Hidden Killers

by Lynda La Plante

  Jane got up and gently laid her hand on Marie’s shoulder. As she turned back she noticed a photograph of Marie with her eldest child as a toddler. Jane pointed to it.

  “Was that taken when you lived in Maidstone?”

  Marie seemed relieved to be changing the subject. She wiped her eyes.

  “Yes . . . yes.”

  “And you worked at the Majestic Hotel when you were there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did,” Marie replied.

  Jane waited a moment before saying quietly, “I need to ask you about your friend, Susie Luna.”

  Marie reeled back in her chair, visibly shaken by the reference to Susie Luna.

  “Five years ago you gave your husband an alibi, confirming that he was at home with you on the afternoon and evening that your friend went missing. If you lied about that, and we find out, do you know what that means . . . committing perjury? You could be sent to prison for six years. But if you want to tell me the truth now, I might be able to help you. Did you lie for him, Marie?”

  Marie was expressionless. Very slowly she stood up, and with no emotion she began twisting strands of her hair through her fingers. It was strange, but it seemed to calm her.

  “He says he will take my children if I not do or say what he want me to. But I have plan now . . .”

  Jane was confused by the complete change in Marie’s demeanor.

  “I have something for you,” Marie said calmly. She started walking toward the door as Jane stood up.

  “Where are you going, Marie?”

  She walked out of the room. “Follow me . . .”

  Jane hurried after her, down the hallway and into the kitchen. She was horrified as she watched Marie pulling a large knife out of the knife block on the counter. Marie knelt down, opened a cupboard door, and used the knife to release a worn envelope that had been stuck to the inside of the cupboard with Sellotape. She then stood up, put the knife back in the block and laid the envelope on the kitchen counter, placing her hand on top of it.

  “This is proof . . . but you not send me away from my children.”

  Moran looked up as Jane came out of the house and gestured for him to come inside. He hurried from the car and followed Jane into the lounge. Marie was sitting calmly on the sofa, staring into space and twisting her hair between her fingers.

  “Marie has given me this, sir. It’s Susie Luna’s passport. She has also admitted that she posed as Susie, wearing a rose in her hair, at a few locations, including a bus stop and outside a fish and chip shop.”

  Moran took it, then flicked through the old, dog-eared passport and glanced over at Marie.

  “So when you were posing as your friend, where was your husband, Mrs. Allard?”

  “I don’t know . . . when I go home, Susie had gone. I never saw her again.”

  Moran held up the passport. “So where did you find this?”

  “It was in her handbag,” Marie replied.

  “We’re going to need a statement from you at the station, Marie,” said Jane gently. “I’ll stay with you throughout.”

  Jane stayed with Marie for two and a half hours as she gave a statement. She admitted that she had introduced Susie to her husband. Their son was three years old, and Marie was pregnant with their daughter. Under pressure to recall how well her husband had known Susie Luna, Marie became very distressed and said that he had sex with her, but he made Marie deny it when the police in Kent questioned them both as being the last people to see Susie Luna alive.

  Marie admitted that, because of her pregnancy, she had felt very sick at work and had returned home early, walking in on Peter raping Susie. He was very angry and Marie had run out, afraid that he was going to beat her up. Marie never saw her friend again. Susie Luna had always worn a red rose in her hair and Peter had told Marie to put it on and walk around obvious places for two hours. Marie went and stood for twenty minutes at a bus stop and then outside a fish and chip shop for a further half an hour, eventually standing outside a pub. When she returned home, Peter was working out with his weights and never mentioned Susie Luna again. A few weeks later, Marie found Susie’s handbag, went through it and took out the passport. Peter used a leather strap to beat her, snatching the handbag from her, and she thought he must have thrown it in one of the industrial bins outside the hotel. Marie kept Susie’s rose and used to always have it by her little statue of the Madonna. She looked at Jane.

  “I saw it every day when we move here, so I never forget her, but Peter, he sometime frightened the children, and Kim, my little boy, when they arrested Peter, he ask me if he was bad boy, would he be punished like Susie Luna? I could not believe my boy even remember her, because he was only three year old. But Susie was always so sweet and kind to him. I took the rose as my daughter want to put it in her hair. Susie Luna has been a ghost in my heart.”

  Jane was exhausted and remained sitting in the interview room with Marie. “You have been very brave, Marie. And you know if you ever need to talk to someone, please call me.”

  Marie nodded.

  “Today I feel better than I have for as long as I remember. I won’t go and visit him but if he call me, Detective Moran said I not mention Susie Luna and I won’t. I will keep secret until he pay the price for her murder.” By mid-afternoon Marie was taken home. Moran knocked on the open door, and leaned against the door frame as she turned toward him.

  “She will make one hell of a witness for the prosecution . . . well done, Tennison.”

  “Thank you, sir. You were always right about Peter Allard and hopefully we will now have enough to legally make sure he gets a long sentence.”

  Moran watched Jane pick up her bag, put away her notebook and walk past him. He had previously thought of her as a waste of space. A female probationary officer of no consequence . . . but he now knew she was a force to be reckoned with, and not to be treated lightly.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jane was off duty at the weekend, and she had agreed to go home to visit her parents. Mrs. Tennison had made roast chicken with all the trimmings, roast potatoes, carrots and broccoli, and her usual gravy from the roasting tin. Jane’s sister Pam and her brother-in-law were at some hairdressing function in Birmingham as Pam had been doing a special hair tinting course and wanted Tony there for the weekend.

  “That’s good news. Is there anything I can do to help with lunch?” Jane said.

  “No no, dear, everything’s done but the dessert. Pam’s back at work and might even win the coloring competition as they have to cut and recolor and style with models. I doubt Tony will be all that interested, but they have a double room at a very nice hotel,” Mrs. Tennison said proudly.

  “That’s good,” Jane said, as her attention was drawn to a newspaper placed on the sideboard while her mother added the finishing touches to lunch. She picked it up and took it into the sitting room, never having time to read the newspaper while at work. She was shocked at the headline, “Murder in the Bath accused couple to stand trial,” and the press coverage was extensive, with photographs of Katrina Harcourt being led into the court. The redhead was smiling as if enjoying the moment, unlike the photographs of Barry Dawson who had a blanket covering his head. By the time Jane had finished reading the article her father had opened a bottle of wine.

  “That’s a shocking case, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, the CID at the station investigated and it was a very complicated case as the young wife in the bath was wrongly diagnosed as being a non-suspicious death, but when we had a second post-mortem it revealed another wound had been inflicted. The suspects were having an affair and it was a very complicated inquiry to be able to charge them with murder. The trial will not go ahead for months.”

  “Good God, and she looks such an attractive woman! So were you involved in the investigation?”

  Jane hesitated and then nodded, but not wanting to go into details she collected the newspapers and stacked them ready to be thrown out.

  Her mother, who had overhear
d the conversation, found it difficult to ask Jane about her work as a police officer. She gave her husband a shake of her head as a warning not to continue. Her father steered the conversation back to safer waters, but after a couple of glasses of wine, while Mrs. Tennison tried to make a crème brûlée, her father topped up her glass and asked quietly, “So it must have been quite a time for you at Bow Street?”

  Jane raised her glass and took a sip. How could she even begin to explain about the tragic murder of Shirley Dawson, or the forthcoming trial of Peter Allard? To tell him about the time spent in and around the sex shops and strip joints of Soho, or even the interaction with the beautiful Janet Brown? It was all so far removed from the warmth and normality of being at home with her family.

  They sat down together and enjoyed the main course but her mother was in a state of anxiety as the toffee crisp on top of her crème brûlée had hardened like cement and her father was worried he’d break the denture plate in his mouth.

  “I must have used too much sugar; it’s not that bad is it, Jane?” her mother asked.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said with clenched teeth.

  “It’s supposed to just crack when you tap it with a spoon.”

  “You should have used a hammer!” her father said.

  This made Jane smile, and as they were trying to chew through the very hard topping, all three of them suddenly started laughing.

  “It’s so good to be home,” Jane said, feeling emotional.

  Her father screwed up his face again as he chewed and then swallowed.

  “Well, it’s perfect for us to have you safe and sound, because we miss you.”

  The phone suddenly started ringing in the hallway. Mr. Tennison stood up and went to answer it. A moment later he called out to Jane.

  “It’s for you, Jane.”

  “For me?” she asked, surprised. She walked over and took the receiver from her father.

  “Hello?” she said into the mouthpiece.

  “Jane, it’s me, Spence. I’m in a callbox at the end of your road . . . I need to see you. Can you come and meet me?”

  Jane laughed. “Are you asking me out on a date, Spence?”

  “No . . . we’ve got a nightmare on our hands, Jane. Peter Allard’s been released.”

  “Give me five minutes, all right?”

  Jane didn’t want to show her parents how disturbed she was by Gibbs’s phone call.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go in to the station. There’s some confusion about one of my reports.”

  “Oh, don’t you have time for a coffee?” her mother asked.

  “No, Mum, I’m sorry but if I can I’ll come back later.”

  She walked down to the end of the road and found Gibbs standing beside a patrol car parked next to the callbox.

  “Is this a joke, Spence?”

  “No, it’s deadly serious. Moran is going crazy. Apparently Marie got a call from him from the prison, and even though she was warned not to mention anything or refer to the present inquiry about Susie Luna, she told Allard she wanted a divorce, that she knew about Angie.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, her idea of revenge, but the stupid bitch has really screwed up because he’s fucking got bail until his trial.”

  “I don’t believe it, not after what we uncovered about his connection to Susie Luna.”

  “You don’t understand, Jane . . . that’s an entirely separate investigation, and if they find a body they can arrest him straight after the trial.”

  “But you’re not even working on Allard’s case. What do you want me to do?”

  “I know I’m bloody not, but Moran wants protection for Janet Brown. He contacted me because he knew that we had taken her to her mother’s flat at the council estate. So I need you to come with me to go back there again and get her into protective custody.”

  When DI Moran found out, he was apoplectic with fury. He had only just returned from Maidstone where Scenes of Crime officers were waiting for permission to lift the paving stones from the small patio garden of the property that had been rented by Allard. They had run into a problem as the actual owner of the house had sublet it and they would require his permission to begin working. DC Edwards had also discovered that the garden had only been paved over during Allard’s occupation. They had no option but to wait for permission to start digging.

  Moran’s blood pressure was going through the roof. He had contacted Detective Chief Superintendent Metcalf and wanted to update him on the Susie Luna case and he had agreed to come into the station, but he had to wait for over an hour.

  “Sir, all I was told when I was at Maidstone was that a trial date had been set for two weeks’ time. I’ve now been informed that they have released Peter Allard on compassionate grounds. They’ve just let a killer walk out, sir.”

  Metcalf gestured for Moran to calm down.

  “I can’t do anything about that, because this is a very complex situation, Nick. I don’t want to have to underline this to you but it is the inconsistencies in Allard’s confession that have given the barristers and the judge the opportunity to release him. Apparently his wife wanted to divorce him and take his children and he begged to be given the opportunity to see her.”

  “Yes, I know that, sir, and I want her and their two children put into protective custody, because if he is on the loose God knows what he is going to do. And we now have a strong witness that has agreed to identify him with evidence on the rape charge and in my estimation he’s going to go after her.”

  Metcalf flicked through the statements and notes.

  “The prostitute Janet Brown?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She used the name ‘Angie,’ among others, but he must now know she is a valuable witness if his wife told him she knew about her.”

  Metcalf continued to read the reports as Moran waited impatiently.

  “This Susie Luna situation, you don’t have enough evidence. She was reported missing five years ago, and these accusations from an aggrieved wife are not enough. But if you want them protected, go ahead . . . and just keep your powder dry. I’ll leave you to handle it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Peter Allard, carrying a small overnight bag, stepped out of the prison gates. Unshaven and already over-anxious because of the wait he had been subjected to before he was released, he hurried to get to the nearest phone kiosk. He had only a small amount of change which had been taken from his pocket when he was brought in to the prison.

  DC Edwards drove DI Moran in a patrol car to the Allards’ house. They parked up outside, and DC Ashton approached the car and opened the back passenger door. “He hasn’t shown yet, guv . . . We’ve got her and the kids in a safe house. When I told her he had been released, she was terrified. I thought she was going to collapse.”

  “This is bloody unbelievable, isn’t it? They let a killer out on the loose, they don’t tell his wife, and even I wasn’t told until this morning.”

  “We don’t yet know for sure if he is a killer.”

  “Yes, thank you, Edwards. Either way they’ve bloody released a man accused of indecent sexual assault, a man who’s also been told the name of the key witness in the case against him.”

  “How did Allard manage to get out?” Ashton asked.

  “His confession was thrown out due to inconsistencies, and as he has been on remand for some time, and the only firmed-up evidence we’ve got is sexual assault, he was granted bail. He just needs to go back for his trial in two weeks. If he finds out that we’re on to him regarding the Susie Luna case, he’ll do a bloody runner. You go back to the station and keep in contact on the radio if you hear anything.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll get the Underground then. I’ve been here since early this morning.”

  “Get back any way you can, go on, but stand by as we might need you, I’ve only got a handful of officers.”

  Ashton, rather disgruntled as he was also supposed to have the weekend off, walked off down the
road. He was tired out having been up all night with his new baby girl and his wife was exhausted. She would be really pissed off with him as he was now on standby at the station.

  Moran lit a cigarette and checked his watch. Edwards saw a black taxi pull up in front of the house. Peter Allard stepped out of the passenger door.

  “Shit, here he is, guv,” Edwards said.

  “Let’s see how he reacts to an empty house.”

  Allard was wearing a pair of jeans and a denim shirt. They saw him leaning into the taxi driver’s window, and he appeared to be having a conversation. He then went up the path to the front door and rang the doorbell. He stepped back and looked up at the windows, then rang the bell again. When there was still no answer they saw him reach up to the top of the door frame and take down what was obviously a spare front door key.

  Allard opened the door and replaced the key before he slammed the door behind him. Moran gestured to Edwards.

  “That’s Allard’s taxi cab, isn’t it? Go and check the driver out and get rid of him.”

  Edwards climbed out of the patrol car, crossed over to the taxi and tapped on the driver’s window.

  “Are you waiting for someone?”

  The driver answered, “Yes, I’m booked.”

  “No you’re not. This cab registered to you, is it? You got your cab driver’s license?”

  Moran saw the driver move off as Edwards returned to sit beside him.

  “He moved off fast but it’s Allard’s taxi, didn’t even have to show my warrant card.”

  Allard stood in the neat and orderly lounge. He went out into the kitchen and immediately became suspicious as a meal had been left half-eaten on the table.

  He headed up the stairs and saw the wooden slats nailed across his gym door. He placed one hand on either side of the door frame and kicked the door open. The room was in the same state of disarray as it had been when Moran and the SOCO had searched his house. The knives were all gone, but he picked up a nunchuck, swinging it by the chain. He then went into the children’s bedroom. The beds were unmade and the floor was strewn with toys.