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Adam turns sharply. “I should have.”
Marsh takes a long drag on his cigarette, then blows the smoke out into the dark. “I’ve been doing this job for over thirty years. Did you know that, Bishop?”
“No, guv.”
“Holding off retiring, because I thought, what would be the point? What would I do? Play golf?” He pauses, reflectively flicking ash onto the concrete. “But you know what? Who cares if that’s all I do? I can’t be around this anymore. All this death, this murder. They rot your brain. The ones you couldn’t save.”
Adam stares at him. In all the years he’s worked for Marsh, the man has always been rock hard. Never giving an inch, driving detectives to achieve. To be better. To hear him admit defeat was sobering.
“When I was a DCI, like you, there was this one case. A woman, beaten up by her shitbag of a husband. We all knew he was doing it—the doctors that saw her in A and E, the PCs on the beat, the teachers for their kids. Even social services were involved. But we couldn’t get anything on him.” Marsh stares grimly at his feet, shuffling a toe of his shoe in the gravel. “My super said we needed to keep it by the book. He’d make a mistake. We’d get him eventually.”
“And did you?”
He frowns, scratches his ear. “Yeah. Put him away for life. But not until he’d set fire to his house, killing his wife and their two girls.” He stands up, turning and looking over the drop as Adam had moments earlier. “They didn’t die straight away either. The burns killed them. Two days in the ICU, watching their skin crack, fingers burnt away, suffering painfully. One of the little girls, she was eight at the time. She’d been blinded, her eyes destroyed by the heat. So she couldn’t see anyone. She couldn’t touch anyone. I sat by her bedside for hours. Just reading. Books, magazines, anything suitable I could get my hands on. To offer some sort of human comfort as she died. I’ll never forget her. And the smell …” He stops, looking back to Adam, his eyes dark. “I’ll retire, after this one, Bishop. You catch this guy, and then I’ll go.”
Adam’s gaze drops to the concrete as he extracts the last fraction of nicotine from his cigarette. “What if I don’t catch him?” he says quietly.
“You will. I know you, Bishop. You will.” Marsh brushes down his suit, replacing his packet of cigarettes in his jacket pocket. “By whatever means possible,” he finishes, leaving Adam standing up there.
Adam looks to the doorway. He drops his butt to the concrete and stubs it out with his toe. It’s good his boss has faith in him, he thinks, because right now he doesn’t have a clue.
* * *
The team are all assembled and waiting when Adam gets back to the incident room. Chairs facing forward, notepads in hand, they look up as he stands at the front of the room.
“Let’s start from the left, work around. What lines of inquiry are we all following? And shout up if you have any new thoughts, however ridiculous they may seem.”
He starts with Ellie Quinn; she runs through her progress identifying possible VW Transporters. As she talks, he notices movement to his left, and Romilly comes into the room. She’s wearing her smart dark blue coat over a black jumper, jeans, and boots. She stands in the doorway. He’s surprised to see her; it’s rare that a civilian, especially one with connections to the case, would be allowed so close. She smiles at Adam, a quick flicker, then switches her concentration to Quinn.
Ellie continues: “So we’re working through the list, starting with vehicles registered in the area where the van was seen on CCTV. Checking alibis, comparing owners to the database. But it’s slow work.”
“Good, keep going,” Adam says, and she blushes, staring at her notebook. He moves on to DC Lee.
“Tim. Any news from the lab?”
He shakes his head. “Mags has confirmed that the blood in the outbuilding on Gloucester Road was definitely Pippa Hoxton’s. But they’re still working through the rest.”
“Did she say if the samples from the mortuary had been processed?”
“No, sorry, Boss.”
“Get on it. If there was blood from the offender on those bodies, I want it. And where are we with the witnesses from Wednesday night?”
The detective sheepishly confirms their lack of progress, and Adam moves on. They’re still scouring CCTV, checking ANPR, running house-to-house and interviewing fly-tippers from the first dump site, but there’s nothing new, nothing of note.
“What about stalkers?” one of the detectives speaks up. “Louise Edwards reported she was being stalked, and we believe the killer went into Stephen Carey’s house. How about we run a check on the PNC for reports of similar cases?”
Adam notices Romilly staring intently at the whiteboard. She looks at him, then back again, before leaning forward slightly.
“Good shout,” Adam confirms to the detective. “Do it.”
He turns his attention to Romilly.
“Dr. Cole, thank you for joining us. Do you have anything to add?”
She frowns and quickly looks out at the detectives, all eyes now shifted onto her.
“Just a thought,” she says slowly, “about your witness mentioning they saw the killer wearing pajamas. Have you considered scrubs?”
