‘Yes. It’s quite a social group as well as hard work,’ answered Selena, a friendly-faced woman with a shock of tumbling curls and a peasant blouse, long silver earrings. She had black kohl eyeliner around her pretty green eyes. ‘We support each other – have to, a lot of us are single parents.’
‘Teaching seems the ideal job.’ Ebony looked around. Down the other end of the table there was one man in the group. He was joining in with the laughter.
‘That’s Christian. He’s the token man on the team. His little girl is so sweet,’ said Selena.
‘Is he the only man on the course?’
‘Yeah. He’s been on it since the beginning. He’s been studying here for years.’
Selena leaned towards Ebony in a stage whisper. ‘Most of the women fancy him; he has a new one every week. The person he’s most in love with is himself.’
Ebony made a face that said ‘Really?’
Selena laughed and nodded. ‘Not me personally but the women who are talking to him now – they really like him.’
Just then the women stopped laughing and looked their way. The man, Christian, had been half eavesdropping into Ebony’s conversation. He excused himself and walked down the outside of the row of chairs, stopped by Ebony and held out his hand.
‘Christian.’
‘Ebony.’
Ebony tried to stand to shake his hand. She got her leg caught in the chair.
‘No, don’t get up; I didn’t mean to interrupt, just came to say hi to the new girl. And to tell her not to believe everything this lot say. This is the naughty end of the table.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Selena laughed.
‘It’s nice to have you on the course. Are you going to do computer skills and word processing?’ Ebony looked unsure. ‘Oh well, I’ll see you in there if you are. Nice to meet you.’
‘You too.’
‘If you need anything you can Facebook me. I’m Christian Goddard.’
‘Okay.’ She smiled. Christian walked back along the row and continued his raucous conversation with the women at the other end from Ebony. There were shrieks and giggles on his return.
Selena was grinning when she looked back.
‘Never takes him long to hit on the new girl.’
Ebony rolled her eyes. ‘Doesn’t he have any competition?’
‘We had a couple.’
‘Men?’
‘Yeah, there are a few around. But Christian seems to be the Alpha male.’
‘He dates exclusively single mothers,’ said Sammy.
‘I suppose he’s got a child. He wants to find someone in the same circumstances?’ Ebony said as she sipped her wine.
‘It doesn’t seem to get them very far with him,’ retorted Selena. ‘It doesn’t do them any good either. Some of them end up dropping out of the course.’ She looked across for confirmation from her friend. ‘I was thinking of a couple of women that dropped out – what was her name?’
‘Who?’ asked Sammy.
‘The girl from IT who dropped out, or she just didn’t come back. Not sure why?’
‘There’ve been a few,’ Sammy answered. ‘One was called Emily.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Did you see the news? She was pulled out of the Regent’s Canal.’
Chapter 34
Robbo went to get a cup of water from the water dispenser by the door. He could hear a couple of officers talking way down the hall. He heard Bowie’s nervous cough. The one that sounded like he had a lump of phlegm in his throat which he hadn’t been able to shift for a decade or two. Every few moments he tried again.
Robbo knew he had gone past the point of being able to close his eyes. Now, he would have to knock himself out with sleeping pills to sleep and then he would sleep for a week, getting up only to eat, staying in his bedroom, sleeping so solidly that he wouldn’t even dream. But for now, he needed to be as mad as it took to see all the layers of the women’s suffering, to see into the mind of the man who caused it.
He got his water and went back to his desk; there were four pieces of jewellery in front of him: the charm bracelet, two rings and the chain. He ran the chain through his fingers over and over. He watched it coil onto the desk. It was mid-afternoon. Pam was watching him out of the corner of her eye. She was worried about him. She knew he needed to sleep so badly but she had seen him this way many times and she knew he would only catnap now until it was over and then he’d collapse for a week.
Robbo sat listening to the noise of the chain, a shushing noise that became loud in his head. He was waiting for HOLMES to finish a check. He picked up Emily Styles’ ring and turned it over in his hand. The sharp edges worn dull from years of use. HOLMES was finished; he printed off the pages he needed and smiled across at Pam, as taking the ring with him, he stood and stepped out into the corridor.
He felt calmer in the corridor. He walked down towards Bowie’s office. Robbo had no love for Bowie. Years ago they had worked together in CID. But Bowie had gone undercover and helped to end one of the biggest paedophile rings in the country. Robbo had been part of the surveillance team watching Bowie as he integrated into the ring. He had his methods but Robbo wasn’t always convinced they were by the book. Robbo was also not sure that anyone could do five years in undercover work and come out of it the same way they went in.
‘This is the new search that takes in the jewellery connection plus other things: age of kids, geographical location to college and within a mile of Hawk’s phone radius.’ Robbo slid a file across Bowie’s desk. On it he had the names of five women; clipped to their names were photos.
‘These women fit all the criteria. Three missing, two dead. All of these women are linked by the fact they are all in their twenties, they are single mums living in North London and they were all attending classes of some kind in order to retrain.’
Robbo handed him the print-out from HOLMES. ‘Two years ago this woman—’ he pointed to the photo of Charlotte Rogers – ‘disappeared and a year later her body was found in woodland belonging to the National Trust.’
‘What was the coroner’s verdict?’
‘Open verdict. The only thing on her was the bracelet but her mother didn’t recognize it. This is Sophie Vein.’ He pointed to another photo. ‘She was found decomposed in a forest in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire in February 2011. She’d been lying there for an estimated nine months. She disappeared a while before that, in the August of the previous summer.’
‘Anything found on her?’
‘Examination of the organs was not possible as they were too badly decomposed; there was evidence of deep ulcerated wounds, causing infections in the bone. Her mother said she always wore a small pink ring on her little finger. Could be the one we have.’
‘We’ll ask Harding to take another look at the post mortem results and get some re-analysis of the samples taken at the post mortem and the burial site. Was there nothing before 2010?’
‘Not that we can uncover. None of the women on the list who might possibly be a victim. If he follows the normal pattern of starting to kill in his early twenties then he is thirty at least.’
‘Something happened in the lead-up to that year then. Something flicked his switch,’ said Bowie.
‘He searches out single mothers; they have to have children. All the women have been described as strong women, determined, not easily fooled. None of these women were registered junkies. None of them were thought to be users of class A drugs.’