by Jill McGown
“Great.” Judy shook her head. “And the knife?” she said. “The one they found on the riverbank?”
“It was kosher.”
“How dared they?” Judy said angrily. “How dared they treat anyone like that? She was sixteen years old!”
“I know. But they figured the end would justify the means.”
“Well, it didn’t! It never does.”
“No. But DNA results took weeks to come through then, and they thought that was the only way they could get him behind bars before he raped anyone else. Anyway,” said Tom, “I thought you ought to know. I expect this investigation will bring it all out in the open.” He waited for a moment before he spoke again. “Are you going to tell Lloyd I knew about it?”
“No.” She stood up. “The blood on his jeans,” she said, drawing a line under the discussion. “Was it his?”
“No.”
“Did it go for profiling?”
“No. Once we’d established it wasn’t the murder victim’s, we had no further interest in it.”
“I have,” said Judy. “They’ll still have that sample, won’t they?”
“They should have,” said Tom slowly, realizing why she wanted it. “Of course … Bobbie Chalmers was raped that same night, wasn’t she?”
“I want it analyzed,” said Judy. “He’s still a suspect in an outstanding rape, even if it wasn’t an official complaint. Bobbie’s flatmate reported that there had been an assault. If anyone queries it, refer them to me. I’ll see if I can persuade Bobbie to give us a sample for comparison. She might, now that the circumstances have changed.”
“Will do, guv.”
Bobbie Chalmers lived on Parkside. The road that had relieved Malworth of much of its choking traffic had devoured most of that area except for a few narrow streets lined with workmen’s cottages, which had somehow got themselves listed by British Heritage, and in one of which Ginny Fredericks lived; two low-level blocks facing one another, where Bobbie Chalmers had her flat—still sharing with her friend; an unlovely high-rise; and a scattering of shops and small businesses. Malworth had finally managed to cut Parkside off from the rest of the town completely; the bypass had severed it even from the desolate park which had given it its name, and in which Ginny had once plied her trade.
For motorists, it meant that getting from one side of Malworth to the other actually took longer than it had, because of the volume of traffic on the bypass which had priority over that turning into Parkside, and for pedestrians it meant using the underpass, which now, less than a year after its completion, few people used after dark except street girls and muggers. It had been designed for them; it was supported all along its length by buttresses behind which the girls could do business, and the muggers could wait unseen for the foolhardy or the unwary. Occasionally, the two joined forces; that sort of crime was rarely reported. The lights were constantly vandalized, and even when working produced pools of light beyond which the dark was even more impenetrable than it would have been without them. Those going for an evening at the pub, on the other side of the bypass, preferred, as a rule, to risk the traffic. There was talk of a bridge to replace it, already.
Thus isolated, Parkside had become more and more run down, until the council had been forced at least to look as though they were doing something about it. The Parkside Regeneration Program had caused a great many more unsafe buildings to be demolished, and large expanses of uneven ground lay waiting for some enterprising, not to say dotty, speculative builder to snap them up.
One such, not far from the cavernous opening of the underpass, in the shade of the high-rise, was being put to good use at the moment; someone had had the idea of piling up the combustible debris from the demolition and making a huge bonfire of it, and the council had entered into the spirit of the thing. They were laying on hot-dog stands and baked potato vendors, a professional firework display, and, Judy understood, recorded entertainment in the form of the Music for the Royal Fireworks, no less; the flattened ground all around was to become a car park for the evening.
To prove that Parkside really was being regenerated, the Malworth bonfire was going to be something special. If no one set it alight before Friday, of course. To this end a posse of guards had been formed, mostly from the area’s long-term unemployed, and it was being guarded twenty-four hours a day. Bobbie’s block of flats was within sight of the towering pile of wooden windowframes and floorboards.
Bobbie was auburn haired now rather than blond, but as immovable as ever, though her original reason for being so no longer mattered. No, she would not give them a blood sample, she said, and whatever argument Judy used, that was her answer.
Judy looked at her steadily. “He’ll rape again,” she said. No ifs or buts. He would, and Bobbie ought to think about that. “He’ll do that to someone else,” she said.
Bobbie tilted her head back slightly, looking up. Tears weren’t that far away. The iron control with which she had refused to cooperate before was slipping, deserting her just a little, as it had immediately after the rape. That was when she had told Judy about it, only to refuse to make it official when her resolve had returned moments later. Judy knew she could work on that slight weakness, but she was puzzled; something other than Drummond’s reappearance was bothering the girl.
“If you give me a sample of blood and it’s the same as the blood on his jeans, then he’ll go back to prison and he’ll stay there,” said Judy.
She shook her head. “I’m not making myself a target,” she said.
“It’s your blood on his jeans—I know it is, and so do you. As soon as we have confirmation, he’ll be arrested again. That, your evidence, and his statement to me will convict him, Bobbie.”
“No!” she shouted, almost sobbed. “It’s been two years! I was just beginning to get over it. I was making some sort of life again—I was even seeing someone! I was putting that whole business—all of it—behind me. Marilyn thought she might even be getting rid of me at last,” she said, with a half laugh, half sob. “She’s been great. She went through it all with me. She put her own life on hold. I don’t know what I’d have done without her.”
Judy nodded.
“And then as soon as things start getting better, this happens. And I’m getting calls from him all the time.”
Judy’s eyebrows shot up. “Drummond’s ringing you up?”
Bobbie closed her eyes, took a short breath. “Whoever raped me is ringing me up,” she said carefully. “And I didn’t tell you that much—got it?”
Judy sighed. “Is it the same ground rules as before?” she asked. “You’ll deny this conversation if I try to make it an official complaint?”
“Yes.”
Judy rose. “All right,” she said. “But he can’t get to you, Bobbie, not if he’s inside. And that’s where he’d be.”
“Sure,” said Bobbie, scornfully. “I was a hostess in a nightclub—that’s one step up from prostitution in their book. They’d treat me just like they did Ginny and you know it. Look where it got her. Not guilty.”
Judy didn’t want to think about that. “Do you know Ginny?” she asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I work at the Ferrari. So did she, in a manner of speaking. I don’t see much of her now, though.”
“Why? Has she given it up?”
“I doubt if her husband would let her. I see him, flashing a card around. I expect it’s hers.”
“What do you do at the Ferrari?”
“I work behind the bar. At night. It was a long time before I could face going out in the evening at all, and then … well, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let it rule my life.”
The phone rang, and the two women looked at one another. Bobbie picked it up, listened, and held it out to Judy. “It’s him,” she said, her voice scared. “He wants to know if you’re still here.” She pressed the privacy button as Judy took the phone. “Don’t tell him I told you he’s been ringing me,” she begged.
Judy shook her hea
d, then nodded to Bobbie to press the button again. “DI Hill,” she said.
“I just thought I’d let you know I’ve changed my mind about you,” he said.
“Drummond, if you think you can get away with following me around, and ringing me every—”
“There are other ways of screwing you, Detective Inspector,” he went on, talking through her. “Better ways. And I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.”
He hung up, and Judy tried to trace the call, just in case, but it was the waste of time she had thought it would be. She replaced the receiver, and looked at Bobbie. As Hotshot would doubtless point out, she didn’t know who was ringing her either, but the odds were three million to one against its being anyone else. “I have to go,” she said. “If you change your mind, you know where to get me.”
She drove the short distance to where Ginny now lived with Lennie; she hadn’t liked Drummond’s reference to unfinished business, and Ginny should know that he was back. Ginny’s house was at the end of a small terrace of shops; an inevitable alleyway ran alongside it, joining it to the street behind. The front door was practically for show; the side door in the alleyway was the one in constant use. People didn’t want to be seen coming and going.
“I know,” said Ginny, when she told her. “Someone saw him. I’m not bothered—Lennie’ll look after me.”
He certainly seemed to be looking after her. Judy looked around the cozy little kitchen, at the washer-drier, the fridge-freezer. “Very nice,” she said.
Ginny beamed, and waved a hand at the door into the sitting room, following Judy in, inviting her to sit down. State-of-the-art hi-fi, TV, and video gleamed in the soft light from the table lamps. “Would you like a cup of tea or something?” she asked.
Judy shouldn’t really. She was supposed to be at Lloyd’s flat, enjoying a pre-birthday dinner drink. But Ginny had come so far up in the world that she must be finding it hard to breathe the thin air; she was intrigued, and wanted to know more. “That would be lovely,” she said.
Ginny busied herself in the kitchen, and Judy still looked around, slightly openmouthed, at the sparkling glass shelves on which vases of flowers and little ornaments were grouped, at the fitted carpet without a strand of pile out of place.
“This is a bit of an improvement on your last place,” she said, when Ginny came in with a tray, which she set down on the coffee table.
“Lennie got it,” she said. “He knew the guy who said he could have one of them.”
Judy worked on that. The allocations manager, she presumed. And Ginny had doubtless got to know him pretty well, too. She plunged in—there was no such thing as subtlety where Ginny was concerned. “Lennie must be getting you a better class of client,” she said.
“Lennie’s not my pimp,” Ginny said.
She wasn’t in the least offended; the denial was automatic, as was Judy’s disbelieving acceptance of it.
“He’s not! He’s got a job. A proper job.”
Judy smiled. “Lennie? A proper job?”
“Yes,” she said stoutly. “He’s driving a taxi.”
That Judy simply couldn’t believe.
At five o’clock Lennie was sitting outside a house, opulent by anyone’s standards, in Malworth. His passenger wore an expensive suit over a muscled body, smoked cigars, and now, it seemed, had a deep interest in Lennie’s affairs.
“I’ll have what you’ve got, then,” he said.
Lennie handed his passenger a bundle of notes. The man counted it, and nodded.
“Pick me up the same time, same place, Friday,” he said. “And bring the rest.”
“Friday?” Lennie repeated, twisting around in his seat. “I can’t get it for Friday, not all of it!”
“That’s all right,” he said pleasantly. “If you haven’t got it all, I’ll settle up with you some other time.”
Lennie knew what that meant. “Friday,” he agreed.
Short of robbing a bank, he didn’t know how he was supposed to comply. His passenger got out, failing to pay the substantial fare that had been clocked up on the meter, and which would be coming out of whatever he managed to take over the next couple of hours. Lennie lit a cigarette, and headed back to Stansfield. There might, with luck, be a randy businessman looking for a bit of relaxation while he was attending the conference, he thought, and made his way out to the new hotel complex with fear-driven optimism. He could sometimes get customers for her when a conference was on. Especially an international one like this one—men away from home liked to try the local delicacies. He hoped he got something, because if things were bad before, they were critical now. He’d put Ginny’s card in the phone boxes, but the phone had been cut off, so there would be nothing from that source. The gas and electric would be next. But none of that mattered now.
Until he’d picked up his cigar-smoking passenger, he’d been happy in the knowledge that things would get better, because they would. They did. These things went in cycles. But now he had no time left to let them get better. He had to make them get better. Now.
The rape inquiry was being reopened. Matt stared at the television, where Drummond was leading off the news as if he was some sort of celebrity, and licked his lips, which had gone dry. Surely to God they didn’t really think Drummond wasn’t guilty? It was just some technicality, some clever lawyer’s trick that had got him off; there couldn’t be any more real doubt than there had been in the first place. Except that they were reopening the inquiry
“In an unusual move, Bartonshire police intend producing a photograph of one of the victims,” said the reporter. “Her name will not be released, but a spokesman for Bartonshire Constabulary said that it was hoped that people’s memories would be jogged. Mrs. A, as she is known, was caught on security cameras as she entered the all-night service station where she was later assaulted, and, tragically, took her own life three months before the case came to trial. Her husband’s permission was sought and granted for the publication of her photograph. He was unavailable for comment this afternoon.”
Back to the newsreader. “Colin Drummond was cleared of all charges of rape and sexual assault …”
Matt switched off the television. Bloody hell. Had they nothing better to report? No wars? No famines? Wasn’t that what was on the news every other night? Tonight, it was Colin Drummond. It was the rapes. It was the police corruption, the miscarriage of justice story. Sex, violence, and dodgy cops—you couldn’t beat it. All that statement-falsifying and evidence-rigging wasn’t confined to big metropolitan forces. Here was a cozy little county force doing the same thing. The story was big.
And now he, too, was waiting for the axe to fall.
God, was she never going to leave? Ginny answered her questions without ever wondering if she had any right to be asking them; police asked questions, and if it wouldn’t get you into trouble, you answered. If it would get you into trouble, you said no comment.
“I can charge a lot more,” she said. “Now they can come to me.”
DI Hill looked impressed. “You don’t go out looking for them anymore?” she asked.
“No.”
It wasn’t against the law, doing it like this, Lennie said. Sometimes they rang up—well, not at the moment, because the phone wasn’t working—but they had, for a while. And Lennie brought the others.
She had her fingers crossed that she didn’t hear the double hoot of the taxi horn that meant he had one with him, and she should go upstairs and get ready. Because that was against the law. Him getting them for her. Ginny had never understood why some things were and some weren’t against the law, but she knew which was which.
“You must be charging a great deal more to have all this,” said DI Hill.
“Yeah, And there’s Lennie’s money from the taxi.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked as though she found that funny. “How on earth did Lennie get into taxi driving?” she asked.
“It belongs to a—” Ginny stopped, and thought, unable to assess whethe
r or not the deal with Rob was against the law. Better not say, just in case. “A mate of his,” she said.
“Oh.” Inspector Hill smiled again. “How many taxis does this mate of his have?”
“Just the one.”
“Maybe I should take it up,” she said. “It must be a very lucrative business.”
Ginny frowned. “A what?” she asked.
“It must pay.”
“Yeah.”
Ginny felt slightly more at ease as seven o’clock came and went; Lennie never brought anyone after that, because the taxi had to be back at eight, and Rob got mad if it wasn’t. But she was beginning to worry that DI Hill might still be here when Lennie got home; he would go ballistic if he found a cop in the house, and he’d blame her. She told the inspector that.
“So he would,” she said, getting up. “I’m on my way. Just—you know. Watch yourself.”
“Yeah,” said Ginny. “Right.”
Her free time had been taken up by an unwelcome visitor once again; Ginny sighed with relief when the inspector had gone, and set about making Lennie’s tea. It would have to be another fry-up—she didn’t have time to do anything else. She didn’t like giving him too much fried stuff, though he would live on it given half a chance. But they said it was bad for you. Men in particular. And she didn’t want anything happening to Lennie.
She was chipping the potatoes when she heard the taxi drawing up.
* * *
Rob got out of the backseat, and slid in behind the wheel, catching sight of Lennie’s wallet lying on the floor. He picked it up, flipping it open: two fivers, that was all. He had thought it would have a lot more in it than that, in view of the way Lennie was ripping him off.
“Hang on, mate!” he shouted to Lennie’s retreating figure, and got out, taking him the wallet. “You must have dropped this,” he said.
Lennie took it, nodded his morose thanks, then let himself into the house. Funny—Lennie was usually talkative, almost like a real cabdriver, giving a running commentary on his day, and his life. He wasn’t usually down, but he was tonight. He hadn’t said a word on the way home.
