‘You are sick,’ she interrupted him.

  ‘Not sick enough to allow anyone to take over my case without permission!’

  There was a pause. Anna sat, head bowed.

  ‘I will think about what I am going to do with you, but you could be taken off the case.’

  ‘I was hoping no one would find out.’

  He sighed. ‘Sometimes, Anna, your crass naivety stuns me. You think that because of your connections with me, you can do what you bloody well feel like doing.’

  ‘That isn’t true.’

  ‘Then what is the truth?’

  Anna stood up. ‘I was afraid you were allowing the case to run out of control because of personal reasons. I was concerned that you were widening the case to include your attack. Then, when you collapsed, I had serious concerns as to whether or not you should still be working.’

  He shook his head, smiling, as if stunned by what she had said; then he wiped the smile off fast and gritted his teeth. ‘So, DI Travis, what were you going to do about it?’

  She could hardly get her breath. She had to swallow over and over, then excused herself to go into the kitchen. She fetched a glass of water and returned to the lounge to find him sifting through her notes.

  ‘I said, what were you going to do about it?’

  Anna sat down. ‘I would do anything for your well-being.’

  He gave a short bark of a laugh.

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘It’s bullshit; you were going to have to make a report, right? Get me removed from the case. Why can’t you tell the truth?’

  ‘Because I…that is not the truth.’

  Langton sighed and rubbed his knee again. ‘Well, I don’t want to waste time bickering. Did you come up with anything worth breaking the rules for?’

  She passed him her notebook. ‘They are brothers, Eamon and Idris; the only way I got Idris to open up and to write this was because I brought up the voodoo hex on Eamon. It was the only time he showed any sort of reaction. I gave him a story about visiting a voodoo doctor who thought he might be able to help Eamon. Idris bought it, and then wrote this.’

  Langton read the scrawled writing and put the book down.

  ‘Idris is afraid of voodoo himself; he speaks to no one in prison and is terrified of anyone knowing he even talked to me. He’s had no visitors and remains in his cell during recreation. I asked him to give me a signal if any names I mentioned meant anything to him; the only ones were Sickert, Rashid and Camorra. I think if we can get some help for his brother, he will keep his bargain and he will talk.’

  Langton nodded. ‘Just how do you think we can do that?’

  ‘There are numerous voodoo specialists; we contact them, see if they can get to Eamon. If he’s still alive, then we should try and do what we can–possibly even arrange some kind of meeting, so we get Idris out of the prison.’

  Langton pinched the bridge of his nose.

  ‘If that would be possible,’ she added lamely.

  ‘He is still alive–just,’ Langton said. ‘They are trying to feed him intravenously, but he won’t let them. He even tried to bite off his own tongue.’

  She looked at him. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘About you?’ he said softly, without moving.

  ‘No–Idris. I am certain he has information, and if this is a way to get it then we should move fast.’

  Langton gripped the side of the sofa and rose, gritting his teeth; he was very obviously in pain. ‘I’ll organize something.’

  ‘Great! Do you want something to eat?’

  ‘No. I need sleep. I’m going back to my place.’

  Anna walked with him to the front door. ‘What about me?’ she asked.

  He turned, resting his hand on her shoulder. ‘Ah, Travis, you will have to wait and see. I’ve not decided, but it’s going to have to be put on report–you know that, don’t you?’

  She stepped back. ‘Do I also put on a report that you are still suffering—’

  He gripped her shoulder tightly. ‘Don’t try making a fucking deal with me. You are so out of line, and lucky I haven’t already kicked you off the case. I haven’t, let’s say because of past relationships, but from now on, you tread the line or I’ll bloody get you demoted–do you understand?’

  She felt his fingers digging into her, and it hurt. ‘Yes, sir.’

  He released his hold on her and she opened the front door. ‘First thing, I want you to go over to Clerkenwell station; a pal of yours is part of the enquiry into the body of the boy found in the canal–DI Frank Brandon. Have a talk to him and see what they have come up with. Then get back to the incident room for a briefing at two.’

  He walked out, not looking back at her as he headed for the lift. He never used to take it, but she knew that he was unable to walk down the stairs without pain these days.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said quietly.

  He turned to look at her; he had such a strange look on his face. ‘You are a clever girl, Anna. I care about you. Don’t blow your career. You have just come very close to it.’

  The lift opened and he stepped in before she could say anything. She shut her front door and went into the kitchen. From the window, she watched him limping across the road. There was an unmarked patrol car waiting; she hadn’t seen him drive since his attack. She saw how much difficulty he had getting into the front seat; eventually the driver came round to help him.

  Anna returned to the lounge and stacked all her notes and reports into her briefcase ready for the morning. She felt as if she was on automatic pilot. Even getting ready for bed, cleaning her teeth, putting on her nightshirt, she couldn’t kick her brain into action. Unable to sleep, she got up and brought her briefcase to bed. She sat, propped up by pillows, and forced herself to read up on the case of the unidentified boy whose dismembered body had been found in the canal.

  It was now many weeks after the wretched discovery. To date, they had no report of any missing child of his age and race. He was estimated to be six or seven years old; his head was missing, as were both hands. He had marks to his small torso that were possibly linked to some sadistic ritual. It had been estimated that hundreds of children had been brought into the UK illegally and then disappeared without trace. Gail Sickert’s children–about the same age–were still missing. She doubted that they could have been taken out of the country, but this was a possibility; another was that somewhere in the UK, they were being used for sexual perversions or sadistic rituals, possibly voodoo ceremonies.

  She shut the file. If Camorra was involved in their case, either directly or indirectly, she was certain they would eventually trace him. However, if Camorra had instigated illegal entry for Sickert, Rashid Burry and God knows how many others, he could have a virtual army to make sure he was protected. He must also have a lot of money; these desperate people were paying thousands for fake documents to get into the UK. It would also mean Camorra had a hold over them for the rest of their lives.

  Anna glanced at the clock: it was coming up to 2 a.m. She put all her files back into the briefcase and turned off her bedside light, then lay staring at the ceiling in the darkness. Langton was right–she was more and more sure of it. As he often said, there were never any coincidences, just facts.

  Back in his own flat, Langton had taken a double dose of sleeping tablets to try and obliterate the pain in his leg. It had got no better; in fact, it seemed to feel worse. He topped the pills off with half a bottle of whisky before he crashed into a deep, troubled sleep. The mounting case file and lack of results tore at him. He knew he had to watch his back from now on: the one person he had cared for deeply was also the one ready to stab him in the back, and the revelation had shocked and pained him.

  Old Jack Travis had spawned a detective as wayward and as obsessive as he had been. As a young, wet-behind-the-ears detective, Langton had wanted to prove himself better than anyone else on Jack’s team. The old man had taken him out to a pub and ordered a pint for each of them.

  ‘You are the best that’s come out of training school in a long while, Jimmy, and you’ve got a big future ahead of you. But unless you become a team player, and play on my team, I am kicking you off my investigation.’

  Langton had almost swallowed his beer backwards; he had thought Jack was taking him out to congratulate him on his work.

  ‘Every man and woman working on this enquiry answers to me, and I protect them. You will need for the future to build friends, not make enemies inside your own camp.’ The big man had put his arm round the chastised young Langton’s shoulders. ‘You earn loyalty, Jimmy; you earn it.’

  After the case had been filed, Langton was promoted as a result of a report made by Jack Travis. In part, that was the reason why Langton had brought Anna onto his team for her first murder case. It was also the reason he had saved her career in the Red Dahlia investigation: he was loyal to Jack Travis. He would now have to give Jack’s daughter the same lecture Jack had given to him. It was not going to be easy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Anna and Frank Brandon sat opposite each other in his station’s canteen. He was back to using that same cologne that made her eyes water, but he was still very friendly and greeted her warmly.

  He stirred his milky coffee, shaking his head. ‘My God. From what I hear, you are up to your eyes in a nightmare case.’

  ‘You can say that again. It’s the reason I’m here.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Your boss had words with my SO. I can take you down to the incident room, if you can call it that; we’re about to close the file. We’ve come up with zilch–no identification. We’ve tried every avenue. I guess we’ll get what’s left of him buried.’

  ‘So you’ve still got his corpse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  ‘Sure, I can run you over there, but you won’t get much, bar a bad night’s sleep; poor little sod.’

  ‘Doesn’t he have markings on his body, as if he’s been subjected to some kind of ritual?’

  Brandon nodded. ‘Yeah, but we’re not sure what kind. We’ve even been to see a voodoo expert at London University. He seemed pretty clued up–spent a lot of time in Louisiana and New Orleans. We also went to see some quacks in the East End.’

  ‘Can I have all these contact numbers?’

  ‘Of course. He also suggested that they could be tribal markings, but we’ve not got any confirmation. All we know for sure is he was around six or seven years of age, and died from asphyxiation, but even the autopsy was hedgy. His last meal was rice and fish, but he was quite undernourished.’ He sighed. ‘He was somebody’s son and yet no one has come forward, which underlines the fact that he could have been brought into the country illegally.’

  Brandon then changed the subject to ask about Arthur Murphy. Anna gave him all the details that she knew about his murder, and Brandon gave a soft laugh. ‘Well, he got what he deserved; and it saves the Government a lot of money–fifteen years of three meals a day. I bet old Harry was well pleased. He’d have strung him up but then, if he had his way, he’d give lethal injections to every paedophile and killer clogging up the prisons.’

  Anna drained her coffee and said that she was due back at her own station by two, so if they could get cracking, she’d be grateful.

  The incident room was as Brandon had described, with only a few officers present. She was given access to all the case reports and statements and was surprised at how much paperwork had been done without any result. The black bin-liner had been traced to a factory and matched with a bulk load made six months prior to the discovery. The interviews had focused on the area where the body had been found, but it seemed that every possible clue as to how the child had ended up in the canal had resulted in a blank. He was naked, so they could get nothing from any clothes and, without his hands or skull, they obviously had no dental records to check and no fingerprints to file. His DNA would be kept on record, along with a thick dossier of forensic photographs and autopsy reports. As Brandon had said, all they could do now was bury him.

  Brandon did not accompany Anna into the cold storage; he’d already viewed the body too many times to want to see it again. She understood why. Seeing the tiny child’s headless body, his hands severed, was not something she would ever forget. His torso had deep welts across the chest and, between them, a cross had been cut into the skin. The tissue had had time to scar, which led them to deduce that the cuts had been inflicted some weeks before he had died. This was further horror, to think the child had been subjected to this torture whilst still alive.

  Professor John Starling agreed to see her at eleven; she did not contact the other voodoo doctors, as she knew she would not have enough time before the briefing back at her own station.

  When Anna was shown into his office at the London University campus on the edge of Bloomsbury, she was surprised by the Professor’s appearance. He was very tall and slender and wore a loose-fitting tracksuit. His greying-blond hair was long and tied in a tight ponytail. He had a rather handsome, long face with pale blue eyes. Incense had been used in the room and hung lightly in the air, a musky sweet smell.

  ‘Please come in, sit down,’ he said courteously, gesturing towards a low sofa.

  He offered her water, not tea or coffee. The walls of the office were lined with rows of framed credentials. His qualifications ranged from Egyptology to Hieroglyphic analysis, Anthropology and Criminology. He saw her looking at them, and laughed.

  ‘I switch interests; I have a drawer full of even more certificates. I also collect Persian carpets but, as you can see,’ he tapped the floor with his foot, ‘this is not one of them.’

  He apologized for his tracksuit, but said he was due to give a yoga session to some of his students. He then crossed his legs to sit in front of her on a woven Japanese mat. She found him fascinating–quite unlike any professor she had ever come across at Oxford. She was amused at the thought of Frank Brandon interacting with him; his cologne would compete with the smell of joss sticks that hung in the air.

  Starling remained silent as she opened her briefcase and took out the details of the young boy’s body.

  ‘I’ve been shown these before,’ he said, as she passed them to him, then reached up for a large magnifying glass from a desk with stacks of files on every inch of it.

  ‘I was wondering if the markings could be made by some kind of voodoo ritual,’ Anna said.

  ‘No–well, not in any ceremony that I have come across, though it could be some amateur, professing knowledge of voodoo. Voodoo was originally used only for healing; it was very positive. Practitioners were kindly and knowledgeable people and probably came into the US via the slave trade. They had herbs for medical treatments. The slaves were snatched from their own environment, and many suffered severe mental disorientation; they would look to anyone who could ease that agony of separation. Voodoo priests and priestesses therefore became like present-day therapists, giving their patients mental and physical comfort. To dance into exhaustion was healing, to wail was a release, and it was not until many years later that the powers wielded by these priests led them to pervert the original concept.’

  He continued to use the magnifying glass, carefully scrutinizing each photograph of the unidentified headless boy.

  ‘Haiti and many other offshoot countries began to elaborate the ceremonies, because they realized it would generate money. They discovered the power to manipulate their patients using drugs and mind games: the threat of voodoo is a very simple device used to exert control, but only those who believe in its powers will succumb to them.’

  He suddenly looked up, and cocked his head to one side.

  ‘I remember when I was about sixteen years old, a group of us were messing around with a Ouija board. We sat holding hands in a darkened room. One of the kids placed a glass in the centre of the board and started asking questions in a weird high-pitched voice. There was a girl there, Christina, the same age, but from a pretty dysfunctional family. Anyway, we messed around and started pushing the glass backwards and forwards, when it suddenly shot towards her. I didn’t touch it, but I presumed the other kids were moving it.’

  He frowned, turning away. ‘I am trying to recall exactly what she asked. I think it was, “Will I be married?” You know, nothing freaky. The glass spelled out NO and there was a lot of whispering and giggling as she asked, “Why not?” And the glass moved to the letter D, then E, then A, and T, H.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘How the mind can play tricks. I don’t know which one of us pushed the glass towards her, but six weeks later she was found hanging from the banisters in her parents’ home.’

  ‘Was that why you have made a study of…’ Anna looked around the room at his many credentials.

  ‘Good God, no! I am first and foremost an Egyptologist; everything else is more or less simply down to interest and fascination.’

  There was a long pause as Professor Starling returned to studying the photographs. Anna wondered if he had told the truth; perhaps it was he who had spelled out DEATH to the young teenage girl.

  ‘They have found no sexual abuse to the child, correct?’ the man asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  He slowly gathered the photographs and stacked them neatly before passing them back to her. ‘His head and hands were removed, and the body dumped in a black plastic bin-liner in the canal, as if it was no longer of any use. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He somehow managed to get from the cross-legged position to standing upright in one fluid movement. ‘I would say that the poor child was used by some perverted group of people; if they did not use the child for sex, they used him for some kind of ceremony. I cannot say categorically whether it was voodoo or Satanic.’

  He went to a bookshelf and looked along it, trailing his fingers, then removed a book. Anna looked at the open page he offered her: there was a shrunken skull, hanging by its hair from a cross, and around the neck of a man wearing a white robe and carrying the burning cross was a necklace. Attached to the necklace were what looked like blackened birds’ claws.