Above Suspicion (7 page)

Henson cocked his head, still looking at the picture. ‘I’d say he was right-handed.’ He mimed lifting something heavy and placing it over his shoulder. ‘Yes, could be right-handed.’

‘Could they be punches?’ Anna ventured.

Henson narrowed his eyes. ‘Punches?’

‘Yes, the one on her stomach looks like part of a fist to me.’

Henson pursed his lips. ‘I doubt that is a punch. As I said, more like a bruise from being carried.’

Langton was growing visibly impatient, but Henson hadn’t finished his deliberations.

‘She died where you found her. The time of death we’ve got down to approx five weeks ago. We’re expecting more details of the insect infestation, but it’s difficult to get all that much as the weather plays such a part. It went from very cold to nearly seventy degrees in a matter of a day.’

Langton stated that he did not want the coroner to release the body until they were certain it would not be required for further examination.

‘Have it your way. The parents have been calling constantly. They want to arrange a funeral service. But if you need her, fine; we’ll keep her on ice.’

Depressed about the limited information he had gained, Langton walked silently with Anna through the car park. As she stopped by her car, she said, ‘Sorry I was late, sir.’

‘That yours?’ he asked, still glowering.

‘No, I stole it to get here. Joke.’

She was fumbling for her keys and when she looked up to smile, seemingly oblivious to her, Langton was walking away towards a patrol car and uniformed driver.

She got into the Mini only to find a notice plastered across her windscreen: ‘Private car park. For medical employees only. Your car will be towed away’.

Her attempts to rip the notice off left strips of partly glued paper across the windscreen. She swore softly and repeatedly, for a very long time.

Mike Lewis glanced up from his desk as Anna put the Barbara Whittle file back and signed out her fifth victim for more late-night reading.

‘Get anything helpful from that old fart Henson?’

‘No. Murdered where she was found,’ replied Anna. ‘Possibly carried over the killer’s shoulder. You?’

‘Yards of fucking CCTV footage, plus two hours with that Cuban fruit and nut. His BO is the worst I’ve ever come across and I’ve had my fair share of smellies.’

They were interrupted by a sudden burst of laughter from a group of detectives round DC Barolli’s desk. He was holding up an article from the internal Met newspaper.

‘Says here, they’re lowering the physical entrance requirements for women; they just can’t keep up. You read this, Jean?’

Jean gave them a sour-faced glance, but Moira, a big blonde with heavy breasts, grinned with derision. ‘Wankers. It’s brains, not brawn, that cracks a case.’ Though Moira waited for a response, they avoided her scrutiny and returned, mumbling, to their desks.

‘Any of you beefcakes traced the girl’s handbag yet? You should try getting off your arses—’ Moira broke off as Langton appeared in the doorway. She returned to marking up the board.

‘What was that?’ he asked as he joined her.

Anna listened curiously. She had also been struck by the fact Melissa had no handbag and that none of the other victims’ handbags had been recovered.

Moira answered Langton earnestly. ‘I know they never mentioned it in the reconstruction, but surely she’d have had one? Why would she walk off from her boyfriend without a purse when she was supposedly heading for the tube?’

‘Boyfriend couldn’t recall if she had one or not.’

‘Yeah, but they don’t notice. He said the same thing about her coat.’ Moira flipped through her notebook. ‘All she had on was a T-shirt and mini skirt? When it was cold out? But the no-bag thing really worries me. Doesn’t make sense.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Langton turned to Barolli at his desk. ‘Have you been back to The Bistro?’

‘Yep. We questioned waiters, the owner and managed to trace a couple of customers. No one remembers much. The place was jammed, so even though it was cold, some of them were eating outside. Melissa and Rawlins sat at the table ringed on the right of this photo.’

Langton frowned over the photographs of the restaurant.

‘CCTV footage ready yet, Mike?’

‘Any minute, gov. There’s a hell of a lot of tapes to be checked over. If our sighting of her from the Cuban is correct, we’ve got her at Old Compton Street, corner of Greek Street, so we’ve had to cover a lot of possible routes.’

‘Put some pressure on them. We need to see what they’ve got. Or haven’t got. Did The Bistro have a security camera?’

‘No. And during video reconstruction, they never mentioned a handbag.’

‘She had no pockets in her clothes,’ Moira reminded them.

‘Maybe she expected the boyfriend to catch up with her,’ Langton said, flatly.

Two hours later, when the tapes from all the security video cameras had been gathered, DS Mike Lewis stood by the TV screen, the remote control in one hand and addressed the team.

‘We got some good news and some bad,’ he said as the blurred black and white film began.

Lewis did a running commentary. They had identified Melissa in frame, as she passed by Paul Smith’s boutique in Floral Street. He froze the film at that point.

‘Look: no handbag. No coat. She’s really hurrying. Now you see her, now you don’t.’

Lewis replayed the moment Melissa passed the security camera. She was in quite a hurry, almost running. The next sighting was Melissa going down Exeter Street near Joe Allen’s restaurant, walking at a slower pace, but looking confused. She turned back, giving the camera two hits.

‘Now we presume she’s heading past the Opera House towards Bow Street mags court.’

‘Or she could have been going back to the boyfriend,’ Moira said.

‘No, wait now, we’ve got something good coming up. There’s a time code on this section: it’s eleven fifteen and here she comes.’

All heads craned forward to watch, as Melissa came in shot, passing the Donmar Theatre. The footage had been taken from across the road. ‘Two black kids, with grey anorak hoods pulled over their faces, try to get Melissa to stop and talk to them. As one puts out his arm towards her, she backs away. She will have nothing to do with them. They follow for a few feet, then she starts to run. The two boys look after her, as she disappears out of frame. They walk away.’

Lewis pressed fast forward, then stopped the frame again.

‘The theatre was already closed; so was the Pineapple Dance Centre. Now, just on the edge of frame, is that her boyfriend? I can’t be one hundred per cent, but it looks like Rawlins to me.’

They rewound and replayed, all the time peering at the fuzzy frame. All they could agree on was that it could have been Mark Rawlins, but it was impossible to be sure as he was hardly in shot.

‘Get that blown up,’ Langton said.

‘Already in the pipeline.’ Lewis picked up the remote. ‘On to the next section.’

‘Why didn’t she get the tube at Covent Garden?’ Moira asked.

‘They shut the gates at half ten; congestion on the platform. OK, this is the best we’ve got and it tallies with our Cuban friend. It’s footage from the Club Minx and buttressed on to it is the footage from the massage parlour opposite. So we’re getting two hits of the same sequence, from different perspectives.

‘There’s our Cuban pacing around, lighting a cigarette. He is directly opposite the massage parlour. Passing him are a number of cars, one is a Range Rover and the other is a Jaguar. You can see the flash of the neon sign outside the massage parlour; it’s giving us that strange light. Now, there’s a vehicle on the inside of the Range Rover, but hidden; it’s some kind of low car and it’s turning right. You can see his indicator flashing, along with the neon light. But there’s no way we can tell the make of the vehicle. We’ve got the reg of three of the passing vehicles but no luck with the other two.’

There was a brief pause as the footage jumped to the next segment.

‘OK, now we’re seeing footage from the massage parlour security camera and again the Cuban’s statement bears out. Here she comes, just entering right of frame, maybe intending to walk down Greek Street, to Soho Square. If we believe the boyfriend, she was heading towards Oxford Street, either to get on the tube at Tottenham Court Road or to continue on to Oxford Circus tube. That would make more sense since she lived in Maida Vale, which is on the Bakerloo, line. There’s a clear shot of Melissa for only a second, passing the massage parlour and again she looks as if she were unsure of her direction. She stands a moment. She turns back to walk past the massage parlour again. She walks virtually out of shot, then she can be seen looking towards something or someone, before disappearing out of frame.’

Lewis held up his hand. ‘Now, on the freeze frame, you can just see a small section of a pale coloured vehicle. It could be white or grey, but all we’ve got is that fraction of the side and a minuscule section of the back bumper. See it?’

Lewis had to rewind the tape twice before it was clear to them what he was pointing at on the edge of frame: there was a fraction of the side of a car and a small section of the vehicle’s bumper.

‘It could be the same car that was on the inside of the Range Rover; either that, or he’s driving down Old Compton Street from Tottenham Court Road and parking up on the corner. We’ll get that section blown up and see if we can tell the make of the car, but I think it could be a Mercedes, an old one, maybe thirty years old.’

The video ended and Lewis rewound the tape.

Viewing the video had left the team with a strange, almost surreal feeling. Melissa had come to life in front of them and yet they seemed as far away as ever from trapping her killer. Langton closed his office door with unusual quietness. Everyone went to work on their various assignments.

Anna studied the file of the fifth victim. Beryl Villiers was thirty-four. Younger and fitter, she had put up more resistance than the others. Nevertheless, both her eyes were blackened and swollen and her nose had been broken; two front teeth had been knocked out and were found near the body.

She, too, was a known prostitute and had a history of addiction, but her autopsy showed no signs of her still using, nor any alcohol. Her home address was in Bradford. When all else had failed to produce anything, Beryl had finally been identified by the number on her breast implants. Once she was identified, the police leading her enquiry had questioned all the working girls around King’s Cross station. None could recall who Beryl had picked up earlier that night, after a couple of punters she’d taken to the old station arches. She was last seen patrolling her beat, around ten fifteen, but no one could recall seeing her after that. Four weeks after she disappeared, in March 1999, Beryl’s body was found on Wimbledon Common.

Beryl was younger than the previous victims. She had no children. She was a ‘weekender’, travelling from Bradford every Friday night and returning home on the following Monday. She originally hailed from Leicester, where they located her mother; she seemed more distraught to learn her daughter was a prostitute than to learn that she was dead.

Anna made copious notes and returned to the filing cabinet for the last case history.

‘What are you doing?’ Moira asked.

In reality she was making herself busy. ‘Just familiarizing myself with the case files,’ she said.

‘You’re Jack Travis’s daughter, aren’t you?’

Anna’s eyes lit up. ‘Did you know him?’

‘Everybody knew Jack. He was something else. I was sorry he died.’

‘It was cancer.’

‘Yes, I know. We sent flowers. How’s your mother handling it?’ Moira asked.

‘She died two years ago.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry. She was very beautiful. I remember meeting her once. None of us could believe that old codger had kept her secret for so long.’

‘He worshipped her.’ Anna smiled.

‘We all pretty much worshipped your dad. If he’d been handling this case, he’d have got a result by now. I think Langton’s out of his depth. And I tell you something: that girl had to have a handbag. Why aren’t we concentrating on that?’

Anna felt an urge to defend Langton. ‘We are, though.’

‘Bloody haphazard way of going about it. And that reconstruction? They didn’t have her with a handbag in the video. They’re bloody amateurs. Why didn’t they ask her mother if one of Melissa’s handbags was missing from home?’

‘Have we checked Melissa’s flat?’ Anna asked.

‘Of course we have. She had a wardrobe full of handbags.’ Moira stared at the photographs on the wall. ‘Better life than any of these poor bitches. Seeing them up there, it’s as if their eyes follow you around, like wounded dogs. All got the same expression, haven’t they?’

‘Have you noticed how many come from up north?’

Moira nodded. ‘Leeds, Liverpool, Blackpool, Manchester, Bradford …’

‘I was just wondering if there was a possible connection; whether they knew each other.’

Moira shrugged. ‘You ask around the big stations: Euston, King’s Cross, Paddington - a big percentage come down on the train from the north and scrabble for punters. They’re like hornets. Usually junkies, who get hooked up with a pimp, or drugs, or booze. I know, I was on Vice for six years.’

Moira was walking away as if the conversation was over. Anna took the last file to her desk. Langton opened his office door and called, abruptly: ‘Travis! Come in here a minute.’

Anna picked up her notebook and headed for his office. Moira smirked at Jean.

‘Keen, isn’t she?’

Jean pursed her lips and returned to her computer. ‘Maybe she’s after a spot on Crime Night!’

Anna stood in front of Langton’s desk. He rolled a pencil, flicking it back and forth. ‘You were late this morning. You threw up at the murder site yesterday and then again at the post mortem. I was beginning to think you were a waste of space, Travis.’

She bristled.

‘But Henson’s just called. It seems you’re right. The marks to Melissa’s stomach are part of a fist. The punch wasn’t directly to the skin but through her T-shirt; there are fine fibres embedded in the skin that match the material. It makes it hopeless for us to get a clear print but Henson believes that they’ll have every indication of the size of fist, so there’s a possibility that if we find the killer, they might be able to make a match with his fist!’