Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (33 page)

“I trusted you, I may even have helped you—that is what is worst, worse than any of the lies you have told me.” Her shoulders were hunched with the strain, fists clenched at her sides. Her usual pale coloring was now white as chalk. “I don’t care if I lose my job—”

“Who’s been talking to you, Margaret?” Parker-Jones asked, keeping his voice low. He reached for her hand.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!”

He swayed back, spreading his arms defenselessly. “Come in, at least talk this through.”

Margaret Speel wore a bitter smile that made her pert face ugly.

“She knows everything—about you, and about John Kennington. And when I’ve finished you’ll go to prison.” Spittle flew from her lips.

Parker-Jones reached out and grasped both her wrists. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Margaret. This is from that policewoman, Tennison, yes?” His face showed pain and bewilderment. He tugged beseechingly at her wrists. “Oh, Margaret, don’t you understand? Please . . . just calm down.” His hand touched her cheek. He implored her softly, “Just come in a minute. Let me explain.”

She took a swift decisive step backward, pulling herself free. “Yes, I do. I do now.”

And then she was striding off, past the reception counter. Alan Thorpe stared at her. She spun around, glaring at him, making a sudden grab for his arm.

“Don’t come here anymore. Do you hear me? Don’t come here. This is closed.
This is closed down!
”

Under the force of this onslaught Alan backed away from her. He wasn’t scared, just bemused. Margaret Speel pushed him aside and started snatching down the letters and cards on the contacts board. She tore them off and ripped them up, scattering the pieces, and then she tried to drag the board itself off the wall. One corner came loose and she attacked it in frenzy, bringing the whole thing crashing down.

Parker-Jones came around the corner from his office. He leapt toward her, face livid, his hand grappling for her shoulder. Margaret Speel pivoted on her heel, her arm swinging, and caught him smack across his face, a stinging slap that split his lip. Her shoulder bag had come off. She swung it back on and stormed up the echoing wooden stairs.

From his breast pocket Parker-Jones took out a clean white handkerchief and dabbed his lip. He returned to his office, picked up the phone and dialed, dabbing his lip and looking at the spots of blood on the pristine white linen.

The connection came through.

He held the receiver close to his mouth, feeling the sluggish warm trickle on his chin.

“Mrs. Kennington? It’s Edward Parker-Jones.”

Jimmy Jackson was bent double in the chair, his hands locked across his head, tufts of hair sprouting through his fingers.

“All
right.
I never lent him any money!”

Mr. Arthur sat close by him, knees firmly together, fingers laced beneath the threadbare cuffs of his overcoat.

Tennison went on, “You were told by Martin Fletcher where Connie was. You then went to Vernon Reynold’s flat.”

“I didn’t—I’ve admitted I was looking for Connie, but I wasn’t the only one.”

“Who else? Who else was looking for Connie on the night he was murdered? Jimmy, it’s just five . . . ten minutes there and back from the advice centre.”

“I never killed him. I couldn’t have.”

Otley put his hand on the back of Jackson’s chair and leaned right over. “But you had to silence him, didn’t you? Connie was going to tell about the way you kidnap underage kids. The room at the top of the house. We’ve seen the chains, the weapons, the knives.”

“Did you torture boys up there?” Tennison said expressionlessly. She looked at his hands, the spiky hair sticking through. “Is that why we have, to date, fifteen separate blood samples, from walls, floorboards, bed sheets? What were you doing to those children?” She glanced at Mr. Arthur, and then inspected her fingernails. “Mr. Jackson, I would really try to be as helpful as possible. The charges against you . . .”

“Look, I did go to the centre, right?” His head came up, eyes bulging at Tennison, lips red where he’d been chewing them. “I told Mr. Parker-Jones I couldn’t find him, right?”

“Edward Parker-Jones,” Tennison said, looking at Otley.

Jackson nodded. “Yeah . . .” He sounded short of breath. He twisted around to Mr. Arthur, and twisted back again, plucking at his T-shirt where it stuck to him, one boot agitatedly thumping the carpet. He said hoarsely, “Martin Fletcher took my stuff out of the house . . .”

“What stuff?”

“Things, photographs . . . I wanted them back, right?”

“Photographs of you?”

“Some of them,” Jackson said cautiously, “but Connie had nicked them, he got Martin to get them for him from Camden, right? You with me?”

“Who else was in the photographs?”

“I can’t remember,” Jackson said too quickly.

“You almost kill a boy for them,” Tennison said, her voice brittle with disbelief, “and you can’t remember who they were of? Who was in the photographs?”

Jackson shakily lit up. He dragged deep, crouched forward, elbows on his knees, blowing smoke at the carpet.

“Was Parker-Jones in these photographs?” Tennison said.

“No.”

“How about a John Kennington? Was he in any of these photographs?”

Jackson tried to shrug it off. “Just kids, blokes dressed up . . . bit porno, that’s all. Anyway, it got to about eight, bit later, an’ I told Parker-Jones that I couldn’t find Connie, an’ he said go and get Martin Fletcher, he’d know where he was.” He stared at her sullenly from under his thick brows. “So I did. Ask Martin Fletcher, he’ll tell you.”

“Martin is dead, Jimmy.” Tennison allowed the silence to hang heavy. “So Parker-Jones wanted the photographs—why? If as you have just stated he wasn’t in them, why would he want them?”

“I don’t know. All I know is he wanted them, but so did I.”

“But you were in the photographs.” Tennison pointed her finger. “Are you sure there weren’t any of Edward Parker-Jones?”

“I didn’t have any pictures of him,” Jackson said through his teeth.

“Was John Kennington in any of these photographs?”

“No! I told you before, I don’t even know that bloke . . .”

“So they were just photographs of you? And you wanted them so desperately you were prepared to kill for them?”

“Look, when that fire started . . . I was over the other side of Waterloo Bridge.” He waved his arm, indicating a vast distance, the backside of the moon.

Tennison rubbed the nape of her neck, trying to ease the hangover that was thudding in the base of her skull. Red wine was lethal bloody stuff. She felt rotten.

Otley saw her close her eyes for a second. He said, “So, who was at the centre when you were there?”

Jackson half-turned to him. “I was only there two minutes, no more,” he said irritably. “Then I come out.”

“Anybody else?” Tennison asked. “Did you speak to anyone else apart from Parker-Jones?”

“Yeah.” Jackson sounded weary. “Vernon Reynolds.”

Tennison and Otley exchanged looks. Vera? Since when was she at the centre that night? First they’d heard of it.

Head hunched down between his bony shoulders, Jackson stared miserably at his boots, blowing smoke at the carpet.

Tennison drove north along Highgate Hill, fuming at the traffic. Otley sat beside her, filling his face with a cheeseburger, a plastic cup of coffee held up in front of him to avoid spilling any. It was twelve-thirty. A soothing Brahms string quartet was on Classic FM, but it didn’t help Tennison’s temper any.

She swung the wheel, avoiding what she knew would be a totally clogged Archway and Muswell Hill, and took to the side roads on the eastern edge of Hampstead Heath.

“If Jackson is telling the truth, then he couldn’t have done it,” she said, turning right unexpectedly, so that Otley had to concentrate like fury to save his coffee.

He stuffed in the rest of the cheeseburger, cheeks bulging. “What about Vera, then? That was a turn up. I mean, she’s never mentioned anything about being in or anywhere near the centre.” He swallowed and took a slurp of coffee. “But she couldn’t have started that fire—she was onstage at Judy’s at nine-fifteen. She was bloody onstage.”

The Sierra Sapphire came into the tree-lined avenue of large detached houses. Tennison leaned forward, peering through the windshield.

“What’s going on here?”

There was an ambulance outside the gates, its rear doors standing open. Two attendants were wheeling a trolley from the driveway. There was a humped shape under the red blanket.

Tennison stopped the car and hurried forward. Otley took a peek through the gates, seeing the Panda car outside the front door.

“What’s happened?” Tennison asked, showing her I.D.

The attendants were about to lift the trolley into the ambulance. She turned back the blanket. It couldn’t be, she told herself, it couldn’t be, but she was wrong. She clenched her jaw.

“It’s John Kennington. Shit.”

Otley glanced toward the house. “We’d better leave it,” he advised, “must have just happened.”

He looked around for her, but she wasn’t there.

“Guv!”

Tennison was walking through the gates, heading up the gravel drive.

“Guv!”

17

T
ennison stepped through the open front door into the parquet-floored hallway. To her left she could see a cluster of uniformed police in the study. There was a plainclothes officer kneeling on the carpet. Somebody else was taking flash photographs. She moved across the hallway toward them, and then stopped. The door to the drawing room was open. Mrs. Kennington was sitting on the sofa, her head downcast, a cigarette in one hand, a crumpled lace handkerchief in the other. A crystal tumbler, filled nearly halfway with Scotch, was on the coffee table in front of her. An open bottle of Macallan’s Malt stood next to it.

Tennison put her hand on the doorjamb. “Mrs. Kennington? Could I speak to you a moment?”

The woman didn’t move or look up as Tennison came in and eased the door shut behind her. The room contained an unnatural quietness, the stately ticking of the grandfather clock portioning out the silence.

“Are you all right?”

Mrs. Kennington stirred. “He shot himself, not me,” she said, vacant and subdued. She turned her head. “You were here the other night, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Tennison moved up to a winged armchair, set at an angle to the sofa. “I can leave if you want . . .”

“But then you’ll want to come back, so ask whatever you want. Get it over with.”

She happened to notice she was smoking. The cigarette was nearly done, and she took another from the box and lit it from the stub, very ladylike, little finger stuck out. She then noticed the Scotch, and drank a mouthful, little finger out. Tennison sat down. She put her briefcase by the side of the chair and folded her hands.

“I was in the front bedroom,” Mrs. Kennington said. “We sleep in separate rooms. There was a phone call, I put it through to John’s study. About half an hour later I heard the—well, I didn’t know what it was, to be honest. I thought it was the plumbing. It’s been making extraordinary noises. Obviously it wasn’t. John had shot himself.”

She blinked at Tennison, as if making an apology for some unfortunate social gaffe. She had bright, intelligent eyes, a striking light blue. Even under stress she maintained her poise, and Tennison was able to understand what an asset she must have been to her husband in furthering his career.

“Do you know who the call was from?” Tennison inquired after a decent interval.

“Oh yes, I know who it was from. His name is Edward Parker-Jones.”

She didn’t notice, or paid no attention, as Otley slid into the room. He moved behind Tennison’s chair.

“At least this saves me getting a divorce.” Mrs. Kennington smiled faintly, gazing at nothing. She delicately wiped the corners of her mouth with the wisp of handkerchief. “There have been obstacles in the way for almost a year . . .”

“I know about the investigations,” Tennison said.

“Oh, do you?” Mrs. Kennington remarked, cool to the point of half frozen to death.

“You were a doctor, weren’t you? Do you still practice?”

“No. My first husband died. We worked together, or in the same practice.”

“In Cardiff?”

“Yes, in Cardiff. Why do you want to know about my husband’s practice?” She peered closely at Tennison, frowning. “Why are you here?”

“When you were in Cardiff, Mr. Parker-Jones was running . . .”

“The Calloway Centre.” Mrs. Kennington was now paying full, complete attention. She looked at Otley and then at Tennison, quite perplexed. “Why are you asking me these questions?”

“Did you examine a young boy called Jason Baldwyn? It was a sexual assault charge.”

“Which was subsequently dropped. No, my husband examined the boy—” Her mouth fell open. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “You think I had something to do with that? My husband was critically ill, he was very sick, I had two small children, and . . .” She faltered, rubbing her forehead distractedly with the wadded handkerchief. “He had cancer, I only remember it because, because he died. Then there was this investigation about . . .” She stared, trying to recall the name, and failed. “. . . This boy. But there was so much confusion about whether his reports were stolen, or just mislaid, I really don’t know.”