I rubbed my temples where a headache had begun to form. ‘What do you mean?’
Ward paused, perhaps regretting what she’d said. The strain of recent days was etched on her face. Whelan folded his arms and stared at his lap as she continued.
‘This doesn’t go any further than this room, OK? We’ve learned Jessop had access to St Jude’s sooner than he’s been claiming. He was supposed to have surveyed the site a full year before demolition work actually started. We’re still looking into the dates, but that potentially overlaps with when Christine Gorski and Darren Crossly went missing.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, struggling to take this in. ‘Are you saying now he could be involved in their murders? Not just the hit-and-run?’
‘I’m not saying anything yet. But earlier today we got a warrant to search Jessop’s work premises. We found plastic tarpaulins in his yard like the one used to wrap Christine Gorski’s body. And before you say it, yes, I know half the builders in the country probably use something similar. But Jessop had a guard dog in his yard, a black-and-tan Rottweiler. Same colour as the dog hairs we found on the tarpaulin from the loft.’
‘Not much use as a guard dog,’ Whelan commented. ‘It was daft as a brush. It’d run out of food and water, so it was just pleased somebody had come to see it.’
I barely heard him. It was one thing being told that Jessop was suspected of the hit-and-run that had killed Oduya. But the sadistic murders that had taken place at St Jude’s were something else entirely.
‘Guard dog aside,’ Ward continued, pointedly, ‘most of the tarpaulins were coated in cement dust and powder, which, admittedly, is only what you’d expect, given his trade. But some of them had dried paint on them, the same blue as the paint on the tarpaulin from the loft. We’re getting it analysed, but it looks identical. And Jessop’s wife let us take some of his clothes, so we’ve got samples of his hair. If his DNA matches the human hair we found on the tarpaulin as well, then he’s going to have some tough questions to answer.’
I sat back in my chair, numbed by this new information. ‘So where does this leave Gary Lennox?’
Ward spread her hands. ‘At this moment in time, he’s still the main suspect for the St Jude’s inquiry. But that was always going to hinge on whether his fingerprints match the ones from the false wall. We still haven’t been able to check that, so in the meantime we need to find Jessop and—’
She broke off as her phone rang in her bag. Taking it out, her face cleared of all expression as she looked at the screen.
‘I need to take this.’
Pushing herself to her feet, she left the room. Whelan and I sat in an uneasy silence after the door closed behind her. He took out his phone and began scrolling down the screen.
‘This is going to be bad for her, isn’t it?’ I said.
For a second I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he reluctantly lowered his phone.
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Tonight wasn’t her fault.’
‘Doesn’t make any difference. This whole investigation’s been a PR train wreck. Might not matter so much if we’d anything to show for it, but we’ve got one suspect practically out of bounds in hospital and now another on the run. Doesn’t look good, however you try to spin it.’
No, it didn’t. ‘Do you think she’ll stay on as SIO?’
Again, there was a pause. ‘It all depends. If we get a breakthrough with either Jessop or Lennox in the next twenty-four hours, she could still come out smelling of roses. If not…’
He shrugged.
If not, the finger of blame would be levelled firmly at Ward, I thought. An inexperienced SIO — and a pregnant one, at that — in charge of her first murder inquiry would make a convenient scapegoat, regardless of whether it was fair or not. This must have seemed a fantastic opportunity when Ward was appointed.
Now it could end her career.
The door opened and she came back in. Whelan and I both looked at her as she returned to her seat, but her face was unreadable.
‘We’ve heard from the hospital,’ she said, sitting back down. ‘Daniel Mears is out of surgery. He lost the leg.’
Jesus, poor Mears. It was only a few hours before that I’d seen him in the pub, brooding and withdrawn. Whatever had been bothering him would seem inconsequential now.
‘At least he’s alive,’ Whelan offered.
‘Is that supposed to count as a win?’ she snapped. ‘Only one dead and one maimed? Jesus.’
Whelan coloured, looking down at the tabletop. Ward gave a long sigh.
‘Sorry, Jack.’
He nodded, though his jaw muscles didn’t unclench.
Ward pushed a hand through her hair, making it even more unruly than before. ‘OK, I think we’re done here. I need to get back to headquarters. We’ll have to prepare a press statement and Ainsley’s going to want briefing.’
‘Do you need me for anything else?’ I asked. I was expecting her to say I could leave. Instead, she considered me for a moment.
‘Actually, yes,’ she said. ‘We have another problem.’
Chapter 26
I didn’t sleep well that night. Thoughts of the hit-and-run kept me awake well into the early hours, and if I drifted off it was to jerk awake again, still hearing the screech of tyres and the thud of impact. I got up early and took a long shower, finishing with an icy-cold spray. It left me shivering and more alert but no less at odds. Images of Oduya and Mears in the street alternated with Ward’s bombshell about Jessop. The enormity of what had happened was hard enough to grasp on its own, but realizing the cause was something so needless — so bloody mundane — made it worse. I’d felt some pity for the contractor before this, seeing that, for all his flaws, the man was suffering.
Not any more.
I badly missed Rachel. I wished I could call her, but that wasn’t possible while she was at sea. Instead, I tried to act as if it were just another morning, hiding behind the comfort of routine. I resisted turning on the morning news until I was eating breakfast, making do this morning with two cups of instant coffee and a slice of toast. I was expecting the hit-and-run to be one of the lead stories, and it was. It felt strange to hear Oduya and Mears spoken about in that context on the radio, difficult to reconcile that the activist’s huge personality had crossed over into the past tense. Mears’s condition was described as serious but stable, his injuries life-changing rather than life-threatening. That was better than it might have been, but still bad enough. Their role in the St Jude’s investigation was mentioned, along with the inevitable speculation and criticism of how it was being handled. Then came something I wasn’t expecting.
‘The Metropolitan Police are looking to question a fifty-three-year-old man in relation to the incident,’ the newsreader intoned. ‘The whereabouts of Keith Jessop, a demolitions expert believed to have been working on the hospital site, are currently unknown. Jessop is thought to be potentially dangerous and, if sighted, should not be approached.’
I put down the piece of cold toast, no longer hungry. So that was it, then: Ward had chosen the nuclear option of releasing his name. I guessed she’d be under pressure from Ainsley to demonstrate that the police were taking action, but I hadn’t anticipated it so soon. There seemed something irrevocable about it, like taking a blindfolded step in the hope that the ground was where you thought it would be.
Pouring my coffee down the sink, I got my coat and left the apartment. There was a bin liner of rubbish to take out, so I dropped it into the refuse chute on my way to the lift. The vandalized bins had been replaced, and the only sign of the fire was a cold odour of old smoke when I opened the hatch. Whatever I might think about Ballard Court, I couldn’t deny the place was efficient.