I turned to my new partner. She was definitely more attractive than Sparky, but I didn’t know how she’d be in a fistfight. “Anything, Annette?” I asked.
“Yes,” she began. “From your earlier examinations, Professor, and what you’ve seen here, could you say if any violence was used during the acts of intercourse?”
“The actual penetration, you mean?”
“Er, yes.”
“Difficult to interpret. Yes, entry was quite violent, but one man’s — or woman’s — violence is another’s big turn-on. It was rough intercourse, but I cannot interpret the victim’s feelings about that.”
“How rough?” I asked.
“Some damage to the mucous membranes, but not excessively so.”
“Both ends?”
“More so in the anus, but that’s quite usual.”
I spread my chart on the arm of the settee and explained it to the professor. We all agreed that what he had determined at the house fitted perfectly with Silkstone’s story but I argued that it could also support the sex romp theory.
“Did you find any other supportive evidence?” the professor asked.
“Such as?”
“Well, for instance, did you find any pornography? Sex aids? Bondage paraphernalia? That sort of thing.”
“No,” I reluctantly admitted.
“Then I’d say it was unlikely.”
My pet theory had just prised the bars open and escaped. “Unless the DNA tests show that they were both there,” I argued.
“I suppose so,” the professor said, in a tone that suggested I shouldn’t hold my breath.
“How about Silkstone killing them both in a jealous rage?” I suggested, tapping Box 3 with the blunt end of my pen. “That’s probably what we would have concluded had it not been for his admissions.”
“Ye-es, I’d wondered about that,” the professor replied, “but I’m not sure that what I’ve seen validates it. Force was undoubtedly used against Mrs Silkstone, but she wasn’t knocked about and there are few signs of a struggle. There’s no bruising to her face, but her arms bear evidence of being tightly gripped. It was a controlled force, in my opinion, by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Was she a willing partner, in the sex?”
“Willing? Probably not. Reluctant, I’d say. She certainly didn’t fight for her life until she had no chance.”
“Are you suggesting that the motive for the assault was rape, pure and simple,” I asked, “and killing her was an afterthought?”
“It’s a possibility,” he agreed, “although I’m not sure about the pure and simple. Assaults of this nature are not necessarily for sexual gratification — they’re about inflicting humiliation on the victim. Which, I suppose, when you think about it, enhances the gratification. He’s a control freak, likes to dominate — that’s what stimulates him. I’m rambling a bit, Charlie. That side of it is not my field, thank goodness, I’m just the plumber.”
I pointed to the fourth box on my chart. “And then there’s the possibility that Silkstone orchestrated the whole thing,” I said. “He killed them both but put the blame for Margaret on to Latham. That way he comes out of it with a fairly hefty financial gain.”
The professor pursed his lips, deep in thought. He has a face like a dessicated cowpat, but always looks as fresh and clean as a newly bathed baby. His talcum smelled of roses or some other garden flowers. “It’d be a bugger to prove, Charlie,” he concluded. “Let’s wait and see what the DNA says, eh?”
We thanked the prof. and drove away in silence. I wasn’t equipped to have a meaningful conversation with an attractive woman about the merits of rough sex, so I kept my thoughts to myself, but Annette had no such inhibitions. “Why do men — some men — want to do that?” she asked.
“Um, do what?” I enquired.
“Inflict humiliation. Why isn’t the sex act enough in itself?”
“Good question,” I said, stalling for time. “It’s probably something deep in our psyche, in our genes.”
“You mean all men are like that?”
“Well, um, I wouldn’t say all men. I don’t know, perhaps we are. At a very subconscious level. Most of us have never recognised it in ourselves, but it’s probably in there, somewhere.”
“Really?” She twisted in her seat to face me and nearly drove into the kerb.
“Put it like this,” I said, checking my seatbelt. “Most men, I’m sure you know, find a woman in her underwear sexier than a woman in a bikini. Why do you think that is?”
“No idea. It’s a mystery to me.”
“Well, most men wouldn’t know, either, if you asked them. But it could be because a woman in her underwear is at a disadvantage. You’ve caught her partially dressed. However, the same woman in a bikini is fully dressed and completely in charge of the situation.”
“Gosh! I’d never have thought of that.”
“Whereas most men,” I pronounced, holding my hands aloft, “rarely think of anything else.”
There was a pub called the Anglers Rest about half a mile down the road, with an A-board outside saying that they did two-for-the-price-of-one meals before six o’ clock. We’d missed that, but it reminded me that I was starving.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Ravishing,” Annette replied, and giggled.
“I can see that,” I told her. “I asked if you were hungry.”
“Mmm. Quite.”
“Fancy a Chinese?”
She looked across at me. “Yes. That sounds like a good idea.” Her cheeks were pink again.
“Take us to the Bamboo Curtain then, please,” I suggested, and settled back into the seat feeling uncommonly content. Things were moving along quite nicely, and the enquiry wasn’t going too badly, either.
I ate with chopsticks, to show how sophisticated I am, and we drank Czech beer, which I insisted in pouring into glasses. A glass is essential if you want to experience the full flavour of the drink. Itsy-bitsy sips from the bottle are a waste of time. I insisted on Annette doing several comparisons, and she politely conceded that I might have had a point. Drinking from the bottle, I told her, is an affectation encouraged by the brewing industry to save them the trouble and expense of washing glasses, that’s all. Apart from that, the bottles have been stored for months outside some warehouse, and the security man’s dog probably cocked its leg over them several times each night as they did their rounds. She smiled and humoured me.
Women in the police have a hard time. Be one of the lads and you get a reputation as a slapper; stay aloof from all that and you’re a lesbian. Times are changing and a new breed of intelligent, confident women are coming into the service, but old attitudes take a long time to be pensioned off. I like working with women, and they make good detectives. Traditionally we’ve always given them the jobs with an emotional content — child abuse, rape, that sort of thing — but they can be surprisingly hard at times. Harder than a man. Stereotypes and prejudices, I thought. The more you work at them, the deeper the hole you dig for yourself.
As far as anyone knew Annette had never been out with another copper, so the inevitable whispers had gone round the locker room. I’m as guilty as all the rest, and wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they were true. Disappointed, but not surprised. We talked about the case, the job and the E-type, but steered clear of personal chat. We’d both considered teaching when we were younger. I had a degree in Art and she had one in Physics.
“A proper degree,” I declared, sharing out the last of the beer.
“That’s right,” she agreed across the top of her glass, holding my gaze.
Mr Ho, the proprietor, brought me the customary pot of green tea, on the house, and I asked him for the bill. Annette produced a tenner and slid it across to me.
“Is that enough?” she asked.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I’ll get these.”
“No, I’d rather pay my way,” she insisted. Men handle these things much better than women. Any of the
male DCs would have said: “Cheers, I’ll get them next time,” but they wouldn’t have spent all evening analysing my every word, waiting for the boss to proposition them.
“I’ll arm wrestle you for it,” I said.
“Please?”
“If you insist.” I reached for the note and put another with it. “That’s a one pound sixty tip,” I said. “Alright with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
It was a short drive back to the station, where my car was parked. No opportunity for an invitation in for coffee there. She parked the Fiat behind my Ford, without stopping the engine. Eyes would be upon us from within the building.
“That was very pleasant, Annette,” I told her, opening the door.
“Yes, it was. Thank you,” she replied.
They say the moon was formed when another planet strayed close to the fledgling Earth and its gravity tore a great chunk from us. I know the feeling. The car door was open, beckoning, and this beautiful lady was eighteen inches away, her face turned to me, her perfume playing havoc with my senses. I felt lost, pulled apart. Salome was dancing, but was it for me or was I in for the chop?
Just a kiss. That’s all I wanted. Just a kiss. A simple token of affection after a harrowing day. No harm in that, is there? The scientists don’t know it, but there’s one force out there in the universe far more powerful than gravity. It’s called rejection. I wrenched myself away, saying: “See you in the morning.”
“Yes,” she replied. “See you in the morning. Boss.”
Chapter Five
It was no big deal. I drove home and collected the mail from behind the door. Six items, all junk. I put the kettle on and hung my jacket in the hallway. It wasn’t nine o’ clock yet but I was tired and felt like going to bed. There’d be no red faces in the office tomorrow, no mumbled apologies as we crossed paths in the corridor. We’d be able to continue working together as a team, and that was a big consolation.
I had loosely promised myself to clean the microwave oven tonight, but it could wait. There’d been a slight accident with an exploding chicken Kiev at the weekend, and the kitchen stunk of garlic, but I couldn’t face pulling on another pair of rubber gloves and setting to work with the aerosol of nitric acid, or whatever it was I’d bought for the job. I was sure it said self-cleaning when I bought the oven, but it isn’t. You just can’t believe anything these days.
I made a pot of tea — more tea — and settled down with Dylan on the turntable, unaware of the fiasco being enacted in the town centre. Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you are the one. Spot on, Bob. Spot on.
Dick Lane stretches down to the canal in a part of the town that has been heavily redeveloped. Legend has it that the street gets its name from a worker in the woollen industry who could carry bigger bales of wool than anybody else. Twenty-five stones, or some other mind-boggling figure. More mischievous sources say the name is derived from the row of cast-iron posts that runs across the end of the street. A now defunct Methodist church stands on the corner, and the posts were possibly placed there to deter the carters from taking a short cut to the loading wharves. They were erected by the minister of the day, and it is hard to believe that the foundry that moulded them was not having a joke at his expense, for the posts look remarkably like huge, rampant male members. The developers wanted to remove them, but the council, in its wisdom, slapped a preservation order on them. Dick Lane still has its dicks.
More important than all that is the fact that the posts are exactly sixty-four inches apart. There’s no known reason, practical or mystical, for this. Nobody has come up with the theory that it’s the distance between the Sphinx’s eyes, or the exact width of the Mark IV Blenkinsop loom. It probably just looked about right to the bloke who installed them, nearly two hundred years ago.
At about half past eight young Jamie Walker, now on the run, stole a Ford Fiesta; his favourite car. The owner saw him drive off in it and phoned the police. He was a known drugs user and pedlar on the Sylvan Fields estate and demanded to know what we were doing about the theft of his only means of continuing in business. Control circulated the description, filed a report and went back to the Sun crossword. Ten minutes later one of the patrol cars, conveniently parked in the town centre where they could ogle the talent making its way to the various pubs, saw a green Fiesta with a white bonnet and red passenger door tearing the wrong way through the pedestrian precinct. It was Jamie. They did a seven-point turn and gave chase.
The rules of engagement say follow the target vehicle until the driver is well aware that you require him to stop. Then, if he continues to flee, drop back but try to remain in visual contact until assistance can be organised. The patrol car, siren and lights a-go-go, positively identified the registration number and was backing off when Jamie turned into Dick Lane.
“Gorrim!” declared the driver of the patrol car.
Jamie’s Ford Fiesta was sixty-three inches wide, which gave him a clearance of half an inch each side as he slotted it neatly between the posts at the bottom of Dick Lane. That’s an ample margin when you are escaping arrest, in somebody else’s vehicle. He wiped the wing mirrors off, but he never used them anyway. The pursuing officers saw the Fiesta slow to a crawl and make a right turn on to the towpath, towards freedom.
What was actually said between the driver and his observer is open to speculation, as their stories conflicted at the resulting enquiry. What is known is that: a) They decided to continue the chase; and b) A Ford Escort of the type they were driving is sixty-six inches wide. The iron posts neatly redesigned the front wings of the police car, in a process known to engineers as extrusion, and then held it fast. Alpha Foxtrot Zero Three juddered to a standstill with the posts jammed solid halfway along its front doors.
The advent of closed circuit television has been, it is generally agreed, a wondrous breakthrough in the policing of town centres. Tonight it was to prove a curse. Two very large police officers trying to extricate themselves through the rear doors of a fairly small car makes very good television. The CCTV cameras recorded the build-up and several local yuppies with palm-sized Sonys committed the rest of the story to magnetic tape in much greater detail, negotiating contracts with Reuters and Associated Press via their mobile phones even as they filmed.
After doing some much-needed tidying in the kitchen I made myself a peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich and ate it in the bath, accompanied by Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 played very loud on the CD. It’s not one of my favourites, but it includes the Brief Encounter music, which amused me. I dried myself and fell into bed feeling reasonably wound down considering the day I’d had, totally oblivious of Jamie’s latest exploits.
“Boss wants you. Now,” I was told as I passed the front desk early Friday morning.
“What’s he doing in at this time?”
“Don’t ask.”
I ran straight up the stairs to Mr Wood’s office on the top floor. First thought in my head was that Silkstone had topped himself in the cells.
“Morning, Gilbert,” I said, after knocking and walking in. “You’re in early.”
“You haven’t seen it then?” he asked without returning my greeting.
“Seen what?”
“Breakfast TV.”
“I’d rather fart drawing pins. What’s happened?”
“Watch this.”
He went over to the monitor on another desk and pressed a few buttons. After a snowstorm of blank tape a well-polished couple with colour-coordinated hair flickered into view. I stayed silent, not knowing what to expect, but it was looking like a Martian invasion at the very least. The Chosen Two shared a joke which we couldn’t hear because the sound was off and the picture changed to black and white.
“That’s Heckley,” I said, recognising the scene. “Down near the canal.”
“Dick Lane,” Gilbert stated.
“That’s right.”
A car jerked towards the camera i
n ten yard steps, like an early movie. The clock in the bottom right-hand corner said 2123.
“Driven by Jamie Walker,” Gilbert informed me.
“Oh,” I replied. “Last night?”
“Mmm.”
There were some posts across the end of the street. The car — it looked like a Fiesta — was stopped by the camera as it reached them and in the next frame it was through and bits were flying off it. It exited to the left, narrowly avoiding falling into the canal, and another car jumped into the top of the picture.
“Watch,” Gilbert ordered.
“One of ours?”
“Alpha Foxtrot Zero Three.”
“Who up?”
“Lockwood and Stiles.”
Jim Lockwood and Martin Stiles were first on the scene when we arrested Tony Silkstone. I felt uneasy, expecting their car to go into the water and drown them both, or roll over and burst into flames. All it did was get stuck between the posts. The coloured picture came back on, with the Golden Couple laughing just enough not to ruffle their coiffures or flake their make-up. I tried to stifle a giggle, but failed.
“You’ve got to laugh, Gilbert,” I chuckled.
“What’s so funny about it?” he demanded.
“It just is.”
“We’re a bloody laughing stock! It won’t be funny when the Chief Constable sees it, I’ll tell you that.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I admitted. “Nobody was hurt, that’s the main thing. I was expecting to see someone hurt. What’s happening?”
“I’m having them in at nine o’clock. I’ll have to ground them, Charlie. And the car’s probably a write-off. Jamie-fucking — Walker! I’d like to take the little scrote and…and…oh, what’s the point?”
“Who’s investigating it?” I asked. He told me the name of a chief inspector from HQ who I hardly knew.
The super was right: it wasn’t funny. Wrecking a police car is a serious matter. Lockwood and Stiles would be taken off driving while a senior officer made preliminary enquiries. It was back to the beat for them. If he’d committed a prosecutable offence it could be the end of the driver’s career. “Were this a member of the public would further action be taken?” was the question that the investigating officer would be asking. Meanwhile, we’d lost the use of two men and a car.
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