Die Twice

with on a regular basis. Most of them usually do. We’ve got two statements from girls testifying that she was picked up on more than one occasion by someone in a red TVR, although no-one ever saw his face. Apparently she had a friend, a girl by the name of Molly Hagger, who used to work the streets with her, I believe you’ve got a photo of her, Dennis, but she hasn’t been seen for several weeks.’
I felt a brief stab of fear. So that was her name. Molly. And now she was missing. ‘There was a photograph of her with the victim at the victim’s flat,’ I said. ‘It looked recent, so I think it would be useful to talk to this Molly.’
‘If we can find her.’
‘Have we got an address for her?’ I asked.
Knox nodded. ‘We think so. One of the girls said she thought she was staying at Coleman House. It’s a council-run children’s home over towards Camden. We haven’t contacted anyone down there yet so I want you and Malik to pay the place a visit and see if you can find out where she is, and if any of the other people there have any information on the victim.’
I nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘We’ve also got to bring in the victim’s pimp, who we’ve now identified as Mark Wells. Dennis met him briefly yesterday.’ He looked across at me and winked, much to the amusement of everyone else. ‘Wells has a long record of violence, including attacks on women, and at the very least we can bring him in for taking out DS Milne.’
Again there was more laughter. I managed a strained smile to show that I could take a joke, just like the next man, not that I felt much like laughing. My face still hurt and a darkening bruise had appeared under my right cheekbone overnight.
‘We’re applying for a search warrant for his house and a warrant for his arrest, both of which should be with us by mid-morning. We’re going to lean on him hard. He’s a cocky bastard by all accounts, but he’s going to have useful information about the victim, and it’s essential we extract it from him. He’s also a suspect. So far, our only evidence of sexual assault is the stab wounds around the vagina, so it’s quite possible that the killer’s attempting to make it look like a sexual assault when, in reality, it wasn’t his prime motivation. Now I don’t want to put too much stock on that theory, because at the moment it is just a theory, but we’ve got to bear it in mind. And that means taking a close look at Mark Wells.’
He paused again, took another sip of his tea. ‘We also need the names of everyone in a three-mile radius of here who’s been picked up for soliciting at any time in the last two years, giving particular preference to anyone with convictions for violence or sex offences. And we’re going to need to interview them all.’ Several people groaned, and Knox managed an understanding smile. ‘Look, it’s not going to be easy – it never is – but we’ve got to explore every possible avenue, and that means talking to the sort of people who could have done this, i.e. men who are known to be violent to women. This murder hunt is twenty-four hours old, ladies and gentlemen. At the moment the body’s still warm but it’s going to cool down fast, so we’ve got a lot of work to do. One hell of a lot. I want this killer brought to justice and I know you’re the people to do it.’ He accompanied this last sentence by enthusiastically whacking one of the desks with the palm of his hand, which was a very Knox-like gesture. I’m sure sometimes he thought he was working on Wall Street.
Brave words, too. Whether they’d be matched by deeds or not, though, remained to be seen.
The remainder of the meeting was spent organizing who was going to be doing what, and took about ten minutes, including questions. Welland was going to be leading the raid on Mark Wells’s place as soon as the paperwork came through, which annoyed me a little bit. Since it had been me the bastard had hit, I wanted to be on the team which brought him in, but I suppose at the same time I also wanted to find out more about Molly, and it was going to be difficult to do both.
It was 9.20 when Malik and I left to go round to the Coleman House care home. Times were hard in our division of the Metropolitan Police and budgets tight, so we decided to save the taxpayers some money by taking the bus. In the end, though, it would probably have been quicker to walk. An accident on the Holloway Road had snarled up the traffic and we were stuck in it, stopping and starting, for what seemed like hours.
I told Malik about my dream as we sat there watching the world go by, or not as the case might be. It had genuinely rattled me. ‘You know, I know it sounds stupid, but it was almost like some sort of premonition.’
He couldn’t resist a grin. ‘What? You think Les Dennis might be in danger?’
‘I’m serious, Asif. This wasn’t like any dream I’ve ever had. You know me. I’m not superstitious, and I’m not spiritual or anything like that. I’m not even a Christian. So it’s nothing to do with my state of mind. It was just it was so vivid that when I woke up I was absolutely positive this Molly girl was dead.’
‘Explain the dream to me again.’
I went through it all with him, missing out the details of the dead customs men, and whispering so that none of the other passengers, a mixture of old grannies and foreign students, could hear what I was saying. I didn’t want them thinking I was some sort of nutter.
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