The Last 10 Seconds

By the time she’d got off the phone, the rest of the team had already gone to the pub, and when she’d walked in fifteen minutes later and seen them clicking glasses in celebration of catching the man who’d been terrorizing London’s young women for the past two years, she hadn’t had the heart to say anything about Kent’s alibi. But she hadn’t had the heart to join in the celebrations either, and had forced herself to drink orange juice rather than a real drink because she needed to think.

All the available evidence suggested Kent was their killer, yet his alibi seemed cast-iron, and he was screaming his innocence from the rooftops. She felt the familiar stirring of excitement at the prospect of working alone to solve a puzzle that no one else seemed interested in.

Now that she’d done her bit and shown her face at the pub, her plan was to go back to the station and look through Roisín O’Neill’s file to see if she could find any clues. Roisín was the fourth victim, murdered only a few months before Tina joined the team. Perhaps the coroner had made a mistake with the timing of the death? That kind of thing occasionally happened, and right now it seemed like the obvious alternative. Or that, at least, was what she was hoping as she stubbed her cigarette underfoot.

She noticed that Sean had disappeared, and thought fleetingly that it was a pity they’d not said goodbye. She wondered if she’d have given him her number if he’d asked for it, and concluded that she probably would have done.

As she turned to walk back to the station, Dan Grier hurried out of the pub door, and she asked him if he was off home.

He nodded. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m heading back to the station. I’ve got some more work to do.’

‘What kind of work?’ he asked as they fell into step. ‘I thought we’d solved the case.’

‘We have,’ she answered, ‘but there are a few ends that need tying up.’

‘Anything I can help with?’

‘You were on the team when Roisín O’Neill was murdered, weren’t you? Do you remember if anything stood out about her case? That made it different from the others?’

‘I heard talk that Kent’s claiming he’s got an alibi for the O’Neill murder.’ Grier looked at her. ‘Is that right?’

She and MacLeod had agreed to keep Kent’s alibi quiet, but it was always going to get out and she saw no reason not to say anything about it now. ‘It looks like he has, yes. That’s why I wanted to go back and have a look at the file. Roisín’s murder was before my time so I need to read up on it.’

Grier was silent for a few seconds. ‘There was no footage on Kent’s laptop relating to it. And it was the only one for which there wasn’t, which I suppose in the light of his alibi seems a bit strange.’

‘This whole thing seems bloody strange. Try to think, Dan – was the MO exactly the same as the others?’

‘Jesus.’

She put a hand on his arm. ‘What?’

‘The MO was the same, but . . .’ He screwed up his face in concentration. ‘But not exactly. There were minor differences.’

‘What kind of differences?’

‘The hammer blows. Roisín had her face pummelled in like the others, but if I remember rightly, the actual cause of death was strangulation. He laid into her with the hammer, like he did with all the others, but the difference was he did it after she was already dead.’

They stood in the middle of the pavement stock-still as the full ramifications of what Grier was saying washed over them both.

‘His alibi’s watertight,’ said Tina at last.

‘But if he didn’t kill Roisín O’Neill, then who did? And what about the other four girls? Did he kill them, or didn’t he?’

Tina sighed. ‘I don’t know. But that’s exactly what we need to find out.’

Nineteen

‘You don’t have to help me, Dan,’ Tina told him as they headed back up to the incident room. ‘I know you’ve put in the hours, and I don’t mind doing this myself.’ In truth, she preferred the idea of working alone, especially in an empty office. It meant she could sneak a quick drink if she needed one without arousing suspicion.

‘If there are problems with the case then I’d like to help,’ he answered coolly. ‘I’m in no hurry to get home. Melinda’s not expecting me until late anyway.’

Melinda was Grier’s wife. They’d met at university, and had been together ever since. Tina had never been introduced to her, but she’d noted that whenever Grier spoke about her it was with an obvious fondness in his voice, which was very different to the rest of the married men in the team when they spoke about their wives. It should have made her like him more. Instead it made her jealous.

Tina split the task of trawling through the Roisín O’Neill file into two, Grier concentrating on Roisín’s background while she looked into the mechanics of the murder itself.