Hidden Killers

by Lynda La Plante

  “I play golf with her father every first Sunday of the month.”

  Jane was now officially off duty. She collected her coat and popped her head into the incident room to see Edith still there.

  “You’re here late, Edith? Are you coming over to join us at the pub? Everyone’s celebrating.”

  “Listen, with the amount of work I’ve got to type up from DCI Shepherd I could be here all night . . . I have to say, I didn’t think the husband did it, did you?”

  Jane shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, Katrina Harcourt was a real piece of work and I was very impressed with Spence . . . he really handled her well and sort of cornered her. He constantly referred to her as being a ‘one-night stand,’ which she hated, but it took a long time.”

  “Yes and all his notes have to be typed up. It’s going to be a lot of work checking and double-checking all the statements, you know . . . he did this, she did that, and they blamed each other so that’s all got to be investigated and ready for the trial. It’ll be months of work.”

  Jane nodded. “One of them held her under the water. Katrina says that Barry held her and he says she did, but what’s interesting is that they both describe the same thing about waiting until there were no bubbles . . . so they both had to be in the bathroom.”

  “Well, they deserve what they’ll get. It’ll be a big trial with lots of publicity . . . there’s already been a press release. Headlines will be ‘Murder in the Bath’ by tomorrow, and with it being a twosome even more press will be hungry. That redhead’ll love it.”

  Jane put on her coat. She felt confused. Barry had appeared to be so emotionally distraught when she had first met him in the neighbors’ basement. He had also appeared to be very honest when she had taken his statement and the tears seemed genuine when he had identified his wife’s body. She remembered watching him as he walked away from the mortuary, and how bereft he had seemed . . . And all the time he knew what he had done. Jane realized she was a very poor judge of character and wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  “Jailhouse Rock” was playing on the juke box. The CID team had pushed three tables together and there were bottles of wine and beer, and similar to the fare served at the Warburton Arms there was an array of shrunken sausage rolls, curling sandwiches and packets of crisps. Gibbs passed Jane a glass of wine as she sat down next to Lawrence.

  “Well, I got there eventually! The fingerprints were confirmation that Katrina Harcourt lied about the phone call. It will be useful evidence in the trial for the prosecution—two fingerprints on the same coin. The coins from the machine at the Dawsons’ building all had to be checked by eye match print. Each one had to be carefully laid out on white paper and dusted—”

  Jane interrupted his overly detailed description. “Congratulations. As you said, it was a long shot.”

  “Well, it’s going to be one hell of a schlepp to the trial. But we all got there in the end. It was seeing you with the coins in your hand about to use the Dawsons’ phone box . . . it just clicked! As you said, it was a long shot. But it paid off, and . . .”

  Jane realized that DS Lawrence must have been in the pub for quite a while and it sounded as if he was about to detail the entire forensic department’s discovery of Katrina Harcourt’s fingerprints to them all.

  Gibbs pulled over a chair and took out his wallet.

  “Right, everybody, place your bets. Which one of them held Shirley Dawson down in the bath?”

  As the rest of the team took out various coins and notes, Jane had a second glass of wine. Gibbs nudged her.

  “Come on, Tennison, who are you betting on?”

  “I think they both did it.”

  “No, no, no . . . you’ve got to bet on one or the other!”

  “I think it was Katrina . . . I’ll put a fiver on it.”

  “Fiver on for Katrina!” Gibbs shouted loudly.

  “Make that another fiver,” Lawrence joined in. “I say it was Katrina too. As you know, with my scientific prowess, I was able to provide the vital evidence from the coins in the phone box . . .”

  Gibbs looked at Lawrence despairingly. “Oh God . . . here we go again!”

  By the time Jane left the pub it didn’t look as if there were going to be any winnings as the bets were all being spent on drinks.

  It was already 9:30 p.m. so she decided that, as she hadn’t yet managed to get through to Peter Allard’s wife, she would ring her again. She wondered if perhaps Marie just wanted to get in touch to find out if a trial date had been set. She made a mental note to be very careful about exactly what she was going to discuss as she was using the payphone in the reception area of the section house. Jane dialed the number in her notebook. The phone rang for a long time before Marie answered.

  “Hello?” Her voice wavered like a child’s.

  “Is this Marie Allard? This is Detective Jane Tennison . . . I understand you’ve been trying to contact me?”

  “Yes . . .” There was a pause.

  “Are you all right, Marie?”

  “I need speak with you . . . but not on phone . . . to your face, please. I need your help, but it private.”

  Jane didn’t think it was wise to go and see her straight away as she had consumed three glasses of wine in the pub.

  “I’m off duty in the morning . . . how about I come to your house at nine o’clock tomorrow?”

  “Thank you . . . thank you very much.”

  Jane replaced the handset and headed toward her room. It had been a very long day, but one she had learned a lot from. She would be careful how she approached Marie, and mindful of what she said as she didn’t want any repercussions from DI Moran. She had made a mistake in talking to her at the Magistrates’ Court and had been reprimanded, so at the meeting she would not take any chances.

  DI Moran still felt very queasy. He had ordered some chicken and sweetcorn soup as he couldn’t face anything too solid. DC Edwards was tucking into beef chow mein and crispy sweet and sour pork with fried rice. They were dining at the Golden Dragon, a small Chinese restaurant in the outskirts of Maidstone.

  “I think this is him, guv . . .” as the bell tinkled, signaling a customer entering through the door.

  Moran turned to see a very broad-shouldered, ruddy faced man with gray-streaked hair, who almost filled the open doorway.

  “Ahhh, Moran? Victor Bethell.” He walked over and held out his huge hand, shaking Moran’s hand vigorously.

  Moran gestured to Bethell to sit down with them. “This is DC Brian Edwards. Nice to meet you. Glad you found the place.”

  Bethell turned to a hovering Chinese waiter.

  “I’ll have a whole crispy duck, pancakes, plum sauce and fresh vegetables.”

  Bethell took off his thick duffle coat and pulled out an old notebook from an inside pocket, tossing it on the table. The waiter took his coat to hang it up and Bethell sat his large frame down rather precariously on a small chair.

  “You were lucky to get hold of me . . . I retired two years ago. I put my pension into a motor home. Me and the wife are driving to Folkestone for a very carefully planned six-month tour of the Continent.”

  If Moran had had a headache first thing that morning, he now had what felt like a severe migraine. Bethell’s booming voice was like a hammer in his head. A few Chinese customers kept darting fearful glances toward their table.

  “I am very grateful you agreed to see us,” Moran replied, taking a slurp of his soup.

  “When your young DC contacted the station they immediately got on to me because I handled the case. It’s all packed up in the cold files, and if needs be I can get one of the detectives there to get it out.” He looked at DC Edwards. “But this youngster wanted to have a chat about it first.”

  Moran took another spoonful of soup, then pushed the bowl aside.

  “So what can you tell us about Susie Luna?” The big man opened his notebook.

  “Well, for starters it’s such a simple name . . . you never forget it.” />
  “She was missing?” Moran asked, wanting to get on with it.

  “Yes, she was. She was a Filipino who worked as a chambermaid in one of the hotels . . . pretty little thing.”

  “So what was the consensus?”

  “Foul play—she had one and a half thousand pounds in the bank, she left all her clothes in the room she rented, she gave no notice at the hotel, and she was liked. We had a couple of sightings around the town, but then she just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “Do you think she was abducted? Kidnapped? Murdered . . . ? Did you find her passport?”

  “Nope. She was last seen leaving the staff exit at the hotel where she worked, then a few unconfirmed sighting, and then nothing.”

  Moran leaned to one side as the waiter brought Bethell’s order. He was impatient to get to the point of why they had asked to meet, but he waited until the various dishes had been laid in front of the retired detective before he quietly spoke.

  “You never found a body. But did you have a suspect?”

  With great dexterity Bethell placed a pancake on his plate, spread the plum sauce, then used his fork to shred the crispy duck and carefully laid it onto the pancake.

  “His name was Peter Allard. His wife, Marie Allard, was Filipino and worked at the same hotel.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jane rang the doorbell for the second time, and waited. She stepped back from the porch and looked over to a side window where she saw the curtain drawn back for a second. Jane had already doubted her reasons for coming all the way to Walthamstow, and it was much further than she had calculated because the previous time she had been at the house was as a passenger in a patrol car. It really did seem such a long time ago. She had still been in uniform as a probationary WPC, and the Allard case had been her first introduction to CID.

  “Who is it?” Marie asked nervously from behind the front door.

  “It’s WDC Tennison, Mrs. Allard . . . you wanted to talk to me?”

  Jane waited as various locks and a chain link were undone. Marie opened the door and gestured for her to come in, then quickly closed the door and replaced the chain.

  “To stop my mother-in-law from getting in. She very trying and is making my life a misery.”

  Jane was ushered into the kitchen and Marie offered her tea or coffee, but she declined both. Without taking her coat off she asked if there was anything wrong that Marie wished to talk to her about, and apologized for the delay in returning her call.

  “I given up on you,” Marie said, and pulled out a chair to sit down. She pointed to the one next to her for Jane to use.

  “I have no one else . . . well, I not mean I not know anyone . . . I not have anybody that I can talk to about it and now I am very anxious, and my mother-in-law ask me lots of questions and I am frightened to answer the phone in case it is her, and . . .”

  Marie started to take deep breaths and wave her hand in front of her chest.

  “I sorry, I get this panic and my lungs not work properly . . . I sorry . . .”

  It was a few moments before Marie calmed herself down, and then started to cry, getting up to fetch a box of tissues. Eventually Jane was able to ask why Marie needed to talk to her, and bit by bit she opened up about the blackmail phone calls, the money drops, and that her mother-in-law had discovered the £1,000 missing from the joint account with her husband. She was sobbing.

  “I cannot see my husband because of the stress . . . I had to lie about the last five hundred pounds . . . he was becoming very angry with me . . . He tell me what to do, but I not see who take the money wrapped in the newspaper.”

  Jane had asked if she could take down some details, so as the story unfolded she made pages of notes, trying to ascertain exactly what the chronological order was, as sometimes Marie jumped back and forth as she tried to explain.

  “Do you mind if I just go through everything you have told me? I need to understand clearly exactly what has been happening. First, you received a phone call from a woman, who you say sang a song to you and said she wanted five hundred pounds in cash or she would go to the police with incriminating evidence that proved your husband had committed the rape he has denied?”

  “Yes, yes . . . that’s it. I very scared because she said that if I not pay he would go away to prison for a very long time, and I not know what to do.”

  “Yes, you said . . . so you went to the prison and visited your husband, and you told him that you paid this woman and she then called again for the second time blackmailing you into paying five hundred pounds?”

  “Yes. She gave me time to go to bank and said she would call me again. And I told Peter . . . I told him this.”

  Jane nodded, and turned a page in her notebook.

  “Just repeat to me what he said, will you?”

  Marie nodded.

  “That it was the police . . . that it was Detective Moran who lied and fitted him up . . . that it was him doing blackmail and that I should just pay to get rid of him as he was bent copper. That how he describe the detective, as bent copper . . . because he had framed him and he did not do the rape.”

  Jane showed no reaction, but it was very difficult not to be shocked by the accusations against DI Moran. Marie continued describing how she had done as instructed and left the money wrapped in newspaper but she had not seen who collected it. She continued by detailing how the next call came from the same woman, and she wanted another £500. She told Jane how Peter had instructed her to place the money in the litter bin, get on the bus and then jump off to see if she could follow or identify who collected the money.

  Marie started to cry again, and Jane had to wait until she calmed down before she falteringly described the ginger-haired boy and how she had seen him getting into a taxi, but had not seen who else was inside. Jane felt herself becoming deeply involved as she was certain the boy that Marie had seen fitted the description of the young red-haired boy with the gapped teeth whom she had questioned about Janet Brown.

  “Can you go over the phone call again, Marie?”

  “I told you . . . she sings this song ‘Angie’ something, and she keep repeating it over and over, I don’t know if she is Angie or she is singing about someone else. It horrible. That’s why I not pick up the phone at night no more.”

  Jane felt herself becoming increasingly tense as she was certain that Angie was Janet Brown, with her connection to the red-haired boy. She asked Marie again if the woman had ever described just what evidence she had to implicate Peter Allard in the rape. Marie said that she had laughed and said that it was enough to find him guilty.

  “How did Peter react when you told him that you paid another five hundred pounds?”

  “He not know . . . I told you, you not listening to me . . . I said the woman never showed so I never paid. But now my mother-in-law find out and she told him that I had withdrawn it from our joint bank account. She will make threats to me about the children. She is very interfering, she tries always to dominate me. Peter will go berserk when he knows I never saw who collected it . . . he certain it was that police detective because he swears that he is innocent and they set him up.”

  Marie was going into repeat mode, and she was becoming more and more distressed. She started gasping for breath, then weeping uncontrollably, plucking one tissue after another out of the box.

  “Marie, let me go away and think about all of this and I will get back to you in the morning. I really think you did the right thing in contacting me, but for now can you keep this just between us until I can establish what should be done?”

  The front door was rebolted and the chain locked behind her as Jane left. She had been with Marie Allard for more than two hours, and felt exhausted by this new development. She didn’t look at her lengthy notes but leaned back in her seat on the top deck of the bus and ran it all over in her mind.

  Jane had already been warned once for working solo by DCI Shepherd, and even Gibbs had given her a tough talking to and repriman
ded her for blowing his cover in Soho and wasting time on what he considered a piece of lowlife scum like Peter Allard. Jane decided that perhaps the one person she could talk to would be DS Lawrence.

  DI Moran and DC Edwards had returned to Maidstone Police Station and were awaiting the release of Bethell’s old files on the Susie Luna case. As impatient as ever, Moran paced up and down the small reception area of the 1950s station, checking his watch.

  “How much longer do you think they’re bloody well going to keep us waiting?”

  Just then a very neat, chisel-faced officer introduced himself and handed Moran a worn cardboard box full of files, photographs and assorted evidence.

  “I’m afraid nothing can be taken off the premises without my signature, but you are most welcome to use an interview room to sort through and select what items you require.”

  “Thank you very much,” Moran said curtly.

  “Follow me.” The detective led them down a dark corridor, up a flight of stairs and opened a porthole-windowed door to an interview room.

  “There’s a canteen upstairs if you want any refreshments. I’ll be in the incident room next door if you need me.”

  “Thank you very much,” Moran said, eager for the detective to leave.

  He placed the worn cardboard box on a Formica-topped table as Edwards pulled up a hard-backed chair. Moran looked around the sparse room, taking in the grimy windows. Even the yellowing walls reminded him of Hackney Station, and yet this was a relatively “new” building. He shook his head as he sat down at the table.

  “Do you think every police station built in the fifties and sixties gets a bulk discount on pots of crappy paint?”