Hidden Killers

by Lynda La Plante

  Ignoring Edith, his head pounding, Gibbs went over to the filing cabinet to pull out the reports on the Shirley Dawson case, then went into his office and shut the door.

  By the time Jane arrived at the mortuary it was almost 2 p.m. Professor Martin hadn’t arrived yet, and even when he did she knew it would take a considerable while before he could gain access to the body and begin the second post-mortem due to the paperwork. Barry Dawson was sitting in the reception with his mother. His daughter Heidi was asleep in her pushchair clutching a teddy bear.

  “What’s going on?” Barry demanded.

  “I’m sorry . . . I have only just arrived,” Jane replied quietly.

  “We have been told that Shirley’s body can’t be released. We have organized for her to be taken to a funeral parlor as we are having her buried tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m sorry. I am not actually aware of what you are being told.”

  “Just what I said. I mean, you tell me what’s going on.”

  “We have been informed that a second post-mortem has been requested and there was some suggestion that the first one was not as straightforward as it would seem.”

  Jane excused herself and said she would try to find out what was going on and would get back to them as soon as she could. Pushing open the door to the corridor she stopped as Mrs. Dawson called after her.

  “This is bloody disgusting, you know,” she said, pushing the little girl back and forth in her pushchair. “Barry’s had to take another day off work, and we got family to organize. We get here only to be told that our funeral arrangements have got to be put on hold? You tell me, why?”

  “If you just wait here I’ll go and see what I can find out.”

  Jane hurried along the corridor and stepped back as a mortician assistant wheeled out a covered gurney from the chill room toward the autopsy section. Professor Dean Martin appeared, already wearing his rubber gown and black boots. Judging by the stains on his apron it was clear that he had already been at work. He gave a polite nod to Jane as he pushed open the doors to allow the gurney to pass in front of him, then the doors swung closed behind him. Jane was disinclined to ask permission to follow but stood waiting in the corridor until she felt it was time enough to return to reception. Barry Dawson had gone, leaving just his mother and the still sleeping Heidi.

  “He’s had to go to work . . . he’s really distressed, and we need to get some answers. This is disgusting and there doesn’t seem to be anyone I can ask.”

  Jane apologized and sat down beside her. She decided to take a risk in the hope that Mrs. Dawson might let something slip.

  “Basically there seems to be some confusion about your son’s statement. We now have information regarding a relationship he had with a woman called Katrina Harcourt.”

  “What? I’ve never bloody heard of her! This isn’t right.”

  “I just need to double-check that I have your own statement correct, Mrs. Dawson. Could you please tell me exactly what happened on the morning your daughter-in-law was found at your son’s flat?”

  “I’ve told you! I was supposed to go and look after Heidi because Shirley had a hair appointment.”

  “Ah, I see. That’s why you were going to babysit, because . . .”

  “She was going to have her hair done at nine o’clock. But I couldn’t go round there because my washing machine was faulty and I was waiting for the engineer to come. I’ve already told you this.”

  “Did you call Shirley to tell her that you wouldn’t be able to babysit?”

  “I rang the payphone in her house, but she never answered so I presumed she’d already gone out and had taken Heidi with her.”

  “What time did you call Shirley?”

  Mrs. Dawson sighed.

  “Be about a quarter to nine . . . but like I just said, she didn’t answer so I presumed she had gone to have her hair done. I don’t see why you want to know all this. She always asked me to look after Heidi if she was going out. And I presume that’s why Barry got no reply either, when he called her.”

  “I am going to show you some photographs now, Mrs. Dawson. Could you tell me if you recognize this woman?”

  Jane took out the three small black and white photographs of Katrina Harcourt and showed them to Mrs. Dawson, who shook her head. She sighed.

  “Don’t tell me that silly bugger was seeing another woman? I swear to God, he’s unable to keep his ruddy dick in his pants! But he never mentioned nothin’ to me about her, and he’s been in a terrible state since Shirley died. So what difference does it make? He’s always been a one for the girls, and I have to say that it’s not easy for me neither as I got to look out for his daughter. He’s got to go to work, and I mean he’s still living at my place, and his dog . . . I don’t know what he’s gonna do when he moves back to his flat.”

  “Has he suggested selling the flat? I believe he owns it, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he does. He pays the mortgage, but his dad left him the money to make the down payment. Mind you, it needs a lot doing to it and the landlord is a nasty piece of work. Never does nothing about the communal areas. There used to be a general cleaner who’d collect their rubbish from the storage area by their flat and take it down to the basement. But since he got rid of her, Shirley’s had to do it herself.”

  Mrs. Dawson rambled on, all the while pushing the buggy back and forth, until Heidi woke up and started crying. Mrs. Dawson was becoming more and more agitated now, standing as she rocked the pushchair. Jane discreetly glanced at her watch.

  “You tell me what I should do, will you? I mean, we’ve arranged the funeral and now I don’t know if it can go ahead. I just don’t understand why there is this delay.”

  Jane stood up and once again checked her watch. She suggested that Mrs. Dawson return home and said that she would call her with an update as soon as she knew the details. Heidi was now howling loudly and Mrs. Dawson eventually agreed to take her home.

  Relieved that she had gone, Jane sat waiting in reception. There was something about the cavernous, cold room that always had a faint smell of cleaning fluid and Dettol, which became stronger when you passed through the double doors into the chill rooms. The first time she had been in there was for the identification of murder victim Julie Ann Collins. She remembered how Julie Ann’s father, after seeing his dead daughter, had become frighteningly enraged. Nothing had prepared her, after witnessing his overwhelming grief, for learning that he had instigated the brutal beating of his daughter. DS Lawrence appeared, having arrived via the back entrance.

  “It’s going to take a while . . . the old boy is being very methodical and won’t be hurried. So far he has made no further conclusion and is ticking off the previous PM as all being acceptable. As soon as I get anything to the contrary I’ll call you at the station.”

  Jane would have liked to have stayed but before she could argue, Lawrence left her to return to the postmortem. With nothing else to do, Jane headed back to Bow Street to wait for Professor Martin’s PM report.

  Marie Allard sat at the Formica-topped table in the visitors’ section at Brixton Prison. The noise of the waiting families always gave her a headache. The children were mostly under five, so weren’t at school like her own two. The babies screamed while the mothers and grandmothers shouted and tried to keep them from running between the tables. The male visitors always seemed much older than the prisoners they were visiting, with rough, worn faces. Many of them were rolling cigarettes and the walls of the prison visiting room smelt stale and were yellowing from tobacco stains. The tin ashtrays were never emptied and the officers walked up and down between the tables as they waited for the loud clanging sound that heralded the prisoners’ entry into the visiting section.

  Two wardens sat on high stools surveying the room and making sure nothing illegal was passed across, or underneath, the tables. Marie waited patiently, becoming more nervous as the minutes ticked by. Then the buzzer sounded, the communication door was opened and a loud bell rang.


  The hubbub of noise increased as the prisoners were led in, and the men hurried to their allocated tables and loved ones. Peter Allard wore creased and stained prison issue denims, and was unshaven. He had always been so particular about his clothes and his personal hygiene, with clean cut nails, and shiny well-styled hair. Now he looked very pale, with deep circles beneath his eyes. As he pulled out the chair to sit opposite Marie she could feel the weight of his depression.

  “You all right?” he asked quietly.

  “Not really . . . but I’m OK.”

  He looked down at his dirty fingernails, then glanced around the room.

  “So, did you sort it as I told you to do?”

  Marie hesitated and then tightly clasped her hands.

  “No, I never get another phone call. So I didn’t do it.”

  He asked if she had got the money ready and Marie replied that she had. One lie after another tumbled out. Part of her was unsure why she was so afraid of admitting that all she had seen was a young boy collecting the cash.

  “I too scared to answer the phone, Peter,” she admitted. “It’s such a lot of money, and with you in here.”

  “I called you last night . . . you know I got to wait in line to use the payphone so I can’t tell you exactly when I’ll be calling, but we get time around six o’clock . . . so pick up around then, as you know it’ll be me.”

  “OK. You heard about a trial date yet?”

  “No. Bastards are just keeping me here . . . I hope to God it’s soon because I don’t know how much longer I can last in this shit hole. You have no idea what it’s like . . . a ping pong ball went missing and there was a big fight so we had to have a lockup for the entire day as punishment. As if being in this dump wasn’t enough.”

  “The kids are fine, Peter.”

  “What did you buy then?”

  “What?”

  “Ma said you were taking them to a birthday party on Sunday.”

  “Oh yes, it was just a jigsaw puzzle.”

  Peter unclenched his hands and reached over to take hers. A passing warden snapped as he passed, “No contact, please.”

  Peter quickly withdrew his hand.

  “Well, maybe that bent cop has got enough of my hard-earned dough and won’t be blackmailing us for our savings.”

  From across the room a young thug stood up, shouting at the top of his voice, “The law sucks! Innocent until proved fuckin’ guilty, my arse! It’s a shit pile!”

  Two officers removed the boy, who continued yelling and kicking out, leaving the two women at his table crying. Peter shook his head.

  “That’s true—I know it better’n anyone else . . . I’m innocent. You know it too, don’t you? All I want is a fair trial so I can prove I was fitted up.”

  Marie felt ashamed that she was willing the bell to ring for the end of visiting time. She just wanted to go and collect the children from school. But for a further half-hour Peter repeated over and over that he was going to prove his innocence. At one point he was in tears, and Marie had never seen him in such a depressed state.

  “I can’t forgive myself for doing this to you, Marie, and to my kids. You know I love you and want to make it good when I get out. But I just get into a bad state, because it’s so frustrating. I admitted what I did was wrong, but it wasn’t serious, not like that other time . . . you know that, and you know why . . . but we’ll be all right, as soon as I get out.”

  “Yes, of course we will.”

  The bell rang and Marie was free to go. But first she had to watch him being led out back into the prison section, as the door was bolted behind all the inmates. Once he was out of sight, Marie turned away. It was too late now, she’d lied to him. And what if there was another call from “Angie”? She was terrified there would be another demand, and the money in their savings account was running out.

  At the mortuary Professor Martin peered through his half-moon spectacles at the right side of the victim’s scalp. Using a fine spatula, he moved aside the thick curly hair, bent very close and sniffed. He then carefully parted a section of hair and turned to Lawrence.

  “This is interesting. Can you see that a small section of hair looks frizzy? Not the section close to the face but just behind it? And if you lean in close you can just detect a slight smell of Dettol, but also burning. It’s not strong, but then she was in the bath for some time. Can you see the strands are shorter here?”

  Lawrence leaned in close and agreed. He watched as Prof Martin used sharp scissors to cut away the long thick strands and then, with the hair cropped, began to shave the complete right side of Shirley’s scalp.

  “Well, well . . . what have we here? I would say that this is what could have caused your victim to be unconscious, not the blow to her forehead. Can you see it?”

  Lawrence looked at a strange V-shaped red mark, about three and a half inches in length. Prof Martin continued to peel back the face and remaining scalp hair to examine the skull.

  “Easily missed, and I could be wrong . . . perhaps the victim was wearing a band of some kind that in part might have cushioned the blow from being that visible. And her hair was thick enough to hide the strange burnt section. But it is clear she was struck to the right side of her head.”

  Lawrence watched closely.

  “The wound on her forehead is not the one that would have rendered her unconscious?” he asked quietly.

  “No, it would probably have been caused by her falling forward and hitting the edge of the tap, as has been suggested, but having read the reports describing how her body was found, it doesn’t quite add up. She should have been face down, not on her back.”

  “So you are saying that she was more than likely unconscious when she hit the tap with her head?”

  “Yes, but in any case your victim was alive in the bath water, as her blood was still flowing out of her nostrils. I would say the young lady could have had a severe nosebleed from the blow.”

  Lawrence stepped back to allow Prof Martin to finish. His mind was reeling as he took in the consequences of this new information.

  He was stunned.

  By the time Lawrence returned to the station he was feeling exhilarated, and went straight to the incident room. Jane turned expectantly toward him as he came in and his triumphant expression told her all she needed to know. But a thrill still went through her when Lawrence said, “Our non-suspicious death is now very suspicious. Shirley Dawson was murdered.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Two days later, after all the investigation she had instigated, Jane was very upset that DCI Shepherd excluded her from the inquiry. DI Gibbs and DS Lawrence were given the overall lead, with three other DCs who had been with Bow Street a lot longer than Jane. She had presumed that Shepherd would ask for her to be present and had even expected some acknowledgment from him when he had been asking Edith what DCs were available.

  “Excuse me, sir, will you want me to discuss the report and my notes from my inquiries?” Jane asked.

  He glanced toward her and then went back to looking over the lists of available officers, making suggestions of who he wanted for the briefing.

  “As you will see, I have underlined sections that we will need to discuss, so please put them on my desk straight away,” he told Edith.

  Edith scurried out of the office and only after she had left did he turn his attention to Jane.

  “Tennison, I think you have proved yourself to be very diligent. However, I have major issues with the fact that you have acted, or appear to have been acting, without authority. As you have only recently completed your probationary period and joined us here at Bow Street just over a week ago, I am warning you that I do not, and will not, have any detectives working without the full co-operation of the team. Your priority should have been to inform me of any new evidence or suspicions you acquired.”

  Shepherd walked out, leaving Jane shocked and confused.

  Edith returned carrying a large stack of papers she had to check th
rough and banged them down on her desk.

  “My God, this has created a lot of extra work. Now I have to sort out what meetings he can be available for with all this new development.”

  “What exactly is going on in the board room?” Jane asked, watching as officers including Shepherd and Lawrence gathered round a large oval table in the room opposite.

  “I am not privy to what their intentions are, dear, but this Shirley Dawson case is leaving the desk sergeant pulling out his hair.”

  Jane felt awful after the dressing down from Shepherd. As she was almost at the end of her shift she went into the ladies’ locker room. She sat in a cubicle and, as much as she hated herself for doing so, she burst into tears. She was loath to admit it, but after a good cry she was feeling increasingly irritated that she had not been brought onto the case, after all the work she had done on it. She was also hurt that DS Lawrence had not intervened on her behalf. She collected her bag and jacket and left the station to return to the section house. She went to the laundry room and ironed a fresh shirt for the morning, then returned to her room. Sitting on the edge of her bed as she flicked through her notebook, she came across the message she had jotted down about Mrs. Allard calling Hackney Station, which had been forwarded on to the duty sergeant at Bow Street. She had not really given it much thought, having been so caught up with the Shirley Dawson situation. Glancing at her watch she saw that it was after seven. She hoped it wouldn’t be too late to return Mrs. Allard’s call.

  Jane was also intrigued to find out what Mrs. Allard wanted, so she made her way down to the reception to use the payphone. It rang unanswered for a long time, and Jane double-checked that she was dialing the correct number. She replaced the receiver, waited five minutes and tried again but it still rang with no one picking up. She was about to go back upstairs to her room when DI Gibbs came hurrying through the reception doors.

  “Ah! Just the person I was coming to see.” He gestured toward her to join him.