Joanne looked up, the excitement sparkling in her eyes. “That’s brilliant. Wow! So, what do you want me to do?”
“I’m afraid it’s time for drudgery. Identify the streets outlined in red — and one street either side, for the sake of my peace of mind and get the electoral roll.”
Joanne sighed. “And go through the electoral roll checking it against CROs?”
“Unless you can think of a better way of doing it.”
“When I rule the world, they’ll organize the criminal records database so you can search it with any one of a dozen parameters,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’m on it.”
“Thanks, Joanne. Oh, and thanks for the restaurant tip.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I hope you enjoy it.”
Steve grinned. “I fully intend to.”
Joanne turned on her way out of the door. “If you get there, of course. I mean, if I get lucky, we could all be checking out a new number one suspect this evening. Right, sir?”
“Get lucky, Jo. But try not to get lucky before tomorrow morning if you want to remain my favourite DC.”
After she left, Steve stared at the closed door, feeling the buzz in his veins that came from the knowledge that at last they might be only hours from a lucky break. Thinking of lucky breaks reminded him that there had been a message on his desk asking him to ring Sarah Duvall.
Part of him dreaded the call. If Georgia Lester had been found dead, he wanted to put off the knowledge and its implications for as long as possible. On the other hand, it was feasible that she’d turned up alive. Steve reached out and punched in Sarah’s number. Extract from Decoding of Exhibit P13⁄4599 Azoqf tqkru zpsqa dsumx qefqd edqym uzeyk xurqe sauzs fasqf mxaft mdpqd. Ftqkx xtmhq faefm dfeqq uzsft qbmff qdzft qzuze bufqa rftqp gynet ufbmp pke.
Once they find Georgia tester’s remains, my life’s going to get a lot harder. They’ll have to start seeing the pattern then. But it’ll take them a day or two to go official with it. They won’t want to admit what’s going on because that’ll cause a panic. So I need to hit my next target fast, while he’s unsuspecting. But I’ve got to be careful not to rush things. Patience, that’s the secret. Never snatch at half a chance. Never lose your cool. Just sit it out. Even when the waiting’s hard and bitter. Take the courier’s uniform. I knew right from the beginning what I needed to get Kit Martin. But I had no idea how I was going to lay my hands on it. Then the gods smiled. I was in the launderette one evening, watching my clothes tumble around in the washer. There was only one other man there, and when he dragged out his damp clothes and stuffed them in the drier, I couldn’t miss the logo of Capital City Couriers blazing across the dark-blue drill jacket. And there were matching trousers. Pure manna from heaven. After he dropped some tokens in the slot, he looked at his watch and headed across the road to the local boozer. I waited a few minutes, and then loaded the courier’s entire wash into my holdall. Piece of piss. I sat and waited for my wash to finish, cool as a cucumber. Ten minutes later, I was walking back to my flat with my wet laundry on top of his. The trousers needed taking up, and the jacket’s a bit tight on the shoulders, but that really doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’ll be wearing it for long. Just long enough to convince Kit Martin to open his front door to Postman Pat.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Fiona looked at the clock on her office wall. Breakfast that morning had been tense, in spite of both their efforts to maintain something like normal life in the face of the fear that flickered below the surface. She had extracted an assurance from Kit that he wouldn’t open the door to strangers, nor would he go out alone, not even for his usual lunchtime walk on the Heath. She could see he was already chafing under these restrictions, but at least he could salvage his pride by telling himself he was doing it to mollify Fiona rather than out of cowardice.
The worst part of it was the not knowing what was going on. She almost wished she had been able to be sanguine about Steve’s refusal to offer Kit any formal protection. At least then they’d be in communication and she would be aware of how the investigation was progressing. But she couldn’t bring herself to forgive his failure to stick his neck out for the sake of friendship. So she would somehow have to deal with her unaccustomed ignorance.
She glanced at the clock again. This was pointless. She was achieving nothing sitting here. The paper she was supposed to be revising before submitting it for publication stared accusingly at her from the computer screen, as neglected as a piece of waste ground In her heart, Fiona knew she couldn’t concentrate in the office. If she took the paper home, she could at least hope to get the work done there. Nothing would happen to Kit while they were in the house together.
The decision made, Fiona was taking her jacket off its peg when her phone rang. She resisted the temptation to ignore it and crossed the office to pick it up on the fourth ring. “Hello, Fiona Cameron,” she said.
“Dr. Cameron? This is Victoria Green from the Mail. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If I could just explain what it’s about?” The journalist’s voice was warm and ingratiating.
“There’s no point, because I’m not interested. If you bother to look at your cuttings library, you’ll see I don’t do interviews.”
“It’s not an interview we want,” Green said quickly. “We’d like you to write an article for us. I know you write articles, I’ve read you in Applied Psychology Journal.”
“You read APJ?” Fiona said, her surprise holding her back from putting the phone down.
“I have a degree in psychology. I’ve read your work on crime linkage. That’s how I knew you were the best person to talk to about writing an article for us.”
“I don’t think so,” Fiona reiterated.
“You see,” Green continued undaunted, “I’ve got a theory that Drew Shand and Jane Elias were murdered by the same person. And I think Georgia Lester might be the next victim. I’d like you to apply your crime linkage work to these cases to see if I’m right.”
Fiona replaced the receiver without responding. The word was out. It wouldn’t be long before others jumped on Victoria Green’s bandwagon. If she’d had any doubts about going home to Kit, they had ended with the phone call.
The man with the face like a chicken shrugged. “Meat’s meat, innit? Once it’s skinned and off the bone, your human flesh isn’t going to look much different from a piece of beef or venison.”
Sarah Duvall sighed. “I appreciate that.”
“And it’s huge, the market. I can’t begin to count the number of fridges and chill cabinets and freezers in that place. It’s not like walking into your local butcher’s shop, you know. There’s twenty-three trading units in the East Building and another twenty-one in the West.” His dark eyes glittered and his beaky nose twitched in a sniff.
Sergeant Ron Daniels smiled benevolently at the small man. Working as officer in charge of the Smithfield Market policing team, he’d got to know Darren Green, the traders’ representative, over a period of years. He knew that behind his aggression was a reasonable man, provided he was accorded sufficient respect. “Nobody appreciates that more than me, Darren. We’ve got a big job on our hands and that’s why we’ve come to you.”
Duvall turned to the Home Office pathologist. “Professor Blackett, what’s your take on this?”
The balding, middle-aged man sitting behind her looked up from his notebook and frowned. “It is problematic, as Mr. Green points out. But on your suggestion, I read the relevant section of Georgia Lester’s book. And if we’re dealing with a copycat killer, then the cuts of meat he would end up with are going to vary from the standard butchery cuts in several key details.”