‘He’s safely behind bars,’ said May.
‘OK, but it’s someone like that. I’d say he set out to remove your witness and did a very neat job. How did Waters get into Coram’s Fields? You’re not allowed inside the perimeter without a child.’
‘He had a little girl with him,’ said May. ‘Coram’s Fields has several CCTVs around the outer railing. Unfortunately, Mr Waters was standing behind a very large plane tree when he was stabbed.’
‘Then how did his attacker get in?’
‘He vaulted the fence covered by some bushes – the council had been due to cut them back – and made his way straight towards Waters. He knew his target.’
‘Waters was with – who, his daughter?’ Kershaw’s interest always extended beyond the bodies on his table.
‘We don’t know. We’ve got a muddy shot of a girl running away, maybe nine or ten years old, that’s all. We’ve only just started piecing together the witness reports. She ran off moments before he was attacked and carried on until she reached the far side of the park railing. It looks like Waters warned her away. We’ve got a brief shot of his arms outstretched, then we lose him.’
‘Did you get a description of the killer?’
‘It’s useless,’ May said. ‘Black motorcycle helmet, black leathers, boots, broad build, young and obviously fit. Thanks to the helmet we don’t even know if he was Caucasian. No branding on the jacket, which is unusual. Probably removed it to avoid identification, which also suggests intent.’
‘Well, I think our crime scene manager is probably going to disappoint you on particle evidence, assuming we can afford any proper tests. There isn’t much to go on. I get the feeling our man stuck his right arm out, gripped with the left, hauling Waters into close contact by keeping him off balance. You can’t see anything on the CCTV?’
‘Not a sausage. My guess is he knew where the cameras were positioned, and avoided walking on the grass, so there are no prints to speak of.’
‘About the intent to kill. I’d say Waters was targeted and dropped as neatly as a bull at a corrida. There’s a fresh abrasion on the left knee.’ Kershaw picked up his telescopic indicator – a bequest from his predecessor – and flicked it at the corpse’s leg. The Victorian device served no real purpose but was a trade accessory, like a journalist’s pencil. ‘It’s a textbook army hit.’
‘So you think it was a professional job?’
‘It seems the likeliest scenario. Do you want to tell me what this is all about? You interviewed a – what, suspect, witness? – who was then murdered. And you don’t have the case, because it came to me direct. So what on earth’s going on?’
‘You remember Oskar Kasavian?’
‘Of course. Is he still trying to close the unit down?’
‘He commissioned us to investigate his wife. She’s been suffering from behavioural problems and has turned into a security risk. She was being shadowed by Waters here, who was commissioned to take photos of her, but we think she told him something that got him killed. Oh, and his killer matches the description of the man who mugged Arthur’s biographer, Anna Marquand.’
‘Well, that’s as clear as creosote,’ said Giles, covering the body. ‘It’s a bit of a tenuous link, isn’t it?’
‘Not at all. There were two murders in London today, in a city of eight million people. One was the victim of a gang stabbing on a Tower Hamlets estate and the other was Waters, who appeared in my office just a day before he was killed. I’d say we have a link, wouldn’t you?’
‘Then where does the kid fit in?’
‘No idea yet. There’s no reason to assume there’s a connection between her and Mrs Kasavian, although I’m sure Arthur is looking hard. I’ve sent Dan Banbury over to Waters’s apartment to retrace his final day on earth. He enjoys jobs like that. I have to say, it feels like we’re pulling on threads that may unravel something big.’
‘Like what?’ asked Giles.
‘I don’t know,’ May admitted gloomily. ‘Something that’ll probably come down and crush us all.’
Dan Banbury was the only member of the unit who still knocked on the door of Bryant and May’s shared office, or at least he knocked on the lintel, as the door had been removed by the decorators because it was sticking and had yet to be put back because they had lost the screws between the floorboards. ‘I’ve got Waters’s movements for the full day,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come and see?’