Room when they walked in. Egan had pulled in a few more muscleheads from the proactive team, those officers who liked patrolling the alleys, watching the active criminals; burglars and dealers would be getting an easier time for the next few days. They found some seats at the back of the room, and as Laura sat back in her chair she looked around.
The police station was showing its age. The walls had been painted many times over, the current version of cream uneven and flaking, with large radiators beneath sash windows. The ceiling was high so everything below it looked jumbled, untidy, just a clutter of desks and paper. There was talk of a new station being built on the edge of town, but that was years away yet.
Egan paced at the front of the room and stroked his chin. He looked tense. He had watched Laura and Pete walk in, the last ones to arrive.
Egan turned to address the room, announced his presence with a cough and started with a summary of the case so far: how Jess’s body had been found, the usual list of inquiries. Boyfriends. Money. Stalker. He was a flipchart cop. He had done all the leadership stuff, put pictures of the dead woman on the wall, jotted down suspects and ideas. The others in the room had short attention spans, and Laura could sense their restlessness, as if they knew they wouldn’t get the resources to do the job properly. They had to get lucky, and quickly.
And it might take luck, because crime scenes had already reported back and the forensic sweep was looking slim. There were DNA tests to run, fingerprints to compare, but, for a bloody murder scene like that, nothing stood out yet. No bloody handprints on the walls or the doors, or any footwear marks on the floor. The evidence might be there once everything was looked at, but nothing instant had shown up.
Egan paused to look at Laura. ‘You spoke with the old man. How was he?’
‘Tired and emotional, I suppose. I told him I would call on him later to get a statement. Neighbours confirmed that he was banging on the door not long before the call was made, so we didn’t think we had enough to bring him in this morning.’
‘But what did you think?’
‘I don’t know. He was there, he was upset, but other than that, I’m not sure.’
‘Still no alibi?’
Laura shook her head. ‘None. Just that he was at home, dreaming about her.’
Egan looked eager at that. ‘Eric Randle has to be our target suspect. I want to know everything about him by the end of today. Where he worked, who he knows, where he goes. I want someone to keep an eye on his house. See who goes in and who goes out.’ And then he pointed at Laura and Pete. ‘And you two can go get his statement. Once you leave, he might think that’s it.’
Laura and Pete exchanged glances. It seemed mundane after the pressure of the murder scene.
‘What about Luke King?’ asked Pete. ‘He was in the area and left in the middle of the night.’
‘Make some discreet inquiries,’ answered Egan. ‘That’s your job once you’ve finished with Randle.’
Pete seemed unconvinced. ‘How long do we wait if he realises we’re watching him?’ he asked. ‘There may be the deceased’s DNA on him right now. If we wait, it’ll be gone.’
Egan took a deep breath, looked as if he was trying to control himself.
‘I’m aware of that, but he has no idea that we know about him yet. Let’s just keep an eye on him, see what he does.’
Pete didn’t reply. He just clenched his jaw and stared at Egan.
Laura knew what Egan really meant: that if they got it wrong against a powerful family, only a confession would save them from a shift back into uniform, riding the Saturday night van for six months, fighting drunks.
Egan split everyone up into teams of two, gave them all a task, and then broke up the meeting.
As the room had emptied, Laura watched Pete as he walked past Egan.
And what are you going to be doing, Dermot?’
Egan looked him up and down, and then said curtly, ‘Taking responsibility,’ before he turned and walked out of the room.
When he had left, Laura asked, ‘Do you two have a history?’
A smile played on Pete’s lips for a few seconds. ‘Just flashpoints,’ he said.
He sounded calm, but Laura noticed an angry flush on his cheekbones. ‘You know what it’s like with cops,’ he continued. ‘You think you’ve got trust, but as soon as the shit hits the fan, cops like Egan point the finger like they’ve just seen the end of the fucking rainbow.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘C’mon, I’ll tell you about it another time.’
Laura made a mental note to find out one day. The day was getting long enough without having to spend it dodging bruised egos.
‘But what if he’s right about Luke King?’ she said. ‘Maybe Eric Randle should come first.’
‘Yeah, if he’s right he’ll take his applause. But if he’s wrong he’ll make sure we cop the flack. Just me and the new girl.’
They were turning to walk out of the room together when someone shouted from the back of the room, ‘What’s the old boy’s name again? The one who called it in?’
Laura turned around. Yusuf, a young Asian officer with a soul patch on his chin and thin-rimmed glasses, was sitting in front of a computer screen. ‘Eric Randle,’ she shouted back.
‘In his sixties? Scruffy? Lives on the Ashcroft estate?’
Laura nodded.
‘I might be wrong,’ he continued, looking up now, ‘but I think his name came up in the abduction cases, when the children first started disappearing.’
Laura snapped a look back at Pete. They raised their eyebrows at the same time. This was about to get very interesting.
Eric Randle lived in a pebble-dashed semi on the Ashcroft estate, a collection of local-authority cul-de-sacs and high privet hedges. It wasn’t Laura’s first visit—she had been given a tour of the Blackley trouble spots on her first day—but this was her first incursion as part of a case.
Pete seemed like he knew it well, and as they did the circuit of the estate Laura started to understand why. The neighbourhood grocer had a red neon sign, but it was cracked and dirty, the windows protected by metal grilles during the day and shutters after it closed. Young girls walked the streets, but they weren’t the carefree teenagers they should have been, with college books tucked under their arms or heading into town to work in chain-stores on a Saturday. These girls pushed prams, their hair pulled back tightly as their fingers glittered with cheap gold, a ring for each finger, the gleam broken only by the orange glow of a cigarette as the smoke swirled around the next generation in the pushchair beneath. Laura didn’t see many smiles, and as Pete drove on she sensed the hostile recognition in their look. They were the police. They were trouble.
‘Seems a strange range of suspects,’ she said.
Pete looked over from his driving. ‘Huh?’
Laura pointed outside the car. ‘The son of a local hotshot or this. I’m getting a feeling already which way it’s going to go.’
‘The kids are ruining this place,’ he said. ‘It used to be okay, twenty years ago.’ He looked over at her. ‘But do you know what? There are some good people here. The older ones, the ones who didn’t have the savings to get out when it turned to shit, scared to go out, scared to stay in.’
Laura had seen these waste estates in London, but they seemed different there. In London they were more like spots of squalor in a vibrant whole, just part of the London