Carol immediately wheeled round on her heel. But she was too late. She’d not only been spotted but also recognized by one of the handful of journalists who weren’t visiting firefighters sent up by the national media networks at the sniff of a good tale. As she rounded the corner, they shot after her. All except Penny Burgess, who leaned against the wall and gave Don Merrick a tired smile.
‘You weren’t the only one that got the early-morning phone call, then,’ he said cynically.
‘Unfortunately not, Sergeant. At least the lads seem more interested in your guv’nor than they do in you.’
‘She’s better looking,’ Merrick said.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ Merrick said drily.
Penny’s eyebrows climbed. ‘You must let me buy you a drink sometime, Don. Then you can find out for yourself if the gossip’s true.’
Merrick shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, pet. The wife wouldn’t like it.’
Penny grinned. ‘Not to mention the guv’nor. Well, Don, now the pack’s gone off in full cry after Inspector Jordan, are you going to let me exercise my democratic right to report the proceedings of the magistrates?’
Don Merrick stood clear of the door and waved her in. ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘Just remember, Ms Burgess, the facts, and nothing but the facts. We don’t want innocent people put at risk, do we?’
‘You mean, like the Queer Killer’s been doing?’ Penny asked sweetly as she slipped past him and into the court.
Brandon stared in disbelief at Tom Cross. His face was knitted in an expression of deep complacency, his multicoloured eye socket the only disruption to a picture of smug self-satisfaction. ‘Just between ourselves, John,’ he was saying, ‘you have to admit I was bang on the button about McConnell. That stiff last night – it wasn’t down to the Queer Killer at all, was it? Well, it couldn’t have been, could it, on account of you had me laddo banged up downstairs.’ Ignoring the absence of ashtrays in the ACC’s office, Cross lit a cigarette and puffed a happy cloud of smoke into the air.
Brandon struggled, but he couldn’t find the words. For once, he was speechless.
Cross looked around vaguely for somewhere to flick his ash, and settled for the floor, rubbing it into the carpet with the toe of his shoe. ‘So when do you want me to start back on the job?’ he asked.
Brandon leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘If it was up to me, you’d never work in this town again,’ he said pleasantly.
Cross choked on a mouthful of smoke. Brandon looked back down and savoured the moment. ‘By heck, you like your joke, John,’ Cross spluttered.
‘I’ve never been more serious in my life,’ Brandon said coldly. ‘I called you here this morning to warn you off. What you did to Steven McConnell yesterday afternoon was assault. The file stays open, Superintendent. If you come anywhere near this investigation again, I’ll have no hesitation in charging you. In fact, I’ll enjoy it. I will not have this force brought into disrepute by any officer, serving or under suspension.’ As Brandon’s words sank in, Cross paled, then turned puce with anger and humiliation. Brandon stood up. ‘Now get out of my office and my station.’
Cross got to his feet like a man concussed. ‘You’ll regret this, Brandon,’ he stuttered furiously.
‘Don’t make me, Tom. For your own sake, don’t make me.’
Thinking on her feet, Carol led the journalists round to the small lounge outside the lawyers’ cafeteria. ‘OK, OK,’ she said, trying to damp down their baying with exaggerated hand movements. ‘Look, if you’ll just give me two minutes, I’ll come right back and answer your questions, OK?’
They looked uncertain, one or two at the back showing a tendency to drift back towards the courts. ‘Look, people,’ she said, gently massaging her jaw, ‘I’m in agony. I’ve got raging toothache, and if I don’t ring my dentist before ten, I’ve got no chance of him fitting me in today. Please? Give me a break? Then I’m all yours, promise!’ Carol forced a pained smile and slipped through to the cafeteria. There was a phone on the far wall, which she picked up. She made great play of taking out her diary and looking up a page, while dialling the familiar number of the court. ‘Court one, please.’ She waited for the connection, then said to the clerk, ‘This is Inspector Jordan here. Can I speak to the CPS solicitor?’
Moments later, she was talking to the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer. ‘Eddie? Carol Jordan. I’ve got about thirty hacks here waiting for Steven McConnell to come up. They’re dying to jump to all the wrong conclusions, and I think you might prefer to get him on now while I’ve got them tied up at an impromptu press conference. Can you swing it with the clerk?’ She waited while the solicitor muttered with the court clerk.
‘Can do, Carol,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
Keeping up the pretence, Carol put the phone down and scribbled something in her diary. Then she took a deep breath and headed back towards the pack.
FROM 3½″ DISK LABELLED: BACKUP.007; FILE LOVE.015
Damien Connolly, the ultimate PC Plod. I couldn’t have found a better person to teach the police a lesson if I’d searched for a year. But he was already there, on my list, one of my own personal Top Ten. He was harder to stalk than the others, because his shift pattern was often in conflict with the hours I work. But, as my grandmother always used to say, nothing worth having comes easy.
I trapped him in the usual way. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but my car’s broken down and I don’t know where the nearest call box is. Can I use your phone to ring the AA?’ It’s almost laughably easy to get across the threshold of their homes. Three men dead, and still they fail to take the most elementary precautions. I almost felt sorry for Damien, since of all of them, he is the only one who had not betrayed me. But I needed to make an example of him, to show the police how pathetically useless they are. It was galling to find myself in agreement with the so-called ‘gay community’, but they were one hundred per cent correct when they said that while supposedly gay men were being killed, the police would do nothing. Killing one of their own would be the one thing that would make them sit up and notice. At last, they’d be forced to give me the recognition and respect I deserve.
To mark this, I had devised something a bit special for Damien. An unusual method of punishment, used occasion ally to act as a terrible example pour discourager les autres. It seems to have been most commonly used in cases of high treason, where men had plotted to kill the king. Appropriate, I thought. For what was Damien if not an integral part of the group that would bring me down if only they could?
The earliest record of this treatment in England was in 1238, when some minor nobleman broke into the royal lodge at Woodstock intent on killing Henry III, there on a hunting trip. To demonstrate to any other potential traitors that the king was serious about attempts on his life, the man was sentenced to be torn limb from limb by horses then beheaded.
Another would-be royal assassin met the same fate in the mid eighteenth century. The aspiring assassin’s name just had to be an omen. François Damiens stabbed King Louis XV at Versailles. His sentence read that ‘his chest, arms, thighs and calves be burned with pincers; his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said attack, burned in sulphur; that boiling oil, melted lead, and rosin and wax mixed with sulphur be poured into his wounds; and after that his body be pulled and dismembered by four horses.’
According to reports of the execution, Damiens’s darkbrown hair turned white during the torture. Casanova, that other great lover, reported in his memoirs, ‘I watched the dreadful scene