‘I’ll phone ahead and warn them you’re on your way,’ Dan gestured to Trevor to get moving.
‘I’ll leave after I’ve said goodbye to Dr Randall,’ Trevor took the case.
‘Make it a quick goodbye,’ Dan called after him, making a mental note to ask Trevor about his relationship with the doctor in the morning.
‘Sorry our evening had to end this way.’
‘It was bad enough being married to a doctor.
After tonight I believe a policeman would be worse.’ Daisy looked up from the notes she was making.
‘Dinner again next week?’ he asked.
‘You’re living with someone.’
‘Daisy…’
‘It doesn’t take a genius to work out you have problems there, Trevor. I’d rather not be part of them.’
‘And when they’re resolved?’
‘My advice to you is concentrate on resolving them, Trevor. I’ll send you the next lot of information I get.’
He looked around. The corridor was crowded with police, paramedics, firemen, and patients suffering varying degrees of burns, cuts, sprained ankles and smoke inhalation. ‘Sometime, Dr Randall, there will be a time and place for us.’
‘Perhaps.’ She put down the form she’d filled in and picked up another. ‘But it might not be in this lifetime.’
It was a thirty mile drive to the police laboratory from the hospital. Dan had phoned ahead and two men were waiting to take the suitcase from Trevor.
‘Top priority?’
‘Top priority,’ Trevor echoed, realising that his top priority at that moment was bed and sleep.
He finally reached his house at three in the morning. He opened the car door and looked down at the remains of his finery. His cream silk shirt and slacks were covered with black smuts, his shoes and socks sodden from the puddles made by the fire hoses, and he stank of smoke. So much for any romantic intentions.
He glanced up at the house. Something white moved on the balcony outside his bedroom. Lyn had waited up, tonight of all nights. He was tired, aching, and he had a foul headache. All he wanted was to stretch out and have a couple of hours sleep until he had to start all over again. What on earth had happened to sour the relationship between them to the extent that he was now reluctant to enter his own house and face her?
He had a sudden pang of regret for the peace and quiet of his bachelor flat. He had often been lonely, but perhaps loneliness was preferable to the trauma of sulks and arguments. He climbed out of the car, wincing as his muscles protested. He stretched his back, and locked the car before walking up the short drive. Shrugging his shoulders out of his jacket, he hung it over the banister in the hall. Kicking his sodden shoes into a corner he went upstairs. The lights were on but Lyn was still on the balcony.
‘You’re going to be exhausted tomorrow,’ he warned her.
‘I’m not working, so I can have a lie in,’ she turned and faced him. The rain had stopped but the wind was still blowing in cold from the sea. She was white, frozen, but she appeared oblivious to discomfort.
‘I wish I had the day off so we could spend it together.’ He stripped off his tie.
‘Do you?’
‘Of course I do, it seems weeks since we spent any time with one another.’
‘Then why don’t you just take the day off?’
‘Because we’re in the middle of a case, we’re short-handed…’
‘The police are always short-handed,’ she snapped. ‘Let Peter and Anna take some of the load for a change.’
‘They can’t. They’re both in hospital.’
‘Are they all right?’ She came in from outside and closed the French doors.
‘They should be in a couple of days.’ He sank down on the bed and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘They were caught inside the factory down the docks when it went up. I suppose you heard about it.’
‘We heard the sirens. We couldn’t hear anything else in the restaurant at one stage.’ She noticed the state of his is clothes. ‘My God…’
‘I’m fine under my clothes.’
‘Are Peter and Anna badly hurt?’
‘Peter has concussion, smoke inhalation, and a bullet wound that hit nothing vital.’
‘He was shot?’
Trevor nodded, conscious that he hadn’t told her anything that wouldn’t be in the press release tomorrow. Wasn’t it possible to stop being a policeman, even in the bedroom? ‘Anna cut her hands when she smashed a window to get them out of the building.’ He almost made a gibe about the male chauvinist being rescued by a mere woman. If it had been another evening, one early in their relationship, they might have laughed about it before rolling on the bed and making love. As it was he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d touched her.
‘That woman you were with?’
‘Dr Daisy Randall.’
‘Is she the one you told me about in Compton Castle? The one you were in love with?’
‘Nothing has ever happened between us.’
‘It’s obvious you wish it had and in some ways that’s even worse. If you’d had the sense to fuck her when you first met, you’d probably have forgotten about her by now.’
‘I doubt it,’ he replied with unintentional cruelty.
‘I’ll move out tomorrow.’
‘Lyn,’ he pleaded. ‘It’s late, and I’m tired. This is neither the time nor the place to start another row.’
‘If you love her, you’re free to try and get her back.’
‘I can’t get her back, because I never had her,’
he said vehemently. ‘She was the wife of a victim. It was a traumatic case for her and for me. You saw the state I was in at the end of it.’ He grimaced at the pain in his legs as he forced himself to rise, and take the steps he needed to stand beside her. ‘Lyn,’
he reached out and touched a strand of her hair. ‘I’m sorry. But it’s always difficult when we’re working flat out on a case. I tried to warn you.’
She looked up at him through tear stained eyes.
He kissed off the tears before kissing her lips. She tasted of salt, brandy and toothpaste. It took five minutes of whispered endearments and caresses to evoke a response.
As he pulled her down on to the bed and began to undress her, he reflected that if men and women never had to talk to one another life would be uncomplicated. Making love to Lyn was much easier than making conversation. But after passion triumphed and they rolled naked between the sheets he remembered Daisy, and how easy conversation had always been with her.
Lost in a jumbled dream world of blazing fires and injured colleagues, Trevor reached for the telephone on his bedside table.
‘Don’t tell me you’re still in bed?’ Dan resounded down the line.
Trevor opened an eye and focused on the clock beside the telephone. Ten o’clock. ‘It was a hard night.’
‘I didn’t leave the hospital until two and I was in at seven.’
‘I’m not as robust as you, Dan.’
‘We’ve had the results back from the lab.’
‘And?’ Trevor sat up in bed, shuddering as a cold draught blew across his shoulders from the open bathroom window. He’d forgotten to close the connecting door in the night.
‘A complete and beautifully clear set of prints.
They’re being run through the computer now. How soon can you get here?’
‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Make it ten.’
‘I have to shower.’
‘I won’t mind if you smell.’ Dan hung up.
‘Work?’ Lyn stirred beside him.
‘Afraid so, love.’ He leant over and kissed her.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘See you next week.’ Even half asleep she was capable of sarcasm.
Compromising on food, but not the shower, Trevor walked into the station fifteen, not ten minutes, after receiving Dan’s call.
‘Sergeant Collins telephoned,’ Sarah Merchant informed him. ‘He told me to tell you that they’ll probably discharge him after the doctors’ rounds at two o’clock.’
‘Do me a favour?’
‘For you, anything, Sergeant Joseph,’ she smiled.
‘Telephone the General at two and see if I can pick him up.’
She nodded as the telephone buzzed again.
When Trevor walked into the office he was amazed to see Anna sitting at her desk. ‘You sure you should be here?’
‘No. But as I can’t do anything at home with these,’ she held up her bandaged hands, ‘I thought I may as well come in. I need someone to feed me, and with the aid of the intercom I can answer the telephone.’
As if to prove her point, the telephone buzzed and she pressed down on the button with her elbow.
Dan was fixing photographs to the board. He pointed to one. ‘Philip Matthews, the face matches the prints on the whisky bottle and the general description is similar height and colouring to Tony.
You can run the photograph and a full description to Patrick in the mortuary some time today to see if he can match him to our victim.’
‘Peter said the man he saw in the factory yesterday was definitely Tony,’ Trevor said.
‘Looks like Philip Matthews was wearing Tony’s boot,’ Dan agreed.
‘Anything from forensics on the victim’s fingerprints?’ Trevor asked.
‘You saw those hands. Did you really expect anything?’
‘I live in hope and bow to science.’
‘You’d be better off bowing to leg work. That solves cases. But talking about hope, I’ve asked for Philip Matthews’ dental records to see if Patrick can match them to the remaining teeth.’
‘That jaw was pretty badly burnt.’
‘Patrick said there might be enough there to facilitate a match. And thanks to Joan of Arc here,’
he smiled at Anna, ‘we have this.’ He handed Trevor a faxed report from the laboratory. ‘They not only found prints inside the suitcase, they matched them. Now they’ve finished with it. Chris Brooke has gone over to fetch it. He should be back around eleven.’
‘Adam Weaver…’ Trevor frowned. ‘Why should I know that name?’
‘He was the actor who killed his wife.’
‘I remember. He played a detective in a long running series…’
‘And for a curtain call he murdered his wife in real life. The tabloids loved it.’
‘Did he have a reason?’ Trevor flicked over the first page of the fax.
‘The best. She wanted to leave him because he was having an affair.’ The telephone rang. ‘Do you want me to get that?’ Dan asked Anna, who was staring into space.
‘No, I can manage,’ she said hastily.
‘It was an interesting case,’ Dan commented as Trevor continued to read.
‘He dismembered her body in the bath.’
‘Weaver insisted he was in London when she was killed but couldn’t come up with a single witness to substantiate his alibi.’
‘Unusual for London,’ Trevor commented.
‘His defence sent people to ask questions in the off-licence Weaver claimed to have visited that night. They interrogated the porter who’d been on duty in his building, combed the streets looking for people who’d been in the area, put out an appeal in the press and on TV, and drew a complete blank.’
‘Some people never see anything beyond their noses, especially assistants in urban off-licences,’
Trevor said.
‘The pathologist who carried out the PM never established cause of death. Although he did go so far as to say it was probably strangulation.’
‘Because the upper horn of the thyroid cartilage on the right side of the neck was fractured,’ Trevor read. ‘And there was a blood clot around it which meant it couldn’t have happened after death.’
‘That’s the small bone in the neck that can only be broken when the neck is compressed?’ Dan asked.
‘I thought you’d read this?’ Trevor held up the report.
‘I only received it ten minutes ago.’
‘The jury saw fit to believe the prosecution.
Adam Weaver was sentenced to life imprisonment three years ago,’ Trevor flicked over the last page.
‘And he escaped one year to the day later,’
Anna murmured after finishing her telephone conversation.
‘How come you know so much about this case, Anna?’ Trevor asked.
‘Would you believe I had a crush on Adam Weaver?’
‘A hardened policewoman like you?’ Dan said sceptically.
‘I was a girl before I was a hardened police officer.’ Anna didn’t say any more. She realised her explanation sounded ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as the truth. That she had met Adam Weaver in drama college. Had fallen head over heels in love with him. That she had moved in with him the day he had asked her to. And taken an overdose the day he had left.
‘The suitcase, sir.’ Chris Brooke, fresh-faced, young, keen and wearyingly eager, carried the suitcase he’d picked up from the laboratory into Anna and Trevor’s office. He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Dan. ‘An inventory of the contents.’
‘Quick driving, Constable,’ Dan
complimented.him ‘I’ve arranged for you to pick up these two original files.’ He handed Chris papers relating to Adam Weaver’s escape from prison.
‘Right away, sir.’
‘It makes me tired just to look at him,’ Anna said as he left the room.
‘With you and Peter laid up we could do with his energy,’ Dan said thoughtfully. ‘I’ll have a word with the super.’
‘As long as you keep him on a leash whenever he’s near me,’ Anna moaned.
‘You sure you don’t want to go home, Anna?’
‘I told you, there’s no one there to feed me.’
‘We can always tip baked beans into a bowl so you can lap them up, cat fashion.’ Trevor picked up the case and laid it on his desk. He sprung the locks, lifted the lid and stood back as the rancid smell of damp, dirty clothes wafted out.
‘If our man really is Adam Weaver, he’s not thinking any straighter than when he carved up his wife. There’s no point in locking a cardboard suitcase. All you need is a knife to cut through the back.’ Dan slit open the envelope Chris had given him.
‘He certainly didn’t keep the crown jewels in here.’ Trevor lifted out a brown wool sweater. It was speckled with the fingerprint powder the forensic team had used on every hard surface inside the suitcase. The wool felt thick and greasy. He held it gingerly between his fingertips and looked around for somewhere to dump it.
‘Not on my desk,’ Anna leant protectively forward.
‘One sweater, brown wool.’ Dan ticked it off the list as Trevor dropped it to the floor.
‘It doesn’t look as though he ever got around to doing his laundry.’ Seeing an empty plastic bag in the bin next to Anna’s desk, Trevor pulled it out and thrust it on his hand.