Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims

by Lynda La Plante

  “I want you to give Operation Contract your fullest and immediate attention. I know it’ll be a new area for you, but I am confident your past experience will be an added bonus.”

  All the feeling of a talking clock, Tennison thought. As if he’d rehearsed it in his sleep. She had no idea what Operation Contract was. She thought about asking, and then decided not to give him a stick to beat her with by displaying her ignorance. She nodded to seem willing.

  Halliday tapped the desk with manicured fingers. “It is imperative we get results—and fast. There’s been enough time wasted.” He shot his cuff and glanced at his watch yet again.

  “As yet I have not had time to familiarize myself with any of the cases …” Tennison was distracted as WPC Hastings entered without knocking. Halliday showed no signs of noticing her presence. Norma draped a black evening suit in a cleaner’s bag over the back of a chair and went out.

  “… the cases I will be taking over. But, er—Operation Contract I will make my priority.”

  Halliday stood up. “Good.” He stuck his hand out. Tennison shook it. “The team will fill you in on our progress to date.” Another swift glance at the Rolex. “I was expecting you earlier.”

  Small wonder he could remember who she was, Tennison thought, leaving his office.

  Sergeant Otley flicked the sugar cube into the saucer. He did it twice more, leaning his head on his hand, elbow on the table. Observing him with heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, hands twisting nervously in her lap, Vera arched her neck, her Adam’s apple rippling like a trapped creature. Inspector Hall stood with casually folded arms near the door of the interview room. He was interested, and secretly amused, to see how the Skipper would handle Vernon stroke Vera Reynolds. There was the vexed question of gender, for a start.

  “I told you … I did the show and then went out for a bite to eat with some friends.” The reply was half-whispered, yet it wasn’t a lisping, camp voice.

  Offstage, Vera wasn’t dragged up like some transvestite queen. There was no secret about who and what she was, but she chose to dress plainly and conservatively, favoring a simple blouse in dusky pink, a straight dark skirt, and leather sling-back shoes with low square heels. A few rings and a string of purple beads were the only bits and pieces of jewelry. Under her wig and makeup, in fact, Vera had rather a strong face, Hall reckoned, with good bones; though the mouth, shapely and sensitive, was a dead giveaway.

  Otley flicked the sugar cube. “And you don’t know who was in your flat?” he inquired in his usual drab tone.

  Vera gave a little shake of the head.

  Hall put his hands on the back of Otley’s chair and leaned over. “Vernon,” he said, not unkindly, “if I go out and leave somebody kippin’ in my place, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to say I don’t know them. I mean, that is stupid, isn’t it?”

  Vera threw up her hands, the knuckles red where she’d been kneading them. She swallowed hard, the Adam’s apple doing a double gyration. “It could have been any number of people—you see, it was well known I leave a key on top of the front door …”

  Otley made a sound, a kind of muffled snort. He sighed and shook his head, crumbling the sugar cube between his long hard nails.

  “About seventeen years old?” Hall said. “Reddish blond hair … ring any bells?”

  Vera bit her lip, staring down at the table. Then a tight, rapid shake of the head. She was steeling herself for the next question when she was saved by Norma’s face at the small glass panel in the door. She tapped and stuck her head in.

  “Fire team would like Mr. Reynolds as soon as possible. There’s sandwiches and coffee served in the Squad Room. Can you get everybody mustered, same as this morning, for twelve-thirty sharp.” Norma waggled her dark unplucked eyebrows at them. “She’s here.”

  While Inspector Hall escorted Vera Reynolds out and put her in the charge of two uniformed men, Otley followed Norma along the corridor to Tennison’s office, which at the moment was minus Tennison. The Skipper peered in, an evil grin on his face, watching Norma in the dim, dusty cubbyhole trying valiantly to wrench open one of the desk drawers. Norma looked up, perspiring.

  “She won’t like this,” Otley gloated, rubbing his hands.

  “She’s not here, Sarge. Nor should you be,” Norma said pointedly.

  Otley cackled.

  Tennison capped her fountain pen with a decisive click and stood up. She tugged her suit jacket straight at the front and came around the desk to face them. The Squad Room stilled. Not very tall, under five feet five, her honey-blond hair cut in a swath across her forehead, she seemed rather out of place in a room of hulking men; all but one of the women police officers were taller, even if they didn’t have her rounded, sensual figure.

  The tension in the hot, crowded room was almost palpable. Tennison certainly wasn’t relaxed, and neither were they. A new Detective Chief Inspector heading Vice might spell all kinds of trouble, and already she had two strikes against her. Her reputation as a tenacious round-the-clock obsessive who worked her team to the bone, and the fact that she was female. Even the WPCs were wary of that.

  Fingers laced together at her waist, feet braced apart, Tennison let the silence gather for a moment. She wanted control from the start, and was determined to have it.

  “So … please accept my apologies. Not got off on a very good footing on my first day.” Small smile. Let them know you can afford it. “I will obviously need everybody’s cooperation, and I would also appreciate it if …”

  She caught a movement as Hall slithered in. He gave her a weak, apologetic smile and she returned a curt nod. He grabbed a sandwich from the cafeteria tray and it was halfway to his mouth when Tennison said:

  “It’s Inspector Lawrence Hall, yes?” He nodded, mouth open, sandwich unbitten. “Well, let’s you and me start off on the right footing, shall we? If I ask everyone to be at a place at a certain time, and only unless you have a good excuse …”

  “I’m sorry,” Hall interrupted, “but I had to arrange for Reynolds to be taken over to the Fire unit. I was waiting—”

  “Is Sergeant Otley with Reynolds?” Tennison asked sharply.

  Hall hesitated. “Yes,” he lied. “You know about the fire, do you?”

  Tennison nodded, slowly folding her arms. “Why is this fire and the boy of such interest to you, or this department? I know Vernon Reynolds. I know what he is, but that isn’t against the law.”

  “Well—one—it was on our patch. And in the area we have been targeting, Euston and St. Pancras, on Operation Contract. The dead boy was possibly a rent boy.” Hall glanced toward the door, wishing Otley would show up. “Vernon was probably taking a few quid for letting them use his place.”

  “Has he admitted that?”

  Hall shifted uneasily under her gaze. Where the fuck was Otley? “No, ma’am … well, he’s not likely to, is he? He’s saying he doesn’t even know who was in there.”

  Tennison scented that matters were spinning beyond her control. Nip it in the bud. No mavericks on her team. She said briskly, “I’d like a full report on this fire business and then I will tell you whether or not this department wishes to continue with the investigation. Our priority is Operation Contract.”

  Hall stared at his feet. The other officers, munching sandwiches and slurping coffee, exchanged looks. First morning in and she was throwing her weight around. This was going to be a load of fun, they didn’t think.

  With a curt nod of her head, Tennison indicated that work should continue. The officers turned back to their desks, to their mounds of paperwork, reaching for phones. They were all aware of her scrutiny: new regime, new boss, and they were being required to pass muster.

  Tennison beckoned to one of the WPCs standing in a small group next to the wall-length filing section. She came over, a tall, striking girl with frank, open features and friendly blue eyes.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Kathy.”

  “Can you give me a brief rundown on th
e operation?”

  WPC Kathy Trent led her over to the large board. “I’ve been trying to question as many of the kids as possible.” She smiled diffidently, eager to help.

  Tennison watched closely as Kathy took her through it. She still hadn’t got a handle on this Operation Contract thing. The board was crammed with information. Under “TOMS”—police slang for female and male prostitutes—a long list of names and locations: Waterloo Street, Golden Fleece, Earls Court, Euston Station, Stars & Stripes. Farther along, headed “OPERATION CONTRACT,” photographs of young boys, some of them no older than eleven or twelve, with video stills of supermarket checkouts, tube station platforms, mainline station concourses. More typed lists of targeted locations—cafes, coffee shops, street markets, soup kitchens, cardboard cities—spotted in different colors. Tapes led from these to a huge map of central London with corresponding colored pins. A duty rota of officers on surveillance was marked up in black felt-tip, with dates, times, and frequency, all cross-referenced to file number such-and-such. At first sight it seemed to be an efficient and comprehensive operation, well planned, rigorously executed.

  “Most of the older rent boys are carrying pagers, portable phones, so our team—four of us, ma’am—concentrate on the younger ones skiving around Soho.” Kathy pointed to a sheet marked up in colored felt-tip, a blizzard of asterisks, arrows, code numbers. “We staked out the Golden Fleece, Euston Station, Earls Court …”

  Tennison nodded, content for now to listen and learn, get some kind of grip on it.

  “Our problem is that when the kids are actually out on the street, they’ve already accepted the lifestyle.” Kathy didn’t sound sad, simply resigned to reality.

  Over by the door, behind Tennison’s back, Sergeant Otley sneaked in, made a rapid gesture to Hall. The Inspector scuttled over.

  “You’ve been with Reynolds and the Fire team,” Hall said under his breath, tapping his nose.

  “I haven’t.” Otley grinned. “I’ve been up at Records and we got …”

  He pulled Hall behind the half-open door as Tennison glanced their way.

  “… boy is Colin Jenkins, known as Connie.”

  Otley punched Hall’s arm. He then made a show of arriving for the first time, all innocent, to be met face-to-face by Tennison, who’d marched smartly over.

  “Sorry I’m late, ma’am,” said Otley with a straight face. “But I’ve been seein’ if I can get your drawers loosened.”

  Everybody heard but nobody laughed.

  Tennison stood with her back to the window. On the other side of the desk piled high with three-inch thick files, Otley waited, sardonic grin absent for the moment. He’d had to deal with this slit-arsed bitch before, and knew what to expect.

  The room was still in an almighty mess, though WPC Hastings had managed to find her a desk lamp that worked and two more straight-backed chairs with the varnish worn through to bare wood. For the moment, Tennison had more important preoccupations.

  “Right, Sergeant, I am not prepared to take any crap from you, or stand by and let you stir it up. So let’s clear the air.” Tennison jerked her head, eyes hard as flint. “Sit down.”

  “Judging by the state of the rest of your office I don’t think I should risk it!” Otley pulled a chair forward and sat down, an uncertain half smile hovering on his face. “Joke!”

  “If you don’t want to work with me, I can get you transferred.”

  Otley studied his thumbnail. “I was out of line at Southampton Row, but, that said”—he shrugged—“I know you did a good job.”

  “Thank you,” Tennison said, her sarcasm like a saw’s edge.

  Her last case with the Murder Squad had been a racial and political minefield. Teenage half-caste girl dug up in the back garden of a West Indian area seething with antagonism against the police. Despite this, Tennison had stuck to the job like a terrier with a bone. Tracked down and collared a young white bloke with a sickening, sadistic streak who liked taking photographs while buggering his schoolgirl victims.

  Otley was looking anywhere but at Tennison as she moved a stack of files from her chair and sat down. She stared at him a long moment, letting him sweat a little, and then flipped open the green cover of a file. She tapped the report.

  “I have a lot of catching up to do, so, come on … are you going to help me or not?”

  “I got an I.D. on the boy in the fire at Reynolds’s place,” Otley volunteered. He took a folded sheet from the pocket of his crumpled suit. “He was a runaway, fifteen years old. Colin, known as Connie, Jenkins. All the state-run homes have their kids’ teeth checked on a regular basis and filed on record—”

  “What’s this boy got to do with Operation Contract?” Tennison asked bluntly.

  There were connections here she couldn’t make. Otley and Hall seemed to be running some cowboy operation of their own. Plus there was an undercurrent in the department; she’d sensed it right away. Not unease exactly, more a kind of apathy. Lack of motivation. She had to get to the bottom line of all this before the whole bloody mess swamped her.

  She strode along with Otley to the Squad Room and up to the board.

  “It was supposed to be a slow start to a massive big cleanup.” He swept out his hand. “All the areas targeted were those specifically used by rent boys.” A glance at her under his brows. “It’s Halliday’s obsession.”

  “Yes … And?”

  “That’s what it is—cleanup operation.”

  “So what’s the big deal? Why has it been taking so long?”

  “Because it’s a bloody cock-up—if you’ll excuse the pun!” Otley said with some heat. “The Guv’nor before you got dumped. Somebody had to take the blame.”

  Tennison saw a chink of light. The entire room, while ostensibly working, was taking in every word. Kathy and Norma were sitting at their VDUs, staring at the green screens. Otley was about to go on, checked himself, and looked toward Inspector Hall. Hall came up and the two men swapped some kind of coded message.

  Hall turned to Tennison, keeping his voice low.

  “Ma’am, a few of us think the same way. There was a leak, word got out. No gamblers, no boys on the streets.” His tone turned bitter. “We spent weeks getting ready for a big swoop, all hush-hush … came out empty-handed. Surveillance trucks, uniformed and plainclothes officers—it was a fiasco. It had to be a leak but Chiswick and Halliday keep on pushing it.”

  Tennison looked at Otley standing a few feet away, head sunk on his shoulders, flipping through the pages of a report that just happened to be on the desk.

  Under the force of her gaze he raised his eyes. “I’d say, now, the buck stops with you.”

  She knew that. It was the sly curl of his lip she didn’t like.

  3

  “So we stop, and old John looks at this unattended vehicle, he looks at me, we’re both wet behind the ears, and I said, ‘What do you think?’ There it was, parked without lights in the middle of this copse on a housing estate in Cardiff …”

  Chief Superintendent Kernan paused, smiling down at the man seated next to him at the top table, the “old John” in question. Kennington, receding silver hair brushed back, distinguished, with a supercilious air, returned the smile. He puffed on his cigar, smiling and nodding at the great and the good gathered for his farewell dinner in the banqueting room of the Cafe Royal. Every senior-ranking policeman on the Metropolitan force was here. These were colleagues he had worked with, served under, commanded during the nearly forty years of his rise to very near the top of the heap.

  Several judges were in attendance, not one under sixty-five. Barristers who’d defended against him, prosecuted with him. Pathologists, forensic scientists, doctors, one or two people from the Home Office, a junior Minister, and a sprinkling of sober-faced top brass from the security services whose names and photographs never appeared in the newspapers.

  Kernan took a sip of brandy before continuing. In spite of his apparent joviality, the puffy, pasty face with its m
ournful hangdog look seemed painfully at odds with his black tie, starched shirt, and black dinner suit. Leaning forward, hands splayed on the white tablecloth, he spoke into the microphone.

  “So we drive across the copse. Midway across we get bogged down in the mud. So we get out and radio for assistance.”

  Grins and nods from the rows of tables stretching down the long elegant room, chandeliers reflecting in the gilt-framed mirrors. Everyone relished a good cock-up story.

  “… a Panda was just passing, so they followed us across the copse—and they got bogged down about ten feet away from us. Next came a Land Rover. They got as far as our patrol car. So there we all were … and John says, maybe we should check out this abandoned vehicle. So we wade across this bloody bog, and find a note pinned to the windshield. ‘GONE FOR HELP. STUCK IN THE MUD.’ ”

  Thumps on the tables. Flushed faces guffawing. Everybody having one hell of a good time, getting better by the minute so long as the free booze kept flowing.

  Three seats down from Mike Kernan at the microphone, Commander Chiswick took advantage of the laughter to mumble into his companion’s ear, “Sweep it under the carpet job. Now I’ve been warned to keep it there …” He met the other’s wide-eyed gaze, nodding meaningfully.

  Kernan had consumed three large brandies while on his feet, and his speech was getting slurred. He now poured another treble, ready for the finale. “So I would like to propose my toast, and to give my very good wishes for a happy, productive retirement—to John Kennington. Gentlemen! Please raise your glasses!”

  There was a gulping silence while everyone drank, and then a loud buzz of animated chatter, ribald comment, and hee-hawing laughter. Plump hands beckoned urgently to the waitresses, beavering around in their short black dresses and white pinafores. The speeches were only halfway through, a powerful incentive to get three sheets into the wind by the shortest possible route.