She was supposed to be hot on the trail of a psychopathic killer who had committed the most horrific acts of violence, but the more Collins learned about the group he appeared to be targeting, the more she felt herself feeling a measure of sympathy for his cause. If he did turn out to be, say, the father of one of the victims, she knew she would find it almost impossible to remain entirely objective.
Johnson was focusing his attention on the computer system, working with technicians to find ways to isolate cases that fitted the criteria the murder detectives were looking for. Collins and Woods, in the meantime, were having to laboriously work their way through the paper files holding details of the cases that had been deleted from the computer system.
They sat at opposite ends of a long wooden table in a spare office a few doors along the corridor from Johnson. Each had a large pile of files on the floor beside them and a thick notepad by their writing hand. They would take one file at a time and examine its contents: a photograph of the accused, details of the crimes they had committed, and information about where they lived and worked before and after conviction. The files also contained details of the last-known sighting of each offender.
Files that held no promise were placed on the floor on the other side of the chair; those that were possibly of interest were kept in a new pile in the middle of the table. These would be taken to the incident room so that DC Natalie Cooper could add the relevant details to the case database.
The number of files on the table, and therefore the list of missing men, was growing by the day, but they were no closer to finding their killer or identifying the third victim. Johnson had been right. When Collins started making inquiries to try to trace the whereabouts of one missing man who might have been a likely target, she ran into brick wall after brick wall. The missing men were already deep underground and desperate to hide away from the authorities, but their files held a great deal of information that gave clues to their likely whereabouts. Many were creatures of habit and had gone back to old haunts in the hope of starting their lives over. Others had clearly changed their details in a bid to continue their sexual offending away from the watchful eye of the authorities.
Some of the men on the list had managed to stay missing for years. Unless their bodies turned up, it was unlikely they would ever be found.
‘Do you ever wonder about what we’re doing here, Tony?’ asked Collins as the two of them sat in the beer garden of a riverside pub, washing down scampi, chips and peas with a couple of Diet Cokes.
Woods chewed thoughtfully and swallowed before he replied. ‘You mean here in this pub, here on this assignment or here in this universe? I’m not entirely clear on just how philosophical you’re trying to be.’
‘Ahh, now I get it.’
‘Get what?’
‘Why you’re still single.’
Woods smiled, pushed another forkful of scampi into his mouth and then pushed it into the side of his cheek so he could speak. ‘You’re still really struggling with all this, aren’t you?’
‘Not as much as I’m struggling with your table manners.’
Woods waved his fork so that the prongs were pointing towards his colleague. ‘I think we should have a rule. Once a week or so you should temporarily give up your rank, just so I get a chance to tell you what I really think of you without risking being hauled in front of the commander on a discipline charge.’
Collins cocked her head to one side and placed a finger on the corner of her mouth in a mock gesture of deep thought before screwing up her nose. ‘Nah, I don’t think so.’
‘Joking aside, boss,’ said Woods ‘at this stage we don’t even know if the other two bodies are linked to any kind of sex crime. Everything we’re doing here could be a complete waste of time. This might not have anything to do with it. There’s no point in letting your feelings get in the way of doing the job before we know the whole truth about what the job actually involves.’
Collins’s mobile began to ring before Woods had finished speaking, and while she fished it out of her bag he quickly stuffed the remaining pieces of scampi into his mouth.
He watched as Collins listened intently and then got out her pad and frantically scribbled notes, her face stern with concentration.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked as she ended the call.
‘Looks like the mystery is about to be solved. That was Anderson. We’ve had a hit on the tattoo.’
Brazilian-born Roberto Medina first fell in love with the trendy North London district of Crouch End when his wife suggested they go there for a drink one summer’s evening. Medina had been bowled over by the vast number of bars and restaurants seemingly representing the four corners of the globe, but he had also been struck by something else.
Despite a thriving high street scene and thousands of young, hip residents, there was not a single tattoo parlour anywhere to be found. Medina had first become interested in the body-art business as a teenage graphic-design student in his home town of Rio de Janeiro. After graduation, he had spent five years working as an apprentice at a parlour on the Ipanema beach front before feeling confident enough to set up on his own.
He had arrived in the UK a decade earlier to study English but, like so many others before him, had met a girl, fallen in love and decided to get married and stay put. The tattoo parlour in Crouch End, the most recent of his many business ventures, had been running for a little less than three years and was thriving.
‘Man,’ said Medina as Collins and Anderson arrived at his tiny workshop. ‘I always check the papers and watch the news – it’s like there’s usually some tattoo they want to know about; it’s much more common than you’d suppose. But never in a million years did I ever think that I’d actually recognize one of them. To be honest, it’s a little spooky.’
Collins was finding it a little spooky too. Every few years she toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo herself – something small and discrete, perhaps one of those inspirational messages in Chinese characters – but she always managed to talk herself out of it. She didn’t like the idea of doing anything to her body that she might later regret.
The patrons of this tattoo parlour clearly had no such reservations. Every inch of wall space around them was filled with a host of weird and wonderful images. Some were original drawings of designs; others were photographs taken of works performed on satisfied customers, stretching and flexing their body parts in order to show off the results to best effect.
She could not deny that some of the tattoos appealed to her: tiny multicoloured butterflies on hips, bunny rabbits on ankles, hearts on shoulder blades. They were simple, understated, almost cute. Others made her want to shake her head with disbelief: a lime-green iguana stretching from the small of a young woman’s back all the way up to the base of her neck; a fire-breathing dragon emerging from a cave that covered an entire arm.
A large board close to the door listed the prices for having tattoos applied on various body parts. The thought of some made her wince in horror while there were others that made her brow wrinkle in confusion. She had no idea which parts of the anatomy some of the terms referred to, and she had no wish to know.
Collins turned back to Medina. He drew nervously on a cigarette as he explained in his soft South American tones how he had been watching the early-evening news on a small television in the corner of the workshop during a quiet spell when he spotted his handiwork.
‘I said, “Oh my God!’ I recognized it right away. I called my wife, Maria, and said you’re never going to believe this. I’ve just seen one of my tattoos on the telly. I was in complete shock. Especially when they said the guy was dead and no one knew who he was.’