Prime Suspect (Prime Suspect (Harper)) (23 page)

“All set! Let them in!”

Peter grabbed her and kissed her cheek, then they both headed for the hall.

When they had finished eating, Jane cleared the table and went to make the coffee, taking her glass of wine with her. The kitchen was a disaster area with hardly a square foot of clear work surface. She tidied up a little while she waited for the percolator.

Peter rushed in, obviously panicking. “You’re taking your time! Where are the liqueur glasses?”

“We haven’t got any! You’ll have to use those little colored ones Mum gave me.’ She drained her glass of wine. “How’s it going?”

He relaxed a little. “Just getting down to business. Can you keep the women occupied? I’ll take the tray.”

As he hurried back to his guests, Jane yawned and pressed the plunger on the percolator. The hot coffee shot from the spout, all over her dress. “Shit!” Then she shrugged, wiped herself down as best she could, fixed a smile on her face and marched out with the coffeepot.

Frank King was obviously the dominant male, the one with the money and the big ideas. He had spread some plans on the table and was explaining them to Peter and Tom.

Frank’s wife, Lisa, and Tom’s wife, Sue, were sitting in the armchairs at the other end of the room, drinking apricot brandy from tacky little blue and green glasses. They were both dressed to the nines, perfectly coiffed and lip-glossed, but Lisa was the one with the really good jewelery. Jane poured them coffee.

“It’s nice, isn’t it? I like sweet liqueurs,” Lisa was saying to Sue. “We spent three months in Spain last year; the drinks are so cheap, wine’s a quarter of the price you pay here. Oh, thanks, Jane. Mind you, the price of clothes—all the decent ones are imported, that’s what makes them so expensive.”

Jane moved on to the men. Neither Tom nor Frank thanked her for the coffee and Peter, intent on what Frank was saying, refused it.

“Like I said, no problem. Get the bulldozers in and they’re gone before anyone’s woken up. Don’t know why they make such a fuss about a few trees anyway. So, we clear this area completely, but leave the pool, which goes with this house here. The other we build at an angle, the two of them have to go up in less than three-quarters of an acre . . .”

“What sort of price are we looking at?” Tom wanted to know.

“The one with the pool, four ninety-five. The one without we ask three fifty. That’s low for an exclusive close . . .”

Leaving them to it, Jane found a small glass that Peter had poured for her on the dresser. She carried it over to the women and sat down.

She took a sip from the glass. “Christ, it’s that terrible sweet muck!” Up again, Jane fetched a wine glass and went looking for the brandy. It was on the table beside Frank’s elbow, and she helped herself to a generous measure. She had been drinking since lunchtime: gins in the pub, on the train, wine throughout dinner. She was tying one on, but it didn’t show, yet. She captured a bowl of peanuts and sat down again. It seemed as though Lisa hadn’t stopped talking.

“She goes on and on, she wants a pony. I said to Frank, there’s no point getting her one if she’s going to be the same as she was over the hamster. The poor thing’s still somewhere under the floorboards . . .”

Sue took advantage of the pause to speak to Jane. “Tom was telling me you have Joey at weekends.”

Jane was searching for her cigarettes. She nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but Lisa got in first.

“What I wouldn’t give to have mine just for weekends! Au pairs have been the bane of my life . . .”

“Oh, I’ve never had any troub—”

Lisa steamed on regardless. “I’ve had German, Spanish, French and a Swedish girl. I was going out one day, got as far as the end of the drive and realized I’d forgotten something, so I went back. She was in the Jacuzzi, stark naked! If Frank had walked in . . .”

“Probably would have jumped on her!” At last Tennison had got a word in edgeways, She grinned.

Sue nearly laughed, but remembered in time that she wanted to stay in Lisa’s good books. She changed the subject.

“You’re with the Metropolitan Police, Jane? Peter was telling . . .”

Lisa broke in: “Well, I’d better tell Frank to ease up on the brandy, can’t have you arresting him . . .”

“That’s traffic, not my department,” Jane replied, knocking back her brandy.

“Oh, so what do you do? Secretary? I was Frank’s before we got married.”

“No, I’m not a secretary.” The day was beginning to catch up on Jane, or rather the tragic little Jeannie.
There was no one to bury her, so we had a whip-round . . .

If Lisa had heard Jane’s reply she paid no attention. Her peanut-sized brain was now fixed on wallpaper, and she was holding forth about which was best, flock or fabric. In her opinion, fabric held its color better . . .

The three men were still sitting around the table, hogging the brandy bottle. As Jane helped herself to another large one, Frank pushed his glass forward without pausing for breath.

“I put my men on the main house, Pete’s men on the second, and the two of them go up neck and neck. I’m looking for a quick turnover, so we do a big color brochure with artist’s impressions and start selling them while we dig the foundations. Tom does the interiors, and we split the profits . . .”

Jane was unused to being ignored. She downed the brandy and poured another to carry back to her perch on the arm of the only really comfortable chair which, oddly enough, no one had sat in. She knocked over the bowl of peanuts into the chair and spent a few minutes eating the spilt ones from the seat, then slowly slid into it herself.

Lisa had not drawn breath, but Jane’s accident with the peanuts finally brought her verbal assault course on wallpaper to a grinding halt. There was one of those classic silences among the women, during which Frank’s voice could still be heard.

Lisa turned her full attention on Jane. “I hear you were on the
Crime Night
program?”

“That’s right, I was answering the telephones, I was the one passing the blank sheet of paper backwards and forwards.”

Missing the sarcasm in Jane’s voice, Lisa ploughed on, “I
am
impressed! I never watch it, it scares me, but I’m paranoid about locking the house. And if a man comes near me when I’m walking Rambo . . .” She laughed. “That’s our red setter, I’m not talking about Frank!”

Jane switched off for a moment, gazing into the bottom of her empty glass. When she snapped to again she realized that Lisa hadn’t paused once.

“But don’t you think, honestly, that a lot of them ask for it?”

“What, ask to be raped?” Jane shook her head and her voice grew loud, “How can anyone
ask
to be raped?”

She jumped to her feet, swaying slightly and glaring as if interrogating Lisa, who shrank back in her seat. “Where do you walk your dog?”

“Well, on Barnes Common . . .”

“Barnes Common is notorious, women have been attacked on Barnes Common!”

Lisa rallied a little. “Yes, I know, but I wouldn’t go there late at night!”

“There are gushes, gullies, hidden areas. You could have a knife at your throat, your knickers torn off you, and bang! You’re dead. But you weren’t asking for it!”

“I—I was really talking about prostitutes . . .”

“What about them? Do you know any? Does Sue know any?” She turned to the men, she had their attention now. “How about you? Can you three tell me, hands on hearts, that you’ve never been with a tom?”

Lisa whispered to Sue, “What’s a tom?”

Tennison snapped, “A tart!”

In the ensuing silence, the telephone rang. Peter said, “It’ll be for you, Jane.”

She weaved her way to the door, but turned back, blazing, when she heard Peter say, “I’m sorry about that!”

“Don’t you ever make apologies for me! We were just having a consev . . . a conservation! She slammed the door.

“Keep her off the building site, Pete,” Frank said in a low voice.

“Actually, I’d like an answer to her question,” said Lisa.

“I think that went off all right, didn’t it?” Jane, creaming her face, was talking to Peter.

“You asking me?”

“No, I was talking to the pot of cold cream! You’re going to do the deal, aren’t you?”

“Yeah . . . Did you have to bring up all that about tarts?”

“Put a bit of spark into the evening.”

“It wasn’t your bloody evening!”

“Oh, thanks! I broke my bloody neck to get that dinner on the table!”

“It’s always you, Jane! You, you, you! You don’t give a sod about anyone else!”

“That’s not true!”

“You care about the blokes on your team, your victims, your rapists, your “toms,” as you call them, you give all your time to them.”

“That’s my job!”

“Tonight was for my job, Jane. But no, you’ve got to put your ten cents’ worth in!”

“Ok, I’m sorry . . . sorry if I spoilt the evening!”

The tiredness swept over her like a tidal wave. She had no energy to argue, and went for the easy way out, giving him a smile. “OK? I apologize, but I think I had too much to drink, and they were so boring . . .”

He stared at her, infuriated. Her comment really got to him. “This is business, Jane, do you ever think how boring all your fucking talk is? Ever think about that, ever think how many conversations we’ve had about this guy George Marlow? You ever consider how fucking boring you get? Do you? I don’t know him, I don’t want to know about him, but Christ Almighty I hear his name . . .”

“Pete, I’ve said I’m sorry, OK? Just let it drop.”

He was unwilling to let it go, but he shrugged. Jane put her head in her hands and sighed. “Pete, I’m tired out. I’m sorry tonight didn’t go as well as you’d planned, but you’ve got the contract, so why don’t we just go to bed?”

The memories of the day swamped her: the smell of the factory, the smell of the two tarts’ flat, her feelings, the smells, all muddled and out of control . . . She couldn’t stop the tears, she just sat hunched in front of the mirror, crying, crying for the waste, the little tart who had been raped by her stepfather when she was seven, little Jeannie with no one to bury her, who Jane didn’t even know, yet she was crying for her and all the other Jeannies who lived and died like that and nobody gave a shit for . . .

Peter squatted down and brushed her hair from her face. “It’s all right, love. Like you said, I got the contract. Maybe
I
had a few too many . . . Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

Jane went to bed, but she didn’t sleep for a long time. When she woke she found the kitchen full of the debris of dinner; not a single dish had been washed. She put her coat on, ready to leave for work, and took two aspirin with her coffee.

Peter, his hair standing on end, joined her.

“Pete, I’ve been thinking over everything. Last night . . .”

With a grin he reached for her, tried to kiss her. She stepped back. “I love you, Pete, I really do, but you’re right. It doesn’t work, does it? I do put my work first. I don’t think I can change, because I’m doing what I always wanted, and to succeed I have to put everything into it. I have to prove myself every day, to every man on that force—and to myself . . .”

She was telling him that they could never lead the sort of life he wanted. It hurt a lot, and he wanted to gather her in his arms, make it all right. But the doorbell rang. They just looked at each other, with so much more to say and no time to say it in.

Peter said quickly, “Don’t say anything more now, let’s talk it over tonight. Maybe I haven’t been easy to live with, maybe if I was more secure . . .”

The doorbell rang again. “You’d better go, Jane.”

“I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”

Peter stood for a moment after she’d left, surveying the kitchen, then he lashed out at the stack of dishes on the draining board, sending them crashing into the sink.

Tennison sat silently beside Jones as he drove. It unnerved him. Eventually he said, just to break the silence, “Still no trace of Marlow’s car.” She didn’t react. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“I want that bloody car found!” she snapped.

“Trouble at home? I got all your shopping OK, didn’t I?”

“Yeah!”

“I got an earful when I got home. My dinner had set like cement.”

“The difference is that you get your dinner cooked for you. At my place, I’m the one who’s supposed to cook it.” She thought a moment. “Shit’s gonna hit the fan this morning, though. You got an aspirin?”

Chief Superintendent Kernan had come in early to review the Marlow case, and for once Tennison had got her oar in first. Now he listened in growing anger as Tennison and Otley raged at each other, but he let them get on with it.

“George Marlow was questioned in nineteen eighty-four about the murder of a prostitute, Jeannie Sharpe. John Shefford, then a DI, was on the investigating team. He was transferred to London because it was discovered that he’d been having a relationshp with the murdered girl!” Tennison stormed. “None of this is in the records. We now know that he was having a sexual relationship with Della Mornay; he must have known he’d identified the wrong girl, but he was prepared to cover that up as well!”

Otley was seething. “Everything you’re saying is a pack of lies, and if John Shefford was alive . . .”

“But he’s not, he’s dead, and you’re still covering up for him.
You
requested the Oldham case,
you
wanted to go up there because you knew Shefford was involved . . .”

“That’s not true! Della Mornay was a police informer . . .”

“She was also a prostitute, picked up and charged by John Shefford when he was attached to Vice—and what a perfect job for him!”

Tennison’s last remark brought Kernan to his feet. “That’s enough! Just calm down!”

“Sir, I have been working against time ever since I took over this investigation, at first because of Marlow’s release, now because I’m going to be pulled off it. George Marlow is my only suspect, still my suspect for both murders, and now very possibly a third: Jeannie Sharpe.”

“I don’t know anything about any previous case up north,” Otley insisted. “I know some of the men fraternize with the girls on our patch . . .”