28.

Jennings's address was in the middle of a dilapidated terrace of eighteenth-century houses on the Camberwell New Road, south of the Thames. The tall, five-storey building was set back from the heavy traffic behind corroding iron railings and a strip of untidy concreted front garden. The brickwork was almost black and grimy net curtains stretched across most of the windows, with satellite dishes sprouting from every floor.

Minderedes parked the car around the corner and he and Tartaglia walked along the main road and in through the rickety wrought iron gate. Rap music thudded from somewhere above, almost drowning out the cries of a small child on the ground floor.

'This way,' Tartaglia said, noticing a large black arrow painted alongside the number 34a, pointing down towards the basement. They skirted around a collection of overflowing bins and bags of rubbish and descended a set of steep, slippery, moss-covered steps to the basement front door.

Minderedes turned up his nose. 'God, it stinks.'

'Cats and drains,' Tartaglia replied.

He knocked and Turner opened the door almost immediately.

'Come in, guys,' he said, with a grandiose sweep of his hand. 'Make yourselves at home.' The temperature was cellar-like and the air was rank with damp; still the powerful, retch-making smell of drains.

'What's the layout?' Tartaglia asked, trying to hold his breath as he glanced around the narrow mustard-yellow hall.

'Bathroom in there,' Turner said, pointing to a door immediately behind them. 'There's bars on the window.'

''Scuse me. Gotta have a pee,' Minderedes said, disappearing inside and switching on the light.

'What's in there?' Tartaglia asked Turner, gesturing towards another half-closed door on their right.

'Bedroom. Again, bars on the window. The lounge is this way.'

Tartaglia followed Turner down the narrow passage to the sitting room at the back where the curtains were tightly drawn as though it were still night.

'I didn't want to open the curtains or a window,' Turner said. 'Jennings is a clever sod; he'd know something's up.'

The only source of light was a naked pink bulb in the centre of the low ceiling, which Turner knocked with his head, sending the pool of soft light spinning around over the mottled, greyish-green walls. The room was littered with empty beer cans, takeaway cartons and overflowing ashtrays, and the centre of the floor was covered with a rug in an indeterminate shade of brown that would hide most stains. The only furnishings were a sofa, an armchair, an old TV, and a makeshift coffee table that had been assembled from piles of bricks and an old door. It all looked as though it had been hauled off a skip.

'What a shithole,' Minderedes exclaimed, coming into the room behind Tartaglia and looking around. 'God, I hope I don't catch something just standing here.' He dug deep into the pockets of his coat and put on a pair of new-looking black leather gloves.

'Is this his flat?' Tartaglia asked, surveying the debris.

'Belongs to his girlfriend,' Turner replied. 'She's a smackhead; doesn't seem to be into using a Hoover.'

'But he's staying here?'

'According to her, he's been dossing down here for the last three months. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess.'

'Where is she?'

'Soon as I paid her off she was out the door like greased lightning to score some skag. She's in the bedroom now, sleeping it off.'

'She knows you're here?'

'Yeah. She told me I could stay.'

'Good. What about Jennings?'

'He's got some kind of a job in a restaurant or pub kitchen. She wasn't sure where. Says he usually comes back sometime after three.'

Tartaglia looked at his watch. There was a good hour to go. 'Is there a back exit?'

Turner pointed. 'In the kitchen through there, but I'll cover it. He's not getting past me, I promise.'

Minderedes walked over to take a look. 'Jesus,' he said, swiftly ducking out again. 'This fucking place is alive. There are cockroaches everywhere.'

'All in the line of duty, Nick,' Tartaglia said. 'We're here for poor Catherine Watson.'

'She won't be paying the bloody dry-cleaning bill, will she?' Minderedes replied crossly, brushing something invisible off his sleeve and scraping the heel of his shoe on the edge of the rug.

'Go outside and wait across the road by the bus stop. Text us when you see him coming.'

'Where will you be?' Turner asked Tartaglia, as Minderedes left the room.

'I'll cover the front from the bedroom. What about the girl?'

'She's in la-la land; she won't give you any trouble.'

'Well, I just hope we don't have long to wait. This place gives me the creeps.'

'I've got all the time in the world for Michael Jennings,' Turner said, sweeping an empty pizza box off the armchair and sitting down. 'This one's for Alan Gifford and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. I just hope we can make something stick. It would kill me if we have to let him go again.'

'How did you find Jennings? Did you get a tip-off?'

Turner nodded. 'I told you I put the word out with all his old mates. The girlfriend, or whatever she is her name's Heather she heard we were looking for him. She called me this morning as soon as he'd gone out. She shopped him for the princely sum of two hundred quid. I paid her a hundred up front, and told her there's another hundred to follow if we get Jennings, plus fifty for good behaviour if she cooperates.'

'How does she come to know Jennings?'

'They were at uni together, although you'd never know she's that young, or had it in her to study something. Poor thing looks wrecked. I'll bet she's on the game to finance her little habit.'

'Did she tell you anything useful about Jennings?'

Turner nodded. 'Said he's real strange. He likes to dress up in army stuff, combat gear, like he's a para or something. When I asked her about his sexual preferences, if he did anything weird with her, she clammed up like she was the Virgin Mary.'

'Maybe's she's embarrassed.'

'She's a bloody tom, for Christ's sake. No point in her being embarrassed, is there?'

Tartaglia wanted to say that even someone who sold their body could have a sense of dignity, but Turner wasn't in the mood for subtleties. 'Anything else?'

'Yes. She's got some interesting marks on her wrists, like rope burns, and bruising on her arms and neck, and it's not just from the needle.'

'Really?' Tartaglia said, now interested. 'And you think Jennings is responsible?'

'Has to be. I asked her if he hurt her, but again she wouldn't say anything, although she didn't actually deny it. Gave me the big eye treatment and sucked her finger. I don't know what he's been doing to her, what games he's been playing, but she's scared shitless.'

'Poor girl,' he said with feeling. He thought back to what Angela Harper had said about Michael Jennings fitting the profile and how the killer would be keeping his urges and fantasies in check. Harper had been right all along and he looked forward to telling her. 'Do you think Heather will talk?'

'Maybe. If she feels safe. But we'll have to lock Jennings up first, so he can't get to her in any way.'

'Why's she decided to turn him in?'

'She was also one of Catherine Watson's students and she knows what happened to her. Maybe what Jennings has been doing to hurt her has made her join up the dots. As I said, she's real scared. She told me he knows we're looking for him and he's threatened her. Said he'd kill her if she told anyone where he was.'

'Well, she's certainly brave. Thank God we're here now. I just hope we'll be able to find something to put him away. Have you had a chance to look around?'

Turner nodded. 'I had a good scout about once she'd gone out. Of course I put it all back the way I found it, so Jennings won't know anyone's been nosing around. But either it's well hidden, and we'll have to pull the place apart to find it once we've nabbed him, or he's got it stashed somewhere else.'

Tartaglia glanced around the room, thinking that there weren't many obvious hiding places. 'You're sure he's staying here?'

'That's what Heather said. He got kicked out of the place he was in before and moved in with her. I found some clothes of his in a chest of drawers in the bedroom, and there's a rucksack and a bag of books in the cupboard. But apart from that, nothing interesting.'

Tartaglia thought back again to what Harper had said. 'He has to be keeping his rape kit somewhere else, then. He'll want to have access to it, have it all close to him.'

'She said he's got a big bunch of keys which he never lets out of his sight. Said he practically brained her when she took them once to go to the shops while he was asleep. Maybe he's got a lockup somewhere.'

'If he has, we've got to find it.'

Tartaglia left Turner and went down the hall to the front room. As he opened the door, he was greeted by a wave of sweet, musky incense, which was so strong it masked the general odour of the flat for a moment. A pair of dirty red patterned curtains were drawn against the day, but there was enough light coming from the passage for him to make out Heather, lying flat on her back in the middle of a mattress on the floor, a sheet half twisted around her middle. He had seen more than his fair share of junkies in his time on the beat, often after they had OD'd, but he was not judgemental. It was impossible to understand another person's hell and looking at the outline of the young girl on the bed he felt a deep sadness.

He moved into the room, and as his eyes adjusted to the dim light he noticed how pale she looked, her skin almost luminously white. Dressed in tight jeans and a T-shirt that stopped well above her midriff, she looked like a doll, one scrawny arm flung across the pillow, her bare feet poking out awkwardly over the end of the mattress, not quite touching the floor. A syringe, spoon, lighter and other bits and pieces of addict paraphernalia lay scattered beside her, along with a tattered old teddy bear, its glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling.

He bent down and looked at Heather more closely, taking in her short, ragged brown hair and her neat-featured face, with its small, upturned nose and pretty little mouth. He thought he could see the bruises and burn marks at her wrists and ankles that Turner had described and some sort of bruising or shadowing on her neck. He instantly thought of the similar marks on Rachel Tenison's body. Maybe she had picked Jennings up in a bar somewhere. Maybe that was the connection. Catherine. Rachel. Heather. At least Heather was still alive. But Turner was wrong about one thing; in her self-induced torpor she appeared hardly more than a child.

It also struck him suddenly that she looked like Sam Donovan, although the idea instantly made him uncomfortable. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or the lack of light but, gazing at Heather, it was as though he had glimpsed Donovan in another life, or in a nightmare, and the thought brought him up sharp, making him instantly want to see her, warm, hearty and healthy, and put his arms around her. Maybe it was just the echoes from the Bridegroom case again coming back to haunt him. He wondered if Turner had noticed the physical resemblance, just as he wondered yet again what Turner had been doing at Donovan's house the other night.

Heather lay motionless and silent. Concerned, he knelt down on the mattress and listened hard until he finally picked up the faint, slow, shallow breathing. Reassured, he parked himself on a corner beside her, content with the steady drone of the traffic outside and the beat of the music from up above, and settled down to wait.

It wasn't long before he felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket; a text from Minderedes, as arranged, sent simultaneously to him and Turner: Jennings coming. Will follow.

He looked at his watch. Jennings was home early. He stood up and moved into the shadow behind the bedroom door. Within seconds, he heard the thud of feet on the basement stairs outside the window, then the sound of a key in the lock. The front door banged behind him and Jennings marched straight past the bedroom door and down the hall into the sitting room. As Tartaglia came out from behind the door and followed him along the hall, he heard shouts, followed by the drone of Turner reading Jennings his rights.

Jennings stood just inside the doorway facing Turner, arms tense by his sides as if ready to make a move, the muscles in the back of his neck rigid.

'Shut up, will you?' Jennings shouted, over Turner's voice. 'You're crazy. I've done nothing wrong.' He seemed unaware that Tartaglia had come in behind him.

Although Jennings couldn't have been more than about five eight or nine, he was muscular and thickset, as though he worked out regularly. He had thick, layered, streaky blond hair and was wearing jeans, trainers, and a navy blue fleece with a hood. Tartaglia instantly thought back to the description of the man Liz Volpe had seen in Holland Park, wondering if she might have been wrong about his height. At a distance of thirty yards, in poor light, it would be easy to make a mistake.

'You've got no right to be here. Get out!'

'We've got every right,' Turner said. 'Haven't you been listening?'

'You can't arrest me. I've done nothing wrong and you know it. This is persecution.' His voice was a high-pitched whine.

'Tell him how it is, Mark,' Turner said flatly, glancing over at Tartaglia.

Suddenly aware that there was someone else in the room, Jennings swung around, looking first at Tartaglia, then back at Turner again. 'I've done nothing wrong, do you hear me? You know I had nothing to do with Dr Watson's murder. Why are you persecuting me?'

Turner shook his head. 'Don't give me that self-righteous crap, Michael.'

'You're trying to stitch me up, like last time.'

'Shut it, Michael. Got new evidence. This time you won't get away.'

As Turner moved towards Jennings, Tartaglia saw a flash of steel. 'Look out,' he shouted.

'Hey, steady, Michael,' Turner said, jumping back and raising his big hands. 'Put the knife away. You don't want to do anything silly, now.'

Breaths coming in short, sharp bursts, Jennings shifted from foot to foot, the blade of what looked like a Commando knife glinting in the light. He held it out in front of him confidently, as though he knew how to use it, his eyes flicking from Turner to Tartaglia and back again.

Tartaglia wondered if Jennings was high on something, although his speech and coordination seemed normal. 'Put the knife down and we can talk. That's all we want to do. Just talk.'

Jennings stabbed the air with the knife. 'No. Get away from me. You can't arrest me.'

'Don't be a plonker, Michael,' Turner said. 'It won't do you any good. You're coming with us.'

'You're not taking me. I'm innocent, I tell you.'

'Then put the bloody knife down.'

'No. Let me out.'

His voice was shrill and desperate. It was an extreme reaction given that he had been through this before and Tartaglia wondered if there was something more than a bit of alcohol or dope behind it. He needed to be handled very carefully and Turner's heavy-handed approach was not helping matters.

'Look, if you're innocent, you've got nothing to worry about,' Tartaglia said, trying to calm him.

'Yeah, that's right, Michael. Give it up, for Christ's sake.' Turner took another step forwards.

'No,' Jennings shouted, shifting around towards Tartaglia, as if about to make a run for it.

Tartaglia raised both palms to him in an appeasing gesture. 'Whoa, Michael. Put the knife down.'

Jennings was sweating, face bright pink in the light, and he was panting loudly. He looked anything but rational. Turner started to edge forwards again behind him.

'Back off, Simon,' Tartaglia shouted, not taking his eyes off Jennings. 'Let me handle it.' He lowered his voice. 'I'm going to ask you one more time, Michael. Put the knife down.'

Jennings held his ground. 'Get outta the way or I'll fuckin' kill you.'

Hands still up, Tartaglia clenched his fists and positioned himself, ready. 'Can't do that, Michael. I really don't want to hurt you, but you've got to come with us.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Tartaglia saw Turner move forwards again.