by Hania Allen
‘Why the Duke?’ said Von.
‘They didn’t like Mr Quincey. That landlord was always giving him the eye. That’s why—’ She stopped, as though she’d said too much.
‘That’s why what?’ Von said quickly.
She hesitated. ‘That’s why he kept himself to himself.’
She’s lying. She was going to say something else. But Von knew better than to persist when someone clammed up. There were other ways of obtaining information. She decided to change tack. ‘Miss Manning, did you ever visit Max Quincey in his lodgings?’
Rose drew herself up. ‘Our relationship’ – she accented the word – ‘was strictly professional. An unmarried lady would never visit a gentleman in his rooms.’
‘Even one who’s gay?’ said Steve.
She stiffened. ‘Whatever his persuasion, he was still a single gentleman.’
Von jerked her head towards the back of the room. ‘You said those packing cases travel with you. The knots look complicated. Did you tie them?’
She seemed mildly surprised. ‘Zack Lazarus showed us all how to tie them years ago. He’s the lighting manager. Good at knots, he is. It looks difficult but it’s easy once you know how.’
‘Why not use simple knots?’
‘They can come undone. No use when you’re on tour. Costumes are expensive.’ She stared fixedly at the clothes waiting to be pressed.
Von took the hint. She handed Rose a card. ‘Please do contact me if there’s anything else you’d like to tell us.’
At the door, Rose gripped her arm. ‘The papers said that Mr Quincey had been strangled.’ She brought her face so close that Von could smell her sour smoker’s breath. ‘And that he’d been blinded. The doll too.’
‘That’s right, Miss Manning,’ Von said softly.
She brought her hands to her chest, fingering the pearls, her nails like drops of blood against the pale jumper. ‘Lord, I don’t know what the world is coming to, I’m sure I don’t. Such a wicked place.’ She turned away. ‘Wicked, wicked.’
In the foyer, Von and Steve watched the men remove the last of the dolls from the crates.
‘I have to say it, boss, but Max Quincey could certainly charm the ladies. Whatever his sexual orientation.’
‘Maybe, but if I see another woman in tears over him, I’ll be reaching for the sick bag.’
They left the building and walked towards the Toyota, parked a couple of blocks away.
‘I see those dolls everywhere now,’ Von said.
‘Aye, and after opening night, London will be heaving with them.’
‘Even the wardrobe mistress had one.’
‘She was something else, wasn’t she? Pity her name doesn’t match her appearance.’
She tapped him lightly on the forearm. ‘That’s bitchy, Steve.’
‘My mother had a twinset just like that, in a colour she referred to as heather mixture. And she wore American Tan tights.’
She watched a cyclist mount the pavement to get ahead of the slow-moving traffic. ‘Interesting that Rose seems to have adored Max Quincey enough to give up her empire at the Garrimont and take to the road with him. Not an easy life.’
‘Fine when you’re young, but she isn’t. How old would you say?’
‘Pushing retirement.’ She held up her warrant card as the cyclist approached. With a rapid motion, he swerved back onto the road and disappeared into the distance.
‘So, in her early forties, when the rent boys’ murders took place.’
‘Did you see how she buttoned it when I pressed her about the Duke? And what do you make of Gillanders wanting to run the Quincey Players?’
‘I don’t buy it, boss. If Gillanders decided to kill Quincey and take over the Players, he wouldn’t have waited this long.’
‘People can be patient.’
They reached the Toyota. Steve started the engine and they moved away at a crawl. The cyclist, several cars ahead, was weaving in and out of the traffic.
‘Steve, have you noticed that everyone seems remarkably keen to tell us that Gillanders was around in 1985? What did Harrower have to say about him?’
‘Gillanders had no alibi for the two late attacks on the rent boys. And as for the earlier attacks, the sergeant taking his statement scribbled in the margin that his character disappears early, so he could have left, killed them, then returned for lights up.’
‘But no hard evidence?’
‘That was the problem with the old case, boss. Everything was circumstantial.’
‘Let’s get back to the murder of Max Quincey.’ She pulled a document from her bag. ‘The floor plan of Mrs Deacon’s shows Gillanders’s room one floor down from Quincey’s. Leaving aside there’s no evidence Gillanders had murderous intent, he could easily have slipped into Quincey’s room, stunned him, tied him up and strangled him.’
‘And made it look like the old murders?’
‘Nothing like throwing the filth off the scent.’
‘What about the sex, though, boss? Quincey had sex before he died. Surely not with Gillanders.’
She shrugged. ‘Quincey could have had sex with someone else, Gillanders heard him leave, then crept upstairs. Quincey would have been naked on the bed.’
‘How can you be sure he had sex naked?’
She suppressed a smile. ‘Do you have sex with your clothes on?’
‘He’d have to get his timing spot on. He could have been seen by Quincey’s lover coming down the stairs.’
‘Come on, you saw how thin those floorboards are. Didn’t you hear the creak on the steps?’
‘You mean he’d have heard the guy pass by his room, and known that the rumpy-pumpy had ended?’ He nodded. ‘It’s possible. Forensics might give us a lead.’
‘Talking of which, if the report isn’t at the nick first thing tomorrow, I’m sending you over. Don’t give me the face. You know I can’t send one of the others.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they can’t stand up to Sir Bernard. The last time I sent someone there, he came back a broken man.’
Steve pulled up at a red light. ‘It’s the smell of the place,’ he said, closing his eyes.
‘You don’t need to go further than the secretary,’ she said gently.
He smiled, his eyes still closed. ‘Ah, Miranda.’
‘I thought that might make a difference.’
Chapter 10
It was the morning of Tuesday, 19th September. Von was in her office with Danni.
‘So, where’s Steve?’ said Danni, fingering the sick-looking plant on the desk.
‘I sent him round to The Vulture’s to fetch the report.’
Danni pulled a face. ‘Rather him than me.’
‘Rather him than anyone else. The Vulture’s secretary has the hots for him.’
‘Miranda? She can’t have. She’s a lesbian.’
Von pushed her hands through her hair. ‘Oh well, I got that horribly wrong.’
Danni grinned. ‘I’m sure Steve can handle himself. Anyway, you were telling me about this theatre manager.’
‘There was no mistaking her signals. I thought Steve was going to trip over his tongue.’
‘That sexy?’
‘Personally I think she wore too much make-up. It was her voice, though. Reminded me of Marlene Dietrich. And she has these honey-coloured eyes with big lashes.’ She smiled. ‘What does it for Steve is that she’s a blonde, the big-hair kind with layers and streaks.’
‘You do surprise me.’ Danni looked pointedly at Von’s hair. ‘His taste is in brunettes.’
She felt herself flushing. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that if you ditched the semi-detached relationship you have with that journalist, DI English would have your knickers off in a flash. Surely you’ve seen the way he looks at you, Von. Kenny’s not making you happy, a blind man can see that.’
There was a time when she would have welcomed a chat about her personal life. But it was too late now. Her rela
tionship with Kenny was in free fall, and she was watching powerless from the sidelines. He hadn’t been in touch since the night she’d told him about her new case. He’d been away before, but this time was different. She thought about contacting his boss at The Guardian to find out what he was working on, but that seemed a step too far.
‘Shall we get back to the business in hand?’ she said, her voice measured.
Danni gave a brief nod. ‘Fine, if that’s what you want. You never take my advice when you need to.’ She folded her arms, as if to signify that Von would come to regret it. ‘So did this Horowitz woman give you anything?’ she said.
‘Here’s the thing, Danni. The phone records show that she and Max were in constant communication from the day he arrived till the day he died. But when I asked her, she gave me a load of old cock about meeting up to go through his accounts. The two of them were up to something.’
Larry poked his head round the door. ‘The forensic report’s here, ma’am,’ he said, staring at Danni’s legs.
‘Excellent. Get everyone into the incident room.’ She smiled broadly. ‘It’s show time.’
‘Let’s go straight to the summary.’ Von flicked to the back of the report and scanned the pages. ‘First off, the bedside lamp had traces of Max’s tissue. Means he was killed in his room. And the eyes were definitely cut after strangulation.’
‘Like Manny Newman’s,’ Danni said thoughtfully. ‘And presumably the same with the other rent boys.’
‘Nicotine in Max’s bloodstream indicated he’d been smoking heavily. The ash and butt in the ashtray were found to be the brand, Hoyo de Monterrey, which has a distinctive aroma.’
‘What the hell are Hoyo de Monterrey?’ said Larry.
‘Cigarillos, son,’ said Steve.
Von frowned. ‘Yet only Max’s DNA was found in the saliva on the butt.’
‘There was just the one butt,’ Steve said, ‘but that ashtray was too full for one cigarillo.’
‘You think our Mr X was a smoker too, and took his butts with him?’
‘We’ve seen that before, boss, killers who take their fag-ends away.’
‘Good point.’ She continued to scan the pages. ‘From the internal penile swab, a sample of semen was recovered from the urethra. Normally semen is expelled by the passage of urine following ejaculation. It means he didn’t urinate between having sex and being killed.’
‘So, can we assume his attacker was the person he’d had sex with, ma’am?’ said Larry.
‘We can assume it’s possible.’
‘What about the DNA?’ Danni said impatiently.
She skipped a couple of pages. ‘No saliva on the penis, no foreign pubic hair on the body, nothing under the fingernails, the DNA on the toothbrush, towels, and dirty underwear was Max’s. But here’s something. The sweat on his skin had traces of someone else’s.’ Her expression hardened. ‘Damn it. The DNA was contaminated with Max’s to such an extent, it will prove impossible to find a match.’ She felt like throwing the report against the wall. ‘The DNA was our best chance,’ she snapped. ‘We can forget it.’
‘We had this last time, boss. Mixed samples.’
‘At least he can confirm the gender.’ She paused. ‘Male.’
‘Hardly surprising for a gay man,’ said Danni.
‘As for fingerprints, Max’s were everywhere. But there was nothing on the bedside lamp, nothing could be lifted from the tie, and the doll had been wiped clean.’ She let out a breath. ‘I’d hoped we’d be lucky with that.’
‘Again, the same as with the rent boys,’ said Danni. ‘As I think you said yourself, Mr X wasn’t panicked enough to flee the scene without covering his tracks. Pity, though. Even partials would have been better than nothing.’
‘They rarely stand up in a court of law.’ She’d never forgotten her first court case, thrown out because there were two fewer than the statutory sixteen points of identification. The defence pathologist was quick to point it out, defence counsel played on a possible miscarriage of justice, and she had to watch in silence as a man she knew to be guilty walked free.
‘Here’s something,’ said Steve. ‘Prints from the thumb, index and middle fingers of both hands were found on the bathroom taps. They’re good quality. And they’re not Max’s.’ He smiled. ‘Killers who take their gloves off to wash their hands often forget to wipe the taps.’
‘Before we get excited, remember that someone would have cleaned in there. The prints might be theirs.’ She continued to read. ‘There were no metal traces on the doll’s eyes. Not surprising. The eyes are resin, so they’re softer.’
‘I take it the knife’s not turned up?’ Danni glanced around. ‘Okay, ignore that, I can tell by your faces.’
‘They found hairs,’ said Zoë, excitement in her voice. ‘Only Max’s on the hairbrush, but there were foreign hairs in the room. No follicles, and no viable DNA could be extracted from the shafts, but the hair was dyed and otherwise chemically treated.’
‘Where exactly were the hairs?’ Von said, peering over Zoë’s shoulder.
‘Several on the bed, and some on an armchair. Sir Bernard has given the lengths. Average is about ten inches.’
‘Colour?’
‘Blond.’
‘So, blond and not short.’ She glanced at Steve. ‘The only person, so far, who matches that description, and who Max knew, is Chrissie Horowitz.’
‘But Max was gay, boss. He can’t have had sex with Chrissie.’
‘She may have visited him and sat on the bed. Those prints on the taps may be hers. We need to get her photo to Mrs Deacon and see if she recognises Chrissie as having visited him. We know Mrs Deacon has been keeping things from us, so this time let’s lean hard.’
‘Chrissie did say she’d never been to his digs, ma’am,’ said Larry.
‘People lie, Larry. Learn to factor that into your analysis.’ She turned back to the report. ‘Contents of Max’s gut: anchovies, cheese, tomatoes, bread dough.’
‘Pizza, boss.’
‘Max’s last meal was at lunchtime, according to Sir Bernard. And that’s all we have so far.’ She looked up. ‘Right, we have three pieces of evidence: sweat that was deposited by a man, long blond hairs, and someone else’s fingerprints on the taps. Danni, anything to add?’
‘Three things.’ Danni spoke in the precise way Von had heard her use when lecturing. ‘First, Max’s eyes were stabbed, but not otherwise damaged. If you look at page ten, you’ll see a close-up of his doll’s eyes. They were scraped only lightly. Max’s injuries are mere scratches compared with the rent boys’ blindings, which were done with great savagery, as were the mutilations of the dolls.’ She paused, looking round the room. ‘Secondly, Manny Newman stated that he was penetrated, but not his client. The pattern of anal bruising, and the absence of semen round their penises, indicates that was also true of the other boys. But in Max’s case it was Max, the victim, who did the penetration.’
‘How significant is that?’ said Von.
‘If he was killed by the man he had sex with, then very.’
‘And the third thing?’
‘The victims in 1985 were young rent boys. Max wasn’t.’ She hesitated. ‘There’s one final thing I need to say. In 1985, there were only four attacks. The killer was hardly trying for the Guinness Book of Records. Serial killers usually continue till they die or get caught, and they continue killing even if they move from the area.’
Danni had a point. One of Von’s earliest cases had involved a serial who killed nearly twenty people across the length and breadth of Britain before he was apprehended. ‘Harrower didn’t see that MO anywhere else, Danni.’
‘Then it may not have been a serial killer. Something could have linked the victims, and the link was broken when the last rent boy died. I keep coming back to it: Max’s case is different from that of the boys. You’re looking for two different killers.’ She glanced at the wall clock. ‘Sorry, but I have to go. Call me when you need me again.’
‘A Chrissie Horowitz is on the phone, ma’am,’ the constable said. ‘Michael Gillanders has arrived at the Garrimont.’
Von jumped up. ‘This is our cue, Steve.’
As they left the building, she looked at him sideways. ‘How did you get on with Miranda?’
He puffed out his cheeks. ‘She’s playing hard to get, boss.’
Von was drumming her fingers on the arm rest. They were sitting in a traffic jam on High Holborn, listening to the cacophony of car horns.
‘We’ll be stuck in this gridlock for ages,’ she said impatiently. ‘I told you we shouldn’t have come this way.’
‘Sorry, boss. I thought it was the quickest route.’
‘When is Red Ken going to do something about this congestion?’
Ken Livingstone had been elected to the office of Mayor of London just a few months before, with nearly sixty per cent of the vote. He was the only directly-elected mayor in the country, and everyone was waiting to see what he would do first. Sorting out London’s traffic problems didn’t seem to be top of his agenda, and Von wasn’t sure it had even been put on the list.
‘So the blond hairs in the room were long,’ she said, more to herself. ‘Despite what Chrissie told us, I’m convinced she visited Max in his room. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the possibility they belong to a man.’
Steve was looking thoughtful. ‘Aye, a man with long dyed blond hair.’
‘Bet you a tenner Michael Gillanders has long dyed blond hair.’
‘Was there a photo of him in the case file?’ he said suspiciously.
‘No.’
‘In that case, done.’ With horns blaring, he made a fast turn into Shaftesbury Avenue. The man behind the wheel of a large delivery truck bearing down on them gave him the finger.
‘Always interesting driving with you, Steve,’ Von said breathlessly. ‘Next time, we’ll walk.’