Anna stood in front of the mirror and checked her own smile. Perhaps she should switch to that whitening toothpaste? She lay down on the hotel bed. If Daniels was about to undergo extensive dental surgery, he wouldn’t have cared where he left his teeth marks. Could someone be so calculating? So devious?
She recalled finding her father sitting with a glass of brandy and staring in the firelight. She was young at the time and she sat on his knee, trying to draw him back to her from the dark place he occupied sometimes. He gave her a sad smile when she asked what the matter was and gently drew the hair away from her face.
It was inconceivable that something could be wrong with her father. ‘Don’t you feel well?’ she asked worriedly.
He rested his head for a brief second against his child’s shoulder.
‘I’m fine, sweetheart. It’s just sometimes Daddy works with such twisted, devious souls that their sickness clings afterwards, like a bad smell.’
‘What does devious mean?’
He sipped his brandy. ‘Saying you didn’t do something when you know that you did; weaving lies to make everyone believe you didn’t do this thing, but you know that you did and you enjoy the fact that your lies have fooled everyone. That’s devious.’
‘Did someone do something devious to you?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
He said there was a man who had sworn he never hurt one little girl and because they had believed him, another little girl got hurt.
Years later, Anna found out from her mother that he was talking about a child killer, a case that had traumatized him deeply. Ever since then, the word ‘devious’ had a powerful memory association, which she now attached to Alan Daniels.
The door was rapped so hard that Anna almost shot out of her bed. She had been sleeping naked, so she grabbed a large bath towel on her way to the door.
‘Who is it?’ she asked.
‘Me,’ Langton said.
Anna unlocked her door. She was still tucking the towel tightly around her chest. He was leaning drunkenly against the frame. He waved the notes she had slipped under his door.
‘So, this Klein guy came up trumps? The bastard planted those dental records in his apartment, right?’
She took a step back. ‘I’d say it’s a possibility.’
‘Brilliant! Bloody brilliant!’
‘Do want me to order some coffee?’
‘Nope, going to crash out. G’night.’
‘G’night.’
He tottered off down the corridor. She watched, peeking round her door, as he attempted to slot in the card to open his room door: there were three swipes and some swearing and cursing, before the green light bleeped and he disappeared inside. She shut her door, sighing: even if she had been stark naked when he appeared at her door, he probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Anna had ordered coffee, orange juice and a blueberry muffin. What arrived was grapefruit juice, coffee and what appeared to be a banana muffin. There was no time to complain to room service, so she finished it.
She sat in the lobby waiting for Langton to pay their hotel bill. He looked like shit: unshaven and crumpled.
‘Sleep well, did you?’ she asked sweetly.
He grimaced, obviously hung over. She decided not to ask if he had gained ‘vital information’. It did not seem likely.
When they arrived at the airport, she traipsed after him resignedly as he strode around, going to the wrong airline first, then swearing as they retraced their steps to the American Airlines desk. By the time their flight was called, Anna reckoned they had covered the entire airport. He really was useless at directions, she realized, and he was constantly checking for his passport, then the tickets.
They at last boarded the plane. As they weren’t on the same row, she still could not ask him about his meeting with Angie the previous night.
It was not a long flight: under two hours. Langton had decided not to hire a car on their arrival in Chicago, but to use taxis. Even though the hotel was very inexpensive, it was really not bad. They were to meet up in the hotel lobby at two o’clock.
Langton was pacing up and down impatiently when she arrived. He had shaved and changed his suit and wore a white shirt and his usual dark navy tie.
‘Where were you? Let’s go. Taxi’s waiting,’ he snapped.
Tottering after him, she looked at her watch. She was five minutes early.
During the taxi ride to the Chicago Police Department he asked her to repeat her conversation with Klein. He sat with his eyes closed, listening. When she finished, she asked how his meeting with Angie had gone. He shrugged.
‘Good. It was good.’
‘I’m sure it was. But did you get any information?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He seemed more tetchy than usual.
‘Just that the meeting went on quite late. You do remember waking me up?’
‘Course.’ He gave her one of his direct stares. ‘So, Travis … do you always sleep naked?’
Before she could think what to say, they arrived at the Chicago Police Department. He paid the cab fare and walked ahead of her.
‘Detective Langton?’ A uniformed officer with a crew cut spoke loudly as he approached them across the marble floor of the reception area.
Langton stood and he and the officer shook hands.
He flashed a smile at her. ‘Hi, you must be Anna. I’m Captain Jeff O’Reilly.’ He shook her hand, squeezing her fingers tightly. Yet another American with really great teeth, she thought.
‘Good to meet you. Right, we can go up to Records first. Then, if you want a drive around, I got a patrol car outside.’
Two floors up, Langton and Anna followed O’Reilly through a cavernous room filled with thousands of files until they reached the Z section. O’Reilly removed a file, signed it out and took them into a small room off another corridor with just a table and chairs inside.
He held up a photograph of a blonde woman, with wide-apart brown eyes. ‘This is Sadie Zadine. How she was.’ Then he took out a second picture of the victim, in situ. She was lying face down, her hands tightly tied behind her back with a red lace bra. Her neck was wrapped in flesh-coloured tights. The identical MO to their victims; no suspect, no witness, Travis had noted one other similarity.
‘Sadie’s handbag, was that found?’
O’Reilly raised his eyebrows. ‘Her what?’
‘I think you call them purses. We call them handbags in England.’
‘Ah. I’m with you,’ O’Reilly said. ‘No. No handbag, as you call it.’