‘What?’ Dudley said and sat up very straight. ‘The same as my bloke?’
‘That’s not all,’ Gus said with satisfaction. ‘He was also involved with the Right to Inheritance Bill, which is apparently being used as a lever to reform the House of Lords, if they can get it through. The Labour Party are very keen on it, and none keener than our David. It started out as a Tory Bill, of course, designed to strengthen the Lords, but the Labour people on the Committee have been making a hell of a running on it.’
‘Well,’ Dudley said. ‘That is interesting.’
‘Just what we thought when I heard your bloke matched our bloke,’ Gus said. ‘We’re going to have to do a bit more digging around in political waters, Roop, whether you like it or not.’
‘I want to start with the families,’ Dudley said, his chin up. ‘And do me a favour, Guv, and drop the Roop, will you? It’s setting my teeth on edge.’
‘Sorry,’ Gus said. ‘And after that?’
‘We’ll see where that leads us,’ Dudley said, still obstinate. ‘I want to talk to the son in Australia. The fact that he isn’t here doesn’t mean to say he mightn’t have involved himself in some way. The wife’ll give me a lead on him. I’m arranging to have her plane met later – one of the women constables can do that, together with you Mike or Tim here. They’ll see what she says on the way in from Heathrow. It’s always a good time to get ’em on the hop, when they’re a bit fagged from a flight.’
‘Play it straight,’ Gus said warningly. ‘We don’t want anyone accusing us of cutting corners. This one’s a very spicy hot potato and don’t forget it. Did you see that crowd of press outside the St Stephen’s entrance? They’re after all they can get, however slight, to build into something huge. Don’t take any chances.’
Tim Brewer looked hurt. ‘Here, Guv, whenever did you know me to bend the rules?’
‘Well, I hope you do sometimes, for Gawd’s sake,’ Gus said. ‘If you don’t you’ll never get a bleedin’ result. I’m just tellin’ you to go very easy on this one and walk on eggshells.’ He dropped his voice even more. ‘We’re walking on the buggers right now. Don’t look now but if that isn’t that bastard from the Clarion over at the table in the corner, then I’m the Duchess of York.’
‘You’ve got the toes for it, Guv,’ Mike muttered, and Gus snorted. The pressman at the table in the corner looked over longingly as the four of them laughed loud and long.
They left five minutes later, still seeming to joke like a quartet of ordinary lunchers. But Duggie Rowe from the Clarion wasn’t fooled. He knew Gus by sight, and suspected that he knew Dudley too. He’d certainly seen him at the scenes of various crimes; now, as the engraved glass doors swung closed behind the little party, he pulled out his mobile phone. The sooner the editor heard what he’d managed to pick up (and careful as the policemen had been, he’d still managed to pick up a good deal because the ear-whistling tinnitus that made his life a misery sometimes had forced him to become the best lip-reading journalist in the business, an asset he exploited for all it was worth) the better.
‘I’m going to Heathrow,’ he told his editor when he managed to get through. ‘Alice Diamond’ll be back from Italy tonight and the Bill are meeting her. With a bit of luck, I’ll be to her first and see what’s what. OK?’
‘Oh yes,’ clacked the little voice in his ear. ‘Very much OK.’
7
George was perched on a high stool in the middle of the main lab, watching Jerry finish off a batch of slides as Alan Short, working on the other side of him, completed the assays for the afternoon’s Endocrine Clinic. What she was about to ask of them was, she knew, outrageous. If she were in their shoes it would make her mad as hell; but all the same she had to ask them. She wished, just for a moment, that she was one of the autocratic sort, like many of the other consultants at Old East, who simply told their junior staff what they were going to do and then went and did it, no matter how much extra work it made for them. But she couldn’t be like that, not ever. A natural Democrat all the way through to my middle, I am, she thought. Goddamn it.
‘Um. Jerry,’ she said as he tidied away the last slide and cleared his work area ready for the next job. ‘I want to talk to you. And you too, Alan.’
Alan looked up as Jerry, his head on one side, swung himself up on to his high stool, crossed his knees and folded his arms and looked at George. ‘Well, now,’ Jerry said. ‘What d’you reckon, Alan? Is my bet going to pay off, or isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into it. It’s like taking pennies from a beggar’s bowl, that’s what it is.’
‘Then you agree I’m going to win?’
‘What are you two going on about?’ George demanded, a little pink because she feared she knew the answer perfectly well. ‘I just want to talk to you!’
Jerry put the finger in the middle of his forehead and made a face like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. ‘Aw, let me think, even though I haven’t got a brain. Aw, the little lady wants to talk to us about … I know, Tin Man! She wants to go away and leave us! She wants to take her little basket and go off with Gus – or do I mean Toto? – and find … Now, what does she want to find?’
‘Um,’ said Alan and struck an awkward tight-jointed pose. ‘Could it be nasty murderers? Rippers with knives? Oh, if I only had a heart it would bleed with the horror of it all.’ And he pretended to weep.
‘Oh, bugger the pair of you,’ George said crossly. ‘I’m not that transparent, am I? But – well, it’s just that this really is one hell of a case, and they only found the second body because I told them where it would be. And I have a notion that if they take good care to stake out the place I’ll show them then they’ll get the man before he can kill again. You have to admit it’s an important case. Is it any wonder I want to be bang in the middle of it? And I can’t be if I have to be here all the time. I just want to concentrate on it, and leave the Old East stuff in your capable hands … please?’
‘Oh, wowie!’ Jerry said. ‘The control! The strength! The sheer power she’s putting into our hands! I love to see a woman grovel, don’t you, Alan?’
‘She’s not grovelling enough,’ Alan said with a fine judicious air. ‘I want to see some real begging.’
‘And you can go on wanting, because you’ll get diddly squat!’ George retorted. ‘OK, OK, I get the message. So I’ll do the case and I’ll work here as well. I’ve done it before, and I can again, so to hell with both of you.’
‘Oh, come down out of the rafters, Dr B.,’ Jerry said, laughing. ‘Of course you can. It never occurred to me you wouldn’t. That’s why I made the bet with Alan, silly sod.’ He grinned at Alan. ‘I’ll take my winnings in beer next time you and Jane can get a babysitter. And don’t fret, Dr B. I’ll see to it you get a full report every day of what’s happening here and who did what, to whom, with which.’
He jumped down from his stool and made for the little office in the corner. It had once been the domain of Sheila Keen, his predecessor as chief technician, but no one ever spoke of her now. Not after what had happened last year. Jerry had had it painted in bright yellow and totally refurnished it with pieces he bought out of his own pocket: an old roll-top desk, an armchair and a scrap of crimson carpet, all found in a Bermondsey street market. Now it was very much his and it was as though Sheila had never existed.
‘Look, let me lend you my mobile phone. I shan’t need it much for the next little while and if you have it with you all the time I’ll be able to contact you in an emergency. Though I doubt anything’ll turn up that Alan can’t handle. Right, Alan?’
Alan, who although he was George’s registrar and as such nominally in charge of the pathology department when George wasn’t there, but who much preferred to do his own medical work than be involved in administrative details, grinned contentedly. ‘Right, Jerry. And he is right, Dr B., we’ll cope fine. I don’t blame you for wanting to spend all the time you can on this case. If it were mine I would. So, you go ahead
and don’t worry. I’ll do the routine PMs – it’s only the forensic stuff I’ll leave for you – and I can call you on Jerry’s phone about that if necessary.’
‘Boys, I love you,’ George said fervently and took the phone. ‘I’ll keep this switched on all the time, I promise – oh, is that the spare battery? Great. I’ll see I keep it charged up.’
She was almost at the door when Jerry called after her. ‘Just one thing, Dr B.! We expect you to come back and give us every gory detail there is so that we’re a step ahead of everyone else.’
‘Ghoul!’ said Alan.
‘You bet,’ Jerry wriggled his shoulders. ‘I love to have my flesh creep.’
‘I promise,’ George called back over her shoulder as she headed for her own office to fetch her coat and her emergency bag. ‘Every bit of it!’ And then she ran. There was no time to waste.
At the nick, the incident room was busy with everyone, it seemed, making phone calls, but there was no sign of Gus. She felt flat and cross; she had imagined how pleased Gus would be when she told him that she was free to help in any way at any time and now she couldn’t tell him, she was as disappointed as a child watching the ice-cream van drive away. She looked round for Mike Urquhart; in Gus’s absence he was always a good source of information about what was happening; but he too was out. She bit her lip with irritation. She’d just have to wait till people came back from wherever to report on what was going on out there; and she ached to be out there with them.
‘Where is everyone?’ she said with a casual air to the woman PC at the desk nearest the side of the room where all the pinboards were. The girl, who had just cradled her phone, looked up, and George recognized Julie Bentley and grinned with relief. ‘Hi, Julie, I didn’t realize it was you.’
The girl leaned back in her chair, equally pleased to see George. ‘Hello, Dr B.! They’re out on various things – Roop and Tim are interviewing the Tory MPs at the House of Commons and the Guv has gone with Mike to talk to the other lot – the Labour ones. After that, they’re going to the political party headquarters.’ She riffled some papers on her desk. ‘Here we are. Central Office, 32 Smith Square. That’s where Roop and Tim are going. The Guv and Mike are going to 140, Walworth Road. John Smith House, it’s called.’
‘Did they choose them because of their political feelings, I wonder?’ George perched on the edge of her desk. ‘I’d have expected Roop to be a Tory, wouldn’t you? And I know Gus isn’t anywhere near being a Tory, so …’
Julie shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Politics is so boring, isn’t it?’
George looked at her a little sadly and shook her head. ‘Is it? It shouldn’t be. The way politics works controls the way you work. The way we all work.’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Julie said. ‘The brass here, they’re always politicking with each other but it makes no difference to us poor oiks who do what matters, the real work. I can’t be doing with politics. It’s just people talking of stabbing each other in the back or cutting each other’s throats.’ She grinned bleakly. ‘Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with life and the way people feel, has it?’
George shook her head. ‘You’re wrong, Julie, truly. Never think that politics isn’t to do with real life and real feelings. Because it is – and it can make people do appalling things. Even violent things.’
‘Well, I grant you it seems to make ’em do violent things to each other. Politicians, I mean. Two with their throats cut – it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? And now they’re all in a state.’
‘Who are?’
‘The politicians,’ Julie said. ‘We’re having to call every damn Member of Parliament to check, let me see, “if they’ve had any reason to be alarmed by behaviour they might have noticed’.” She had glanced down at a sheet of paper which clearly bore her instructions. ‘ “Or have become aware of anything which might be of use to our inquiries.” ’
‘All of them? You’re phoning all of them?’ George said, awed.
‘Damn near.’ Julie sounded gloomy. ‘Though we’re getting some help from the A MIT team, and some local forces are dealing with their areas for us. Still, it’s a lot of work. There’re over eleven hundred in the House of Lords and six hundred and fifty in the House of Commons.’
‘And they all have to be asked,’ George said thoughtfully. ‘And that means, of course, warned …’
A sort of rustle went through the room as everyone bent closer over their desks. It was as though a cold wind had blown over a field of ripe wheat, and George looked over her shoulder to see that Roop and Tim Brewer were back.
She sat still, letting her shoulders slump a little. The last thing she wanted was any sort of run-in with Roop before Gus got back. She wouldn’t put it past him to make her leave the incident room. Anything he could do to sideline her he would, she knew. And she slid from the desk into the chair beside Julie and slumped even more.
But it didn’t work; he spotted her at once and said something to Tim who looked across at her, seemed to try to argue with Roop and then, with a resigned shrug that didn’t escape George, came towards her as Roop went over to the far side of the room to bend over a pile of faxes, his back firmly turned.
‘Hello, Dr B.,’ Tim said wretchedly. ‘All right, are you?’
‘Fine. Or I was till you two got back. The sooner someone runs that man over with a Sherman tank the better off we’ll all be,’ George snapped. ‘And you can quote me!’
Julie giggled and bent her head assiduously over her desk.
‘I wish I could,’ Tim said, more miserably than ever. ‘But what can I do? He says to ask you kindly to wait in the Guv’s office, because … Well, just kindly to wait there until –’
‘Like hell he did,’ George snapped. ‘He said, “Get that bitch out of my sight. Put her in the Guv’s office or somewhere.” ’
‘Oh, Dr B., do me a favour!’ Tim said, almost pleading. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up in a row between you two. I haven’t time. I’ve got to go to Harrow in a minute.’
‘You don’t have to get mixed up in anything,’ George said with a sudden lightening of spirits. ‘Here’s Gus now.’ And she stood up and went marching across the room to stand at Gus’s side. The fact that he had made a beeline for the small pile of faxes that Roop was reading pleased her mightily.
‘Hi, Gus,’ she said, putting a hand on his sleeve in a manner that was clearly meant to be proprietorial. She saw a muscle in the corner of Roop’s mouth twitch. Great, she thought, he’s good and mad. She stood even closer to Gus, sliding herself between them as Gus obligingly made way, till they flanked her.
‘Busy morning, Roop?’ she said. ‘Poor old you. Gus – Guv, I mean’ – she saw from the corner of her eye that Roop had noticed, and pressed on – ‘I have some important information for you. Can we talk?’
‘Sure.’ He looked at her and grinned. That she was up to something was very clear to his experienced eye. She was looking particularly fetching at the moment, he thought, for her eyes were glittering even more than usual, and her curly hair was springing over her forehead in a way that made her look more like a schoolgirl than a woman well into her thirties. ‘Talk on, dolly.’
‘Oh, we’d better go to your office,’ George said sweetly. ‘Roop thinks I’m in the way here, don’t you, Roop? He sent Tim over to tell me to wait in your office, so let’s go there, shall we?’ And she linked her arm in Gus’s and half pulled, half led him towards his room on the far side.
‘Hey, what’s goin’ on here?’ Gus protested. ‘You two sparrin’ again?’
George looked shocked. ‘Would I spar, Gus? I ask you, would I?’
Roop hadn’t waited. He was gone to talk earnestly with Mike who had found himself a vacant computer terminal as soon as he had come in, and had been punching keys busily ever since.
‘I’ll say you would,’ Gus said, sounding resigned and irritable at the same time. ‘You two never have got on. But if he’s been really unpleasant –’
‘Not really,�
� George said, relaxing now. ‘It was just that he tried to shove me out of the room. Listen, Gus, I’ve been thinking. If it’s as I suspect – and I think you do now too – that this is a serial killer using an MO based on Jack the Ripper’s cases a hundred years ago, you’re going to need a Ripper expert, aren’t you? And that’s me. So I’ve arranged time off from the hospital to –’
‘Who says it’s you?’ He had let her lead him into his office and now he sat on his desk as she closed the door behind her. ‘You’re an expert after reading one book? One I’d already read and could as easily read again? Do me a favour, ducks.’
‘No, it’s more than that,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve read more since then. I mean, when I read Paley’s book after seeing that programme, I went off and bought everything I could get my hands on. Why should you waste your time mugging it all up when I already know it? Let me in on the investigation properly and not just as a pathologist, hmm? I told you I’ve fixed it at the hospital so I can get away. I’m in touch by phone.’ She patted the breast pocket of her jacket. ‘And I could really be useful on this case. Didn’t I help you find CWG? No one believed me, but there he was.’
He sighed and stared at her, his eyes partly glazed, and she let the silence stand, knowing he was thinking seriously. After a while he looked over his shoulder through the glass wall of the office to where Roop was now sitting at a computer console of his own, and shook his head. ‘Roop’ll go ballistic if I do, of course. He likes everything by the book.’
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