LITMIR.BIZ

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coiling into the foetal position, hugging herself silently.

      ‘Not at first,’ Karen answered in little more than a tearful whisper. ‘When I woke up he’d taken my clothes, but I don’t think he’d touched me. He left me a mattress and duvet, like he has for you, but later he took them away and he … he started to hurt me. At first he was almost gentle. He injected me with something that stopped me struggling and then he did it. But now he’s always angry with me. He does it to punish me, but I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t done anything to make him angry.’

      Louise listened as if she was listening to her own future being described, her body stiff with panic, her muscles cramping with tension. ‘What happened to your clothes?’ she asked. ‘You said he took them when he brought you here, but he gave you back your underwear. Why didn’t he give you the rest back?’

      ‘These aren’t mine,’ Karen explained. ‘My first few days here he let me wash, then he gave me some clothes and made me wear them. But last night – I think it was night, he came and took them off me, except for what I’m wearing. I didn’t know why he took them until he brought you here.’

      Louise too realized why he had taken the clothes and knew that soon she would be wearing them. She retched bile, capillaries in her eyes rupturing, leaving them pink and glassy. The silence was suddenly shattered by the metallic clank of something small and heavy hitting against what sounded like sheet metal. A padlock being opened, Louise guessed, and for a second dared to believe it could be their rescuers. The fear and dread she heard in Karen’s voice soon chased her hopes away as she instinctively backed into the furthest corner of her cage.

      ‘He’s coming,’ Karen told her. ‘Don’t speak to me now. He’s coming.’

      Sean and Sally entered their murder inquiry incident room at Peckham police station shortly before four on Wednesday afternoon. The office was both unusually busy and quiet, the detectives from Sean’s team taking advantage of the lull between new investigations to catch up on severely overdue paperwork. They hadn’t picked up a murder case in weeks, despite there being no shortage to go around. The other Murder teams working South London were getting more than a little annoyed that the regular flow of violent death seemed to be passing Sean’s team by. Though glad of the respite, Sean increasingly had the feeling he was being saved for something he knew he wasn’t going to like.

      As they crossed the room he saw Detective Superintendent Featherstone through the Perspex of his partitioned office. He caught DS Donnelly’s eye as he walked and with a barely noticeable twitch of his head indicated for Donnelly to follow them. As Sean approached Featherstone, he began to get the feeling this was the day he’d been dreading. They entered the office and Featherstone stood to greet them. ‘A little bird tells me it didn’t go so good at court today,’ was Featherstone’s hello.

      ‘Depends on your point of view,’ Sean answered.

      ‘And what’s yours?’ Featherstone asked.

      ‘Well, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life banged up with the worst of the worst in Broadmoor. That sounds like a result to me.’

      ‘And who would disagree with that point of view?’ Featherstone enquired. Sean said nothing, but his eyes flicked towards Sally. ‘Nobody gets out of Broadmoor, Sally. That bastard will rot in there. Think of it this way: he’s got a life sentence and we didn’t even have to go to trial. All it takes is a couple of dimwits on the jury who like the look of him and he walks free. Trust me, Sally, this is an outstanding result.’

      Sally was unmoved. ‘He should have stood trial,’ was all she said.

      Sean decided it was time to move the conversation on. Cops never dwelt on old cases long. It didn’t matter whether they’d had a good result or a disastrous one; within a few hours of the court’s decision the case, though not forgotten, was put aside, rarely to be mentioned again. However, the investigation surrounding Gibran had been significantly different from anything any of them had dealt with. And bad as it had been for the rest of them, it had been much, much worse for Sally – she had almost died, almost been killed in her own home. Physically she had survived, just, but Sean felt that something had died inside her. She’d spent two months in intensive care and then another three with the hospital general population. A month later she’d gone back to work, but it was too soon and she couldn’t cope physically or mentally. A few weeks later she’d returned again and he couldn’t persuade her to take more time off, no matter how hard he tried. That was two months ago; nine months after she was attacked. She couldn’t hope to have truly recovered in that time.

      ‘There’s no point dwelling on what did or didn’t happen any longer than we have to. What’s done is done. We can’t appeal a decision made at committal so we all need to move on.’ Sean glanced at Sally, who was silently staring at the floor, then turned to Featherstone. ‘I assume you’ve gathered us together for a reason, boss.’

      ‘Indeed. I’ve got a missing person for you to find.’

      Featherstone’s words were greeted with disbelieving silence.

      ‘A what?’ Sean queried.

      ‘A missing person,’ Featherstone repeated.

      ‘Must be someone very important to have an MIT assigned to their case,’ Donnelly surmised.

      ‘Important, no,’ Featherstone told them. ‘Or at least, not to the general public. No doubt she’s important to her family and friends, and certainly to her husband who reported her missing.’

      ‘Are we talking foul play?’ Sean asked. ‘Is the husband a suspect?’

      ‘Yes to the foul play, no to the husband. He’s not a suspect.’

      ‘How long’s she been missing for?’ Sean continued.

      ‘Best guess is yesterday morning. The husband, John Russell, left her at about eight thirty to go to work and hasn’t seen her since,’ Featherstone explained. ‘He got home at about six that evening and both his wife and her car were missing. Her handbag was there, her mobile phone etc, but Louise wasn’t. Clearly something’s happened to her and clearly she could be at risk.’

      Sean didn’t like what he was hearing. Women who ran off with secret lovers didn’t leave their handbags and phones behind. ‘How far have we got?’ he asked.

      ‘About as far as I’ve just described,’ Featherstone told them. ‘The local uniform inspector who picked up the missing persons report didn’t like the look of it so he passed it up to their CID office who in turn thought it might be something we’d be interested in.’

      ‘And when or if they find her body, we will be interested,’ Donnelly chipped in.

      ‘The idea is we find her before it comes to that,’ Featherstone snapped back.

      ‘That’s not our brief,’ Donnelly continued to argue. ‘We deal with murders, nothing else. Why don’t they give it to the Serious Crime Group or even leave it with the local CID?’

      ‘Because,’ Featherstone explained, ‘the powers that be, sitting in their ivory towers in Scotland Yard, have decided to trial a new policy with vulnerable MISPERs who at first sight appear to have come to harm. It’s an extension of the murder suppression and prevention programme.’

      ‘Then why not give it to the Murder Suppression Unit?’ Donnelly refused to back down. ‘Seems tailor-made for them.’

      ‘Not quite their remit,’ Featherstone continued. ‘They need a suspect to concentrate on before they’ll take a job.’

      ‘And we need a body,’ Donnelly insisted.

      Sean broke the argument up with a question. ‘How old is she?’

      ‘Sorry?’ Featherstone’s mind was still tussling with Donnelly.

      ‘How old is the missing woman?’

      Featherstone flicked through the file he’d been holding throughout the meeting.

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