‘Well... without a full face of the bloke in the baseball cap it’s hard to tell... but I’m pretty sure I don’t know him.’ Jack looked at Morrison. ‘Is he the victim?’
Morrison shoved the photos back in the file with a scowl.
‘Is he the suspect then?’
Morrison stood up. ‘This is not over, Detective Warr. I don’t believe in coincidences and by Christ I have a slew of them with your name on them!’
Jack looked to DCI Clarke, who nodded for him to leave. Jack walked calmly to the door, glad he was wearing a jacket because he knew his shirt would be soaking wet with sweat. As he returned to his desk, Laura rocked back in her chair, not even needing to ask.
‘I’ll fill you in later,’ Jack assured her.
‘Not good enough, Jack,’ she said vehemently. ‘Morrison hasn’t seen me yet, Jack. Was that about me calling him the other day?’
‘No, you weren’t even mentioned. Do us both a favour, Laura, go into the loo, and stay there until they leave.’
Laura shook her head. ‘How the hell will I know when they’ve gone? I’ll go for lunch. I’ve been too worried to eat till now!’
‘Great, go on then. Hurry up!’
Laura left the incident room and Jack remained at his desk for half an hour before Morrison and Collingwood walked out of DCI Clarke’s office. Morrison strode out, without so much as a glance at Jack, allowing Collingwood to hang back for a second.
‘Sorry to drop you in the shit, Jack. No hard feelings.’
‘None. I hope you get your victim identified.’
Collingwood shook his head. ‘You must be joking. All we’ve got is crank calls, the victim’s physical description doesn’t match anyone on any missing person’s list. Morrison is clutching at every straw he sees. He reckons O’Reilly is our main suspect.’ Collingwood smiled. ‘After you.’
‘He could be right about O’Reilly. He was a thug basically.’ Jack was just about to suggest that they should check out what O’Reilly was shipping from Southampton docks when Morrison appeared at the doors, and Collingwood quickly joined him. Jack was relieved that Adam Border had been wise to the position of the shop’s CCTV cameras. But why was he so concerned about having his image recorded? He also thought about the tall, well-dressed black guy coming out of the shop when he’d found the invitations. Perhaps the camera was only picking up people entering the frame shop from one side, as he had done. Adam Border had walked out the first time he had seen him and turned to the right, and so had the elegant black guy. He sighed, doubting he could do anything about it unless he returned to the carpet shop opposite the framer’s and looked for himself.
For the rest of the afternoon, Jack found it hard to concentrate as he kept mulling over the meeting with Morrison. The shock of seeing the photos of Adam Border had really unnerved him. All it would take would be for one person to identify him from the investigation Jack had been involved in when Adam Border had been suspected of drug dealing and murder. Jack’s nerves started to jangle as he tried to remember what photographs of Adam Border they had on file.
As the incident room thinned out, Jack went into the records department with the intention of skimming through what had been retained about the years-old drug investigation, and what information they had on Adam Border.
As Jack sifted through the file, he was unable to find any adult photographs of Adam, only the ones they had uncovered from his childhood. He also became aware that due to his friendship with his old boss, Ridley had deleted any record of his suspicions about how Jack had traced Adam to his studio in Ireland. When the studio was searched, they had found no evidence that Adam had even been there. It had been wiped clean because Jack had given Adam the time to do that and then escape. Adam was very good at disappearing without a trace.
Returning to his desk in the incident room, he packed up, ready to leave. Before he did so, he recalled Ridley’s words: ‘Be careful Jack,’ Ridley had warned. ‘Border is a smart, dangerous liar. He’ll come back one day. Be ready.’
Chapter 22
On Thursday the whole station was in a celebratory mood following numerous arrests of gang members based on tip-offs and community support. The local newspaper showed a picture of DI Armani with a group of grateful parents and she made it clear that the police were committed to ending the local gang wars.
Jack, however, was clearly in the doghouse as far as DCI Clarke was concerned; the last thing he needed was one of his officers being connected — however tangentially — to a murder case. Jack noticed Armani was now keeping her distance, too. Whether it was because he’d mentioned her as his ‘alibi’ during his interview with Morrison, he didn’t know, but he decided against bringing the subject up with her. She must know he hadn’t divulged her connection to George Barras, because she would have been dragged over the coals by now. In the end he put her aloofness down to her being busy with her new-found media profile.
The covert programme to put officers on the streets wearing expensive watches had started to show results, with four arrests being made after receiving information from two other stations. Jack was in the thick of things but kept one eye on developments in the framer’s shop murder investigation.
The still-unidentified victim was now being physically described using Collingwood’s words in the ICU: five feet nine to ten, late thirties to early fifties, tanned, muscular, with collar-length dark blond hair. The media still made no reference to the crucifixion, but they did elaborate on the appalling injuries inflicted, suggesting that it was a possible hate crime due to the perpetrator disfiguring the victim’s face. Jack knew that by withholding certain key details, the hundreds of officers manning the public phonelines would be able to more easily distinguish between nutcases and true potential leads.
To Jack’s relief, so far there were no references to CCTV images of people seen entering the framer’s shop. On his way into the station, Jack had checked the position of the CCTV camera across the road from the framer’s. It was angled to show the carpet shop’s display out in front, and it just took in the left side of the framer’s shop entrance which was still covered in yellow crime scene tape. It was why the elegant black man had not been caught on camera, but Jack had been, along with Border who had been wearing his baseball cap pulled low and dark glasses.
Jack was packing up, ready to go home. Laura was at her desk and leaned back in her chair to indicate she had something to say. ‘Guess what, DCI Morrison has asked me on a date. I couldn’t believe it. I said to him was it just a drink and he said he was offering dinner.’
‘And?’
‘I accepted. You know what I think, it’s because of what I told you about Cruella working with him. I saw the reaction when he saw her, and she was just as tense. I’m going over to Fulham after work tonight.’
‘Well don’t have too much to drink.’
‘I won’t, and I’ll see what nuggets I can find out about his murder case.’
Jack was still shaking his head when he got to the car park. With Laura’s total inability to be subtle, Jack often wondered how on earth she had managed to become a police officer in the first place.
When Jack arrived home just after six, Maggie was in the nursery with Charlie, while Penny and Hannah were having dinner in the kitchen. Jack asked about his evening shirt and Penny said it had been washed and ironed and it was in the bedroom with his pressed jacket. Jack rolled his eyes, knowing Maggie would see it and ask what he was up to. As he left the room, Penny called after him, ‘You’re welcome!’