There was a mass intake of breath from the assembled detectives.
‘Wow!’ somebody said.
Helena straightened up again slowly, eyes still fixed on the message on the screen.
‘Why are they only telling us about this now? It’s Monday, for shit’s sake.’
‘A couple of the key people who knew about our cases here and the possible links to the London murders were away at a conference at the end of last week,’ Frankie said. He sounded a little breathless. ‘So nobody made the connection, until this morning, when our contacts came back and saw the crime report. Oh, and looked at his picture. They haven’t sent that over yet, but apparently he’s another lookalike … it all fits, boss. It all bloody fits.’
‘SHIT.’ Helena spun round and grinned at Devon, then turned back to Frankie.
‘So – he’s alive? This Declan guy? And the attacker dropped the weapon? Holy cow.’
Frankie nodded vigorously, his glasses bobbing on his nose.
‘He’s got a bad head injury, but he’s alive, although he doesn’t remember much. But the weapon’s being rushed through forensics. I’ll stay across it and get the results to you as soon as they come in, boss.’
‘Shit, guys. I think we’ve got her,’ said Helena slowly.
There was a moment of silence, then somebody started to clap, followed by another and another. Helena and Devon grinned at each other, then she held up her hand.
‘OK, so yes, it’s looking good. But we still have a long way to go on this. If we can get DNA from that hammer though …’
‘And Gemma O’Connor? She’s downstairs right now, remember?’ said Devon.
She smiled again.
‘Well, let’s go and see her, shall we? And then let’s arrest her. On suspicion of murder and attempted murder.’
Chapter 33
‘Think this is it. Yep, number sixteen. Address is Flat 16B.’
DC Mike Slater, who’d just manoeuvred the car neatly into a space directly opposite number 16 Elmwood Road, pointed at the house. It was a shabby semi, the small front garden overgrown, a bicycle missing its front tyre leaning against the ramshackle wooden fence that separated the house from its neighbour.
‘Right. Let me just finish these last few mouthfuls and we’ll see if he’s in.’
Devon raised his takeaway cup and Mike gave him the thumbs up sign. They were in Feltham in west London, after a day spent with their contacts at the Metropolitan Police, visiting the scene of the latest – thankfully, foiled – attack and then heading to St Thomas’ Hospital to see and attempt to interview the victim, Declan Bailey. Unfortunately, the man had been asleep, still under mild sedation, and his doctor had been insistent that he not be disturbed.
‘We’re confident he’ll recover, but he’s still very ill, and as far as I know remembers nothing whatsoever about the attack,’ Dr Mulligan had said. She was a tall, formidable-looking woman with a shock of bleached blonde hair piled on top of her head.
‘You can interview him when he’s better. You are not waking him up now.’
Suitably intimidated, Devon and Mike had obeyed doctor’s orders, but they’d managed to get a look at the sleeping patient and, even though his face had been bruised and swollen and most of his hair covered by the bandages protecting his head wounds, the similarities between him and the other four victims – five if you counted Danny O’Connor – were obvious.
‘He’s got the same sort of hair, dark eyebrows, same general look,’ Mike had whispered, before they’d been briskly ushered out of the room by Dr Mulligan. ‘What the hell is it, Devon? I mean, if it is Gemma O’Connor behind all this, why is she attacking men who look like her husband? Does she hate him that much? What on earth can he have done to her to drive her to this?’
They were still waiting, though, for the forensics report on the weapon Declan had been attacked with; with profuse apologies, and mutterings about budget cuts and staff shortages, they’d been told that there was some sort of backlog and that it might be another twenty-four or even forty-eight hours before they might have a result. In the meantime, and with Gemma O’Connor in custody since the previous morning, and still denying everything when questioned, Devon and Mike had been dispatched to try to carry on gathering as much evidence as they could. They’d stopped off in Feltham on their way back to Bristol in an effort to find Quinn O’Connor, who hadn’t been answering his phone.