Lazy Bones (5 page)

Thorne nodded, grunted, took the top off a pen with his teeth. He took it out of his mouth, put it back on the pen. He smiled, told Hol and to get his arse in gear and ended the cal .

Then he answered Brigstocke's question.

34

4 DECEMBER, 1975

They sat in the Maxi, outside the house.

She'd held it together al morning, through al the real y hard parts, the personal stuff the intrusion. Then, when it seemed the worst was over, she'd begun to wail as she'd stepped through the doors he'd held open for her. Out of the police station and running down the steps towards the street, her heels noisy on the concrete, her sobbing uncontrol able.

In the car on the way back, the crying had gradual y given way to a seething fury which exploded in fitful bursts of abuse. He kept his hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel as she rained blows down on his shoulder and arm. His eyes never left the road as she screamed words at him that he'd never heard her utter before. He drove careful y, with the same u tion he always showed, and as he manoeuvred the car through the lunchti.me traffic on the icy streets, he absorbed as much of her pain and rage as he could take.

They sat in the car, both too shattered to open a door. Staring straight ahead, afraid to so much as look towards the house. The house, which was now simply the place where, the night before, she had told him what had happened. The col ection of rooms through which they'd staggered and

shouted and wept. The place where everything had changed.

The home they'd never feel comfortable in again.

Without turning her head, she spat words at him. 'Why didn't you make me go to the police station last night? Why did you let me wait?'

The engine was turned off the car was stil , but his hands would not leave the steering wheel. His leather driving gloves creaked as he grasped it even tighter. "You wouldn't listen, you wouldn't listen to senJe:

"What do you expect? Christ, I didn't even know my own name. I had no idea what I was fucking doing. I would never have had the shower...'

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She'd been too upset to think clearly, of course. He'd tried to explain al this to the WPC that morning, but she'd just shrugged and looked at her col eague and carried on taking the clothes and putting them into a plastic bag 'as they were taken off and handed over.

'You shouldn't have had a shower, love,' the WPC said. 'That was a bit sil y. You should have come straight in, last night, as soon as it had happened...'

The engine had been off for no more than a minute, but already it was freezing inside the car. The tears felt warm as they inched slowly down his face, running into his moustache. 'You said you'd wanted to wash ... to wash him off you. I said I understood but I told you you shouldn't have. That it wasn't a good idea. You weren't listening to me...'

Standing there in the lounge after she'd told him. The horrible minutes and hours after she'd described what had been done to her. She wouldn't let him do a lot of things. She wouldn't let him hold her. She wouldn't let him ring anybody. She wouldn't let him go round to the bastard's house to kick what little he had between his legs into a bloody mush and punch him into the middle of next week. '

He looked at his watch. He wondered if the police would pick Franklin up at work or later on at his house...

He needed to cal the office and tel them he wouldn't be in. He needed to cal the school to check that everything was OK, that the previous night's explanations for why Mummy was so upset had been believed...

'What did that woman mean?' she said, suddenly. 'That WPC? When she asked if I always wore a dress that nice to go to work?' She slid her hands beneath her legs and began to rock gently in her seat.

Snow was starting to fal quite heavily, building up quickly on the bonnet and windscreen. He didn't bother to turn on the wipers.

36

THREE

Later, when they talked about it, both Thorne and Hol and admitted to fancying the Deputy Governor of Derby Prison. What neithe of them quite got round to admitting was that, attractive as she undoub,t edly was, they actual y fancied her more because she was a prison governor.

They didn't real y go into it al that much...

'He's certainly made a very good job of it.' Tracy Lenahan put down the letter, actual y a photocopy of one of twenty-odd letters written to Douglas Remfry during his last three months inside, plus a couple to his home address after he'd been released. The letters that Hol and had found under Remfry's bed.

Letters written by a Miler, pretending to be a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Jane Foley.

Thorne and Hol and had already been taken through the procedure for the sorting of prisoners' mail. The letters - five sackfuls a day on average - would have been taken by two, perhaps three, Operational Support Grade officers to the Censor's room for sorting. The X-ray machine had been done away with by the present Governor, but drug 37

dogs might be used and each letter would be slit open and searched for il egal enclosures. The OSGs did not read the letters, and providing there was no good reason, they would not usual y be seen by anyone else.

'A good job of sounding like a woman, you mean?' Thorne asked. He thought the letters were pretty bloody convincing and so did Yvonne Kitson, but other opinions couldn't hurt.

'Oh yes, but I think he's been much cleverer than that. I've seen one or two letters like this before, genuine letters. You'd be amazed how much mail like this people like Remfry real y get.

This has that same,

odd tone to it. It's something slightly crazed...'

'Something a bit needy,' Hol and suggested.

Lenahan nodded. 'Right, that's it. She's claiming to be a bit of a catch, a sexy bit of stuff looking for fun...'

'A sexy married bit of stuff,' Thorne added. The fictitious Jane Foley was conveniently hitched to an equal y fictitious and awful y jealous husband, so Remfry couldn't write back to her.

Lenahan read a few lin&s of the letter again, nodded. 'Al the suggestive stuff in the letter is bang on, but there's stil a kind of hopelessness. Something sad underneath...'

'Like she's a bit desperate,' Thorne said. 'A woman who's desperate enough to write these sorts of letters to a convicted rapist.'

Hol and puffed out his cheeks. 'This is doing my head in. A bloke, pretending to be a woman, pretending to be a different kind of woman...

Lenahan pushed the letter back across her desk. 'It's subtle, though. Like I said, he's bloody clever.' She didn't need to tel Thorne that. He'd studied every one of 'Jane Foley's' letters. He knew that the man who wrote them was very clever indeed. Clever, calculating and extremely patient.

Lenahan picked up the photograph. 'And this is the icing on the cake...'

Thorne was struck by her strange choice of phrase, but said noth

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ing. On the wal behind the desk was the regulation portrait of the Queen, looking rather as if she could smel something unpleasant wafting up from the canteen. To Her Majesty's left were a series of framed aerial views of the prison and, hung next to these very modern images, a pair of large landscapes in oil. Thorne knew next to bugger al about it but they looked pretty old. Lenahan glanced up, fol owed Thorne's gaze.

'Those have been knocking around the place since it opened in 1853,' she said. 'Used to be gathering dust down in Visits. Then six months ago, we had an inmate in for receiving stolen antiques. He took one look at them and went pale. Worth about twelve thousand each, so they reckon...'

She smiled and her eyes dropped to the black and white photo in her hand. Thorne's went to the silver picture frame on her desk. From where he was sitting he couldn't see the photo inside, but he imagined a fit-looking husband - army perhaps, or maybe even a copper - and a smiling, olive-skinned child. He looked again at:the woman behind the desk, her dark eyes wide as she stared at the pi.c ture. She was ridiculously young, probably not even thirty. Her black hair was shoulder length. She was tal and large-breasted. It would have been clear to a blind man that the Deputy Governor would figure regularly in the fantasies of the men she locked up every night.

Thorne glanced across at Hol and and was amused to see him struggling not to blush, as he waited for Tracy Lenahan to finish studying the photograph of 'Jane Foley'. The picture was of a woman kneeling, her head bowed and hooded, the artful lighting concealing much, but revealing tantalising glimpses of the ful breasts, the nearly trimmed thatch of pubic hair. Of the leather belt around the wrists.

Hol andhad earlier expressed surprise that the photos had not been confiscated, especial y as Remfry was a sex-offender. Surely this kind of image was risky on 'Fraggle Rock' - the term used by many police officers for the Vulnerable Prisoners wing. Lenahan, bridling slightly

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at the slang, had explained what she cal ed the Page Three rule. Stuff like this was discretionary. Obviously images of kids were not al owed on the VP wing, but if it was the sort of thing you might see on Page Thiee, then the OSGs would have a look, pass the odd comment and put it back in the envelope.

'Jesus,' Hol and had said. 'Page Three must be going seriously fucking arty...'

Lenahan put the picture down, scraped at the edge of it with a long red fingernail.

'This is clever too. It's the ideal image to have chosen. Just what would be needed to hook an offender like Remfry, to tease him with the promise of something. This is a rapist's wet dream. Wherever your kil er got it from, it's perfect.' She swal owed, cleared her throat. 'Remfry was a man who got off on submission...'

Thorne and Hol and exchanged a glance. They hadn't told Tracy Lenahan, but they were pretty sure the picture wasn't one the kil er had just gone out and bought. The naked woman was wearing a hood identical to the one that'Phil Hendricks had taken off Douglas Remfry's body...

'There's half a dozen similar pictures,' Thorne said. 'They were sent with the most recent letters. They start to get more revealing the closer the letters get to his release date.'

Lenahan nodded. 'Increasing the excitement...'

'By the time he got out he must have been gagging for it,' Hol and said.

She picked up the photograph again in her left hand and reached for the letter with her right. She brandished them both. 'Your kil er is sensitive to the way this kind of woman might think, and to what wil best stimulate the man she's writing to.'

Thorne said nothing. He was thinking that she sounded bizarrely impressed.

'Sensitive, like a gay man maybe,' Hol and said.

Thorne shrugged non-committal y. They were back to that. He

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had to agree it was possible, but he was growing irritated at the way the investigation was fixing on what they presumed the kil er's sexuality to be. Yes, the violent sodomising of the victim was clearly significant. The rapist had been raped and Thorne was sure that this would prove to be crucial in finding out why he'd been murdered. Thorne was less sure that who the kil er chose to sleep with was as important.

Hol and slid forward in his chair, looked at Tracy Lenahan. 'This is an angle we obviously have to consider - that Remfry was kil ed by someone he'd known in prison. Someone with whom he'd possibly had a non-consensual sexual relationship...'

Lenahan looked back at him, waiting for the question, not appearing terribly keen to do Hol and any favours. �Is that possible, do you think? Could Remfry have sexual y assaulted another prisoner? Could he have been sexual y assaulted himself?.'

The Deputy Governor leaned back, something dark passing momentarily across her face. It vanished as she clasped her hartds together and shook her head. Thorne thought that the laugh she prQ duced sounded a little forced. '

'I think you've been watching too many films set in American prisons, Detective Constable. There're some very nasty pieces of work in here, don't get me wrong, but very few of them are cal ed Bubba, and if you're looking for bitches or puppies, you should look in a dogs' home. Prisoners form relationships, of course they do, but as far as I know, nobody's going to get gangbanged if they drop the soap in the shower.'

Thorne couldn't help but smile. Hol and smiled too, but Thorne could see the skin tighten around his mouth and the reddening just above his col ar. 'As far as you know?' Hol and said.

'Meaning that it's possible.'

'The week before last, in the kitchens, a prisoner had his ear cut off with the lid from a tin of peaches. That was an argument Over a game of table-tennis, I think.' She smiled, sexy and very cold. 'Anything's possible.'

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Thorne stood and walked away from Lenahan's desk towards the door. 'Let's presume that the man we're looking for is not an ex-con. The obvious question is how he got the information. How did he find Remfry? How could he find out where a convicted rapist was serving his sentence and when he was going to get released, in enough time to set al this up?'

Lenahan swivel ed in her chair to face the computer screen on the corner of her desk. She hit a button on the keyboard. 'He would have had to have got it from a database somewhere.'

She continued typing, watching the screen. 'This is a LIDS computer. Local Inmate Data System, which has everything on the prisoners in here. I can send stuff down the wire to other prisons if I need to, but I wouldn't have thought this would be enough...'

Thorne looked at the nearer of the two landscapes..The dark, thick swirls of the paint on the canvas. He thought it might be somewhere in the Lake District. 'What about national records?'

'I S. The Inmate Information System. That's got everything - locations, offence details, home address, release date.' She looked up and across at Thorne. 'But you'd stil need to type a name in.' 'Who has access to that?' Hol and asked. 'Do you?' 'No . . .'

'The Governor? Police liaison officer?'

She smiled, shook her head firmly. 'It's headquarters-based only. The system's pretty wel restricted, for obvious reasons...'