Prime Suspect (Prime Suspect (Harper)) (22 page)

“Next round’s on me, give us your orders,” she told them. “The bad news is: I’m asking for volunteers. They’ve withdrawn the official surveillance from Marlow, so I want four men to cover it.”

Lillie stood up. “Excuse me . . .”

“Great, that leaves three . . .”

“I was just going for a slash . . .”

Rosper laughed and she nailed him. “Two! Come on, undercover’s a piece of cake. Two more . . .”

She handed Rosper a twenty and sent him to the bar. “Let’s get those drinks in. I’ll have a large G and T.”

Lillie pulled out a chair for her. “How did it go, boss?”

The others pretended not to listen. Tennison said quietly, “If I don’t pull something out of the bag very soon, I’m off the case.”

Her gin and tonic arrived. She thanked Rosper and he handed her back her money.

“What’s this?”

Rosper shrugged. “It’s OK, Skipper coughed up.”

“Is this a truce? Ah well, cheers!” She raised her glass to them, but Muddyman and Rosper were looking towards Otley, who was sitting at the bar.

“Cheers, Skipper!” Muddyman called.

Otley turned and grinned, as if he had got one over on Tennison, even in the pub.

With a few drinks inside them they returned to the Incident Room to work. The stacks of paperwork did not seem to have diminished much, despite the busy atmosphere. The room was thick with tobacco smoke and littered with used plastic cups. Tennison, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, was double-checking and collating results.

At nine o’clock, Muddyman stood up and announced that he was going home. Many of the others started to make a move and Otley approached Tennison.

“We’ve got several cases that need looking into: one at Oldham, another at Southport, an’ we’re checking one in Warrington. Ma’am . . . ?”

Tennison looked up. “Sorry.”

“Who do you want checking these unsolved cases?”

“Oh, anyone who’s been cooped up here all day, give them a break.”

“OK,” Otley muttered. He made a few notes on a pad. “I’ll do the Oldham . . . Muddyman, Rosper and Lillie are on Marlow, so that leaves . . . Can you take the Southport case?”

“OK, just pin it up for me.”

Otley put the list up on the notice-board and picked up his coat. As he left he passed WPC Havers.

“You’ll be able to retire on your overtime, gel!”

“Night, Sarge!” she replied as she passed some telephone messages to Tennison. “Why don’t you take a break, boss?”

“Because I’ve got more to lose, Maureen.” She rose and stretched, yawning, then went to examine the list on the notice-board. “I’ve lost track,” she sighed.

Only three of the men were left working. “Go on home, you lot,” she told them. “Recharge your batteries.”

DC Caplan put his coat on and asked, “Anyone for a drink?”

I’ve had enough liquid for one day, mate,” replied Jones. I’ll be bumping into the mother-in-law in the night, she spends more time in the lavvy than a plumber . . .”

There was a metamorphosis taking place right in front of them, not that anyone noticed. DC Jones, of the polished shoes and old school tie, had taken to wearing striped shirts with white collars and rather flashy ties, similar to those favored by DI Burkin. He was also knocking back the pints, was even the first in the bar at opening time. It was taking time, but he was at last becoming one of the lads.

As they left, still joking, Havers asked Tennison casually, “What’s with Oldham, then? He got relatives there or something?”

“What?”

“Skipper asked for anything from Oldham. I wondered what the attraction was . . . Mind if I push off?

It slowly dawned on Tennison what she was talking about. “He’s doing it to me again!” She shook her head in disbelief and muttered a vague goodnight to Maureen, intent on getting to the bottom of it. Maureen saw her uncover one of the computers and start tapping the keyboard as she closed the door.

Tennison muttered to herself, “Right, Otley, let’s find out just what your game is! Jeannie Sharpe . . . March nineteen eighty-four . . .” She moved the cursor down the screen, read some more, then picked up the phone to make an internal call. There was no reply; she put the receiver down and went across to the large table in the center of the room where all the files were stacked in alphabetical order. Whistling softly, she selected the Oldham file and flipped through it, then carried it back to the computer.

“Ah . . . Jeanie Sharpe, aged twenty-one, prostitute . . .” She compared the entry on the computer with the notes in the file. “Head of investigation, DCI F. G. Neal . . . Detective Inspector Morrell and . . . DI John Shefford!”

She pushed her chair back, staring at the computer screen. Why was Otley so intent on taking the Oldham case? It had to be something to do with Shefford; it was too much of a coincidence. He had put her down for Southport with DC Jones; she snatched the list down from the notice-board. By the time she had retyped it she was seeing spots before her eyes. It was time to call it quits; but she, not Otley, was now down for Oldham.

“My car’ll be here any minute! I was too tired to drive last night.” Dressed and ready for work, Jane was rushing around the kitchen. Peter, still half-asleep, stumbled in.

“ ’Morning!”

“I got in a bit late, so I slept in the spare room. Feel this—d’you think it’ll soften up by tonight?” She handed him an avocado.

“It’s fine.” He stood in the middle of the kitchen and stretched. The avocado slipped from his grasp and Jane caught it deftly.

“I’ll be back early to get everything ready for tonight. I’m doing what Pam suggested: pasta and smoked salmon. Prawns and mayonnaise in the avocados . . . Ah!” She whipped round and jotted “Mayonnaise” on her notepad. The doorbell rang. “And cream. Give us a kiss. I’ll see you about seven. If anyone calls for me, I’ll be in Oldham.”

She left Peter standing in the kitchen. “Oldham, right . . .” He woke up suddenly. “Oldham?” But he was talking to himself.

Tennison and Jones followed the uniformed Sergeant Tomlins through a makeshift door in a corrugated iron fence. Tomlins was still trying to make up for his error at Manchester Piccadilly station, where he had assumed Jones to be the Chief Inspector.

“In nineteen eighty-four all this part was still running,” he said as he led them into the cavernous, empty warehouse. “It was shut down soon afterwards, and hasn’t been occupied since. The only people that came here were the tarts with their customers, and I think some still do.”

“We got the call at four in the morning, from a dosser who’d come in for the night.” He pointed to an old cupboard against a wall, minus its doors. “He found her in there.”

Tennison inspected the cupboard. “Actually inside?”

“Yes. The doors were still on then, but not quite closed. She was lying face down, her head that way . . . This shed was used for dipping parts; the vats used to fill the place.” He spread his arms to indicate the whole area. “They all went for scrap, I suppose. They lowered the stuff on pulleys—you can still see the hooks—then raised them again to dry.”

Dozens of rusty hooks still hung from the ceiling. Tennison looked around and asked, “Hands tied behind her back, right?”

“Yes. Savage beating, left half-naked. Her face was a mess. Her shift was found outside, and her coat over there.”

They started to leave but Tennison turned back to stare at the spot where Jeannie Sharpe was found.

“Nasty place to end up, huh?”

“Well, these tarts bloody ask for it.”

She snapped at him, “She was twenty-one years old, Sergeant!” but he was moving ahead, heaving the rubbish aside. He waited for them at the door.

“You wanted to have a word with her friends? Slags isn’t the word for it . . .” He pushed the corrugated iron aside for Tennison to pass. “We clean up the streets and back they come, like rodents.”

She let the door slam back in his face. “Sorry!” she said.

The flat was damp, with peeling wallpaper, but an attempt had been made to render it habitable. The furniture was cheap: a single bed, a cot, a painted wardrobe and a few armchairs, and it was fairly tidy, apart from the children’s toys scattered everywhere.

Tennison was sitting in an old wing-chair beside a low table on which were two overflowing ashtrays, a teapot and a lot of biscuit crumbs. She was totally at ease, smoking and sipping a mug of tea.

Carol, a drably dressed but attractive blond woman in her early thirties, was telling her about the last time she had seen her friend Jeannie alive.

“We were all together, just coming out of the pub, our local, y’know. We’d had a few . . .”

Linda, plump and cheerful with dark hair, interrupted her. “I hadn’t! I was on antibiotics, can’t drink with them.”

“His car was parked, er . . . You know where the pub is?” Tennison shook her head. “Well, it’s right on a corner, y’know, so there’s a side street . . .”

Finishing her tea, Tennison suggested they go and look.

The three women stood on the corner outside the pub. It wasn’t easy to tell by looking at them which were the prostitutes and which the senior policewoman.

“See, there’s the side street. He was parked just there. You could only see a bit of the car,” Carol was saying.

Tennison offered her cigarettes round. “You couldn’t tell me the make of it? The color?”

“It was dark, I reckon the car was dark, but it had a lot of shiny chrome at the front, y’know, an’ like a bar stuck all over with badges an’ stuff. He called out to Jeannie . . .”

Tennison grabbed the remark. “He called out? You mean he knew her name?”

“I don’t think it was her name. It was, y’know, “How much, slag?” I said to her, hadn’t she had enough for one night . . .”

Carol put in: “Ah, but she was savin’ up, wanted to emigrate to Australia if she could get enough.”

“So Jeannie crossed the road? Did you see her get into the car?”

Linda replied, “She went round to the passenger side.”

“I looked over, y’know, to see, but he was turning like this . . .” Carol demonstrated. “I only saw the back of his head.”

Tennison stepped to the kerb and peered around the corner as Linda said, “We never saw her again. She had no one to even bury ’er, but we had a whip-round.”

“Fancy a drink?” asked Tennison.

They piled into the pub and found an empty booth. Carol went to the bar while the locals sized up Tennison. They were mostly laborers in overalls.

Linda had produced a photograph of herself and Jeannie. “Lovely lookin’, she was. That’s me—I was thinner then, and blond. Cost a fortune to keep it lookin’ good, so I’ve gone back to the natural color. Set me back twenty-five quid for streaks! We used to get cut-price, mind, at the local salon, but they’ve gone all unisex, y’know. I hate having me ’air done with a man sitting next to me, don’t you?”

Tennison opened her briefcase to take out her copy of the
News of the World
, but was interrupted by a man in dirty, paint-splashed overalls who strolled across from the juke box. He put a hand on Tennison’s shoulder and leaned down to whisper, “I’ve got fifteen minutes, the van’s outside . . .”

Turning slowly, she removed his hand from her shoulder. “I’m busy right now.” He made no move to go, so she looked him in the eye. “Sod off!”

He looked in surprise at Linda, who mouthed “Cop!” and shot out before anyone could draw breath. Tennison carried on as though nothing had happened.

Carol returned with the drinks as Tennison placed the newspaper on the table.

“The barman says you just missed the London Express, but there’s a train at four minutes past five.”

“I’ll be cutting it fine . . .” Tennison checked her watch and smiled. “Dinner party! Is this like him?” She pointed to the newspaper photo of Marlow and took a sip of her drink.

“He’s a bit tasty, isn’t he?” Carol commented, and glanced at Linda. “He was dark-haired . . .”

“You thought he had a beard, didn’t you?” Linda said.

“Beard? You never mentioned that in your statement.”

“She couldn’t get out of the nick fast enough, they’re bastards,” Carol informed her. “An’ I’ll tell you something for nothing—they never gave a shit about Jeannie. We’re rubbish, until they want a jerk-off! Four kids we got between us, and no one’s interested in them. An’ that inspector geezer, y’know, him . . .” She nudged Linda. “I’m not sayin’ any names, but . . .”

“I will,” said Linda. “It was that big bloke, John Shefford. They got rid of him faster than a fart.”

Tennison asked, deadpan, “What do you mean?”

“I reckon they found out about him an’ Jeannie,” Carol told her confidentially. “Next thing we knew, he was on his bike, gone to London. He was as big a bastard as any of ’em—bigger. Jeannie never had a chance: her stepdad was screwin’ her from the time she was seven. She was on the streets at fourteen, an’ that Shefford used to tell her he’d take care of her. Well, he never found out who killed her; they never even tried.”

“Poor kid, strung up like that, like a bit of meat on a hook!” Linda said. “You have to be really sick . . .”

Tennison jumped on her. “What? What did you say?”

“The dosser who found her, he told me.”

“You know this man? He got a name?”

“Oh, he’s dead, years back, but he told me all about it. Hanging by her arms from a hook in the ceiling.”

It was getting late. Peter checked his watch anxiously and started to lay the dining table. Where the hell was she?

The front door crashed open and Jane rushed in, yelling, “Don’t say a word, I’ve got it timed to the second. Don’t panic!”

True to her word, everything was just about ready by eight o’clock, and she had put on a nice dress, though her hair was still damp. She ran quickly around the table, distributing place mats.

“Water’s on, what else can I do?” Peter asked.

She stood back to look at the table. “Right, glasses for red, glasses for white, starter plates, teaspoons . . . Napkins! Shit, hang on . . .”

She shot out to the kitchen, returning to fling a packet of paper napkins at him, then disappeared again, shouting, “Bread, bread!”

The doorbell rang as she came back with the basket of rolls. She gave Peter the thumbs-up.