‘Come on then, Cora.’ Pauline set off down the street with a wink over her shoulder at Megan.
The car park wasn’t far away and when they reached it Pauline spread a plastic sheet over the passenger seat before bundling Cora in.
Megan hesitated before getting into her own car. There was so much she wanted to ask Pauline. She wanted to know how she felt about BJ storming up like that. If she was bothered, it didn’t show on her face. And she wanted to know about Tracy Jebb. Was Pauline going to go and see her? Check that she was all right?
Cora McBride was cursing loudly as Pauline half pushed, half lifted her into the car. She was ranting about some punter who’d pinched her as they were having sex. She accused Pauline of adding to her bruises. Pauline was laughing it off, making faces at Megan over her shoulder.
Clearly this was not the time to ask questions. They would have to wait till tomorrow.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’ Megan asked, fishing in her bag for her car keys.
‘Oh sure,’ Pauline croaked. ‘She’ll be fine when I get her home. You get off now. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?’
Megan drove off, glancing at Pauline’s car as she reversed out of the space. The last thing she saw was Cora’s bare leg in the open passenger doorway. She’d hitched up her skirt and appeared to be having a good scratch in the region of her crotch. Megan shook her head. She wondered what flea pit Cora was being driven back to. How many years of this sad life lay ahead before the booze or AIDS or some violent punter put her out of her misery?
It was almost two o’clock in the morning when Megan got back to the flats where she was staying in the smart new development in Cardiff Bay. She looked about her, blinking as she waited for the lift. The plate glass and the flower-decked balconies seemed a world away from the seedy industrial estate where the prostitutes plied their trade.
But a few years ago this place had had exactly the same problem. It was called Tiger Bay then and no-one with any choice in the matter wanted to live there. Rusty cranes threw monster shadows over cramped back-to-back houses. The streets were so dangerous at night that policemen would only go there in twos. And on the corners of those streets were the women selling sex.
At least in those days the women could look out for each other, she thought. Sadists like the one who’d stabbed Jackie Preston would have been far less likely to get away without being seen.
The problem was, of course, that the people in the houses didn’t like having prostitutes on the street corners. No-one could blame them for that. Tiger Bay had been cleaned up and the problem had moved to another part of the city. And the people there didn’t want it either.
This new crackdown was driving women out like rats from a sewer. But they had to go somewhere. The sex trade was never going to go away.
She’d been to other parts of the country, and had compared the way things worked in cities like Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. In some places the pimps ruled the roost and the women were always worse off for it. But in others the sex workers seemed to be in charge of their own lives. They weren’t proud of what they did, but at least they weren’t having their money taken off them by some thug who fed them drugs to keep them under his thumb.
Getting rid of the pimps was the key, Megan knew that. She’d been to red light districts in other countries – places like Holland and Germany. Tolerance zones, they called them there. They were much safer places than the Cardiff patch. And because the police kept a close eye on the men who went there, rather than the women, the pimps had been squeezed out.
The lift came and Megan stepped in. Her legs, her back, her arms – every bit of her – was weary. As soon as she got through the door of the apartment she took off her clothes. No matter how tired she was, she had to have a shower. She always felt grubby after these evenings with Pauline, as if some of the sleaze she had seen had rubbed off on her.
She reached for the shampoo. It had a strong-scented, male fragrance that made her think of Jonathan. This was his flat. He was a dentist who worked for the police. An expert on identifying bodies from their teeth. She’d met him on a murder case she’d worked on in Wales. They’d had a one-night stand that had made her feel awful.
It wasn’t that she didn’t fancy him. It was the fact she’d broken her own rules and had sex with a man she barely knew: sex without a condom.
She closed her eyes tight as she rinsed out the shampoo. That night they’d both been spooked by the sight of a very gruesome body in the morgue. They’d gone back to his hotel and started drinking whisky in his room. The sex had been a kind of antidote to the horror of the dead body.
But it had made her feel dirty. The next morning she worried that she might have caught something. After all, she didn’t know him. Which made her no better than a prostitute. Worse, really, because she’d done it for free.
Somehow they’d stayed friends. Well, a bit more than friends. He’d said sorry and in time she’d got over her embarrassment. He’d been to stay with her in Birmingham a couple of times and now he’d lent her his flat. He was working on a murder case in Jamaica and wasn’t sure when he’d be back.
She climbed out of the shower and grabbed the big blue bath sheet that hung from the towel rail. As she rubbed herself down she thought about the women she’d met that night. What must it be like, night after night, washing off the smell of strange men? Strange men who might want kinky, risky sex. Men who might hurt you or even kill you without a second thought. She shuddered, remembering Jackie Preston, who was lying in hospital a few miles up the road, her face ruined.
Worn out now, she lay down on Jonathan’s king-size bed, still wrapped in the towel. As she closed her eyes she thought about Sergeant Mick Mullen. She wondered if he was really so keen to clear the streets of pimps, or whether it was just a front for his sadism.
God, she thought, those poor women. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. She made up her mind at that moment. If Mullen wasn’t bothered about finding Jackie Preston’s attacker, she’d damn well do it herself. And Pauline would help her. She was sure of that.
Megan had been asleep for only two hours when dawn broke over the city. As colour returned to the pretty window boxes outside the flat, the sun’s rays reached into a dirty back alley on the industrial estate across town.
The light fell on black bin bags, ripped open by animals, their contents spilled like guts across the dusty grey concrete. There were used condoms in faded shades of pink and yellow and plastic syringes stained with brown liquid. And at the far end of the alley, stacked against the bin bags, there was something that looked like a shop dummy with a white plastic bag for a hat. But its splayed-out legs were lying in a pool of blood.
There were no flowers to mark the dead woman’s resting place. Just a bunch of condoms stuffed between her gaping blue lips.
Chapter Five
It was nearly midday when Megan woke up. The sun was streaming through a crack in the curtains. It cast a beam across her face, and when she opened her eyes the light was blinding.
Blinking and half asleep, she stumbled into the kitchen. She reached for the kettle and turned on the tap, splashing herself as the spout met the stream of water. While she waited for the kettle to boil she went into the bathroom, peering at her face in the mirror. These late nights were starting to take their toll. There were bags under her dark brown eyes, made worse by the smudged eyeliner she had forgotten to wipe off last night.
She made a cup of strong black coffee and sank onto Jonathan’s cream leather sofa. The flat was eerily quiet and she flicked on the TV. It was strange, this need she had for another human voice. At home in Birmingham she never felt alone, even though she’d lived by herself since the break-up of her marriage. What was it about Jonathan’s flat that made her feel so uncomfortable?
Something on the television caught her attention. She’d only been vaguely aware of the news, not really taking it in. But suddenly it changed from national stories to t
he local news from Wales. There was a brief shot of people in white overalls as the first headline was read out.
‘A woman’s body has been found on a Cardiff industrial estate.’ Megan stared as the newsreader’s face came back onto the screen. ‘The grim discovery follows the stabbing of a prostitute in the same area two days ago.’
Megan gasped as the sign at the entrance to the industrial estate came into view. ‘Oh my God,’ she said aloud, ‘who is it?’ The faces of the women she had met last night flashed through her mind.
‘The body was found early this morning by a van driver who was dropping off goods at a factory nearby,’ the newsreader went on. ‘The dead woman has not yet been identified. A post-mortem is being carried out this afternoon. A police spokesman said it was too early to say whether the woman’s death is linked to the stabbing of twenty-three-year-old mother-of-two Jackie Preston.’
Megan leapt off the sofa and ran into the bedroom, fumbling in her bag for her mobile. She punched out Pauline’s number. Pauline would know. She was bound to. She knew that patch better than anyone. Better than the police.
Someone would have seen that body before the police took it away. News travelled fast among the women who worked the streets. Yes, she thought, Pauline would have heard long before the TV people got the story.
The phone rang six times before the voicemail message cut in. Megan cursed under her breath, waiting for the tone. When she spoke her voice was low and urgent. ‘Pauline, it’s Megan. I’ve just seen the news. Can you call me?’
At Cardiff city mortuary Inspector Phil Cameron was standing next to the body that had just been brought in from the alley on the industrial estate. With him was Sergeant Mick Mullen.
The men were about the same age, but Mullen’s thinning hair made him look several years older. Cameron towered over him. With his floppy brown fringe and blue eyes, he looked like a tall version of Hugh Grant.
‘God, look at the state of her!’ Mullen took a step back as the pathologist unzipped the body bag. ‘Are those…’
‘Condoms, yes,’ the doctor answered. A silver-haired man of sixty, his face was blank and his voice matter-of-fact. He had seen too many cases of murder to be shocked by anything.
The Inspector stared at the bloodless skin of the woman’s face. Only her mouth and cheeks could be seen. Her eyes were hidden by the white plastic bag that had been pulled over her head. Its edges were rolled up, giving it the look of a Victorian mob cap. Slowly the doctor eased it off her face.
‘Christ!’ Mullen gasped. ‘It’s Pauline bloody Barrow!’
Cameron peered at the staring grey eyes in the lifeless face. ‘Not the one who works for the charity?’
Mullen nodded, his lip curled in a look of disgust.
‘Poor woman.’ Cameron shook his head. ‘Just as she was starting to make something of her life.’
‘Pah!’ Mullen almost spat across the body. ‘Bloody troublemaker, that’s all she was. No wonder she’s ended up on the slab – didn’t know when to keep her nose out!’
‘Looks as if she was stabbed in the stomach,’ the doctor said, carrying on as if he hadn’t heard the sergeant’s remark. He eased the body onto its side. ‘Just the one entry wound.’
‘Jackie Preston said her attacker used a kitchen knife,’ Cameron said. ‘Are we looking at the same kind of weapon here?’
‘Very likely,’ the doctor replied. ‘Interesting, isn’t it, that she’s fully clothed? And her underwear’s still in place. Of course, we’ll have to take swabs, but it certainly doesn’t look like a run-of-the-mill sex attack.’ He looked from one policeman to the other with a smile that lit up his cold, green eyes. ‘Not that it’s my place to tell you boys your job, of course.’
‘What about the condoms?’ Cameron asked.
‘Yes.’ the doctor sniffed. ‘I’ve never seen them in a corpse’s mouth before. We’ll have to look at the gullet – find out if they were put in before or after she died.
‘What, you mean she could have choked on them or something?’ Mullen blinked as he bent closer to the body.
‘We can’t rule it out at this stage,’ the doctor replied. ‘She might have been tortured by her killer or killers before she died. Making her swallow condoms could have been part of that.’
Cameron took a white handkerchief from his pocket. He brought it halfway to his mouth, as if he was on the verge of throwing up. ‘Any chance of forensic evidence on the condoms, do you think?’
‘We’ll swab them all, of course. I haven’t counted them, but I’d say there’s at least a couple of dozen.’
‘Hmm.’ Cameron took a step back. ‘She’d have had plenty on her, wouldn’t she?’ He looked at Mullen, who nodded.
‘She was a walking bloody Durex factory.’
‘And you saw her the night she died?’
‘Well…yeah,’ Mullen shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ‘Saw her most nights, though, didn’t I?’ He shrugged. ‘Hard-faced bitch like that – you’d have to be blind to miss her!’
‘Listen, Mick.’ Cameron’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘I know you two didn’t get on, but she’s dead, for God’s sake! Can’t you show a bit of respect?’
Mullen grunted. ‘She was with that shrink when I saw her, anyway.’
‘Shrink?’ Cameron frowned.
‘You know, that psychologist woman from Birmingham. Doctor Megan what’s-her-name.’
‘Oh yes, I remember.’ Cameron nodded. ‘She came to see me a couple of weeks ago.’ He stroked his chin with long, manicured fingers. ‘Wonder if she saw anything?’
‘I’ll pull her in if you like,’ Mullen said. ‘Along with the usual suspects.’
‘You do that,’ Cameron replied, nodding slowly, ‘and send out a team to talk to the women on the streets…but of course, you’ll have been doing that already, won’t you? For the Jackie Preston case?’ He shot a sideways look at Mullen.
Mullen looked away, mumbling something that sounded like, ‘Yes, Guv.’
‘Hmm.’ Cameron turned back to the body on the mortuary table. ‘You had plenty of enemies, didn’t you, Pauline? Not afraid to stand up to the pimps.’
‘No, Guv, she wasn’t,’ Mullen replied, clearing his throat. ‘Not afraid of anyone. That was her trouble, as I said. Looks like she pushed someone too far this time – and I don’t think it’ll take Sherlock bloody Holmes to work it out.’
Cameron’s eyebrows lifted half an inch. ‘You think it’s BJ, don’t you?’
Mullen shrugged. ‘I’d put money on it, Guv. He’s running more women than any other pimp on the patch. Stands to reason she’d get up his nose.’
‘But if this was done by the same person that stabbed Jackie Preston…’ Cameron tailed off. He was looking at Mullen, waiting for an answer.
‘Could have been, couldn’t it, Guv? I mean, Jackie isn’t one of his girls, but maybe he was after her. Maybe they’d had a row about it.’
‘If that was the case, why wouldn’t she have told us?’ Cameron’s hand was on his chin again, the fingers moving up and down his jaw. ‘She said she didn’t know her attacker.’
‘Hmm.’ Mullen thought about this for a moment. ‘He might have threatened her.’
‘I suppose so.’ Cameron frowned. ‘Seems unlikely, though, doesn’t it? I mean, whoever did it left her for dead. If she knew who it was she could put them away for a long, long stretch. There’d be no reason for her to be afraid, then, would there?’
Mullen shrugged again, running his eyes down the length of Pauline’s body. ‘You know BJ. He’s got his finger in that many pies, I can’t see prison stopping him. If he couldn’t do the job himself he’d get someone else to do his dirty work.’
Cameron frowned at his sergeant, holding his gaze. ‘I hope you’re right, Mick – I really do. The sooner we can get scum like BJ behind bars, the better. But if I hear you’ve played this anything other than straight…’
Mullen’s face flushed and a little muscle on the side of his head bega
n to twitch. ‘Yes, Guv,’ he said, in a voice that sounded tired.
‘Okay, Doc.’ Cameron nodded to the pathologist. ‘Give us a bell when you get those results.’ He made for the door. As he swung it open and walked out of the room, Sergeant Mullen hung back, his eyes fixed on Pauline Barrow’s body.
After a moment he glanced up at the doctor and winked. ‘He’s not living in the real world,’ he muttered. Turning on his heel, he made for the door.
Chapter Six
By two o’clock Megan was pacing round the flat, wondering why Pauline hadn’t called back. She couldn’t wait any longer. Grabbing her car keys and her jacket she made for the door. She would drive to the industrial estate and find out for herself
As her hand was on the door knob the phone rang. Not her mobile, but the phone in Jonathan’s flat. She frowned. It couldn’t be Pauline – she only had the mobile number. After five rings the answering machine cut in. She heard someone take a breath before leaving a message. It was a woman’s voice.
‘Hi Jon, it’s Janie. I’m in Cardiff this weekend. Do you fancy getting together? Anyway, give me a bell when you get this. ’Bye darling.’
Megan felt the colour rising up her neck to her face. She recognised the plummy voice. It was Janie Northcliffe, the woman Jonathan had had a fling with when his marriage broke up. The woman he said he’d finished with six months ago.
’Bye darling. The words rang in Megan’s head. Her heart was thudding against her ribs. She wouldn’t call him darling unless there was still something going on between them, would she? And why would she want to see him if he’d broken up with her?
She flung open the door and slammed it shut behind her. Charging past the lift, she ran down three flights of stairs and jumped into her car. The tyres squealed as she sped out of the car park. You’re being stupid, the voice inside her head was saying. And, yes, she knew she was jumping to conclusions. Janie was the kind of person who probably called everyone darling. And just because she wanted to see Jonathan didn’t mean he wanted to see her. Clearly he hadn’t told her he was in Jamaica. If Janie had known that she wouldn’t have asked to see him this weekend.
The Rubber Woman Page 3