‘How do you turn it off?’
‘There should be a switch at the side – but it’ll be safer if I empty everything on to the sheeting. I don’t fancy sticking my hand in and hoping for the best . . . even to amuse Ms Morley.’
She grasped the edge of the sheeting and gave it a flick, tumbling the bag towards Jen. As the stun gun fell out, a deafening, high-pitched electrical siren screamed into the night air. The woman grinned as Jen jumped backwards. ‘Most guys with any sense do a runner the minute they hear the siren,’ she said, stretching forward to flick the switch. ‘The ones who don’t end up on the floor for ten minutes.’
Using her grab-stick, she caught the bottom of the leather bag and upended the rest of the contents over the sheeting. From among the detritus, she isolated an empty biro tube and a small gilt compact. ‘No imagination,’ she said, popping the catch and showing Beale the white powder inside. ‘Nine times out of ten, women disguise their stash as cosmetics.’
She stood up and beckoned Jen forwards. ‘Legs apart and arms out to the side, please. When I’m satisfied that you have nothing else in your clothing, you will be taken to a police station, where you may be asked to undergo a more intimate search.’
For a moment, Jen looked as if she was about to comply with the woman’s brisk, no-nonsense manner, then she abruptly raised an open hand to slap her. This time the WPC’s smile was dismissive as she easily caught the swinging hand and twisted it behind the girl’s back. ‘I told you you should have chosen one of the men,’ she murmured, grabbing Jen’s other hand and snapping on a pair of handcuffs. ‘They might just have been fool enough to take that.’
*
Acland was awake the second time Jackson went to check on him. He was sitting cross-legged in the corner of the bed, his back resting against the wall, and he nodded as she appeared in the open doorway of the cell. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. ‘What for?’ ‘Everything . . . the damage to your car . . . the duffel bag . . . involving you again. It wasn’t fair on you or your patients.’ Jackson leaned her shoulder against the jamb and folded her arms. ‘Then why did you do it? I don’t even have a car at the moment. It’s been towed to a lab for forensic examination.’ ‘Sorry.’ He made a move to stand up. ‘Would you like to sit down?’ ‘No, thanks . . . and don’t keep saying sorry. It’s the most infuriating word in the English language. Just a cheap way to behave badly, then shelve responsibility by putting the onus on the other person to be forgiving.’ He knew her well enough by now to know that her bark was worse than her bite. ‘It wasn’t deliberate,’ he said. ‘I got stuck with the damn bag and I didn’t know what to do with it.’ ‘Why didn’t you hand it in to the nearest police station? That’s what a normal person would have done.’
‘A normal person wouldn’t have gone looking for it in the first place.’ A glint of self-deprecating humour appeared in his good eye. ‘And neither would I if I’d known what was in it.’
‘What did you think was in it?’
He shrugged. ‘More of Ben’s possessions. It annoyed me that he denied knowing anything about it.’ He put his head back to stare at the ceiling. ‘Chalky couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. I should have suspected something at that point.’
‘You’d still have taken it,’ said Jackson. ‘You’d have been too curious not to.’
Acland acknowledged the point with a nod. ‘I wouldn’t have paid for it, though.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty quid.’
She gave an abrupt laugh. ‘You shouldn’t be allowed out alone. Chalky says you got it in exchange for a cheap bottle of vodka. How come the dykes let you back in?’
‘I didn’t try. I waited at the end of the terrace until Chalky came out. It didn’t take long. He said he hadn’t had a drink in twelve hours.’
‘How did you know he was in there?’
‘While we were there I heard a man hawking phlegm up in the room across the corridor. I didn’t know for a fact it was Chalky but it seemed worth a try.’ He held her gaze for a moment. ‘Thanks for telling the police he was there.’
‘You could have done it yourself. You had the perfect opportunity when the superintendent spoke to you outside the Crown.’
‘I gave Chalky my word I wouldn’t.’
Jackson’s smile was cynical. ‘That’s Pontius Pilate stuff, Charles. How long were you planning to sit on the bag before you chose a side?’
‘That’s not what I was doing. I was trying to work out—’ He broke off on a sigh. ‘Chalky said the bag belonged to Ben. Is that what he’s told the police?’
‘In a manner of speaking. His view seems to be that as Ben brought the bag into the alleyway, it must be his . . . on the basis of possession being nine-tenths of the law.’ She saw the doubt in Acland’s face. ‘The police aren’t convinced.’
‘I wouldn’t expect them to be.’
‘Then I suggest you come up with some credible answers about how you knew the bag existed. From what I remember, you told the superintendent you only thought it did.’
*
Apart from a glass crack pipe on a coffee table in the open-plan sitting room with a kitchen at one end, it wasn’t immediately obvious why Jen had been so reluctant to allow the police into her flat. If she’d entered first and palmed the pipe, Beale doubted that he or his detectives would have noticed. The room was in some disorder, with various outfits slung across the back of a sofa and different pairs of shoes littering the floor. ‘Looks as if she couldn’t make up her mind what to wear,’ said Wagstaff. ‘I wonder what the bedroom’s like if she had to bring the choices in here.’ ‘More to the point, what’s in here that had her so twitched? This is the only room we could reasonably have entered if she’d been willing to come with us.’ DC Hicks nodded towards a flat screen on a desk against one of the walls. ‘Her computer’s still on. I can hear the fan working. She may not have had time to close out before she left.’ He walked over and nudged the mouse with the tip of a gloved finger. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said with amusement. ‘She’s seriously up her own arse if she has to admire her own pictures.’ Beale and Wagstaff joined him to gaze at the naked and half-naked images of Jen on the screen. They were standard soft-porn poses – fully naked on hands and knees with her arse raised provocatively, bare-breasted on a chair, cutely provocative in high heels and a bikini bottom.
The text beside the pictures read:
Cass’s STAR profile
Cass is BEAUTIFUL with the look of a movie goddess. You’ll find out that a date with her will be pure class. Her European heritage and soft Italian accent add even more to her allure.
Cass is IRRESISTIBLE but BE WARNED! Her passionate Latin nature will make her unforgettable and your body will crave her for a very long time.
Incal l 1 hour: £150 2 hours: £280 Outcall 1 hour: £200 2 hours: £350
‘What’s with the soft Italian accent?’ asked Beale. ‘It sounded more like Estuary English to me when Barnard put the cuffs on her. Doesn’t anyone regulate this crap?’
Hicks grinned. ‘Shall I go back one? It’ll probably bring us to the home page of her escort agency.’ Beale nodded. The detective gripped the mouse between the points of his gloved thumb and forefinger and steered the cursor on to the ‘back’ arrow before using a pencil to depress the ‘click’ button. He took out his notebook and jotted down the name ‘Party Perfect’ and the telephone details. He nodded to the photographs of other girls running down the side of the page. ‘Look at the names. I should think most of them are Eastern European . . . unless they’re using pseudonyms.’
‘Try minimizing it,’ Beale told him. ‘Let’s see if there’s another window underneath.’
Hicks moved the cursor to the other side of the screen and clicked with the pencil again. ‘Microsoft Outlook. Three messages in the inbox. Do you want me to open them?’
Beale ran a thoughtful hand round his growing stubble, wondering how much leeway they had on this search. ‘Not at the moment. Click on “conta
cts”. We’ve a legitimate interest in looking for Lemarr Wilson or Duane Stewart.’
All three of them stared at the displayed page. Top left was ‘Robert Allan’. Bottom right was ‘Timothy Gains’. A third of the way down the second column was ‘Kevin Atkins’ and an inch below in the third column was ‘Martin Britton & John Prentice’.
Hicks pointed to an icon at the bottom of the screen. ‘She uses a cell-phone synchronizer to feed in information from her mobile. That’s why so few of the names have email addresses. All she’s recording are telephone numbers.’
‘In Britton’s case, there’s no number, just his address in Greenham Road.’
‘Maybe that’s all she knew.’ Hicks clicked on ‘P’. ‘No Harry Peel.’
‘Try “T” for taxi,’ said Beale. ‘If the gods are smiling on us, we’ll find Walter Tutting as well.’
Twenty-eight
BEN RUSSELL’S PROTESTS about being woken at six o’clock in the morning to be taken to Southwark East police station for questioning under caution were noisy and prolonged. He was sick. He wanted his doctor. He wanted his mother. He wanted his solicitor. The police were fascists.
He turned his ire on the ward sister. ‘You should fucking stop them,’ he snapped, pointing his pistol hands at the two uniformed constables.
‘I’ve no reason to,’ she told him. ‘Dr Monaghan feels there are no medical grounds to prevent you going. You’ve been given all the tools to manage your condition and you’ve been doing it successfully for several days now. We’d have discharged you yesterday if you’d agreed to live with your mother.’
‘Bitch!’
The sister ignored him. ‘There’s a doctor at the police station who will monitor your regimen during the interview. Your mother and your solicitor will also be there. You will be allowed regular rest periods, and both the doctor and your mother will ensure that you follow your instructions on blood testing for glucose levels and that you administer your insulin the way you’ve been taught.’
He stared mutinously at his hands. ‘You can’t make me go if I don’t want to.’
‘You’re due to be discharged this morning anyway. You will continue on Dr Monaghan’s list and attend for outpatient visits, but social services have found a place in a hostel where a qualified
staff member will keep an eye on you. This was all explained to
you yesterday.’
‘I’m not fucking going to a hostel.’
‘You’ll need support for a few months yet.’
‘Why can’t I get it here?’
‘You will . . . as an outpatient . . . but you can’t take up a hospital bed for the rest of your life just because you have diabetes. You know all this. Dr Monaghan has told you several times that a hostel placement is your only option if you refuse to accept your mother’s help.’
‘I like being here.’
The sister smiled slightly. ‘You could have fooled me,’ she said. ‘I thought you were in a hellhole run by bitches and mother fuckers.’
*
‘We’ll give your client as much latitude as he needs,’ Superintendent Jones told Pearson. The solicitor was sitting across the desk from him, as dapper at eight o’clock in the morning as he’d been at eight o’clock at night. ‘It would help if Ben understands that the interview will be shorter and less stressful if he answers our questions frankly and honestly.’ Pearson leaned forward to look at the bagged items on Jones’s desk. ‘You asked him if he took a canvas bag into the alleyway. This one’s too soft to be canvas.’ ‘At that time, we could only go by Lieutenant Acland’s description. Both he and Terence Black – the man Ben knows as Chalky
– have since identified it as the bag your client brought into the alleyway.’ He paused. ‘It’s not in Ben’s interests to deny it, Mr Pearson. His fingerprints are on both mobiles and on the plastic carrier that was wrapped around the knobkerrie.’
‘I can see that one of the mobiles has Harry Peel’s name on it. Have you identified it as his?’ ‘We have.’
‘May I ask if you know who the other one belonged to?’
‘Martin Britton.’
‘A full house, then . . . if we include the one belonging to Kevin Atkins that you claim was in Ben’s rucksack.’
Jones’s Rottweiler personality had him leaning forward aggressively. ‘There’s no “claim” about it, Mr Pearson. Your client never disputed that he had the Nokia in his possession. He said he stole it between two to four weeks before his admission to hospital.’
The solicitor nodded. ‘We both know he was lying.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Would you be willing to tell me how you think he’s involved in your inquiry?’
Jones propped his elbows on the desk and folded his hands under his chin to stare at the other man. ‘If it’ll help influence the way you advise him, we don’t believe he was involved in any of the murders.’
‘But you’re not ruling him out of involvement in the assault on Walter Tutting?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘Meaning your decision will depend on when and how he came by the bag –’ he tilted his chin towards the knobkerrie – ‘and, more specifically, the weapon?’
‘It will certainly help to clarify a few details.’
‘Ben’s told you several times that he has no recollection of what happened that day, Superintendent. His consultant endorsed the possibility of deep confusion prior to his collapse.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘Which may explain why he denied taking this bag into the alleyway. If he wasn’t aware that he had it, he wouldn’t have recognized the description you gave. By the same token, he may not be able to recall how he came by it.’
Jones shrugged. ‘Then I shall have to assume he was telling the truth about Kevin Atkins’s mobile. He was vague about who he stole it from but not at all vague about carrying it around for two plus weeks.’
Pearson gave a faint smile. ‘I thought we agreed he was lying about the Nokia. May I suggest the scenario went something like this? Ben acquired the bag at some point on Friday afternoon, rifled through the contents and transferred the only phone that might be worth something to his rucksack. Harry Peel’s has Dynotape stuck to it and Martin Britton’s is a “pay-as-you-go”. The fact that my client was still carrying the bag when he entered the alleyway is the best evidence you have that he wasn’t thinking straight afterwards. On any other day, he’d have dumped it.’
Jones shook his head. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Mr Pearson. If Ben was compos mentis enough to recognize a halfway decent mobile . . . then frightened enough of how he came by it to spin us a convoluted yarn about a man in Hyde Park . . . my educated guess is he remembers exactly what happened.’
‘Do you have a suspect for the murders?’
‘Is that another way of asking if we’ll know when your client’s lying?’
The solicitor smiled. ‘Possibly.’
‘Advise him to be frank with us, Mr Pearson.’
METROPOLITAN
POLICE
WITNESS STATEMENT Witness: Benjamin Russell (16) Interviewing officers: DI Beale, DC Khan Present: Mr H. Pearson, Mrs B. Sykes, Dr J. Jackson Date: 16.08.07 Incident: Assault on Walter Tutting on 10.08.07
I, Benjamin Russell, agree that the following is a true record of statements made by me during an interview today with DI Beale and DC Khan.
I’ve known Walter Tutting a few months. We got friendly because I used to hang out around the pub he uses. Some girls I know have a dealer close by. Walter was pretty lonely and he liked me because I was the same age as his grandson. He told me he hadn’t seen the boy since his wife died.
At first I thought it was me Walter was keen on, but when I told him I wasn’t into that kind of thing, he said it was the girls he liked. He wanted to know if any of them would be willing to spend time with him. He told me he was making calls to a sex chat line for a bit of company but it wasn’t the same as having a woman to cuddle.
He was always a bit twitched about anyone seeing us go in. He said his daughter wouldn’t like it if she found out. We used to sneak down an alley behind his terrace and get in through the back. He was always pleased to see us, even told me his PIN on his card so that I could get cash out at night-time if he was short. We were good mates so I never took more than he said. I used to buy fags and booze for him as well.
Everything changed about a month ago. Walter started locking his back door and telling us to go away. The girls were upset because they were fond of Walter. They asked me to wait for him in Gainsborough Road one day to see if I could find out what was wrong. We had a bit of a row because he said we’d been stealing off him. I told him it wasn’t true. He said his daughter had found out about it and was going to put him in a nursing home. I think his brain had gone a bit. He said he wasn’t allowed to let anyone in any more. After that we left him alone.
When I woke up on Friday, 10 August, I was feeling really sick. I hadn’t been well for a few days but I thought it was flu. I’d spent the night down by the river and I knew there was a drop-in centre in Gainsborough Road. I decided to go there and ask for a doctor. One of the girls said she’d come with me. We had to go down Harris Road to get to the centre.
The time was about eleven o’clock and there was no one around. We saw a woman come out of an apartment block and stand at the edge of the pavement. She looked as if she was waiting for a lift. She was about five foot eight and thin but we couldn’t see her face. She was wearing a baseball cap and had her head down. I think she was blonde. She was carrying a duffel bag and I snatched it off her and ran down the road. The girl with me pushed the woman over to stop her following us.
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