision, that it was not number eight, an irrelevance of a man, too nondescript, too weak, too much of a loser, too obviously not right, and probably a police plant, on reflection a little like number one. He clearly did not belong there. She glanced at Walter and pursed her lips.
‘Well?’ he said, hopefully.
‘I need to get closer to them,’ she said.
‘You mean you want to go inside?’
Corla bobbed her head and said, ‘I need to smell them.’
‘But you weren’t close enough to the man that early morning to smell him, were you?’
‘Of course not. I want to smell the guilt on them, I need to smell the fear.’
‘Okay, if that’s what you want.’
‘Will you come in with me?’
‘Yes, of course, all the way.’
Walter nodded at Karen and she went on the intercom and said, ‘They are coming inside, Bob.’
They watched Bob nod, and stare at his charges and say, ‘Best behaviour now, lads, ladies present,’ and unbelievably all the men stood up straighter, shoulders back, chests out, a man thing, as if they were about to experience an inspection by the Queen. They probably didn’t even know they were doing it.
Corla paused at the door and said, ‘May I take your arm?’
‘Of course,’ and she linked Walter’s chunky forearm.
They entered and went to the far end of the room without glancing into faces. They turned to face the parade. Corla pursed her lips and looked upward. A dainty sniff at number one, she meant it literally, thought Walter, she was going to smell them all. Mothballs and over-strong soap. It wasn’t him. A stooge. Number two, Nesbitt, grinning, sniffing, expensive aftershave, probably imagined it would bring him all he desired; yet she instinctively knew it did not. It wasn’t him.
Another pace along and number three, the tall one, Speight. He smelt of musty and dusty offices, and musty and dusty houses, where an absent wife hadn’t kept up with the cleaning. But there was more to it than that. Arrogance and ignorance, for starters. Corla shivered and it wasn’t cold in there, the heating was full on. She didn’t like the man, in fact she couldn’t stand being near him, and that was often an indicator of a violent and out of control guy. But no matter how much she might have liked to, she couldn’t ID him, for he was clearly not the man. Simply too tall. Better not to waste a single second on the cretin.
Man number four, Rekatic, was totally different. He smelt of women. Maybe he had sneaked some of his wife’s perfume, or maybe there was more to it than that. This was a different kind of man altogether, and possibly dangerous too. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Fear and loathing oozed from his pores. He looked guilty, and he smelt guilty, and he knew it too, a man with many sins to conquer, but was he the man she had seen in the street?
Deep down she knew he did not like women, enjoyed hurting them, even. Corla had met more than her fair share of such brutes. But that worked both ways. She didn’t like him either, and she imagined many other women would feel the same. It would have been so easy to finger him too, and maybe he deserved it, but sadly, he was not the man she saw.
Number five, the man with the flourishing hair. He smelt of gel, and cosmetics, probably spent a goodly portion of his lunch hour inspecting the latest products in the high street chemist, something of a supercilious guy who imagined he
