The Mermaids Singing

8

No unpractised artist could have conceived so bold an idea as that of a noon-day murder in the heart of a great city. It was no obscure baker, gentlemen, or anonymous chimney-sweeper, be assured, that executed this work. I know who it was.

Stevie McConnell ran both hands through his hair in a gesture of desperation. ‘Look, how many times do I have to tell you? I was telling porkies. I was trying to make myself sound the big man. I wanted to cop off, I was trying to make myself interesting. I never knew Paul Gibbs or Damien Connolly. I never saw either of them in my life.’

‘We can prove you knew Gareth Finnegan,’ Carol said coldly.

‘OK, I admit I knew Gareth. He was a member down the gym, I can’t pretend I’d never met him before. But Christ, woman, the man was a lawyer. He must have known thousands of people in the city,’ McConnell said, thumping the table with a solid fist.

Carol didn’t even flinch. ‘And Adam Scott,’ she went on relentlessly.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said wearily. ‘Adam Scott had a trial one-month membership down the gym about two years ago. He never joined up. I bumped into him a couple of times in my local pub, we had a jar together, that’s all there was to it. I have a drink with a lot of people, you know. I’m not a bloody hermit. Christ, if I killed everybody I’ve ever stood at a bar with, youse bastards would be busy from now till the next century.’

‘We will prove you knew Paul Gibbs and Damien Connolly. You know that, don’t you?’ Merrick chimed in.

McConnell sighed. His hands clenched, forcing the muscles in his powerful forearms into sharp relief. ‘If you do, you’ll have to make it up, because you can’t prove what isn’t true. You’re not going to do a Birmingham Six on me, you know. Look, if I was really this mad bastard, do you think I’d have hung around to help you? First sign of trouble, I’d have legged it. Stands to reason.’

Sounding bored, Carol said, ‘But you didn’t know then that Sergeant Merrick was a police officer, did you? So give us your alibi for Monday night.’

McConnell leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘Mondays is my day off,’ he recited. ‘Like I said, the guys that share my house are on their holidays, so I was on my tod. I got up late, went down the supermarket for my messages, then I went for a swim. About six o’clock, I drove out to the multi-screen off the motorway, and I went to see the new Clint Eastwood film.’

Abruptly, he lurched forward in the chair. ‘They’ll be able to confirm it. I paid by credit card, and their system’s all computerized. They can prove I was at the pictures,’ he said triumphantly.

‘They can prove you bought a ticket,’ Carol said laconically. From the cinema to Damien Connolly’s house would take no more than half an hour round the motorway, even allowing for rush-hour traffic.

‘I can tell you the whole plot, for fuck’s sake,’ McConnell said angrily.

‘You could have seen it any time, Stevie,’ Merrick said gently. ‘What did you do after the pictures?’

‘I went home. Cooked myself a steak and some vegetables.’ McConnell paused and stared at the table. ‘Then I went into town for the last hour. Just for a quick drink with a few mates.’

Carol leaned forward, sensing McConnell’s reluctance. ‘Where in town?’ she demanded.

McConnell said nothing.

Carol leaned further forward, the tip of her nose an inch from his. Her voice was quiet but icy cold. ‘If I have to stick your face on the front page of the Sentinel Times and send a team into every pub in the city, I’ll do it, Mr McConnell. Where in town?’

McConnell breathed in heavily through his nose. ‘The Queen of Hearts,’ he spat.

Carol leaned back, satisfied. She stood up. ‘Interview terminated at 3.17 a.m.,’ she said, leaning over to switch off the tape recorder. She looked down at McConnell. ‘We’ll be back, Mr McConnell.’

‘Wait a minute,’ he protested as Merrick got up and the two of them made for the door. ‘When am I going to get out of here? You’ve got no right to keep me!’

Carol turned back in the doorway, smiled sweetly and said, ‘Oh, I have every right, Mr McConnell. You’ve been arrested for assault, let’s not forget. I have twenty-four hours to make your life a misery before I even have to think about charging you.’

Merrick gave an apologetic smile as he backed out of the room in Carol’s wake. ‘Sorry, Stevie,’ he said. ‘The lady’s not wrong.’

He caught up with Carol as she was asking the custody sergeant to return McConnell to the cells. ‘What do you think, ma’am?’ Merrick asked as they walked off together.

Carol stopped and eyed Merrick critically. His skin was pale and clammy, his eyes feverishly bright. ‘I think you need to go home and get some sleep, Don. You look like shit on a stick.’

‘Never mind me. What about McConnell, ma’am?’

‘We’ll see what Mr Brandon has to say.’ Carol set off for the stairs, Merrick trailing behind her.

‘But what do you think, ma’am?’

‘On the face of it, he could be our man. He’s got nothing approaching an alibi for Monday night, he runs the gym where Gareth Finnegan worked out, he knew Adam Scott and by his own admission he was in the Queen of Hearts on Monday night for the last hour. He’s certainly strong enough to have carted the bodies in and out of a car. He’s got form, even if it is only a couple of breaches of the peace and a Section 18 wounding. And he’s into S amp;M. But that’s all circumstantial. And I still don’t think we’ve got grounds for a search warrant,’ Carol rattled off. ‘What about you, Don? Got a feeling in your water about this one?’

They turned down the corridor towards the murder squad room. ‘I kind of like him,’ Merrick said grudgingly. ‘I can’t imagine that I’d take a liking to the bastard that’s been doing these murders. But then, I suppose that’s a pretty daft reaction. I mean, he’s not the two-headed man, is he? He’s got to have something about him that lets him get close enough to his victims to do the business. So maybe it is Stevie McConnell.’

Carol opened the door to the squad room, expecting to find Brandon and Tony still sitting there, fuelled by coffee and canteen sandwiches. The room was empty. ‘Where’s the ACC got to now?’ Carol said, tiredness lending her voice a note of exasperation.

‘Maybe he’s left a message at the front desk,’ Merrick suggested.

‘And maybe he’s done the sensible thing and buggered off home to bed. Well, that’s us for tonight, Don. McConnell can stew for a bit. See what the bosses have to say in the morning. Maybe we can try for a search warrant now we know McConnell was in the Queen of Hearts. Now, get out of my sight and go home to bed before your Jean accuses me of leading you off the straight and narrow. Get some sleep. I don’t want to see you before noon, and if your head’s hurting, stay in bed. That’s an order, Detective Sergeant.’

Merrick grinned. ‘Yes, ma’am. See you.’

Carol watched Merrick walk back down the corridor, worried at the slow deliberation of his movements. ‘Don?’ she called. Merrick turned enquiringly back to her. ‘Get a taxi. My authorization. I don’t want you wrapped round a lamppost on my conscience. And that’s an order, too.’ Merrick grinned, nodded and disappeared down the stairs.

With a sigh, Carol walked down the squad room to her temporary office. There was no message on her desk. Bloody Brandon, she thought. And bloody Tony Hill. Brandon at least should have waited till she’d finished her interrogation of McConnell. And Tony might have left some indication of when he expected them to meet to discuss his profile. Muttering under her breath, Carol followed Merrick out of the building. As she reached the foyer, the officer minding the front desk called, ‘Inspector Jordan?’

Carol turned back. ‘I’m what’s left of her.’ ‘The ACC left a message for you, ma’am.’ Carol approached the desk and took the envelope the constable handed her. She ripped it open and pulled out a single sheet of paper. ‘Carol,’ she read. ‘I have taken Tony off on a little mission. I’ll drop him at home afterwards. Please be in my office for ten this morning. Thanks for your hard work. John Brandon.’ ‘Great,’ Carol said bitterly. She gave the constable a tired smile. ‘I don’t suppose you know where Mr Brandon and Dr Hill were headed?’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry, ma’am. They didn’t say.’

‘Wonderful,’ she muttered sarcastically. Turn your back for a minute and they were off playing their boys’ games. Little mission, indeed. Bollocks to that, Carol thought as she marched back to her car. ‘Three can play at that game,’ she said as she turned the ignition key.

Tony flicked through the last of the magazines and returned it to the box file in the bedside storage cube. ‘S amp;M always leaves me feeling faintly queasy,’ he remarked. ‘And this lot’s particularly nasty.’

Brandon agreed. McConnell’s collection of hard-core pornography consisted mostly of magazines crammed with glossy colour pictures of well-muscled young men torturing each other and masturbating. A few were even more disturbing, with their graphic shots of male couples indulging in full sex with an array of sado-masochistic trappings. Brandon couldn’t remember seeing nastier examples, even when he’d done a six-month attachment with Vice.

They were sitting on the bed in Stevie McConnell’s room. As soon as Carol and Merrick had left for their interrogation, Brandon had said, ‘Would it be helpful to you to see where McConnell lives?’

Tony picked up his pen again and started to doodle on the sheet of paper. ‘It might give me some insight into the man. And if he is the killer, there could be evidence that ties him into the crimes. I don’t mean murder weapons, or anything like that. I’m thinking more of the souvenirs. Photographs, newspaper clippings, as well as the stuff I was talking about before. But it’s academic, isn’t it? You said there was no chance of getting a search warrant.’

Brandon’s melancholy face lit up in a strange smile, almost a leer. ‘When you’ve got a suspect in custody, there are things you can do to circumvent the rules. You game?’

Tony grinned. ‘I’m fascinated.’ He followed Brandon downstairs to the cells. The custody sergeant hastily dropped the Stephen King novel he’d been reading and jumped to his feet.

‘It’s all right, Sergeant,’ Brandon said. ‘If I only had a couple of prisoners to think about, I’d be enjoying a good read, too. I’d like to have a look at McConnell’s property.’

The sergeant unlocked the property cupboard and handed the transparent plastic bag to Brandon. There was a wallet, a handkerchief and a bunch of keys inside. Brandon opened it and removed the keys. ‘You haven’t seen me, have you, Sergeant? And you won’t see me when I come back in a couple of hours, will you?’

The sergeant grinned. ‘You couldn’t possibly have been here, sir. I’d have been bound to notice.’

Twenty minutes later, Brandon was parking the Range Rover outside McConnell’s terraced house. ‘Lucky for us McConnell happened to mention that the two blokes he shares the house with are away on holiday.’ He took a cardboard box out of the glove compartment and gave Tony a pair of latex gloves. ‘You’ll need these,’ he said, slipping a pair over his own hands. ‘If we do get a search warrant, it would be a bit embarrassing when the fingerprint team turn up you and me as prime suspects.’

‘There’s one thing I’m curious about,’ Tony said as Brandon inserted the key in the mortice lock.

‘What’s that?’

‘This is an illegal search, right?’

‘Right,’ Brandon said, opening the door and stepping into the hall. He groped for the light switch, but didn’t turn it on when he found it.

Tony followed him, closing the door behind him. Only then did Brandon snap the light on, revealing a carpeted hall and stairs. There were a couple of framed posters of body-builders on the walls. ‘So if we find any evidence, presumably it’s inadmissible?’

‘Also right,’ said Brandon. ‘But there are ways round that. For example, if we find a bloodstained cut-throat razor under McConnell’s bed, it will mysteriously find its way on to the kitchen table. Then we go to the magistrate, explain that we went to McConnell’s house to check he was telling the truth when he said his house-mates were on holiday, and we happened to look through the windows and we spotted what we have reason to believe is the weapon used to kill Adam Scott, Paul Gibbs, Gareth Finnegan and Damien Connolly.’

Tony shook his head in amusement. ‘Bent? Us? Never, your honour!’

‘There’s bent and there’s bent,’ Brandon said grimly. ‘Sometimes you need to give things a shove in the right direction.’

Tony and Brandon moved through the house, room by room. Brandon was intrigued by Tony’s method. He would walk into a room, stand in the middle of the floor and slowly scan the walls, the furniture, the floor coverings, the shelves. He almost sniffed the air. Then, meticulously, he opened cupboards and drawers, lifted cushions, examined magazines, checked titles of books, CDs, cassettes and videos, handling everything he touched with the care and precision of an archaeologist. Within seconds, his mind was busy, analysing everything he saw and touched, slowly building a picture in his mind of the men who lived here, constantly matching it against the embryonic picture of Handy Andy that was developing in his mind like a photographic print in developer fluid.

‘Have you been here, Andy?’ he asked himself. ’Does this feel like you, smell like you? Would you watch these videos? Are these your CDs? Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli? The Pet Shop Boys? I don’t think so. You’re not camp, I know that much about you. And there’s nothing camp or chichi about the house. This place is so aggressively masculine. A living room furnished in eighties chrome and black. But it’s not a straight man’s house, is it? No girlie magazines, not even car magazines. Just body-building periodicals stacked under the coffee table. Look at the walls. Men’s bodies, oiled and shining, muscles like carved wood. The men who live here know who they are, they know what they like. I don’t think this is you, Andy. You’re controlled, Andy, but not this controlled. It’s one thing to keep yourself buttoned up, it’s another thing altogether to be strong enough to project so coherent an image. I should know, I’m the expert. If you were as firmly rooted in your identity as the guys who live here, you wouldn’t have to do what you do, would you?

‘Look at the books. Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Stephen Gallagher, Iain Banks. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biography. A couple of paperbacks about the Mafia. Nothing soft, nothing gentle, but nothing off the wall either. Would you read these books? Maybe. I think you’d like to read about serial killers, though, and there’s none of that here.’

Tony turned slowly towards the door. It was a small shock to see Brandon standing there. He’d become so absorbed in his scrutiny that he’d lost all sense of being in company. Watch yourself, Tony, he warned himself. Stay inside your head.

In silence, they trooped through to the kitchen. It was spartan, but well equipped. In the sink there was a dirty soup bowl and a mug half full of cold tea. A small shelf of cookery books testified to the occupants’ obsession with healthy eating. ‘Fart city,’ Tony observed wryly, opening a cupboard filled with jars of pulses. He opened the drawers, noting the kitchen knives. There was a small vegetable knife with a blade worn thin from sharpening, a bread knife whose blade was pitted with age, and a cheap carving knife, the handle bleached from the dishwasher. ‘These are not your tools, Andy,’ Tony said to himself. ‘You like knives that do their work properly.’

Without consulting Brandon, he walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Brandon watched him stick his head round the first bedroom door and reject it. As he passed, he saw that it was obviously the couple’s room. He followed Tony through the door across the landing. In McConnell’s bedroom, Tony seemed to drift away altogether into a world of his own. The room was simply furnished with modern pine bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe. An array of weightlifting trophies sat on the deep windowsill. A tall bookcase was crammed with pulp science fiction and a handful of gay novels. On a small table, there was a games computer and a television monitor. On a shelf above was a collection of games. Tony browsed through Mortal Kombat, Streetfighter II, Terminator 2, Doom and a dozen other games whose keynote was violent action.

‘This is more like it,’ he murmured. He stood by the chest of drawers, hand poised to open one. ‘Maybe it’s you after all,’ he thought. ‘Maybe you leave the living room to the other two. What if this is your only domain? What would I expect to find here? I’d want your souvenirs, Andy. You need to keep something by you, otherwise the memory disintegrates too fast. We all need something tangible. The discarded perfume spray that holds her fragrance and summons her before my eyes like a hologram; the theatre programme from the night we first made love and it was all right. Keep the good memories, throw away the bad. What have you got for me?’

The first three drawers were disappointingly innocuous: underwear, T-shirts, socks, jogging suits and shorts. When Tony opened the bottom drawer, he sighed in satisfaction. The drawer contained McConnell’s S amp;M gear – handcuffs, leather restraint straps, cock rings, whips, and a clutch of items that looked to Brandon as if they ought to be in some kind of laboratory or mental institution. As Tony calmly took them out and examined them, Brandon shuddered.

Tony sat down on the bed and looked around. Slowly, cautiously, he tried to construct a picture of the man who lived in this room. ‘You like to exercise power through violence,’ he thought. ‘You enjoy the flow of pain in your sexual experience. But there’s no subtlety here. No sign that you’re a man who plans things with care and detail. You worship your body. It’s a temple to you. You’ve achieved things, and you’re proud of that. You’re not socially inadequate. You manage to share a house with two other men, and you’re not obsessive about your privacy, since there’s no lock on the door. You don’t have a problem with your sexuality, and you’re comfortable with the idea of picking up a man in a club, provided you have the chance to get to know him a bit first.’

His picture-building was interrupted by Brandon. ‘Look at this, Tony!’ he said excitedly. The ACC had been painstakingly going through a shoebox full of papers, mostly receipts, electrical guarantees, bank and credit-card statements. The box was almost empty, but now, he held out a flimsy slip of paper.

Tony took it. It was some kind of official police form. He frowned. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s the form you get when an officer stops you in a car and you haven’t got your documents with you. You have to take them to a police station within a fixed period, so they can check everything’s in order. Look at the name of the officer,’ Brandon urged.

Tony looked again. The name that had at first seemed a scrawled jumble suddenly resolved itself into ‘Connolly’.

‘I recognized his number,’ Brandon said. ‘You can hardly make out the name.’

‘Shit,’ Tony breathed.

‘Damien Connolly must have stopped him for some minor traffic offence, or just on a spot check, and asked him to produce his documents,’ Brandon said.

Tony frowned. ‘I thought Connolly was a local information officer? What was he doing dishing out a traffic ticket?’

Brandon looked over Tony’s shoulder at the slip of paper. ‘It was nearly two years ago. Connolly obviously wasn’t a collator then. Either he was doing a stint with Traffic or he was on duty in the area car when he saw McConnell doing something he shouldn’t have been.’

‘Can you check that out discreetly?’

‘No problem,’ Brandon said.

‘You’ve cracked it, then, haven’t you?’

Brandon looked astonished. ‘You mean… you think that clinches it? McConnell’s the man?’

‘No, no,’ Tony said hastily. ‘Not at all. All I meant was that if you can track that back from the other end, you should be able to get a magistrate to grant you an official search warrant on the basis that McConnell knew three of the four victims, which goes beyond mere coincidence.’

‘Right,’ Brandon said, sighing. ‘So you’re still not convinced McConnell’s the killer?’

Tony stood up and paced to and fro across the carpet, its jagged geometric pattern of grey, red, black and white reminding him of the one and only migraine he’d ever had. ‘Before you found this, I’d come to the conclusion you’d got the wrong man,’ he said after a few moments. ‘I know I’ve not had time to sit down and write out a full profile yet, but I felt like I was beginning to get a sense of what this killer’s like. And there are too many things here that don’t fit that picture. But this is a hell of a coincidence. This is a big city. We’ve established that Stevie McConnell knew or at least had met three out of the four victims. How many people are going to be in that position?’

‘Not many,’ Brandon said grimly.

‘I still don’t like McConnell for the killer, but it’s possible that the killer is someone he knows, someone who’s met Adam Scott and Gareth Finnegan through him,’ Tony said. ‘Maybe even somebody who was with him when he got that traffic ticket, or someone that he pointed Damien out to. You know the kind of thing: “That’s the bastard who nicked me for speeding.”’

‘You really don’t think it’s him, do you?’ Brandon said flatly, disappointment in his voice. ‘I suppose it’s thin. After all, there’s no evidence as such to connect the house to the killings,’ he said cautiously. ‘But you said yourself, he’s more likely to be doing his killing somewhere else. That might be where he keeps his souvenirs.’

‘It’s not just the absence of souvenirs,’ Tony said. ‘Putting it crudely, John, serial murderers kill to turn their fantasies into reality. Typically, they have fantasies developed to the point where they are more real to them than the world around them. There’s nothing here to suggest McConnell is that type of personality. Sure, he’s got a stack of porn mags. But so have most single men of his age, regardless of sexual orientation. He’s got violent computer games, but so have thousands of teenagers and grown men too. What there is is plenty of evidence to suggest that Stevie McConnell isn’t a sociopath. Look around you, John. This whole house reeks of normality. The kitchen calendar has dates for people coming round for dinner. Look at that pile of Christmas cards on his bookshelf. There must be fifty there. Look at his holiday snaps. He was obviously with the same partner for four or five years, judging by the locations and hairstyle changes. Stevie McConnell doesn’t seem to have problems forming relationships with people. OK, so there doesn’t seem to be anything relating to his family, but a lot of gay people get cut off by their families when they come out. It doesn’t mean that his family were dysfunctional in the ways that typically lead to the development of a serial killer. I’m sorry, John. I wasn’t sure at first, but the more I’ve seen, the more this guy just doesn’t smell right to me.’

Brandon got to his feet and carefully replaced the slip of paper exactly where he’d found it. ‘It grieves me to say so, but I think you’re right. When I interviewed him earlier, I thought he was way too calm to be our man.’

Tony shook his head. ‘Don’t let that mislead you. Chances are when you do pull the right guy, he’ll be calm too. Don’t forget, this is something he’s planned carefully. Although he thinks he’s the best, he’ll still have made contingency plans. He’ll expect to be brought in for questioning sooner or later. He’ll be ready for you. He’ll be reasonable, pleasant. He won’t look like a con. He’ll be bland, helpful, and he won’t ring alarm bells with your detectives. His alibi will be no alibi. He’ll probably say he’s been with a tart, or been to an away football match on his own. He’ll end up being eliminated from your enquiries because other suspects will be superficially far more appealing.’

Brandon managed to look even more depressed than normal. ‘Thanks, Tony. You’ve really cheered me up now. So what do you suggest?’

Tony shrugged. ‘Like I said, it’s a possibility that he knows the killer. He may even have his own suspicions. I’d hang on to him for a bit longer, sweat him for what and who he does know. But I wouldn’t call off the team. Get a warrant. Do a proper search, under the floorboards, in the loft. You never know what you might turn up. Don’t forget, I could be completely wrong.’

Brandon glanced at his watch. ‘Right. I’d better get these keys back before the end of the custody sergeant’s shift. I’ll drop you off on the way.’

With a last look to check they’d left nothing out of place, Brandon and Tony left McConnell’s house. As they approached the Range Rover, a voice from the shadows said, ‘Good morning, gentlemen. You’re nicked.’ Carol stepped forward into the light of the streetlamp. ‘Dr Anthony Hill, and Assistant Chief Constable John Brandon, I am arresting you on suspicion of breaking and entering. You do not have to say anything…’ At that point, the giggles took over.

Brandon’s heart had thudded into his throat at her first words. ‘Hellfire, Carol,’ he protested. ‘I’m too old for tricks like that.’

‘But not for ones like this, I see,’ Carol said drily, gesturing with her thumb towards McConnell’s house. ‘Unauthorized search, and with a civilian? Just as well for you I’m off duty, sir.’

Brandon gave a weary smile. ‘So why are you loitering with intent around the suspect’s house?’

‘I’m a detective, sir. I thought I might find you and Dr Hill here. Any joy?’

‘Dr Hill thinks not. What about your interview?’ Brandon asked.

‘Your suggestions worked really well, Tony. McConnell’s got no alibi to speak of for Damien Connolly’s murder, apart from one hour late on in the evening, by which time Damien could have been dead already. The significant thing is where he was for that hour. Sir, he was drinking in the pub where the body was dumped.’

Tony’s eyebrows climbed and he sucked his breath in sharply. Brandon turned to him. ‘Well?’

‘It’s exactly the cheeky sort of thing Handy Andy could pull. You might want to get someone to check if he’s a regular in there. If he isn’t, it makes it significant,’ Tony said slowly. Before he could say more, he was overwhelmed by a huge yawn. ‘Sorry,’ he yawned. ‘I’m not a night bird.’

‘I’ll drive you home,’ Carol said. ‘I think the ACC has something to drop off at the station.’

Brandon looked at his watch. ‘Fine. Make it eleven, not ten, Carol.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Carol said with feeling as she unlocked her car for Tony. He slumped into the passenger seat, unable to stop the wave of yawns that had engulfed him.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she made out through a jaw-cracker. ‘I can’t stop yawning.’

‘Did you find anything to make it worthwhile?’ Carol said, her tone more sympathetic than her words.

‘Damien Connolly nicked him a couple of years ago for a traffic offence,’ Tony said heavily.

Carol whistled. ‘Gotcha! We’ve caught him in a double lie, Tony! McConnell originally told Don Merrick he’d met Connolly after a burglary at the gym. Then in the interview he denied ever having seen him. He said he’d been lying to make himself seem interesting. But now it turns out he really had met him! What a break!’

‘Only if you believe he’s the killer,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Carol, but I don’t think he’s the one. I’m too tired to go through it all now, but once I’ve drawn up my profile and we go through it, you’ll see why I can’t get excited about Stevie McConnell.’ He yawned again and leaned his head on his hand.

‘When can we do that?’ Carol asked, fighting the urge to shake his thoughts out of him.

‘Listen, give me the rest of today to myself, and by tomorrow morning I’ll have a draft profile for you. How’s that?’

‘Fine. Anything else you need in the meantime?’

Tony said nothing. Carol gave him a quick sidelong glance and realized he had dozed off. All right for some, she thought. Forcing herself to concentrate, she drove across town to Tony’s house, a turn-of-the-century brick-built semi in a quiet street a couple of tram stops away from the university. Carol pulled up outside. The car’s slow glide to immobility did nothing to disturb Tony, whose breathing had become audible.

Carol undid her seat belt and leaned over to shake him gently. Tony’s head came up in a startled gesture, his eyes wide and frantic. He stared uncomprehendingly at Carol. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’re home. You fell asleep.’

Tony rubbed his eyes with his fists, muttering something unintelligible. He looked blearily at Carol and gave a sleepy, lopsided smile. ‘Thanks for bringing me home.’

‘No problem,’ Carol said, still twisted round in her seat, fiercely aware of his closeness. ‘I’ll give you a ring this afternoon, we can fix up a time to meet tomorrow.’

Tony, awake now, felt claustrophobic. ‘Thanks again,’ he said, retreating hastily, opening the car door and almost tumbling on to the pavement, thanks to the combination of haste and sleepiness.

‘I can’t believe I wanted him to kiss me,’ Carol said to herself as she watched Tony open his gate and walk up the short path. ‘Dear God, what is happening to me? First I treat Don like a mother hen, then I start fancying the expert witnesses.’ She saw the front door open, stuffed a cassette in the stereo and drove off. ‘What I need,’ she told Elvis Costello, ‘is a holiday.’

‘You tease, and you flirt, and you shine all the buttons on your green shirt,’ he sang back.

‘Last night, we were practically sticking the champagne on ice. Now you’re telling me you want to let McConnell go?’ Cross shook his head in a gesture of exasperation so ancient it probably appeared on a Greek vase. ‘What’s happened to change everything? Come up with a cast-iron alibi, has he? Out on the razz with Prince Edward and his bodyguards, was he?’

‘I’m not saying let him go this minute. We need to question him closely about his associates, check if he introduced anyone to both Gareth Finnegan and Adam Scott. And after that, we have to let him walk. There’s no real evidence, Tom,’ Brandon said wearily. Lack of sleep had transformed his face into a grey mask that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Hammer Horror film. Cross, on the other hand, looked and sounded as fresh as a toddler who’s just had a nap.

‘He was in the Queen of Hearts that night. For all we know, he had Damien Connolly’s body in the boot of his car, just waiting for closing time. It’s got to be grounds for searching his gaff.’

‘As soon as we’ve got enough evidence to get a search warrant, we’ll do it,’ Brandon said, reluctant to admit that he’d already taken that unorthodox step. Earlier, he’d asked Sergeant Claire Bonner to check all Damien Connolly’s arrests and traffic tickets, supposedly on the off chance of a connection to McConnell, but so far, she hadn’t unearthed the crucial information that he knew was lurking there.

‘I suppose this is all down to Boy Wonder,’ Cross said bitterly. ‘I suppose the shrink says McConnell’s childhood wasn’t unhappy enough.’

Carol bit her tongue. It was bad enough being the fly on the wall in this clash of the titans without reminding either of her bosses she was witnessing their conflict.

Brandon frowned. ‘I have consulted with Dr Hill, and yes, he does feel that on the basis of what we’ve got so far, McConnell probably isn’t our man. But that’s not the main reason why I think we should let him loose. The lack of evidence is a hell of a lot more important to me.’

‘And to me. That’s why we need time to collect some more. We need to interview these poofters he was drinking with on Monday night, to see what kind of state he was in. And we need to take a look at what McConnell’s got under his mattress,’ Cross said forcefully. ‘We’ve had him in custody for less than twelve hours, sir. We’re entitled to keep him till gone midnight. Then we can charge him with the assault for now, and ask the magistrates for a lie-down in police custody, which gives us another three days. That’s all I’m asking for. I’ll have nailed him by then. You can’t say no to that, sir. You’ll have the lads up in arms.’

Wrong, Carol thought. You were doing fine up till then, but the emotional blackmail just scuppered you.

Brandon’s ears flushed scarlet. ‘I hope no one thinks that because we are questioning someone the work stops,’ he said, a dangerous edge in his voice.

‘They’re dedicated, sir, but they’ve been working on this a long time without a break in the case.’

Brandon turned away, staring out of the window at the city below. His instincts said to let McConnell go after they’d had one last attempt at digging his contacts out of him, but he had known without Cross’s clumsy comments that having a suspect had given the murder squad a new lease of energy. Before he could make a decision, there was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ Brandon called, swinging round and dropping heavily into his chair.

Kevin Matthews’s carrot curls appeared round the door. He looked like a kid who’s been promised a trip to Disneyland. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we’ve just had a report from Forensic on the Damien Connolly killing.’

‘Come in and tell us, then,’ Cross invited genially.

Kevin gave an apologetic smile and slid his slim frame round the door. ‘One of the SOCOs found a scrap of torn leather caught on a nail on the gate,’ he said. ‘It’s a secure area, the public can’t just walk in, so we thought it might be significant. Obviously, we had to eliminate the people who work at the pub, and the draymen who deliver there. Anyway, it turns out that the yard was whitewashed and the gates were painted only a month ago, so we didn’t have to chase too many bodies. Bottom line is, no one admitted owning anything made from leather like this, so we sent it off to Forensic and asked them to look at it double urgent. The report’s just come back.’ He proffered the report to Brandon, eager as a Boy Scout.

The relevant passage had been highlighted in yellow. It leapt off the page at Brandon. ‘The fragment of dark-brown leather is extremely unusual. For a start, it appears to be deerskin of some sort. More significantly, analysis indicates that it has been cured in sea water rather than a specialist chemical-curing medium. I know of only one source of such leather: the former Soviet Union. Because regular supplies of the correct chemicals are difficult to come by, many tanners there still use the old method of curing with sea water. I would guess that the fragment has come from a leather jacket that originated in Russia. Leather like this is not available commercially elsewhere, since it does not meet the quality levels required by Western retail outlets.’ Brandon read it, then tossed it across the desk towards Cross.

‘Bloody hell!’ Cross said. ‘You mean we’re looking for an Ivan?’