by BIBA PEARCE
The receptionist’s smile faltered.
Francine shut the door and gestured for them to take a seat. She sat down and crossed her legs in front of her. “Now, what is it you want to know?”
“Thanks for cooperating.”
She scoffed. “Save me the bullshit, detective. It’s not like I had a choice.”
They hadn’t got a warrant after all. Bryson had called Francine and told her to play ball or else she’d have the police crawling all over the building. This was preferable to ruining her business.
“Could you give us the names of the escorts who saw those two men I mentioned last time?”
“Remind me who they were?”
“Adam and Doug,” said Mallory.
She tapped away on her laptop. “Amber saw Adam on Monday the twenty-seventh of January and Guadalupe saw Doug on the fifteenth of December last year.”
“Is that the last time Doug booked one of your girls?” asked Rob, just to be sure.
She nodded, her eyes on the screen. “Yeah.”
“That’s strange, because we’ve got proof that Doug called here on the fifth of February, the day he died. Why would he do that if he wasn’t hiring one of your girls?”
Francine looked genuinely surprised. “Really? There’s nothing in the system that says he made a booking that day. Maybe he changed his mind.”
“Maybe,” said Rob. “Except a woman was seen going up to his flat on Wednesday evening.”
Mallory slid the photo taken from the CCTV camera across the desk to her. “Do you recognize this woman?”
She picked it up and studied it. Rob noticed she had long, perfectly manicured nails. “This could be anyone. I can’t see her face.” The woman had wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, but apart from that you couldn’t make out her features.
“But no one springs to mind?” he asked.
“No.” She pushed the photograph back at Mallory.
“Francine, who else has access to your booking system?”
She thought for a moment. “Me, Mary, Ruth, Angie and Issy. They’re my telephone operators.”
“Who is on duty now?” he asked.
“That’s Ruth,” Francine said. “She’s been with me for years. Mary works every weekday, ten till six, then Ruth takes over for the night shift. We close our lines at one in the morning. Angie does the weekend day shift and Issy the evening shift.”
“How long have they been with you?” Rob asked.
“Mary’s been here just under a year. She started as an escort but couldn’t cut it, so I gave her a job on the phone lines. Angie’s been here a bit longer, maybe two years and Issy’s quite new. She started a couple of months ago. Why?”
“We’re going to need to talk to them,” he said.
Francine sighed. “You realize after this they’ll probably quit and I’ll have to hire new staff.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Rob sincerely. “But this is a murder investigation. Apart from you, they were the only ones with access to the system.”
“Are you saying one of them killed these men?” Her gaze turned hard and her voice brittle.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
“Where were you between four and eight o’clock on the twenty-seventh of January?” asked Mallory.
“How am I supposed to know?” she snapped. Mallory looked taken aback.
“How about Thursday the thirtieth of January?” asked Rob.
Francine stared at them as if they were mad. “I don’t know. The dates mean nothing to me. I’ll have to look in my calendar.” She picked up her phone, which was lying face down on the desk and flicked through the calendar function. “On Monday the twenty-seventh I was here at the office until seven. That’s right, I remember now, I met my husband for dinner.”
“What about the other dates?” asked Rob.
“Thursday the thirtieth of January . . . What time did you say?”
“Late evening.”
“I was at home. My husband will vouch for me.”
“And finally, Wednesday the fifth of February.”
She flicked the page to February. “I was at a party that night,” she said smugly. “My sister-in-law’s fiftieth. There are about a hundred people who saw me there.”
Rob sighed. “Okay, Francine. Could you give me the contact details for all four of your telephone operators as well as Guadalupe, the girl who saw Doug in December?” It might be worth questioning her too. He was done with traipsing around town, from now on Uniform could pick the lot of them up and bring them in for questioning.
“If you insist,” she said. “But don’t take Ruth until tomorrow, she’s on all evening and I can’t do without her.”
“I’m not going back to the station now,” said Rob. “We’ll pick them all up tomorrow.”
They waited for her to look up the information.
“Do you know of any girls who’ve been assaulted by punters?” Rob asked.
Francine’s gaze darkened. “It happens from time to time. We blacklist those bastards. If it’s really bad, we encourage the girls to contact the police, although hardly any of them do.”
“Could you give me a list of their names?” he asked.
“You think one of my girls could be doing this to get back at these guys?”
She was shrewd, Rob gave her that much. “Maybe. It’s a line of enquiry we’re following. The nature of the attacks are such that they are likely to be revenge killings.”
Francine studied him. “I can’t see any of my girls killing anyone, but I’ll make you a list of those who I know have been treated badly. Shall I email it over or do you want to wait?”
“We’ll wait.” Rob leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
Mallory got up. “I’ll go talk to Ruth.”
Francine printed out the contact details for all four telephone operators as well as Guadalupe. Then she thought for a moment, typed some more on her laptop and printed out five additional names. “These are only the ones who required hospitalization,” she said.
Rob whistled. “And they’re still working for you?”
She shrugged. “What else are they gonna do? It’s much harder to feed a family being a checkout girl at Tesco.”
And therein lies the problem, thought Rob. He thanked Francine and they left, Ruth staring daggers after them.
Chapter 26
“The telephone operators are here,” panted Mallory. He’d run down the road from the station, and passed them in the lobby. Unlike Rob, Mallory didn’t live close by in Richmond. He commuted from Clapham Junction every morning, but it was only a ten-minute train journey when all ran according to plan. Today they’d been delayed. “All except Mary who’s on duty at the agency.”
Rob nodded. “Let’s arrange for her to come in this evening after she knocks off.”
He grabbed a cup of coffee, then went downstairs to the two interview rooms on the ground floor. It was more than enough for a small station. Ruth and Angie each occupied a room, while Issy waited in a holding area. He’d asked a delighted Jenny to accompany him again. She’d proven herself to be extremely adept last time.
“Let’s interrogate Ruth first,” Rob suggested. “She was there last night when we questioned Francine.”
As expected, Ruth wasn’t particularly forthcoming. She exuded a deep-seated distrust of the police, which made questioning her difficult.
“Could you state your full name for the record, please?”
“Ruth Danes.”
“And Ruth, how long have you worked for Daring Divas Escort Agency?”
Ruth scowled at them as if they’d said a bad word. “Nearly five years.”
“You know the business well?”
Another glare, and a nod.
“Were you on duty when Adam or Doug made their appointments?” They already knew from Francine that it was Mary who had taken Adam’s booking.
“No.”
“But you did book Doug in with Guadalupe on the fifteenth of Dece
mber last year, didn’t you?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t remember that long ago.”
“Here’s a printout of the booking.” Jenny slid a piece of paper across the table towards her. “See, that’s your name at the bottom.”
She shrugged. “I must have done, then.”
“Do you know Doug Bartlett?” Rob asked.
She stared at him. “Why would I know him? He’s a punter.”
“No reason. We just have to ask these things.”
She huffed and stared down at her hands.
“Could you tell us where you were at these dates and times?” He passed another piece of paper to her listing the dates and times of the three murders.
She frowned. “How am I supposed to remember?”
“Please try,” Jenny said with a smile. “It will help to clear you from our investigation.”
Ruth glanced at the female sergeant, then sighed and picked up the piece of paper. Her hands were rough and wrinkled and spoke of a hard life. She gazed at it for a long moment. Eventually she said, “The twenty-seventh was a Monday, so I was at work. I do the evening shift which means I get in at five and leave at one in the morning.”
Rob nodded. “What about the other two dates?”
“I don’t remember exactly, but Thursdays I’m usually at home, although I might have gone out to do some shopping. On Wednesday the fifth I was working in the evening.”
“Here?”
She nodded. “I ain’t been off sick in months.”
“Thank you.” Rob made a note in the file in front of him.
“Can I go now?”
“Just one more thing and this is a bit sensitive. Have you ever been a sex worker yourself?”
She inhaled sharply and for a moment it looked like she might get mad, but then her shoulders sagged and she nodded. “A long time ago.”
Rob nodded. “What made you stop?”
She shrugged. “I got too old. So, I did a secretarial course and got office work after that.”
Rob consulted his file, then he looked up. “Ruth, is it true that you were so badly beaten by a customer that you had to be hospitalized?” He’d done some research into the four women last night. Yvette still hadn’t been in touch and Rob had to assume she wouldn’t be coming home in the near future.
Ruth swallowed, her eyes hard. “Like I said, it was a long time ago.”
Jenny said softly. “Would you mind telling us what happened?”
A pause. “I worked in King’s Cross, picking up punters from nearby pubs and bars. It was a bad time for me. I was hooked on . . . Well, anyway, I’m clean now, this was years ago.”
Jenny nodded encouragingly.
“This Nigerian guy, a big bastard, took me to his van. He was a delivery driver, I think. I got in the back and he . . . Well, he was rough and huge, he damaged me down there. When I tried to push him away, he hit me. I screamed and he went fucking crazy. He punched me over and over until I blacked out. Then he dumped me in an alleyway. The next thing I knew, I woke up in hospital. It was a week before I could walk again.”
Rob stared at her. The more he learned about the sex industry the more he wondered why anyone would want to work in it. Sex workers were so vulnerable, and no matter how liberated women were these days, they often didn’t have the strength to fight off an angry man. That was a fact. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”
“He hurt me so badly I couldn’t have children.”
Jenny whispered, “I’m so sorry, Ruth.”
She shrugged. “That’s life on the streets for you.”
“Still, it’s a terrible thing to have happened. Did you report him?”
“I tried, but I didn’t know anything about him. He said his name was Don, but he could have been lying. I didn’t have his car registration number or anything like that, so the cops couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Did you quit after that?” said Jenny.
Ruth nodded, her face expressionless. She was a hard woman, and Rob could understand why. “Do you feel angry about what happened?”
Ruth gave him a look that said, What do you think? “I look out for other girls now,” she said. “I give them advice and help them if they get into trouble.”
“How do you do that?”
“Forums and stuff.”
Rob raised his eyebrows. “Do you ever go on the SAAFE forum?”
She frowned. “Yeah, I’m a senior member. I’ve been on there since they started, five years ago — about the same time I started here. Before that, there was no place where women could warn each other of the bad ones or the scam artists.”
Rob met Jenny’s gaze. Ruth would have direct access to the telephone numbers of punters who had been warned against. That’s opportunity. And she had a deep-seated anger towards violent men. One had damaged her so badly it had altered the course of her life. That’s motive. Was she the revenge killer?
“She was at work during two of the murders,” Jenny pointed out as they left the interview room. “It can’t be her.”
“She fits the profile,” he murmured.
You can be certain of one thing — this was a frenzied attack committed by someone fuelled by rage.
“There must be a lot of women who fit that profile,” said Jenny. She had a point.
Before they’d concluded the interview, they asked Ruth’s permission to take a DNA swab. To their surprise, she’d agreed.
“A guilty woman would have refused,” Jenny said.
“True, but maybe she thought she’d been careful. Out of all three murders, we only found a smidgeon of DNA under one of Patterson’s fingernails. Other than that, there was no trace.”
“Ruth has an alibi for two of the three murders,” Jenny pointed out. “She was working at the agency on the evenings of the twenty-seventh and the fifth.”
“Hmm, look into that, will you? We need proof. She could have redirected the phone line to her mobile or popped out for an hour or so during the evening. Who would have known?”
Jenny nodded. “I’ll get right on it.”
“Thanks, Jenny, and by the way, you were great in there.”
Jenny beamed.
* * *
“I like her for it,” Rob told Mallory at lunch time. They were sitting in the canteen eating sausage rolls fresh from the oven. “She’s had a terrible time of it, but she’s a hard woman — you can see it in her eyes. Plus, she had means, motive and, quite possibly, opportunity.”
“That doesn’t make her a killer,” Mallory pointed out.
Unfortunately, he was right. There wasn’t enough to convict her. The other interviews hadn’t offered much in the way of leads either.
Angie worked the weekend day shifts as she was at home looking after the kids during the week. Her husband, who owned a small hardware store in Peckham Rye, took over the childminding duties on the weekends so she could work. They needed two salaries to make ends meet. Children were expensive.
Rob wouldn’t know. He wondered how Yvette felt about children now. With everything that had happened, maybe she’d had a change of heart. Rob still wasn’t sure where he stood on the subject. At first he’d agreed with her — kids were such a big commitment, they took over your whole life — but lately he’d been thinking more and more maybe he would like to have a family. He could picture himself taking the kids to the park on weekends, Trigger in tow, and having family barbecues and beach holidays. Anyway, it was pointless thinking about it now. Yvette wasn’t even at home yet. It was a conversation they’d have when the time was right.
His heart felt heavy as he turned his attention back to the investigation. They still had a long way to go.
All three men had been murdered during the week, so interviewing Angie and Issy were just formalities, but he had to be sure. They had access to the booking system, after all, which made them suspects.
Issy started work at five o’clock on Saturday and Sunday. She had only been at the agency for a few months
and was still getting to grips with the system and the terminology. “I don’t know what half them things are,” she confided in the interview. “I just follow the price list. I found it a bit shocking at first, but now I’m all right with it.”
Rob could imagine it being a shock to someone who wasn’t familiar with it. Neither Angie nor Issy had worked in the sex industry before. They were purely admin staff. They had no apparent grudge against men or the trade in general. Both were young and only too happy to have a flexible job that left their weeks free. Issy worked as a shop assistant Monday to Friday. “Mornings only,” she told them. “’Cos I’m studying, innit.”
“What are you studying?” Jenny asked kindly.
“Reflexology,” she told them with a serene grin. “I want to have my own business one day.”
Rob wished her well, he really did. Everyone should have a chance to do something they loved.
After that, he got Jenny to write up the interviews and met Mallory for lunch to fill him in.
“There’s only Mary left,” said Mallory. “She’s coming in after six this evening. I’ve arranged for a squad car to pick her up at the agency after her shift.”
They were just finishing up when Rob’s phone rang. He answered it with a curt, “DI Miller.”
To his surprise it was Angie’s soft voice on the line. “I remembered something unusual that happened,” she said. “It might be nothing, but it’s to do with that hotel where that man was murdered.”
Rob was suddenly listening hard. “What is it?” In her interview he’d asked her if she’d known any of the three men. She’d insisted she hadn’t, and Rob had believed her.
“There was a booking for the Thursday before last, at that same hotel. It wasn’t the man you asked me about, though, it was someone else. I think his name was Lewis.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?” he snapped.
“I only just remembered. I’m on the bus on my way home.”
“Who did he book?” rasped Rob, aware that Mallory was watching him closely.
“Well, that’s the thing, sir. The escort never turned up. He rang me to complain that weekend,” she continued. “I thought he was trying to get a freebie. Well, there was nothing I could do. I didn’t take the original booking.”
