Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims Page 6

  “We just wanted to talk to him about Colin Jenkins,” Hall added. “Then he starts to tell us about Jackson.”

  “The bastard plucks ’em off the station,” Otley said, “takes them out, gives them food, offers a place to stay—that’s it, he’s got them.” His mouth twisted in his long, haggard face. “Keeps them locked up. Not just boys, it’s very young—only the very young—girls as well. He drugs them, keeps them dependent.”

  Thoughtfully, Tennison went back around the desk. She leaned her knuckles on the edge.

  “Did Martin Fletcher tell you all this? Or is it past history?”

  “We’ve sort of known about the scams,” Hall said, “but we can’t get any of the kids to name Jackson—he was one of our main targets. We don’t know where he holds the kids, but Fletcher, he admitted—”

  “Just hang on a second.” Tennison’s narrowed eyes flicked between them. “What do you mean, ‘holds the kids’? Kidnaps them?”

  “No, they go with him willingly,” Otley said. His voice had a raw, ugly edge to it. “And then once he’s got them—that’s it. We’re talking about kids as young as twelve and thirteen …”

  “None of the kids will talk. We’ve had him hauled in on numerous occasions, we’ve even got as far as getting charges compiled against him, but the statements are always withdrawn, the kids are terrified of him, they won’t go against him. So when Martin tells us Jackson beat him up because he wanted to know where Connie was, we reckoned we got something.” Hall gestured irritably toward the desk. “Have you read my report?”

  Tennison straightened up. “Yes!” She flipped open the buff cover, and began to read out loud.

  “SGT. OTLEY: ‘Where does he stay? Do you know his address?’

  FLETCHER: ‘No, sir.’

  SGT. OTLEY: ‘Did he beat up on you, Martin?’

  FLETCHER: ‘Yes, sir, he did.’

  SGT. OTLEY: ‘Why did he do that, Martin?’

  FLETCHER: ‘I don’t know.’

  SGT. OTLEY: ‘Did you know Connie?’

  FLETCHER: ‘No.’

  SGT. OTLEY: ‘Come on, Martin, he was murdered.’

  FLETCHER: ‘No, sir!’ ”

  Tennison brought her fist down on the page, glaring across the desk at them. “We do not as yet have any proof that Colin Jenkins was murdered.”

  Hall took the file, turned it around and thumbed over a couple of pages. He looked up. “Excuse me, Guv …”

  “Help yourself,” Tennison said curtly.

  Hall read out loud:

  “INSP. HALL: ‘Tell me about Colin Jenkins.’

  FLETCHER: ‘I don’t know him.’

  INSP. HALL: ‘I think you are lying.’

  FLETCHER: ‘I’m not, I didn’t know where he was, that’s why Jackson done it to me… .’ ”

  Hall looked at Tennison. “Jackson beat up Martin Fletcher on the same night Colin—Connie—died.” He read on.

  “INSP. HALL: ‘What time did Jackson beat you up?’

  FLETCHER: ‘Eight to nine-ish.’ ”

  Hall closed the file and stepped back. During the silence Otley stared at nothing and Tennison tapped her thumbnail against her bottom teeth. “Have you got a realistic time for when the fire started?”

  “Yes,” Otley said, getting up. “About nine-thirty.” He yanked his crumpled jacket straight at the back. “Jackson could have done it! Even if he didn’t, this could be what we need to get him off the streets so we can get the kids to talk.” He stared hard at Tennison. She thought some more and then gave a swift nod.

  “Okay. You get hold of the probation officer and Martin Fletcher, and bring Jackson in for questioning … just helping inquiries,” she added quietly, staring him out. In other words, no more bloody cock-ups that would leave her holding the shitty end of the stick.

  Tennison wanted to see for herself. Statements, autopsy reports, tapes, photographs told one version of events. They might be true and accurate, but they were one-dimensional, open to interpretation. Nothing like being there, seeing it, smelling it, touching it.

  She took Otley along with her to Vera Reynolds’s flat. The Fire team was still there, sifting through what remained of Vera’s most treasured possessions. A plastic sheet had been taped over the window to keep out the draft. Even so it was cold, the air acrid with the lingering smell of smoke that seemed to enter every pore, making Tennison’s eyes sting.

  “Body was found here, on the settee.” Drury showed her, his gloved hand tracing the outline of Connie’s body on the singed fabric. “This is, or was, a paraffin oil heater, and the seat of the fire.”

  He pointed to the white cross on the carpet.

  Tennison crouched down for a closer look, lifting the tail of her beige Burberry raincoat to prevent it getting soiled. “Was it an accident?”

  “No.” He was very definite. No pussy-footing around. The man knew his business, and his confidence gave her a lift. “The heater was pushed or kicked forward. And there are signs that paraffin had been distributed around the room, probably from a canister of fuel that we found by the door.”

  “So somebody started the fire,” Otley murmured, stroking his jaw.

  Tennison leaned over to inspect the covering with its ghostly imprint of Connie’s last few seconds alive. No longer just a poor dead lad, she thought; now he was the subject of a possible murder inquiry.

  “If you stand by the fireplace, for example, and say you trip …” Drury acted it out for them. “There’s an armchair, a footstool, a coffee table, but none would indicate the victim had fallen. Coming from the opposite direction … if he had, say, fallen against the heater, then he wouldn’t have been lying that way around. His head would be at this end.”

  Tennison pictured it in her mind. It was as important to know what hadn’t happened as what actually had. She thanked him with a smile and stepped onto the duckboards leading outside. In the Sierra Sapphire, heading for the morgue, she asked Otley if anything had been found in the flat that might be a possible weapon.

  Otley sat in the passenger seat, not wearing his seat belt as she’d asked him to. “Yes, taken to the labs,” he said, rhyming them off. “A heavy glass ashtray, a pan, a walking stick handle, er …”

  “Any prints on them?” Otley shook his head. “What about Vera Reynolds? She in the clear?”

  “Time of the fire he was on the catwalk in a tranny club.” Otley looked across at her. “He still insists he didn’t know the boy. You want to talk to him?”

  “I suppose so.” Tennison sighed, gnawing her lip. “But if Connie was killed, it won’t be down to us to sort it.” Seeing her murder inquiry vanishing over the horizon, she said, “We won’t get a look in.”

  Like a kid who’s had an ice cream snatched from under her nose, Otley thought. It should have made him feel gleeful, her disappointment, but somehow it didn’t.

  “DCI Tennison’s gone walkabout,” Halliday said darkly to Commander Chiswick. “Nobody knows where she is.”

  Chiswick closed the door and tossed the report onto Halliday’s desk. “It’s just official, the fire—it wasn’t accidental.”

  “Well, in that case it’s nothing to do with us, is it!” A smile broke over Halliday’s pallid features. Maybe now he could shake this blasted hangover. He sat back, relieved. “Thank God!”

  “Make sure she understands that this is the Vice Squad,” Chiswick told him stolidly, spelling it out. “Any other crimes are forwarded to the correct departments.”

  “We might have a bit of a problem. The boy was earmarked in Operation Contract, could be a tie-in, but I’ll have a word …”

  “You’d better,” Commander Chiswick said, his face stern. “I don’t want her—us—to have anything to do with this murder, so reallocate the investigation.” He wagged his finger. “And tell her, Jack, she has no option.”

  Chiswick went out, leaving Halliday delicately massaging his temples with his fingertips.

  They arrived at the morgue a few minutes before two-t
hirty, and were about to enter the laboratory when Tennison received a call on her mobile. She waved Otley on and listened to Norma relaying her messages.

  “Right. Okay. Did he leave a number?” Tennison couldn’t get to her notebook fast enough, so she wrote the number on her hand. “Anything else?” She listened impatiently. “Again? Just tell her I am unavailable, or put her onto the press officer.”

  She zapped the aerial back and strode into the white-tiled laboratory. Otley was standing with Craig, a scientist with the Forensic team, before a large, oblong lab bench with a white plastic worktop. Pieces of burnt remnants from the boy’s leather jacket, trousers, boots, and underwear were pegged out and separately tagged. There were some loose change, covered in sticky human soot, and sections of what had been a leather wallet, calcified in the heat so that it crumbled to the touch.

  “Just official, the fire wasn’t accidental,” Tennison informed Otley. “What’s all this?” she asked, sticking her nose in and watching Craig poking with a glass rod at a hard wad of blackened paper that was crumbling to grayish ash.

  “Money. Or the remains of it. We’ve still got some under the microscope, but it’s quite a lot.”

  “Like about how much?”

  Craig was squinting at it through horn-rimmed glasses, wrinkling his hairy nostrils. “At least five hundred, could be more.” Using the glass rod as a pointer, he took them through the display. “The clothes, all good expensive items. Quality footwear. We’ve got a label from his leather coat, it was Armani… .”

  He moved on, and Tennison said in a quiet aside to Otley, “Martin Fletcher didn’t say anything about money, did he? You think this is what Jackson was after?”

  Otley shrugged. Money hadn’t even been mentioned.”

  Farther along the bench, Craig was pointing to some crinkled bits of glossy paper. “These are sections of phtographs, all beyond salvaging, but they were stuffed inside his jacket. And these scraps of paper, all charred, I’m afraid. Possibly letters … hard to tell.”

  “This is it?” Tennison said, surveying the worktop.

  “Yes, this is all that’s left of him,” Craig said.

  On their way out, Tennison said quietly to Otley, “Get Vera brought in again.”

  Inspector Larry Hall and WPC Kathy Trent were cruising Euston Station in reverse, so to speak. They weren’t looking to be picked up, they were planning to do the picking up—when they found him. To a casual observer they would have appeared just like any other young couple waiting to meet someone. Hall wore his dark navy car coat over his double-breasted blazer, and Kathy had on a loose, deep purple trenchcoat and black suede ankle boots.

  Already they’d walked the full length of the concourse at least a dozen times. As each train arrived and the passengers surged up the ramp from the platform, they stood midstream, scanning the wave upon wave of faces rolling toward them.

  At ten minutes to three, with Hall starting to fret that they were wasting their time, he got a call. He inclined his head, listening intently, and then spoke into the small transceiver inside his turned-up collar. “Is it him? Sure? Okay, we’re on our way.”

  He set off, Kathy walking briskly beside him. “Jackson’s hanging around platform seven.” He held out his hand, and Kathy slapped it. “You owe me a fiver!” Hall said, grinning. “I said Euston, you said Charing Cross!”

  The Liverpool train had just pulled in. Jackson was sitting on the metal barrier at the top of the ramp, eating a burger. He looked quite relaxed, waiting, it seemed, like several others, for the arrival of a friend. His eyes roamed over the passengers: businessmen, families, older people with their luggage on a cart, but he wasn’t interested in any of them. Then he spotted a young boy, fourteen, perhaps fifteen, scruffily dressed, carrying a cheap suitcase tied up with string. Jackson tossed the burger away and slid down. Wiping his mouth, he watched the boy coming up the ramp. He sidled to his left, getting into position to intercept the boy as if by chance.

  Hall and Kathy, and a third plainclothes officer, moved in slowly, threading their way through the stream of passengers.

  “Hi, how you doin’?” Jackson was all smiles, a friendly face in a strange, hostile environment. “Do I know you?” The boy gave a little nervous smile, shaking his head. “You from Liverpool? You know Steve Wallis?” Jackson patted his shoulder reassuringly. “I’m not the law, just waitin’ for a friend. You got somebody meetin’ you? First time in the Smoke?” Jackson stuck a cigarette in his mouth and offered one to the boy. “Hey, man, you want a drag?”

  As the boy reached to accept it, Hall stepped between them, nose to nose with Jackson. Jackson fell back a pace. He half-turned, nearly colliding with the third officer standing right behind him. Hall muttered a few words in Jackson’s ear.

  Her arm around his shoulder, Kathy said to the boy, “Have you got somebody meeting you, love?”

  The boy shook his head. He looked past Kathy and got a glimpse of the two officers walking off with Jackson between them, merging into the crowd.

  Otley came into the interview room with a tray of canteen teas in proper cups and saucers. He slid it onto the desk between Tennison and Vera Reynolds. Norma was sitting next to the wall, plump black-stockinged legs crossed, taking notes. She looked bored to tears.

  “Vera’s admitted that she knew Colin.”

  “Connie,” Vera corrected Tennison. Her head was bowed, her long pale hands with the manicured nails clasped tightly in the lap of her leather skirt. She wore a loose halter-neck knitted top, colored bangles on her bare arms. “He didn’t like his name, sometimes he called himself Bruce.”

  Tennison made a note on her pad.

  “Bit butch for his kind, isn’t it?” Otley said, standing with legs apart, sipping his tea.

  Vera turned her face to the wall.

  Tennison’s patience was running short, but she summoned up some more. “Vera, the sooner this is all sorted out, the sooner you can leave.”

  “On the other hand, if you killed your little feathered friend,” Otley said, “then you’ll be caged up—with no makeup bag in sight.”

  Tennison looked at Vera over the rim of her cup. She glanced up at Otley, who rolled his eyes. They waited.

  “If it’s proved to be arson …” Vera’s voice was croaky; her eyes red-rimmed. “I mean, if somebody did it, does that mean I won’t get the insurance?” Her brow puckered as if she were about to cry. “Oh, God … all my costumes. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Never mind your costumes, Vera, what about Connie?” Otley’s patience was running shorter than Tennison’s. “Who do you think set light to him?”

  “I don’t know.” Staring at the desktop, fingers plucking at the baggy sleeve of her knitted top.

  DI Hall tapped on the door and looked in. Otley went over, and Hall whispered to him, “I’ve got Jackson and the probation officer waiting to see …” He nodded at Tennison. “And Martin Fletcher’s being brought in.”

  Tennison was making one last try. “Vera, if you are protecting someone, then you had better tell me. You have already lied to us, wasted our time …” She looked across at Hall. “Five minutes.” Then back to Vera. “Why did you lie about Connie?”

  Norma looked at Hall, cross-eyed. She tapped her watch, blowing out her cheeks. He grinned and went out. Tennison leaned her elbows on the desk, waiting. Otley stood holding his cup and saucer, waiting. He glanced impatiently at his watch. Vera took a long time lighting a cigarette. She blew out a great gust of smoke, then, as an afterthought, hesitantly offered the packet.

  “I’ve given up,” Tennison said.

  “I’ve tried, I’ve had the patches.” Vera smiled weakly. “I’ve got patches for hormones, nicotine—my arse looks like an old pub table. I even tried the chewing gum. How did you give up?”

  “With great difficulty.”

  Norma’s mouth sagged open as she watched the pair of them. She looked at Otley, who gave her a snide wink.

  Tennison pushe
d the loaded ashtray across. “You had better help me, Vera, I am losing my patience. Why did you lie?”

  “I wasn’t lying—about knowing him. Nobody really knew him. He was very gentle, very beautiful. He wanted to be a model. A professional model,” Vera insisted, making sure Tennison understood the difference. “He used to answer the ads …”

  Tennison glanced up sharply and glared at Otley as his sigh exploded in the quiet room. She rapped her knuckles on the desk. “What about James Jackson, Vera?”

  Vera drew deeply on her cigarette. “He’s an animal, should be caged.”

  “Did Connie have someone looking after him? Say Jackson?”

  “You mean like a pimp? No, the older boys don’t have them, really. Not like the Toms.”

  The bing-bong of the chimes came over the wall speaker. “Sergeant Otley to main reception please.”

  He looked to Tennison, and at her nod left the room.

  “I would help you, you know that,” Vera said slowly, as if, with tremendous effort, she was forcing the words out of herself. “I always have in the past. You’re … you’re not like the others, and I’ve always appreciated the way you speak to me—” She broke off to suck in a lungful of smoke. “But—I can’t help. Maybe …”

  Tennison counted silently to five. “Maybe what?”

  “He used the advice centre, for letters, I know that.” She stubbed out the cigarette. “Edward Parker-Jones runs it.”

  Tennison’s hand reached toward Vera’s, but instead of touching it she picked up the ashtray and tipped it into the wastebasket. Abruptly, she stood up. “Norma, will you show Vera the way out.” She tore the sheet from her notepad. “And check out this. Give it to Kathy.”

  Tennison went into the corridor, leaving the door open. She stood there, grinding her teeth. She was annoyed with Vera and bloody angry with herself. She found it difficult to concentrate, and her insides were jumpy. Was she coming down with flu or what? She wasn’t in top form, and knew it.

  Otley strode up. She faced him wearily.

  “Martin Fletcher’s now in reception, and the probation officer’s with him. I think you need to have words with Martin, and before Jackson.”