Geraldine pressed him to say more.
‘Off the record, Mr –?’
‘Parker. Jeff Parker. I don’t care if it’s on the record. It bloody well should be on the record by now. She’s a complete basket case.’
‘Basket case?’
‘With all that singing.’
Geraldine’s phone rang and she excused herself and walked back to her car as she took the call. It was Sam, enquiring how she was getting on, and asking if she wanted company. Geraldine quickly brought her up to speed. There wasn’t much to say. In return Sam told her about a possible witness a constable had spoken to: a young boy who had been caught shoplifting. He had been assaulted prior to his arrest. Under questioning he had broken down and admitted he had been attacked by a woman.
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So there’s nothing concrete to link him to the case?’
‘Only that he was bashed on the side of the head by a woman on the Andover Estate, about a mile or so from where Henshaw’s body was found.’
‘But she didn’t kill him?’
‘No. He’s only a kid.’
Geraldine thought about it. The chances were the incident had nothing whatever to do with the murder investigation, but it was possible the boy had encountered the killer, and had a lucky escape.
‘It could have been the same woman. Luckily the manager of the shop called up about the theft – it was only a bar of chocolate – and the constable who attended the scene was on the ball. It looks like the boy might have survived an attempted fatal assault. He wasn’t exactly forthcoming – I think he was petrified his mother would find out he’d been nicked for pilfering. But if he can identify his attacker …’
‘Find out exactly where it happened and alert Visual Images Identification and Detection Office,’ Geraldine told her. ‘We need to view all CCTV we can get hold of from the area at the time of the attack, check who else was around, and see if we can get a look at his attacker. At the very least we should be able to confirm the gender and general appearance.’
They agreed that Sam should speak to the boy and find out more about the attack. Meanwhile, Geraldine intended to sit tight and wait for Ingrid to come home. She couldn’t afford to let her slip away. Geraldine hoped a DNA sample from the young singer would place her at the scene of the murders. If not, it was best to find out soon so they could stop wasting time on her.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to see the boy?’ Sam asked. ‘This could be the break we’ve been waiting for. He might have seen the killer.’
Even down the phone, Sam’s excitement was clear. Geraldine smiled.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘I’ll leave it to you. I’m going to sit it out here for a while. Ingrid’s neighbour said she’s usually home late afternoon. Find out what you can and I’ll see you back at the station in a couple of hours.’
S
am never liked being stuck at her desk, staring at the four constables on her team. It wasn’t that they didn’t have enough to do, checking the VIDO reports, liaising with borough intelligence, beavering away hunting for information, and right now they were fully occupied searching for anything that could link the four victims. With Henshaw and Corless the case had presented a tidy picture. The two men had not only worked together and known one another’s wives, they had no doubt been privy to the skeletons each had squirreled away in their closets. Bradshaw remained an enigma, and the addition of Birch to the death toll did nothing to clear the obscurity that seemed to grow around the case with every passing day. While she appreciated the necessity of spending hours ferreting out information, she was always happiest when she was out and about looking for answers in the real world, leaving the virtual maze for others to track online. Missing Geraldine, she set three of her constables to assist the VIDO team in viewing CCTV, and took Detective Constable Christian Whittaker with her to see what they could find out about Charlie Lewes, the young boy who had been attacked on the Andover Estate.
Charlie was a skinny lad, with floppy light brown hair and narrow brown eyes that glared from beneath lowered lids. Either his memory had been knocked out of him in the attack or else he was deliberately refusing to co-operate, because whatever question was put to him, he was unable to come up with an answer.
‘How did you get that bruise, Charlie?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Who hit you?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘How can you not know who did that to you?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Was it your mum?’
‘Me mum? You having a laugh? She knows better than to lay a finger on me.’
Despite vociferous protests, the boy had been given a medical examination.
‘It’s for your own good,’ Sam had explained.
‘What would be good would be to let me go home. It was only a bleeding bar of chocolate.’
The medical officer was positive the blow had been indirect. If the implement had struck full on, there was no way the boy would have escaped serious damage. As it was, he had suffered a flesh wound that looked nastier than it actually was. Skin had been scraped away as the bludgeon slid along the side of his head, but internal damage appeared minimal. The boy was sent for an x-ray to make sure, but the doctor was confident the victim had suffered only superficial damage.
‘Would it have been enough to knock him out?’ Sam asked.
The doctor shrugged.
‘He might have been stunned, in the sense that he’d received a terrible shock. As to whether he actually lost consciousness or not, that’s something you’ll have to ask him.’
Charlie’s form teacher at school was a harassed-looking middle-aged woman, who groaned when she heard the police had come to see her about Charlie.
‘What’s he done now? I noticed he wasn’t in school today. He’s not in trouble is he?’
Without answering the question, Sam asked if Charlie had been in any fights in school recently. The teacher said she wasn’t aware of any such incident.
‘What about injuries?’
‘What sort of injury are you talking about? He’s a boy. They fall over, knock each other about playing football, that sort of thing. But we don’t have any trouble here with fighting and –’
‘I’m talking about a nasty-looking head injury, on the right side of his head, bruised and perhaps bleeding. You couldn’t miss it.’
The teacher shook her head.
‘A head injury, you say? That wouldn’t go unrecorded.’
‘When did you last see him?’
Flustered, she checked her register.
‘Yes, here it is, 9S,’ she muttered. ‘He was here yesterday, but not today. I saw him at the end of the school day yesterday and he didn’t have any head injuries then as far as I’m aware. Whatever it is you’re investigating, it must have happened after he left school yesterday.’
She looked up with a smile as though relieved the injury hadn’t happened in school.
‘He’s in my tutor group,’ she added, sounding more confident.
‘What about his mother? Could she be beating him at home? Enough to cause potentially serious injury?’
The teacher shook her head.
‘I doubt it very much. She’s the overprotective type, always coming into school complaining.’
‘About what?’
‘Some parents just complain a lot, it doesn’t seem to matter what it’s about. Most of them just want to blame the school for their children’s bad upbringing. It happens a lot, especially when there’s no father at home. The mothers are either violent or over-indulgent. Sometimes both.’
She laughed nervously.
A figure resembling Charlie was spotted on camera near his home at eight thirty that morning. Close examination of the film disclosed a stain on the side of his hood that could have been blood. It was difficult to tell on the grainy black and white film, but comparison with a blood stain on Charlie’s jacket confirmed the identity of the figure, so he had been injured at some time between leaving school at four on Wednesday and leaving home around eight on Thursday morning. The entire Visual Images Identification and Detection Office was tasked with following Charlie after he left school the previous day. There was much interruption as he travelled unwittingly from camera to camera, until he was picked up turning into Todds Walk, not far South of his home.
‘He entered the estate all right,’ the VIDO officer said, ‘but he didn’t arrive at Birnam Road for nearly an hour. It’s less than half a mile. It shouldn’t have taken him more than ten minutes at the most.’
‘Was anyone else around on the Hornsey Road who might have seen something? Could he have fallen over …?’
‘The only other figure there at the same time was this – hang on –’
The officer rewound the tape back to the point where Charlie went into Todds Walk. A woman had turned off a few seconds earlier.
‘He was hanging around for a few minutes before he turned off,’ the VIDO officer said, ‘almost as though he was waiting for her.’
‘Or for someone. According to his mother he’d been mugged twice on his way home from school. She insists it’s all the fault of the school, but the Andover Estate is notorious for its gangs and she knows that. She told him not to cut through the estate but to go the long way round along the main road. Perhaps he just didn’t want to go in there on his own.’
‘I’ll check back and find out who else was around,’ the VIDO officer said.
‘If there was anyone else there,’ Sam muttered under her breath.
She turned back to her colleague.
‘Before you do that, I want images of the woman, enhanced to give as clear an image of her figure and her face as possible, and send them to me as a priority.’
‘But –’
‘Now please!’
Picking up the urgency in Sam’s voice, the VIDO officer set to work.
Sam called Geraldine but there was no answer. With growing unease she rapped at the detective chief inspector’s door and brought him up to date with the CCTV evidence.
‘So it’s looking like this singer might be responsible,’ she concluded. ‘It looks like a woman, at any rate.’
‘We don’t know the woman who assaulted the boy in the tunnel has got anything to do with the murders,’ Reg pointed out.
‘But it’s a possibility. Shall I go after her?’ Sam asked.
‘Who?’
Sam explained that Geraldine had gone to question Ingrid Tennant. She hadn’t returned and wasn’t answering her phone. Reg listened closely, frowning, and nodded when she finished speaking.
‘Go on then,’ he agreed. ‘Take a couple of constables and go over there. And let’s hope this singer can tell us something useful.’
G
eraldine waited outside Ingrid’s flat for almost an hour. It hadn’t taken long to scan through the sketchy information the intelligence unit had dug up on her. By contrast there was a lot of background detail on Linda Harrison. She read and reread it while she waited, familiarising herself with the prisoner’s history. Comparing pictures of Ingrid and Linda, there did seem to be a resemblance, although the pictures she had of Ingrid weren’t very clear and it was impossible to be sure.
Absorbed in her reading, she almost missed her target. It was drizzling and the woman walked so quickly up the path she had reached the front door before Geraldine spotted her black raincoat and grey scarf. She had only ever viewed a picture of the singer online and could see nothing of the woman’s face as she unlocked the door and hurried inside. Geraldine barely caught a glimpse of the black coat, grey scarf and large bag slung across one shoulder before the figure vanished inside. Nevertheless she felt a thrill of anticipation. She was almost sure she had just seen Ingrid Tennant. Deciding not to stop to summon Sam, she climbed out of the car and scurried across the road. She didn’t want to risk losing her suspect now. The rain was falling heavily in fine drops that swept sideways under her umbrella, and by the time Geraldine reached the front door, her ankles and shins were soaked. Clutching her jacket closer to her chest, she reached out to ring the bell. As she did so, Jeff Parker opened the door.
‘Oh it’s you,’ he greeted her, surprised but pleased. ‘Come to speak to her at number 26a about her bloody racket, have you? About time too. Number 26a, it’s that door there.’
He pointed along a corridor brightly illuminated by lights placed at intervals along the walls.
‘Wish I could stay around to hear you give her a dressing down but my sister’s expecting me and I’ll be in hot water if I’m late. I hope you give her what for. She’s had it coming for a long time.’
With a quick grin, he bounced down the steps and trotted away, whistling.
There was no response when Geraldine rang the bell. Wondering if Ingrid was in the shower, or listening to music, she pulled out her phone to call Sam. As she did so, the door to the flat was suddenly opened by a blonde woman in steel rimmed glasses. The interior behind her was dark as she peered out, blinking into the brightly lit hall. There was a strong stench coming from the flat. It smelled like insecticide.
‘What do you want?’ the blonde woman asked in a low voice.
‘I’m looking for Ingrid Tennant.’
‘Ingrid? She’s my flatmate.’
The woman took a step back, her head lowered. Her shoulders were bowed and a bedraggled fringe fell down to her eyes, brushing the top of her glasses.
As Geraldine introduced herself, something warned her to be discreet. She played her interest down, claiming she just wanted to have a brief word with Ingrid concerning an ongoing enquiry.
‘What’s it about?’
Ingrid’s flatmate didn’t sound very interested. She shuffled back so Geraldine couldn’t see her features, half concealed by the door. Geraldine hastened to reassure her it was nothing important. When the other woman wanted to know if it was to do with the neighbour upstairs, Geraldine gave a non-committal grunt, adding that she was unable to disclose the reason for her visit.
‘Do you know when Ingrid will be back?’
The blonde woman shook her head, hesitating.
‘You can come in and wait if you like.’
She turned and led Geraldine into a small kitchen where she pulled a three-legged stool out from underneath a work surface.
‘You can sit down there, while you’re waiting.’