Prime Suspect (Prime Suspect (Harper)) (25 page)

As they hurried towards Marlow’s flat she gasped, “He’s got a lock-up, some kind of garage where he stashes his car. Look for a set of keys, anything that might fit that kind of place. Get the bloody floorboards up if necessary.”

“I don’t believe this,” Marlow was saying with exasperation to Lillie and Rosper as he wiped his hands on a rag. He stood and watched Tennison, Amson and Jones legging it up towards his flat.

“What are they after?” Lillie asked, watching him carefully.

“Me! I’d better get up there, the old lady next door’ll have heart failure . . .” He laughed. “Not because of them, but because she’s out playing bingo. Means she’ll miss all the drama. Ta-ra!”

Moyra was at the door, looking at the search warrant. From the bottom of the steps Marlow called, “Hi, you want me?”

Moyra was very near to tears as she stood in the hall and surveyed the wreckage of her home. The carpets had been rolled back, all loose floorboards had been prised up, the hardboarding around the bath had been removed, the toilet had been taken apart, even the U-bends of the handbasin and the kitchen sink had been disconnected. Every video had been taken out of its jacket, every book taken down from the shelves and shaken, every crevice in every piece of furniture delved into. Tennison and Amson had every key in the place laid out in the lounge and were examining them minutely.

Moyra’s self-pity turned to rage, and she screamed, “I don’t believe this! I want everything put back as it was, and what you’ve done to the plumbing I want repaired professionally! You’ve had all our bloody keys down the nick before, why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

Tennison gestured to Amson to close the door on Moyra, then turned to Marlow, who was standing in front of the fireplace, hands on his hips. “Why don’t you tell us, George? You know what we’re looking for.”

“I know you’ve been asking the neighbors. I park my car outside, I don’t have a garage.”

“But your car isn’t always parked outside, George. We know you’ve got a lock-up.”

“When it’s not parked here it’s because I’m away on business. I drive—correction, I drove—for a living. Instead of all this, why don’t you just try and find my car?”

There were thuds and hammering noises from the kitchen, and the sound of crockery being moved. Moyra’s screaming voice could be heard telling Muddyman and Jones that the bottom of the percolator didn’t come off. She started yelling for George.

Tennison turned to Amson. “Tell them to keep it down out there. George, you’ve got a lock-up, we know it.”

“A lock-up? How many more times do I have to tell you? I park my car at the back of the flats!”

“We have a witness . . .”

“Not that old bat from next door!”

“No, a friend of yours.”

“What friend? I don’t have one left because of your crowd. Mates I worked with for years turned their backs on me! You got a friend? Great, introduce me!”

“We have a witness who stated that you told him you had a . . .”

“Him? Was it someone I was inside with? Yes? Don’t tell me, let me guess. It was Reg McKinney, wasn’t it?” He shook his head, laughing. “You must be desperate. Reg McKinney? He’s no friend of mine. Stung me for fifty quid when we got out. He’s a known nutter. Look at his record, in and out of institutions since he was a kid. He’s no friend of mine, I told him to take a hike.”

There was a tap on the door and Amson opened up.

“Nothin’,” said Muddyman with a shrug, “but we need a plumber.”

In a low voice, Marlow told Tennison earnestly, “I don’t have a lock-up, I don’t have a garage. If I had, maybe my motor wouldn’t have been nicked. It’s the truth!”

Suddenly anxious to get home to Peter, Tennison decided not to go back to the station to pick up her car, so Terry Amson gave her a lift home. She was very aware of the difference having a genuinely friendly face on her team made to her job. She knew she could talk to Terry and it wouldn’t go any further.

Amson was saying, “If he’s got his car stashed somewhere between Camberwell and Kilburn, we’ll find it.”

“If!” She looked at him sideways. “Terry, now you’ve met him, what do you think?”

“For real? If he’s lying, he’s one of the best I’ve ever come across.”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “Tonight, for the first time, I had doubts.” She pointed ahead. “It’s the second house along.”

When he had stopped the car she turned to him. “What do you think about John Shefford?”

“As a suspect? He was a crack officer, you know.”

She said sadly, “He was also in the vicinity when Karen, Della and Jeannie Sharpe were killed. We’re going to have to check him out on the two that just came in.”

“You know I’m with you on this, Jane, but there’s only so far I’m prepared to go. I’ve got a wife and four kids to support, remember.”

“I don’t like it any more than you.” She put her hand out to open the door. “Just keep it under your hat, but we’ve got to check it out. So you pull Shefford’s record sheets, first thing in the morning, OK? You want to come in for a drink?”

Amson shook his head and Tennison climbed out. “G’night!” she said as he started the engine.

Jane felt for the hall light switch, pressed it down. The flat was quiet; she dumped her briefcase and took off her coat, shouting, “Pete! Pete?”

There was no answer. She opened the kitchen door to find it clean and tidy, nothing out of place. She tried the bedroom; it was just the same.

Sighing, she unbuttoned her shirt and opened the wardrobe. One half of it was empty. She checked the chest of drawers—all Peter’s were empty! Turning away, she unzipped her skirt and let it slide to the floor, stepped out of it and walked towards the bathroom.

As she opened the door the phone rang. She let it ring, looking around to see only one toothbrush, one set of towels. The answering machine clicked into action and she waited, listening.

“Jane, it’s your mother . . .” Jane saw the white envelope propped against the phone and reached for it. “Didn’t you get my message this morning about Pam? Well, in case you didn’t, she’s had a girl, eight pounds seven ounces, and she’s beautiful! She was rushed into St. Stephen’s Hospital last night, I’m calling from her room . . .”

Jane picked up the phone as she ripped the envelope open. “Hallo, Mum! I just got home.”

Jane drove to the hospital and parked, with the unopened letter from Peter on the seat beside her. She turned the lights off and reached for the white manila envelope with her name hastily scrawled on it.

It contained one sheet of her own notepaper.
Sweetheart
, she read,
I took on board everything you said this morning. I can’t quite deal with you, or the pressures of your work, and at the same time get myself sorted out. I am sorry to do it this way, but I think in the long run it will be for the best, for both of us. I still care for you, but I can’t see any future in our relationship. Maybe when we’ve had a few weeks apart we can meet and have a talk. Until then, take care of yourself.

It was signed simply
Peter.
She laid it face down on the seat and sighed, then realized that there was a postscript on the back.

I’m staying with one of my builders. When I get an address I’ll let you know where I am, but if you need me you can reach me at the yard.
Then he had put in brackets: (
Not Scotland Yard!
).

Jane opened the door slowly, but remained sitting. Was it always going to be like this? Peter wasn’t the first, she’d never been able to keep a relationship going for more than a few months. She flicked her compact open and delved into her bag for a comb, stared at her reflection in the oval mirror for a long time. She looked a wreck, her hair needed washing and the make-up she had dashed on in a hurry that morning had long since disappeared. She studied the lines around her eyes and from her nose to her lips, the deep frown lines between her brows. She fished in her bag and brought out her lipstick, closed the mirror and ran the lipstick around her mouth without looking at it. She was so used to freshening up in a hurry that she didn’t need a mirror.

Locking the car, she walked briskly towards the bright hospital entrance. An anxious-looking woman in a wheelchair was holding an unlit cigarette. Jane smiled at her and she gave a conspiratorial grin.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a match, have you?”

“Yes, love.” Jane took a half-used book of matches from her pocket. “You keep them, and mind you don’t get cold. It’s freezing out.”

As Jane headed for the night nurse at reception, she thought to herself, So what if you’re going home to an empty flat? You’ve done that most of your adult life. By the time she reached the desk she had persuaded herself that she preferred it that way.

She gave the nurse a cheerful smile. “I’ve come to see my sister. I know it’s late . . .”

After signing the visitors’ book she headed towards the lifts, as directed. The woman in the wheelchair called out, “Thanks for the matches!”

“That’s all right, love. Good night, now!”

The corridor was deserted. Jane checked each room, peering through the little windows, until she found the right one. She could see Pam through the glass, holding the new baby, Tony’s arm resting lightly around her shoulders. Although it was way past their bedtime her two little boys were there too, spick and span, swarming over the bed and admiring their new little sister.

Watching them, Jane’s hand tightened on the door handle, but she found she couldn’t turn it. They formed a picture of a family in which she had no place. She turned away and walked slowly back down the corridor.

She headed automatically towards the river, needing quiet, space to think. It was an ordeal to cross the King’s Road; she found herself shrinking from the traffic, from the faces passing her in their shiny cars; happy faces, drunken faces, all going somewhere, all with a purpose, with someone . . .

She found herself in Cheyne Walk, beside the water. Tonight the Thames looked like a river of oil, sluggish and smooth, and she could not shake off the feeling that dead and rotting bodies floated just beneath the surface. She had come here to celebrate a new life, but all she could see was death, and pain.

By the time she returned to the hospital, visiting hours were officially over, but she slipped along to the private section without being stopped.

The room was decked with flowers and bowls of fruit, and the baby lay asleep in her cot, but Pam’s bed was empty. This time she didn’t hesitate, she walked into the room and gazed down at the baby girl, moved the blanket gently away from her face.

Soft footsteps behind her announced Pam’s return. Jane looked up, smiling, back in control.

“Hi! Just checking she has all her fingers and toes! She’s OK? Bit of a dent in her head, though . . .”

Pam climbed cautiously into bed. “Her skull is still soft, it’ll go. If you’d been here earlier you’d have seen Tony and the boys. Mum’s staying until I go home.”

“I feel a bit cheap—no flowers, no fruit. But I’d just got in from work.”

Pam was still in pain. She shifted uncomfortably in the bed.

“Could you just plump up my pillows?” She lowered her voice. “You know we got this on Tony’s firm? It’s a new scheme, a private patients plan. We can all get private medical attention now . . .”

Jane rearranged her sister’s pillows and straightened the sheets, then kissed her sister’s cheek. “Well, congratulations! What are you going to call her, Fergie? Eugenie? Beatrice? I mean, now it’s all private . . .”

Pam pulled a face. “Well, Mum’s actually hinted . . .”

“What? No, you
can’t
call her
Edna
!”

They were interrupted by a nurse, who gave Jane a pleasant smile that nonetheless indicated that she shouldn’t be there. “It’s time for her feed, I’m afraid. Beautiful, isn’t she?”

She disappeared with the baby, and Jane prepared herself to leave.

“You can tell this is private: no bells and everybody out!” She kissed Pam’s cheek and smiled. “I gotta go, anyway.”

“Thanks for coming. Give my love to Peter.”

“If I see him I will . . .” She hesitated at the door. “It’s all off.”

Pam was instantly concerned. “Oh, no! Why?”

Jane shrugged. “You know me.”

“Is there someone else? I mean, are you OK?”

“No, there’s no one else. I’m . . . It was a mutual decision.”

“Well, you know what you’re doing. Is the case we saw on television over?”

Jane paused before she answered. Her family’s total lack of understanding when it came to her work, to herself, on top of Peter leaving, swamped her, but she managed to keep her smile in place.

“No, I haven’t got him—yet!” She gave her sister a little wave. “G’night, God bless the baby.”

As she closed the door behind her, only the expression in her eyes betrayed Jane’s loneliness. She had made a tremendous effort, forcing herself to come here. Having done her duty, at last she could go home and cry.

10

“
W
hat in Christ’s name do you think you’re playing at?” Kernan demanded.

“We had good reason to search Marlow’s flat,” she protested. “Bloke he was in jail with said he had a lock-up . . .”

“I’m not talking about Marlow! You’ve had Sergeant Amson going over Shefford’s record sheets.”

How the hell had he found out so quickly? She opened her mouth to speak, but Kernan ploughed on, “If you want information regarding one of my ex-officers, then you know bloody well you should have come to me!”

“I think we’ve got our wires crossed here.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Jane! Are you so desperate? It’s pretty low, just because you can’t prove your case, to try shifting the blame to John Shefford!”

“I first mentioned my suspicions to Sergeant Amson last night, and until I have more evidence . . .”

“I’m telling you, back off! If there was one viable piece of evidence against DCI Shefford, you should have brought it to me. And don’t harp back to the diary, that’s sorted, and Otley’s paid for it. Don’t try to do my job, Inspector.”

She tried again. “We’ve got two unsolved cases, one in Warrington and one in Southport, both with similar bruising to their upper arms, hands tied with the same sort of knots. George Marlow was in the vicinity when both . . .”