Bradfield remarked irritably.
‘I didn’t mean Sally’s old man, guv . . . I meant DC Ashby.’
There was more laughter round the room and Jane wasn’t sure if Ashby’s face was red with anger or embarrassment at the remark. DS Gibbs told them all to shut up and behave. Kath leant over to Jane and whispered that everyone thought DC Ashby was having an affair with Sally as they had once been caught coming out of the ladies’ locker room together on a night shift.
Bradfield proceeded by asking what the hell had gone wrong with the re-arrest of Eddie Phillips. Jane now realized why he had been so mad when he came in that morning. DC Ashby explained that Eddie wasn’t at the squat or his grandmother, Nancy Phillips’ flat when nightshift officers turned up there at midnight. Nor was he there at 6 a.m. when Ashby and a colleague visited the flat. She was a tough lady with iron-grey hair who told them to fuck off and stop harassing her and her grandson. Then, whilst searching the place, they had taken further abuse about causing her angina to flare up.
Bradfield took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.
‘Bloody marvellous, so it looks like the lying little shit has done a runner.’
The office door opened and DS Paul Lawrence walked in. He apologized for being late and explained that he’d been busy discussing some forensic results with the scientist and they had both worked in the lab until after midnight on the case. He handed Bradfield an envelope and said it contained photographs of the scene and postmortem.
‘Has anyone checked Homerton Hospital drug unit for Phillips?’ DS Gibbs asked.
Everyone looked at each other blankly until a detective spoke up and said that he went there yesterday evening to make enquiries about the phone call Anjali O’Duncie allegedly heard Julie Ann make, but no one had mentioned anything about Eddie returning to the hospital.
‘Sir, if Eddie overdosed he could be in a hospital casualty unit or on a normal ward being treated,’ Jane commented.
The room went quiet and she felt as if everyone was staring at her because she had had the audacity to say something. She noticed Bradfield nod his head slightly as he looked at her. However, he said nothing and let Gibbs continue.
‘Right, Tennison, after the meeting phone the Homerton. If Phillips isn’t there then ring round every casualty hospital in London if you have to.’
Jane nodded to Gibbs and saw Kath give her a sly wink and thumbs-up for her suggestion.
Bradfield returned to the officer who had been making enquiries at the Homerton about the phone call.
‘Is there any good news on that front?’
‘Well, guv, it’s sort of yes and no.’
He explained that on the last day Julie Ann had been seen at the clinic a telephone switchboard operator recalled a lady on the internal line saying she was a nurse and needed to contact the parents of a patient. The nurse then asked for a directory enquiry to be made and the operator thought she sounded rather distressed.
‘You get the details, name, address, etc?’ Bradfield asked.
‘The hospital operator did get a number and gave it to the woman, but she didn’t keep a record and can’t remember any details about it. Also the hospital don’t list every call from every phone.’
‘One step forward, two back,’ Bradfield remarked, shaking his head in disappointment.
‘Maybe not. Whoever asked for the number would probably have written it down. If the doctor had a notepad on his desk the unknown lady, who could have been Julie Ann, may have written the number and address down,’ DS Lawrence suggested.
‘But she would have torn the details off the pad,’ Gibbs remarked.
‘Yes, but when you write on something like a notepad the pressure of the pen, or pencil, carries through to the pages underneath the top one. We can light the pages below the original document from different angles, use some multiple-exposure photography and hopefully bring up the indented writing left behind.’
‘But it was two weeks ago,’ Gibbs said, shaking his head.
‘So what? For one we don’t know how many pages of the pad have been used since, it could be none if the doctor’s been away, and besides, nothing ventured nothing gained,’ Lawrence retorted.
Bradfield sighed. ‘Ashby, get down to the Homerton now and ask O’Duncie to show you the doctor’s room Julie Ann used to make the call. If he’s got a notepad take it up to the lab pronto.’
Ashby grabbed his jacket and hurried out the door.
‘Any more gems of wisdom for us, DS Lawrence?’ Bradfield asked.
‘Maybe, just depends how you look at it. Regarding the child Julie Ann was carrying, the foetus was too young to do any reliable blood grouping.’
‘Terrific – we got another dead end,’ Gibbs said.
‘No, we tested her knickers with benzamine, made a slide and examined it with haematoxylin . . .’
‘You’re beginning to sound like Prof Martin – give it to us straight and simple, please,’ Bradfield instructed him.
‘We found semen and a blood smear on her knickers, and on the vaginal and anal swabs. A person’s ABO blood group can be detected in body fluids, and in this case the blood was all from the same group, but a different one to Julie Ann’s blood group. The scientist obtained Pep A 2 from the stains which is common in Race Code 3 individuals and not found in other races . . .’
‘For Chrissake, what have we got?’ Bradfield shouted.
‘She’d had anal sex with a black man, but of course it may not have been with consent. In forcing himself on her he could have torn and bled from the small piece of skin that joins the foreskin to the penis, which is called the frenulum. Also the semen could have come from sex some hours before she was murdered, or from the suspect at the scene before he killed her.’
‘So either way our killer could be the black geezer who left the blood and semen in her?’ Bradfield asked.
DS Lawrence nodded and added that the question of exactly where Julie Ann was murdered was still unanswered. Another detective pointed to his groin and asked if they should ask any suspects if they had, figuratively speaking, ‘a sore head’ and get them to drop their trousers for an inspection.
Everyone laughed loudly, even Jane and Kath.
After a brief pause Bradfield flicked through his notes.
‘We got any update concerning the red fibres on Julie
Ann’s socks, Paul?’
‘Well, we got a few off her hot pants and blouse as well, but the majority were on her socks and inside her boots. The scientists at the lab were of the opinion they were probably from some sort of cheap carpet, but couldn’t give the exact origin.’
DS Gibbs raised his hand. ‘Just a thought, but Jaguar cars are fitted with carpets, right? Would they be similar?’ Lawrence shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not sure,
