LITMIR.BIZ

      5

       Friday morning

      It was hot in the way only a giant metropolis can get. The heat mixed with the fumes of four million cars, taxis and buses. It made the road warp.

      It was Friday morning and Sean was late. He had a briefing to give at ten and had wanted to be at work at least an hour and a half before that to prepare his thoughts. Thanks to the traffic along the Old Kent Road and his three-year-old daughter Mandy, who’d decided to throw a tantrum because of Sean’s broken promise to take her to Legoland, he would barely have time to read through his incoming emails. He’d tried to read them on his iPhone as the traffic staggered forward, but after almost driving into the back of the car in front of him for the third time he’d thought better of it.

      His team had been assigned initial tasks the previous day − now he hoped those tasks had progressed the investigation. The briefing he would soon be chairing was an opportunity for the team to tell him what they had discovered so far. DS Roddis and his forensic crew had finished at the scene and he would be present to detail their findings. Findings that could be critical to the investigation.

      He rang Sally to let her know he was running late.

      ‘I’ll be there within half an hour if this traffic starts moving. Briefing is still at ten unless I call again.’

      ‘Do you want everyone in the briefing room?’ Sally asked.

      ‘Er … no,’ Sean answered after a second’s thought. ‘We’ll do it in our incident room, there’s more space.’

      ‘No problem.’ Sally had more to say and knew she would have to speak quickly or Sean would already have hung up. ‘Guv’nor …’

      He heard her just in time. ‘What?’

      ‘I thought you should know some wit’s come up with a name for our killer.’

      Sean knew he wasn’t going to like this. ‘Go on.’

      ‘Some of the guys have christened him “The Fairy Liquidator”.’

      There was silence from Sean. He sat stony-faced, thinking about what the family would say if they knew the police investigating their son’s death were calling the killer ‘The Fairy Liquidator’.

      After five seconds he spoke. ‘Let them know in advance that from this second onwards anyone using that name will be off the team, back in uniform and directing traffic in Soho just as soon as they can get measured up for a new helmet. Take this as a first and final warning, Sally.’

      ‘I understand. I’ll make sure it’s not used again.’

      ‘Good.’ He hung up and continued his tortuous journey through the unbreathable air. Before the murder of Daniel Graydon he’d planned to take the day off and make it a long weekend with his family, doing normal things that a normal family would do – the sort of things he never did as a child. More promises made to his wife and children broken. His stomach tightened with the sense of sadness that suddenly engulfed him – an almost panicked longing to be with his family. He shook the feelings away as best he could, chasing them from body and mind as if they were a weakness he couldn’t afford to carry with him to his work. Besides, there was nothing he could do about it. It was the nature of the beast. It was his job.

      Sean and his team were back in the open-plan office that was their incident room and second home. Desks were scattered about, mainly in groups of four, and most were adorned with old oversized computer screens and, if the owner was lucky, a corded telephone. Murders in London were still being solved in spite of the equipment available rather than because of it. Sean stared through the Perspex into the room on the other side, watching the detectives: most preferring to sit on the edges of their desks talking in groups, while others moved with purpose, gathering last-minute stationery or squeezing in one final phone call ahead of Sean’s arrival.

      The incident room was already changing as the investigation developed. Where there had been blank whiteboards and bare walls the night before, now there were photographs of the scene, the victim, the initial post-mortem results, pinned up in no particular order. The name of the victim had been confirmed: Daniel Graydon. It adorned a piece of white card and was stuck above the photographs of his mutilated body and violated home. Sean noted they’d been put up in one corner of a wall only. The rest of the wall had been left empty. Clearly someone on his team believed there could be more photographs. More victims.

      The whiteboard listed tasks, ‘actions’ to be undertaken and which detective was allocated to each. All were numbered and when complete a line would be drawn through it, so if the investigation was failing the board would tell the tale. It never lied. No progression meant fewer and fewer tasks to be placed on the board, causing Sean’s seniors to grow ever more anxious, more desperate and more likely to interfere; but such concerns were for later. The first couple of days would be busy enough just collecting and preserving evidence. The early days were crucial. Evidence missed now could be lost for ever.

      Sean walked the few steps from his office into the main body of the incident room and waited for the detectives to become still and quiet − the noise level fading as surely as if he’d turned the volume down on an amplifier. He spoke: ‘Right, people, before we get into this let’s be clear that if anyone uses the term “Fairy Liquidator” on this inquiry they’re gone. Understood?’ Silent nods of agreement all around the room. ‘Good. Now that nonsense is out the way, we can get down to business.

      ‘Firstly, you all need to know that in light of the autopsy I no longer believe this is a domestic murder. Dr Canning tells me that the victim would have been incapacitated with the first blow to the head, meaning there was no violent struggle.’

      ‘What about the broken furniture and the blood spray patterns suggesting a fight?’ Sally asked.

      ‘Staged,’ Sean told her. ‘Cleverly staged, but staged all the same. He’s trying to throw us off the scent. The stab wounds have the appearance of some sort of ritual killing, not a frenzied attack.

      ‘Most of you know DS Andy Roddis here, the forensic team leader. Andy’s kindly given up his time to bring us all up to date on any findings from the scene.’

      ‘That’s very fucking nice of you, Andy,’ Donnelly interjected, to the amusement of his audience.

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