Aftershock

Seventy-nine

‘That’s us.’ Becky Stallings looked at her watch. ‘We’re twenty-four hours into the Theo Weekes homicide investigation. One week since the Sugar Dean murder. And what have we achieved?’

‘That depends on how you want to look at it,’ her sergeant answered. ‘We’ve eliminated all the immediate potential suspects; now we can concentrate on the rest.’

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘we haven’t worked together long, but already I know what I like about you. You don’t seem to buy negativity. You’re like those Man U supporters who used to sing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” to the opposition supporters, as their team was being thumped.’

‘You’re not a Red, are you?’ he asked her.

‘Hell, no! I’m an East End girl, a Hammer through and through. That’s why I’ve got a tendency towards the pessimistic. The way I see it, “the rest” of the suspects means the whole bloody world. It was bad enough running one investigation into the buffers, but two! “Stallings by name, stalling by nature,” my male colleagues in London used to say, whenever I got into a bind. It’ll be spreading up here soon.’

‘Not around me it won’t. You’re a bloody good detective, boss. But you’re wrong in your analysis, as far as the Weekes investigation goes at any rate: it’s much narrower than that. We’re looking for a male; that takes half the population out of the frame. Kick out the elderly and children, and that knocks it down to a quarter. We’re looking for someone who’s powerful, and able to overcome a big man like Theo. That’s us down to about five per cent. Finally, we’re looking for a left-hander. So we’re not trawling through the entire population: less than one in a hundred fit all those criteria. Now, this wasn’t a random killing: the guy was sought out and executed. If we take what we know and look at every person who knew the victim, his killer should be staring us in the face.’

‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ Stallings asked.

‘I’m afraid so. It’s more bad news for the police force. We’ll have to interview every officer who’s ever worked with Weekes, or even been in the same station.’

‘No, Jack, not all of them, just the southpaws.’

‘True. But I don’t suppose that detail’s on the HR files, is it?’

‘There was nothing about it on my transfer form.’

‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ Stallings and McGurk both turned and looked across at DC Haddock.

‘Yes, Sauce?’

‘I heard what you and the sarge were saying,’ he began. ‘Isn’t it possible that whoever killed PC Weekes might have had a heavy-duty grudge against him, without actually knowing him all that well, at least?’

‘Anybody in mind?’

‘Well, we know it wasn’t Sugar Dean’s dad, but what about PC Grey? Does she have a father, and is he left-handed? And then there’s the ex-wife. Are her parents still alive and well?’

‘That’s a good point, Sauce, but we weren’t actually going to confine the trawl to police officers, were we, Jack?’

Silence.

‘Jack?’ she repeated.

Still there was no response. McGurk was somewhere else, staring at the wall.