Langton watched her closely as Anna talked the team through the rest of her interview with Idris and then her meeting with Professor Starling. She repeated much of what he’d explained about voodoo and the way drugs could be used to immobilize the victim’s muscles. She showed the photograph of the voodoo priest with the skull and dried hands used as a necklace.
Anna now had the team’s total attention.
‘If the body of the small boy in the canal was used by Camorra to put fear and terror into the men around him, I think if it’s in any way possible to remove Eamon Krasiniqe from Parkhurst and get treatment to save him, then I believe we will get the information we need from his brother Idris.’
Anna sipped some water before she continued. ‘It is hard to believe that after three weeks we still have no sighting of Sickert or the two children. This means either he is dead and the children, God help them, are also dead; or, they are being used by Camorra.’
Anna paused and checked her notes again. Langton was about to end the briefing, when she raised her hand.
‘I think we are missing a link — something we might have overlooked in the murder of Carly Ann North.’
Langton frowned.
‘It still doesn’t add up that her body wasn’t just dumped. Why was Idris attempting to sever her head and hands? Because she could have been identified by her prints from her previous arrests? She was a known prostitute and heroin addict; however, weeks before her death, she was attempting to straighten out her life. Did she know something? Had she seen something? I think we need to go back into that murder enquiry to see if there is any connection.’
‘You think we need to go back into the enquiry and see?’ Langton was angry, slapping his desk with the flat of his hand.
‘I can’t see why you are so furious.’
‘Can’t you? What are you insinuating — that I didn’t oversee that case properly? Not satisfied with trying to make me look like a prick on this one, you are now attacking my previous—’
She interrupted, going right back at him with as much anger. ‘You were in hospital for the latter part of the enquiry, and you were never able to go to the trial. Did you know that after your attack, Barolli had to take two weeks off because of the trauma of seeing you injured? Mike Lewis was left overseeing the trial and, like Barolli, he must have been traumatized; all I am saying is perhaps something was overlooked. Krasiniqe pleaded guilty, so the murder charges were virtually cut and dried before even going to trial.’
Langton took deep breaths, calming down.
‘I just want to look into her background a bit,’ Anna went on, also calming down. ‘We know she was a prostitute, we know she was brought up in various foster homes. But we also know that before her death she was off drugs and no longer working the streets. What was her relationship with Krasiniqe? Who else did she know, or what else did she know that we’ve never uncovered because the case was closed?’
Langton sat down behind his desk. ‘Get Mike Lewis in, let me talk to him.’
Anna nodded and walked out.
About half an hour later, Mike Lewis came up to her desk.
‘What the fuck is going on? I’ve just had him tear a strip off me! Suddenly you want to open up the Carly Ann murder? You put me right in it. I did my job, Anna, and I don’t like any implication that I skipped anything, all right?’
‘I am not implying that you did, Mike.’
‘Well, bloody Langton is.’
‘Then I’m sorry. Barolli was unable to work; that left you carrying the can for the trial.’
‘Krasiniqe bloody admitted it, for Chrissakes.’
‘Yes, I know — but why chop off her hands, try to decapitate her? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘No? Listen to me. These fucking illegal immigrants come out of war-torn areas, they cut up anything and anybody that stands in their way. If she refused his advances, if she did anything—’
‘But you don’t know why he killed her. He’s twenty-five years old, his brother’s just twenty-two—’
‘She was raped,’ Lewis snapped.
‘I know that, but what do you know about where she was and who she was seeing before she was killed?’
Mike Lewis sighed. ‘She’d been on the game since she was a kid, she’d left her foster home years before, she’d lived rough — what more do you need to know about her?’
‘Well, did she come into contact with Camorra? Do we know that?’
‘No, I don’t bloody know that. Until recently, I’d never even heard of him.’
‘Right. The Krasiniqe brothers may have been working for him; maybe Carly Ann also knew him, and when she stopped selling her tricks, stopped pumping herself full of heroin, maybe, just maybe…’
Lewis turned away. ‘I’ll check into what we have on record for her.’
It was obvious that Mike Lewis really had it in for her. Anna could see by the covert looks of the rest of the team that they were all ganging up against her too.
She felt slightly better when Langton called her into his office.
‘I’ve got Mike pulling out everything we have on Carly Ann, but I want you to cover for him as well. If you re-interview anyone connected to the case, then you go with him.’
‘He won’t like it.’
‘Tough shit. Get on with it.’
‘Right. We also need to double-check these two guys that Krasiniqe put into the frame before he withdrew his statement. We all know what happened when you went to interview them; what we don’t know is if the names were for real or if there is any connection to Camorra.’
‘Both names proved to be bullshit,’ Langton said. ‘They could have been shipped out of the country or Christ knows what, but we could find no record of them from immigration. Krasiniqe may not even have known their real names. Those guys disappeared into thin air.’
‘But they were staying close to Rashid Burry.’
‘Yes, but we can’t find that bastard either; he’s gone to ground.’ Langton gave a mirthless laugh, raising his hands. ‘It’s bloody mind-blowing. We can’t trace Sickert, the two missing children, we can’t find the guy that ripped me to shreds…’ He opened a file and flipped it round to face her. ‘Here’s the descriptions: one of them had two gold teeth — I see them in my nightmares. Maybe it was Rashid Burry. But how many of these guys have gold-capped teeth? The other, the one with the machete, is a blur. I couldn’t tell you what age, how tall; it happened so fast. One minute I was moving up the stairs, the next…’
Langton made a gesture of defeat, and Anna asked if she could take the file and work on it. ‘Yeah, take it.’
She flipped through it there and then. Attached was a picture of Carly Ann that Anna had never seen before; she had only ever seen the brutal photographs taken at the murder site and on the pathologist’s slab.
Langton’s desk phone rang and he snatched it up, listened for a few moments and then replaced the receiver.
‘Mike Lewis is waiting; he’s contacted the woman Carly Ann was staying with.’
Anna looked up from the file. ‘She was beautiful,’ she murmured.
‘What?’
‘I said, she was beautiful.’ Anna stared down at the photograph. Carly Ann had tawny skin, perfect features and wide, slanting blue eyes. She was tall and slender, at least five feet eight, and in the photograph, her lips were parted in a seductive, almost secret smile. Around her neck was a thick gold chain and a cross.
Mike Lewis was driving, Anna beside him in the unmarked patrol car.