by Linda Regan
When she looked up Banham was standing there, holding the Chinese takeaway and smiling. He hadn’t noticed. Or had he? He gave nothing away. He walked on ahead into the kitchen, giving her time to hide the underwear in the drinks cabinet.
There was more embarrassment in the kitchen. The sink was full of unwashed coffee mugs. Banham put the brown paper bags of food on the worktop, turned the oven on, then rolled his sleeves up and started washing up.
He shook his hands and patted the mugs dry with the kitchen roll, hunted for plates in the cupboards and turned them upside down on top of the oven. “Glasses,” he said, looking round, but didn’t wait for an answer.
It took a second for the penny to drop. By the time Alison realised where he was going he had reached the drinks cupboard and taken out two champagne flutes. He completely ignored the underwear; she couldn’t decide if he hadn’t noticed or was too polite to comment.
He walked back into the kitchen, smiling at her blushing face as he passed her. He rummaged in one of the brown paper bags and brought out a bottle of champagne.
“I’ve warmed two plates,” he said, beginning to uncork it, “and I think you should have a tiny bit of this food. You know what they say about champagne on an empty stomach.”
“No. What do they say?”
He turned to face her, and those blue eyes gazed into hers. “Well, if you don’t know, I won’t be responsible for…” The cork flew in the air, cutting him off in mid-sentence.
“What’s this in aid of?” she asked, a little bemused.
“It’s Valentine’s Day. Had you forgotten?”
“Yes, I had.”
He poured champagne into both glasses and handed one to her. “Didn’t the new fella send you roses?”
She coloured with guilt and looked away. “Not his style,” she said feebly, knowing full well lying to a detective inspector was a waste of time. “Stop staring at me. I’m your sergeant, not a suspect.”
“Sorry.” He clinked her glass with his. “Here’s to lovers everywhere,” he said, still looking her straight in the eyes.
She held his gaze for a few moments but was first to look away. After a few more seconds, he put the bottle down and walked through to the lounge. She stayed where she was for a moment, then picked up the champagne and followed him. She settled on the sofa beside him, but he jumped up and went back for the food.
The mood had changed.
She sipped her champagne while he munched on his supper. Every now and again he held a spoonful of food in front of her, but she always shook her head. There were enough calories in the champagne, but she couldn’t resist that.
“Tell me about Lottie,” she said.
He told her about the sex chat line job, and how it was affecting the children. “And of course she won’t take any money from me,” he concluded.
Alison could see Lottie’s point of view. “She’s a grown woman and a mother, and she won’t take kindly to you telling her how to run her life. She’s trying to be independent. I can see she needs help, but you’ll have to do it another way.”
“What if I tell her about this case we’re on? Those murdered women were naïve students who ended up getting involved in pornographic videos. And now, after nineteen years, someone is killing them, all because of something that didn’t seem at all threatening at the time.”
He was such a compassionate man, she thought. Eleven years as a murder detective hadn’t killed that; he’d held on to his compassion and sensitivity. She had a sudden urge to put her arms around him, but fought it down. It was the champagne, knocking her defences down.
The reason he was here at one in the morning, she reminded herself, was to talk through Lottie’s problems; no more than that. “No,” she said. “Coming from you, that’ll only put her hackles up more.” He looked bewildered, and she smiled. “You’re exactly the same, you and Lottie – stubborn.” She paused, her mouth watering at the scent of the food still in the foil dishes. “Look, I’ll talk to her if it’ll help,” she offered. “It’ll be better coming from another woman.”
His face seemed to light up. “Would you really do that for me?”
“Course I will. You can chase Derek for the maintenance he owes her.”
Suddenly he leaned towards her. She thought he was going to kiss her, but he lifted the spoon full of chicken fried rice to her mouth. “Please eat something,” he said. “I worry about you. You look half starved.”
The champagne had melted her defences. She accepted the food. “I’ll pay Lottie a visit and make her see sense,” she told him as she munched on the delicious rice. “She just might listen to me.”
He fed her again and she leaned back enjoying the flavor. Then she picked up the chopsticks that he had discarded and carried on feeding herself. Next things he knew, the plate was empty.
“You’re tired,” he said tenderly.
“Do you want to stay?” It was out before she could stop herself.
They stared at each other. “Yes, please,” he said after a few seconds. “I don’t want to get done for drinking under the influence. The sofa will do fine.”
There was another few seconds silence. Alison broke it. “Fine, good.”
Banham said, “I’ll drive you to the garage in the morning before work. You can leave your car there, get your wheel sorted and the suspension checked. Then I’ll take you back to pick it up later.”
“Thank you.” She stood up, consumed with humiliation. With any other man a bottle of champagne would mean something. If she lived to be a hundred and eighty she’d never understand him. The only good thing was she was drunk enough to fall asleep quickly.
Isabelle must have been watching out the window as Alison arrived at the station in Banham’s car the next morning. She was washing her hands over the basin as Alison walked into the locker room.
“You look tired,” she said, with a cat-like narrowing of her eyes.
“I am,” Alison said coolly. “‘We’ve got another g-string victim, just in case it had slipped your mind.”
Isabelle tossed her head. “Nothing to do with you arriving in the guvnor’s car this morning?”
Alison wasn’t in the mood. “Oh, do give it a rest, Isabelle. He picked me up because I had to leave my car in the garage to get the suspension checked. If you remember, I caught the silencer going over the potholes in Kenneth Stone’s road. And that was before I got the puncture, which also needs fixing.”
Isabelle moved to the hand drier and shook her hands up and down. “And the garage is on his way to work, is it!” she persisted.
“He owes me a favour,” Alison sighed.
“Did him one last night, did you?”
“If you invested as much effort on catching criminals as you do on other people’s private lives, this squad would get spectacular results!”
She turned her back on Isabelle and dug in her brown leather shoulder bag for a comb. She could still see Isabelle in the mirror. The other woman lifted her hands defensively. “OK,” she said apologetically. “I’ll mind my own. You didn’t have a go about my embarrassing little fling with Know-all Col.”
“Yes, that did come as a surprise,” Alison said. She started to comb the end of the long plait she’d tied her brown curls into. “I’d have thought the Borough Commander was more your type.”
Isabelle burst out laughing. Alison had to admire her for that. The woman was ambitious and a man-eater, but she didn’t lack a sense of humour.
“He must be one hell of a good lay,” she added.
“I’ve had better,” Isabelle confided. “Anyway, he’s back with Penny now, so what the hell.”
Her hand was unsteady as she applied her lipstick, and Alison detected a glimmer of sadness in her eyes.
“I only slept with him because there’s a rumour of a promotion in the offing.”
“Really?” Alison said. “I haven’t heard anything. Someone leaving?”
The foxy eyes flicked towards Alison. “The DCI, accord
ing to the jungle telegraph. Keep it under your hat, though. The word is Banham will get DCI, you’ll go to DI and it’ll be between me and Col for sergeant.”
“I hadn’t heard a word.”
“He doesn’t talk in his sleep, then?”
“Where did you get it from?”
Isabelle examined her fingernails. “Let’s just say you were right. The Borough Commander is more my type.”
Banham clapped his hands for silence from the twenty-strong investigation team who were all talking noisily amongst themselves. The face of Theresa McGann, eyes terrified and staring, throat covered in coagulating blood, was stuck to the whiteboard beside Shaheen Hakhti and the unrecognisable Susan Rogers.
“We’ve now got twenty-four-hour surveillance on Olivia Stone and Katie Faye, and from the end of today on Judy Gardener and Kim as well. Our killer has already claimed three women, and the three remaining ones could still be in grave danger. We have Kenneth Stone and Brian Finn in custody, but we’ll have to charge them or free them by the end of the day. We desperately need some evidence. If forensics can’t come through, we have no choice but to put our possible suspects back out there.”
“Unless one of them is our murderer,” Alison said.
“Unless we can prove one of them’s the murderer,” Banham countered.
“The super is giving us a lot of grief about releasing Ken Stone,” Crowther said. “Some of us have been up all night watching the blue films we confiscated from his home…”
“Oh, what a hardship for you!” Isabelle called sarcastically.
“I’ve seen it all before, love!”
Banham was already edgy. “Can we keep our minds on the case, please?” he snapped.
“Sorry, guv,” said Crowther. “None of the films marked Scarlet Pussy Club had any connection with the Scarlet Pussy Club, or any of the six women. Not a red g-string in sight. They’re obviously his own private collection. Nothing illegal, no children or anything like that. So he hasn’t broken the law.”
“So unless forensics turn something up,” Banham said, “we’ll have to let him go. We can’t even hold him for domestic violence; the son won’t play – he’s afraid Ken will hurt his sister.” Banham rubbed his mouth. “If we get no joy from forensics, we have to release him – but we’ll put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. And we won’t tell him. See to that, will you, Crowther?”
“Guv.”
“He may lead us to something. And if he does, we’ll bring him in again. Now, what else have we got?”
“Penny is a hundred percent sure that the letter on the g-string left with Theresa is a single S,” offered Crowther.
“Theresa’s stripper name was Trixie or Cherry,” Alison reminded them.
“There must be something in that,” Isabelle said. “All the g-strings are marked with a letter S. Are we missing something? Is the killer trying to tell us something?”
“If he was, wouldn’t it be consistent?” Crowther suggested.
“Isn’t it?” asked Banham.
“There’s another faint letter beside the S on the other two. And Shaheen and Susan both begin with S, but Theresa doesn’t.”
“But they marked the g-strings with their stripper names,” Alison pointed out.
“And Susan didn’t have a stripper name,” Banham added.
“So maybe someone wrote the S on them for a different reason,” Isabelle suggested. “Olivia Stone has an initial S too.”
Banham shook his head. Too many maybes.
The team tossed the idea around for a few more minutes, but it was plain it was going nowhere. Banham lifted his hand. “Have we got the visiting records back yet, from Finn’s time in prison?”
“They’re promised today,” Isabelle told him.
Banham closed his eyes. “For goodness sake, what have we got? We have to report back to Bow Street – I’d like to be able to say we’ve made some progress. What about the weapon? Anything on that yet?”
Archie, the oldest member of the team, was leaning against the wall smoking a roll-up. He lifted his hand. “We’ve searched every bin for a mile around the murder scenes of all three women. Nothing’s turned up, but uniform has widened the search, and the door to door is still ongoing.”
“Heather Draper is pretty sure the same knife was used on all the girls,” Alison said. “So we’re not holding our breath. The killer has still got it.”
“That means he intends to strike again,” Banham said quietly.
Silence descended on the room.
“It still has to be somewhere,” Crowther said eventually. “In the killer’s house, or his car.”
“Or her,” Alison said quietly.
“Guv, we do have something,” said Isabelle. “Surveillance report a tallish woman wearing a headscarf and pushing a shopping trolley coming out of the flats within minutes of Theresa being killed. We’re trying to trace her. If she was on her way to the shops, it’s highly likely she lives in that block. And she might have seen something.”
“At last!” Banham punched the air. “Keep me posted on that one. Anything else?”
“Can Alison claim for her car repair?” Isabelle said with a cat-like glint in her eye. “The underbelly got caught in the potholes in the Stones’ road. She’s had to take it in, and she’s relying on lifts.”
“Later,” Banham snapped. “Isabelle, I want you with Crowther this morning. We have an appointment with Mr and Mrs Diane, the couple who bought the lease of the strip club and turned it into a café. They have found receipts and paperwork from the auction they held of the club’s leftovers. See if you can retrieve anything relevant.”
“What about Ahmed Abdullah’s family?” Alison asked.
“The wife died of cancer,” tall Archie said. “Left everything to the daughter. She was the only child. She emigrated to Canada two years after her father’s death, and didn’t even come back for her mother’s funeral. The club carried on for a few years, but she hasn’t set foot on English soil since she left. The sale was arranged by lawyers.”
“Why does every door on this case lead to a wall?” Crowther said thoughtfully.
Archie gave a burst of laughter. “Don’t let that get you down, son. You can get over a wall. Rumour says there’s nothing you can’t get your leg over.”
Isabelle’s face seemed to crumple. For the first time ever, Alison felt sorry for her.
Finn sat at the table, head buried in his hands. He looked up as Alison and Banham entered the room. Alison turned the tape on and murmured the formal words of introduction.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said.
Banham was beginning to believe him.
“Did Theresa keep the g-strings from her time at the club?” he asked.
Finn’s eyes were full of pain. He looked from Banham to Alison and again. “Search me,” he said.
“You don’t know?” Banham persisted.
“No, sir. How would I?” His eyes kept flicking back and forth. “I’ve just done a nineteen-year stretch. I’ve hardly ever seen the inside of her flat.”
“You saw it today,” Banham said flatly. “Have you seen any red g-strings there since you’ve been out?”
Finn was looking worried now. “You don’t think my Theresa killed them other girls, do you?”
“At the moment I don’t know who killed them.” Banham hadn’t taken his eyes off this man since he sat down. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Do you remember any other strippers at the club with the initial S?” Alison asked. “Besides Shaheen and Susan, I mean.”
“What, real names, or stripper names?”
“Either. Both.”
He screwed up his eyes thoughtfully. “S is a common initial. Could have been a lot of them.”
Alison had been leaning her elbow on the table. She slowly moved her arm so it lay flat in front of her, and leaned a little closer to Finn. “Enlighten us.”
“Let me think a minute. Shaheen was Brown Sugar. Kim Davis c
alled herself Dusty Springfield, I’ll leave you to work out why. And either Katie or Olivia was Strawberry.”
“Which?” Banham asked quickly.
Finn lifted a hand. “I don’t know, sir. Those two were interchangeable. It could have been either.”
There was a knock on the door. Alison stopped the tape. Outside was the new Indian CID officer, Mandi Patel. She handed Banham Brian Finn’s prison records. He quickly scanned the list of visitors then handed it to Alison.
One name caught her eye.
Mr and Mrs Diante’s café, once home to the in famous Scarlet Pussy Club, was in a small street off the main Piccadilly thoroughfare. It was a busy street in what was still the red light district.
As Crowther and Isabelle walked down the street, they passed young women in leather mini-skirts, snake-patterned tights and stiletto-heeled shoes with ankle straps standing in doorways. Most of them were smoking; all of them, Isabelle could tell from the haunted and vacant look on their faces, were addicted to hard drugs.
A young black girl, who couldn’t have been more than thirteen, stepped out as they approached. “Business?” she said to Crowther. “It’s happy hour,” she added invitingly. “Buy one of us and another comes free.”
Despite the February chill, the girl wore a flimsy see-through blouse with a scarlet bra clearly visible underneath. It revealed a large expanse of tattooed and studded midriff. Isabelle dug in her pocket for her CID card, but Crowther put his hand over hers. “Sorry, love, I prefer white,” he said to the girl. Fury suffused her sunken face. He added, “Stockings, I mean.”
“I’m very surprised at you,” Isabelle said as they continued up the road. “You’ve got your faults, but I never had you down as racist.”
“If you want to make sergeant, you’ll have to wise up, darling. Her pimp will arrive in a minute; you’d better be prepared. I’ll lay odds the bastard’s a dealer, as well as a fixer for under-age girls. So we’ll have learned something else while we are here. We’ll know who runs this street.” He bobbed his head to the side knowingly. “If we’re going to talk about colour, I think you’re still a bit green, sweetheart.”