Above Suspicion Read Online Free PDF

strayed into our killer’s target area. To date all his victims have been hardened prostitutes, all in their late thirties or early forties. Melissa may be our biggest breakthrough yet. It’s imperative we move like the clappers.’
    Anna made copious notes, but not being privy to any of the previous case files, she had no idea what Langton was talking about most of the time. What she picked up was the following: on the night Melissa disappeared, she had an argument with her boyfriend. This had occurred at a late-night cafe close to Covent Garden. She was last seen walking in the direction of Soho. The boyfriend assumed she was heading towards Oxford Circus tube station. He finished his drink and headed after her. But Melissa, it seemed, had found a shortcut, perhaps down Greek Street. Inadvertently, she went through the red-light district.
    Though Melissa’s boyfriend, Mark Rawlins, called her mobile phone incessantly from the tube station, it was useless. The phone had been turned off. Frightened for her, he retraced his footsteps, hoping he’d bump into her. After returning to The Bistro, around 2.30 a.m., he went back to Oxford Circus tube station, then on to Melissa’s flat, but she had not arrived home. Neither Mark nor her three flatmates ever saw Melissa again.
    The following day, after calling her parents in Guildford and everyone else he could think of, Mark finally contacted the police. Forty-eight hours later, a missing person’s file was lodged and circulated, along with photographs and requests for information.
    No one came forward, even after a television reconstruction shown four weeks after her disappearance. They had not one eyewitness who could give a clue to her disappearance, with the possible exception of a waiter who had been smoking a cigarette outside a renowned gay club and who saw a blonde girl talking to the driver of a pale-coloured, or maybe white, car. At the time, he assumed she was a prostitute, he said. Though he didn’t get a good look at her face, he did notice her black T-shirt, which had diamante studs that sparkled in the neon lights outside the massage parlour opposite.
    Langton suggested that their killer, who haunted red-light districts, could have mistaken Melissa for a call-girl: outside a strip joint very late at night, a blonde in a sexy outfit, short skirt and strappy sandals - could their killer have been the one to pick her up?
    Though the briefing continued for another hour, the super finally insisted they did not yet have enough information for him to take to the commander and request this murder enquiry be handed over to Langton’s team. Hearing this, Langton jumped to his feet, holding the photos of the six dead women like a pack of cards.
    ‘Their hands tied with their bra, strangled with their own tights. If forensic can verify that the knots around the neck and wrists were tied in a similar way, then Melissa Stephens becomes the latest victim of a serial killing. If we get this case then we’ve some hope of catching the bastard, but we’ve got to move! Any time lost in farting around begging for the enquiry is a fucking waste of time!’
    With that, the team broke up; they would simply have to wait until the following morning.
    After the team had left the briefing room, Langton sat moodily in a hard-backed chair. He looked up when he heard Anna crossing the floor towards him. He held in his hand the photos of the dead women.
    ‘They were all alive, once. Albeit in one wretched condition or another, but nevertheless they were alive, with families, husbands, sometimes kids. Now they’re dead and whether or not they were junkies, whores, drunks, or just fucked-up human beings, they have a right to have us hunt down who killed them with as much press as Melissa Stephens.’
    He sighed, pinching his nose. “Course, on the other hand, I could be wrong. We won’t know one hundred per cent until we get the forensic evidence back.’
    ‘But you really do think