Lastnight Read Free

you don’t cut yourself. I’m not happy about having to ask you for help, but I don’t seem to have a choice.’
    Nightingale’s eyebrows headed skyward. ‘I’m not a cop any more, remember?’
    ‘I’m not over the moon about this either, but conventional investigating is getting us nowhere,’ said the superintendent.
    ‘I’m not a cop,’ Nightingale repeated.
    ‘At least hear me out,’ said Chalmers, pushing himself up out of his seat and walking around the desk. ‘You’re not a cop but last time I checked you were still a citizen and that comes with responsibilities.’
    ‘I pay my council tax,’ said Nightingale. ‘And my television licence.’
    ‘Well done you,’ said the superintendent. ‘Come and have a look at what I’m dealing with.’
    He opened the door and headed out. Nightingale sighed and followed him. They walked down a corridor to a set of double doors. There were meshed windows on each door and over one of the windows someone had stuck a sheet of paper on which the letters MIT were printed. Murder Investigation Team.
    The room was about fifty feet long and twelve feet wide. A dozen tables had been set up in the middle of the room, each with its own computer terminal. There were half a dozen civilian workers sitting at terminals. Nightingale assumed they were inputting information into the HOLMES system, a vital part of any murder investigation. Strictly speaking it was HOLMES 2 as the first Home Office Large Major Enquiry System had been substantially improved. By inputting every single piece of information into HOLMES, the detectives could spot patterns and links that they would otherwise miss.
    Another four tables had been pushed against the wall furthest from the door and four detectives in suits were on the phone. There were files and stacks of paper everywhere and a row of metal filing cabinets on top of which were tea- and coffee-making equipment. It was, like most incident rooms, organised chaos.
    Five whiteboards had been fixed to one wall and even before they walked up to them Nightingale knew there was one per victim. ‘Five Goths all killed in the past two weeks,’ said Chalmers. ‘Three male, two female. Ages between eighteen and thirty-nine. Two from North London, one from West London, two from South London. Two were gay and three were straight, so far as we know. Two students, one long-term unemployed, one website designer, one shop assistant. The one thing that they have in common is that they were Goths. Strike that – it’s the only thing they have in common.’
    ‘So they’re hate crimes?’ said Nightingale.
    ‘That’s the theory we’re working on,’ said Chalmers. ‘But that’s our problem. If the victims are being singled out because they’re Goths, that doesn’t give us a profile of the killers.’
    ‘Killers, plural?’
    Nightingale walked over to the first of the boards. Written across the top, in felt tip capital letters, was the name of the victim – STELLA WALSH . To the left of the name was a head-and-shoulders shot of a pretty teenage girl with spiky black hair and heavy mascara. Below the head-and-shoulders photograph were five crime-scene pictures. Stella had been stripped naked and her flesh cut to ribbons. Nightingale grimaced as he looked from photograph to photograph.
    ‘The nature of the crime scenes suggests that there are more than one,’ said Chalmers. ‘But the only thing we know is that they hate Goths. That’s not enough to go on. The Senior Investigating Officer is Detective Chief Inspector Rawlings but he’s getting nowhere. Not from want of trying, it has to be said, he’s done everything by the book but with zero results. Now we’ve got a tweeting campaign saying that if two of the victims hadn’t been gay, we’d be doing more to solve the case.’
    ‘Are you serious?’ asked Nightingale, turning to look at him.
    Chalmers nodded. ‘The Met is now being described as institutionally homophobic and the commissioner is