“Morris Munns is our best scene photographer.” The man beamed at Desai’s compliment. “He’s with our Serious Crimes Unit. Up with all the latest laser stuff.”
“Even so”—Morris shook his head—“we’ve been ’aving an ’ell of a time with this one, Kathy. It’s been a real challenge.”
She thought them an odd couple, the young Desai tall, long-skulled, and cool, the elderly Munns short, broad cockney, bustling around enthusiastically. Yet they obviously got on well together: Desai’s admiration for the older man’s work was clearly genuine, and seemed to be reciprocated.
“How come, Morris?”
“Plenty of latent marks, but very few legible ones. No fingerprints we could visualize, so we concentrated on the possibility of footprints. I think we were ’aving a go at that with the portable laser when you looked in, Kathy. Masses of marks on the carpet, but not one clear enough to visualize on that thick pile, see? The only decent marks we found were on the ’earth.”
Desai selected a photograph from a pile on the bench and showed it to Kathy. “They sealed up the fireplace when they put in central heating, but they left the tiled hearth in front of it. That’s the only part of the floor of the room that isn’t carpeted.”
“There were two small partial shoe prints on the corner tile, Kathy,” Morris went on, showing her another photograph. To Kathy’s eye the traces were indecipherable.
“Yes, not a lot,” Morris agreed. “But clearly two different patterns, the lower one in blood, probably a partial ’eel mark, then partly obscured by the larger upper one.”
“That’s what made us think for a while that there could have been two men involved,” Desai added.
“But you don’t think so now?”
Desai gave his sardonic smile. “The second one belongs to one of the police officers who was first on the scene. That’s why I’m paranoid, you see.”
Kathy nodded. “But . . . there’s almost nothing of the lower shoe print.”
“We photographed it in situ under different lights, then tried to get more detail with gelatine lifting and treatment with tetraaminobiphenyl,” Morris said sadly.
“No good?”
He shook his head.
“Well . . .” Kathy looked at him doubtfully, then saw the gleam in his eye as he turned to Desai.
“OK.” Desai became businesslike, taking charge. “The post-mortem examination revealed a large bruise on Hannaford’s back, about the size of a foot, as if she’d been stamped on.”
You cold bastard. Everyone else calls her “Angela.”
“The section of her blouse corresponding to that position showed no significant marks on the outside surface. But we know that, when a body is run over by a vehicle, for example, the tyre marks are sometimes printed on the inside surface of their clothing, by absorbing material from the skin. So we tested the inside surface of Hannaford’s blouse.”
Morris Munns pulled a sheaf of photographs from an envelope and selected one for Kathy. Like the previous one of the shoe prints on the hearth tiles, it had a scale rule across the bottom. Apart from that it was an undifferentiated grey.
“That’s it under ordinary white light. Nothing much.”
He pulled a second print from the sheaf. “Under an argon-ion laser. Getting better.”
The ghostly, distorted outline of a foot was emerging from the gloom.
“Then we treated it with DFO, which reacts with amino acids to fluoresce under laser light.”
A third photo, brighter still. There was something unsettling about seeing this image of a grossly violent act teased into visibility from the fabric of a dead girl’s blouse.
“Then ninhydrin, which reacts with both amino acids and proteins. The marks are visible under white light.”
Kathy stared at the fourth and final photograph, quite clear now. “Why is it so distorted?”
Desai replied. “The material of the blouse is loose, crumpled. He brings his foot down and the material is pressed against her flesh, soft, contoured, resilient. In some places the material stretches, in others it bunches up. You end with an image distorted in all sorts of unpredictable ways. That’s why the print on the tile is important. It gives us a basic fragment of true scale to work from.”
“To undo the distortions.”
“Right. We’re not there yet, but we’ve got a pretty good idea.”
Desai reached over for a fat A4 folder and turned the pages to one marked with a slip of paper. Kathy realized that they had probably laid out all their exhibits here specially for her to see this morning. She felt rather gratified. She also wondered what was in the carrier bag sitting on the end of the bench.
“Do you know the Footwear Index?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“It has over ten thousand sole patterns. We reckon this is the one.”
Kathy looked at a pair of shoe prints reproduced on a file sheet. The information boxes at the top identified them as Doc Martens.
“Several manufacturers have copied the classic Doc sole pattern, but we think this is a genuine one.”
“Size?”
“That’s the tricky bit. We’re still working on that. At the moment our best guess is a ten.”
Now Morris reached for the carrier bag and produced from inside it, with something of a flourish, a pair of black, shiny Doc Martens, size ten.
“Used to be only bovver boys and coppers wore ’em. Now everyone does, from pre-teen girls to grandpas. It’s the best we can do.”
“Thank you, Morris,” Kathy said. “I’m impressed. And if you can be any more certain about the size, we’d be really grateful.”
She was thinking about Tom Gentle’s dapper frame and neat little feet.
DESAI WAS MORE RELAXED with her now, driving back across the river, as if she’d passed some kind of initiation test. He even cracked a joke of sorts, about using one photographer to catch another, and Kathy, trying to encourage this faint thaw, asked what Morris did for a hobby, arrange car loans? He actually laughed, a short bark, head tipped briefly back, and she admitted to herself, reluctantly, that he had a certain style.
The mood in the Bride of Denmark was more troubled. Bren looked tense and short of sleep, Brock preoccupied. Only Ted Griffiths seemed relaxed, giving them a little wave as they sat down.
“Bren,” Brock started abruptly.
Bren cleared his throat and straightened in his seat. “We held the re-enactment on Saturday night. A WPC dressed much like Angela joined the crowds leaving the National Theatre at 10:30 and made her way to Waterloo suburban station, where she caught the 11:08 to Petts Wood, then walked to Birchgrove Avenue. It hasn’t produced anything new so far. We have managed to find a couple of people who were in the audience for Macbeth on the eighth near Angela, and can remember seeing her, sitting alone, the seat beside her empty. We’ve also had people come forward who were on the train that night, but nobody who recalls Angela on the journey, or at Petts Wood.”
He paused and took a deep breath. “We do have a taxi driver who recalls seeing a pale grey BMW parked near the taxi rank at the foot of the station steps at Petts Wood one night about a week ago, but he can’t swear it was the Saturday. Tom Gentle has a pale grey BMW. One of the barmaids in the Daylight Inn thinks she recognizes Gentle’s picture, but can’t be any more precise than that. No one at Gentle’s local can vouch for him being there that evening.”
There was another pause. “I can tell you all the other things we’ve done, Brock, but so far, these are the only results.”
Brock nodded. “So, the hypothesis is that Gentle went out at about 9:30, telling his wife he was going to the local. Instead he drove to Petts Wood, where he waited for Angela to return from the play, maybe had a drink in the pub there while he waited. Probably he knew that her parents were away, and saw this as a chance he couldn’t let slip. She was surprised to see him, but accepted a lift. When they got to her home he asked to use her loo, or the phone or whatever, she let him in, then r
esisted when he made advances. He lost control, killed her, and went home.”
Bren nodded. “That’s about it.”
“Kathy?”
“I haven’t got much that’s solid, Brock. I’ve been unable to get any positive matches between the faces in Gentle’s files and either Missing Persons or the Sexual Assault Index. We’ve got addresses for eight women so far. I’ve spoken to five on the phone, and one in person. They all knew Gentle, but not necessarily under that name, and none realized he’d been photographing them. The most damning was the typist who made the complaint against him at Merritt Finance, and whose picture was in his collection. The words she used were creepy, sleazy, and devious. The others were more generous; they saw him as charming, persuasive, a bit sad. They would make very reluctant, embarrassed witnesses, and they never saw a violent side to his nature.”
“That’s because they all went along with him,” Bren retorted. “We’ve got to find the ones who slapped his face and told him to fuck off, like Angela did.”
“Yes, but why show your face in the local pub, or park your car in front of the taxi rank, if you were up to something?”
“Because he planned to poke her, not murder her!” Bren was irritated, his voice tight.
“He doesn’t seem to have . . . to have had sex with any of the women I contacted, actually, although I gathered that at least two of them would have agreed to it. But he must have anticipated enough to be carrying the knife, and whatever he tied her thumbs with. And what about the mess his clothes would have been in?” Kathy hesitated. She hadn’t meant to get into an argument over this. “Anyway, Leon’s got something that has a bearing.” She was aware of Bren turning and staring at her as she said this.
“Ah,” Brock said. “Something at last, Leon?”
Desai gave a summary of what he and Morris had told Kathy at the Laboratory, his voice sounding calm and reasonable after Bren’s. Kathy, eyes lowered, noticed Bren’s large, grubby shoe tapping with impatience whenever the other man used the technical names of chemicals and processes.
When he had finished, Desai produced the pair of shoes from his bag, and passed them round.
“So what’s the difficulty, Kathy?” Brock said.
“I think Gentle has small feet.”
“How sure are you about the size, Leon?”
“We’re working on that. It’s only a probability at present.”
Brock nodded and turned to Ted Griffiths. “How are things going in Orpington?”
“Steady, Chief. No great developments. I think we’ve pretty well eliminated the boyfriend and his buddies at the stag do.”
“How did you manage that?” There was a note of scepticism in Brock’s voice.
“Well, they all support each other’s accounts. It would have been next to impossible for any one of them to have spent time alone at Angela’s house before 2:00 a.m., and the post-mortem seems to rule out a later time.”
“We don’t know it was one man alone. What if it was a group of them?” Brock’s voice was hard now.
“Well . . . seems a bit far-fetched.”
“Does it?”
His irritation with Griffiths’ apparent complacency was palpable. After a moment he spoke again, quietly. “What about the Hannafords? How are they coping?”
“I suppose they’re all right. We haven’t heard from them.”
“I asked you to go and see them last Wednesday, Ted. I told you to keep in close touch with them.”
Griffiths coloured slightly. “Oh . . . I didn’t get time, Brock. I reckoned, let sleeping dogs lie.”
“You reckoned.”
Kathy hadn’t ever seen that look in Brock’s eye before, and she was very glad it wasn’t directed at her.
“I’ll do it this morning,” Griffiths said hurriedly.
“Yes.” Brock’s monosyllable hung in the air. “I think we have to bring Gentle in, Bren. You agree?”
Bren nodded.
“We’ll make it formal. Grill him on his movements that Saturday evening. Kathy, why don’t you go down to his home again? Check his shoe size and have another word with his wife. Also, these searches for precedents, have you circulated the county forces around the Met area?”
“Yes, Brock. Especially south of the river. I’ve followed up with phone calls too.”
“If we’re talking about commuters,” Leon Desai came in, “we could look further afield. People commute into London from Brighton, Bristol, Barnsley, even. Boulogne too, pretty soon, I suppose.”
“True enough,” Brock grunted. “Better send out another request, Kathy; make it nationwide. Emphasize the peculiar features of the assault.”
He pushed his papers back into their file. “All right, let’s get on with it. Ted, I’d like a word in my office, in ten minutes. Kathy, hang on here, will you?”
The meeting broke up, Kathy and Brock remaining silent in their seats. When the others had gone, Brock said to her, “What was all that about, between you and Bren?”
Kathy frowned. “I . . . I don’t think there was anything, Brock.”
“You sure? You haven’t been having disagreements about the case?”
“No, no, not at all.”
He met her eyes for a moment, not doubting exactly, but searching for something. “It’s important that you two can work together, Kathy. You understand, don’t you? The importance of the team.”
“Of course I understand, Brock.” It wasn’t like Brock to be stating the obvious. She wondered what he was worried about.
He nodded and picked up his file as if to go. “Bren’s wife’s father died last week. After a fairly grim illness. It put a lot of strain on the family.”
“Ah. I’m sorry. He didn’t say anything—to me, anyway.”
Brock shrugged and got to his feet. “You sounded there as if you were having doubts about this Gentle character, Kathy.”
“No, I think he’s the one all right. I’ve just been trying not to jump too soon to conclusions. They kept telling us that at Bramshill.”
Brock smiled. “Very commendable.”
“But since we found his photographs, and after talking to the women, I’ve begun to get a very bad feeling about him, to be honest. His whole behaviour seems to be like a mask, hiding what he wants, what he feels—what he really is. He hasn’t shown the least concern since we started paying attention to him. I’ve never seen a murder suspect so unconcerned.”
“I’ll look forward to meeting him, then,” Brock grunted, and led the way out of the room.
On her way up to the entrance, Kathy passed Ted Griffiths’ desk, its top carefully composed with framed photographs—the wife, the wife and the baby, the baby, Ted and the baby. She found it vaguely embarrassing.
MURIEL GENTLE’S INITIAL PANIC had been replaced by a cold fury at the disaster which had burst into her tranquil life. She seethed at the injustice of the police treatment of her husband, the heedless obstinacy of their suspicions. Kathy’s second visit gave her the opportunity to express some of this. She harried Kathy with every step as she went through the house, checking Gentle’s shoes. They were all size seven: Hush Puppies, trainers, slippers, wellington boots—nothing remotely like Doc Martens.
“You have simply no idea, do you?” she stormed at Kathy’s back. “You demolish our whole existence on the flimsiest of pretexts, turning innocent people’s lives into a nightmare on the basis of some second-hand rumour, because you simply have no idea what you’re doing. You don’t know where to look for that girl’s murderer, so you go around kicking innocent bystanders to the ground. You’re stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
After five minutes of this, Kathy led her back to the living-room and asked her to sit down. She did so, abruptly silent, chest heaving with the exertion of her invective. She stared at the mantelpiece and its framed photographs of herself and her husband, the two of them together, and another with an elderly couple, parents presumably. No children. Then, in a low, furious voice, she began again.
“Do you imagine that I could be married for twenty years to a sex monster, a thrill-killer as the papers put it, and not have the faintest idea? Do you? Don’t you think I would know?”
“Did you know about the photographs, Mrs. Gentle?”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous! Tom is a photographer. That’s his hobby. He’s always done that. He has his darkroom upstairs. Of course I knew.”
“I mean, following women, and taking photographs of them secretly.”
“There you go, you see! Turning him into a monster. It wasn’t like that! He’s told me all about it. He likes his sitters to be natural, unposed.”
Her use of the word struck Kathy. She thought of Angela’s body on the bed, rigidly posed.
“Angela believed that your husband was following her and harassing her. Other women in his office have made the same complaint before.”
Mrs. Gentle heard the calm voice, the professional dealing with a case, not her life but a case, and she decided to make one more effort to break through the detective’s stubbornness, to make her understand. “Look, my husband has a hobby, he’s an enthusiastic photographer, a girl notices him looking at her and she misinterprets it. That’s all. The thing with the girl in the office happened years ago, when Tom was under a lot of stress at work. He snapped at her over something, and she took offence. Some spiteful gossips blew it up out of all proportion, and then people started saying ‘no smoke without fire.’ My God, that’s a long, long way from murdering Angela Hannaford, isn’t it?”
Kathy nodded. It was a good try. But she thought of the filing cabinet, the bureaucratically neat files of photographs of unsuspecting women, and tried to imagine the efforts of a wife to rationalize that.
“The point is,” Muriel Gentle’s voice became low, pleading, “when you’ve finally eliminated Tom from your inquiries, and you’ve discovered who did actually do it, will we be able to put our life back together again? Will Tom be able to face the people at his work again? Will I be able to go to the shops? Or will we always hear people whispering behind our backs, because you once pointed a finger at an innocent man? Please, I beg you, please be careful!”
All My Enemies Page 9