Passion Killers (10 page)

“Oh, don’t!” Katie shuddered.

Alison stared at them. If this was a nervous reaction, she understood and sympathised – but if it was an act, they were worse than Cannon and Ball.

“When we couldn’t get an answer on the phone, we decided to come and see Susan,” Katie said. “I’m going to stay with Olivia for a while, and needed to go home to pick up some things, so I popped home and we agreed to meet here.”

Alison looked at Banham. What was going on here?

“You arrived separately?” Banham asked.

Katie nodded.

“Where’s home?” Alison asked her.

“Chelsea.”

“So how long did it take you?”

“About thirty minutes, I think.” She turned the big blue eyes appealingly on Banham. “I changed, and I left home about half past eight. I had to find somewhere to park, so I arrived here, oh, about nine? I don’t know exactly; I wasn’t watching the time.” She looked from Alison to Banham and back at Alison with a lift of her eyebrows, then carried on more quietly. “The door to the shop was wide open. I wasn’t happy about it, so I rang Olivia on her mobile.”

“I was just up the road, parking,” Olivia said quickly. “I told Katie to wait till I got here, and we went in together.”

Her long, brown imitation fur coat fell open, leaving her cleavage on show. She pulled the coat round her yellow t-shirt and jeans and pushed a long dark red nail into her shiny mouth.

“Had your husband gone out when you left?” Banham asked her.

“Yes, he stormed out not long after you went.”

There was a silence. This wasn’t getting them anywhere, Alison thought. Katie Faye was giving Banham that helpless look from under her fringe, and Alison could tell he was trying not to be taken in by it. He was failing miserably.

Tears suddenly spilled from Katie’s eyes and the back of her hand flew up to catch them. “We walked through to the kitchen calling Susan’s name, and...”

Alison leaned forward. “You mean when you got here?” Katie nodded. “Miss Faye, this is very important. Did you touch anything when you came into the shop?”

Katie looked at Olivia. “The till,” Olivia said. “We opened the till, didn’t we? Susan said she was going to lock the money in there.”

“Before going out to the back room?” Alison asked urgently. Now they were getting somewhere.

Olivia nodded. “We were scared Brian Finn might be here.” She looked from Alison to Banham, and Alison thought how hard her eyes were. But then Katie’s were probably just as calculating. She was an actress, after all.

“You should have rung 999,” Alison said.

“When we found Susan, we panicked,” Olivia said. “We rang Judy, and she said she would take care of it.”

“We weren’t thinking straight.” This was Katie, and she spoke directly to Banham.

“You don’t need to worry about Brian Finn,” Banham said gently. “He’s in custody. And tomorrow I’ll get you both under police protection. But until I can put that in place, neither of you should go out alone, is that quite clear?”

Both women nodded nervously.

“I’m worried about the kids,” Olivia said anxiously. “I’d like to get back. Ianthe was upset – she hates it when Ken drinks.”

“You could ring them,” Alison suggested a little too sharply.

“Both their mobiles are switched off.”

Banham stood up. Alison opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it; judging by the way he kept looking at Katie Faye, he wouldn’t take any notice of her anyway.

“OK,” Banham said. “I think you’ve told us all you can for the moment. I’ll need your clothes, though, for forensics.” His businesslike tone softened as he spoke to Katie. “You say you picked some clothes up? Something you could lend Mrs Stone? I’ll get forensics to bag what you’re wearing, and you can both go home.”

“But you have to stay together, at your house, Mrs Stone,” Alison cut in. “We need know where you are.”

“I’ll send a female forensic officer up here to take your clothes,” Banham said.

“And we’ll need your phones too,” Alison added.

“I don’t feel safe without my phone,” Olivia said.

“You’ll get them back in the morning.”

Banham handed Katie another of his cards. “This is just in case you need me. Ring this number any time.”

Alison flicked her notebook closed. She had to admit he was being completely professional.

“We’ll get you out the back way,” she said.

Alison and Banham walked back to her car in silence. Banham clicked his belt into place, saying, “I’m not taking any chances. We’ll get Judy Gardener compassionate leave, and tell her she’s to stay with Kim twenty-four hours a day. The other three will need round-the-clock protection. Get that moving first thing in the morning, will you?”

“Guv.”

“And get someone to check on Theresa McGann now. I thought they’d be safe once we got Brian Finn banged up, but now...” His voice trailed away, and Alison focused on the traffic. “Can you lean on Isabelle?” he said suddenly. “We need to find out where those knickers came from. Get on to Penny too – I need the results on this latest pair ASAP.”

“G-strings, guv,” Alison said. “Not knickers.”

“Whatever.”

“We’ll be lucky if Penny and Isabelle are even talking. Isabelle’s the reason that Penny and Crowther fell out.”

“Why?”

“Isabelle and Crowther.” He could be so exasperating; didn’t he take notice of what went on under his nose? “They’ve been having a fling.”

He turned his blue eyes on her, and a horn blasted behind them as her hands shook on the wheel.

“I can’t keep up,” he said with a shrug.

Then he turned away and stared out the window. He was in a world of his own again.

As Banham blu-tacked the photograph on the whiteboard at the front of the room, a silence descended over the twenty-four detectives on the murder team. Beside Susan Rogers on the board was Shaheen Hakhti. Both photographs were horrifying, and both women had red g-strings protruding from what was left of their mouths.

Banham turned to face the room. “These are savage killings,” he said. “This murderer must –” But his voice stuck in his throat as images of his dead wife and mutilated baby banged around his brain. Thank goodness for Alison, he thought; she would help him out.

She did.

“We do have a lead,” she said. “The same souvenir was left with both women.”

He found his voice and carried on. “Nineteen years ago, both women worked in the club where a man called Ahmed Abdullah was murdered. An identical pair of g-strings was left in his pocket.”

“Not a pair, guv. It’s singular,” Isabelle Walsh said loudly.

Banham frowned uncomprehendingly.

“It’s g-string, singular,” Isabelle repeated. “Not a pair of g-strings.”

“OK. G-string, singular. That’s our link.” His hand covered his mouth briefly, and he continued, “Brian Finn, the club bouncer, who served nineteen years for Abdullah’s murder, is in custody.” He looked over at DC Crowther. “Penny is carrying out forensic tests on his clothes as we speak.”

He turned back to the whiteboard and stared at the pictures.

Alison broke the silence. “Brian Finn is blackmailing the women that worked in that club. He has videos of them having sex with Ahmed Abdullah. The actress Katie Faye is one of them; another is the wife of the government minister Kenneth Stone. Susan Rogers had arranged to meet Brian Finn to hand over the blackmail money – and that’s missing.”

Banham took over. “We have nothing solid on Finn. And if it isn’t him, the killer is out there, and the other four women’s lives are in grave danger. I have put in a request to the Super for twenty-four hour protection and surveillance for them. I’ll feel a lot happier when that’s in place. PC Judy Gardener’s other half is one of the four women. Gardener has been given compassionate leave and will be with Kim twenty-four-seven until we have the murderer. The fourth woman, Theresa McGann, is the mother of Brian’s child.”

“Guv, I don’t think Finn is our murderer,” Isabelle Walsh said loudly from the back of the room where she was perched on the edge of a desk with three male detectives. “Why would he? The women had agreed to pay up. He didn’t need to steal the money.”

“We didn’t find any money on him when we picked him up,” Alison said. “And I don’t think he was expecting us.”

“We need to concentrate on that club and those... g-strings.” He paused and glanced at Alison. “Why would the murderer leave those?”

“The club closed down a few years back, and everything was sold off,” said a tall detective standing close to Isabelle Walsh.

“Any records left?” Banham asked.

“I’m on to that, guv.”

“Good work, Les. Can you also find out all you can about Abdullah, the club owner? Relatives, friends, anything you can.”

“Katie Faye and Olivia Stone found Susan’s body,” Alison said. “They claim they arrived at the murder scene, separately. They have to be suspects as well as potential victims.”

“Katie and Olivia were searched on the premises,” Banham reminded her. “They didn’t have the blackmail money on them. I believe they’re innocent.”

Alison looked at him doubtfully.

The fax machine on a desk at the back suddenly started whirring, and Crowther went to put paper in it. He had been sitting on an adjacent desk to Isabelle Walsh. Today he wore a shiny, cheap grey suit, the jacket of which was more than a tad too large; the shoulders were heading toward his elbows and the cuffs were turned back so there was more striped lining than grey fabric on his lower arms. He had matched the suit with an earth-brown shirt and a wide tie nearly the same colour. The centre of the lad’s hair was gelled into spikes, and to Banham he looked like a cross between a cockatoo and a punk rocker.

Banham knew Crowther was conscious of his lack of height; he had obviously been told, mistakenly, that gelling his hair would make him look taller. What did it matter how tall he was anyway? Women seemed to love him regardless of his lack of inches. Banham didn’t understand why, but he did understand the lad was a great worker, and a clever detective. Like Isabelle he came from a tough background, and was determined to make something of himself in the force. The pair enjoyed scoring off each other, and it meant they got results.

Crowther pulled the paper out of the fax machine and scanned it. “Forensics tests in from Penny.”

Alison and Banham exchanged glances. Forensics were only done this quickly when Crowther was pleasing the beautiful Caribbean forensic supervisor, Penny Starr. It didn’t take detective work to know the affair was back on. Banham was glad; not only was it a great help to the case, it also meant that Crowther’s fling with Isabelle was over, and they were back in competition.

One of the older detectives, who had gained waist measurement as he lost his hair, looked speculatively at Isabelle, then at Crowther. “Am I missing something here?”

“Such as?” Crowther said belligerently.

Isabelle laughed raucously. “I’m just old-fashioned enough to want a man and not a mascot,” she said callously.

A ripple of laughter went round the room.

“Can we get on?” Banham shouted angrily. “We are having to work with Bow Street on this one, and I want to stay on top of things. Col, what’s in that forensic report?”

Crowther angrily pulled more paper from the fax machine. “Unless he changed his clothes before jogging home last night, Finn is in the clear,” he snapped. He swept a glance round the whole room, letting his eyes rest on Isabelle. “There’s nothing to link Brian Finn to Susan Rogers. Not from any of the tests that Pen did.”

“Why would he change his clothes?” Alison said. “He had no reason to expect us.”

“Unless he was tipped off,” Crowther suggested more calmly. “A lot of people on that estate knew we were Old Bill.”

“Uniform are checking all the bins within a mile of Susan Rogers’s shop,” Banham said. “They’re searching for the weapon, and they’ll let us know if they find any clothing. The murderer would have blood on him, that’s definite.”

“Or her,” Alison corrected. “I’ll get them to widen the search to Finn’s estate. They could check for CCTV too.”

Crowther was still reading the forensic report. “The clothes you took from the two women have no traces of Susan on them either. But Penny has found a pubic hair on the knickers left in Shaheen’s mouth.” His face brightened. “There’s a faded initial too. She’s working on that.”

“Terrific,” said Banham. He looked across at the older detective with thinning hair and expanding waist. “Get the FME to take a pubic hair from Brian Finn.”

“Guv.”

“Any updates on Shaheen Hakhti?” Banham asked.

The family liaison officer raised his hand. “Her husband reported her missing on January thirty-first when she didn’t come home. We have CCTV footage of her, arriving at St Pancras. She was wearing the same clothes she was found in.”

“Judy Gardener said she was planning to stay with Susan Rogers,” Isabelle added.

“So how did she end up down here?” Banham mused. “Crowther, get a search warrant before I have to release Finn, then go and turn his mother’s flat over. You’re looking for the videos and the hundred grand cash. Better still, red g-strings.” He looked across at Isabelle. “How is the research going on the knickers?”

Isabelle shrugged. “They’re twenty years old. No one manufactures them here – they came from China. The sex shops I tried all said they look like old stock, but no one was a hundred percent on a photo; they need to see the real thing.”

“That’ll have to do for the moment. Isabelle, you and Alison go and talk to Kenneth Stone. Use that feminine charm of yours.” Alison looked at him, the dark flecks in her eyes growing. She was in a strange mood again. He carried on, “Stone met Olivia at that club. He has a lot to lose if those videos ever made it to the
News of the World.
Get him to account for every second of his movements last night. Assure him it’s all off the record, or he’ll clam up. Then bring him in. Looks like we need a sample of his pubic hair – tell him it’s to eliminate him from our enquiry.”

He continued to brief members of the team for a few more minutes, and they began to drift away.

“I’ve got today’s best job,” Crowther said with a cheeky grin.

“Only if you find the videos,” Isabelle said grabbing her coat and making sure it hit him in the face. “You never know, there might be one with instructions on how to keep it up!”

A whole morning ahead in Isabelle Walsh’s company. Alison’s heart was already sinking into her shoes.

Isabelle munched on a large packet of Maltesers all the way to the Stones’ house, talking all the while into her mobile phone. Her washing machine had broken down, and the constant crunch of honeycomb and endless dialogue explaining the problems she’d had with the spin began to get on Alison’s nerves. She gritted her teeth and accelerated noisily away from the traffic lights, shaking her head irritably as Isabelle pushed the inviting smell of chocolate under her nose. She needed to lose three or maybe even five pounds, then her tiny bust wouldn’t look quite so bad against her wide hips. Yesterday, apart from black coffee, she had fasted, so the smell of Isabelle’s chocolate was the last thing she needed.

It wasn’t that she disliked Isabelle; sometimes she was fun to have around, and she was an excellent source of gossip. But she irritated Alison, and she knew her well enough to know the young DC would sell her own soul – or anyone else’s – to get what she wanted. And at the moment that was promotion.

Isabelle had moved into CID after a brief affair with a very senior, very married officer. She cultivated the right people as friends, and she was clever and astute. That made her a good detective, which Alison admired – although didn’t admire the way she made use of her detective skills to discover people’s weaknesses. Isabelle had found out about Alison’s disastrous date with Banham; when Alison asked her how, Isabelle had tapped her nose and replied, “Woman’s intuition.” A more likely answer was eavesdropping – and it hadn’t stop Isabelle from flirting with Banham under Alison’s nose. Banham didn’t even notice.

Until recently the flirting wouldn’t have worried Alison; Banham had given her every reason to believe he wasn’t interested in a relationship with anyone. But of late things had changed. He had started to look at pretty women in a different way. He couldn’t take his eyes off Katie Faye. Isabelle too was very pretty, despite her loud, coarse mouth; and Banham was naïve when it came to women. Alison couldn’t bear the thought of him being with Isabelle, with her twenty-two inch waist and skin clear as purified water. How unfair was that? Alison lived on Ryvita and black coffee and spent her spare time in the gym, working off the excess on her hips and thighs to compensate for having no bust. Isabelle had great boobs, and said she go tall the exercise she needed chasing criminals; her diet consisted of chocolate and milky lattes and butties dripping with bacon and ketchup. Life was a bitch sometimes.

Isabelle finally fixed her washing machine repair appointment and clicked her phone shut.

“Can we forget our domestic problems now, please, and concentrate on the case?” Alison snapped.

Isabelle crumpled the empty Malteser bag and dropped it on the floor. “Oh dear. You’re in one of your ‘I’m the sergeant’ moods,” she said dryly.

“I am the sergeant, as it happens,” Alison replied. “So here’s what I’ve decided. When we get there, I talk to the women and ask them to come in and give a DNA sample, while you take a statement from Kenneth Stone and tell him we need some pubic hair from him. Use your charm; he’s a difficult man, and a potential suspect. We need to get him into the station, but we can’t arrest him till we have something on him.”

Isabelle nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

“You need to push him for everything you can about the Scarlet Pussy Club. Banham asked you to deal with Stone, because he knows you’re good at getting what you want out of men.”

“Hey, I resent that.”

“I’d take it as a compliment if I were you.” Alison turned the car into an unmade road. A painted sign saying CHERRY TREE WALK was nailed to a large tree; its branches swung out into the road, partly blocking the view ahead. The car bumped its way over the potholes.

“What’s going on with you and Crowther?” she asked Isabelle.

“You mind your own!” Isabelle joshed.

“Damn! Look at that!” A stone flew out from under the front wheel and smacked into the bodywork of Alison’s green Golf.

“I hope the DI hasn’t used up too much of the budget on blow-up dolls from the sex shop,” Isabelle said sarcastically. “You’re going to need some for car repairs.”

“I’ll send Ken Stone the bill,” Alison retorted, pulling up at the bottom of the Stones’ vast U-shaped driveway. She decided against driving up to the house, parking instead beside a bush by the gate. From here she could observe the house and most of the drive, where there were already four cars parked: Katie Faye’s BMW, a shining silver Mercedes, Olivia Stone’s brand new royal blue convertible Mini, and another, older BMW.

She teased Isabelle as they walked up to the house. “Is Crowther not good in bed, then?”

Isabelle ignored the remark and stopped to examine the cars. “He must get a deal with BMW,” she said. “One of the perks of being a Right Honourable.”

“If I see you driving one, I’ll know who your next conquest is,” Alison teased again.

“You’re the one who’ll need a new car,” Isabelle retorted.

They reached the Mercedes with its personalised registration: KS 001. “Do you think that stands for marks out of ten?” Alison joked.

Isabelle laughed crudely. “Crowther’s got a beat-up Cadillac with zero-zero-zero on the plate. Does that answer your question?”

Olivia’s son Kevin opened the door. “Sergeant. Hello again. Mum and Auntie Katie are still upstairs. Come in and I’ll give them a call.”