Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (10 page)

She sat down opposite him, scanning his statement sheet, cheeks slightly flushed. “What’s your address?”

“Flat four, Addison Lane Estate, my mother’s place . . .”

“And your full name is James Paul Jackson, yes?”

“Yes, that’s my name.” He turned the packet over slowly, as if it were a tricky, delicate operation.

Tennison went down the sheet. “Unemployed . . . arrested . . .” Hardly audible, she read on. “No charges, no charges, no charges . . . you are very well known to the Vice Squad, aren’t you?” She closed the report. “You’ve been very lucky until now,” she said, smiling, the boss congratulating a promising recruit before dumping on him from a great height. “Because obviously we couldn’t formally charge you until we had interviewed Martin Fletcher.”

The smile vanished. Hard-eyed now, she let the silence hang.

Jackson looked at Hall, then at Tennison. He opened the packet and eased out a cigarette. Slow and deliberate, with a steady hand, he picked up his lighter. The phone rang. Hall reached for it and had a whispered conversation.

“I never touched Colin Jenkins,” Jackson said, sucking the smoke deep. “I wasn’t even there. I wasn’t at Vernon Reynolds’s flat full stop.” He sighed, shaking his head, still very full of himself. “End of questions.”

“But you admit that you attacked Martin Fletcher on the night of the seventeenth—”

“I was at the advice centre,” Jackson stated calmly, flicking ash. “Ask Mr. Parker-Jones, he saw me there. There was also a kid called Alan Thorpe, and I got three or four more witnesses to prove I was there.” Again the heavy sigh, glancing around the room. “This is ridiculous, waste of time.”

“Why did you want to find Colin?”

“I never found him. I admit though, I was looking for him. Martin must have told you that. I was looking for Connie, but—I—never—found—him.”

“Advice centre,” Tennison said, making a note. “Why were you looking for Colin Jenkins?”

Jackson closed his eyes momentarily and opened them the barest slit, staring straight at her. “He owed me some money.”

“How much?”

“Couple of hundred.”

“Couple of hundred?” Tennison said, eyebrows raised. “But you are unemployed! That’s a lot of money.”

“Yes, that’s why I wanted it back.” Jackson rubbed his unshaven chin and leaned forward. “Look, I’ll be honest with you.” He cleared his throat, big confession coming up. “Sometimes I . . . do the odd trick, I mean work is really hard to come by, you know? And my mum, she gets behind with the rent . . . so, I blow a few blokes, an’ I don’t like it when some kid nicks my dough.”

Tennison laced her fingers together and stayed silent. She wasn’t going to waste an ounce of breath on this kind of bull. She heard another of Otley’s long-suffering sighs. Hall leaned over and murmured that the Super wanted to see her in his office.

“I’m not going to lie about Martin,” Jackson said, waving his cigarette about carelessly. “I guess I just lost my temper. You tellin’ me he’s gonna press charges? Martin? No way.” He was staring at her, tugging his earlobe, as if he was trying to figure something out. “Like you said, it was a lot of money. . . .”

Tennison said nothing. He sounded brash and cocksure, right enough, but she sensed that underneath the swaggering bravado he was getting rattled. Good. Get him rattled some more.

“I’m not sayin’ anything until I got a brief. Because you . . .” Finger jabbing, fleshy lips twisting. “You’re not listening to what I’m sayin’.”

Very businesslike, Tennison collected her things together and stood up. She said to Inspector Hall, “I think Mr. Jackson should be taken to the cells until we have, as he has requested, contacted his brief, and we have verified his alibi for the night in question.”

“Right, let’s go through your witnesses,” Otley said. “Names, Jackson.”

Tennison went out. Hall looked to Otley, patting his tie. She was sailing bloody close to the wind. She’d nearly charged him with murder without a shred of real evidence.

Jackson was making a brutal job of stubbing his cigarette in the ashtray. He glared up at Otley. “What’s her name?”

“One dead rent boy, Chief Inspector, is not going to bring the entire department to a standstill, is that understood?”

Halliday stood with his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking out onto a darkening Broadwick Street. It was the vacant hour, lost in no-man’s-land between the exodus of the office workers and the first stirrings of Soho nightlife.

Tennison was taken aback. “I wasn’t aware of any standstill—

“Just let me finish, please.” Halliday swung around, an abrupt movement that betrayed his edginess. Usually neat to the point of fastidiousness, his tie was slightly askew and his short fair hair was ruffled as though he’d been combing his fingers through it. He placed his pale, freckled hands on the back of his swivel chair. “As Colin Jenkins’s death is now a homicide, I suggest we hand it over—”

“But we have . . .”

“—to the correct department.”

“But we have a strong suspect in custody,” Tennison protested. “And far from any standstill, we are making progress. The reason I am interested in Jackson is because of the direct link to Operation Contract.”

The Superintendent released a small sigh. “Go on.”

“Jackson’s well known to Vice, and has in actual fact been questioned on numerous occasions. If he did murder Colin Jenkins, I think it will act as a strong lever for more information.” She hesitated, knuckles tapping her palm. “There’s also an advice centre that keeps cropping up, run by a man called Edward Parker-Jones.”

“Operation Contract at no time initiated an investigation into Edward Parker-Jones . . .”

“I wasn’t contemplating any investigation into Mr. Parker-Jones. But he is my suspect’s alibi, and the longer we have Jackson locked up, the easier it’ll be to question the kids.” Tennison was furious with herself that she sounded to be pleading, and didn’t know why the hell she should have to. “Look, you did say that my priority was Operation Contract . . .”

“All right,” Halliday conceded. He rubbed his forehead and swung the chair around to sit in it. “Just keep me informed if there are any new developments.”

Tennison nodded and left the office. Halliday sat down, drumming his fingers. He stared at the closed door for a moment, picked up the phone and started to dial.

As Tennison closed the door to Halliday’s office, Kathy came up.

“Guv, have you got a second? You asked me to check back if Colin Jenkins had been brought in. Well, he was—but he used the name Bruce Jenkins, charged with soliciting.”

“So who did the interview?”

“Sergeant Otley. But it was almost a year ago, and he was underage, so a probation officer took over from our department. I’ve traced her,” Kathy said, “but she’s not much help. She’s sending the report in.”

“You remember anything about him?” Tennison asked.

Kathy shook her head glumly. “No, sorry . . .”

She went off, leaving Tennison gazing dully at the dark green wall opposite. She felt totally drained. Her brain had seized up, and she felt unable to connect one coherent thought to another. She started to drag herself back to her office next door when she heard Halliday talking on the phone, his voice faint but distinct.

“. . . how can I tell her to back off something if it has a direct link to the bloody job she was brought in to do?”

Tennison looked up and down the corridor and leaned in.

“If she isn’t suspicious now, she would be if I pulled her off it,” Halliday said, sounding exasperated. After a pause he went on, “She knows nothing, because I’m sure of it. We’ll just make damned sure it stays that way.”

The receiver went down and rapid footsteps thudded on the carpet. Tennison made it to her door just as Halliday’s door opened. She nipped in and gently pushed the door to with her fingertips, seeing him pass by through the crack. She clicked the door shut.

Otley had been on the bevvy the night before. His gaunt face was grayer and even more deeply lined than usual, eyes like piss-holes in snow. Nonetheless he was enjoying himself. He kept sneaking wicked little grins at Hall, whose return smile was rather lukewarm.

It was the 9:30 
A.M.
briefing in the Squad Room, and the entire team—with the exception of DCI Tennison and WPC Kathy Trent—was assembled, paying close attention to Commander Chiswick. Halliday was there, the Colin Jenkins autopsy report and forensic lab reports on the desk in front of him. There was also a new face. Otley recognized him as Detective Inspector Brian Dalton—dark, tanned, with sleepy brown eyes that had the women turning somersaults, Otley reckoned. A real handsome bastard.

So Otley’s delight was twofold. Chiswick was holding court while Tennison was conspicuous by her absence (maybe she hadn’t even been
told
!) and new people were being drafted in, probably without her knowledge. At any rate,
something
was going down, Otley gloated, and the old cow would hit the freaking roof when she found out.

“The deceased, Colin Jenkins, was, according to the Path. reports, unconscious when the fire took hold.” Chiswick had a pedantic, monotone delivery, better suited to reading the weather forecast. “This is verified by the low amount of smoke inhalation, indicating very shallow breathing. But his death was due to carbon monoxide poisoning, therefore we are treating the case as murder . . .”

Otley folded his arms, hugging himself, as Tennison came in, followed by Kathy. Halliday nodded a greeting to Tennison, who went to stand beside him.

“. . . as it is clear from the fire reports that the fire was not accidental, but an act of arson. We all have a backlog of cases,” the Commander said, looking toward Tennison. He didn’t nod or smile, he just looked. He faced the front.

“. . . and my own feelings concerning the murder and its obvious complexities are that we keep it inhouse. So I’d like this case brought to a conclusion as fast as possible, and have requested backup to assist Detective Chief Inspector Tennison’s inquiry from C.I.D. AMIT area seven-stroke-eight.”

AMIT 7/8 was the Area Major Incident Team, based at New Scotland Yard, which covered the Soho, Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square beat.

“Thank you,” Chiswick said, and a buzz of chatter started up.

Otley nudged DI Hall. They both watched, Otley with undisguised glee, as Tennison stalked out, face like a storm cloud.

She was halfway along the corridor when Chiswick and Halliday appeared behind her, following on at an even pace. When she was a reasonable distance from the Squad Room, Tennison halted and turned, facing squarely up to Halliday.

“I do not, at this stage, need any assistance. I already have a strong suspect.”

“James Jackson,” Halliday muttered to Chiswick, “earmarked in Operation Contract.”

“I would also appreciate it,” Tennison said crisply, getting it off her chest, “if I were to be informed before the squad of any further decisions connected to the Colin Jenkins investigation.”

DI Dalton ambled up, tall, dark, and handsome, with an engaging grin. Otley’s head poked through the Squad Room doors, wearing a devilish smirk, relishing every moment.

“Ah, I’m sorry, Jane, I didn’t have time this morning to introduce you.” Halliday extended his hand. “This is one of your new team, DI Brian Dalton. Brian, this is Chief Inspector Jane Tennison.”

“Good morning,” Tennison said without so much as a glance at him, and went into her office.

She busied herself for an hour with a mound of paperwork. The mind-numbing chore brought her anger down from white heat to a dull smoldering red. Why in heaven’s name she hadn’t developed an ulcer was one of the unsolved mysteries of the age. Or had a nervous breakdown. But she was saving that for her three-week vacation.

Norma kept her supplied with coffee, and at eleven o’clock DI Hall came to her office with the tape sent over from the ambulance emergency service. All such calls were taped and kept for a period of months. They listened to it several times, straining to hear through the whining distortion and crackling electronics; also there was music and pinging noises in the background, which didn’t help.

“I want to report an accident. It’s flat five. I need an ambulance. I want to report an accident. It’s flat five. I need an ambulance
.
.
.”

“Call logged at nine-fifteen 
P.M.
,” Hall said.

Tennison rewound the tape. “Recognize the voice? It’s not Vernon, is it?”

Hall shrugged. It could have been King Kong.

As they were replaying it, Brian Dalton knocked and came in, and leaned against the wall, supported by an outstretched arm, one ankle crossed over the other, studying his fingernails.

“Didn’t leave his name?” he said, when it was finished.

“Of course!” Hall said, beaming brightly. “We’re just replaying this because we like the sound of his voice!”

Tennison started the tape again. She turned it off when Otley put his head around the door. “Jackson is now with his brief, Guv!” He pushed the door open, holding his wrist up, pointing at his watch.