Cold Sacrifice (11 page)

One of the earliest English seaside resorts, Margate had attracted holiday makers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when bathing in the sea was fashionable. With the advent of air travel, the town had been unable to compete with cheap holidays in sunnier climates. In spite of its sandy beach and colourful amusement arcades along the front, it had suffered a steady decline. A large sign on the front advertised the rebuilding of Dreamland, a former theme park, once a major attraction of the region. Behind the sign a huge metal skeleton of a rollercoaster towered above the high fence, visibly rusting. There was no evidence of its restoration and the whole area had an atmosphere of decay. Ian turned off the coastal road up a narrow street that led around the back of the arcades. He parked on a double yellow line next to a couple of large waste bins at the bottom of a metal fire escape.

The entrance to the club was a small dirty black door. As he approached it he felt rather than heard the vibration of music, a dull regular bass thumping. At the same time he made out the sign, ‘Over 21s Only’ beside the door. A massive bruiser of a man with a shaven head and crooked nose materialised from nowhere, demanding an entry fee.

‘I’m a non-paying member.’

‘No one goes in without paying.’

Ian squared up to him, a head taller than the bouncer, and almost as bulky. He reached into his pocket for his warrant card.

‘I belong to a bigger club than this.’

With that, he barged past the other man and pushed open the door.

‘Hang about,’ the bouncer called after him. ‘You can’t just walk in unannounced –’

Ian took no notice. He didn’t need to wait for permission from some jumped up thug in a stab vest before entering the premises.

A powerful, artificially sweet, fragrance hit him, making him blink in the dimly lit hallway where a voluptuous woman with long dark curly hair was standing in front of a red velvet curtain.

‘Hello, handsome.’

She posed provocatively for him and fiddled with a zip on the front of her dress, pulling it down to expose an unnaturally deep cleavage. As the zip slipped down, her eyes moved suggestively up and down Ian’s body. He wondered if this was what women meant when they complained about men undressing them with their eyes.

‘Have you come to watch the show?’ she drawled in husky tones.

It was a tawdry opening move in a game designed to fleece him, but there was something seductive about her sordid performance that was hard to resist.

‘I’m looking for a girl called Della,’ he said brusquely, shifting his gaze from her exposed breasts.

The woman’s stance altered as abruptly as though she had been slapped. She straightened up, adjusted her dress and glared at him.

‘You a cop?’

Ian hesitated only a second before pulling out his warrant card. There was no point in trying to conceal his identity. Either a woman called Della worked there or she didn’t. Just then the doorman burst into the hallway.

‘Pigs,’ he called out.

The woman looked past Ian.

‘You took your time,’ she snapped.

Her voice had lost its softness, and she looked older than Ian had first thought.

‘He pushed his way in –’

‘Get back on the door and do what you’re paid to do. Moron,’ she added under her breath. ‘Bloody useless moron.’

The bouncer had already disappeared outside.

She switched her attention back to Ian. Her manner was so business-like it was hard to believe this was the same woman who had been coming on to him only a moment before.

‘Now, what did you say you wanted? You can’t hang around here all night. Are you on your own? This isn’t a raid, is it?’

‘There’s no raid. I’m looking for a girl called Della. Is she here?’

His hopes that she would shake her head, with a bemused expression on her face, vanished at once.

‘What’s she done?’

Ian was tempted to tell the woman to mind her own business, but he needed her co-operation.

‘She hasn’t done anything. She’s a potential witness in a case we’re investigating and I need to speak to her at once. It’s important.’

‘You’re impatient,’ the woman teased, twisting her body with a flicker of her practised routine. ‘Quite a looker for a cop. I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re a happily married man?’

‘Della,’ Ian reminded her sharply, suppressing a smile at her shameless flirting.

She gestured to him to follow her through a side door into a small waiting room furnished with a shabby velvet sofa and a couple of large armchairs. Ian perched on a chair and the woman went out, leaving the door open. After a few moments a man in a grey coat entered the hall. Ian watched through the open door as the dark-haired woman recommenced her act, leaning back provocatively and fiddling with her dress. At one point she turned her head sideways, and smiled when she saw Ian’s eyes on her. After a few minutes, his view was blocked as another woman appeared in the doorway. Wearing a very short tight black dress, she teetered into the room on absurdly high stiletto heels. Any illusion of glamour was countered by the graceless way she moved. She closed the door on Ian’s view of the performance out in the hall.

‘What can I do for you, big boy? I hear you been asking for me.’

She came and stood close enough to Ian for him to smell the cloying sweetness of her perfume, mingled with a stale odour of sweat and alcohol. Her heavily painted face was framed by brittle blonde curls. Her arms and legs were skinny, her thin figure oddly unbalanced by unnaturally large breasts which must have put a strain on her back. The whole package struck Ian as faintly grotesque. He thought about Bev’s lovely figure, everything about her in proportion and graceful, and a wave of pity swept through him for the ungainly creature in front of him, struggling to eke out a living from her pitiful appearance. Any man who succumbed to her charms would have to be seriously drunk, or else desperate. Yet she would have been quite pretty if she had taken better care of herself. Close up, he could see she had tried to conceal a bad complexion beneath a thick layer of make-up. Dark red lipstick failed to hide several unsightly cracks in the skin on her lower lip, and she had greyish bags under her eyes from lack of sleep.

‘Where were you on Friday evening?’

‘Who’s asking?’

Ian repeated his question.

‘Are you Henry’s brother?’

Ian’s hopes were crushed at hearing the suspect’s name on her lips. Resigned, he held up his warrant card. She waved it away without even glancing at it.

‘Friday evening?’ she repeated slowly.

Ian had the impression she was trotting out a story she had learned by rote, but there was nothing he could do about it. Dismayed, he held up a small photograph.

‘Do you recognise this man?’

She leaned forward, squinted at the picture, and nodded without hesitation.

‘Yeah, that’s him. That’s Henry. That’s the punter I was with on Friday night.’

‘I need you to go to the police station to make a statement.’

Della took a step backwards. She looked startled.

‘Police station? What statement? What are you talking about? You said you were his brother.’

‘No, I never said I was anyone’s brother.’

‘You’re not his brother then?’

Ian spoke slowly, trying to get through to her.

‘I’m a police sergeant.’

She hesitated.

‘You don’t want to get in trouble over this, do you?’

‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’

‘It’s not a good idea to withhold information from the police. So, are you going to go to the station to make a statement? It won’t take long.’

‘I don’t see why I should but I suppose I can. But I can’t do it now. I’m working.’

She promised to go into the police station in Margate the next day. Wary of frightening her away, Ian had to be content with that.

I
AN WAS GOING OVER
his report once again. Sitting in Rob’s office, he went into greater detail than he had felt able to record in writing, describing the club, its pole dancers and prostitutes, and Della herself, young and vulnerable.

‘You’re sure she was talking about Henry Martin?’

‘Yes, sir. She actually mentioned his name before I did, his first name that is, and she recognised his photo. The thing is –’ He hesitated. ‘I’m not convinced she was telling the truth. She came up with his name so quickly, bang on cue. Why would she remember his name? She must see different punters every night of the week. She said she’d only met him the one time, on Friday, yet on Tuesday she came up with his name just like that. I think I ought to go over there and question her again, when she goes in to make a formal statement.’

‘Good idea. Once she’s there, we can probably be more – persuasive.’

They didn’t speculate long about why a girl like Della might be telling lies about a suspect.

‘How much do you think he paid her?’ Rob asked.

Ian shrugged. ‘Della’s not put anything into her bank account. In fact, very little seems to go in and out of it. She must be paid in cash.’

‘Perhaps we should get a warrant and search her rooms, see if she’s got a wad of money stashed away?’

‘We’d need grounds,’ Rob said. ‘I’m not sure if we can swing it. Ask Polly to do some digging. I dare say we’ll find something on her, but it might take a while.’

‘We’d better get on with it, if we’re going to, sir. I doubt if she’d hang on to that kind of money for long. She didn’t strike me as a saver. Clothes, drugs, booze, you know. It’s already nearly a day since I saw her, and if he paid her off yesterday it could already have gone without trace.’

‘See if the drug squad have any information about her being flush with cash. Of course it won’t prove anything, but it all helps us build a picture.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Ian went off to find Polly and pass on the instruction to carry out some research into Della’s background, and her spending pattern over the past day. The constable’s smile faded when Ian admitted he couldn’t give her a full name.

‘Della? That’s not much to go on, is it?’

He told her where Della worked.

‘She was jumpy as hell so I didn’t press her for her real name. But the club’s a start. They’re cagey about giving anything away but lean on them. Find out as much as you can. Any form, and any dropped charges would be great. We need to put pressure on her, because she’s giving Henry Martin an alibi for Friday when –’

‘I know what happened on Friday,’ Polly interrupted, grinning. ‘I work here, remember? Talking of which, I’ve found out something that might interest you. Henry withdrew a thousand quid first thing Monday morning.’

Ian suspected that money had been given to Della in exchange for an alibi.

‘We need to find out where she lives so we can scare her into telling us the truth.’

‘Once I’ve spoken to Mark and his friend I’ll see what I can find out,’ she promised.

‘Why don’t you leave them to me, and you can get on with looking into Della?’

‘Apparently he’s got a young girl with him who looks petrified, so –’

‘Ah, she’s more likely to talk to a nice friendly woman than a big scary policeman, eh?’

‘We thought she might be more comfortable talking to a woman.’

‘Yes, of course, I was only joking. Come on then.’

Not convinced Henry was guilty, despite his dubious alibi, Ian was keen to hear what his son had to say.

Mark was sitting beside a girl who looked about fourteen. Her long straight hair was almost white, as were her eyelashes, while her eyes were a very pale watery blue. Everything about her was wraithlike from her extreme pallor to her emaciated figure. She was so nervous, she trembled all the time Polly was gently questioning her. The girl gave her name as Eve Thompson, said she was seventeen, and reeled off an address and telephone number. Mark fidgeted impatiently as he listened.

‘The point is she was with me on Friday evening,’ he blurted out suddenly. ‘That’s why I brought her here. You said you wanted to know what I was doing on Friday evening. Well, here she is. We split up just after ten and I went straight home. There was nothing to eat there because –’ His voice broke.

The girl threw a terrified glance at him but he patted her hand reassuringly, whispering something Ian didn’t catch.

‘My dad was at home when I got in, about ten. I was starving, so I went out to get sausages and chips, and then I went straight home again.’

Nearly five days had passed since Martha’s body had been discovered, and so far no one had come forward with any useful information.

‘Someone somewhere must know something,’ Rob grumbled as Ian sat in his office, bringing the inspector up to speed with the minimal progress they had made.

Neither of them held out much hope of getting the truth from Della. They discussed the chances of broadcasting a reconstruction of the victim’s last hours, but they didn’t have enough information about her movements in the time leading up to her death. All they knew was that she had been killed around nine at night, probably while sitting on the bench where her body had been found. It wasn’t enough to warrant organising a full reconstruction, in the hope of jogging someone’s memory. An image of a woman who looked like Martha, sitting on the bench in the park, would serve the same purpose.

‘Were you out for a walk on Friday evening? Did you see this woman?’

Rejecting the idea of a reconstruction, Rob suggested they broadcast an appeal on television, with Henry and his son sitting on either side of the inspector. They would beg members of the public to come forward if they knew anything that might help to find whoever had committed the murder. Even if they had been in the area of the park without noticing anything suspicious, any eyewitness account could be helpful. Ian jumped to his feet.

‘I’ll get on to it right away, sir.’

They both knew it was best to send out such appeals as soon after the event as possible, before people had a chance to forget what they had seen. It might already be too late, but they could at least try. Anything was better than sitting around helplessly, waiting for something to turn up.

On his way out to find Henry and invite him to join in the appeal, Ian checked to see how Polly was getting on. She had managed to worm out of the manager of the club that Della’s real name was Jade Higgins.