by Deborah Lucy
Paul King came from the travelling fraternity and made a lucrative living out of stealing what didn’t belong to him until Temple stopped him. He’d put the fear of God into his elderly victims, whom he preyed on for money, persuading them they needed tiles replacing, trees cut down, or their drives tarmacked. Just one case had netted him £80,000 in cash, after he repeatedly targeted the same old couple, taking them to the bank until he’d emptied their account. If he met any resistance, he’d fire up a blowtorch and threatened to burn them. On one occasion, he’d started a fire and left an elderly woman screaming and alone. She died terrified, curled up in the corner of her own kitchen. Forensics couldn’t prove it, but Temple knew it was him. During hours spent sitting across a table in an interview room with King, Temple had had to listen to him telling him explicitly what he would do to him and his family in answer to every question Temple put to him. This added threats to kill to his charge sheet and a few more months onto his sentence.
Temple had registered his concerns at work as soon as he had been told of King’s imminent release. He knew King was dangerous but with no recent intelligence other than the threats King made four years ago, there was little to suggest that King would target him and as such, resources weren’t committed to it. But he was the one who had sat facing King in the interview room. He felt his evil and the strength of his intent.
King had come out of prison a month ago. He was out on licence and Temple knew that he only had to name him for the fire to put him back inside. But had he done it? Had he taken the gun? Perhaps the fire brigade had taken it after all, perhaps they’d done a search and found it, perhaps they were in the process of handing it in. Temple knew even if that was the case, it would spark an inquiry by the Professional Standards Department (PSD) and he was looking down the barrel of dismissal and prosecution. Whilst the gun was antique, which ordinarily required no firearms licence, the fact that it was loaded made it a prohibited firearm.
If it was King and he was arrested with the gun in his possession, he was bound to say where it came from and how he found it.
What made him feel sick was the thought that the gun would be in circulation within the criminal fraternity. He knew how it worked. It was clean, uncirculated, untraceable. It would be rented or sold up and down the country, used by teenagers to kill other young teenagers, used by drug gangs for vendettas, kidnaps, in gang and drug turf wars. It was highly valuable in monetary terms. And deadly. He knew he had to call it in. It would be the end of his career and likely prosecution, but he couldn’t live with the thought that his firearm would cause untold misery.
He had started sleeping with the gun since King’s release. Had he really intended to shoot King if he’d been confronted by him in the night? Yes, even now, as he asked himself the question he knew he would have, because King had threatened not only him, but Leigh and Daisy. He would have stopped King in his tracks even if it meant shooting him. As to the consequences, he’d let a jury decide. He was still too affected by the past to let anyone get away with harming his family again. But what now?
He tried to recall the detail in the solicitor’s letter. There was no address; he was sure there was nothing in it to take King to Leigh. They’d moved since King had been imprisoned. Eventually, the brandy kicked in and dulled his senses enough for him to sleep and stop thinking how he could protect his family when they no longer lived under the same roof and somehow get himself out of a mess that would see him lose his job and potentially release a loaded weapon onto the streets. He decided to give himself twelve hours to resolve things before handing himself into PSD. At least it would give him an excuse to contact Leigh.
CHAPTER 9
SITTING OUTSIDE IN his car, Temple put in an early call to update Harker on the inquiry. He’d managed to get two hours’ sleep but didn’t seem to feel any better for it.
‘We’ll get Hussain’s account checked out and go from there,’ Temple explained.
‘Simon seems to think you’ve got your man. Young woman, older husband. Over the side as soon as he’s out of the country. Don’t fuck about with it, Temple, don’t string it out. Make sure you fast-track fingerprints and DNA, we could do with a quick resolution on this one. The Swindon job is still ongoing and burning more resources and money by the minute. I need the Ramsbury job closed off as soon as possible.’ Harker ended the call with one of his signature grunts.
The call confirmed what Temple suspected – Sloper was giving Harker every detail of the inquiry. Perhaps Sloper was right, perhaps Temple had his man, but Hussain just didn’t feel right. His mobile showed a missed call. It was Jackie Newly. Temple called her back.
‘Just to keep you updated, knowing that you want this urgently, I put in an early call. Things will be a little delayed with the DNA profile.’
‘What timeframe are we working to, Jackie?’
‘Well, things are a little more complicated given that there seems to be a mixed profile.’
‘Hang on, what exactly are you saying?’
‘On first examination, there appears to be two distinctive DNA profiles coming from the semen.’
‘Let me get this right, are you saying our victim had sex with two different guys prior to death?’ Temple asked, his whole concentration now on what was being said to him.
‘That’s what they seem to be saying, but they’ll need more time to be sure.’
‘Once this is established, check it against the foetus,’ instructed Temple.
‘OK, so we could end up with three different profiles. In order to make sure this is right and to distinguish these, the lab will need twenty-four hours, maybe sooner.’
‘OK, Jackie, look, make sure they get another DNA sample over for comparison. Contact the custody suite at Swindon to get the sample of Marcus Hussain. I’d be grateful if they could check against this profile in the first instance. And keep on their case, will you, keep the pressure on?’
‘Sure, will do, I’m just sorry for the delay, boss.’ Jackie Newly was a good sort and Temple trusted her to do her best for him.
Temple met Simon and Kelly at Marlborough Police Station and updated them on the situation.
‘We should have the DNA profile in twenty-four hours, a slight delay but nothing we can do much about.’ Temple withheld the fact that there was a mixed profile, specifically to keep Sloper in the dark. He would impart this information to Harker himself to show him that Sloper wasn’t in possession of all the facts of the case.
‘Fucking scientists,’ said Sloper, ‘How hard can it be? It’s not like that they’re not doing this every day. Still, they’ll have Hussain’s to compare with now and that’ll be game over. I can go up to Swindon. It’s him, I just know it’s him. He looks like a slimy, shiny little shit, with his poncey suit and gold round his neck.’
Kelly flashed him a look.
‘And what would you know?’ he said.
Sloper was finding it increasingly difficult to temper his frustration at having to work on a routine domestic, with what was going on at Swindon. He needed to know first-hand what was happening up there with the drug gangs and he was having to work harder than he wanted to. He was more comfortable dealing with the crackheads and heroin addicts of Swindon than dancing around the refined likes of Dianna Forrester.
Sloper prided himself with the fact that street dealers and pimps couldn’t so much as take a shit without him knowing about it, as he kept across their scummy lives. He spoke their language and walked their walk and he needed to. He had his own interests to protect. Normally, he had free movement, but at Harker’s behest, he had to stay put, stay with Temple. Get a quick resolution, he said. In the meantime, his phone was ringing its tits off with dealers and pimps wanting to know what was going on with all the cops swarming all over Swindon, asking questions, making arrests, pulling the place apart. That’s what they paid him for, to keep the heat off.
Through tracking Gemma, the deeper she sank, Sloper had gone a step further. The world was changing; the
eastern Europeans had moved in and from his position, Sloper was ready. As a Romanian head case moved in to pimp Gemma, Sloper had his number. They’d eventually come to an agreement. Sloper had learnt a lot and come a long way since he’d first dragged Gemma out of a punter’s car in Manchester Road. It was a whole different ball game. But, in order to protect his investment, he had to find out who the local scum was who’d beaten and left Gemma in a stairwell as she made her way back to her flat. Meanwhile, cops were crawling all over the place in Swindon and Sloper was firefighting from a distance. The sooner he got a result here the better, but he felt he was having to work with fucking amateurs, leaving him to do most of the work.
For his part, Temple knew Sloper wouldn’t do him any favours whilst he was still with his investigation, but with no one else on the horizon, he had to get as much out of him as he could. Feeling the tension between Sloper and Kelly, he knew all he could do was try to protect her from the worst of Sloper’s extremes.
Kelly stood up and walked over to a window to put some space between them. She was already sick of working with Sloper; she saw what he thought of her; he viewed her with contempt. She was uncomfortable. Temple sensed how she felt and knew he had to keep what team there was together as much as he could. He could do without their bickering. It was all he could do to concentrate in light of the missing gun. He had a plan, but it was desperate and depended on another’s help.
‘In the meantime, there’s plenty for us to be getting on with around Hussain and Mr Ashton-Jones. When’s he due in by the way?’ asked Temple.
‘The airline rang me back earlier,’ said Sloper, ‘Maxwell left Heathrow at 21.45, on Thursday evening, arrived in Singapore at 10.30 on Friday and arrived in Sydney at 19.50 yesterday GMT. British Airways’s HR department broke the news to him last night. They said they would have him back on a flight out of Sydney later today to Singapore, in time for another flight out with Singapore Airlines back to Gatwick. He’ll be with us tomorrow.’
‘OK, so there’s nothing we can do but wait,’ said Temple. ‘You continue some inquiries with Dianna Forrester, Si, and I’ll make an appointment with Greta’s GP and go back and see Brett Forrester. I’ll ask him if he has a contact number for Greta’s friend, Caroline Black, and I’ll ring you with it, Kelly, for you to make contact. Right, we’ll meet here tonight for a debrief, let me know any developments.’
Glad to get away from the office, Temple drove off to meet Brett Forrester. On his arrival, the door was opened by a pretty young girl with an elfin-like face and close cropped dark hair. She looked back at him through doe-like, heavily kholed eyes. She wore a black, short silk slip dress that emphasized her waif-like thinness, as it skimmed the contours of her bra-less body, while on her legs, cream coloured socks ended mid thigh, leaving creamy white flesh exposed. She gained height from high platform shoes. As she walked away from Temple to show him into the study, she reminded him of a foal trying to walk for the first time.
‘And you are?’ Temple asked, following his own introduction.
‘I’m Alice.’ Temple was disarmed by her well-spoken voice and wanted to delay her departure to find out more. As she spoke, Temple studied her face. Her heavily made-up eyes looked enormous and her full, soft, pink painted lips looked babyish.
‘Do you live here?’ he asked.
‘I sometimes stay over,’ she replied, ‘with Brett.’ She could have been talking about a teenage boy.
She could be no more than twenty, he thought, perhaps younger.
‘If you go in here, he’ll be with you in a minute.’
She opened the study door. Temple went inside and she closed it behind him. Old bastard, thought Temple. He finds out his daughter’s been murdered and calls in Alice for some comfort. There had to be forty years between them.
He looked around the room where they had met before. He was looking for the canvas bag of cameras and equipment but it wasn’t there today. Within seconds, Brett Forrester joined him; he seemed subdued but in possession of his emotions.
‘Sorry to keep you, Inspector. I didn’t sleep too well last night but then dropped off in the early hours.’
I bet you did, thought Temple, thinking of a way he could question him about his choice of companion.
‘I can get you a family liaison officer, sir, to help you through the investigative process,’ offered Temple. If he could get an FLO in here, he could find out what was going on.
‘I don’t wish to be ungrateful, Inspector, but I was a journalist. My friends are journalists, two are crime reporters and so I know how this works. You appoint me a family liaison officer, I tell them all I know and they feed that back to you for your investigation. Let’s cut out the middleman, shall we? I’ll deal with you, if that’s all right. Just ask me what you want to know.’
Temple agreed.
‘You last saw Greta on Saturday afternoon, you said, was that a regular visit?’
‘We would meet up, now and then, for lunch, to spend the afternoon together, just to catch up. We were close. She wasn’t close to her mother and Maxwell was away a lot. She took an interest in my work, she helped me in it. We connected, if you see what I mean.’
‘Was there a specific purpose to her visit on Saturday, was it just social?’ asked Temple.
‘We had lunch, didn’t you hear what I said? She came here at about 1 o’clock, 1.15 p.m., we ate, had a catch up, you know how it goes, Inspector.’
‘What time did she leave?’
‘About 4 p.m.’
Temple scanned the pictures of Greta on the wall.
‘She was beautiful,’ said Forrester, wistfully.
As Temple surveyed a number of photographs, his eye was drawn to a series of black and white photos which, on closer inspection, he realized showed close up images of a naked woman’s body.
‘These are striking,’ offered Temple. ‘It’s not apparent at first what they are, I mean, they almost look as if they’re of a landscape. Is it your work, Mr Forrester?’ asked Temple.
‘Yes,’ replied Forrester, quietly.
The light and shadow-play of the black and white photographs attempted a clever conceal of the hollow of an armpit, the rise of a woman’s abdomen, the cleft of a woman’s buttocks, both of which could only have been taken from an interesting angle from between the legs.
‘It’s not immediately obvious what they show, but when you realize what you are looking at, they are really quite intimate. And very clever. Was it the same model in all of them?’ asked Temple.
‘Yes.’
‘She must have been very trusting,’ said Temple, thinking of Alice, the young girl who had opened the door to him.
‘She was. They were part of an exhibition I had in London. Caused a little bit of a stir at the time.’
Brett Forrester attempted to distract Temple from looking at the pictures by asking him if he wanted a cup of coffee. Temple said yes in the hope that it would bring Alice into the room where he could see the interaction between her and Forrester. Forrester left the room instead and returned alone with the coffee. Temple continued to look at the detail in the photographs.
‘Could you describe your relationship with Greta, Mr Forrester?’
‘As I said, we were close, we connected. I wasn’t there much for her when she was growing up, her mother and I went our separate ways when Greta was only two years old. I had a job to do, I spent a lot of time away, abroad. I suppose her mother and I were basically incompatible. I looked after them financially but I kept my distance. We had no contact. One day, I came home to find Greta sitting on the doorstep of my London flat, she was fifteen. I didn’t recognize her. I didn’t know her. She’d had a row with her mother and had run away. Due to my work, she had tracked me down and just turned up, decided she would come and live with me.’
‘That must have come as a bit of a shock, I mean, kids aren’t easy, let alone a teenager and a daughter you’ve not seen for such a long time,’ said Temple.
‘She wa
s actually fine, very like myself, either fortunately or unfortunately. It seems we both discovered how difficult it was to live with her mother.’
‘Did she return home?’ Temple asked.
‘No, she stayed with me. We lived together until she met Maxwell.’
‘Was she a difficult teenager—’
Brett Forrester cut Temple off.
‘What has this got to do with the fact that Greta has been found murdered?’
‘I just need to try and establish a picture, the background of Greta’s life. It helps us to try and understand her, understand the things she did, her thought processes, character, likes and dislikes. As you said, you know how this works. Victimology. It may bring us closer to her killer if we know more about her, what she did. You’d be surprised at how helpful to inquiries the past can be sometimes.’
‘She was beautiful, she wouldn’t harm a fly,’ said Forrester, becoming increasingly irritated with the direction the questions were taking. ‘She wasn’t a difficult teenager, she was bright. Happy.’
‘What was her relationship like with her husband, Maxwell, were they happy?’ asked Temple.
‘He gave her everything she wanted and she loved him. They met at work and he adored her. Who wouldn’t? She came home one day and said a pilot had told her he’d fallen in love with her, within months they were married. So far as I know, their relationship was good. If you’re asking me if I think he killed her, for a start he was out of the country and as far as I’m aware, he loved her. They were good together.’
‘Was that based on things that you observed, or …’
‘Look, Inspector, it was based on what she told me and what I saw. The only thing that I would say is that she shouldn’t have given up work as this left her on her own too much when Maxwell was away. She didn’t like being on her own, she liked being with people.’