Tennison watched him leave, metaphorically dusting her hands. That’s got rid of him.
The team settled down to watch the Connie video. “What we watchin’ then?” asked Haskons as Dalton started the machine and stepped back beside Tennison’s chair.
“Gone With the Wind, what d’you think, pratt,” came Otley’s reply.
They all waited as the screen jumped and buzzed. Tennison looked up and said quietly, “You know, Brian, if you need to talk, there’s always me, or there’s a very good counselor.”
Dalton didn’t move, though it seemed, Tennison acutely sensed, as if he was withdrawing tightly into himself. Both his hands were clenched, the bandage on his right hand vivid against the bloodless skin. A muscle twitched in his cheek. He stared straight ahead at the screen, fragmented pictures starting to form.
Tennison turned away as the film proper began.
A desolate, windswept children’s playground. Pools of water on the cindery ground. A row of swings, some with broken seats, creaking to and fro on rusted chains. The shaky camera panned to the left, picking up a slight, red-haired figure in a padded red-and-black baseball jacket and sand-colored chinos. The wind ruffled his curly hair as he sat down on one of the swings and gently rocked. The camera moved in close until the boy’s face filled the screen. He had a sweet shy smile. Fringed by long auburn lashes, his brown eyes sparkled. He had a fair complexion and skin soft as a girl’s. He giggled, biting his lower red lip with small white teeth.
“Hi! My name is Connie. I am fourteen years old, and …”
Again the infectious giggle.
“I’m sorry, I’ll start again.” He straightened his face. “Hi! My name is Connie …”
He couldn’t keep it up. He covered his mouth. “This is stupid.” He pointed off camera. “It’s Billy’s fault, he keeps on pulling faces at me!”
A cross-eyed Billy appeared, features contorted in a dreadful grimace. It was too much. Connie had broken up, hanging onto the swing, helplessly wagging his head from side to side. Someone’s hand whisked Billy out of sight, but it was past saving, Connie had had it.
“Get Billy Matthews brought in,” Tennison said quietly, face set.
The video went off and then started again as they tried for another take. This time a straight-faced Connie, his eyes still moist from laughing, gave it his best shot.
“Hello. My name is Connie”—the same shy, sweet smile filled the screen—“and I’m fourteen years old …”
Otley and Hebdon had St. Margaret’s Crypt, Haskons and Lillie the Bullring, WPCs Kathy Trent and Norma Hastings the underpass next to Waterloo Bridge.
It was a fine night, with a pleasantly mild breeze blowing off the river. The waxing quarter-moon rose up behind the distant towers of Canary Wharf, a dusty orange-red scimitar seen through the haze of the capital.
The chances of finding Billy Matthews were slim. Just one punk kid among the hundreds sleeping out on the streets, dossing down in shop doorways, huddled on the concrete walkways and beneath the brick archways on the South Bank.
Norma hated it. To the drunks and dossers, she and Kathy were two respectable, well-dressed young women, and as such fair game. They got the lot, and had to endure it. The obscene invitations and suggestions, the grimy faces jeering at them from the shadows, the beggars and buskers accosting them at every corner. Down by Cardboard City, at the tea wagon run by two middle-aged women, they came across a gang of kids with a skinny dog on a bit of string. The kids took off as they approached them, scattering in all directions. One of the boys stumbled, and Kathy managed to get near him, a fresh-faced lad with ragged blond bangs, his face showing signs of a recent beating.
“Do you know Billy Matthews? Have you seen him?”
Fear in his eyes, Alan Thorpe picked himself up and stumbled off past the cardboard and wood shacks lining the viaduct walls, ducking out of sight in the labyrinth of shantytown.
Kathy looked hopelessly at Norma. They both felt like giving up. Drunken voices sang, argued and swore in the darkness. On a tinny, crackling radio, Frank Sinatra boasted that he’d done it his way. A busker with an out-of-tune guitar sang “She said, Son, this is the road to hell,” while a reeling drunk clutching a bottle of Thunderbird yelled out in a hoarse voice that boomed and echoed under the viaduct, “Oh, when the saints … Oh, when the saints … Oh, when the saints go marchin’ in …”
Keeping close together, Kathy and Norma moved along the slimy, littered pavements. A head was thrust out on a scrawny neck, its front teeth missing. “Hello, girls! This way to the National Theatre, have yer tickets ready—pul-ease!” He cackled with insane merriment.
Norma evaded his clutching hand, and bustled on quickly, shuddering. She touched Kathy’s arm, having had enough, about to retreat from this underworld of the damned—to hell with Billy Matthews—and there he was, lying against the wall, wrapped in a filthy sack. He was in a terrible state. They weren’t even sure, at first, if he was alive or dead.
Kathy felt for his pulse. “Radio in for an ambulance! Norma!”
Norma came back to herself, fumbling for her radio. She was sick to her stomach. Along the pavement, the busker with the broken guitar was singing her song.
“This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway—
Oh no, this is the road to hell.”
Jessica Smithy didn’t give the Sierra Sapphire time to stop before she was out from behind the wheel of the black BMW, switching on the tiny microcassette recorder and holding it concealed in her gloved hand. Carl, her photographer, was a few paces behind as she crossed the quiet tree-lined street, thumbing the auto flash on the Pentax slung around his neck.
Jessica reckoned she deserved this break. She had waited over an hour, since 9:45, listening to The World Tonight on Radio 4 and the first five minutes of Book at Bedtime. At last she had been rewarded. She flicked the long tail of her Hermès scarf over her shoulder and patted her knitted ski hat down onto her razor-trimmed, slick-backed hair. Tall and athletically slender, she had a sharp, fine-boned face and quick, darting hazel eyes. Intelligent and tenacious, she never let a good story escape her grasp, and she scented that this one was high-yield plutonium.
“Excuse me, Inspector Tennison? Are you Detective Chief Inspector Tennison?”
Tennison locked the door of her car. She turned warily, eyeing the woman and the bearded man with the camera with deep suspicion.
“I’m Jessica Smithy. I have tried to contact you, I wondered if you could spare me a few minutes … ?”
Evidently, Tennison couldn’t. Briefcase in hand, she marched around the back of the car to the pavement. They pursued her.
“Can you give me an update on Colin Jenkins?”
Tennison pushed open the wrought-iron gate. Without turning, she said, “There was a formal press conference yesterday. I have no further comment.” She banged the gate shut and went up the short path to her front door.
“But is his death still being treated as suspicious or accidental?”
Jessica Smithy hovered at the gate as Tennison let herself in.
“Are you heading the investigation?”
The door was firmly closed.
“Shit.” Jessica Smithy kicked the gate viciously and switched off the recorder.
At 10:35 P.M. Billy Matthews was being rushed along a corridor toward the emergency resuscitation section. The red blanket was up to his chin. Eyes closed, a dribble of blood-streaked saliva trailing from his open mouth, his pale peaked face was drenched in sweat. His hands clutched the edge of the blanket, as a child seeks to cuddle up warm in the comfort and security of a favorite fluffy toy.
Trotting alongside, the nurse leaned over him anxiously. Billy opened his eyes, blinking away sweat.
“I’m okay.” He smiled up at her. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
9
That bloody woman again! Did she never give up?
Tennison had unlocked the door of her car, tossed her briefcase inside, mentally preparing h
erself to do battle with the early morning gridlock, and there she was—climbing out of a black BMW across the street next to the park railings. The bearded guy with the camera was with her.
“Chief Inspector Tennison!”
Did the damn woman never sleep? Even before Tennison could get in and zoom off, she was hurrying across, the heels of her high brown leather boots clicking, coat flapping around her.
The photographer nipped in and a flashlight went off.
“Hey—what is this?” Tennison demanded angrily. “What’s he taking pictures of me for?”
Jessica Smithy wafted her hand. “Go back in the car, Carl.” She gave Tennison a warm friendly smile, all sweetness and light. “I’m sorry, but I just need to talk to you.” She held up a press card, a passport-size photograph sealed in plastic. Tennison’s eyes took this in, and also the pocket recorder partly concealed in Jessica Smithy’s other hand.
“Is that on?”
“You’re not interested, are you?” Jessica Smithy’s face hardened, the smile evaporating like morning mist. “Why? Because he was homeless? A rent boy? Doesn’t he warrant a full investigation?” She was holding up the recorder, quite blatantly. “You are the officer who brought George Marlow to trial—”
“Is that on?” Tennison repeated, getting riled.
“I’m writing an article on the boy that died in the fire, Colin Jenkins. You see, I met him a couple of times, and my editors really want pictures … he promised me an exclusive.”
“I’m sorry, we have no pictures of him,” Tennison said, clipped and precise. She was looking at Jessica Smithy with renewed interest.
“They must have taken some when they found him, surely?”
“How often did you meet him?”
“Just a couple of times. I have been very willing to come in to discuss my entire interaction—”
“An exclusive?” Tennison interrupted. Jessica Smithy frowned; the interrogator had suddenly become the interrogated. “You mean Colin Jenkins was selling his story, yes?” She pointed. “Is that tape on?”
“He was prepared to name his clients, including a high-ranking police officer,” Jessica Smithy admitted.
Tennison jerked back, bumping into the side of the car. A spasm tautened her stomach muscles. “Did you record your interview with Colin Jenkins?” she asked, pointing at the recorder.
“Yes, and I’m willing to let you hear the tapes, but I want an exclusive interview with you.”
Tennison had a nasty streak. Jessica Smithy got the brunt of it.
“I want to interview you, Miss Smithy.” She thrust her wrist out, glared at her watch. “You be at my office—with the tapes—at nine o’clock. That’s official.”
Jessica Smithy smiled, holding up her hands. “Hey, I’ll be there! I’ve been trying hard enough to get to you …”
Tennison slid behind the wheel.
“Thank you very much, Chief Inspector!”
Tennison said frostily, “It’s Detective Chief Inspector, Miss Smithy,” and slammed the door on her.
DI Ray Hebdon pushed through the black curtain, blinking in the light. “Nothing in the darkroom.” His expression sagged dejectedly at the sight of the thick albums, several piles of them, on the coffee table. “We got to go through every one of them?” he asked Brian Dalton.
“ ’Fraid so.” Dalton’s mouth twisted in his tanned face. “Sickens me. I don’t understand it—I mean, there’s thousands of them …”
“Of what?” Hebdon hoisted one, riffled through the pages.
“Poofters,” said Dalton, with repugnance.
Hebdon kept turning the pages, saying nothing.
The caretaker shuffled in from the passage leading to the studio. Tufts of white hair sprouted from under a greasy flat cap and his baggy cardigan almost reached his knees. The unlit stub of a cigarette was welded permanently into the corner of his mouth.
“You goin’ to be much longer? Only I wanna go out. I do the place next door. You want the keys?”
“Need you to stay, sorry,” Dalton said, though he didn’t sound it.
“Only the uvver blokes ’ad ’em.” The caretaker sniffed. “Larst night.”
Hebdon frowned at him. “Somebody was here last night?”
“Yers …” The caretaker nodded, waving his hands around in circles. “Took a whole load of stuff out. Police.”
Hebdon pushed past him to the phone.
Vera’s friend with the tight firm buttocks, Red, stood in the sitting room of Mark Lewis’s flat, smoking a cigarette in an ebony holder. He wore a silk kimono with purple dragons and fluffy high-heeled silver slippers. His eyebrows had been shaved off and redrawn with an artist’s flourish, and his lips were glossed a pale pink.
Head back, he blew a graceful plume of smoke into the perfumed air, watching Haskons rooting through the drawers of the gilt escritoire. From the bedroom came the sound of closet doors being opened and banged shut as Lillie conducted a thorough search.
“If I’d known I was having so many visitors I’d have waxed my legs,” Red mused, addressing no one in particular.
He swanned across to the long low Habitat sofa and dinked the cigarette in the frosted lead crystal ashtray. He sat down, crossed his smooth bare legs, and with a little sigh began filing his nails.
“You could help us,” Haskons said accusingly. Not yet eight-fifteen in the morning, and already he was frazzled, frustrated, and thoroughly pissed off. “Where’s his diary? His address book?” Red shrugged, shaping his thumbnail to a point. “What about his tax forms? VAT forms?”
“I don’t know, unless they took it all,” Red said placidly.
Haskons straightened up, flushed. “Who?”
“They said they were police, and that Mark was being held in custody. I mean”—his painted eyebrows rose in two perfect arcs—“there’s not a lot you can say to that. Nobody even asked me about him, you know.” He gave a little plaintive sigh. “… Connie, he was a sweet kid. Not all the time—he was quite an operator—but then, he had the equipment.”
Haskons raised his hand to Lillie, who had appeared from the bedroom, telling him to keep quiet.
“Connie …” Red said pensively, propping his chin on two fingers. “He wanted to be a film star. There’s a lot of famous stars that pay out to keep their past secret. That’s life. Whatever you do catches up on you.” He gazed down sadly at his feet. “Tasteless slippers, aren’t they?”
The day hadn’t started well, and by nine o’clock Tennison was in Halliday’s office, spitting mad. Commander Chiswick was there, his portly bulk framed in the window, neat as a bank manager in his blue and white striped shirt and pinstripe suit. Halliday, across the desk from Tennison, was in one of his twitchy moods. But he was determined not to be bulldozed by this harridan.
“Both Mark Lewis’s flat and studio cleaned out!” Tennison stormed. “And supposedly by police officers.”
“I’ll look into it,” Halliday said.
“I hope you will, because it stinks.”
“I said I will look into it. But we have to abide by the rules,” Halliday insisted, “we have to get the warrants issued.”
Tennison rapped her knuckles on his desk. “There isn’t a single piece of paper with his name left on it, let alone any of his clients’ names. What’s going on?”
Beneath the level of the desk, Halliday’s fingers dug deep into the leather armrests. His pale blue eyes bored into hers. “Chief Inspector, check your transcripts of Mark Lewis’s interview. He was allowed to make a phone call. Maybe he arranged for someone to clear his place out, and it had nothing to do with delays in issuing bloody search warrants!”
“Don’t go casting aspersions around—or they’ll come down on your head,” Chiswick boomed, his fleshy jowls quivering with indignation. “We are just as keen to get a result as you are!”
Tennison half-raised her hand in a gesture of apology. She was so fired up, she’d overstepped the mark. What with missing tapes, not-so-subtl
e warnings, and officers she didn’t altogether trust, it was easy to get paranoid around here. Or was she simply paranoid about being paranoid?
Chiswick loomed over her. “May I remind you that you inferred that an arrest would be imminent!” He had her on the defensive and was taking full advantage of it. “How much longer do you require four extra officers to assist your inquiries?”
That was rich, Tennison fumed inwardly, when she’d made no such request for extra manpower in the first place. It had been foisted upon her. However, she let it ride.
“I can’t put a time on it. You’ve seen those videos, there’re kids in them …” Tennison looked from one to the other. “I got a breakthrough today, from a journalist. I’ve not interviewed her yet, but she met the victim, taped Colin Jenkins for an exclusive. He was selling his story, and prepared to name his clients.” She checked the time. “In fact she should be here now.”
Silence. Both men seemed taken slightly off guard by this. Chiswick cleared his throat loudly.
“What’s the journalist’s name?”
“Jessica Smithy.”
He rubbed the side of his face, then gave a curt nod, indicating that she was free to go. Tennison went.
Halliday waited. He jumped up. “Don’t cast aspersions! Coming down on whose head?”
Chiswick rounded on him. “Who’s idea was it to bring her here! We’ve got a bloody loose cannon now, and we’re both going to be in a compromising position if it gets out.”
“I warned her off, all right?” Halliday said, low and angry. He pushed his chair aside and stalked over to the window, massaging the back of his neck. “But now there’s this journalist … we can’t tell her to back off.”
“I know what she said,” Chiswick snapped. He took a breath, trying to calm down and think straight. “So give her twenty-four hours. If she’s not charged Jackson, she’s off the case. Get Dalton on this journalist woman.”
Halliday stared at him for a moment. He returned to his desk, twitching, and picked up the phone and asked for the Squad Room.
There were three butts in the ashtray, ringed with lipstick. Jessica Smithy added a fourth, grinding it down with a vengeance. She looked at her watch, yet again, and let her arms flop down on the table.
Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims Page 13
