City of Sins. Daniel Blake

have been wiped cleaner than Fatty Arbuckle’s plate,’ Selma said.

      ‘There are ways of retrieving deleted files,’ Phelps said.

      ‘And there are ways of deleting them so they’re never found again. Who do you think has got the better tech guys: us, or them?’

      Frenzy in the incident room: a Chinese parliament of men barking down phones, tapping information into computers, stonewalling reporters, swilling coffee, and shouting at each other.

      Sound and fury, and nothing. A perverse mixture of adrenalin and frustration: adrenalin that they had so much information to chase up, frustration that none of it was yet translating into solid, useful leads.

      They needed a connection between the two victims. There had to be one, or else how would the killer have chosen them? Some killers went for a certain type of person: short blondes, for example. If so, the pattern was clear even when the victims otherwise had nothing in common.

      But that wasn’t the case here. Cindy had been a white woman, Rooster a black man. The connection would therefore be more subtle. Marie had spoken of balancing the genders. Did that go for races too?

      There was a large whiteboard on the main wall, and Patrese had written a list of everything they needed to check.

      Did Cindy and Rooster have any friends in common?

      Did any of the customers at the voodoo emporium where Rooster worked have anything to do with Cindy?

      Were Cindy and Rooster on the same company mailing lists?

      Did they hang out at the same bars or nightclubs?

      Had they dealt with the same realtors?

      Did they get their cars serviced at the same place?

      Did they use the same utilities companies?

      Workmen? Electricians? Plumbers? Builders?

      And drug dealers, of course. Forensics may still have been analyzing all the evidence they’d found at Rooster’s house on Ursulines, but they didn’t need a microscope to tell them that the small plastic bag they’d found in one of his kitchen cupboards contained half an ounce of Acapulco Gold.

      And if they were looking for dealers, where better to start than with Luther Marcq?

      Thorndike might have released him, but he hadn’t banned Patrese and Selma from getting in touch with him again. Patrese suggested they pay Luther a visit later. Selma didn’t volunteer what she felt about this, and Patrese didn’t ask.

      The snake, mirror and axhead found at Rooster’s house were being compared to those from Cindy’s apartment, which were themselves still in the process of being matched to manufacturers, mailing lists, customs records and so on.

      When would they get a hit? Hours, days, weeks … take your pick. And even if they did get a manufacturer’s name, and a production code, that guaranteed nothing. Anything mass-produced would be sold in such volume as to make tracing the killer that way near on impossible.

      The media hadn’t yet made the connection, and long might it stay that way. A white woman had been killed in Louisiana, a black man in Mississippi. Even though that man was from New Orleans, the connection was still far from obvious: in fact, the very things that were making this case such a bitch were the ones that would hopefully keep the press at bay for a while yet.

      And sadly, murders in New Orleans were so commonplace that most of the time they were hardly news at all.

      Patrese was pondering all this when Thorndike rang.

      ‘You and Selma, get your butts over to the courthouse. We got a judge who’s going to give you a warrant for Varden.’

      The courthouse was right across the road from both police headquarters and Orleans Parish Prison; a geographical arrangement that was either admirably practical or depressingly cynical, depending on which way you looked at it.

      Judge Katash, who the previous week had been as astonished as everyone else when the jury had found Marie Laveau not guilty, had now considered Selma’s application for a warrant to impound Cindy’s computers.

      Katash knew that three other judges had already turned down this application, and he was sure that they’d had good reason to do so – ‘reason’ in this instance meaning ‘patronage’, of course, though he wasn’t vulgar enough to say so out loud – but things had changed since then. Specifically, there’d been another murder. Cindy’s death was therefore no longer an isolated tragedy; it was, Katash had to assume, connected to the ‘something terrible’ which she’d told Patrese about, and which had also clearly been responsible for taking Rooster’s life.

      In the circumstances, Katash understood that law enforcement needed all the information they could get, and therefore he had no hesitation in issuing the warrant, to cover not just Cindy’s computers but all her other work effects as well.

      Selma clutched it as though it were the winning ticket in the state lottery.

      ‘Let’s see how high and mighty Mr Varden is now,’ she said.

      Badges and warrant held high like talismans, they went into Varden’s office without waiting to be admitted, leaving sentinel security guards and scrambling secretaries in their wake.

      Varden was on the phone. ‘Remember what Joe Zee said,’ he was saying; and that was all Patrese caught before Varden turned toward them in astonishment.

      ‘I presume this is urgent,’ Varden said, ‘else you would have had the courtesy to knock first, no?’

      Patrese handed him the warrant. ‘You said we could come back when we had a warrant. Well, we do. So we have.’

      ‘I’ll call you back,’ Varden said into the phone. He replaced the receiver and scanned the text of the warrant. ‘Yes. That all seems in order. Cindy’s computers are outside, in the anteroom. I had them boxed up, to save you the trouble.’

      ‘And her personal items? The warrant covers them too.’

      ‘They’re there as well. Like I told you before: I have the highest regard for the law enforcement community. It’s my duty, and my pleasure, to give you all the assistance I can.’

      Patrese almost smiled. Varden had had plenty of time to wipe the disks and weed out anything incriminating from Cindy’s possessions. His elaborate courtesy was the magnanimity of the victor. Patrese and Selma knew that, and he knew they knew; but still he dared them to call him out on it. The old boy had some style, Patrese thought; but two could play that game.

      ‘And we appreciate your civic-mindedness, sir,’ Patrese said. ‘It’s an honor to protect and serve such illustrious citizens as yourself.’

      Varden acknowledged the comeback with a nod. He was enjoying this.

      ‘Do let me know if you find anything germane to your inquiries,’ he said. ‘You need any help, call on me, day or night. And I wish you the happiest of weekends.’

      Patrese’s cell phone rang when they were still in the elevator on the way down.

      It was one of the detectives on loan from Natchez, and they’d found something. That guy Rooster had mentioned in his tape, the doctor gone bad, Toomey Tegge; well, they’d got some stuff on him. He’d had a medical license from the state of Mississippi, but he’d been disbarred a few months back. Not because of anything he’d done in Mississippi; because of something he’d done in Iraq.

      Iraq?

      Tegge had been a reservist. He’d been called up, done his tour. Cut a long story short, he’d ended up at Abu Ghraib. After the whole prisoner abuse thing had come out, he’d been court-martialed. Failure to provide the expected standards of care to the prisoners. Collusion with the soldiers responsible for the abuse. Covering up the crimes while under direct investigation.

      Tegge had received a dishonorable discharge. He’d come back to Natchez,