Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (18 page)

Trotting alongside, the nurse leaned over him anxiously. Billy opened his eyes, blinking away sweat.

“I’m okay.” He smiled up at her. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

9

T
hat bloody woman again! Did she never give up?

Tennison had unlocked the door of her car, tossed her briefcase inside, mentally preparing herself to do battle with the early morning gridlock, and there she was—climbing out of a black BMW across the street next to the park railings. The bearded guy with the camera was with her.

“Chief Inspector Tennison!”

Did the damn woman never sleep? Even before Tennison could get in and zoom off, she was hurrying across, the heels of her high brown leather boots clicking, coat flapping around her.

The photographer nipped in and a flashlight went off.

“Hey—what is this?” Tennison demanded angrily. “What’s he taking pictures of me for?”

Jessica Smithy wafted her hand. “Go back in the car, Carl.” She gave Tennison a warm friendly smile, all sweetness and light. “I’m sorry, but I just need to talk to you.” She held up a press card, a passport-size photograph sealed in plastic. Tennison’s eyes took this in, and also the pocket recorder partly concealed in Jessica Smithy’s other hand.

“Is that on?”

“You’re not interested, are you?” Jessica Smithy’s face hardened, the smile evaporating like morning mist. “Why? Because he was homeless? A rent boy? Doesn’t he warrant a full investigation?” She was holding up the recorder, quite blatantly. “You are the officer who brought George Marlow to trial—”

“Is that on?” Tennison repeated, getting riled.

“I’m writing an article on the boy that died in the fire, Colin Jenkins. You see, I met him a couple of times, and my editors really want pictures . . . he promised me an exclusive.”

“I’m sorry, we have no pictures of him,” Tennison said, clipped and precise. She was looking at Jessica Smithy with renewed interest.

“They must have taken some when they found him, surely?”

“How often did you meet him?”

“Just a couple of times. I have been very willing to come in to discuss my entire interaction—”

“An exclusive?” Tennison interrupted. Jessica Smithy frowned; the interrogator had suddenly become the interrogated. “You mean Colin Jenkins was selling his story, yes?” She pointed. “Is that tape on?”

“He was prepared to name his clients, including a high-ranking police officer,” Jessica Smithy admitted.

Tennison jerked back, bumping into the side of the car. A spasm tautened her stomach muscles. “Did you record your interview with Colin Jenkins?” she asked, pointing at the recorder.

“Yes, and I’m willing to let you hear the tapes, but I want an exclusive interview with you.”

Tennison had a nasty streak. Jessica Smithy got the brunt of it.

“I want to interview
you
, Miss Smithy.” She thrust her wrist out, glared at her watch. “You be at my office—with the tapes—at nine o’clock. That’s official.”

Jessica Smithy smiled, holding up her hands. “Hey, I’ll be there! I’ve been trying hard enough to get to you . . .”

Tennison slid behind the wheel.

“Thank you very much, Chief Inspector!”

Tennison said frostily, “It’s Detective Chief Inspector, Miss Smithy,” and slammed the door on her.

DI Ray Hebdon pushed through the black curtain, blinking in the light. “Nothing in the darkroom.” His expression sagged dejectedly at the sight of the thick albums, several piles of them, on the coffee table. “We got to go through every one of them?” he asked Brian Dalton.

“ ’Fraid so.” Dalton’s mouth twisted in his tanned face. “Sickens me. I don’t understand it—I mean, there’s thousands of them . . .”

“Of what?” Hebdon hoisted one, riffled through the pages.

“Poofters,” said Dalton, with repugnance.

Hebdon kept turning the pages, saying nothing.

The caretaker shuffled in from the passage leading to the studio. Tufts of white hair sprouted from under a greasy flat cap and his baggy cardigan almost reached his knees. The unlit stub of a cigarette was welded permanently into the corner of his mouth.

“You goin’ to be much longer? Only I wanna go out. I do the place next door. You want the keys?”

“Need you to stay, sorry,” Dalton said, though he didn’t sound it.

“Only the uvver blokes ’ad ’em.” The caretaker sniffed. “Larst night.”

Hebdon frowned at him. “Somebody was here last night?”

“Yers . . .” The caretaker nodded, waving his hands around in circles. “Took a whole load of stuff out. Police.”

Hebdon pushed past him to the phone.

Vera’s friend with the tight firm buttocks, Red, stood in the sitting room of Mark Lewis’s flat, smoking a cigarette in an ebony holder. He wore a silk kimono with purple dragons and fluffy high-heeled silver slippers. His eyebrows had been shaved off and redrawn with an artist’s flourish, and his lips were glossed a pale pink.

Head back, he blew a graceful plume of smoke into the perfumed air, watching Haskons rooting through the drawers of the gilt escritoire. From the bedroom came the sound of closet doors being opened and banged shut as Lillie conducted a thorough search.

“If I’d known I was having so many visitors I’d have waxed my legs,” Red mused, addressing no one in particular.

He swanned across to the long low Habitat sofa and dinked the cigarette in the frosted lead crystal ashtray. He sat down, crossed his smooth bare legs, and with a little sigh began filing his nails.

“You could help us,” Haskons said accusingly. Not yet eight-fifteen in the morning, and already he was frazzled, frustrated, and thoroughly pissed off. “Where’s his diary? His address book?” Red shrugged, shaping his thumbnail to a point. “What about his tax forms? VAT forms?”

“I don’t know, unless they took it all,” Red said placidly.

Haskons straightened up, flushed. “Who?”

“They said they were police, and that Mark was being held in custody. I mean”—his painted eyebrows rose in two perfect arcs—“there’s not a lot you can say to that. Nobody even asked me about him, you know.” He gave a little plaintive sigh. “. . . Connie, he was a sweet kid. Not all the time—he was quite an operator—but then, he had the equipment.”

Haskons raised his hand to Lillie, who had appeared from the bedroom, telling him to keep quiet.

“Connie . . .” Red said pensively, propping his chin on two fingers. “He wanted to be a film star. There’s a lot of famous stars that pay out to keep their past secret. That’s life. Whatever you do catches up on you.” He gazed down sadly at his feet. “Tasteless slippers, aren’t they?”

The day hadn’t started well, and by nine o’clock Tennison was in Halliday’s office, spitting mad. Commander Chiswick was there, his portly bulk framed in the window, neat as a bank manager in his blue and white striped shirt and pinstripe suit. Halliday, across the desk from Tennison, was in one of his twitchy moods. But he was determined not to be bulldozed by this harridan.

“Both Mark Lewis’s flat and studio cleaned out!” Tennison stormed. “And supposedly by police officers.”

“I’ll look into it,” Halliday said.

“I hope you will, because it stinks.”

“I said I will look into it. But we have to abide by the rules,” Halliday insisted, “we have to get the warrants issued.”

Tennison rapped her knuckles on his desk. “There isn’t a single piece of paper with his name left on it, let alone any of his clients’ names. What’s going on?”

Beneath the level of the desk, Halliday’s fingers dug deep into the leather armrests. His pale blue eyes bored into hers. “Chief Inspector, check your transcripts of Mark Lewis’s interview. He was allowed to make a phone call. Maybe he arranged for someone to clear his place out, and it had nothing to do with delays in issuing bloody search warrants!”

“Don’t go casting aspersions around—or they’ll come down on your head,” Chiswick boomed, his fleshy jowls quivering with indignation. “We are just as keen to get a result as you are!”

Tennison half-raised her hand in a gesture of apology. She was so fired up, she’d overstepped the mark. What with missing tapes, not-so-subtle warnings, and officers she didn’t altogether trust, it was easy to get paranoid around here. Or was she simply paranoid about being paranoid?

Chiswick loomed over her. “May I remind you that you inferred that an arrest would be imminent!” He had her on the defensive and was taking full advantage of it. “How much longer do you require four extra officers to assist your inquiries?”

That was rich, Tennison fumed inwardly, when she’d made no such request for extra manpower in the first place. It had been foisted upon her. However, she let it ride.

“I can’t put a time on it. You’ve seen those videos, there’re kids in them . . .” Tennison looked from one to the other. “I got a breakthrough today, from a journalist. I’ve not interviewed her yet, but she met the victim, taped Colin Jenkins for an exclusive. He was selling his story, and prepared to name his clients.” She checked the time. “In fact she should be here now.”

Silence. Both men seemed taken slightly off guard by this. Chiswick cleared his throat loudly.

“What’s the journalist’s name?”

“Jessica Smithy.”

He rubbed the side of his face, then gave a curt nod, indicating that she was free to go. Tennison went.

Halliday waited. He jumped up. “Don’t cast aspersions! Coming down on whose head?”

Chiswick rounded on him. “Who’s idea was it to bring her here! We’ve got a bloody loose cannon now, and we’re both going to be in a compromising position if it gets out.”

“I warned her off, all right?” Halliday said, low and angry. He pushed his chair aside and stalked over to the window, massaging the back of his neck. “But now there’s this journalist . . . we can’t tell her to back off.”

“I know what she said,” Chiswick snapped. He took a breath, trying to calm down and think straight. “So give her twenty-four hours. If she’s not charged Jackson, she’s off the case. Get Dalton on this journalist woman.”

Halliday stared at him for a moment. He returned to his desk, twitching, and picked up the phone and asked for the Squad Room.

There were three butts in the ashtray, ringed with lipstick. Jessica Smithy added a fourth, grinding it down with a vengeance. She looked at her watch, yet again, and let her arms flop down on the table.

“Am I going to be kept waiting much longer? She asked me to be here by nine o’clock. It’s already—”

“Chief Inspector Tennison is caught up right now,” DI Hall said, “but as soon as she’s free . . .”

He went back to gazing out of the window, at the tiny patch of blue sky he could just see between the buildings opposite, daydreaming about Lanzarote. Three weeks to go. Roll on.

Tennison switched on the tape recorder and sat down. She gestured to a chair, but instead Otley perched himself on the corner of her desk. She noticed he hadn’t shaved this morning, and it crossed her mind that he might be drinking again.

Clicks, mike noises, rustlings, and then Jessica Smithy’s voice came out of the twin speakers.

“I’m going to put this on—is that okay? Only I don’t have shorthand. This always makes my life easier.”

Cups and saucers rattling, Muzak playing, background noise of traffic. Cafe? Restaurant? Wine bar?

“Is there any other place I can contact you? I called the advice centre . . .”

“I told you not to do that! I said I would contact
you
!”

Tennison looked at Otley, who nodded. Connie.

“We got to first agree on what you will pay me.”

“I can’t say we will pay you this or that amount of thousands, without first having at least a bit of information.”

“I’ll take it elsewhere. . . .”

Tennison tightened her lips in annoyance as Dalton and Haskons came in. She jabbed the STOP button and glared at Dalton. “You’re late. We’ve got tapes of Colin Jenkins.” On her feet now, she jerked her thumb to Halliday’s wall, and lowered her voice. “This is to stay with us until I say otherwise. This woman said that Connie was selling his story—that he was going to name a high-ranking police officer.”

Deliberately not looking at Dalton when she said this, nevertheless she saw his reaction to it in the droop of his eyelids, the slight stiffening of his jaw.

Tennison went on, “And two, a Member of Parliament.” She gave each of them a searching look. “If a name comes up it stays with us, understood? Because we could be opening up a big can of worms, and we will need hard evidence to back it up.”

The three officers pulled their chairs forward as Tennison restarted the tape.

Dalton was leaning forward, wearing a frown of concentration. “Sorry I’m late, but when did this come up? Who brought this in?”

Tennison shushed him. Dalton dropped his head, staring down at his injured hand, now heavily bandaged and secured with tape.

The Muzak and traffic noises seemed worse than before. They had to strain to distinguish the voices from the irritating background clutter.