Underneath, Pamela wore silky black underwear, which Dr. O’Grady also removed. Naked, she looked even younger, though both Jackie Simmons and Pamela’s parents swore blind that she was nineteen.
Dr. O’Grady began his external examination, noting the petechial hemorrhages, first, then removing the plastic bags from her hands and pointing out the traces of blood and skin under her fingernails, some of which were broken.
“She clearly struggled for her life,” O’Grady said as he took samples.
“Lucky for us,” said Banks. “If we can identify his blood group, it should help.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem.”
He finished with the hands and moved on, using a large magnifier suspended beside the microphone to zoom in on the details of her skin.
But he didn’t need the magnifier when he got to her thighs.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, stepping back, “will you come and have a look at this?”
Banks moved in close and leaned over the body. “She’s been shaved,” he said. “That’s not so unusual with exotic dancers. It doesn’t mean the killer did it. And I think I might be able to find out.”
“Not only that.” O’Grady pointed. “This, too.”
Banks could see a strip of transparent tape between her legs. “What is it? Surely it’s not…”
“If I’m not mistaken,” said O’Grady, removing the tape carefully with a pair of surgical tweezers, “it most certainly is.” He held up a broad strip of Sellotape in the tweezers and looked at Banks. “Would you believe it?” he said. “The bastard Sellotaped her labia together.”
“Are there any signs of sexual activity?”
O’Grady bent over the body again and Banks backed away. He had no desire to watch the doctor probing Pamela Morrison’s private parts. Sellotape. He’d never seen anything like that before. Mutilation, yes. But not this. Why?
“Possibly,” said O’Grady. “I think we have traces of semen here, if I’m not mistaken.”
“She’d had sex recently?”
“Seems that way. It doesn’t have to be the killer, of course. You don’t need me to tell you. A woman in her line of work…”
“I know,” said Banks. “But I don’t think she worked the streets. I mean, I don’t think she took punter after punter back to that room. It’s possible she had only the one date that night.”
“A bit exclusive?”
“The impression I got, yes. By arrangement.”
“Should make finding him a bit easier, then.”
“Except nobody’s talking,” said Banks.
O’Grady put the strip of Sellotape into a bag and sealed it.
“Better send that over to fingerprints right away,” said Banks. “According to the SOCOs, the bastard was clever enough to wipe down the surfaces in the room, but you never know.”
“Will do.” O’Grady turned back to the body. “So what do you make of it?”
“I really don’t know,” said Banks. “But the way I’m seeing things now, our killer comes up to the room with her, or she’s already waiting there for him. They undress and have sex, then he suffocates her with the pillow, either while they’re doing it or after. Then he shaves her, or she’s shaved already, places a strip of Sellotape over her vagina, dresses her, poses her under the sheet with her hands and legs together.”
“Washes all the makeup off her face.”
“That, too.”
“Pure. Like a virgin.”
“Like a virgin,” Banks agreed.
“But what kind of nutter does that?”
“I don’t know,” said Banks. “But I’d hazard a guess that it’s the kind of nutter who doesn’t stop at one.”
“He Sellotaped her cunt shut?” said DCI Roly Verity. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
Banks was no prude, but he found Verity’s language deeply offensive on this occasion. Verity hadn’t been there. He hadn’t watched Pamela Morrison’s postmortem, hadn’t seen her cut open, smelled her insides, like raw lamb.
A couple of fresh-faced DCs lounging with their feet on the table giggled at the comment. Detective Superintendent Hatchard, nominally in charge of the meeting, puffed on his pipe and muttered something about bad taste. Banks said nothing. He still felt sick.
They were in the incident room, about ten of them in all. A coffee urn stood on a table near the door, wadded paper towel under its spout to catch the drips, and a stack of Styrofoam cups leaning like the Tower of Pisa beside it. One wall was dotted with crime scene photos, maps, floor plans and scribbled time lines. The ashtrays were already overflowing.
“The way it seems,” Banks went on, ignoring Verity, who was only present at Hatchard’s invitation anyway, a public relations exercise in interdepartmental cooperation, “and Dr. O’Grady and the lab have verified all this now, is that Pamela took her killer to the room with her, or was already waiting for him there. It was a place she used frequently for such assignations.”
Verity laughed. “Assignations? That’s a good one, that is, for what she did.”
“DCI Verity,” said Hatchard. “If you wish to remain present at this meeting, please refrain from interrupting Detective Inspector Banks in his explanation.”
Verity feigned the look of a chastised schoolboy. “Sorry, sir,” he said, turning to share a smirk with one of the DCs.
Hatchard stuck his pipe back in his mouth.
The whole exchange reminded Banks of how all Hatchard’s meetings were like a class at school with a dull teacher whose grip on discipline was tenuous, to say the least. He went on, “According to my information, she wasn’t a common prostitute, more of a middle-class call girl,” he explained. “She didn’t walk the streets trolling for johns. They came to her. Or they were sent.”
“Did they have references and all?” said Verity, to much laughter from the DCs.
Hatchard tut-tutted.
“Something like that,” said Banks. “Anyway, on the surface of it, this occasion was no different. There were no traces of forced entry, and the door was unlocked when her flatmate Jackie Simmons went there to look for her. She found the body. It says a great deal for her that she called us. A lot of girls in her position wouldn’t, as I’m sure you all know.”
Even Verity nodded knowingly at this remark.
“So it might indicate that she has nothing to hide,” Banks added.
“Or it might mean she’s guilty, sir,” said Ozzy Albright.
Banks gave him an appreciative glance. “Yes,” he conceded. “It might, at that. Except we’re pretty sure the killer was a man. Reconstructing from the evidence and what I’ve got from the doc and the lab so far, they had sex—or she had sex with someone that night. It doesn’t appear as if they used any protection, because the doctor found traces of semen in the vagina.”
“The johns pay extra for bareback,” said Verity.
“Thanks for that little gem, Roly,” said Banks, flashing him a smile. “I’m sure we’re all that much the wiser for it. Anyway, whatever he paid her, if anything, he took it away with him, because all we found in her purse was a few measly quid and some loose change. At this point, we’re assuming she had her clothes off, or most of them, at any rate. We don’t know how or why it happened, what changed things, but then he suffocated her with the pillow. When she was dead, he applied the Sellotape, put her clothes back on and washed all the makeup off her face. The lab confirms traces of lipstick and mascara on the pillowcase, so she was wearing it when he suffocated her, and the bowl on the bedside table also contained traces of the same substances, as did the facecloth. After this, we assume he arranged the body in the way we found it, covering her with a sheet from the bed. We thought he might also have shaved her pubic hair, but I checked with her flatmate, Jackie Simmons, and it turns out she shaved it herself for the dancing job.”
“Those costumes they wear are a little skimpy,” said Verity. “I can see you wouldn’t want a couple of short and curlies peeking out the sides. Spoil the e
ffect.”
Hatchard ignored him and scratched the side of his nose. “That’s very…er…interesting, Alan,” he said “but do we have any idea why he’d go to all this trouble?”
“I think you’d need a shrink to work that one out, sir,” said Banks.
“Hmm. Might be worthwhile getting in touch with one of those specialist psychologists we hear about from time to time.”
“It might be,” Banks agreed. Like most police, he didn’t really trust the psychologists they sometimes used to work on possible profiles of criminals. It was too much like hocus-pocus to him. They might as well use a psychic. But he was willing to keep an open mind.
“What about prints?” Hatchard asked.
“I was just getting to that. It looks very much as if our killer didn’t wear gloves, but he did wipe the place. From what the SOCOs can gather, the surfaces—door, table, drawers, what have you—have all been wiped clean. One of our techs found tiny linen fibers caught on a rough wooden surface, so he probably used a handkerchief. You’d expect prints in a room like…a room used for sexual encounters, but we found none, so he did a pretty good job of obliterating everything.”
“A linen handkerchief, too,” muttered Albright. “Posh.”
“But where he did slip up,” Banks went on, “was the Sellotape. We’ve got a partial from it, and it’s not hers.”
“So if we can find a match…” Hatchard said.
“Then we may have our killer. But it’s not on file, so we’ve still got a lot to do.”
“Even so,” said Hatchard. “I’d say our SOCOs and lab did an excellent job. A partial print and traces of semen. I trust he’s a secretor?”
“Yes,” said Banks, “so we’ll be able to identify his blood group.”
“Good, good.” Hatchard puffed on his pipe. It had gone out, so he lit it again. Clouds of blue smoke poured out of the bowl and he disappeared in the fog. “I’ve already got the press sniffing around,” he said. “What should I do about them?”
“I think we should keep the evidence of the print and semen, along with the unusual details, to ourselves, sir,” Banks said. “I mean the odd posing of the body and the Sellotape. That gives us something up our sleeves when the false confessions come in. And something we can use to nail the real killer when we find him.”
“I agree,” said Hatchard. “Let’s make sure there are no leaks, everyone.”
“Right now,” Banks went on, “all we can do is the usual. We’ve found nobody who admits to seeing Pamela and her killer enter the building, or her killer leave. Someone must have seen something, though. Even though it’s a fairly quiet side street, there are cafés, pubs and lots of street traffic around the corner. We can put an appeal out in the media. We can also follow up on any known perverts in the area, ask around the girls and the clubs and massage parlors about anyone who’s been behaving oddly.”
“But he wouldn’t necessarily have been behaving oddly, would he?” said Albright. “From what I’ve read, people like him often appear normal on the surface.”
Some of the others laughed, but Banks said, “That’s true enough, Ozzy, but he might have let something slip to someone. Maybe one of the girls will remember a bloke who worried her, someone who talked crazy or tried some weird stunt. And there are a couple of points to remember. First, he must have gone prepared. We found no Sellotape at the scene, so he must have brought it with him. Which probably means he knew what he was going to do with it.”
“Or he found some there and took it with him,” said Albright.
“Possibly,” Banks agreed.
“And the second point?” Hatchard asked.
“Well, if she didn’t just pick up a bloke from the street, then this meeting was probably arranged, and if that’s the case, there’s a damn good chance someone arranged it for her, or at least knew about it. Anyway, I’ve got actions for all of you, and enough interviews to keep you going for a while.”
The DCs groaned in chorus.
“And you, Alan?” said Hatchard.
“After we’ve had a quick word with the parents, I think Ozzy and I should pay a visit to Matthew Micallef,” said Banks. “He was Pamela’s pimp and he owns the building where she died. Maybe he knows who she was meeting there.”
Banks had discovered from Verity that Micallef liked to hold court most afternoons in a Chinese restaurant on Gerrard Street, so he and Albright headed over there after speaking briefly with Pamela’s parents. Banks learned little from them. Her mother sniffled the whole time, and her father maintained a monosyllabic stoicism. The only time he showed any emotion at all was when Banks handed him the photograph he had found in Pamela’s handbag, upon which Mr. Morrison uttered a gruff, hasty thank-you and made a quick exit.
Chinatown used to be in Limehouse, close to the docks, and to Banks it evoked images from his adolescent reading: pea-soup fogs, Sherlock Holmes, inscrutable orientals, and the ne’er-do-well sons of the gentry idling away their lives in opium dens. But the modern-day reality wasn’t like that at all, if it ever had been. Most of the Chinese immigrants had moved after the blitz destroyed much of the East End. They settled in Soho in the 1950s and spilled over into an area between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square in the 1970s. It wasn’t a very large Chinatown, but the streets were ornamented with pagodas and arches, and the place was full of Chinese restaurants, supermarkets and shops overflowing with exotic and often unfamiliar Asian produce, little white delivery vans all over the place.
Albright glanced around keenly at the activity and sniffed the exotic air. “I always liked this place,” he said to Banks. “Do you know where the biggest Chinatown in the world is? Outside China itself, that is, sir.”
“You’ve got me there, Ozzy.” Banks sidestepped a few leaves of decaying bok choy.
“San Francisco.”
“Is it, indeed?” said Banks. “Now, that’s a city I’ve always wanted to visit.”
“It’s not the one in the film. That was Los Angeles. Talking about films, sir, did you see A View to a Kill? I must say, I think Roger Moore is getting a bit long in the tooth to play James Bond. And that Grace Jones…I’m not sure I’d want her in my bed. Some very nasty habits she’s got, sir.”
“You should be so lucky,” said Banks. “Here we are, I think.”
The façade of the restaurant was painted black and red, and the signage was lettered in gold. The windows were smoked, the glass etched and covered with net curtains, so it was impossible to see inside.
Banks hadn’t really formed a plan, but he had told Albright just to play it by ear, see how Micallef reacted to the questions they asked him, note down any uncertainties and obvious lies to return to later, perhaps in the more formal surroundings of the station, if they felt he warranted bringing in.
Albright was a good head taller than Banks and had to stoop slightly as they went in. A doorbell pinged. When their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Banks noticed it was a relatively large room, and several tables were occupied. He scanned the diners, thinking Micallef would probably be sitting with a couple of bruisers. But there were no bruisers. Most of the clientele looked like businessmen. The maître d’ approached them, and Banks asked for Mr. Micallef. The maître d’ gave a slight bow and walked over to one of the tables. He spoke to a fair-haired man who glanced at Banks and Albright, still standing in the foyer. The maître d’ came back and led them over to the table. There were no plates of food, just an almost empty bottle of white burgundy.
Banks and Albright introduced themselves.
“Please, sit down,” said Micallef. “My meeting’s over, anyway.” He gave a signal to the two men and a woman who were sitting with him, and they left.
Banks could have sworn that Micallef had been expecting their visit, and perhaps he had. He would know about the murder and, whether he was guilty or not, he would also know that the police would quickly make the connection between him and the dead girl.
“Can I tempt either of you to a drink?” M
icallef offered. “Or is it a duty call?”
“Duty,” said Banks as he and Albright sat down.
Micallef smiled in a slightly lopsided way, head tilted in amusement. “Pity.” He emptied the burgundy into his glass. “It’s a very fine vintage.”
“Then it would probably be wasted on a dull plod like me,” said Banks. He lit a cigarette.
“Oh, come, come. I’m sure you do yourself an injustice. What do you say, Sergeant?”
“It’s true that 1983 was a very good year for white burgundy, but I still think it could benefit from another couple of years in the cellar.”
Micallef laughed, then stopped as abruptly as he had started. “Perhaps,” he said. “But I happen to be a very impatient man. And busy.” He looked at his watch, a chunky Rolex. “Shall we get down to business, or do I need my solicitor present?”
“No need for that,” said Banks. “Just a friendly chat.” Since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act had been passed the previous year, criminals had more rights than ever before. The police, Banks included, hadn’t quite got used to the shift of power yet, so they were nervous and usually erred on the side of caution. Even so, unless Micallef was going to confess to murder, he hardly had need for a lawyer, and he was probably too shrewd to give anything away. What else would they charge him with? Living off immoral earnings?
Micallef spread his hands. “So what can I do for you?”
Banks had to admit that the man had taken him by surprise. Despite what he had already heard from Verity and from Jackie Simmons, he had still expected a swarthy, barrel-chested man surrounded by gorillas. But what he got could well have been, to all intents and purposes, an ex–public schoolboy, a lock of blond hair hanging over his left eye, fair complexion, an air of natural superiority, a haughty demeanor and easy exercise of power. His mother was English, Banks knew, so he had obviously inherited his looks from her, slightly effeminate, but of a kind that is attractive to women. His accent was pure Eton and Oxford. But Banks also knew that behind this veneer of civilized urbanity was a vicious streak and the morals of a common criminal, a pimp, no less, and that was the image he tried to keep in his mind as he spoke with Micallef.
The Price of Love and Other Stories Page 33