Prime Suspect (Prime Suspect (Harper)) (26 page)

“Are you telling me Shefford was also in the vicinity? Have you got the evidence to start an internal investigation?”

“I don’t know if Shefford was ever attached to . . .”

He wouldn’t let her finish. “I’m telling you he wasn’t, because I’ve checked!”

“I apologize, but under the circumstances . . .”

“Under the circumstances I am bringing in DCI Hicock! Don’t you know what you’ve done, Jane? You’ve been running around the country trying to rake up dirt on one of the best officers I ever had! It stinks, and I won’t take any more of it.”

“Shefford falsified evidence, and is known to have been on close terms with two murdered girls, both prostitutes—Della Mornay and Jeannie Sharpe. Of the two other cases we have uncovered, one was a prostitute . . .”

Kernan strode to the door. “The man is in the graveyard.”

“So are they, sir. Re-opening cases as far back as nineteen eighty-four is a slow procedure.”

“I’ve nothing more to say, I’m bringing Hicock in as soon as he can get here. You concentrate on the investigation you were assigned to for as long as you remain on it, is that clear? And if you want some advice, put in for a transfer. I want you off the Marlow case, and I want your report on everything that went down yesterday on my desk by lunchtime, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!” said Tennison.

Amson came racing up the corridor as she left Kernan’s office, waving a sheet of paper.

“We’ve got another one! Blackburn, ’eighty-seven!”

Tennison hurried to meet him and grabbed the paper, but Amson wouldn’t let it go until he’d finished. “It’s about one a year, apart from the time Marlow was in jail! Caplan and Haskons are still watching him, and everyone else is mustered in the Incident Room—apart from these three.”

Tennison looked puzzled, and he finally handed over the note. “Otley coughed up the names of the blokes who were fooling around with the toms! They’re waiting for the Super to call them in now.”

“What about Shefford?” she asked urgently.

“He’s in the clear, on all the new cases. He may have done a surface job on the Jeannie Sharpe murder, but then he wasn’t the DCI on the case, so you can’t put it all down to him. And he wasn’t around when the others were killed.”

“I’m glad,” Tennison said. He gave her a disbelieving look and she protested, “I am! Even if it dropped me right in the shit!”

Amson looked around and lowered his voice. “As a matter of interest, did you know that the Chief and Shefford were”—he crossed his fingers—“like that? They played golf every weekend—not at Sunningdale! Chief was Shefford’s guv’nor when he was on Vice.”

Tennison shook her head and raised her eyes to heaven. “I think I’ll leave that one well and truly alone!” she said.

At least thirty people were crammed into the Incident Room. The air was thick with smoke. Every chair was taken, and the latecomers were sitting on desks or propped against the walls. While they waited some drank coffee and ate sandwiches, but most of them just talked. The din was deafening.

Sergeant Terry Amson was setting up a projector in the center of the room. Tennison was thumbing through her notes while she waited.

She looked up when the door opened. It was DI Burkin and two others, returning from the Super’s office. They all looked rather sheepish.

“Sorry, guv, we’ve been upstairs.”

Tennison nodded, well aware that these were the men who had been a bit too familiar with the local prostitutes. She gave them a moment to disperse amongst the others.

Burkin had found a place next to Muddyman, who asked him what was going on.

“Got our knuckles rapped for off-duty leg-overs. She’s got eyes in the back of her head, that one! Just a warning this time, so maybe she’s not all bad, but rumor has it that Hicock’s definitely taking over, no kidding. He’s in, she’s out.”

Tennison stood up. “OK, can I have a bit of hush?”

She waited for the room to grow quiet. Slowly they sorted themselves out, and she was able to start the meeting. She played it to the gallery.

“Right. I’ve been told that unless we get results very quickly indeed, I’m on traffic . . . Joke! I don’t think it’s quite that bad, but there will be some changes around here if we don’t pull something out of the hat. In case I don’t get another opportunity, I’ll say now that I appreciate your back-up, and all the hard work . . .”

There were moans and unprintable comments as the word went round. Tennison yelled, “Come on, settle down! Maybe there’s something we’ve missed, something that, if we all think about it, will whack us right between the eyes. OK, Sergeant . . .”

The lights went off, the blinds went down, and Amson ran the mock-up of Karen Howard’s last night. They watched her stand-in talking to the builder who had tried to help her, then crossing the road and walking up Ladbroke Grove.

“Oh, boy, we gonna watch you again, guv?” Tennison recognized the voice from the darkness as Rosper’s.

Amson summarized all the evidence as they watched. “Karen Howard, our first victim. Her body discovered in Della Mornay’s efficiency and mistaken for her.”

The film ended, followed by close-up stills of Karen’s badly beaten body, then her various appalling injuries. The last frame was of the bruising on her arms.

“OK, take a good look at these marks. Now we have the other victim, Della Mornay, who was killed approximately six weeks before Karen . . .”

The shot of the decomposed body was sickening. The close-ups showed her upper arms and what appeared to be bite marks.

“The foxes had a go at her, and the dog belonging to the man who found her. But look at the arms again: the same marks, almost identical to those found on Karen.”

Another body was flashed up on the screen. “Jeannie Sharpe, killed in Oldham in nineteen eighty-four. Again, note the bruising and welts on the upper arms. Fourth victim . . .”

Amson pointed to DI Muddyman and whispered, “You ready?” Muddyman climbed to his feet.

“Another video now, this time of Angela Simpson, whose family sent it to us. She was knifed to death in a public park in nineteen eighty-five. She was a hairdresser, well-liked kid, about to get married. This is her engagement party.”

The sweet face of Angela Simpson smiled into camera, showing off her engagement ring, then self-consciously kissing the young man beside her. Her smiling fiancé gave a thumbs-up sign, and Angela turned to the camera, laughing, and put her hands over the lens. Then she loomed very close and kissed the camera.

“During the house-to-house enquiries, George Marlow was interviewed. He had been staying in a bed and breakfast only fifty yards from the gates of the park where she was found. There were no marks on her upper arms, but look at this . . .”

There was a shot of Angela, lying face down, legs apart. Her hands were tied behind her back.

“The rope, the way the hands were tied were just the same as in victims one and two.”

There was a slight commotion as a WPC entered and tried to find Tennison in the dark. She delivered a brief message and departed, clocked by the men. Frank Burkin stood up to take DI Muddyman’s place.

“The fifth girl”—Burkin waited for the shot to appear on screen—“was Sharon Reid. She was sixteen, still at school, and worked part-time in a local beauty salon . . .”

When he had finished they broke for lunch, and the discussion was continued less formally in the canteen. Reading the menu, DC Lillie was reminded about the old woman, the one found in the chicken run. She had had similar marks on her arms to the others. He asked Sergeant Amson, who was in the queue behind him.

“Marlow was in the vicinity, that’s good enough for me to try and pin it on him.” He looked around Lillie to see what the hold-up was. “Come on, Burkin!” he yelled.

Lillie persisted. “But they didn’t all have clamp marks . . . Oh, not ruddy Chicken Kiev again! The garlic’s a killer!”

Burkin, his plate full, moved away from the counter, and joined Muddyman, who was holding forth about Marlow.

“I’ve been watching him for weeks now, he’s a real friendly bloke, right? He chats to the lads every day. Just because he was in the area, it doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”

Burkin picked up the lurid plastic tomato from the table and squeezed ketchup all over his plate, then stuffed a huge forkful of chips in his mouth. Bits of potato flew everywhere while he talked.

“There must be hundreds of salesmen workin’ that area, you could take your pick. You ask me, all that film was about this morning was that we’ve got more bloody tarts being bumped off”—he paused to burp—“an’ no bloody suspects.”

The “bing-bong” sounded and a voice requested the presence of DCI Tennison in Administration. The men ignored it and carried on talking about Marlow; everyone who had had contact with him seemed to be convinced that he was a good bloke and therefore not a murderer. Terry Amson arrived and picked up on the conversation.

“He lied about the lock-up, we know that.”

“We’ve only got the word of an old lag on that, it’s not proof,” Burkin retorted. There was another call over the PA system for Tennison. “Looks like the boss is gonna get the big boys pullin’ the rug on her . . . Coffee all round?” He looked at Lillie. “Your turn.”

Maureen Havers found Tennison hiding in the locker room, eating a large hamburger.

“Is DCI Hicock a big red-haired bloke? He’s in with the Commander and the Super’s there too. You’re being paged all over the station.”

“Am I?” Tennison asked innocently. “Well, they’ll just have to find me.”

Having successfully evaded her bosses, Tennison returned to the Incident Room to continue the briefing. She pinned photographs of all six of the victims on the notice-board while she waited for everyone to settle down.

“Right! Six victims, no set pattern. They did not, as far as we can ascertain, know each other. They didn’t look alike, they belonged to different age groups, different professions. Apart from certain minor similarities they were not all killed in the same manner. The only link between them all is that Marlow was in the area when they were murdered. Did he kill all six? Is there something we’ve overlooked, another link?”

Muddyman was slumped right down in his chair, totally relaxed. He waved a hand to attract Tennison’s attention.

“In the case of Karen, a witness stated that she heard a man call out her name. It was the same with Jeannie. But what about Angela, the little blond one? She was killed in the shrubbery in broad daylight, a good distance from the path, which was her usual route home. So how did she get there? If someone had called out to her . . . And the one who was raped, Gilling, she said he called her name . . .”

“Point taken,” said Amson, “but you’ve got two toms, one hairdresser, a schoolgirl . . . How did he get to know their names, if he knew them?”

Havers had made her way to the front, using her elbows, and was standing by the photographs. She raised her hand, about to say something, but lowered it, not sure of her ground. She moved closer to Tennison and touched her arm.

“Boss, I think . . . It may be off the wall . . .”

“Anything, my love, I’m right up against it. What you got?”

“I did a bit of checking, but it all falls down with Gilling. She was a florist, but there’s one link with the others. It was mentioned once . . .”

“To Marlow?”

“No, not him—Moyra Henson.”

Tennison could barely hear her against the growing racket in the room. “Come on, lads, keep it down a bit!” she yelled, then turned back to Havers.

“Go on.”

“When she was brought in for questioning I typed her statement. She put herself down as unemployed . . .”

“Yeah . . . Quiet! Quieten down!”

The noise slowly subsided. Some of the men closed in on Tennison and Havers, realizing something was going on.

Havers coughed nervously. “She was picked up for prostitution, fifteen years ago, according to her record. But on that charge-sheet she’s down as a freelance beautician. If she worked when she was traveling around with Marlow, he could have met the girls that way. But Gilling doesn’t fit in . . .”

“Good on ya, Maureen!” Tennison gave her a quick hug. “We’ll check it out.”

Unaware of the tension, Jones walked in carrying an MSS internal fax sheet. “This might be useful, ma’am,” he said to Tennison. “I’ve checked back on Marlow’s past addresses. They’ve been in Maida Vale for three years, and before that they were in Somerstown, not far from St. Pancras. He’s had the Rover for twelve years, so what if he had a lock-up close to his previous flat?”

Rosper had a sudden thought. “Yeah! Those garages we’ve been painting, Marlow told us he tried to rent one, but the council leases ’em out to the highest bidder. Maybe he kept his old garage because he couldn’t get one near by . . .”

The phone rang and DI Muddyman answered it, then covered the mouthpiece. “Guv? You’re wanted upstairs, you here or not?”

“No, I’m not! Go and bring that hard-nosed cow in!”

Moyra wasn’t happy at being taken down to the station, and she made sure the whole estate knew about it.

“Had a good eyeful?” she screeched at her next-door neighbor as she was led out to the car. “I tell you, they get more mileage out of you lot than a ruddy video . . .
Don’t push me!
”

Marlow trailed behind them. “I don’t understand, do you want me as well?”

Tennison emerged from the car and held the back door open for Moyra. “Not this time, George.”

They left him standing there, still trying to work out what was going on.

Tennison had a quick wash and checked that the Super had left for the day before she emerged with Maureen Havers from the locker room, ready to interview Moyra.

Amson was pacing up and down the corridor outside. “Mrs. Howard is sending some of Karen’s latest model photos by courier, shouldn’t be long. You all set? Got plenty of cigarettes?”

She took a deep breath and nodded, then followed Amson and Havers along the corridor to room 4-C.

Havers went in first, followed by Amson, who held the door open for Tennison. After a beat, Tennison followed, like a prize fighter.

“I am Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, this is WPC Maureen Havers, and Detective Sergeant Amson. Thank you for agreeing to answer our questions . . .”