Running Scared (37 page)

He said, ‘What the hell is this? What bloody stupid sort of joke is that?’

‘No joke, Jason,’ I told him. ‘It was never a joke. You put her through a nightmare. She’ll never forget it. She was abused, she was hurt, she was terrified. She thought you were going to kill her. The one who drove her back to King’s Cross – I know it wasn’t you – he threatened to take her down the river and hold her head under.’

‘Who told you all this – this nonsense?’ he whispered.

‘I have a lot of friends out there on the streets, Jas,’ I said. ‘You forgot that.’

He ran his tongue over his lower lip. The expression in his eyes, watching me, was both hard and unpredictable. I felt a stab of fear, the faintest echo of what Tig must have felt.

‘Then one of your
friends
lied to you,’ he said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Where is this girl?’ He leaned forward so suddenly I couldn’t help but recoil. ‘You put her in front of me and have her repeat her story! She bloody won’t, you know!’

‘Of course she won’t, Jason, you know that. You’ve always known that. You won’t find her now. She’s out of your reach.’

‘I bloody well will find her! What’s her name?’ The fury spewed out of him now. He crashed his fist on the table. Bonnie, who’d been listening uneasily, jumped up and barked. Harford looked down at her. ‘There was another girl here for a while, wasn’t there? You kept her hidden away but the workmen who came to fix the window saw her and the scene of crime boys glimpsed her too. They said she was acting oddly. She had that dog. She left it here with you.’

‘You see,’ I said. ‘None of you ever even asked her name. She wasn’t human, she was just a thing, picked up off the street like garbage. Something to be used and chucked back in the gutter.’ All the scorn I felt for him must have filled my voice. ‘Only,’ I said, ‘
she
wasn’t the garbage. The three of you were that.’

He’d gone quiet again, leaning back in his chair. His features were frozen, his body tense, only his fingers drummed nervously on the table top.

‘Why’d you go along with it, Jason?’ I asked. ‘Did you want to prove you were still one of the lads, despite being a copper? Was that it? Or was it a night out with old mates from university days – the ones who’d got City jobs – and it turned into something you hadn’t anticipated and hadn’t got the guts to stop?’

‘You’ve got it all wrong!’ He was shaking his head in disbelief, not at the outrageousness of my tale, but that this could be happening to him. ‘I’m not proud of it. But it wasn’t the way she told you. She was just a little tart and she was paid . . .’

‘She was a barely sixteen-year-old kid down on her luck and desperate for money. She was paid a miserable eighty quid for two hours of horror. Twenty-five quid each, Jason. A quickie in a street doorway would’ve cost you that. A real professional prostitute would’ve cost you more.’

He stood up abruptly, the chair legs screeching on the tiled floor as he pushed it back. ‘I take it dinner’s off, then?’ he asked coldly.

‘You bet,’ I said.

He put both palms on the table and leaned over me, his face dark now and threatening. His eyes held a mix of hatred, fear and desperation. I held my breath and hoped I hadn’t judged it wrong.

‘I swear, if you ever breathe a word of this—’ he began.

‘Calm down, Jason,’ I told him as evenly as I could. ‘No one would believe me. Just as you, all three of you, always knew no one would believe the girl if she was brave enough or daft enough to talk. You’re safe. At first it really sickened me to think you’d got away with it so completely. But then I remembered what you’ve forgotten, Jas. You forget that besides yourself, your victim and now me, two other people know what happened that night. That makes five, and that’s too many to keep a secret for ever.’

I saw alarm and then suspicion in his eyes. ‘Who else? I don’t believe you.’

‘The other two guys involved with you. They know.’

He was staring at me, surprised, puzzled, not getting the message. I explained it to him.

‘You think you can rely on them because you were all in it together. Wrong, Jas. You’re a copper, remember? You’re a copper destined for high things! Real senior rank. And one day in the future, just when you think it’s all going swimmingly for you, one of those mates of yours is going to come to you and ask a favour. He’ll tell you he’s in a mess and you, his friend, can help him out. It might be any kind of jam. Fraud? An unreported fatal traffic accident? Perhaps he’ll have picked up another girl for the same kind of games, only this time things may have gone really wrong and she’s dead. Whatever it is, he’ll come to you for help in some form or other. Perhaps for inside information on just what the police know or don’t, or to request a report to be misplaced, a connection deliberately not made, information not passed on or a junior copper persuaded to tear a page out of his notebook. He may ask, tip me off, Jas old pal, if the police get close, so I can hop the country. You’re a mate, you won’t refuse. You won’t be able to refuse, will you? Because he’ll have the dibs on you.’

He was shaking his head.

‘I know what’s in your mind,’ I told him. ‘You’re thinking, he won’t be able to shop me because he’ll be shopping himself. But when it happens, he’ll already be in trouble and a little more old scandal won’t make it that much worse for him. But you, you’ll have everything to lose. So when I said you were safe just now, I meant, for the moment. After all, you were telling me that there was no honour among thieves. I’d be willing to bet there’s none among rapists. Like you said, when the heat’s turned up, every man’s for himself, right?’

He looked like a man in the middle of a bad dream hoping he’d wake up and afraid he never would. He walked slowly to the door and as he got there, I called, ‘Inspector?’

He turned unwillingly. ‘Yes?’ His voice and face were stony. But I wasn’t afraid of him any more. The fight was kicked out of him for the time being. He’d bounce back, outwardly anyway. But from now on, if I’d done any justice by Tig, he’d never go near any of his old mates again. He’d be alone, living with that niggling fear at the back of his mind, every achievement soured. Or I certainly hoped so.

‘I’ve been homeless,’ I said. ‘And after Christmas I’ll be homeless again. My old grandma used to say there were all kinds of people in every walk of life, and that’s true. Good and bad everywhere. But I reckon there are fewer rats out on the street than there are living in comfortable houses.’

He was silent, then he said, ‘It’s a pity, Fran. I really liked you.’

He went out and I heard the front door close. I went and checked he’d really gone. I knew I had pushed him close. But I’d been taking a calculated gamble. I reckoned that at heart he was a coward. Only a coward would have stood aside and let all that happen to Tig – even worse, joined in. He’d chucked out the window everything he’d claim to stand for as a police officer. All that talk, I thought, remembering our conversation in the Italian restaurant. All that blather about making the community a better place and helping people. He’d sounded as if he’d meant it and I’d been taken in. Perhaps he had meant it. Perhaps he really thought the lapse, as he probably viewed it, with Tig hadn’t mattered because she was nothing, just a street-dweller with a drugs habit she was financing by turning tricks.

Faced with the truth about himself and what he’d done, he’d folded. I had to admit there’d been a moment back there when he might’ve grabbed for my throat, but his brain had clicked in. I’d counted on his being bright enough not to do anything so dumb. Policework had taught him how murderers are caught. Parry, for one, knew he’d come here tonight. I’d probably mentioned it to Daphne before she went out. His fingerprints were all over the kitchen and he couldn’t have been sure to clean them all off. Even so, I’d probably come as near to the edge that day as I’d ever want to be – twice.

‘Cats have nine lives,’ I said to myself as I poured my undrunk glass of wine down the sink. I hadn’t touched it while he had been here. I’m fussy whom I drink with. I think I’ve told you that before. ‘How many do you think you’ve got left, Fran?’

I hadn’t wanted to believe Tig at first, although somehow, as soon as she began to speak, I’d had a premonition of just what she was going to say.

‘I didn’t know one of them was a copper,’ her voice, echoing down the line from Dorridge, had said. ‘Not until he came to your flat that afternoon. I caught a glimpse of him as he passed the window on the way to your door. I hid in the bathroom, you remember, but I took a peek through the door, just to make sure. It was him, all right.’

‘You are positive about this, aren’t you, Tig?’ I’d asked.

‘What?’ asked Tig. ‘Do you think I’m ever likely to forget their faces, any of them? I didn’t tell you straight off, Fran, and I’m sorry. But I didn’t know how thick you were with him. You seemed to be getting on really well with all the rozzers. I didn’t know how far I could trust you. I didn’t want you fingering me to him.’

‘You think I’d have done that?’ I’d been incredulous.

‘I didn’t know you wouldn’t. Look, Fran, don’t be angry. I was scared. That’s why I went for you. I was in enough trouble. I didn’t want more. If he’d found out I’d told you about it, he’d have started looking for me, to shut me up. Maybe even to shut you up, too. Knowing some things is dangerous. Out there on the streets, I’ve seen all sorts of things – some really bad. But I’ve never talked about any of them, not once, not even to another street-dweller. You don’t, do you? You see nothing. You hear nothing. That way you stay out of trouble and that’s all I wanted to do. But after I got back here, I started thinking about it. You might really be starting to like him. He’s a good-looking guy. He was being nice as pie to you. You had to know what he was really like. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.’

Bad things had happened to me all my life, one way and another, but Tig had done her best to spare me one thing. I said, ‘Yeah, I understand, Tig. Thanks.’

I fancied I heard her sigh in relief. There was a faint noise in the background and the echo of a woman’s voice, querulous.

‘Oh bugger it,’ said Tig hastily. ‘Here’s Mum back from the supermarket and wanting to know who I’m talking to. I’ll have to ring off.’

I could hear Sheila’s voice now, shrill and frightened.

‘All right, Mum!’ Tig said crossly. ‘It’s only Fran. You remember her, she came here. I’m just calling her to let her know I’m OK.’ Her voice came more clearly as she put the receiver back near her mouth. ‘I’ve got to go. But I’ve got to ask, Fran, were you beginning to like him?’

‘Not really,’ I said. It was a lie. ‘Cheers, Tig. Take care.’ I hung up.

I’d sat for a long time in Daphne’s rocking chair, following that call, with Bonnie curled up in my lap. At first I’d been so angry my stomach had churned. I’d wanted revenge for Tig, for myself. I’d wanted to race round to the police station and face Jason myself. Face them all, tell them all – Parry, Foxley, the lot. I could imagine their faces, horrified, disgusted but not at what he’d done. No, at my effrontery in suggesting such a thing of one of their brightest hopes. No one to back me. No proof. No Tig.

I could hear, in my head, Foxley’s dry pinched tones, saying, ‘There is no record of any complaint being made at the time. You are unable to produce the young woman who is making these claims. How do you know she isn’t lying? How do you know, supposing that some incident of some kind took place, that her story isn’t gross exaggeration? Do you expect me to accept an identification made through a crack in a door? The unsubstantiated word of a street-dweller? An amateur prostitute and drug addict?’

Then anger had died back and I’d gone through it carefully, testing to see if there was something I could do. Eventually it occurred to me that the one thing in my power was to let him know it wasn’t a secret, what he’d done that night. Others knew and he’d never be safe. He wasn’t only evil; he was stupid. I’d been wrong about thinking him bright. Mrs Worran would have called him a ‘whited sepulchre’ and she’d have been right. Game and match to you, Mrs Worran.

Chapter Nineteen

It was Christmas Eve. Throughout the country little kids were looking forward to Santa coming down the chimney or squeezing through the radiator somehow. I’m glad I’m not a mum trying to explain that one. As for me, I opened the door and found I’d got Sergeant Parry standing on the doorstep.

‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, leering.

If recent events hadn’t already made it difficult to get any seasonal feeling going, the sight of Parry’s straggling moustache and beady eyes would’ve nipped in the bud any enthusiasm I had worked up. He was wearing the oldest and dingiest green jacket I’d ever set eyes on. It was the sort which is meant to be waxed but all the wax had gone and the side pockets had bulged and sagged. He probably wore it when he wanted to blend with the crowd but something about it, something about all of Parry, screamed ‘Copper!’ Under it I could see he was wearing a peculiar hand-knitted pullover in cable stitch. It had to have been a present from some elderly female relative. Even a first glance at the front of it showing between the open sides of the waxed jacket revealed several pattern mistakes, cable twists going the wrong way and lots of bits of purl where it should’ve been plain, and the other way round. Whoever had knitted it, she’d either had poor eyesight or one eye on the television. But who am I to criticise? The only thing I’ve ever knitted was a Dr Who scarf, and that was when I was about twelve. It took me a year and was out of fashion by the time I’d finished it.