Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,57
forefinger print from what remained of his left hand. And ‘Rawlins’, assumed to have been the driver, was blown sky-high. All forensically identifiable parts of his body were too badly damaged to be of any use. However, a cadaver dog had eventually found a charred left forearm about seven feet from the van, not belonging to either Pirelli or Miller. This arm wore a gold Rolex watch with the inscription ‘To Harry – Love Dolly – 12/2/62’. And so the mangled, unidentifiable third body ‒ missing its head, both legs and one arm ‒ was documented as belonging to Harry Rawlins.
Jack looked at the images showing this mammoth jigsaw puzzle of body parts. He understood why 1980s forensics had identified this man as Harry Rawlins – but the fact remained that Rawlins had been shot to death by his wife several months later, so the third man in the Strand underpass robbery actually remained unidentified. It could be one of a dozen known criminals from the time. It could even be Jimmy Nunn. Jack sighed heavily as he weighed up the possibilities. His birth dad could be in a thousand pieces, wrongly buried in place of Harry Rawlins back in 1984, or he could be hiding out on some paradise island spending stolen money. Maybe even the money from the train robbery. Jack couldn’t decide which discovery would be more disappointing. Then again, neither might be true.
*
Jack woke at five o’clock in the morning. His body had moulded into the shape of his desk chair, so for a good few minutes he had to sit motionless, waiting for the blood to start circulating back into his extremities. Jack stared at his computer screen – once again, he’d spent police time and used the police databases to research his own paternity case. If he was caught, he’d be sacked for gross misconduct, but that seemed to encourage him rather than anything else. He was working smart for the first time in a long time and it made him feel good.
The showers in the station reeked of lemon-scented bleach; the cleaners had been working into the early hours too. Jack watched the mass of shampoo suds slowly spiral down the drain and replayed the events of the previous day in his head. There were two key memories – Tony Fisher’s face being squashed into the blue lino by four prison guards . . . and Ridley asking if he’d found Angela and Julia yet. One memory made him grin with a new-found sadistic thrill; the other made him turn the shower off and race back to his computer.
*
‘Ester Freeman said that Julia Lawson would be in a gutter or a morgue somewhere,’ Jack announced to the attentive squad room.
Ridley stood in his office doorway leaning against the frame, arms folded, unblinking. He was like one of those paintings whose eyes follow you round the room. Since this investigation began, he had mainly communicated with Jack via voicemail – which Ridley hated. Jack knew that by the time he’d finished speaking, he’d need a damn good excuse for missing yet another one of Ridley’s phone calls yesterday ‒ and ‘I was in Pentonville, without your clearance, asking Tony Fisher about my birth dad’ definitely wouldn’t cut it. It was a good job he was now redeeming himself by having solid leads on Julia and Angela.
‘It seems Julia keeps a low profile running a children’s home. Most of the kids she cares for are in trouble with one or both sides of the law, so she doesn’t advertise what she does. She registered as a safe house with the Manchester force, and she takes in the kids of parents who choose rehab programmes instead of prison. And Angela Dunn got married, but didn’t change her name. I have addresses for both of them now.’
Behind Jack, the two evidence boards were almost full. They spanned 1984 to 2019, and the face of Tony Fisher had been added since the last time Ridley was in the office.
‘Good work, Jack. And I’m glad you weren’t injured when Tony Fisher attacked you.’
Jack felt his face flush. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of concern on Laura’s face, but he didn’t take his eyes off Ridley. Jack couldn’t believe that Ridley knew where he’d been all along and had never said a word. Within seconds, it became clear that he wasn’t going to elaborate ‒ he just wanted Jack to know that nothing got past him.