towards his office and fumbled for the key. He had to put his briefcase down to search his pockets, and that’s when he saw him.
On the other side of the street was a man, stooped, old and shabbily dressed, his clothes hanging loose from his body. His hands were clutched to his sides as if he were stood to attention, and his eyes were fixed in a stare, unblinking, unwavering.
Sam felt uneasy. The courtroom usually protected him, shrouded in respect and court rules, but defence lawyers pissed people off. Victims, witnesses, sometimes just the moral majority. He felt himself grow nervous, checked his pocket for his phone, ready to call the police if a knife appeared. But the old man just stared at Sam, his face expressionless.
Sam eventually found his key. He took one last look into the street. The old man hadn’t moved. He was still watching him.
Sam made a mental note of the time and turned to go inside.
As Egan walked towards them, Laura could sense his self-importance. He was jogger-trim, his nose tight and hooked, his hair bottle-dark and cut just too neatly, not a strand out of place. His white shirt was bright and crisp, to emphasise his suntan, she guessed, which seemed more salon than sunshine.
Pete smiled. ‘He’s going to be pissed off about this.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the last time I saw him he was at one of the press conferences for the abducted children, preening himself. There isn’t much airtime in this case, and he’ll want to get in and out quickly. He won’t give up a place on the podium for what might be just a bad domestic.’
Laura looked at Pete. ‘If he’s involved in the abduction cases, why doesn’t he stick with those?’
Pete looked at Laura and said under his breath, ‘I suspect it wasn’t his choice.’
DI Egan looked around as he took in the scene. He almost stepped on Laura’s toes before he noticed her. She saw his quick appraisal, eyes all over her body, ending at her bare ring-finger. Lesbian or prey, in his eyes she could see that she was either one or the other.
He spent too long looking at the identification she had hanging around her neck and then asked, ‘So what do we have, Laura?’ He looked away before she had a chance to answer, so she ended up talking to the back of his head.
‘Deceased is called Jess Goldie. It looks like she died from strangulation, sir, but it wasn’t quick,’ she said, trying to hide the fatigue in her voice. The early start was catching up on her.
Egan started to show interest. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw her neck before the doctor arrived, and there were a lot of marks, as if she had been strangled over and over.’
‘What, you mean sex games? You know, strangle, release, strangle, release?’
Laura thought she saw a twinkle of excitement in his eyes. ‘Can’t say I do,’ she replied, weary of cops who saw the quick thrill in everything. ‘She died in her clothes. If it was kinky, it was shy kinky.’
Egan pursed his lips and looked away.
‘And there was something else.’
Egan turned back, his eyebrows raised. ‘Go on.’
Laura glanced at Pete. ‘She’s missing her eyes and tongue.’
‘What do you mean, “missing her eyes and tongue”?’
‘It means that she hasn’t fucking got them any more,’ said Pete, his voice rich with sarcasm. ‘What do you think it means, that she left them on top of the fridge or something?’
Egan spun around, eyes angry, so Laura interrupted. ‘She was tied to a chair, and her eyes and tongue have been cut out.’
Egan continued to stare at Pete, who just stared back. Eventually Egan turned away. He sighed and then began to chew at his lip. Laura sensed that he had just seen this investigation stretching a long way into the future.
‘I bet you could do without this,’ said Pete to Egan, as he raised his eyebrows at Laura. ‘On top of the abductions, I mean.’
Egan’s top lip twitched.
Laura looked down and tried not to smirk. She had quickly figured out that Egan’s eyes were on the career ladder. She had seen his type before: delegate everything and then take all the credit. Look pert and enthusiastic in strategy meetings and then ditch the work onto others. She could guess why Pete hadn’t climbed very far.
‘Is it drugs?’ asked Egan, looking around, trying to change the subject. ‘Some kind of revenge attack?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Laura said. She was new to Blackley, but she knew enough to know that this wasn’t a drug neighbourhood. It was full of new-build town-houses, all shiny red bricks, narrow paths and neat double glazing, brightened up with cottage fascias and potted plants. It was a first-time-buyer estate. Drug dealers don’t bother with the housing ladder; they stay low until they can move really high. ‘I checked with intel half an hour ago, and she’s not on our radar. Just a nice, quiet girl, so the neighbours say.’
‘How was she discovered?’
Laura and Pete exchanged glances before Laura replied, ‘The call came around four this morning. Some old boy, Eric Randle, said he went round to check on her. He found her tied to a chair, dead.’
‘Went round to check, at four in the morning?’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘Said he’d had a dream.’
Egan smiled, almost in relief. ‘This sounds like a quick one.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said. ‘I saw the body, and I saw him, and he doesn’t seem a likely. But he doesn’t have an alibi.’ Laura thought back to the meeting she’d had with the old man. He hadn’t spoken much, seemed in shock.
‘So is he suspect or witness?’ asked Egan, watching her carefully.
‘Suspect. Everyone is, this early into it.’
‘So did you arrest him?’
Laura noticed the tone of Egan’s voice, slow and deliberate, making sure it had been her decision. He would stand by her only if it looked like she had got it right.
She paused for a moment, thought about what they had in the way of evidence. The old man had been visibly upset, but Laura had checked him out for wounds or scratch marks. Nothing. His clothes had been seized, to check for blood-spray, and he’d agreed to a DNA swab, for elimination purposes she’d told him, along with his fingernail clippings, but nothing in her instincts told her that he was the killer.
‘No,’ she said, after a moment. ‘He’s of interest, but no more than that.’
Egan nodded, a thin smile on his lips,
