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‘When we’re done,’ Sean told the sergeant, ‘I want you to ensure the body is taken to the mortuary at Guy’s Hospital. Understand?’
The sergeant drew a sharp intake of breath. ‘Tricky. Bodies from this area are supposed to be taken to Charing Cross. Coroner’s Courts are very twitchy about jurisdiction.’
‘My call,’ he snapped at him slightly. ‘He goes to Dr Canning at Guy’s. No one else.’
‘So he is the man you’re looking for, then?’ the sergeant deduced.
‘Yeah,’ Sean answered mournfully. ‘He’s our victim.’ He stood and turned to Donnelly.
‘Anything catch your eye?’ Donnelly asked.
‘Nothing particular, although …’
‘Although what?’
‘Although there’s only two reasons a killer removes a body from the scene of the murder,’ Sean explained. ‘One is because the scene links them in some way to the victim, so they have to move it, or …’
‘Or?’ Donnelly pushed, impatient to hear the answer.
‘Or because they need to continue using the scene – to live in, to run a business from, although in this case neither of those seem likely.’
‘What then?’ Donnelly asked.
‘He needs it,’ Sean explained. ‘He needs to use it again for other victims and there will be more. He’s as good as told us there will.’
‘I was afraid you were gonna say that,’ Donnelly told him. ‘Why is it with us there’s always going to be more?’
‘Welcome to Special Investigations,’ Sean answered.
‘So what we dealing with here? Just another fucking lunatic, or could this one really be some sort of self-proclaimed avenging angel – a normal guy pushed too far?’
‘It doesn’t really matter right now,’ Sean explained. ‘What does matter is that he’s organized, motivated, clever and dangerous. And we need to find him and stop him, before this whole thing gets completely out of control.’
‘Fair enough,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘D’you want me to sort out a Family Liaison Officer?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Sean tried not to think of the pain he was about to put the family through. ‘But I need to see them first – let them know what to expect, maybe get some early answers.’
‘Want some company?’ Donnelly asked.
‘Why not,’ he answered. ‘You can keep me on the right path.’
‘Meaning?’ Donnelly asked.
‘Meaning,’ Sean explained, ‘this isn’t exactly what we’ve become used to – is it? Not like he’s a young woman abducted from her own home or a young child snatched from his bed. They were … vulnerable. This man had no vulnerabilities – or so he thought. Male, in his fifties, rich, powerful. Can’t see the public shedding too many tears over him.’
‘Aye, well,’ Donnelly reminded him, ‘the man’s still been killed and anyone who gets murdered in a strange and interesting way on our patch relies on us to find their killer – no matter what their background.’
‘I know that,’ he agreed, ‘but don’t expect an avalanche of information if we end up relying on the public to help us solve this one.’
‘Sometimes, boss,’ Donnelly told him, ‘you have a very bleak view of mankind.’
‘We’ll see,’ he warned him more than told him. ‘We’ll see.’
DS Sally Jones was in her side office ploughing through the huge number of reports the investigation had already generated. She’d spent a good part of the day speaking on the phone with people from Your View, all of whom who were deeply upset and shocked that their ‘medium’ had been used for such a mindless act of violence, but were powerless to stop it happening again, unless they closed down their entire operation, which of course they were not prepared to do. They were sure the police and public would understand. She sensed a disturbance in the main office and looked up to see Anna standing in the middle of a small group of detectives chatting cheerfully, explaining her sudden, unannounced arrival.
Sally felt the colour drain from her face and an old, familiar sick feeling spreading in her stomach. Her private sessions with Anna had been held in complete secrecy, without the knowledge of anyone connected to the police, but now her psychiatrist was standing in her office talking to her work colleagues.
She practically jumped from her chair and paced into the main office, weaving her way through the small group and seizing Anna by the arm. ‘Anna. So nice to see you. What are you doing here?’ she faked and began to steer her towards the relative privacy of her own office.
‘No one knows, Sally, if that’s what you look so worried about,’ Anna tried to calm her concerns, ‘and no one’s going to know. I’m only here to advise on the Your View investigation – that’s all.’
‘Advise on the investigation?’ Sally questioned. ‘I seem to remember the last time you did that things didn’t work out too well. Not for Sean, anyway.’
‘Sally,’ Anna explained, looking around to make sure they were out of earshot. ‘If me being here is going to cause hostility between us – if it’s going to adversely affect our patient-doctor relationship, then I promise you, I’ll tell the Assistant Commissioner I can’t help with the case.’ There was a silent pause. ‘You’re more important to me than this investigation.’
Sally studied her for a good while, this woman she’d grown to trust with her deepest secrets – secrets she kept even from Sean. ‘Jesus, Anna. I’m really sorry. I just didn’t expect to see you standing in here, in my office. It threw me a bit.’
‘My fault,’ Anna admitted. ‘I should have spoken to you first. Warned you.’
‘You don’t have to check with me. Your work is your work. Outside of our relationship you owe me nothing.’ There was a silent truce between them for a moment before Sally spoke again. ‘So, here we are again. You. Me. Sean. A murder investigation.’
‘Looks that way. Speaking of which, how is Sean?’
Sally tried to hide her suspicion about the true nature of Sean and Anna’s relationship. She barely knew Sean’s wife Kate, and didn’t particularly like the little she did know, if she was honest, but still she felt strangely compelled to protect Sean’s marriage – some deep instinct in her warning he could be lost into a world of turmoil without her and their two young daughters. In Anna, she sensed a threat.
‘Sean’s Sean,’ she answered. ‘He’s fine, as usual. Bull in a china shop, all guns blazing, shooting from the hip and God help anyone who gets in the way.’
‘Hasn’t changed then,’ Anna joked.
Sally forced a smile. ‘Same old, same old.’
‘Well,’ Anna told her, getting to her feet. ‘I’d better get on with what I’m being paid for. Do you think Sean would mind if I borrowed his office?’
‘No,’ Sally said and immediately regretted it. ‘Or you could share with me.’
Anna looked around. ‘Looks like you’re already sharing the rent.’
‘Ah. Yeah. DS Donnelly,’ Sally admitted.
‘I think Sean might tolerate me a little better.’
‘I take your point. Is there anything you need?’
‘No,’ Anna told her. ‘I already have the file and the video. That’s all I need for now. I’ll see you later for coffee perhaps?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Sally replied, trying to sound a lot friendlier than she felt, watching Anna float from the office and into Sean’s. ‘This is not good,’ she whispered to herself. ‘This is not good at all.’
‘Are you sure this isn’t a professional hit made to look like something else?’ Donnelly asked as they approached Elm Park Road in Chelsea – the victim’s home street and the place he was abducted from.
‘I’m not sure of anything yet,’ Sean admitted, ‘but if he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar while laundering someone’s money, especially if they’re Eastern European or South American, they wouldn’t want to hide what they’d done. They like to make public statements – keep everyone else in line. And the abduction too doesn’t feel right. If it had been organized crime they would have lured him somewhere – somewhere quiet and out of sight. But I’m not ruling anything out until we know more.’
Donnelly parked as close as he could to Elkins’s home. Sean was out the car before he’d had time to kill the engine, looking up and down the upmarket street – looking for ghosts. Donnelly soon joined him.
‘Hell of a place to abduct somebody from,’ he offered.
‘And in daylight,’ Sean added.
‘A confident customer.’
‘Or insane.’
‘Either way the whole thing was seen by a couple of witnesses – both saying the suspect’s white van was parked in the street already, waiting for Elkins. So he wasn’t followed.’
‘Not yesterday anyway,’ Sean explained, ‘but he was followed at some point, otherwise how could the suspect know where he lived and the fact he regularly walked from the tube station to his home? Unless he already knew him – knew his habits.’
‘Someone who worked for him in the past?’ Donnelly suggested.
‘In the City?’
‘No. These people have a lot of hired help. I was thinking more a disgruntled gardener, or maintenance man, or even a husband of a cleaner his missus sacked.’
‘Possibly,’ Sean agreed. ‘It’ll all need to be checked out. It’ll be nice if it’s that easy.’
‘Shall we do the witnesses first or the family?’
‘The family,’ Sean replied. ‘Get it over with.’
‘If you don’t want to see them you don’t have to,’ Donnelly offered. ‘I can always come back later with Sally.’
‘No,’ he insisted. ‘I want to see them, or his wife at least.’
‘Fair enough.’ Donnelly didn’t argue. ‘After you.’
Sean walked the short distance along the immaculate street and climbed the short flight of steps to the shining black door of number twelve. He imagined Paul Elkins coming home to this door, day after day, content and confident, untouched by the problems normal people had – unable to imagine something like this could ever happen to him. Was that what the killer wanted – to drag the wealthy and privileged into a world where they could feel the pain of everyday life? Had the killer felt too much pain to bear? He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell – avoiding the heavy-looking metal door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head that looked like it would wake the dead. The last thing he wanted to do was advertise their presence. It was only a matter of time before the media discovered the victim’s home address and came crawling around, but he wanted to keep things quiet for as long as he could.
After a few seconds the door was opened by a short, stocky man in his late twenties wearing spectacles and dressed in an inexpensive-looking dark suit. He eyed them suspiciously. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked with a slight London accent.
Sean knew immediately he was a fellow detective as he showed him his warrant card. ‘DI Sean Corrigan from the Special Investigations Unit.’
‘DS Donnelly,’ Donnelly told him without producing his identification, ‘from the same.’
The other detective seemed to immediately relax. ‘Am I glad to see you,’ he whispered. ‘I was told you’d be taking this one over. Babysitting the family of a murder victim isn’t exactly my thing. DC Jonnie Mendham, by the way. You’d better come in.’ He stepped aside and allowed them to enter before closing the door and continuing to talk in a whisper. ‘They’re all gathered in the living room,’ Mendham explained. ‘Mrs Elkins and her two kids, Jack and Evie. There’s also a friend of Mrs Elkins here too, Trudy Bevens – a shoulder to cry on and all that.’
‘Fine,’ Sean acknowledged as he and Donnelly followed Mendham towards the living room and the desperate sadness he knew he’d find inside.
‘Any idea how long it’ll be before you send someone to take over from me?’ Mendham’s voice held a slight pleading note. ‘I’m not trained for this family liaison stuff.’
‘Soon enough,’ Sean answered carelessly. ‘Until then just keep a watch out for reporters and make sure they don’t speak to anyone they don’t know on the phone. Remind them details of the investigations are confidential and not to be shared even with family and close friends until I say it’s OK.’
‘No problem,’ Mendham agreed in a whisper. ‘Just get me out of this mausoleum.’ He opened the living-room door before Sean could reply and raised his voice to its normal volume. ‘Mrs Elkins,’ he addressed the attractive woman in her late forties who remained seated as she looked up at them – her appearance still immaculate despite the circumstances, her ash blonde hair framing her tanned face and piercing blue eyes that had reddened somewhat with crying.
‘Yes,’ she answered as strongly as she could, her voice wavering somewhat.
‘This is Detective Inspector Corrigan and Detective Sergeant Donnelly from our Special Investigations Unit,’ Mendham explained. ‘They’ll be taking over the investigation.’
‘Why?’ she asked in a slightly clipped accent.
‘It’s the way things work,’ Sean spoke to her for the first time as he scanned the other faces in the room – a weeping girl of no more than eleven or twelve who sat close to her mother wrapped in a protective arm, a stoical-looking boy probably about fourteen and Mrs Elkins’s tearful friend. ‘Most serious and unusual cases get passed on to us. We have a certain amount of experience in dealing with investigations like this.’
‘I wasn’t aware that anything like this had ever happened before,’ she questioned him.
‘It hasn’t,’ he agreed. ‘I meant experience in dealing with things that are a little out of the ordinary.’
‘A little out of the ordinary,’ she repeated, looking at him blankly. ‘My husband’s dead. Murdered by some lunatic.’
‘And we’re very sorry for your loss,’ Donnelly intervened. ‘We’re here because we’re best equipped to find whoever did this and bring them to justice, but we need to ask some questions. Maybe it would be better if the children weren’t here for that.’
‘No,’ she snapped back. ‘We stay together. I’m not about to let them out of my sight. Not until you’ve caught this madman.’
‘Fair enough.’ Donnelly didn’t argue. ‘I reckon I’d be the same. Do you mind if we sit down?’
‘Sorry,’ she apologized. ‘Of course not. Please.’
They both sat on the same large sofa opposite Mrs Elkins and her daughter, Sean glad of the large size of the room – just the thought of being trapped in a small room with this many grieving people was enough to make him feel claustrophobic.
‘I appreciate this must be very difficult,’ Sean tried to say the things she no doubt expected him to say, ‘but our questions really can’t wait.’
‘I understand,’ she assured him. ‘Ask what you need to. Let’s just get it over with.’
‘What time did your husband leave for work yesterday?’ Sean asked.
‘Not long after seven,’ she answered. ‘His usual time.’
‘A hard-working man.’ Donnelly tried to ease the tension.
‘You don’t get to where Paul was working nine to five,’ she told them. ‘It takes dedication and sacrifice.’
‘Yet he was abducted at about five pm – in the street outside,’ Sean reminded her. ‘So he didn’t always work late?’
‘No,’ she agreed, slightly defensively. ‘Not always, but most days. Does it matter?’
Did you know he’d finished work early? Sean asked the killer silent questions. Did you somehow know?
‘Did he call you at all during the day?’ he asked, more to try to establish a rhythm of questions and answers than hoping to discover anything useful, ‘or contact you somehow?’
‘He called me a couple of times,’ she answered. ‘Once in the morning and again early afternoon – to let me know he was about to leave work.’ She suddenly choked up, her tears contagious amongst the other women while the boy looked on blankly. Was the boy somehow involved? Sean asked himself, before deciding he was most likely still in shock. The tears would come later. ‘It was the last time I ever got to speak to him,’ she managed to say.
‘Why call twice?’ Sean asked, trying to remember the last time he’d called his wife Kate more than once a day just for the sake of it. ‘Was something troubling him?’
