Tennison

by Lynda La Plante

  His grey suit was badly creased, his Windsor-knot tie loose and top shirt button undone. He had a face like thunder, and it was obvious he was very hungover from the previous evening’s gambling and drinking session.

  ‘Can I help you with anything?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Not unless you can conjure up more staff or know where Eddie Phillips is!’ he snapped.

  ‘I could make some enquiries about Phillips with—’

  Jane was about to say the collator but was cut off by Bradfield.

  ‘No, you can get a “Wanted” telex circulated Met-wide with his details and description. Also, put it out over the local radio to all the uniform patrol officers. There’s a bottle of Scotch up for whoever finds and nicks him first – two bottles if it’s before midday.’

  Jane selected Eddie’s index card from the carousel and started to copy his details down onto a message pad when she was interrupted by Bradfield handing her a £1 note. He said he’d be in his office with DS Gibbs and they both wanted coffee and a bacon sandwich.

  Jane wasn’t happy about being used as a personal waitress, but she’d already been warned by Kath that when a senior officer told you to do something you did as asked or your cards were marked. First she went to the control room and sent out the telex and radio message regarding Eddie Phillips. Next Jane got the bacon sandwiches and coffees, then with a forced smile took them into Bradfield’s office. Gibbs was also hungover and stank of stale booze. For once his manic energy had been stifled – he wasn’t even tapping on the table, playing drums as he usually liked to do. Once back in the incident room Jane continued with the indexing. The eight detectives on the squad gradually came in to book on before wandering off for some breakfast. Most of them were polite, asked who she was and introduced themselves, but there were two or three who seemed to turn their noses up at her and didn’t have the courtesy to even say good morning. One of them even had the cheek to ask her to get him a cup of tea, but she fibbed and told him DCI Bradfield had said that she wasn’t to be the tea lady for junior officers. It had the desired result as the detective grunted and walked off without a word. She was learning fast.

  Two detectives were in the office when Kath came in with a face like thunder.

  ‘Which one of you lot thought it would be amusing to draw on my notice?’ she bellowed and waved the sign from the ladies’ locker room above her head.

  Jane could see a drawing of testicles and a large penis, the head of which had a smiley face on it.

  ‘If it happens again then I will be taking fucking finger-prints. Yours are all on file and I’ll easily find the culprit, so leave my notices alone.’

  The two detectives laughed and said it was nothing to do with them.

  ‘Just like cling film on the toilet bowl, I suppose? Use your own bloody loo, or next time I’ll have your tackle hanging from the door.’

  ‘Ouch,’ they both said as they left for the canteen.

  Although Jane agreed with Kath, and thought it was a very childish prank, she had to force herself not to giggle. She suspected the drawing was DS Gibbs’s work, having heard him chatting to Bradfield outside the locker room the previous evening, but she kept quiet.

  ‘Good for you, Kath.’

  ‘Bloody detectives are supposed to be experienced and mature, but they behave more like a bunch of kids. They even come on duty and go straight off to the canteen for breakfast.’

  ‘I know – in uniform we don’t even get a cuppa after parade because we have to go straight out on patrol.’

  Kath shook her head and having calmed herself down said she’d help Jane with the indexing before the meeting.

  The team gathered in the small office, some sitting on chairs whilst others perched on the edge of desks. When DCI Bradfield entered with DS Gibbs everyone stood up and the DCI motioned with his hands for them to sit down. He pointed in the direction of Kath and Jane.

  ‘I’m sure most of you already know WPC Morgan. She’ll be working with us for a few days and—’

  A detective interjected. ‘If you can’t see Kath, you’ll always be able to hear her coming, guv.’ He then made the sound of a foghorn which caused ripples of laughter round the room. Kath refrained from responding and simply smiled.

  Bradfield continued, ‘And this is WPC Tennison, who’s filling in for Sally for a bit whilst she’s on maternity leave.’

  ‘How’s the father feel about that?’ a detective asked.

  ‘How should I know? I’ve never met Sally’s husband,’ Bradfield remarked irritably.

  ‘I didn’t mean Sally’s old man, guv . . . I meant DC Ashby.’

  There was more laughter round the room and Jane wasn’t sure if Ashby’s face was red with anger or embarrassment at the remark. DS Gibbs told them all to shut up and behave. Kath leant over to Jane and whispered that everyone thought DC Ashby was having an affair with Sally as they had once been caught coming out of the ladies’ locker room together on a night shift.

  Bradfield proceeded by asking what the hell had gone wrong with the re-arrest of Eddie Phillips. Jane now realized why he had been so mad when he came in that morning. DC Ashby explained that Eddie wasn’t at the squat or his grandmother, Nancy Phillips’ flat when night-shift officers turned up there at midnight. Nor was he there at 6 a.m. when Ashby and a colleague visited the flat. She was a tough lady with iron-grey hair who told them to fuck off and stop harassing her and her grandson. Then, whilst searching the place, they had taken further abuse about causing her angina to flare up.

  Bradfield took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. ‘Bloody marvellous, so it looks like the lying little shit has done a runner.’

  The office door opened and DS Paul Lawrence walked in. He apologized for being late and explained that he’d been busy discussing some forensic results with the scientist and they had both worked in the lab until after midnight on the case. He handed Bradfield an envelope and said it contained photographs of the scene and postmortem.

  ‘Has anyone checked Homerton Hospital drug unit for Phillips?’ DS Gibbs asked.

  Everyone looked at each other blankly until a detective spoke up and said that he went there yesterday evening to make enquiries about the phone call Anjali O’Duncie allegedly heard Julie Ann make, but no one had mentioned anything about Eddie returning to the hospital.

  ‘Sir, if Eddie overdosed he could be in a hospital casualty unit or on a normal ward being treated,’ Jane commented.

  The room went quiet and she felt as if everyone was staring at her because she had had the audacity to say something. She noticed Bradfield nod his head slightly as he looked at her. However, he said nothing and let Gibbs continue.

  ‘Right, Tennison, after the meeting phone the Homerton. If Phillips isn’t there then ring round every casualty hospital in London if you have to.’

  Jane nodded to Gibbs and saw Kath give her a sly wink and thumbs-up for her suggestion.

  Bradfield returned to the officer who had been making enquiries at the Homerton about the phone call.

  ‘Is there any good news on that front?’

  ‘Well, guv, it’s sort of yes and no.’

  He explained that on the last day Julie Ann had been seen at the clinic a telephone switchboard operator recalled a lady on the internal line saying she was a nurse and needed to contact the parents of a patient. The nurse then asked for a directory enquiry to be made and the operator thought she sounded rather distressed.

  ‘You get the details, name, address, etc?’ Bradfield asked.

  ‘The hospital operator did get a number and gave it to the woman, but she didn’t keep a record and can’t remember any details about it. Also the hospital don’t list every call from every phone.’

  ‘One step forward, two back,’ Bradfield remarked, shaking his head in disappointment.

  ‘Maybe not. Whoever asked for the number would probably have written it down. If the doctor had a notepad on his desk the unknown lady, who could have been Julie Ann, may have written the num
ber and address down,’ DS Lawrence suggested.

  ‘But she would have torn the details off the pad,’ Gibbs remarked.

  ‘Yes, but when you write on something like a notepad the pressure of the pen, or pencil, carries through to the pages underneath the top one. We can light the pages below the original document from different angles, use some multiple-exposure photography and hopefully bring up the indented writing left behind.’

  ‘But it was two weeks ago,’ Gibbs said, shaking his head.

  ‘So what? For one we don’t know how many pages of the pad have been used since, it could be none if the doctor’s been away, and besides, nothing ventured nothing gained,’ Lawrence retorted.

  Bradfield sighed. ‘Ashby, get down to the Homerton now and ask O’Duncie to show you the doctor’s room Julie Ann used to make the call. If he’s got a notepad take it up to the lab pronto.’

  Ashby grabbed his jacket and hurried out the door.

  ‘Any more gems of wisdom for us, DS Lawrence?’ Bradfield asked.

  ‘Maybe, just depends how you look at it. Regarding the child Julie Ann was carrying, the foetus was too young to do any reliable blood grouping.’

  ‘Terrific – we got another dead end,’ Gibbs said.

  ‘No, we tested her knickers with benzamine, made a slide and examined it with haematoxylin . . . ’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like Prof Martin – give it to us straight and simple, please,’ Bradfield instructed him.

  ‘We found semen and a blood smear on her knickers, and on the vaginal and anal swabs. A person’s ABO blood group can be detected in body fluids, and in this case the blood was all from the same group, but a different one to Julie Ann’s blood group. The scientist obtained Pep A 2 from the stains which is common in Race Code 3 individuals and not found in other races . . . ’

  ‘For Chrissake, what have we got?’ Bradfield shouted.

  ‘She’d had anal sex with a black man, but of course it may not have been with consent. In forcing himself on her he could have torn and bled from the small piece of skin that joins the foreskin to the penis, which is called the frenulum. Also the semen could have come from sex some hours before she was murdered, or from the suspect at the scene before he killed her.’

  ‘So either way our killer could be the black geezer who left the blood and semen in her?’ Bradfield asked.

  DS Lawrence nodded and added that the question of exactly where Julie Ann was murdered was still unanswered. Another detective pointed to his groin and asked if they should ask any suspects if they had, figuratively speaking, ‘a sore head’ and get them to drop their trousers for an inspection.

  Everyone laughed loudly, even Jane and Kath.

  After a brief pause Bradfield flicked through his notes.

  ‘We got any update concerning the red fibres on Julie Ann’s socks, Paul?’

  ‘Well, we got a few off her hot pants and blouse as well, but the majority were on her socks and inside her boots. The scientists at the lab were of the opinion they were probably from some sort of cheap carpet, but couldn’t give the exact origin.’

  DS Gibbs raised his hand. ‘Just a thought, but Jaguar cars are fitted with carpets, right? Would they be similar?’

  Lawrence shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not sure, never dealt with a body in an XJ, or been in one for a ride.’

  Bradfield rubbed his chin. ‘We need to start doing a bit more to trace this red Jag Eddie Phillips saw Julie Ann getting into. The punter could have had sex with her in the car, then strangled and dumped her.’

  ‘Are the seats the same sort of fabric as the carpets in a Jag?’ Detective Edwards asked.

  ‘I think leather is standard, but she could have had sex in the back of the car, taken her clothes off and they came in contact with the carpet,’ Lawrence replied.

  Jane realized that Bradfield hadn’t as yet read the reports about the Jaguar cars she’d left on his desk. She held her hand up but Bradfield ignored her. Kath could see something was troubling Jane.

  ‘What’s up?’ she whispered and Jane told her he couldn’t have read the reports yet and the flying squad ID parade was at 11 a.m.

  ‘Don’t worry about that – Eddie Phillips didn’t see the driver,’ Kath replied.

  ‘He’ll be mad with me if I don’t say anything,’ Jane said anxiously.

  Kath stuck her hand in the air. ‘Excuse me, sir, but WPC Tennison has made some enquiries about Jaguar cars and I totally forgot to tell you about a red Jag the flying squad recovered yesterday.’

  There was tutting and head-shaking from the male officers in the room, and one even commented that ‘plonks’, a male derogatory term for WPCs, were bloody useless.

  ‘Kath pointed me in the right direction for the Jag enquiries,’ Jane said, trying to ease the situation.

  ‘Make that your first and last mistake on my squad, Morgan, or you’ll be directing traffic for the rest of your career. Tell me about the flying squad first,’ Bradfield snapped.

  Kath recalled as much as she could from what Jane had told her the previous day.

  Jane added that the garage sergeant had told her that roughly eighty-one thousand Jags had been manufactured since 1968.

  ‘Jesus Christ, eighty-one thousand,’ DS Gibbs exclaimed and there were looks of disbelief round the room.

  Jane pointed out that the search could be narrowed down if they started with red and variant-coloured cars registered from 1968 in London, and those that were specially ordered with red carpets. She also mentioned that she had contacted a Jaguar dealer for brochures on the two models concerned. Bradfield told her to get on to the manufacturers and make enquiries after the meeting.

  DS Lawrence spoke next. ‘You need to consider the Daimler as well.’

  ‘Why? We’re looking for a Jag,’ Gibbs said, exasperated.

  ‘Jaguar own the Daimler brand and the car is essentially, in size and shape, the same as the Jag, but more luxurious. A lot of people mistake one for the other and the only differences, as far as I’m aware, are the shape of the front grille and the badge.’

  Bradfield remarked that with the Daimler now being a possibility it could mean another few thousand vehicles and owners to try and trace. He told Kath to help Tennison regarding the car enquiries and to get some Daimler brochures as well.

  ‘That little junkie, Phillips, could be lying but either way he needs to be found asap and leant on. I want more detail about the car he saw Julie Ann getting in. We can show him the brochures and take him out on the streets to point out a bloody car that looks the same. If he was the lookout when Julie Ann made the phone call then there’s a good chance he knows who this “Paddy” is.’

  ‘Paddy doesn’t sound like a black person’s name,’ a detective remarked.

  ‘Neither does Anjali O’Duncie,’ Bradfield fired back.

  ‘Could Julie Ann have said something else that sounds similar to Paddy?’ Gibbs suggested.

  ‘For Chrissake, cut all this crap with names. Bloody well get out there and find Eddie – that’s the only way we’ll trace who she called,’ Bradfield shouted, and started to delegate tasks to his team.

  He told one of them to go over to Stoke Newington and speak with the flying squad detectives about the Jag they had recovered, and the Italian who had been arrested for robbery. He also wanted the house-to-house enquiries extended to all the blocks of flats on the Pembridge Estate and told Gibbs to organize it.

  DS Lawrence asked if there was anything else DCI Bradfield needed him for as he’d like to get back to the lab and have a look at the red XJ6 that the Sweeney lads had sent up, to see if the carpet fibres were a match.

  Bradfield concluded the meeting and returned to his office to ring George Collins, the victim’s father, and ask him to come to the station as there were a couple of developments regarding the investigation that he needed to discuss in private with him.

  While Bradfield was still on the phone to Mr Collins, Jane took him his coffee. She could see that he had
now opened the envelope containing her typed reports and had them laid out in front of him. She was about to turn and leave when he held his hand up, palm facing her, to indicate that she was to stay put. A few seconds later he ended the call with Mr Collins.

  ‘Good work with the Jaguar enquiries, but I would prefer to be told about this sort of information prior to an office meeting.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, I thought you wanted me to leave the reports in an envelope for you.’

  ‘As you can see I am very busy and have a pile of paperwork, case files and envelopes on my desk. If something is important I need you to communicate it to me verbally as well.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Jane said, feeling he was blaming her for not reading the reports himself. She turned to leave.

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ he said, and held up the report concerning the flying squad arrest of the Italian and the recovery of the Jag. ‘If WPC Morgan forgot to relay this information to me, why did you type up the report?’

  Jane paused, unsure how best to answer his question, but Bradfield didn’t wait for an answer and she felt her stomach churn in anticipation of an angry outburst from him.

  ‘As I thought . . . you both lied. However, loyalty to your colleagues is what the CID is all about, but don’t let it happen again. Now go and get on with your work.’

  ‘Yes, sir, thank you.’

  ‘One more thing, come here.’

  She hesitated and edged closer to his desk. He sniffed, leaning further towards her.

  ‘You smell of Dettol.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I still haven’t got my jacket and skirt dry-cleaned from when I was on the floor at the mortuary and—’

  ‘All right, all right – go on, get back to work.’

  Jane went to the incident room and told Kath what Bradfield had just said to her about them covering for each other. They both smiled cheekily, realizing they had been lucky to get away with it. Kath remarked that maybe he had a lighter side to him, and Jane replied that next time it was just best they told the truth and took the flak for their mistakes.

  As they sat going over what they had to do, and who would do what, Sergeant Harris walked in with a smirk of satisfaction on his face. He announced that two of his uniform officers had been doing the murder squad’s job for them while they sat and drank coffee. Kath asked what he meant and Harris replied that Eddie Phillips had been seen wandering aimlessly on the Pembridge Estate, and having been arrested by his officers was now in a cell downstairs.