Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (2 page)

The peacock feathers on another gown wafted in the updraft as the fire took hold. Half the room was ablaze, engulfing the sofa and the young boy so quickly that it sucked all the air from his lungs, leaving his scream stillborn in his raw throat.

The rack of gowns caught fire. Feathers and charred bits of chiffon wafted upward in a writhing cloud of smoke. The curtains went up. The paintwork on the frame of the closed window bubbled and peeled off. The entire living room and cluttered tiny kitchen of Vera Reynolds’s shabby little flat were now ablaze.

With the sound and fury of a small but powerful bomb, the window blasted out into the night. The explosion shattered the peace of the six redbrick blocks of the flats. Burning debris showered down into the paved courtyard three floors below, setting alight a line of washing.

Already, from somewhere across the city, came the wail of an ambulance siren.

He’d find that bastard! Jimmy Jackson swung the old midnight-blue Merc into a side street near the canal, the headlights making oily smears on the wet cobblestones. He gripped the wheel tightly, his scarred, pockmarked face thrust forward, his slitted eyes hot and mad, peering through the cracked windshield. His thick, fleshy lips were drawn back against his teeth. Where the fuck was the little turd! Sure bet that Fletcher was down here with the dregs, another homeless, snotty-nosed kid living in a cardboard box with winos, dossers, and sewer rats for neighbors.

Jackson spotted a movement. He snarled a grin and stamped on the big brake pedal. Next second the door was flung open and he was out and running, tall and mean in a studded leather jacket and torn jeans, knee-length biker boots ringing on the greasy pavement.

The terrified kid had taken off, heading for the iron bridge over the canal. But each of Jackson’s thumping strides was equal to three of Fletcher’s. He caught up with him by the edge of the canal that had the carcasses of bed frames, bikes, and supermarket carts sticking up from its putrid surface. Reaching out a clawed hand, Jackson grabbed the kid by the hair and yanked him to a skidding halt; the act of doing it, the thrill of power, gave him something close to sensual pleasure.

The kid was babbling with abject terror. Jackson stooped over from his lean yet muscular six foot height and smacked him in the teeth. He hit him again with both barrels, left fist, right fist, to forehead and jaw. The kid squirmed on the ground, one grimy hand with bitten nails forlornly held up to ward off more punishment.

Jackson raised his fist.

“Dunno . . . dunno where he is!” Fletcher screamed through his bloody mouth. “I dunno where he is—I swear!”

Jackson took a pace to one side and kicked him in the groin. The steel toe cap went in with a satisfying solid
thunk.
He pushed his spiky mop of hair back with both hands. The kid might not know after all, but then again he might. Jackson needed a bit more convincing. He reached down for him.

Fletcher screamed, “No, please . . . I dunno, I swear! Please don’t, don’t . . . PLEASE DON’T HURT ME!”

Small groups of people in nightclothes were standing on the balconies watching the fire crews at work. Some of the crowd had babies and toddlers in their arms. Hoses from three tenders snaked up the brick walls and over the concrete balconies to the third-floor flat. The fire was out, just a plume of dirty gray smoke eddying from the blackened, blasted-out window and wafting away on a northerly breeze.

A patrol car, siren off but with lights flashing, sped into the courtyard from the main road and stopped with a squeal of brakes, rocking on its suspension. Two uniformed officers, bulky, square framed, leapt out and ran toward the stairway. A slighter figure, round shouldered and rather hunched, wearing a shapeless raincoat that should have been given to Oxfam years ago, climbed out and shambled after them. He paused to look up to the window. The bright flare of arc lamps, set up by the fire crews, illuminated the balcony like a film set. Detective Sergeant Bill Otley sniffed and pinched his beaked nose. The call on the closed police band had reported at least one body. Not strictly his line, but Otley was in the habit of poking his nose in where it didn’t belong.

Taking his time, as he always did, Otley went up the bleak stairwell. On the third-floor landing, pools of water everywhere, he glanced around, sharp eyes in his narrow, intense face missing very little. He appeared intense, Otley, when he was reading the
Mirror
’s sports page or watching the weatherman on TV. As if he was suspicious of everybody and everything, seeking out the guilt, the real motive, behind life’s innocent facade. Life wasn’t all that innocent, he knew damn well; everybody was guilty of something.

“Some of the tenants want to know if it’s safe to return to their flats,” said a voice from within.

“Keep everybody clear,” the fire chief replied. “We’re checking the flats immediately above and below . . .”

The ambulance attendants were bringing out the body. Just the one. Otley stood a couple of feet inside the tiny hallway watching as they lifted it onto a stretcher and covered it with plastic sheeting. Curious position. The heat of the fire had petrified the charred, spindly black bones into what must have been the corpse’s physical attitude at the moment of death. Arms stuck out like rigid sticks. Legs bent, feet curled underneath. The skull was a shapeless knob of sticky tar.

Otley pressed himself to the wall to let them pass.

“Anybody got an I.D. on it?”

“You jokin’?” one of the ambulance attendants said, maneuvering the stretcher through the front door. “Can’t even tell if it’s male or female yet!”

Otley grinned. He let them go and stuck his head into the living room. The arc lamps made stark shadows of the firemen and the two uniformed officers rooting about in the wreckage.

The fire chief gestured. “Can somebody get duckboards on the balcony landing?”

Otley retreated through the hallway. As he went out he heard one of the uniformed officers say, “The flat belongs to a Vernon Reynolds. Lived alone. Aged somewhere between late twenties and early thirties . . .”

Otley pinched the hooked tip of his nose and descended into the gloom of the stairwell.

“I thought it might be nice to eat in the room tonight,” Jake Hunter said. He was lounging in the passenger seat, one arm draped casually along the back of Tennison’s seat as she drove him to Duke’s Hotel just off St. James’s Street where his publisher had booked him a suite. A cheroot dangled from his lips. He had the expansive air of an actor winding down after a performance. But then he always felt easy in the company of Jane Tennison. She felt easy with him too, though sometimes she wondered why the hell she should.

It had been ten years since his last trip over here. That was when they first met, and when they had their affair that became a long-term relationship. Long term in the sense of the seven months and fourteen days they had lived together in Jane’s Chiswick flat. As a Detective Sergeant with the Lambeth Met, she had attended a course at the Bramshill Officer Training College where Jake was visiting lecturer. She was unattached, and so was he. Drinks in the bar one evening plus an almost instantaneous mutual attraction had led, naturally and inevitably, to their becoming lovers. At thirty-four years of age she was no starry-eyed innocent virgin. Jake, two years older, had been married in his twenties; his wife had died in a car crash before they had celebrated their first anniversary. But when they embarked on their affair, neither of them had realized what they were getting into. And when they did, it was too late to do anything about it.

Sooner or later, however, an awkward fact had to be faced. Jake was due to return to the States, to take up his consultative post with the New York Police Pathology and Forensic Research Unit. Jane was in line for promotion to Detective Inspector—something she had been fighting tooth and nail for—and had the chance of taking charge at the Reading Rape Centre. There was no middle way, for either of them. They were both committed to their careers, and both deeply in love. Impossible to reconcile the two. Jake had gone home, Jane had got her promotion and moved to Reading.

Since then, nothing much. Postcards, a few telephone calls, one birthday card—from her, carefully worded, to his office. End of story, until three weeks ago, when the flame had been rekindled.

Tennison was aware of his scrutiny, gentle, rather amused, and concentrated all the more on her driving.

“I thought it went really well tonight,” Jake said. Not bragging, just a simple statement of fact. “Better than last Tuesday. It felt more relaxed, don’t you think?”

“Oh, you always impress me,” Tennison said, with just a touch of mockery, though it was true, he always did. “How long will you be away?”

“Two weeks.” His publisher had fixed up nine speaking engagements and double that number of signing sessions from Brighton to Edinburgh; a punishing schedule. “You are coming with me?”

Tennison hesitated. Then she gave a firm shake of the head. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m starting this new job . . .”

“Aahhh . . .” Jake blew smoke at the windshield, nodding sagely. He might have expected this. In fact he had. “Are we still going back to the hotel?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

“Yes,” Tennison said evenly, without a pause. “Just for a drink.”

Mike Chow, the senior pathologist, and his three assistants in their long green plastic aprons and white Wellington boots prepared the corpse for the autopsy. Lying on the stainless steel table, the body had been straightened to a more natural position. The blackened sticks of arms rested straight by its sides, the legs had been uncurled from their defensive fetal crouch.

“Okay,” Mike Chow said, poking at the charred scraps of fabric with a steel spatula, “we’ll get the clothes cut off and see what’s left.”

A police photographer moved around the table, taking flash shots from every angle. One of the assistants began to snip away, delicately stripping off the burnt clothing with his gloved fingers.

The pathologist leaned over, taking a close look at the corpse’s head. A few singed strands of reddish-auburn hair could be seen still clinging to the gray knob of skull. Impossible to tell, though, whether it was male or female.

Mike Chow picked up his clipboard, flicked over a page. He blinked through his glasses. “Could be a . . .” A frown clouded his face as he turned to stare at the body. “Vera stroke Vernon Reynolds. What’s that supposed to mean?”

They’d eaten a late supper, suprisingly good by hotel standards, in Jake’s suite. A bottle of vintage Chateau-neuf-du-Pape to go with it, and two large brandies with their coffees. Jake was sprawled on the bed, vest undone, his tie pulled loose from his unbuttoned collar. He still wore his fancy cowhide boots, which far from detracting from it, added to his aura of total well-being.

Tennison stood at the small table next to the window, leafing through one of the twenty copies of Jake’s book stacked on it. There was a bookstore display unit with a blowup of the dust jacket and several glossy photographs of Jake at his most seriously thoughtful. One of these took up the whole back cover of the book Tennison was holding.

She read the blurb inside the jacket and glanced up, smiling.

“You’ve taken four years off your age!”

Jake lazily swung his legs down and got up, flexing his shoulders. He wasn’t abashed. “Serial killers are big business.” His voice was a little slurred at the edges as he made a flippant gesture toward the pile of books. “Help yourself. Well, they were big business—last year! I think I missed the gravy train.” He gave her a look from under his sun-bleached eyebrows. “Story of my life.”

“Can I?” Tennison asked, holding up the book.

“One? Just one?” Jake came across and picked up a pen. “Take one, you get eight complimentary copies,” he threatened, waggling the pen.

Tennison rested her arm on his shoulder as he leaned over to write. She smiled as she read the dedication. Very personal, but not so intimate—or incriminating—that she couldn’t proudly show it off to a close friend or two. She gave him a hug.

“Thank you.”

Jake took her hand in both of his. “Why don’t you come with me?” The wine and brandy may have gone to his head, but she knew he was serious, not just fooling around.

“I don’t want to get hurt again,” Tennison said quietly.

“Again? That doesn’t make sense.”

She swallowed. “Jake, there wasn’t anyone else before . . . you know.” Ten years on, the memory hadn’t faded, though she had exorcised the pain, or so she thought. “Just it was going too fast. It was such a big decision.”

“Then why didn’t you talk it through with me?”

“Because if I had, you would have made the decision for me.”

He raised an eyebrow, watching her intently. “Would that have been so bad?”

“There’s no point in discussing it now,” Tennison said, withdrawing her hand. She turned away.

“There might not be for you, but there is for me. I wanted to marry you. I wanted to have kids with you, you know that.” His voice rock steady now, befuddlement swept away. “Don’t you think I deserved more than a kiss-off phone call . . . ‘I’m sorry, Jake, it’s not going to work.’ ” He gave a slow, sad shake of the head. “You never gave it a chance.”

Tennison spun around. She said in a tone of sharp accusation, “I didn’t know you wouldn’t come back.”