meant from the small group of detectives who surrounded him and appeared to be hanging on his every word. ‘Thanks,’ Sean acknowledged her and headed towards Ramsay feeling calm and collected. He might be the outsider here, but he knew he had no small amount of power over the situation, and he enjoyed it – as if being assigned to the struggling investigation had given him an excuse not to try to fit in for once: if people didn’t like or understand him, it wouldn’t be his fault – it wouldn’t be because he could do things they could not, see things they could not, it would just be because he’d been parachuted into the middle of another Murder Investigation Team’s case. He didn’t expect to be acceptedWhen he reached the huddle he stood silently and a little closer than the accepted norm until the group eventually stopped talking and turned towards him. Ramsay spoke first. ‘Can I help you with something?’
‘DI Ryan Ramsay?’ Sean asked, offering his hand and an assassin’s smile.
‘Yeah,’ Ramsay answered, looking him up and down with unconcealed suspicion. ‘That’s me. Can I do something for you?’
‘DS Sean Corrigan,’ Sean told him. ‘You’ve been expecting me.’
‘It was mentioned,’ Ramsay played it down. ‘You’d better step into my office.’ He turned on his heels and marched the short distance to a side office and through the open door. Sean followed him inside. Ramsay sat behind his cluttered desk and pointed to a chair. ‘Shut the door and take a seat.’ Sean closed the door, but remained standing. Again Ramsay looked him up and down. ‘Suit yourself. Now, let’s get one thing straight. I didn’t ask for you to be attached to this investigation and I don’t need you here to get this thing sorted. Understand?’
‘Detective Superintendent Middleton thought I would be of some use,’ Sean reminded him.
‘Harry Middleton, eh?’ Ramsay asked, although he already knew it was true. ‘Well you may have friends in high places, Corrigan, but that means fuck all here.’
‘I’m here to help,’ Sean smiled.
‘I know what people are saying about you,’ Ramsay tried to unsettle him, ‘that you supposedly single-handedly caught Oscar Stokes – somehow figured out he’d killed … Christ, what was the name of that woman off the TV again?’
‘Evans,’ Sean reminded him. ‘Sue Evans.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Ramsay agreed. ‘Never could remember her name. Anyway, just because you solve
‘I’ve no intention of taking over anything,’ Sean half lied. ‘I’m just here to look at things with a fresh pair of eyes. Sometimes that’s all we need to move forward. We’ve all got stuck on investigations before.’
‘Except you, apparently.’ Sean just shrugged. ‘Fine,’ Ramsay relented, getting to his feet and banging on the Perspex partition that made up one of the office walls. A few seconds later the door opened and a plain-looking, slim, white woman in her early thirties entered. At five foot nine inches she was almost as tall as Sean.
‘Yes, boss?’ she asked, still holding onto the door handle, as if she expected to be leaving any second.
‘DS Corrigan, meet DS Townsend,’ Ramsay told them, already looking down at the paperwork on his desk. ‘DS Townsend meet DS Corrigan. Bring him up to date on the investigation, will you Vicky? Apparently he’s here to solve it for us.’
‘Boss?’ Townsend asked, confused.
‘Just do it,’ Ramsay snapped.
‘Thank you,’ Sean faked civility and headed towards the open door before glancing back at Ramsay. ‘I’ll let you know what I think.’
‘You do that,’ Ramsay answered without looking up.
Sean followed Townsend into the Main Office, hoping that the unwritten code between detective sergeants would ensure at least some co-operation. ‘D’you mind telling me what that was all about?’ Townsend asked. ‘If you’re new to the MIT why’s the guv’nor already got the hump with you? You couldn’t have pissed him off already.’
‘I’m not new to MIT,’ Sean answered. ‘I’m just new to this MIT. Superintendent Middleton moved me over from the MIT at Peckham.’
‘And why would he do that?’ Townsend asked.
‘We didn’t have a lot on,’ Sean told her the partial truth. ‘Nothing the team couldn’t handle without me.’
‘Unlike us, you mean?’ Townsend pushed. ‘You here to spy on us?’ she asked him directly, her honesty making him smile.
‘No,’ he told her. ‘I’m here to help – to help you find whoever’s doing this and to stop him.’
Townsend studied him hard before speaking again. ‘Fair enough,’ was all she said. ‘Then we’d better get you up to running speed.’ She headed off towards the far end of the office where a half dozen whiteboards were lined up next to each other – each covered in numerous pictures of the five victims to date. Sean followed, wishing he could be totally alone in the office with the boards and their photographs – pictures of the women when they were alive, at various stages of their lives, side by side with images of them in death – some from the scenes where they were found and others of the post-mortems. The noise in the office was distracting and disorientating – preventing him from seeing what he needed to see, keeping him steadfastly held in an office full of detectives when he needed to travel in his mind to the times and places of the killings. The photographs were already trying to speak to him, but the noise around him wouldn’t let him hear. ‘What do you know so far?’ Townsend added her voice to the voices already inside his head.
‘Not too much,’ he assured her. ‘Only what I’ve seen on TV and what Superintendent Middleton’s told me. I don’t have any detailed knowledge.’
‘Okay,’ Townsend told him and swept her hand in the direction of the white boards. ‘We have five victims to date, the first victim, Heather Dylan, being killed almost a year ago now. A couple of months after her Lisa Sheeran was killed, then a few weeks later Norah Cardle, then Rebecca Shepard and finally the latest victim – Cantara Roper, whose body was found a little over five weeks ago. The oldest of the victims was thirty-three and the youngest was Norah Cardle, who was only twenty-one. All were low-level prostitutes – street-girls, not your upmarket call-girls, and all appeared to have had addictions of various types, hence their chosen occupation.’
‘And the fact they were still prepared to go out onto the streets, even after they knew someone was stalking and killing prostitutes,’ Sean added.
‘Certainly true of our last three victims,’ Townsend agreed. ‘The first couldn’t have seen it coming and even after her death the most popular theory was she’d pissed off some pimp who wanted to make an example of her. But once we had victim number two … there was little doubt what we were dealing with.’
‘The timings between each murder,’ Sean asked, ‘were they the same length of time?’
‘No,’ Townsend answered. ‘It’s varied between about four weeks and ten weeks.’
‘Then timing’s not part
