Laura leaned against her car and peeled off her forensic suit. The hood had made a mess of her hair, dark and long, and so she used the wing mirror to tease it back to life. The body had been taken away, rolled onto plastic sheeting and then wrapped up in a bag, and was on its way to the mortuary. Now it was time for the fingertip search of the undergrowth, and she could see the line of police in blue boiler suits waiting to crawl their way through the small patch of woodland. Joe was looking back towards where the body had been found, his hood pulled from his head. Carson was in his car, talking into his phone.
‘What is it, Joe?’ Laura said, reaching into her car for her suit jacket.
He didn’t answer at first, his gaze trained on where the stream headed under the estate. Then he turned round, chewing his lip.
‘Something about this isn’t right,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The location. It doesn’t make any sense. Why here?’
‘That occurred to me too,’ she said, and looked again at the houses that backed onto the crime scene, a line of wooden fence panels forming the boundary on both sides.
‘It isn’t secluded at all,’ Joe continued. ‘One scream from her and all of those lights are going to flicker on, and what escape route is there? There is only one way to the street, because the other way is down that path, into the woods, but he couldn’t get a car down there. So if he drove to the location, he would have had to leave his car on the street, and so he would be blocked in and easy to catch.’
‘Perhaps she was just walking past?’ Laura said. ‘You know, the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was hiding in there, waiting to pull someone in.’
‘Same thing applies,’ Joe said. ‘Too many houses. What if she fought back? If she ran or screamed? There is a whole community to wake. And you saw how the body was concealed, just left on the ground and covered in leaves and bark. She was always going to be discovered.’ He sighed. ‘It just doesn’t feel right.’
‘You’re giving the killer too much credit,’ Laura said. ‘How many people do we catch because they do dumb things?’ She checked her hair in the mirror again, and then pulled away when the sun glinted off some grey strands. ‘So what do you think?’
Joe looked around again. ‘It must have been the victim he was after, not someone random. He wouldn’t have chosen this location unless it was the only place he could get to her, and this is all about the victims, not the killer. We need to know about her.’
They both turned as they heard a noise behind them, and they saw it was Carson, grunting as he climbed out of his car.
‘We’ve got a possible name for her,’ Carson said. ‘Jane Roberts.’
‘Don’t know it,’ Laura said.
‘No, me neither,’ Carson responded. ‘But I know her father. Don Roberts.’
Laura shrugged, the name didn’t mean anything to her, but she saw the look of surprise on Joe’s face.
‘The Don Roberts?’ Joe said.
Carson nodded. ‘It was called in yesterday, when she didn’t return home at the weekend.’
‘How sure can we be?’ Joe said.
‘The description matches, and she doesn’t live too far away.’
‘It’s Wednesday today. Why would Don leave it so long?’ Laura asked.
Joe turned to her. ‘Because it involves calling us,’ he said. ‘Don Roberts will not want us digging into his life. He’s a long-time thug, Blackley’s most violent doorman before he started to run his own gang of bouncers, leasing them out to the clubs. He’s turned to clamping as well, and trust me, you were wise to pay rather than contest it.’
‘But why would that make him want to keep away from us?’
‘Because he makes a lot of money, and that cannot all come from fixing metal clamps to car wheels. However he makes his cash, he won’t be happy to see us looking into his life, and I can tell you one thing: we’ve got trouble now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Because this is one of two things: targeted or bad luck. We need to look into the last murder again, see if there is any link with Don Roberts, and if there is, we can expect the revenge killings to start.’
‘And if it is just coincidence?’ Laura asked.
Carson almost smiled at that. ‘The killer just has to hope that we catch him first, because if Roberts gets to him, he will die, but it won’t be quick and it won’t be pleasant.’