Читать книгу Soul Murder - Daniel Blake - Страница 30

The first forty-eight hours after Kohler’s murder were already up. Patrese and Beradino both knew that no joy now meant ever-diminishing returns later.

‘Forensics have found a strand of hair in Saint Paul,’ Beradino said. ‘Near Kohler’s body, but unburnt. They reckon Asian origin. Probably Pakistan. Heavily treated, so almost certainly female. And cut neatly; not fallen out naturally, not yanked forcefully.’

‘A Pakistani woman who’d just been for a haircut?’

‘Could be. They’re checking hairdressers now. There are no Pakistani women on the cathedral’s staff roster, we know that. No Asians at all, actually.’

‘Which means nothing. The cathedral’s a public place. People come in and out the whole time. That hair could have come from anyone, anytime. You could clean that floor for days, weeks, and miss something like that. Or you could sweep it up and then deposit it back there again some time later without knowing. Perhaps it got tangled in the broom fibers and then dropped free again.’

‘Exactly. It’s the longest of long shots.’

‘And the kids in the photos?’

‘Sacred Heart have identified most of them, and given contact details for everyone they have in their database. Uniforms are working their way through those people as we speak. About two-thirds still live in Pittsburgh, so they’re being given priority.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing, so far. All of them have alibis. Most hadn’t seen Kohler in many moons. No discernible motives, that anyone can tell.’

‘What are they like now?’

‘What are who like?’

‘The people. The ones in the photos.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Are they, you know, fucked up in some way? Junkies, depressives, suicides?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Looking for a motive for whoever killed Kohler, that’s why. Happily married guy with kids ain’t gonna wake up one morning and decide to off the bishop, is he?’

‘I guess not. Far as I know, they’re a pretty standard cross-section. Check the files, if you want. They’re in the system.’

Patrese logged on, and soon found that Beradino was right; they were a pretty standard cross-section.

More than half were married, about a fifth were divorced, some of them shockingly young. A few gays, a handful with drug problems, or at least problems bad enough to have shown up on their records. There’d be a lot more beneath the surface, Patrese was sure of that; a lot of things that those people wouldn’t or couldn’t tell the cops. And why should they? Cops were cops, not social workers.

Patrese recognized more names than he’d thought he would. It was like some sort of surreal, virtual school reunion; people whom he’d frozen in his mind at some stage in their teens suddenly reincarnated on the screen in front of him as adults with jobs, and lives, and problems, years and heartbreaks and triumphs and catastrophes away from how he’d remembered them.

‘How you’ve grown!’ he recalled friends of his parents saying when he’d been a kid; and of course he’d grown, he’d always thought. It would have been a whole heap weirder if he hadn’t. So too with these people. Of course they’d changed.

Later that afternoon, Patrese went back in front of the media, and tossed them tasty but fundamentally unfilling morsels.

Yes, they were following up multiple leads. Yes, they were aware the first forty-eight hours had elapsed. Yes, they understood the city’s shock and outrage.

No, he wouldn’t give operational details. No, he wouldn’t commit himself to any predictions. No, he didn’t want to send a message directly to the killer.

He didn’t say what he really thought: that, two murders in – and if Mustafa Bayoumi’s alibi held when they finally managed to interview him – what they needed more than anything else was a third.

A third would give them more evidence. A third might persuade Chance to call in the Bureau. A third was what they feared and wanted in equal measures.