‘How did he get in?’
‘He talked himself in.’
‘Or she knew him.’
‘Maybe,’ Steele conceded, ‘but if she knew him, would she have bothered to put her bed away? Take a good look at her hair; the ends are still wet. Go into the bathroom; touch nothing, but go and look.’
Montell stepped over to the studio’s only other door and opened it, then looked inside. ‘The shower’s been used today,’ he called out. ‘There’s a damp towel on the floor, and a plastic cap.’
‘Yes, now go and take a look at her T-shirt. I would, but I want to keep movement in here to a minimum: it’s a confined space.’
‘Okay.’ Steele waited. ‘There are damp patches on it.’
‘I thought there would be. Are you getting the same picture as me? Amy’s just got up. She’s had a shower, being careful to keep her hair as dry as she can. She’s a stylist: she won’t do her own hair; she and her colleagues will go to work on each other’s after the salon closes. Trust me on this: I’ve been out with a couple of hairdressers in my time, and both of them asked where my shower cap was.
‘She’s almost finished drying herself,’ the DI continued, ‘when the buzzer goes. She answers it, and the killer’s there. She lets him in, but not before she’s put on the T-shirt, her knickers and the dressing-gown, and pushed the bed back into its alcove. He talks to her for a bit. She’s just up and hasn’t had breakfast, so she asks him if he’d like a coffee. He says, “yes, please,” so she goes over to the sink, fills the kettle, and she’s spooning coffee into the two mugs when he shoots her in the back of the head. He strips her, lays her out like this and then leaves.’
‘God,’ Montell whispered, ‘it’s like we were in the room when it happened, watching it.’
‘I wish we had been,’ Steele murmured. ‘Then we could have stopped the fucker.’
‘Why’s she naked? Neither Stacey nor Zrinka were.’
‘He did them in public places. He didn’t have time.’
‘And Padstow had already seen them naked.’
Steele scratched his chin. ‘I was at both post-mortems. Stacey Gavin was a pretty girl, but her body wasn’t especially attractive. She had a thick waist and a big brown mole on her side, below her left breast. Zrinka had a figure like a model, but it was disfigured by a vivid appendectomy scar. On the other hand, Army’s flawless; she’s unmarked, and her skin’s like fine china. Maybe he has a thing about perfection. Or maybe the sod just wanted to see Army naked, to humiliate her for her open dislike of him.’
‘Wouldn’t he have been taking a hell of a risk, calling at that time of the morning? A lot of people must have been going to work. There’s a big chance he’ll have been spotted.’
‘Not as big as you think. The salon doesn’t open till ten, remember, and it’s just round the corner. He could have sat here, waited till it was quiet and then made his move.’
‘Would she have let Padstow in? She didn’t like him.’
‘That’s what she said, but you never know, that may have been loyalty to her friends.’
‘Let’s go back to the why, sir. Why kill Amy? What reason could there have been?’
‘The most obvious one is that she would have been a key witness in any trial. She was the only person who could have stood in the witness box, pointed to Padstow and identified him as the guy who was chucked by both of the female victims, then followed into Zrinka’s affections, and bed, by Harry Paul.’
‘In that case, is there anyone else who could identify him? Zrinka’s mother, for example?’
‘She never met him. They only spoke on the phone. But Russ and Doreen Gavin did. Griff, let’s back out of here, get uniforms to seal the place off, and call in Arthur Dorward and his fine-tooth combers. Once that’s under way, we need to get to South Queensferry, not just to talk to Russ Gavin but to make sure he and his wife are still in one piece. I’m going to send a car there right away, but meantime, without alarming her if I can avoid it, give her a call.’
Forty-eight
‘Maybe it’s Tuesday.’
‘What?’ Tarvil Singh exclaimed, gazing bewildered at Ray Wilding, leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk as he gazed at the chart on the wall.
‘I’ve just noticed. Both murders were on Tuesday: the first Tuesday in March and the first Tuesday in May. Maybe that’s the real link between them and we’ve been missing it all along.’
‘In that case we’ve got a bit less than two months to catch this guy before he does it again.’
‘Bags of time.’ Wilding sighed. ‘Where does all that take us?’ he asked.
‘What?’ Singh grunted.
‘The information we got from Mrs Dell and her boy.’
‘Nowhere forward that I can see. Okay, there’s a new connection between all three victims, in that they all had the same agent, but we knew they were linked before we went up there. Okay, if you look at the three of them, Zrinka was very much the focal point, but we knew that too. For what it’s worth, I’m still looking at Padstow and, right now, I don’t think the DI will be handing out prizes for heading off in any other direction. . like your Tuesday theory, for example.’
‘No, he won’t. You’re spot on there; that’s one I will definitely leave on the back burner. What have you got on your desk?’
‘Calls while we were out. Two alleged sightings of the subject, and one. . Hey, this is interesting: one from the woman I spoke to yesterday at the passport agency.’
‘Why does everything have to be an agency these days?’ Wilding mused, idly.
‘So that the government can kid people on that the public sector is smaller than it really is.’
‘That’s a very profound analysis from a big lummox of a detective constable.’
‘And that’s more than a shade sarky from an idle dick of a detective sergeant. Actually, I’m quoting my old man; he’s so far to the right politically that he’d join the British National Party, if they allowed guys with turbans to be members.’
‘In that case he wouldn’t approve of public money being wasted in meaningless chatter. Are you going to answer those phone calls or not?’
‘If you’ll shut up and let me.’ Singh picked up his phone and dialled the passport service direct line number that had been left for him. He swore. ‘Got it wrong. Your fault for sidetracking me.’ He redialled and this time heard the ringing tone.
‘Roberta Savage,’ said a voice at the other end of the line, in an accent with West Indian overtones.
‘Hello, it’s Tarvil Singh here, up in Edinburgh. You rang when I was out. What is it? Have you found Dominic Padstow after all?’
She laughed. ‘No, don’t build your hopes up. Our database never lies, and it’s impossible to hide in it. No, something happened today that I thought you’d be interested in. Somebody else has been asking after the same non-existent person.’ She leaned on the second syllable of the last word. ‘He’s a popular chap, this Mr Padstow of yours.’
‘Let’s just say he’s much sought after. Who was it that rang you?’
‘He didn’t ring me. It was one of my team who took the call; I just happened to be close by and heard the name being mentioned. I waited until he was finished and then I quizzed him. The call came from a man called Dailey, Patrick Dailey, from the Home Office.’
‘You mean the security service?’
‘No, I don’t. This chap’s in the immigration division.’
‘How did your colleague deal with it?’
Roberta Savage laughed. ‘By the book. He told him that we were established as an agency to protect people from intrusion like this, and that he should go away and get legal authority.’
‘And did he?’
‘Actually he didn’t need to do that: my colleague hadn’t seen a newspaper this morning, so he had no idea that Padstow is a suspect in your investigation. But it seems that Dailey didn’t know that either: he tried to bully my man, “I’m from your Head Office” sort of thing, but when he found that he couldn’t, he gave up.