“No. We never did. We suspected the pimp, but he had a cast-iron alibi, of course. There was some speculation later that she might have been one of the Ripper’s first, before the ‘stone in the sock’ murder in 1969. Amazing what you can do with hindsight. But we’d never heard of the Ripper then, and prostitute murders were all too common.”

“And all too rarely investigated,” said Banks, remembering his days in Soho in the eighties. “Plus ça change.”

“Limited resources and too long a list of suspects. What can you do? You know as well as I do that most killers are related or in some way close to their victims. And stupid. Normally it doesn’t take you more than a day or so to run them down. But there are some—prostitutes, stranger murders, random killings, clever buggers, gang hits—they’re a little harder and call for more resources.”

“Do you remember the murder of a bloke called Tony Monaghan, found stabbed in the public toilets in Hyde Park? This would have been a bit later than the Caxton business. October.”

Bradley’s expression turned grim. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember that one, all right.”

AT LEAST Gerry hadn’t teased Annie about appearing at work in the same clothes she had worn the day before. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed. Or perhaps she was just being polite. As Annie was suffering through a three extra-strength acetaminophen hangover, she was thankful for small mercies. Banks had seemed in good spirits when they had met briefly over morning coffee before she set off for the station and he drove off to Leeds.

Before they left to talk to Paul Warner, Gerry filled Annie in on the previous evening’s developments. The only new information was that DC Doug Wilson had found Albert’s mate Ali in the Wytherton Arms. Unfortunately, Ali proved uninformative when questioned about what he had told Albert about older Pakistanis and underage girls. It was just a rumor, or so he told them. Such rumors were always doing the rounds.

Annie was also more than happy to let Gerry drive her to Wytherton later that day, where they found Paul Warner’s flat on the second floor of an old detached house on the northwestern edge of the estate. She understood it wasn’t a part of the estate, wasn’t a council house, but was privately owned and rented.