by Anne Coates
Dancers
in the Wind
Dancers
in the Wind
by ANNE COATES
urbanepublications.com
First published in Great Britain in 2016
by Urbane Publications Ltd
Suite 3, Brown Europe House, 33/34 Gleaming Wood Drive,
Chatham, Kent ME5 8RZ
Copyright ©Anne Coates, 2016
The moral right of Anne Coates to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-911129-63-9
EPUB 978-1-911129-64-6
MOBI 978-1-911129-65-3
Design and Typeset by Michelle Morgan
Cover by Julie Martin
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire
urbanepublications.com
The publisher supports the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®), the leading international forest-certification organisation. This book is made from acid-free paper from an FSC®-certified provider. FSC is the only forest-certification scheme supported by the leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace.
For my lovely daughter, Olivia.
I can enjoy her while she’s kind:
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes her wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away.
John Dryden
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Five
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Epilogue
One
Acknowledgements
ONE
Thursday 1 July, 1993
Death might be an equaliser but dying has its own hierarchy, its own dialogue and narrative. The dying scatter their clues. Just as the dead reveal the evidence of what has gone before. Sometimes.
Detective Inspector Tom Jordan picked his way over the waste ground adjacent to King’s Cross Station. The surface was uneven and pitted. It was used as a car park and a place where the women working the area sometimes brought their clients. In the mornings, the place was littered with used condoms, needles and empty cans and bottles. Today was no exception.
It had rained heavily in the night. A much-needed summer downpour in the drought-ridden south-east. The early morning air was still heavy with moisture. The sun hadn’t risen long enough to burn it off. Six-thirty. He’d had the call 45 minutes earlier. He’d been in bed but there had been no one else there to be disturbed.
“Thought you’d want to know, boss…”
Want! He ran a hand through his fair hair and gave the officer a look that said it all. He didn’t want to know that another body had turned up on what he currently thought of as his patch. It was a fact he needed to know. A fact that he’d rather didn’t exist. His stomach rumbled; lack of breakfast. He’d only had time for a coffee which he had drunk standing in the compact modern kitchen in his new-build ground floor flat, overlooking the small garden which now looked less parched but no less uncared-for. A long-awaited drenching.
Right now Tom Jordan could have done without it. Mud and bits of rubbish clung to his shoes doing nothing to improve his humour. He nodded at a couple of uniformed constables and gingerly stepped over the tape cordoning off the area where the body had been found. An ambulance was at hand, blue light flashing unnecessarily.
The photographer was just finishing the scene of crime photos as the pathologist, Josey Carhill, arrived. Black plastic covered the body. DC Doveton lifted it, his face a mask. Tom suddenly realised that the noise he had been aware of from the moment he had arrived and had ignored was WPC Avril Spenser leaning against a low brick wall and throwing up.
“Get her away from here, Doveton.” His voice was a mixture of irritation and weariness. Doveton couldn’t decide if the inspector was annoyed with Avril’s reaction or his own inaction. He moved away smartly.
Tom bent down to stare at the inert body. It lay face to the sky as though it had been thrown there. Arms and legs akimbo. The little clothing that was left on the body – a cut-off red cotton top and miniscule skirt – was torn and now mud- and blood-spattered. Incongruously, her blond hair, darkened by the rain, gleamed in the sunlight. Bruises on her face and on every part of her body that was visible bore witness to a systematic beating. Dark brown eyes stared out of a face that looked remarkably relaxed. He could almost hear her voice. Don’t nick me now, Guv. Let me do a bit of business first.
“Lisa.” The name emerged on a breath.
The pathologist looked up, a question reflected in her eyes. She knew Tom Jordan had been brought in after the previous DI had been “retired” following “irregularities”. She hoped Tom wasn’t prey to them as well.
“That was her name.”
“Oh.” Josey closed her bag. “Well, looks like she was killed elsewhere and dumped here. Rather like the last two. There seem to be a lot of fresh needle marks on her arms. Was she a user?”
“I don’t think so.” Tom swore under his breath. “Time of death?”
“Anytime between nine and midnight. The rain started at about 2am and she’s drenched. I’ll know more when I do the post mortem.”
Tom nodded mutely. He waited for the scene of crime officers to arrive and then returned to his office. He had a long day ahead of him.
TWO
Hannah Weybridge, wearing a floral-print dress she could just squeeze into under a short-sleeved linen jacket, stepped out of the taxi and searched for her purse. Never, she told herself for the umpteenth time, buy a black purse and use it with a black-lined bag. Her fingers eventually found what she was looking for and, having paid the driver, she paused at the kerbside taking in the scene she had now become a part of. Sunshine highlighted the red tones of her shoulder-length hair. Wispy curls framed her face. She donned her sunglasses and looked across the forecourt.
King’s Cross was heaving. Built nearly a century and
a half ago, it had a charmless air about it. The renovations, including the unprepossessing glass frontage did nothing to enhance its allure. Somehow it lacked the undercurrent of excitement that wafted through other city stations. It was not a place anyone would wish to linger. And yet the forecourt attracted – apart from the people who were there for the obvious reason – more than its share of loiterers and dawdlers.
Two young men in nondescript clothes were sitting on the ground with their backs resting against a barrier, drinking lager from cans and eyeing a group of winos who, in spite of the heat, still wore long, shapeless coats whose original colours had long since given way to drab uniformity. They seemed sexless too. The one woman among them was only distinguishable by her lack of facial hair. She laughed at something and revealed chipped and blackened teeth.
The sound drew a frown from an elegant West Indian talking into a mobile phone. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses but his body gave the impression of a coiled spring ready for action. Regardless of the heat, he looked remarkably cool and fresh. He was standing near the kerb as a taxi pulled up almost alongside him and he jumped back smartly as the door opened.
The crowd around the various bus stops was an amorphous mess – No nice British queues here, Hannah thought – and, as a number 63 approached, there was a movement forward which threatened to engulf anyone in its way. A woman clutched a child in danger of being swept along. In marked contrast, the long, snaking queue for taxis was relatively sedate. Businessmen jostled with travellers laden with suitcases and subdued children, too tired from their journeys to create a fuss. A beggar was walking down the line, hat in hand, while his friend serenaded them with a penny whistle. Hannah wondered what their takings would be and looked away.
She wished she hadn’t. By the station entrance a young woman sat leaning against the wall. Her face was expressionless. She looked thin and hungry as did the child who stood by her, looking eagerly at each passerby who might be encouraged to add a coin to the paltry few in the tin before them. Some welfare state, Hannah thought, as she walked over to them and contributed her loose change.
Feeling guilty and self-conscious, she looked at her watch. Exactly 11am, the time she had been told to meet the BBC researcher outside Casey Jones at the front of the station. And the photographer. She didn’t know what he looked like either. Hannah sighed. It was one of the drawbacks about being freelance – she never seemed to work with the same photographer twice. In the five years since Hannah had given up her staff job on a woman’s magazine, she’d managed with varying degrees of success to keep her career afloat. The advantages of being her own boss and not having to waste time on office politics just about outweighed the handicap of not having a regular income, paid holidays and sick leave. Having a baby, however, had caused a real blip in her finances and she was really grateful for this commission via a friend who worked on The News and had recommended her to the features editor of the colour supplement.
A shout rang out above the general hubbub. Hannah just caught sight of a man running across the far side of the forecourt in determined pursuit of two boys. She wondered what their crime – if any – had been or if they were actually running away from danger. No one around took any notice. No one cared. It reminded Hannah of why she was there – to interview a prostitute and a police officer who were both appearing in a documentary about the seedier side of life at King’s Cross.
From the information she’d been given, the scene before her, basking in the summer sunshine, masked an underworld of vice which was low key during the day but erupted as the sun sank. Remembering the sign she’d passed recently, proclaiming that vice patrols operated in the area and offenders would be prosecuted, she glanced around curiously, wondering who were the pimps and whores, who the dope-pushers...
In the seconds that Hannah had looked away from the café and returned her gaze, a man whose profession was obvious from the cameras and paraphernalia he carried with him, had positioned himself near the entrance. Hannah braced herself – there wouldn’t be two photographers with the same rendezvous, would there? – and approached him.
“Mike Laurel?” She smiled and held out her hand to a greyish-haired man in his mid-40s. “Hannah Weybridge.”
“Hi.” He had a lop-sided grin, a firm handshake and a slightly bored look about him. Hannah was immediately aware that she was of little interest to him. “Any idea what this girl looks like?” Hannah shook her head. “Well I expect she’s black with a name like Princess.”
That idea hadn’t occurred to her. She couldn’t think why the name Princess should be associated with black women. Her own daughter was already referred to that way by doting, if absentee, grandparents. The thought of Elizabeth brought a smile to her face. She could almost feel those chubby little hands clasping her neck, that beloved face smiling up at her.
She had been knocked sideways when her parents had announced they were retiring to live in France. It felt like a defection. And they didn’t even speak French. Hannah had been so used to them being just an hour’s drive away, it had come as an uncomfortable awakening to find them no longer within easy reach. She wrenched her mind back to the present and realised that Mike was saying something to her.
“… I only hope she isn’t camera shy. These girls can be unpredictable.” Hannah wondered how much Mike knew about “these girls”. They were a mystery to her, a fact that did little to boost her confidence about the impending interview.
“She is being paid for her time,” she pointed out, remembering the envelope of cash that had been couriered over to her the day before. “And don’t hand it over until you’ve got the story and the photos,” the features editor had warned her. “We don’t want her doing a runner on us.” And don’t forget to get her to sign the receipt, Hannah added mentally.
Her gaze swept the forecourt then settled on two women walking resolutely towards them. They looked an odd pair. Height was the only thing they had in common. Raven-haired Kathy Osborne wore trousers and flat shoes and an expensive-looking designer jacket that Hannah thought she should have been able to recognise but couldn’t. Clearly worn for effect, Hannah thought. It’s totally superfluous in this heat. Ignoring the fact that she’d donned her own jacket to appear more professional.
Her attention passed to the other woman, no more than a girl really, who was almost a caricature of her profession: long blonde hair, minuscule skirt, black body stocking and leather waist pouch. Closer to, Hannah saw she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up and her skin was flawless. There were slight shadows under her eyes but her instant, if hesitant, smile was engaging and made her look even younger.
They were all shaking hands and introducing themselves at the same time. Hannah thought she ought to take the initiative. “Okay, how about going for a drink and doing the interview first?” She smiled at each face trying to exude more self-assurance that she felt.
“We’ll go to the Great Northern round the corner,” said Kathy who, after working for months on the TV programme that the interview was to tie in with, knew the area almost as well as her companion. She had a mother hen attitude to Princess that Hannah found both irritating and a little intimidating. Princess seemed to defer to her and Hannah had no intention of conducting an interview with Kathy acting as an intermediary.
Princess and Kathy, arms linked, led the way.
THREE
Inside the bar, which had little to distinguish itself from any other hotel bar situated near a busy rail terminus, there were relatively few customers, mostly people waiting for trains and killing time. Hannah still felt self-conscious. Mike’s photographic equipment and Princess’s exaggerated giggles made them an obvious diversion, as everyone seemed to turn and look in their direction.
Hannah could feel the heat in her cheeks that had nothing to do with the temperature. She was as ill at ease as ever when about to ask people personal questions about their private life, especially in a public place. Never particularly confident at the interview stage, h
er strength lay in the writing. What she liked was to get people talking about themselves with a gentle nudge now and again. Later, she would listen to the tape several times, gradually distilling the important facts and shaping the interview to make it a good read.
Mike bought the drinks, three white wines and a pint of lager for Princess.
“You won’t mind if we sit through there?” Hannah pointed to a smaller room she could see through some double glass doors. “It’s quieter and I’d prefer to talk to Princess on her own.”
Princess turned to the other woman as though waiting for permission. Kathy looked about to protest but mercifully didn’t; she just gave the young girl’s arm an encouraging squeeze before the doors separated them.
Hannah and Princess chose a table by the window and sat down. The prostitute looked relaxed, evidently enjoying all the attention. The journalist made a conscious effort to drop her shoulders and took a tape recorder out of her bag.
“Don’t don’t worry about this.” She smiled at the girl, forgetting completely that she’d already been filmed and recorded. “I can concentrate on you and not worry about taking notes. Just say something so I can check the voice level.”
Princess giggled. “Testing… testing… 1, 2, 3,” she said in what she thought of as a posh voice. Then her expression and tone changed; it sounded more gravelly. “Look, have you got the money?”
“Yes, I…” Help, thought Hannah. Please don’t ask for it now before we’ve even started the interview.
“In cash? I haven’t got a bank account.”
“Yes, don’t worry. I…”
“I want more,” Princess interrupted her again. “My story’s got to be worth more than a measly 100 quid.”
Although she didn’t say so, Hannah couldn’t help agreeing with her. Her last commission had been to interview a man cleared of a rape charge; he’d been paid £1000 for his side of a story, which had already appeared in all the tabloids. Here the girl was going to expose herself for one tenth of that. It wasn’t fair but Hannah hadn’t negotiated the sum. For a moment, she wondered who had. Kathy? Then, why so low?
