Hidden Killers

by Lynda La Plante

  DI Moran was going out for a curry with some of his team at their favorite local Indian, the Star of India. It had been a busy day, arresting two thugs who were trying to get protection money from a local betting shop. They turned out to be rather sad figures, old-time gangsters, who were still reminiscing about the infamous Kray twins, who had dominated organized crime in the 1950s and 1960s. Both of the old thugs were pensioners and would probably get a heavy sentence due to their previous convictions, quite apart from the fact that they had used an old sawed-off shotgun. Moran suspected that as he was a good half an hour late the lads would already be stuck into the lager, and he had asked them to order him a vindaloo. He was just crossing Mare Street when he saw her. Janet Brown wasn’t wearing her usual blue rabbit fur coat, but instead she had on a thick, brightly colored Mexican poncho and a leather cowboy hat. She had her little boy in a pushchair, laden down with bags of groceries on the handles. Moran zigzagged behind her.

  “Not working tonight, Janet?”

  She whipped around to face him.

  “What’re you doing scaring the effin’ life out of me?”

  He laughed. “Just checking you’re OK.”

  Moran bent down and rested back on his heels as he touched the little boy’s face.

  “You got anything for me?”

  “No . . . I’ll be in touch, though.”

  “Good girl . . . you look after yourself.” He had slipped a five pound note into the little boy’s hand. Janet gave him a brief nod and hurriedly walked away.

  Moran was now in the mood to get hammered. He pulled off his tie, undid his shirt collar, and sashayed down the road toward the Star of India for a good night out with the boys.

  By the time Jane arrived at the Dawsons’ flat Lawrence had been there for a while. She rang the bell for the top flat and heard the loud buzzer allowing her entry. She carried two takeaway coffees and two bacon sandwiches and headed up the stairs. The flat door was open.

  “Hi there, it’s me . . . and I’ve brought breakfast.”

  Lawrence was bending over an upturned table, carefully brushing the black fingerprint dust around the underside of the rim.

  “Great, I’m starving. Just hoping whoever did the cleanup here might have just done the top surfaces and forgotten to test the underneath of the table. The table was pushed away from the ironing board, right?”

  “I think so, yes. We got no prints off the iron, taps, bath or basin. I mean, they did quite a cleanup job.”

  “Telling me,” he said, as he continued to dust the underside of the table with fingerprint powder. He found nothing, and broke open his sandwich wrapper.

  “Tell me about Spencer Gibbs . . . is he all right?”

  Jane was opening up her sandwich too.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, totally off the record . . . and by that I mean this is between you and me . . . he’s been drinking heavily and was out of his head last night. I know that DCI Bradfield’s death really hit him hard and he’s not getting himself back together. What do you think?”

  Jane couldn’t look him in the face and simply shrugged her shoulders.

  “I didn’t think he was going to have a drink last night.”

  “Well, he came into the pub, and he’d already had a few.”

  “I think we all took it hard . . . but you know Spencer is a big character and they always backed each other up.”

  “Maybe that’s it, but he should get back singing with his rock band to let off the steam . . . last night he was completely out of it.”

  Jane was unable to finish her sandwich and her coffee tasted tepid. She wrapped them up in the plastic bag ready to dump in the bin later. She didn’t want to think about DCI Bradfield now, didn’t want to feel that awful pain in the pit of her stomach. She changed the subject.

  “We need to time exactly how long it takes to walk from here to St. Thomas’ and to get a taxi. I have a rough idea . . . but then it is possible that if Katrina was here and they are in this together she could have driven him back to the hospital in good time.”

  “Yeah . . . Get some photos of a Mini the same color as Katrina’s—we might get lucky. But then again we might not . . . we’ve not had much going for us on this one.”

  They worked well together. Lawrence instructed Jane to check through all the family photo albums to search for any pictures that might have been taken of Katrina. She found none, but there were numerous photos of Shirley wearing the gingham scarf like Audrey Hepburn, tucked in a little bow just beneath her chin. Jane was moved as Shirley had been such a pretty young woman, her thick curly hair sometimes worn in braids and sometimes in a top knot. She wore very fashionable thick black eyeliner and pale pink lipstick. In a number of photographs she was wearing white knee-high boots and a miniskirt, and Jane thought she looked like one of The Supremes.

  There were other photos that were not as glamorous, but Jane decided that Shirley was probably quite aware of her good looks as she played up to the camera and was very coquettish with her lips pursed. Even when she was pregnant she was wearing pretty smock dresses. All of the images were a far cry from that sad wretched drowned woman Jane had lifted out of the bath.

  “Can you do me a favor?” Lawrence asked, making her jump. “I’m about ready to go back to the station but I just want you to do something for me. Act out the scenario I’m trying to piece together, will you?”

  “Yes, of course. I haven’t found any other photos of Katrina in the albums.”

  Lawrence asked Jane to stand at the ironing board. It was positioned in the exact place they had first found it and its position meant that Jane’s back was facing the front door. Lawrence spoke quietly to himself as Jane stood still and he walked around her. He stopped by the high chair and touched the playpen.

  “Shirley was ironing. Maybe she intended to wear the blouse that was on the board. She had prepared the baby’s bottle, dressed her and laid out the food for her breakfast on the high chair. She was expecting her mother-in-law to babysit so that she could go to the hairdresser.”

  Jane turned and touched her head.

  “The scarf . . . she could have put the scarf on to keep her hair back while she took a bath.”

  Lawrence nodded and then turned to the bathroom.

  “She could have been running a bath ready for herself, which would mean she was not wearing underwear, just the dressing gown.”

  Jane agreed. “Yes, if she had been wearing underwear it would not have been on the floor beneath the dressing gown but on top of it.”

  Lawrence frowned in concentration. “If she leaves the iron on, the doorbell rings and she clicks the buzzer, expecting it to be her mother-in-law. Then she goes to the bathroom to turn off the taps and in walks Katrina, who she knows is having an affair with her husband. So seeing her walking into their flat would be like a red rag to a bull.”

  Jane sighed. Yet again there was no proof that this was what had occurred.

  “Jane, listen, there has to be something in this bloody place. We’ve searched drawers and wardrobes but you start again. I am going to move inch by inch over that bathroom . . . I won’t give up.”

  Jane started searching through a stack of magazines left piled up in the bedroom. They were teenage magazines and nothing glossy or expensive. She sat on the bed flicking through them but nothing was stuck inside, or any articles even earmarked or turned down. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was coming up to almost 8:30 a.m. and she placed the stack back beside the bed. She had already searched beneath the bed and on top of the wardrobe. The flat was not very clean or hygienic, and she felt dirty and frustrated. She told Lawrence that she wanted to get out for a few minutes and take a breather.

  He looked at her in surprise. “Sure, go ahead.”

  “I just want to make a call.” She used it as an excuse but then decided that she had not been very professional in failing to return Marie Allard’s call, so she would do it now.

  “Fine by me. I�
�m coming up with bugger all in here . . .”

  Jane took her purse out of her handbag to get coins for the phone on the landing. As she headed down the stairs she heard a loud crash and hurried down to the landing to see the landlord, Mr. De Silva, standing next to a builder who was chiseling the call box loose from the wall.

  “What are you doing?” Jane asked, concerned.

  “Having this phone taken out . . . waste of bloody money as I have to pay the rental on it. I’m putting a landline in the flat below and they’ve got their own on the ground floor. This is hardly used up here anyway, and I want to redecorate the hallway.”

  There was an ominous creaking sound as the wooden surrounds of the payphone were wrenched from the wall. Jane headed back up the stairs.

  “Well, that was a waste of time . . . the landlord is ripping the phone out of the wall, said it wasn’t worth the rental he has to pay and that it’s hardly used.”

  Jane picked up her purse ready to put the coins away when Lawrence grabbed her wrist.

  “Coins! If Katrina used the phone to call Dawson, she would have had to put coins into the call box and then left her fingerprints on them.”

  Jane didn’t really hear all of what Lawrence was saying as he charged out of the flat and leaped down the stairs. There was a lot of raised voices and unpleasantness from De Silva before the entire piece of equipment was removed from the wall and wrapped in a sheet. Jane watched DS Lawrence carry it carefully down to the waiting patrol car. He was eager to work on it in the lab and he drove off with a squeal of tires, not even saying goodbye. Jane locked the Dawsons’ flat and returned to the station.

  DI Moran felt terrible. He was very hungover and was sick to his stomach. The vindaloo had been hotter than hell and he had had to drop his suit at the dry cleaners on the way to work that morning. DC Edwards was back at his desk and looked over at Moran who was standing holding a glass of Andrews Liver Salts for his hangover.

  “I heard it was a good night, sir?”

  Moran frowned. “Ruined my bloody suit . . . that idiot Ellis spilled an entire pint down the back of it.”

  “So you’re not feeling too good then, sir?”

  “No, I am bloody not.”

  “I’m feeling better . . .”

  “Obviously, now that you are at long last back at work,” Moran replied grumpily, as he headed toward his office.

  “Have we had any news regarding the Allard trial yet, sir?”

  “No, we have not. And your last report, Edwards, which you left unfinished . . .”

  “Yes, sir, you told me to check out any previous assaults and rapes that might match Allard’s MO . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t find any.”

  “Terrific.”

  “So I was about to check from when he lived in Maidstone . . .”

  “Maidstone? Well, how far back is that? He’d be a bloody teenager?”

  “Not quite, sir, he’s twenty-nine years old now. It was only five years or so ago.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I wasn’t feeling very well . . . had a high temperature . . . so I had to go home, sir.”

  “Yes, I know that, Edwards.”

  “We need to check with a DS Victor Bethell.”

  “Who?”

  “I was told we needed to talk to him regarding a missing persons case . . .”

  “In Maidstone? What’s the connection to Peter Allard, for Chrissakes?” Moran was becoming very impatient.

  “Allard was questioned because the missing girl was a Filipino friend of his wife. They never found her . . . her name was Susie Luna.”

  Moran downed his Andrews Liver Salts and belched loudly.

  “Well, let’s get onto him then.”

  “I wish I could be present at one or other of the interviews,” Jane said.

  “I doubt it. As I keep on telling you, we are invisible, underpaid and totally unappreciated. Right, I’m going to take these files in to the boys so that they can get started.”

  Shepherd walked in and Edith flushed, hoping he had not overheard.

  “I want DC Tomlinson in with me. And Tennison, I want you in with DI Gibbs. We’re one man down with Paul being over at the labs. Pity . . . but when he gets back let’s see if he’s uncovered anything. Edith, if Lawrence gets a result you interrupt, but we’ll be a while before we get started. The longer time we’ve got the better, as Harcourt is waiting for her lawyer.”

  Edith handed Shepherd the files and as he walked out she turned and looked at Jane.

  “Do you think he heard me having a go? But you know I am telling the truth . . . you got lucky. Can you do Gibbs a favor? Get him to suck one of these Polo mints—he stinks of alcohol.”

  Just as Edith returned to her desk there was a call from reception to say that a Richard Blake was there to speak to his client, Katrina Harcourt. Edith walked out and Jane went back to looking over her notes. Gibbs appeared and asked where Shepherd was, and Jane said he had just taken all the files to his office.

  “Spencer, do you mind if I say something? It’s just that you might want to suck one of these . . . you know what Shepherd is like.”

  He cocked his head to one side as she passed him the half-opened pack of Polo mints. Gibbs shrugged as he left the room and didn’t appear to be at all embarrassed by her comment.

  Gibbs and Shepherd worked on cross-referencing all the statements taken from Katrina Harcourt and Barry Dawson. They underlined and discussed their different approaches and made detailed notes. They were deep in discussion when Edith knocked on the door and entered.

  “There’s a Richard Blake here to talk to his client, Katrina Harcourt. He has asked for any disclosures to be discussed with him.”

  “Disclosures? What is he talking about?” snapped Shepherd.

  “Well, he has been hired by her family and he is unaware of why she is under arrest. Despite having been asked by Katrina, the Harcourts have refused to pay for any representation for Barry Dawson and he has now claimed he does not want a solicitor present.”

  Shepherd smiled. “Well, thank you, Mr. Dawson . . . makes my life a lot easier.”

  “I think yours might as well, DI Gibbs,” Edith said. “I ran a check on Mr. Blake and his chambers are in Victoria, but they are not criminal specialists and deal mostly in property development frauds. Blake is semi-retired and lives in Hove, so he might be a family friend of Miss Harcourt’s parents.”

  Shepherd smiled again and thanked Edith, joking that “The Taming of the Shrew” might not be too problematic. However, when Edith closed the office door he glanced at DI Gibbs.

  “You don’t have much to go on, so I suggest you kickstart the interview on a tough line. She is going to be a difficult one to break.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jane sat at the Formica-topped table, an empty chair beside her. The dank green walls of the partly tiled interview room smelt of stale sweat and nicotine. There were two plastic beakers of water on the table and Gibbs’s thick file, with his notebook and pen beside it.

  Katrina was brought up from the cells by a uniform officer. She had been allowed a twenty-minute interview with her solicitor, Richard Blake. He had subsequently had another fifteen minutes with DCI Shepherd and was brought into the room by the duty sergeant.

  The two hard-backed chairs in front of Jane were close together and she noticed Katrina move hers further apart, as if she didn’t want to sit too close to Richard Blake. Unlike his client he appeared very nervous. He placed his worn briefcase beside him as he took out a legal pad and pen. Without makeup Katrina was very pale, her skin translucent. Her green eyes were devoid of mascara and black liner and were red rimmed with blonde lashes. She was wearing the same suit she had been wearing when she had been brought to the station.

  Richard Blake introduced himself to Jane but Katrina totally ignored her, and the uniform officer remained standing by the door, which was slightly ajar. Gibbs made his entrance, crunching on the Polo
mint Jane had offered him earlier as an attempt to disguise the smell of booze from the night before. He patted the officer’s shoulder in a friendly way and then gestured for the door to be closed. He circled around the table, then in a flamboyant manner drew out his chair and swung it round for him to sit, leaving quite a space between himself and the table. He had long legs and Jane edged further away as he stretched them out and crossed his feet at the ankles.

  “I am Detective Inspector Spencer Gibbs, and this is Detective Constable Jane Tennison, whom I believe you have met before. Mr. Blake is acting as your solicitor. Basically all I really need to do is make sure you understand the serious charges that are leveled against you, Miss Harcourt, and ask you to answer the relevant questions—”

  “Oh, just get on with it,” Katrina interrupted him, as she crossed her legs and then ran one hand through her hair. “I know that you don’t have a shred of evidence that can prove I even knew Shirley Dawson. I never even went to her flat and this is all preposterous. I do apologize for my crumpled suit, but it is linen, which always creases, and I have been forced to wear the same underwear, and have no makeup or even a hairbrush.”

  She looked at Spence hoping he’d respond, but he ignored her obvious attempt to win him over.

  “According to WDC Tennison, you told her that, to begin with, you were astonished and surprised at yourself for considering having a sexual affair with an ill-educated porter like Barry Dawson. Especially after you were previously engaged to an accomplished and highly qualified doctor. Sadly you were unceremoniously dumped after the wedding banns had been read out in preparation for what would have been quite a society wedding.”

  Blake leaned forward.

  “I really don’t see that anything in my client’s past has a connection to whether or not she knew Mrs. Dawson.”

  “Mr. Blake, I feel that there is a strong connection to the humiliating experience of being dumped by one man, and then setting her sights on a much lower level porter, who claims that not only was she just a one-night stand but that he never had any intention of marrying her . . .”