A stunned silence greeted Banks’s summary of the investigation, but eventually a detective from West Yorkshire shyly raised her arm.
‘Yes?’ Banks said.
‘DC Musgrave, West Yorkshire, sir. Do I understand correctly that the three deaths are linked?’
‘We have links between Sarah and Adrienne — the name and phone number — and between Adrienne and Hadfield — the Pandora charm. We have no specific link between Sarah Chen and Laurence Hadfield. We can also link Randall to Hadfield, but not to either of the girls. Yet.’
‘Has Laurence Hadfield ever been involved in the drug trade?’ someone else asked.
‘Not as far as we know,’ said Banks. ‘I realise there are too many gaps in our knowledge. That’s what I want us to work on. We can start by finding out what the phone number meant, what Anthony Randall talked about to Laurence Hadfield and what their relationship was, why Sarah Chen had Adrienne Munro’s name. We’d also like to know how the Pandora charm ended up in Hadfield’s bathroom.’
‘Do we know who wrote the note with the name and phone number?’ another West Yorkshire detective asked.
‘That’s an interesting point,’ Banks answered. ‘The short answer is no, we don’t. But we have checked, and our handwriting expert has determined through comparison that it wasn’t written by Adrienne Munro, Laurence Hadfield or Sarah Chen.’
‘Mia, perhaps?’
‘Possibly.’
‘There’s been cases of students hooking up with older men for sex and companionship in exchange for money,’ said DC Musgrave again. ‘For the older men, I mean, the sex...’
Banks smiled. ‘I think I know what you mean, DC Musgrave. Sugar daddies.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And it’s a good point. It’s a line of inquiry we’re not going to overlook, along with Hadfield’s business interests. Both girls were dressed up a bit more than your usual student, even for a Saturday night. And the dresses they were wearing weren’t cheap. Adrienne Munro concocted a story about a scholarship to explain her improved financial situation this year, but all the large recent deposits in her bank account were made in cash. Sarah Chen told her housemates she had received an insurance payout on her father’s death, along with money left to her in his will. He died over two years ago, so that seems unlikely, but we’re checking into it. There may be a very good reason for all this, and if it isn’t drug-related, it could involve sex for cash. On the other hand, neither girl had been interfered with in any way, and neither had had sex recently, according to the pathologists, though Sarah Chen’s post-mortem might tell a different story. Perhaps they’d been acting as escorts only, something of that nature. Hadfield was a wealthy businessman, so he could no doubt afford a pretty girl or two to hang on his arms if he had clients he wanted to impress, even with a hands-off embargo. Anything else?’
Nobody said anything.
‘OK,’ said Banks. ‘Check in with the incident room as often as you can. We’ll be constantly updating HOLMES. Any leads you come across, contact DCI Blackstone or me if you can get hold of us. But use your initiative. Better to get something done and moving than sit around on your arse because I was out of the station at the time. What do they say? “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Even from me. Now off you go. Pick up your actions on the way, and let’s see some progress before the day’s out.’
The offices Zelda worked in occupied two floors of a building on Cambridge Circus. The upper floor consisted of work spaces for the six people, though it was rare that they were all occupied at the same time, and the lower floor was given over entirely to archives and records. The decor was typical institutional drab, coats of jaundiced gloss so dense you could see your reflection on the walls. The heaters never worked properly, and the most modern elements of the space were its security system and computer software.
Through the tall sash windows she could look down on the Circus in all its glory, the crowds massing by crossings, traffic nudging and edging for advantage, horns blaring, the lumbering buses disgorging their hordes, and at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, the huge HARRY POTTER poster had been outside the Palace Theatre for as long as she had been working there. It always gave her a thrill to look out, not least because it was the Circus, and it was indelibly associated with John le Carré, one of her favourite writers, and George Smiley, one of her favourite fictional characters.
Nobody really knew what anyone else was working on. It wasn’t the kind of office where one shared confidences. Perhaps Hawkins, the supervisor, knew, but sometimes Zelda wasn’t even too sure about him; Hawkins had his own agenda as well his own office, glassed off and soundproofed, in a corner of the room. He liked to give the impression that he was an ordinary bloke, despite the public-school education (a very minor public school, he always stressed) and a first in Medieval History at Cambridge. He wore M&S suits rather than Hugo Boss or Paul Smith, and his glasses were always slipping down over his nose, giving the impression that his mind was on some abstruse problem of Byzantine military history, but he didn’t miss a trick. He wouldn’t have survived in his job as long as he had if he did.
Of course, Zelda’s job wasn’t entirely the way she had described it to Raymond or Banks, though recognising people from photos and surveillance was certainly a large part of it. The rest she couldn’t talk about, partly for reasons of secrecy and partly because it would change their ideas about her. But she had been honest in offering to help as regards Phil Keane, and she thought she could do it with minimum trouble.
‘Just going to check something in the archives,’ she said to the man she knew only as Teddy at the next desk. He nodded without looking up. She picked up a batch of photographs from her desk to carry with her. There was nothing unusual in visiting the archives. Quite often a new image recalled an old one, and it helped create a new juxtaposition that had to be checked and verified.
If one of Hawkins’s beady eyes followed her as she walked past his office, Zelda was aware of it only in passing and never gave it a second thought.
Banks marched through the double doors that linked the police station to the scientific support department and made his way down the corridor to Jazz Singh’s office. The department was mostly open plan, and such ‘offices’ as there were consisted of rows of glassed-in cubicles along the walls. Jazz’s was no exception. Banks tapped on the glass and Jazz beckoned him inside. There was hardly enough space for the two of them, but he managed to shoehorn himself into the second chair opposite her. He had to leave the door open in order to do so.
Jazz sat behind a pile of papers, which threatened to obscure her diminutive form if she slouched down in her seat in the slightest. The bookcases that lined three walls were full to overflowing with scientific texts. All around them was a sense of urgent activity, people coming and going, yet a strange hush presided over it all. Voices were muffled, footsteps inaudible.
‘One luxury I have managed to acquire since I’ve been here,’ said Jazz with a smile, ‘is an electric kettle and a teapot. Fancy a cup of lapsang?’
‘Excellent,’ said Banks.
The kettle boiled in no time and Jazz poured the water on the leaves and set the pot aside to let it steep. ‘I suppose you’ll be anxious to know the results?’ she said.
‘You’ve compared the hair samples for DNA?’
Jazz shook her head. ‘One thing at time. I’m on it. Tomorrow? OK?’
‘OK. But you’re not going to disappoint me on the sleeping pills, are you?’
‘I do hope not. And I must say, it’s a rather interesting and unexpected result.’