“I think we’ve got our wires crossed here.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Jane! Are you so desperate? It’s pretty low, just because you can’t prove your case, to try shifting the blame to John Shefford!”
“I first mentioned my suspicions to Sergeant Amson last night, and until I have more evidence…”
“I’m telling you, back off! If there was one viable piece of evidence against DCI Shefford, you should have brought it to me. And don’t harp back to the diary, that’s sorted, and Otley’s paid for it. Don’t try to do my job, Inspector.”
She tried again. “We’ve got two unsolved cases, one in Warrington and one in Southport, both with similar bruising to their upper arms, hands tied with the same sort of knots. George Marlow was in the vicinity when both…”
“Are you telling me Shefford was also in the vicinity? Have you got the evidence to start an internal investigation?”
“I don’t know if Shefford was ever attached to…”
He wouldn’t let her finish. “I’m telling you he wasn’t, because I’ve checked!”
“I apologize, but under the circumstances…”
“Under the circumstances I am bringing in DCI Hicock! Don’t you know what you’ve done, Jane? You’ve been running around the country trying to rake up dirt on one of the best officers I ever had! It stinks, and I won’t take any more of it.”
“Shefford falsified evidence, and is known to have been on close terms with two murdered girls, both prostitutes-Della Mornay and Jeannie Sharpe. Of the two other cases we have uncovered, one was a prostitute…”
Kernan strode to the door. “The man is in the graveyard.”
“So are they, sir. Re-opening cases as far back as nineteen eighty-four is a slow procedure.”
“I’ve nothing more to say, I’m bringing Hicock in as soon as he can get here. You concentrate on the investigation you were assigned to for as long as you remain on it, is that clear? And if you want some advice, put in for a transfer. I want you off the Marlow case, and I want your report on everything that went down yesterday on my desk by lunchtime, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” said Tennison.
Amson came racing up the corridor as she left Kernan’s office, waving a sheet of paper.
“We’ve got another one! Blackburn, ’eighty-seven!”
Tennison hurried to meet him and grabbed the paper, but Amson wouldn’t let it go until he’d finished. “It’s about one a year, apart from the time Marlow was in jail! Caplan and Haskons are still watching him, and everyone else is mustered in the Incident Room-apart from these three.”
Tennison looked puzzled, and he finally handed over the note. “Otley coughed up the names of the blokes who were fooling around with the toms! They’re waiting for the Super to call them in now.”
“What about Shefford?” she asked urgently.
“He’s in the clear, on all the new cases. He may have done a surface job on the Jeannie Sharpe murder, but then he wasn’t the DCI on the case, so you can’t put it all down to him. And he wasn’t around when the others were killed.”
“I’m glad,” Tennison said. He gave her a disbelieving look and she protested, “I am! Even if it dropped me right in the shit!”
Amson looked around and lowered his voice. “As a matter of interest, did you know that the Chief and Shefford were”-he crossed his fingers-“like that? They played golf every weekend-not at Sunningdale! Chief was Shefford’s guv’nor when he was on Vice.”
Tennison shook her head and raised her eyes to heaven. “I think I’ll leave that one well and truly alone!” she said.
At least thirty people were crammed into the Incident Room. The air was thick with smoke. Every chair was taken, and the latecomers were sitting on desks or propped against the walls. While they waited some drank coffee and ate sandwiches, but most of them just talked. The din was deafening.
Sergeant Terry Amson was setting up a projector in the center of the room. Tennison was thumbing through her notes while she waited.
She looked up when the door opened. It was DI Burkin and two others, returning from the Super’s office. They all looked rather sheepish.
“Sorry, guv, we’ve been upstairs.”
Tennison nodded, well aware that these were the men who had been a bit too familiar with the local prostitutes. She gave them a moment to disperse amongst the others.
Burkin had found a place next to Muddyman, who asked him what was going on.
“Got our knuckles rapped for off-duty leg-overs. She’s got eyes in the back of her head, that one! Just a warning this time, so maybe she’s not all bad, but rumor has it that Hicock’s definitely taking over, no kidding. He’s in, she’s out.”
Tennison stood up. “OK, can I have a bit of hush?”
She waited for the room to grow quiet. Slowly they sorted themselves out, and she was able to start the meeting. She played it to the gallery.
“Right. I’ve been told that unless we get results very quickly indeed, I’m on traffic… Joke! I don’t think it’s quite that bad, but there will be some changes around here if we don’t pull something out of the hat. In case I don’t get another opportunity, I’ll say now that I appreciate your back-up, and all the hard work…”
There were moans and unprintable comments as the word went round. Tennison yelled, “Come on, settle down! Maybe there’s something we’ve missed, something that, if we all think about it, will whack us right between the eyes. OK, Sergeant…”
The lights went off, the blinds went down, and Amson ran the mock-up of Karen Howard’s last night. They watched her stand-in talking to the builder who had tried to help her, then crossing the road and walking up Ladbroke Grove.
“Oh, boy, we gonna watch you again, guv?” Tennison recognized the voice from the darkness as Rosper’s.
Amson summarized all the evidence as they watched. “Karen Howard, our first victim. Her body discovered in Della Mornay’s efficiency and mistaken for her.”
The film ended, followed by close-up stills of Karen’s badly beaten body, then her various appalling injuries. The last frame was of the bruising on her arms.
“OK, take a good look at these marks. Now we have the other victim, Della Mornay, who was killed approximately six weeks before Karen…”
The shot of the decomposed body was sickening. The close-ups showed her upper arms and what appeared to be bite marks.
“The foxes had a go at her, and the dog belonging to the man who found her. But look at the arms again: the same marks, almost identical to those found on Karen.”
Another body was flashed up on the screen. “Jeannie Sharpe, killed in Oldham in nineteen eighty-four. Again, note the bruising and welts on the upper arms. Fourth victim…”
Amson pointed to DI Muddyman and whispered, “You ready?” Muddyman climbed to his feet.
“Another video now, this time of Angela Simpson, whose family sent it to us. She was knifed to death in a public park in nineteen eighty-five. She was a hairdresser, well-liked kid, about to get married. This is her engagement party.”
The sweet face of Angela Simpson smiled into camera, showing off her engagement ring, then self-consciously kissing the young man beside her. Her smiling fiancé gave a thumbs-up sign, and Angela turned to the camera, laughing, and put her hands over the lens. Then she loomed very close and kissed the camera.
“During the house-to-house enquiries, George Marlow was interviewed. He had been staying in a bed and breakfast only fifty yards from the gates of the park where she was found. There were no marks on her upper arms, but look at this…”
There was a shot of Angela, lying face down, legs apart. Her hands were tied behind her back.
“The rope, the way the hands were tied were just the same as in victims one and two.”