Above Suspicion (18 page)

‘We had another terrible row. She was gone the following morning. Under her bed, I found hypodermic needles, drug things. It broke my heart. She was destroying herself.’

‘Did you know where she had gone? Did she leave an address, or contact number?’

‘No, she never did.’ An expression crossed the mother’s face, as if remembering something.

‘Manchester. That’s where she went, that time. Manchester. I found a phone number on a bit of torn paper. I called it. The woman that answered sounded drunk, or maybe she was drugged. I called a few times and the same woman always answered. Told me Beryl wasn’t there. She told me to stop calling.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I thought she was lying.’

‘Why?’

‘Call it mother’s intuition. I contacted the phone company. I thought they might give me the address. I was really worried about Beryl using drugs. They wouldn’t help. I went to the police, told them about Beryl, what I was worried about. I gave them the number.’

Anna spoke up. ‘I don’t suppose you still have the number?’

‘No. She came back. She was hysterical, shouting at me. She kicked at the front door. Said I was causing her a lot of trouble, that her friend had been visited by the police and it was all my fault. I said that I was worried about her, that I knew about the drugs.’

Tears started streaming down Mrs Kenworth’s face as she told Anna that Beryl had become like a stranger. She was abusive and violent. She warned her mother that she was not to call her friend, Kathleen, again. That if she did call, she would be getting her daughter into a lot of trouble.

‘From Kathleen?’

‘Yes. I said that she wasn’t much of a friend since she’d lied about not seeing her. Then she sort of collapsed crying and did the old “sorry” routine. I put her to bed and that’s when I saw her breasts. She’d had implants. She’d always had beautiful breasts. She was perfect. She could have done anything, been anything.’

Mrs Kenworth closed her eyes. ‘I know I was naive, but until then I’d never really considered that my daughter might be selling herself; that she might be a prostitute. If anyone had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it.’

The shop bell rang. While Mrs Kenworth went to serve the customer, Anna took down some notes. Could the Kathleen be their victim, Kathleen Keegan? If so, they would have three out of the six that knew each other. If the Leicester Police had kept records that far back, it would be another link in the chain.

Mrs Kenworth entered with a blue two-piece suit on a hanger. She put it on to a rail at the back of the office. ‘I can lock up now.’

‘That’s nice,’ Anna said, coming closer to inspect. ‘Really nice. I like the colour.’

‘I was just about to mark it down for sale. It was in the window; there’s a slight sun mark on the shoulder. What size are you?’

‘Twelve, I think.’

‘Would you like to try it on?’

Anna smiled hesitatingly.

‘Yes, thank you. Do you have any shirts that might go with it?’

It was a quarter past five when Mrs Kenworth drove Anna to her home. Upon their arrival, Anna placed a call to the local police. It was a far-reaching hope that they might still have a record of Mrs Kenworth’s visit but if so, they might possibly have the Manchester address.

Mrs Kenworth’s flat was in a well-kept council estate. The flat was immaculate, though stiflingly warm. Mrs Kenworth opened the door to her daughter’s old room. ‘I’ve kept this the way it was when she first ran away. All her pictures are in here.’ She touched a photograph of an incredibly pretty, dark-eyed young girl on a pony; then one photograph after the other, showing a pretty little girl growing into a stunning-looking teenager. ‘I still come in here to sit, sometimes, just to talk to her.’

The room was a shrine, permeated by a sickly perfume. There was a frilly pink nylon bedspread, with matching pink pillows and cushions. A collection of dolls had been lined up, all dressed in pink. The white and gold wardrobe still contained the dead girl’s clothes, yet she had not lived in the flat for most of her adult life.

‘I never saw her again after that. She sent me a Christmas card from London. Said she had a job in a fashion house, that she’d gone back to modelling. She had such beautiful brown eyes,’ Mrs Kenworth whispered, heartbroken, holding out another picture.

‘Yes, she was lovely,’ Anna said, taking it.

She looked at the professional headshot. It seemed impossible that this lovely girl had been found dead on waste ground and the only way she could be identified was by her breast implants. Mrs Kenworth’s daughter could have had the world at her feet, but she had been murdered at thirty-four, her beauty completely laid waste by years of prostitution, violence and drug abuse.

Mrs Kenworth raised her eyes to Anna. ‘I wouldn’t believe it when the police told me she was a prostitute.’

When Anna’s mobile phone rang, it startled them both. Anna excused herself and murmured instructions for her driver to collect her from the flat. It was with relief that she finally climbed into the patrol car a few minutes later. The interior heat and the mother’s anguish had sapped her energy.

On saying goodbye, Anna had glimpsed another side to Mrs Kenworth. Anna had just mentioned Beryl’s father again: did he know of her death? In response, Mrs Kenworth’s face became tight and vicious and her lips pulled tightly together.

‘I didn’t know where he was to tell him his daughter was dead. He never had to deal with the local press banging on the door, asking me about the prostitute murdered and left unidentified for six months. You saw all those lovely pictures of her; they could have picked any of them, but no, they had to print that terrible picture from the murder. She looked like a mean-faced whore. Not like my daughter at all. He never sent a penny for her. He never even sent Beryl a birthday card, a Christmas card - nothing! He left me for a bitch that I trusted as my friend. And he broke his daughter’s heart. And then she broke mine.’

Anna touched Mrs Kenworth’s hand as the older woman blinked the tears back.

‘I really have to go. The car’s waiting. But thank you so much for your time and for helping me with the suit.’

‘Any time, dear.’ Mrs Kenworth managed a half smile. ‘You know where I am. I’ll always give you a good price.’

Reclining against the back seat of the patrol car, Anna closed her eyes and gave a silent prayer of thanks for a happy childhood and two loving and understanding parents.

At the police station she headed straight to reception, where the desk sergeant lifted the flap in his counter and said, ‘Come on in. We’ve roped in a retired officer. Some kind of friend to the Villiers family.’

The small interview room smelled of paint. A white-haired, rotund ex-detective stood up to shake Anna’s hand as she was led into the room. Anna was amused to find he didn’t waste any time on a preamble, but went straight to the subject.

‘You wanted to know about Beryl Villiers? How long have you got?’

‘Not long, actually,’ Anna said. ‘I’m on the seven o’clock train back to London.’

Ex-DS Colin Mold leaned back, clasping his hands over his belly. ‘Right, me duck.’ He gave a different version of the Villiers family as troubled, with numerous domestic callouts. Villiers and his wife were always scrapping. ‘The fact is, the man couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. He knocked her around, but his wife always dropped charges before they went to court.’ Then, Mold continued, Villiers had run off with his wife’s best friend, a hairdresser. In the divorce proceedings, he failed in his fight to get custody of Beryl, but he did get access to her. Not long after, he had dumped the hairdresser and skipped, with another girlfriend and a lot of rent owing, to Canada. Nobody had heard from him since. The real victim was Beryl, who had loved him.

He chuckled about how the two women, older and younger, were at loggerheads. Even at the tender age of eight, Beryl was fighting with her mother. A couple of times she had run off and her mother would drag her back home from the hairdresser’s. Then he went quiet; just saying not much had happened until Beryl had left home at sixteen and her mother had found a little flat for her with two friends.

Anna opened her notebook. ‘This was when she went to work at the health spa?’

He snorted. ‘There was another name for it: bloody knocking shop. Open until late at night; a lot of hanky-panky went on.’

‘The most important period I need to know about is the time she went to Manchester.’

‘Right. So they said.’ Mrs Villiers had found hypodermic needles in Beryl’s bedroom and she turned up at the station in a terrible state. She also had a phone number. She believed that Beryl was in Manchester. ‘She even had this idea she was being held against her will by some woman. So I pulled in a couple of favours. You have to understand: I’d known this girl since she was a toddler.’

‘Who was the woman?’

‘Her name was Kathleen Keegan: a real hard tart. She was running a brothel and using drugs and booze and Christ knows what else. Pal from Vice Squad went in, put a bit of a threat about. Beryl, they said, had been there, but had left before the visit.’

‘Can you give me the address?’

He nodded, adding that it wouldn’t be much use, as the house had been torn down.

‘Was it Shallcotte Street?’

‘Not that shithole, excuse my language. That was also demolished when this new housing development went up all around that area. But you know, they’re like rats. You drive them out of one place and they just turn up in another.’

Anna passed over a list of the six victims.

‘Do you recognize any of those names as being connected to Kathleen Keegan?’

He rubbed his nose, as he looked down the list. Then, shaking his head, he passed it back.

‘No, duck, just Beryl and the Kathleen Keegan woman.’

His watery blue eyes assumed a sad expression.

‘I wish I had found her. Might be alive today.’

Anna put out her hand to shake his. He gripped it tightly.

‘I appreciate your help.’

‘No trouble. She was very beautiful, lovely face. Pity the dirt bags got to her when she was young. They never let her go and to die like that: unidentified, left to rot? She didn’t deserve that.’

‘No, she didn’t,’ Anna said.

‘You got a suspect?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Not yet.’

‘I always think if you’ve not got him in the first few weeks, you never will. When it’s white hot, you stand a chance. Body left to rot for weeks, hard to find witnesses, harder to get evidence.’

‘Yes, yes, it is.’

‘If I can be of any further help, you just have to call.’

Anna had turned to walk out, when he called after her.

‘You’ve forgotten your bags.’ He was holding up the three shopping bags from Mrs Kenworth’s boutique.

Embarrassed, Anna took them from him.

‘Got a bit of shopping in as well, did you?’ he teased her.

She had only just made it to the train station in time. When she got home, she hung her new suit and the two new blouses on hangers on the wardrobe door, then stepped back, her head to one side. The sun damage, which made the right shoulder a slightly lighter shade than the left, was hardly noticeable. She closed the wardrobe door, pleased with her purchases and was just getting ready for bed when her phone rang.

‘Hello. It’s Richard.’

‘Richard?’ It had been over six months since they had last been together and that was such a disappointment she had doubted she would bother seeing him again.

‘Richard, hello,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I was only thinking about you the other night. I haven’t heard from you for weeks! How are you?’

‘Terrific. You don’t fancy an early morning game of tennis, do you? Only Phil Butler’s partner’s got flu and I’ve booked the court: the Met’s Athletic Club.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Richard. I’m on this really big case and you know me, I’m better at squash than tennis.’

‘Aren’t we all? Come on, sweep the cobwebs out. Half six? I can collect you.’

‘No, no. I’ll make my own way there.’

‘Terrific. Let’s meet up at quarter to seven, do a catch-up and then we can all have breakfast after the game.’

Anna replaced the phone. It would do her good to get some exercise. Unlike the bad-tempered Langton of late, who never took any and smoked like a chimney. The more she thought about it, the more she looked forward to it. She set her alarm for half past five.

Next morning, Anna got into her car wearing her tracksuit with her squash shorts and T-shirt on underneath; she put her new suit on the back seat. She would shower and change at the club after the game.

The garage was below the block of flats in which she lived in Maida Vale. It was a new building, quite small, with only six apartments. One of the attractions had been that it was very secure, with a locked garage for the residents’ cars and an access door to the ground floor.

There was a well-lit staircase and a small lift to the top floor, but as her flat was only three floors up Anna rarely used it.

Richard, who was always early for everything, greeted her warmly. He looked different.

‘Have you lost weight?’ she asked.

‘I certainly have. Down by ten pounds and I’ve got another five to go.’

He seemed more attractive than she remembered. Perhaps it was the different haircut. There wasn’t long to catch up before Phil Butler arrived. He was a bald, thin-faced DI attached to the Robbery Squad. He crushed Anna’s fingers as he shook her hand. ‘Glad you could make it. This is a double or quits match. Rich and I have been going at it hell for leather for months. It’s the final today. I need to win and my partner gets flu. I tried to cry off, but there’s a hundred quid on it and you know him.’

‘Yes.’ Anna smiled, thinking she didn’t really, but she wouldn’t mind seeing more of him again. Was it only the haircut? And she reminded herself, on the last night they had been together, he had been on duty after all for the last twenty-four hours.

Richard went off to find his partner, also a police officer. Her name was Pamela Anderson which was a bit unfortunate as she was not blonde, had no visible breasts and looked more like a rake than a babe.