Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (37 page)

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Authors: Lynda La Plante

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Tennison was furious with herself. Not a snowball’s chance in hell of nailing this shit if she allowed her emotions to veer out of control. By an act of will she quelled them. She looked up, her eyes cold, her voice without a tremor as she asked, “Mr. Parker-Jones, are you aware of the existence of certain compromising photographs that belonged to James Jackson?”

Parker-Jones leaned toward Spelling, but they didn’t confer. The lawyer merely gave a long slow blink. Parker-Jones straightened up, wearing a smirk that Tennison wanted to smash from his face.

“No comment.”

“That in many of these said photographs you are pictured with the deceased, Colin Jenkins?”

“No comment.”

“That you were also photographed in various poses with a number of juveniles, and these photographs were taken from your home in Camden Town?”

“No comment.”

“I think you knew of the existence of these pictures, and knew that Colin Jenkins intended to sell them.”

“No comment.”

“On the night of the seventeenth you had James Jackson searching all over London, desperate to track these photographs down.” Her tone became thin and cutting as she replayed the scenario, telling the real story to his face, making him know that she
knew.
“To track Colin Jenkins down, but you just couldn’t find him, could you?”

“No comment.”

“And then Vera, Vernon Reynolds, came to you in, as you have said, a dreadful state . . .”

“No comment.”

“. . . telling you that the very person you were looking for was not only
in
her flat, but unconscious, alone, and with the said photographs.”

“No comment.”

“You said you would arrange everything. You would even call the ambulance—”

On his lips she saw the words forming and leapt up, slapped her hands flat on the table, her body arched tautly toward him.

“No comment?”
Tennison hissed. “NO COMMENT AGAIN? Mr. Parker-Jones, you have admitted you were aware of the emergency services’ delays during this period—”

“No comment.”

“—You used that fifteen minutes to hurry from the advice centre, run over to Vernon Reynolds’s flat. He wasn’t dead, was he? Connie was still alive. And so you made sure, made sure he would never be able to tell anyone about you, Mr. Parker-Jones.
You
and your friends. It was so easy, wasn’t it? He couldn’t fight back, couldn’t make any attempt to stop you as you set light to him . . . left him to burn to death.”

She knew, at last, she had him. She was certain she had him, because he said nothing, his long face smoldering and sullen. Then he folded his arms, the corner of his mouth curling up in a little smirk, and she knew sickeningly that she hadn’t.

Tennison stood outside the interview room. She felt so weary that she could have stretched out on the carpet in the corridor and gone fast asleep.

She looked away as Parker-Jones came out. “Good night, Inspector Tennison.” His smiling glance passed over her dismissively. He turned to Otley. “Which way is it?”

Otley led him toward the main staircase. Tennison leaned against the wall. Spelling came out, carrying his briefcase and homburg, followed by Halliday. She watched the lawyer hurry along briskly to join Parker-Jones, who patted his shoulder and pumped his hand. Otley pointed the way and they went off.

Tennison sighed tiredly, rubbing her eyes. “I had to try, Jack.”

Halliday nodded. She was drained, both physically and emotionally, he could see that. He said, not unkindly, “Supposition, intuition, really are worthless. Without hard evidence you didn’t stand a chance in hell. Without a witness who actually saw person or persons unknown set fire to that flat, you will never have a case—especially not against someone like him.”

She looked up at him with a strained mocking smile. “Does this blow my chances? Superintendent?”

“No. You’ll get it. No strings.”

“Guv!” Otley came up. “Jessica Smithy’s back.” He jerked his thumb toward Tennison’s office.

Tennison touched Halliday’s arm. He’d told her what she wanted to know. “Thank you,” she said. She smiled at him, and kept smiling all the way back to her office.

Jessica Smithy handed over a buff-colored envelope. Tennison delved inside and looked at the snapshots of Vernon Reynolds and his family: little Vernon in short pants with his mum and dad, standing on a sunny promenade, the holiday crowd surging around them. Vernon as a lanky teenager in the back garden, one arm clasped around his mother’s shoulder, both of them smiling. Other family snaps—school speech day, weddings, day trips, picnics—and three or four of Vernon, now Vera, as a very young man in a primitive drag outfit he must have compiled from jumble sales. Tennison slipped them back in.

“Is Parker-Jones going to be charged?” Jessica Smithy was anxious to know. She examined Tennison closely, keyed up, smoking rapidly with short little puffs.

In contrast, Tennison felt calm, wearily peaceful. “Still after the scoop, Miss Smithy?” she asked nonchalantly.

“I’m paid to expose the truth. It’s my job, a bit like yours.”

“No, Miss Smithy,” Tennison corrected her, “your job is not like mine.” And as if to demonstrate the truth of this, she opened a file crammed with statements, photostats, photographs, lists of names and addresses, phone memos and faxes, nearly three inches thick.

“But it is criminal that a man like Parker-Jones is able to gain access to young innocent boys,” Tennison mused sadly. With her thumb she riffled through the contents. “All with the blessing of the social services.”

Jessica Smithy turned her head to exhale smoke, but her eyes never left the file that Tennison was idly leafing through. Tennison detached a black-and-white photograph of Jason Baldwyn, holding it up.

“ ‘Keeper of Souls.’ This young boy said that was his nickname—good headline! Nice turn of phrase for a sick pervert . . .”

Tennison let the photograph slide from her fingers and drop onto the open file. She looked at her watch, and then reached behind for her shoulder bag. “Would you excuse me for a moment?” She came around the desk and went out, picking up the buff envelope on the way.

Her footsteps receded down the corridor.

In the silence Jessica Smithy slowly edged around the desk, craning her head. She nudged the corner of the file with her thumb, aligning it more directly into her field of vision. With a swift glance to the door and back, she took hold of the photograph and stared at it.

Several minutes later the door opened a crack. Tennison peered through. Her back to the door, Jessica Smithy was bent over the file in a cloud of smoke, microcassette recorder close to her mouth, sifting through the thick bundle of papers.

Tennison eased the door shut and released the handle from her clammy palm.

She was heading for the staircase when Otley emerged from the Squad Room, his wrinkled raincoat draped over his shoulder. He cocked his head. “You off then?”

Tennison nodded. “Miss Smithy’s in my office. Give her another fifteen minutes, then get rid of her.” She held out the buff envelope. “Oh, and would you make sure these photographs get delivered to Vernon Reynolds.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Otley tucked them under his arm. His head went back, watching her through slitted eyes. “Superintendent next, is it?”

“I think so,” Tennison conceded, cool and poised.

“I guess my mate didn’t have the right strings,” Otley said. He made it sound casual and indifferent, but she could feel the bottled-up force of his resentment, the boiling anger.

“No, he just didn’t know whose to pull,” she told him.

“You live and learn.”

“Not always the best man wins,” Tennison responded glibly, matching his cliché with one of her own.

She walked on, feeling his stare burning holes in her back.

“Good night,” she called out, not turning.

Otley’s lips moved, spitting out volumes of silent abuse, calling her every stinking name under the sun, and he knew plenty—

Tennison whipped around, catching him in the act, a huge exuberant grin spread across her face. She crouched, aiming her finger at him, cocked her thumb and shot him dead. She blew smoke off the barrel and bounced down the stairs.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the talent of the writer Trevor Hoyle, without whom this book could not have been published.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynda La Plante’s fourteen novels, including the Prime Suspect series, have all been international bestsellers. She is an Honorary Fellow of the British Film Institute and a member of the UK Crime Writers Awards Hall of Fame. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2008. She runs her own television production company and lives in London and Easthampton, New York. A new American television series based on
Prime Suspect
premieres this fall on NBC.

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Originally published in the U.K.

F
IRST
U.S.
EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1994 BY DELL PUBLISHING
.

P
RIME
S
USPECT
. Copyright © 1994 by Lynda La Plante. All rights reserved. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontranferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be used or reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

FIRST
H
ARPER
P
APERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-213441-7

Epub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN 978-0-06-213442-4

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DIX
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RRD
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