By the time Love’s Volvo hit the road the lunchtime traffic was doing its best to cause hold-ups. It did its best but failed and twenty-seven minutes later, the two men were walking through the marble reception area of MI6.
They nodded to security and paused momentarily to show their identification. Love had driven back a different route to avoid the hold-up. Knowing how things worked he reckoned the van would probably still be there.
‘I want to go through both files again. We’ve missed something, Love. It’s in there somewhere. I know it.’
‘There’s a definite connection between the two women but we’re not picking up on it.’
‘Is there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re so sure there is a connection but what if there isn’t. What if it’s not a serial and we’re looking at a copycat?’
Love leant over and punched the arrow up button for the lift. ‘What keeps coming back to haunt me is how did he manage to abduct them in daylight with loads of people around.’
‘She knew him.’
The lift arrived and the doors opened. Love moved to one side as two men and a woman stepped out. They were all dressed in suits and carrying files in one arm and briefcases in the other. They looked like smart university students. Or young professors. Love and Stuart stepped into the lift and Stuart pressed the button for level seven.
‘Exactly,’ Love said. ‘Like I said it’s circumstantial and ambiguous but I still say both women had to have known their assailant.’
‘And I still think it’s the same man,’ Stuart said.
A woman looked over at Love. He caught her staring and she looked away. The lift stopped. Love automatically checked the floor before following Stuart from the lift.
Stuart half turned and said over his shoulder, ‘By the way, I have an appointment to see Sister Brookes tomorrow morning. Want to come?’
‘I’ll let you know.’
‘Let’s pull the photographs of both victims,’ Love said as he took off his jacket laid it on the back of his chair and loosened his tie.
He reached into his trouser pocket and removed his pack of cigarettes. He opened the pack and with a jerk of his wrist a cigarette popped up. He directed it straight into his mouth. He flicked his brass lighter he’d already pulled from his jacket pocket and watched as a blue swirl of smoke curled high into the air.
Stuart peeled off his gloves, shrugged off his coat and hung it on the clothes rack. He turned back to his desk opened the file and removed the shots of Carol Butterfield. He laid them out in a row. He then did the same with Monica Dixon.
He looked up at Love who was standing to his right. ‘Screening?’ He pushed his hair back with his hand.
‘Sure, let’s go,’ Love said, and in one swift movement had gathered up the photographs. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk on the way out.
Together they walked into a room two doors down from their office. A polished wooden table ran the length of one wall. To one side a gigantic cheese plant sat next to a huge chrome desk stacked with an array of equipment. A large flat screen television dominated another wall. Computers were set up side by side and in the middle of the room was another table made of glass and chrome. It was on this Love laid out the photographs and switched on the overhead spotlights.
He pulled out his cigarettes he’d looked round for an ashtray and then remembered he was in a smoke-free area. He stuffed them back into his trouser pocket and pulled out his mints.
Stuart eased himself down on to one of the black leather stools that were placed around the room, the sort of stool you would find in trendy bars all over London, but Love remained standing. He simply stood, crunched down hard on his mints and looked from one set of photographs to the other.
He picked one up and fingered it carefully.
It was of Carol Butterfield.
The markings on her stomach were a series of crosses like when you’ve signed your name on a birthday card and underneath you scribble a line of kisses.
Except these weren’t kisses and they hadn’t been made out of love.
He laid it back down and picked up a colour ten by twelve of Monica Dixon. The same marks. A series of crosses like kisses that really weren’t. He stared at them. He stared at her face. She’d been pretty. Red hair. Green eyes, according to the pathologist’s report. He couldn’t see them in the photograph. Her eyelids were shut.
What was the last thing she had seen? His face. Grinning at her. Leering at her. Or was it the barrel of his gun pointing at her.
Carol and Monica.
What was the connection?
Finally, he walked over to the desk and pulled out a magnifying glass. He removed it from its leather case and held it up to his eye. Sometimes a good old-fashioned magnifying glass worked better than a blow-up of a photograph.
He’d try both.
Working at DSBD meant he had access to all the latest technology and gadgets and he’d use whatever it took. He made an effort to be open to pretty much everything.
Except his computer with its flashing cursor and that damn cat.
He looked from one photograph to another. ‘Stuart, look at that,’ he said, pointing to Carol’s mutilated stomach. He passed him the magnifying glass.
A moment later, Stuart laid it down on the table. ‘How did we miss that?’
‘Have we missed something? Or is it nothing?’ Love replied.
Love pulled hard on his cigarette and stubbed it out.
They were back in their own office. Stuart was sitting at his desk. He ran his hands through his dark hair. What they’d come up with was subtle and it might mean something or nothing at all but it needed investigating.
The marks, the cuts on the victims, didn’t match.
‘So, are we back to our partner or even a copycat theory?’ Stuart asked as he punched in a number on his telephone.
‘Could be.’ Love looked over at Stuart sitting at his desk.
Stuart was running his free hand through his hair in an agitated manner. He did this when he was perplexed. Usually when working on a case. And when it was going nowhere or not as fast as he would have liked. He spoke into the telephone and began making some scribbled notes. He wrote something down then crossed it out.
Love picked up his baseball and turned it slowly in his hand. Two murderers? Was it a copycat killer? Two women dead and one boy drugged and trussed up. Why had he included the boy? Had it been planned or had the kid been in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Stuart replaced his receiver and ran his hand through his hair. ‘That was Fitch,’ he said. ‘The tests just came back from crime forensics. The bullet is untraceable.’
‘How come?’
‘It was damaged when it was discharged. One in a million chance.’ He cursed silently under his breath and pushed back the chair from his desk. ‘They can’t give a definitive answer that the bullet was fired from the same weapon that killed Carol Butterfield.’ He stood up and walked over to the window.
Love rolled his baseball across his desk and wondered. Wondered where this was leading them and how it would all end.