34

‘THE PRINT ON EMMA BOSTON’S MOBILE PHONE HAS BEEN matched, with an 85 per cent degree of accuracy, to a man called Samuel Cooper.’

Twenty people in the incident room seemed to be holding their breath. Everyone was looking at the senior crime-scene officer, a slim, bearded, grey-haired man called Peters. He pressed a key on a small laptop and we were looking at the face of the man who could be our killer. Clean-shaven, fair-haired, long face, large nose, bad complexion. And something not quite right about his eyes.

‘He’s twenty-seven,’ said Peters. ‘Last known address was a squat just off the Tottenham Court Road.’

I leaned closer. Cooper’s pupils were elliptic, like those of some snakes.

‘Eighty-five per cent accuracy?’ questioned Tulloch.

‘Best we can do, I’m afraid,’ replied Peters. ‘It was only a partial print. Look, let me show you.’ Peters pressed another key on the laptop and two fingerprints came up on screen. One whole and perfect, the other about 60 per cent present. He pressed another key and we saw the inner segment of both prints, considerably magnified. ‘What you’re looking at here is a loop,’ said Peters, ‘as opposed to a whirl or an arch, the other two main fingerprint patterns.

‘There’s a short, independent ridge here, in the centre of the loop,’ he went on, pointing with a pencil. ‘You can see it quite clearly on the print we know is Cooper’s and on the print taken from the phone. You can also see what we call a lake, a tiny, free-standing line, just above and to the right of the ridge. The lake, like the short independent ridge, is present on both images. We’ve also got a delta, a sort of convergence of lines, a little way down and to the left. Appears on both images and the ridge count between them is the same.’

‘Looks pretty conclusive to me,’ said Anderson.

‘If we had more to go on than this one partial, I’d be agreeing with you,’ said Peters, pushing reading glasses on to the top of his head and nodding at the sergeant. ‘But nothing on either the shoe or the sunglasses, remember. Of course, 85 per cent won’t be enough by itself to convict him, but it makes him someone you want to take seriously.’

‘What’s his history?’ asked Anderson.

At the back of the room a door opened. I glanced round to find myself staring into turquoise eyes. From the look of them, Joesbury had had even less sleep than me.

‘Cooper served two years of a five-year sentence in the late nineties for knife crime,’ replied Peters. As I turned back to the front I could sense a notable increase in excitement in the room. ‘It was gang-related, but the victim wasn’t seriously injured. Hence the relatively short sentence. He was arrested several months after his release on a burglary charge, but it never went to court. Not enough evidence.’

Soft footsteps approached. The desk immediately behind me moved a fraction as someone sat on it.

‘It’s a big step,’ said Tulloch, who had nodded to Joesbury briefly. ‘From gang crime and burglary to carving up women.’

‘Possibly,’ agreed Peters. ‘But the arrest records report him as being a disturbed individual. Violent tendencies. He injured a female sergeant while he was in custody. Apparently he got her by the throat.’

‘Looking promising,’ muttered a voice from the far side of the room. I could see excited glances being exchanged. Tulloch was still looking troubled, but she got to her feet and thanked Peters. Then she updated everyone on the results of the post-mortem.

‘Our corpse, when we find it,’ she said, after summarizing the gist of what Kaytes had told us, ‘will be that of a woman in reasonably good health, who has borne at least one child. She’ll be in the age range thirty-five to fifty-five.’

‘Geraldine Jones fell into that age bracket,’ said one of the detectives.

‘So did most of the original Ripper’s victims,’ remarked another.

‘Yes, and so do half the women in London,’ said Tulloch. ‘Right, we need to find Samuel Cooper as soon as possible. George, Tom, can you get round to the Tottenham Court Road address? Take his mugshot and ask around. In fact, get some uniform round there now. They can hold him till you get there.’

The two detectives left the room.

‘Pete, can you take his picture up to the Jones’s house?’ said Tulloch. ‘See if anyone there recognizes him.’

‘Anybody in here know him?’ said Joesbury. He was still behind me but I knew, from the direction of his voice and its tone, that he was looking straight at me. ‘Just picking people at random now, how about you, Flint?’

I shook my head as the remaining faces in the room turned my way.

‘Are you sure? Name ring any bells?’

‘No,’ I said, looking again at the photograph of Samuel Cooper.

‘He’s not far off your age,’ Joesbury went on. ‘Pal from the old days, perhaps?’

‘I’m sure,’ I said calmly, because I knew I couldn’t overreact in front of so many people. ‘I don’t know him. I have no idea how, or indeed if, he knows me.’

Tulloch had been watching the two of us.

‘Did you two—’ she began.

‘Kiss and make up?’ interrupted Joesbury. ‘Absolutely. Her flat needs some serious attention, though. A three-year-old could break in at the moment.’

Tulloch shook her head, as though despairing of me and all women too stupid to take proper care of themselves.

‘I’ve organized a home-security firm to go round today, but you need to sign the requisition order,’ Joesbury was saying. ‘It’ll be expensive on a Sunday. If it can’t be finished today, she’s going to need somewhere else to sleep tonight.’

‘Come on everyone, get moving,’ called Tulloch. Everyone started to gather things together. I got up too.

‘Hang on a sec, Flint,’ Joesbury called out to me as I moved away. Without looking at him, I sat back down again and waited, until only Tulloch, Anderson, Joesbury and I were left. Joesbury got up, made his way across the room and took another seat directly facing me.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said, reaching into one of his inside pockets and holding out his hand to me. On it was a mobile phone that looked like a new and very advanced model. ‘Your new phone,’ he said.

‘I was happy with the old one,’ I replied.

‘I’ve transferred all your recorded info,’ he said, without withdrawing his hand. I took the phone. His hands were warm.

‘We issue these to all our officers out on jobs,’ he went on. ‘It’s got an internal tracker device built in. It links up with the GPS system. As long as it’s switched on and there’s juice in the battery, it will let us know where you are 24/7. OK with that?’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘I can also give you a four-digit number that sends an emergency call direct to our control.’

‘Is this all necessary?’ I asked.

‘Someone broke into Emma Boston’s flat and stole her phone so that he could call you directly,’ replied Joesbury. ‘He spent the day sending you text messages. That does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about your future well-being.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ I said.

‘And I’ve arranged to take her over to the Yard this afternoon,’ he went on, talking to Tulloch now. ‘We’ll get her kitted out with some basic tracking and recording stuff.’

‘I can’t carry a tape recorder in my pocket for the next six months,’ I protested.

‘We don’t use them any more,’ said Joesbury, before giving me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘It’s all a lot more intimate.’

Any retort I could have made was drowned out by the desk phone ringing. Anderson took it, speaking quietly for several minutes before putting it down and facing us.

‘That was George,’ he said. ‘Local uniform have arrived at Tottenham Court Road. No sign of Cooper at the address we were given. People they spoke to there seem to think he’s been living on the streets for a while.’

‘OK,’ said Tulloch. ‘Ask George and Tom to start making their way round the places where the street people are known to congregate. They’ll need more help, see who’s free to join them. I want them to start straight away.’

Anderson picked up the phone again. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I called to him.

All three of them looked at me in surprise, Anderson with one hand over the receiver.

‘Street people won’t talk to those two,’ I said. ‘They’re both built like brick shithouses, and they’re about as subtle as juggernauts through shop windows.’

‘I’m not sending them in to do therapy, Flint,’ said Tulloch. ‘They just have to show the photograph and ask a few questions.’

‘The first person they collar will tell them he’s never seen Cooper in his life before,’ I said. ‘He’ll look at the ground, he’ll do everything he can to get away. Anything he does say you absolutely cannot rely on, because he’ll tell them anything to get rid of them. In the meantime, everyone else in the vicinity will have quietly slipped away. These people are terrified of the police.’

‘How do you know so much about vagrants?’ asked Joesbury.

‘Street people,’ I said, without looking at him.

‘So what do you suggest?’ asked Tulloch.

‘Let me go and talk to them.’

‘I really don’t think—’ began Anderson.

‘I’ll be able to track down more of them than anyone else and there’s a better chance they’ll talk to me.’

‘Why?’ asked Tulloch, although from the look on her face, I think she already knew.

‘I know the streets,’ I said. ‘I lived on them for eight months.’