‘Sorry, but I don’t like the smell of her breath,’ Deke said calmly. ‘Get her out of my face, or this conversation’s over.’
Lauren cracked Deke across the temple with the Glock. ‘This bastard’s taunting us, Heck.’
‘It’s nothing but bravado,’ he said, hauling her away. ‘Now cool down, okay?’
Heck swung back to Deke, whose face was running with fresh blood.
‘As you can see,’ Heck said, ‘trying to be clever will prove unprofitable. Thanks to your handiwork in Salford, we’re not exactly operating inside the law here. There could be plenty more where that came from, and at some point I’ll get pissed off too and will stop trying to prevent it.’
Deke shrugged. ‘Enjoy your sense of power while you can. Whatever happens here, you’re both going to die soon. And it won’t be over quickly.’
‘Shit, this is a waste of time,’ Lauren said.
‘And this jungle-bunny bitch is going to go just like her sister did.’ Deke eyed Lauren contemptuously. ‘Raped, sodomised, tortured. Of course that was
before
she was dead. You can’t imagine what was done with her afterwards.’
Lauren’s eyes dilated. ‘You son of a …’
He laughed. ‘You weren’t entertaining childish fantasies that she might still be alive, were you? Or that she died easily?’
‘You fucking son of …’
‘Lauren!’ Heck shouted, but it was too late.
She’d already put the gun to Deke’s forehead and fired.
Given the frazzled state of his nerves, Ian Blenkinsop was less than calm when late that afternoon his secretary buzzed through and said that there was a police officer to see him. There’d been police here for the last couple of days, seeking witnesses to Louise Jennings’s last movements. They’d spoken to quite a few members of staff, Blenkinsop included – but only as a matter of course, they’d insisted; just trying to establish if Louise had said or done anything out of the ordinary on her last day in work. But Blenkinsop broke into a heavier than normal sweat when he heard that this particular officer – a certain Detective Inspector Palliser – was here from the ominously named National Crime Group.
When Palliser was shown in by Sally, he wasn’t quite what Blenkinsop had anticipated. He was elderly to the point where he was surely close to retirement, and thin of physique, with scraggy grey hair and an even scraggier grey beard. He wore an anorak over his rumpled brown suit and, before sitting at Blenkinsop’s desk, shook hands and gave a benevolent, almost fatherly smile. He smelled strongly of tobacco.
‘Can I get you a tea or coffee, inspector?’ Sally said.
‘No thanks, my love, I’ll be fine,’ Palliser replied.
‘Can I take your coat?’
‘Oh yes, ta.’ He stood up, shrugged off his anorak, handed it to her, and sat again.
‘So how can I help you?’ Blenkinsop asked, waiting until the door to his secretary’s office had closed, and doing his level best to suppress the growing fear that this venerable old policeman instilled in him.
‘Just a few questions, Sir.’
Blenkinsop was even more unnerved to see that the visitor had already opened a notebook and produced a pen. ‘You say you’re from the National …’
‘National Crime Group, yes. The Serial Crimes Unit, to be exact.’
‘Serial Crimes …’ Blenkinsop struggled to keep the quaver from his voice. ‘I thought the Thames Valley Police were looking for Mrs Jennings?’
‘Funny you should mention Mrs Jennings, Sir.
I
didn’t.’
‘Is that not why you’re here?’ Blenkinsop tried not to sound too hopeful. ‘Sorry, it’s just that there’s been quite a lot of police activity here in the last few days …’
‘Yes, that
is
why I’m here.’ Palliser continued to smile, making no apology for the semi-deception.
‘I see.’
‘Do you know Mrs Jennings well?’
‘I know who she is, she knows who I am. That’s about it, really.’
‘Do you find her attractive?’
‘I’m sorry?’
Palliser shrugged. ‘Simple question, Sir. Do you find her attractive?’
Blenkinsop’s lips had dried and tightened to the point where he thought they might crack. ‘Who wouldn’t? She was a very good-looking woman.’
‘
Was
?
’
‘
Is
… I mean
is
, obviously. Look, inspector, I don’t see what this …’
‘Mr Blenkinsop, we’ve interviewed quite a few staff here at Goldstein & Hoff already.’ Palliser checked his notebook. ‘I understand that you’re one of them.’
‘We’ve all helped in any way we can.’
‘Hmm. Was it mentioned to you when you were interviewed that, several times in the recent past, Mrs Jennings confided in friends that she felt you might have amorous intentions towards her?’
Even with everything else, Blenkinsop was stunned by that. ‘What? No!’
Palliser tut-tutted. ‘An oversight by the detective who spoke to you, obviously. Sorry about that.’
‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘Mrs Jennings apparently told a couple of her colleagues in the Compliance department that she thought you, quote, “fancied her”.’
‘I don’t know how she could have got such an idea.’
Palliser eyed him. ‘But you’ve just told me you find her attractive?’
‘There’s a difference between that and making an approach to someone.’
‘I didn’t say you’d made an approach.’
For the first time in several days, the outrage Blenkinsop felt was genuine. He was quite sure that he’d never said or done anything to give anyone this impression. He had of course fancied Louise Jennings – to such a degree that he’d been willing to turn his life upside down in order to ‘have’ her – but there was still enough of the self-righteous citizen left inside him to be affronted by the notion that he might have lacked sufficient self-control to keep this concealed.
‘Inspector Palliser, I’m a married man. I never signalled anything of the sort to Mrs Jennings, who, as I told you, I barely knew … I mean
know
.’
Palliser mused. ‘Maybe you did it unconsciously? I mean, women have an intuition for this sort of thing, don’t they?’
‘They may think they have.’
‘Well that’s a good point.’ Palliser closed his notebook. ‘It may be that Mrs Jennings was just flattering herself.’
‘Inspector, may I ask … am I under suspicion for something?’
‘Not really, Sir. But you must understand, we have to cover every possibility, no matter how minor or unimportant it may seem.’
‘Minor and unimportant? And that job’s been given to a detective inspector from the National Crime Group?’
‘If you don’t mind my saying,
that
seems to be bothering you rather a lot, Sir.’
‘Not at all … it’s not bothering me in the least. Well, I mean obviously this sad business is. I hope it sorts itself out and that you catch whoever abducted Mrs Jennings as soon as possible.’
Palliser raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s your opinion that she’s been abducted then?’
Blenkinsop cursed himself. Everything he said put him in a worse light. ‘I assume that’s what it is.’
‘As you probably appreciate, Sir, we can’t afford to make such an assumption. As yet, there’s no evidence that she’s been abducted.’
‘Maybe she’s just run away from home.’
‘We can only hope that’s the case.’
‘Wasn’t she supposed to be in her car at the time?’
Palliser nodded. ‘We’ve traced her movements to Gerrards Cross railway station, where we believe she left the car park in her own vehicle.’
Blenkinsop tried to sound as if he was encouraged by this. ‘If her car vanished too … maybe that’s a good sign?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You haven’t recovered her car then?’
Palliser stood up and pocketed his notebook. ‘I can’t really comment on details of the investigation.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Well, thanks for your time. Sorry to have bothered you.’ Halfway to the door, Palliser stopped. ‘Just out of interest, would you be agreeable to providing us with a sample of your DNA?’
Blenkinsop went cold. ‘What?’
‘You wouldn’t need to go to a police station. I can have an officer come and do it here.’
Blenkinsop was stumped, not to say horrified. Surely they wouldn’t ask for his DNA unless they had something? ‘You … you said I wasn’t a suspect,’ he stammered.
‘I’m not
requiring
you to provide your DNA, Sir, just asking. It would help eliminate you from the enquiry.’
‘Why should I need to be eliminated?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Palliser waved it aside. ‘Thanks for your time, Mr Blenkinsop. No doubt we’ll be in touch.’
‘Erm … right.’
Blenkinsop almost stumbled as he followed Palliser across the office. They entered the next room in time to find Sally quickly hanging up her phone – almost too quickly. And
why not? Blenkinsop thought bitterly. A girl had gone
missing and the police seemed to be interested in
him
. The tittle-tattle machine would be working overtime. That was all he needed. Not that it was the worst of his problems at present. Once the policeman had put his coat on and left, Blenkinsop went back into his office – and had to make a beeline to his private bathroom, where he copiously vomited into the toilet bowl.
Palliser left the building with mixed feelings.
He’d learned about Blenkinsop supposedly fancying Louise Jennings through a statement taken by Thames Valley from one of her fellow secretaries in Compliance. It had been a throwaway comment, a nothing piece of intel – Blenkinsop had no reputation for being a creep or a stalker. But Louise had apparently
thought
that he kept a more than friendly eye on her as she strolled the company corridors. In itself this was valueless as evidence, but taken with Blenkinsop’s apparent unease at being questioned – he’d been like a cat on hot bricks from the start – it might be worth someone looking into. The request that Blenkinsop provide a DNA sample had been an on the hoof masterstroke, because it had been refused and why would an innocent man refuse? Of course, this wasn’t Palliser’s case, and to some extent he was breaching protocol getting involved at all. But it wasn’t irrelevant – far from it. What he’d found particularly disconcerting was Blenkinsop’s response to the involvement of the Serial Crimes Unit – that genuinely seemed to have freaked him, and to Palliser’s mind made it seem even less likely that Heck’s theory about multiple connected abductions had been wrong. He would certainly write a report and file it with the mis-per department at Thames Valley, and the Lioness would need to know as soon as he got back to the Yard, but he didn’t think it was significant enough for them to take to Commander Laycock.
Ten minutes after Palliser had left the City, Blenkinsop emerged from Goldstein & Hoff, his face grey, his hands jammed in his coat pockets. He’d told Sally he was leaving early because he wasn’t feeling well. Now, he headed with unsteady steps down Cornhill towards Leadenhall. En route, he called at a newsagent and bought himself a packet of cigarettes, the first in fifteen years. He lit one as he continued walking. At Gracechurch Street, he headed south, coming at last to the river, where he sat heavily on a wrought-iron bench close to London Bridge, and gazed, glassy-eyed, across into Southwark. The world was closing in around him, and that was a definite – quite clearly it was no longer his disturbed imagination. Even if the police weren’t onto him as such, they were clearly close. What did he do now? What
could
he do?
He threw the half-smoked cigarette away and lit another one. His hands were shaking as he put it to his lips. Clammy sweat lay in a fine dew across his forehead. Suddenly he realised he was going to vomit again. He staggered forward, hooking his body over the balustrade. He heaved two or three times before ridding himself of the last vestiges of lunch. When he’d done that, he tottered back to the bench and slumped down. His head was starting to ache, in fact to pound.
That was when he realised that somebody else was sitting on the bench as well. They must have sat down while he was throwing up.
He peeked sideways. It was impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman – they were wearing a waterproof with the hood pulled up, and reading a copy of
The Times
. Okay – it was nothing to get upset about. There was nothing unusual in this.
But of course there was.
It was a free country, and you could sit anywhere you wanted. But this was a riverfront path with several empty benches dotted along it. Would you really choose the one right next to a man who was being violently sick?
Blenkinsop stood stiffly up and walked east. Only when he’d gone thirty yards or so did he risk a glance back. The hooded figure was still on the bench, still reading the paper. That was a relief – but it was only a temporary relief. For now he felt that someone else was watching him. As he turned into Billingsgate Walk, he spotted an unmarked van parked on the other side of Lower Thames Street. There was no obvious reason for this. Nothing was being unloaded; no one was in the process of climbing in or out. But the driver, who was no more than a shadow in the dim interior of the van’s cab, seemed to be observing him. Blenkinsop couldn’t swear on this, but he felt certain it was true.
He was sure those eyes followed him all the way past the Custom House and up Byward Street. He was now bewildered as well as terrorised. How had his life come to this so quickly? By the time he reached Tower Hill, Blenkinsop was running. He didn’t know where he was running to. There was nowhere he
could
run to. But he ran all the same, blindly, tears and sweat mingling on his pallid cheeks.
With the sun setting behind the isolated fort, its shadow lay long and twisted across the surface of the estuary. On the north shore, the fiery glow of the Canvey Island chemical plant was already leaking into the indigo sky. To the south, the mud flats lay spectral beneath a blanket of mist.
Heck stood on the viewing catwalk and absorbed all this without really seeing it. When Lauren appeared behind him, she’d climbed back into her sodden clothes. There was a worried look on her face, but her eyes flashed with defiance.