country. A Home Office spokesman said there would be a full enquiry into the circumstances of his death.
"The economy has never been in a better position, the Prime Minister said today ..." Penny turned the key in the ignition and did a perilous five-point turn in the narrow lane before stamping on the gas and shooting back towards the road. It was just as well, she thought, that she'd already decided to dump Kevin. After the story she was about to write, she couldn't imagine him ever wanting to see her again anyway.
Tony drummed his fingers on the back of the cab's seat, a curious restlessness possessing him. Leaving Scargill Street hadn't been easy, but he knew he had no role while the police worked on their one piece of solid evidence. The last thing they needed in that maelstrom of reproach and driven activity was for him to sit around reminding them of all the reasons why he'd never been convinced that Stevie McConnell was their man.
His consolation was that he felt certain that Angelica would phone tonight. As the taxi hissed through the wet and empty streets. Tony rehearsed the conversation. He felt a new confidence, a certainty that tonight he would have no problems, that he had finally wrestled his demon into submission thanks to her strange erotic therapy. He would tell her she had no idea how much her phone calls had meant to him. That she had helped him more than she could know. Satisfied that he had things under control, Tony sighed comfortably and cleared his mind of Handy Andy.
Penny Burgess popped the top on a can of Guinness, lit a cigarette and switched on her computer. After making a handful of phone calls to firm up the version of events she'd heard on the radio, she was fired with the self-righteous enthusiasm that only politicians, journalists and fundamentalist preachers seem capable of harnessing for professional advancement.
She inhaled a long stream of smoke, thought for a moment, then started to hammer the keys.
Bradfield's serial killer claimed his fifth victim yesterday (Sunday) when gay body-builder Stevie McConnell killed himself in a prison cell.
Police had implied that McConnell was himself the Queer Killer in a cynical bid to force the real killer's hand.
But their twisted exercise ended in tragedy when McConnell, 32, hung himself with a makeshift rope woven from his own torn shirt. He tied it to the top bunk in his solitary-confinement cell at Barleigh prison and threw himself off, strangling himself.
And last night, a police officer involved in the Queer Killer investigation admitted, "We've known for several days that Stevie McConnell wasn't the killer."
McConnell had pleaded with prison staff to put him in solitary after a barbaric attack by fellow inmates the previous day.
A source inside Barleigh prison said,
"He took a real beating. The word on the grapevine when he arrived was that he was the Queer Killer, only the police didn't have enough evidence to charge him yet.
"Prisoners don't like sex killers, and they tend to make their feelings known. McConnell got a brutal hammering. He was badly beaten up, and sexually assaulted too."
Warders are said to have turned a blind eye to McConnell's savage battering. Then yesterday (Sunday) because of a prison officers' work to rule, he was left unattended in his cell for long enough to end his life. A Home Office spokesman said there would be a full enquiry into the incident.
McConnell managed Bodies gym in the city centre, where the killer's third victim, solicitor Gareth Finnegan, was a member.
McConnell faced a minor assault charge after coming to the rescue of an undercover police sergeant who was attacked by a third man in the Temple Fields gay village.
He then tried to flee the country while he was out on bail. Police rearrested him as he was about to board a ferry for Holland, and persuaded magistrates to remand him in custody.
A police source revealed,
"What we did made people think that McConnell was the killer, and that's what we wanted.
"Serial killers are very vain, and we thought that the killer would be so outraged that we had pointed the finger at the wrong person that he would break cover and make contact.
"It's all gone horribly wrong."
A friend of McConnell's said last night,
"Bradfield police are murderers. As far as I'm concerned, they killed Stevie.
"The police really grilled him about the serial killings. They put him under all kinds of pressure.
"Even though they let him go afterwards, mud like that sticks. He