'You're Miriam,' said Les.
'That's right,' said Miriam in a pleasant voice.
'And what brings you here, Miriam?'
'I'm here with the dead.'
'Here with the dead!' laughed Les. 'That sounds good!' And he looked at the audience, and they all laughed too. 'And who's this?' he added, looking towards the person on the other side of Miriam.
I couldn't see who it was because the light wouldn't shine on her and she was silhouetted in the darkness, but I had a dread feeling of familiarity. She was small, smaller than Miriam, and I thought I could make out curly hair.
'Is it your sister?' asked Les, still smiling, and Miriam suddenly looked very sad, as if Les had touched upon some secret tragedy. She started to say something but the words didn't come out or, if they did, I didn't hear them.
There was a long pause, and the audience fell silent.
Then Les turned back towards us, and he too looked troubled.
'These are the dead,' he said.
And then I woke up, sweating and frightened.
Part Two. HUNTING THE LIVING
8
'Miriam Ann Fox, aged eighteen, died from a single stab wound to the neck delivered from behind. The wound was almost two inches deep, suggesting that it was a) a very sharp bladed knife, and b) a very strong person delivering the fatal blow. From the angle of the wound we can surmise that the perpetrator was considerably taller than her. She was five feet three; he, and I think we can safely assume it was a he in this case, is almost certainly between five feet ten inches and six feet two. The victim either bled or choked to death as a result of this one wound. The pathologist thinks that the perpetrator held her up while she choked and died, then laid her out on the ground on her back, before stabbing her four times in the vaginal area.'
'So he didn't have sex with her then?' asked one of the assembled group.
It was 8.35 the following morning and Malik, me, and the fourteen other detectives assigned to the Miriam Fox murder hunt were sitting in the incident room while DCI Knox, the official head of the investigation, stood next to a whiteboard giving his summary of what we knew so far. Welland sat next to him, but was once again not looking himself. If someone had asked me for a diagnosis of his condition I would have said his batteries had gone flat, which seems to happen more and more to coppers of a certain age, and I wondered briefly how much longer he was going to last on the Force.
No such concerns about Knox, who was a big charismatic guy with a deep, resonant voice that swept across the room. 'There's no evidence that she had sex either immediately prior to or immediately after her death,' he continued. 'According to the pathologist she died at some point between eight and ten on Sunday night. Now we've spoken to a number of the girls who work the area and she was seen by at least two of them at about eight p.m., which was when she generally started her shift. She spoke briefly to one of the girls, and the girl said that there was nothing untoward about her. She then moved down the street to her usual spot, which is the corner of Northdown and Collier Street, and from there she was picked up by a car – a dark blue saloon, we haven't got the make yet – and driven away. Usually the girls try to get the number of the cars but, sod's law, no-one did this time.'
There was a resigned murmur from the assembled men, including me. You don't expect to get too many lucky breaks in the course of your work, but on a case like this you need a few.
Knox paused to take a sip from his tea. 'They didn't drive very far though, as we know. The victim was killed at the spot where she was found. As the crow flies that's no more than a few hundred yards from where she was picked up. It's important we trace this car. We've got a dozen uniforms who are going to be doing house-to-house in the vicinity to see if anyone can remember seeing a vehicle fitting the description near the scene. If we're lucky' – more groans – 'somebody might even have got a look at him. He would have been heavily bloodstained after the killing. We're checking CCTV on every possible site from where she was picked up to where she was discovered, but so far nothing's turned up.'
'None of the toms recognized the car, then?' asked Capper, who was a DS, the same as me. I didn't like Capper; never had. He had an unpleasant haircut and constant bad breath, but I wouldn't have held those things against him particularly, not on their own. It was the way he sucked up to senior management I didn't like.
Knox shrugged. 'They see a lot of dark-coloured saloons in their line of business so no-one remembers this one.'
'You said that the toms tended to make notes of punters' registration plates.' It was me speaking this time.
'That's right.'
'Do they ever keep records of them?'
He shook his head. 'No, it doesn't appear so, not according to any of the girls who were spoken to last night. We still might get the number, though. We'll be appealing for information on Crimestoppers and in the area itself. Boards'll be going up round there this morning, so someone's memory might get jogged. We need to find out if she had any punters who she went with on a regular basis. Most of them usually do. We've got two statements from girls testifying that she was picked up on more than one occasion by someone in a red TVR, although no-one ever saw his face. Apparently she had a friend, a girl by the name of Molly Hagger, who used to work the streets with her – I believe you've got a photo of her, Dennis – but she hasn't been seen for several weeks.'
I felt a brief stab of fear. So that was her name. Molly. And now she was missing. 'There was a photograph of her with the victim at the victim's flat,' I said. 'It looked recent, so I think it would be useful to talk to this Molly.'
'If we can find her.'
'Have we got an address for her?' I asked.
Knox nodded. 'We think so. One of the girls said she thought she was staying at Coleman House. It's a council-run children's home over towards Camden. We haven't contacted anyone down there yet so I want you and Malik to pay the place a visit and see if you can find out where she is, and if any of the other people there have any information on the victim.'
I nodded. 'Sure.'
'We've also got to bring in the victim's pimp, who we've now identified as Mark Wells. Dennis met him briefly yesterday.' He looked across at me and winked, much to the amusement of everyone else. 'Wells has a long record of violence, including attacks on women, and at the very least we can bring him in for taking out DS Milne.'
Again there was more laughter. I managed a strained smile to show that I could take a joke, just like the next man; not that I felt much like laughing. My face still hurt and a darkening bruise had appeared under my right cheekbone overnight.
'We're applying for a search warrant for his house and a warrant for his arrest, both of which should be with us by mid-morning. We're going to lean on him hard. He's a cocky bastard by all accounts, but he's going to have useful information about the victim, and it's essential we extract it from him. He's also a suspect. So far, our only evidence of sexual assault is the stab wounds around the vagina, so it's quite possible that the killer's attempting to make it look like a sexual assault when, in reality, it wasn't his prime motivation. Now I don't want to put too much stock on that theory, because at the moment it is just a theory, but we've got to bear it in mind. And that means taking a close look at Mark Wells.'
He paused again, took another sip of his tea. 'We also need the names of everyone in a three-mile radius of here who's been picked up for soliciting at any time in the last two years, giving particular preference to anyone with convictions for violence or sex offences. And we're going to need to interview them all.' Several people groaned, and Knox managed an understanding smile. 'Look, it's not going to be easy – it never is – but we've got to explore every possible avenue, and that means talking to the sort of people who could have done this, i.e. men who are known to be violent to women. This murder hunt is twenty-four hours old, ladies and gentlemen. At the moment the body's still warm but it's going to cool down fast, so we've got a lot of work to do. One hell of a lot. I want this killer brought to justice and I know you're the people to do it.' He accompanied this last sentence by enthusiastically whacking one of the desks with the palm of his hand, which was a very Knox-like gesture. I'm sure sometimes he thought he was working on Wall Street.