by Carl Goodman
Sutton glowered. ‘In as much as someone accidentally failed to kill me. A hit and run while on a bust about eight weeks ago. He buried his car in a tree and his face along with it, so I suppose we’re about even.’ She kept glowering. ‘And you, DI Harris? How has your day really been so far?’
Sutton wasn’t exactly tall, Eva thought as she stared across the desk at her. Maybe five-three, forty-something, long dark hair with a fairly severe fringe. Her skin told of mixed-race ancestry somewhere in the dim and distant past. Hard eyes, Eva noticed. Note to self, she thought as she framed her reply; do not mess with this woman.
‘I’ve had better, ma’am,’ Eva finally admitted. ‘Moresby is going to be okay, so I guess that’s the key thing. Unfortunately, the suspect escaped on a mountain bike.’
‘From what I hear I’m not clear what more you could have done about that,’ Sutton conceded. ‘At least you got sight of him.’ She paused for the briefest moment. ‘And Moresby is definitely okay?’
Eva felt on safer ground. ‘Yes, ma’am, I’m pleased to say. I’ve only known him for five minutes but he strikes me as a good officer.’
Sutton managed half a smile. ‘You have no idea,’ she told Eva. ‘You don’t get many Will Moresby’s to the pound.’ Sutton went back to glowering, though. ‘I’m not entirely sure what to make of you, Detective Inspector Harris.’
Here it comes, Eva thought. The moment she had been bracing herself for all morning. ‘I was told to anticipate there might be some issues, ma’am.’
‘Were you now? By whom? Skip that,’ Sutton snapped, ‘I don’t want to know. You will have anticipated my conundrum then, DI Harris. On the one hand, I have a brand-new DI with comparatively little field experience parachuted into my nick without so much as a by your leave. On the other hand, said DI has some bloody impressive credentials, on paper at least.’ Sutton rocked back in her chair. The expression on her face turned to barely concealed fury; it took Eva a moment to realise that it was not directed at her. ‘And on some hypothetical third hand,’ Sutton continued, ‘we are desperately understaffed, especially with respect to criminal investigations. Every force in London and the Home Counties is. We’ve been a political football for a decade and now the consequences of cost-cutting and hidden agendas at the Home Office are coming home to roost. We are fucked, DI Harris. We do not have a cat in hell’s chance of hitting our clear-up targets, let alone keeping the citizens of this benighted county safe. So on the one hand, I am profoundly unhappy about having an inexperienced DI dropped on my desk. On the other, I need all the help I can get.’ Eva didn’t know how to respond so she sat and waited for Sutton to continue. ‘Your background is in cybercrime?’
‘I was originally with MPCCU, ma’am,’ Eva told her. Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit, she meant. ‘I’m a computer science graduate. I joined cybercrime as an analyst, but I was given the opportunity to move into a broader role. I moved back to Southampton to work as a DS. I went through the usual training and passed my NPPF exams nearly three months ago now.’
‘Three months ago,’ Sutton drawled. ‘My word.’
‘I do have field experience, ma’am, but I admit a large part of the reason for my promotion was technical knowledge. Cyber is becoming an increasing part of police work and—’
Sutton raised a hand. ‘I know all this. I’m not knocking it, Harris, nor am I knocking you. I just want to know what exactly I’ve been landed with. Why, for example, is there a gap in your service history?’
Eva could feel her face colour. ‘Injury, ma’am, while on a stakeout; I was signed off for a period of time.’
She looked like a cobra in the moment before it struck, Eva thought. ‘I know that too,’ Sutton almost whispered. ‘I can sympathise. Was it as bad as it sounds?’
Eva clenched her teeth. ‘I’m still here, ma’am.’
Even Sutton could see the line being drawn and understood enough not to cross it. They sat within an awkward silence that Eva did not feel the need to break. She wrapped the silence around her like a cloak. Sutton tested it for a while but found it to be impervious; and so she moved on.
‘So we have a killer on the loose,’ Sutton said eventually. ‘One we may have seen before.’
‘Moresby said that, ma’am. Three murders, about four years ago?’
‘And no arrests. I wasn’t at Kingston then but Moresby was. There was some stuff about a French dog or something.’
‘Un Chien Andalou,’ Eva told her, and then explained the connection with the surrealist film.
‘Sounds like our guy is back,’ Sutton said.
‘Maybe.’ She did not try to hide her scepticism. Sutton heard it but clearly chose to ignore it for the time being.
‘I need somebody running this case while I get used to having half my leg back again,’ she told Eva. ‘For better or worse, right now that’s going to be you. With a little help from a small but perfectly formed team,’ Sutton added. With not inconsiderable effort she pulled herself to her feet, and stood wavering by the side of her desk. ‘Let’s go and meet them,’ she gasped after a moment. Eva opened the door for her. Sutton limped towards it.
‘Harris,’ Sutton said as she leaned on the doorframe, ‘for God’s sake, give them some reason to respect you.’
Eva felt the knot in her gut tighten as Sutton led her, limping, to the incident room. What struck her as they walked was just how many empty offices she saw. She knew that budget cuts had eaten into the resources of out-of-London stations, Eva had seen that in Southampton, but Kingston seemed to have been especially badly hit.
‘It’s good you could cover this morning,’ Sutton said. ‘This lot were wrapping up a financial misconduct case that’s tied us in knots for weeks. Crown Prosecution are being complete bastards when it comes down to taking action. It used to be that you only needed a 60 per cent chance of conviction to proceed. Now we need to convince a Silk that it’s got better than 80 per cent to push the button.’
Eva frowned. ‘Shouldn’t that be the job of a specialist unit?’
‘It should,’ Sutton agreed, ‘but it isn’t. Resources are finite, or so we’re told.’ She flicked a glance over her shoulder. ‘Didn’t you find that in Southampton?’
A trick question, Eva decided. ‘We had a different set of problems, ma’am. Because of the port we saw a lot of drug trafficking and related activity. A lot of the time we couldn’t move without drugs squad and National Crime Agency on our backs.’
Sutton nodded. A good enough answer, then. ‘There are plenty of drugs here too, but it’s mostly at the top end of the market. And people who run the networks, although not necessarily in the UK. We think there’re a couple of Mexican drug barons in St Jude’s Hill, but we can’t lay a finger on them. Not active in the UK and the authorities in Mexico practically work for them, so they won’t press charges any time soon.’
‘Frustrating.’
‘You could say,’ Sutton agreed.
Three people sat at desks in the incident room. They looked up after a few moments when Sutton clumped to a halt. Sutton gazed at them with an almost imperious stare. ‘This is Detective Inspector Harris,’ she announced. ‘Be nice to her. She’s had a shit day.’ She turned to Eva. ‘Detective Sergeants Flynn, Newton and Chakrabati; they’re good officers,’ Sutton said without lowering her voice, ‘just don’t tell them I said so.’
Rebecca Flynn, Eva thought, James Newton and Rajiv Chakrabati. Sutton would probably have flailed her alive if she had known Eva had already been through their personnel files. Flynn was older than Eva, and had a hard face. A local girl, Eva had read, with a lot of police in her background. Her father and her brother were uniform, her grandfather had been an inspector and a Freemason and her mother had also been a constable. Rebecca Flynn was the first detective in the family, though. Her clear-up rate amongst local criminals was certainly solid enough, although Eva had the impression that some of the praise given to her by her superiors was occasionally tinged with exasperation for he
r methods. Not somebody who would mince her words, a tough cop who would be quick to pass judgement. Eva suspected she would have to watch her back with Flynn.
Jamie Newton, his preferred name, was Eva’s age. Fit, good-looking, earnest and honest. Also not the very sharpest tool in the box, but what he lacked in IQ he made up for in diligence. People seemed to like Newton; that had come across in the notes in his file. In fact he was exceptionally good-looking, Eva thought. She imagined he might be able to give her as much reliable advice on the subject of skin-care products and personal grooming as the networks of financial criminals that permeated the county. When Eva searched for an adjective that described Newton, ‘upright’ was the word that sprung to mind. She would have no problems with him, she decided.
Last was Rajiv Chakrabati, or Raj, as he inevitably preferred to be known. He was also a few years older than Eva and apparently took a keen interest in several activities outside of work, mostly in the Indian community, ranging from technology clubs for kids to charities involved in helping the homeless. His family were all from professional backgrounds. His mother was a doctor and his father an accountant, so how he had ended up a DS seemed somewhat unclear. Raj had a face that conveyed a genuine curiosity about life. Eva suspected she could come to like Raj, even though she knew she could not afford that indulgence.
Sutton looked as though she was going to tell her to introduce herself, but Eva had other ideas. ‘Can somebody take notes, please?’ she asked before Sutton had a chance to say anything more. All four of them hesitated but Newton eventually took the hint. He raised a pen at her and dragged an A4 notepad in front of him. ‘Killer is approximately six foot tall,’ Eva told him, ‘weighs seventy to eighty kilos and is fit. He works out, certainly cycles and has probably done some martial arts, as a sport though, not as any sort of military training.’
Sutton maintained her glare. Eva wondered if the look ever left her. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he punched me in the face, ma’am. What they call a reverse punch, a gyakuzuki in karate classes. It’s the one that comes out from under the armpit and twists as you throw it. Front two knuckles forward, and it bloody hurts.’
‘Done karate, ma’am?’ Flynn asked. She sounded almost innocent.
‘Just self-defence classes at uni,’ Eva said. ‘It all goes a bit to shit when somebody is actually trying to kill you.’ Despite herself Flynn grinned. ‘He was completely covered, head to toe. Black balaclava, black hoodie, goggles of some sort, probably cycling goggles I guess, little red discs and reflective coating. It all looked like sports gear. He had gloves, padded on the finger joints. The punch would have hurt a lot more than it did but for those.’
‘Did you see the bike, ma’am?’ Raj started making notes too.
‘I’m not sure,’ Eva told him, ‘but I think the frame was a Cannondale. It had been sprayed.’
‘Black,’ Flynn said, voice wry. South London accent, as hard as her face.
‘Just so,’ Eva told her.
‘So he’s back,’ Sutton said.
Time to piss everyone off, Eva thought. ‘I very much doubt that, ma’am.’ Sutton said nothing but raised an eyebrow as sharp as a knife’s blade. ‘From what Sergeant Moresby said your previous killer was a slasher. This one is a cutter, methodical and painstaking. I doubt they’re the same person.’
‘Cheer me up, why don’t you?’ Sutton thought for a moment. ‘I take your point DI Harris, but even if they’re not the same person they may be connected. Two eye-slicers in one county seem a bit bloody much. And then again,’ she said as Eva opened her mouth to answer, ‘isn’t it possible he’s changed? It’s been four years. Perhaps he has, what would you say, evolved?’
Not a cat in hell’s chance, Eva thought, but she gave Sutton a curt nod anyway. There was only so far she could push it on her first day. ‘We can proceed on that basis as a start. We should get everything on the previous case and lay it out here.’
Raj raised his hand. It seemed like an odd gesture, almost as though he were in school, but when he looked her in the eye she understood immediately he was intending only to help. ‘We’ll sort that for you,’ he told Eva. ‘Give us a few hours and we’ll have the old stuff out of the files and on the boards.’
‘The new material as well, please,’ she said. ‘Put them side by side so we can see if there are any immediate overlaps.’ There would not be. She had worked that out already, but at least she was showing willing.
Sutton chose that moment to take the weight off her foot by sitting on a desk. She aimed a question at the three detective sergeants. ‘So are you lot sorted?’
‘Think so, ma’am,’ Flynn said. ‘At least we will be by the time we leave.’
A nod. ‘There’s not much more you can do until the forensics reports come back in the morning, so you,’ she turned back to Eva, ‘should probably get some rest.’ Eva started to protest but Sutton overrode her. ‘A knock on the head and a punch in the face warrants a few hours off. It’s going to be full on tomorrow, so catch up while you can.’
‘Don’t worry, ma’am,’ Jamie Newton assured her. ‘We’ve got this.’
The truth was she felt like shit and needed a shower. ‘Thanks,’ she told them. ‘I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow then.’
Sutton led the way out of the incident room. Eva went to follow, but as she did so Raj spoke up. ‘Ma’am? Got a second before you go?’ He had a different look on his face now, Eva saw as she turned to face him again. It seemed like curiosity combined almost with bemusement. ‘I’ve got a delivery for you,’ he said.
* * *
It was only in the room next door. Raj opened the door for her and pointed to a table. On the table was a box, black cardboard with neon-green branding. Next to the box was a note. Eva picked it up. Hope this will speed things up, the note read. It was signed: Tisha.
Leticia North, Eva thought. A slender Afro-Caribbean woman who kept her hair in immaculate cornrows that caused her hours of discomfort every time she had them tightened. Tisha was technical lead at the MPCCU Digital Forensics hub in Vauxhall, and one of a handful of friends Eva had kept from her time in cybercrime. The cardboard of the box was creased, as though the contents had been used before.
‘It came this morning, ma’am,’ Raj said. He stood beside the table. Not as tall as Jamie Newton, nor as fit, he nevertheless had a presence to him. She noted creases in the sleeves of his shirt where they had been ironed. His shoes were immaculate, and yet Raj’s hair had an unruly wave to it that suggested he ran his fingers through it frequently. Wedding ring on his finger, she noted. He seemed tidy, almost despite himself. There was probably a wife in Raj’s background who cared for him even when he forgot to. ‘You don’t look much like a gamer if you don’t mind my saying so?’ She opened the box. Inside was a black plastic-and-metal frame filled with computer components.
Flynn stuck her nose around the door and read the logo on the side of the box. ‘What’s an eGPU when it’s at home?’
Raj answered before Eva could. ‘An external Graphics Processing Unit. You can buy them from Amazon. They plug into your computer and make games like Grand Theft Auto look incredible.’ He was practically salivating, Eva noticed. He muttered something in Hindi and then corrected himself. ‘OMG, I mean. This is stacked. I’ve never seen one with so many graphics cards in. What on earth are you going to use it for?’ Suddenly he stared at her. This time he looked both intrigued and sly. ‘You’re not mining crypto-currencies are you, ma’am?’
I’ll have to keep my eye on you, Eva thought. She picked up the box. It was moderately heavy. She walked out of the room making it clear that the conversation, which had not even started, was now over. ‘Thanks for sorting out the old case files,’ she called back to Raj and Flynn. ‘I’ll review them at eight tomorrow morning.’
Chapter Four
Eva made it back to her flat by five that afternoon. A luxury, she realised, and not one that was likely to be repeated any time soon
. Once the scene of crime reports, the forensic analysis and the notes from the old cases were on her desk, whenever she actually found her desk, the pace of the investigation would become relentless. Not tonight’s problem, Eva decided as she parked her car in the car park underneath the block of flats where she was renting. Tonight she just wanted to feel clean again.
The blouse was ruined. Her blood had stained the white cotton and there was nothing short of bleach that would get the long, dark smears out. At least she had undone her coat. She saw spatters of blood on the collar but nothing that some scrubbing and a few chemicals from the supermarket down the road wouldn’t fix. The same applied to the jacket of her suit. Eva stripped the lot off, dumped everything on the floor and headed for the shower.
After five minutes of standing in a steaming jet of water she started, carefully, to prise the padded dressing away from her ear. It stung like hell. The bastard had slammed her head into the sill of the van and split her earlobe, which had bled profusely. The paramedics had glued the wound and then patched it. Eva thought the glue should have done its job by now. She peeled the dressing off and threw it into the bin under the sink. When she checked her ear in the bathroom mirror she saw one large droplet of dark-red blood oozing from it, threatening to drip onto her shoulder. She stepped back into the shower and stood there for another five minutes until she was sure the bleeding had stopped.
In the bedroom she checked her body for other signs of damage. Her cheek was livid where he had punched her, but at least she would avoid the indignity of a black eye. Bastard could’ve broken my nose, she thought as she touched the bruise. It stung, so she stopped.
There was another bruise, the size of her palm, just under and to one side of her left breast. She had no idea when she had hit herself there, and it didn’t really hurt, so she ignored it. She couldn’t ignore her scar, though. A long line of welted pink flesh ran almost from her groin to her knee, along the inside of her thigh. As ugly as sin, Eva thought, but she no longer tried to hide it when she was swimming or at the gym. It was a line that separated her life, divided it into before and after. Now was most definitely after.
