A noise from behind him, the sound of a man being sick.
‘The bathroom,’ the constable said. Outside of the room, in the corridor, the disinterested long-haired man from reception down on all fours, getting rid of the curry he had eaten earlier.
Larry looked at the woman suspended from the metal pipe coming out of the wall, a shower fitting attached. Even he felt his stomach heave.
The constable left and walked away, getting as far as the stairs before he joined the long-haired individual in being sick.
It was a job for Gordon Windsor. And it was proof that seeing Amanda Upton at her mother’s brothel was a death sentence.
Larry phoned Isaac to update him, Wendy to find Meredith, and Windsor to bring his team down. It was going to be another long night.
Chapter 19
The discovery of Mary Wilton and her house of ill repute had thrown the case wide open. Of the three English women at the premises on the day that Amanda Upton had visited, two were dead and another was frightened.
Meredith Temple had provided the first solid evidence in a murder enquiry that had dragged on too long.
The depressing hotel room where Cathy Parkinson had died had been checked over by the CSI’s, the woman’s body taken to the pathologist. Isaac had seen enough corpses in his time to know there had been a struggle. The hanging in the shower seemed to serve no purpose as there were also multiple knife wounds to the body, except to add to the possibility that the killer had a perverted sense of the macabre. It was a sloppy killing, the likelihood of evidence stronger than in the murders of the other women.
Gordon Windsor offered his appraisal that death had come slowly, that the woman had not been in good health, and that she, along with many who sold themselves, was a drug addict – a syringe and tourniquet had been found in the bathroom. He also confirmed that recent sexual activity was probable. Which meant that this time the murderer had had sex with the woman before killing her, whereas with Janice Robinson he had not, assuming the killer was one and the same for both deaths.
Seminal fluid contained DNA, and it could be traced if there was a record on the database or could prove conclusive at an arrest and subsequent trial.
Wendy sat with Meredith in an open area at the university. Neither woman was saying much; Wendy because she was mulling over what had happened and how to move forward, Meredith due to her fear.
Around the two women, the students moved up and down, talking to one another, some reading, others playing with their phones, one or two asleep. They were blissfully unaware that in their midst was a woman who had seen the seedier side of life, an acquaintance of two recently murdered women, and a police officer.
‘I can’t say I knew her that well, Cathy, that is,’ Meredith said. ‘She was a terrible tart.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She seemed to enjoy it. After a time, or maybe it was always, you start to hate yourself and what you’ve become. The reason that so many become further drawn to heroin. A vicious cycle, screwing to make money to buy the drug, hating yourself, needing more drugs, screwing more, no longer caring what you do or with whom.’
‘You managed to break the cycle.’
‘Cathy was predisposed.’
‘Janice had been sexually abused in her early teens.’
‘A lot are. Cathy, when she did speak, would talk about her family; a mother she loved, a father she hated. It’s the same story as Janice’s, I suppose.’
‘Janice wasn’t too close to her mother, but she was to her brothers, especially the younger one.’
‘My parents were good people; I loved them, and nothing happened to me. My only problem was that I enjoyed men too much, especially in my teenage years.’
‘So did I,’ Wendy admitted. ‘Never drugs, only alcohol.’
‘What about me? What now? I’ve given you information, and Cathy’s dead and so is Janice. Am I to be the next?’
‘I can’t be sure. We don’t know why people have died, not yet. You saw Amanda Upton, as did Janice and Cathy. There has to be a link through the woman.’
‘Mary?’
‘Do you care?’
‘Not really. I can’t say anything against her, though. She played it straight, never cheated on the money, and we did have protection from violent men.’
‘Amanda comes into the house; she meets with her mother,’ Wendy attempting to focus on the murders, to try and make sense of the killings so far.
‘I was never introduced, and until you told me, I never knew she was Mary’s daughter. An attractive woman, elegantly dressed, nothing cheap about her.’
‘High-class escort. A rich man’s folly,’ Wendy said.
‘And she is the dead woman in Kensal Green?’
‘There seems little doubt that she is.’
‘The Asian girl?’
‘Any more you can tell us about her?’
‘She stayed a few weeks, kept to herself, did her job, and then left.’
‘After Amanda Upton had been in the house?’
‘Two, maybe three weeks after. I’m not sure of the dates, time blurs when you’re living on the edge. Do you think it’s significant?’
‘It could be. She must have spoken to you.’
‘Conversations, never about the men, but then we don’t.’
‘A whore’s code of silence?’ Wendy said.
It was the first smile that Meredith Temple had allowed herself.
‘Hardly. Cathy might sometimes, but we preferred to forget. It was neither love nor pleasurable; it was carnal, animalistic, dogs on heat. It was just disgusting.’
‘And Analyn did what you did?’
‘If she was distressed, she never showed it. Not a smile or a laugh, impassive, a china doll.’
‘A seasoned prostitute? Sold herself in the past?’
‘I wouldn’t know, but she would ask about Mary occasionally, what her history was, where she came from, family, that sort of thing.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I don’t think any of us said very much, and besides, what did we know? We didn’t know about her daughter, not really.’
‘You suspected?’
‘It was Janice. She had finished with a client, a fat and sweaty man who usually chose me, but for some reason he decided on a change.’
‘A keen judge of women?’
‘Just a man too ugly he couldn’t find one for free.’
‘Janice?’
‘She was curious. She told me that Mary and her daughter were talking at the back of the house; Mary smoking a cigarette, the other woman standing nearby.’
‘And?’
‘According to Janice, the other woman’s telling Mary about her life; not in glowing terms, either. As to how it was good money, but that some of the men were dangerous individuals, secretive men, possessive, wanting her to always be there.’
‘She wanted out?’
‘She was frightened for her safety. No idea why.’
‘If she overheard something, the same way that Janice had, then who knows. Powerful people have powerful secrets, facts they would not want to be known.’
‘Janice would have told Cathy, who wasn’t always discreet.’
‘She could have told Analyn?’
‘It’s probable. As I said, a few weeks, and she was gone.’
***
Early the next day, Wendy picked up Mary Wilton from the former brothel. The women who had been plying their wares at the place on the day the police had first visited were long gone, some to a different brothel, others back to the street.
At the mortuary, the madam, duly charged with running a brothel, but out on bail on her own surety, and now dressed more fittingly for the solemnity of identifying the Jane Doe, looked away as the sheet was pulled back.
Wendy was the first to look, and even though it had been kept in a cooled environment, the effects of time were starting to show on the dead body. If a body had a soul at death, not that Wendy believed they
did, then this one did not. An attempt to make the deceased more palatable in appearance for the next of kin to identify had not occurred this time. All that Wendy could see, as did Mary Wilton when she turned around, eyes glazed, to look at the body, was a slab of flesh and hair, the caricature of a person.
‘It’s Amanda,’ Mary Wilton said.
With that, the woman turned around and left the room, not once looking back.
Wendy found her outside on the street, a cigarette in her mouth, a handkerchief in her hand, a look of desperation on her face.
‘Difficult?’ Wendy said as she put her arm around the woman who had visibly shrunk.
‘I never wanted her to follow me into the business, that’s why I devoted my time to her, ensured she had the best opportunities. Not that it made any difference, only that she found a better quality of man, made more money, but it’s all the same, isn’t it?
‘A lecherous fornicating drunk on his way home from work, a labourer, a wife-beater, they’re all the same, and the bastard who did that to her, influential, one of those who goes home to his wife and children of a night, has a title or infinite wealth.’
Wendy found that she had little empathy with the woman, who showed a momentary humility but was, apart from her love for her daughter, cold-hearted, more interested in the bottom line, money in her bank account, and the protection afforded the girls at her brothel was more there to protect the assets.
However, the brothel was central to the investigation, in that of five women who had passed through its door, three had been murdered, another was attempting to put her past behind her, and the fourth, an Asian woman, was the consort of Ian Naughton, who was increasingly looking to be the “Mr Big” in whatever criminal venture they were dealing with.
The madam and the police officer sat down in a coffee shop, Wendy ordering a latte, the other woman preferring a cappuccino. Mary Wilton perused the menu, choosing a slice of cheesecake; Wendy, conscious that she shouldn’t, but knowing that she would, ordered a slice of chocolate cake that was in a glass-fronted cabinet on the shop counter.
‘We need to find the connection,’ Wendy said after she had taken the first bite of her cake, ‘and Mrs Wilton, it might be you.’
‘I’ll accept that I’ve broken the law, not the first time either, and there are other convictions against my name, but I can’t see how. I’ve always held that discretion is vital, and I’ve never spoken about the clientele, not to others. Sure, sometimes one of the girls would tell me about a client, even have a laugh amongst ourselves, but I chose my girls with some care. I know that a few had their problems, drugs usually, bad men more often than not, but they all had some education, the sense to know when they were on a good thing with me.’
‘Tell me about Janice,’ Wendy said.
‘There’s not much to say. She was rough around the edges, a working-class accent, not that I liked it much, but she didn’t swear and she was polite. And besides, she had an endearing quality about her, the sort of person you instinctively trusted. Without the drugs, she could have got on in life. Not achieving too much though as her education wasn’t the best.’
‘You didn’t try to discourage her from prostituting herself, to get herself sorted out?’
‘Don’t misjudge me. I’m still a cold-hearted businesswoman trying to make a decent living, and remember, it was prostitution that gave my daughter the opportunities, but then…’
‘Flat on her back,’ Wendy said, not sure if the woman was sanctimonious, giving a story for her benefit, or whether it was just an act. She felt the latter was the most likely, but at least the woman was talking.
‘It’s strange,’ Mary Wilton said, her voice barely audible, a tear in one eye. ‘I’ve been around prostitution all my life, my mother even, but you don’t want to think that your children are going to end up making the same mistakes.’
‘Mistakes? Do you see it like that?’
Wendy took another bite of her chocolate cake, signalled over to a waitress who was looking into space, made it clear that a repeat order for both women was required. The waitress, another foreign student on a working holiday by the look of her, smiled and slowly walked over to the counter and the coffee machine.
‘Not for me, prostitution. I never had any issue with what I did when I was younger, nor with running a brothel. Men need an outlet, and if no one is harmed, then I can’t see it as a crime. And why am I guilty of an offence, but the girls aren’t?’
‘The law can be illogical,’ Wendy admitted.
‘You asked about Janice.’
‘There’s more?’
‘She was a drug addict, not as bad as Cathy Parkinson, but bad enough. Even if I had wanted to help, which I didn’t. I don’t say that to be callous, but I’ve seen plenty of women like them over the years, and whereas some of them sort themselves out, most don’t.’
‘The trauma of their childhood?’ Wendy said.
‘I was academic in my earlier life, the chance of achieving something, finding a decent man, a decent life, but that didn’t happen.’
‘The “Mrs”?’
‘Briefly, when I was young, a few years before Amanda was born. A holiday romance, an infatuation with respectability. Three months later, we’re married in a registry office, just the two of us and a couple of witnesses.’
‘What happened?’
‘It came out one night. We’re in bed in the little bedsit that we rented. We’re just talking about this and that, our plans for the future, our past history, people we had known, places we had been.’
The waitress arrived, deposited the coffees and cakes on the table, made an attempt to clear away some crumbs and sauntered away, balancing the used crockery that she had taken. Wendy thought back to the shoe store in Knightsbridge and the manager of the shop. The waitress would have been lucky to have lasted the first day there, but in the coffee shop, she had the look of someone who had worked there for a while, not concerned as she started scrolling through her smartphone after she had deposited the dishes in a dishwasher.
‘You told him?’
‘My mother had been a prostitute, and she had tried to shield me from it, but I knew. How couldn’t you? There was no father figure in the house, and when you’re young, you just don’t understand, but in my teens, with the phone calls, the late-night knocks at the door, I figured it out. She admitted to it, told me that my father had taken off with another woman, not died as I believed, and that out of desperation she had turned to the only occupation that would pay enough money to look after me, give me a chance in life.’
‘A different time back then,’ Wendy said.
‘No equality, not that I’m making a case for feminism, but a deserted wife with a child didn’t have many options. It was either work in a factory making clothes or a laundry, manually scrubbing clothes and ironing, paid a pittance, allowing yourself to be treated as chattel, no more than a serf to the squire, or else you did what many others had done.’
Wendy, who was almost twenty years younger than the woman, could understand where Mary Wilton was coming from. She had experienced the injustice back then, although it was tempered to some extent by the time she entered the workforce, and growing up on a farm with a mother and father who loved and cared for her was something she was glad of.
‘Your husband?’
‘Before I met him, I was away from home, aiming to get a place at a university, struggling to make ends meet. Part-timing in a restaurant, studying at nights; I needed money. I placed an ad.’
‘Where?’
‘Not so much an ad. I had been approached a couple of times before, knocked back the offer. I just made it known to the next one who came along, a professor at the university, one of those who said he could help with my entry into the university, but couldn’t. No different to the casting couch, and I, in desperation, fell for it.’
‘You slept with him?’
‘Not that it helped. He bragged to another professor who offered his assistance fo
r services rendered, but I knew that academia and I were not to be close friends. I was blacklisted, thrown out with the bathwater. After that, I milked whoever had the money, was outwardly respectable, inwardly half-decent, and could pay.’
‘The holiday?’
‘I wasn’t tainted by what I had done. I still maintained an innocence about it, and I always believed in romantic love.
‘I went down to Bournemouth on the south coast, booked into a small hotel, walked along the promenade, bought fish and chips, heavy on the vinegar, wrapped in a newspaper, not the cardboard box that you get today, paddled in the sea. I was happy, just minding my own business, when Albert, that was his name, comes alongside, starts talking. He was a commercial fisherman, knew all about the tides, where was the best place to catch fish. Not sure if you would find many fishermen these days, but back then, there were plenty of boats going out to sea.’
‘You spent time with him?’
‘He wasn’t educated, so I downplayed mine. But yes, we were inseparable, and then after the marriage, it came out, as I was saying. I thought that honesty in marriage was important, but it wasn’t, not to him. He attempted to put on a brave face about it, and then one day, he goes out to sea, leaving a letter on the mantlepiece, telling me he loves me, but he can’t deal with my having sold myself to other men.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I waited for him to return from the sea, to see if I could quiet his concerns.’
‘Did you?’
‘There was a massive storm that day; his boat never returned, he and two others drowned at sea. We had parted in anger, never a chance to say I was sorry. Since then, I’ve been Mrs Wilton, never fallen in love again.’
It was a sad story, one of many that Wendy had heard over the years, but it was the past. The present was still playing itself out, and those that had died violently had to be vindicated; those that were still alive needed to be protected.
‘Cathy Parkinson?’ Wendy said, not wanting to dwell on Mary Wilton’s past, although feeling some sympathy for the woman, realising that everyone, rich or poor, educated or not, male or female, had a sad story to tell.
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