Tennison (42 page)

He wouldn’t look up. ‘She dropped her purse and—’

‘Oh I see, she dropped her purse and you picked it up?’

Gibbs cut in. ‘You ripped her blouse open and pulled off her bra so you could fondle her tits, but she resisted and you went ape and strangled her with her own bra.’

Still Boyle said nothing, but from the look of self-pity on his face Bradfield knew he and Spencer Gibbs had got it right about what happened in the kids’ adventure playground. Gibbs replaced the picture of Julie Ann before she started taking drugs with the one of her body at the playground.

‘That’s what you did to her, you murdered her and then stole her money. Look at the photograph, see her eyes and tongue? Remember them bulging out as you squeezed the life out of her, can you? LOOK AT IT!’ he shouted.

Boyle swiped at the table, and the photographs slid onto the floor as he started crying.

Bradfield leant over and patted Boyle’s back. ‘Come on, now, son, calm down. Take us through what happened, Kenneth. You’ll feel better once you get it off your chest. Just tell us what happened because I know you never meant to hurt her.’

Bradfield waited as Gibbs collected the photographs and stacked them like a pack of cards.

‘You got a tissue, WPC Morgan?’

Kath delved into her pocket and passed over a clean tissue. Bradfield handed it to Kenneth who blew his nose and then began to knead the sodden tissue.

‘It was night-time and I saw her on a swing in the kids’ playground by the Kingsmead Estate. I went over to her, she stopped and looked me up and down and I told her I’d seen her around lots of times, even talked to her once, but she ignored me and said to go away. I tried to talk to her more and was being nice but then she told me to piss off as she was waiting for someone. But I guessed it was for a punter so I said I had money to pay her for sex and she laughed at me. She got off the swing and started to walk away so I touched her shoulder and asked her to stay. Next thing I knew she turned round and spat at me, she gobbed at me right in my face. She dropped her bag and bent over to pick it up and I dunno, I just went crazy – dragged her to the ground and got on top of her.’ He started crying again.

‘I know it must be horrible for you to recall it all, son, but you’re doing well and it’s almost over, so keep going,’ Bradfield said, urging him to confess.

‘Oh Christ, I dunno how it happened. I put one hand over her mouth then ripped her shirt open and pulled at her bra which came undone, then she bit my hand and when I pulled it away from her mouth she started to scream. I was scared someone would hear her and in a panic I put the bra round her neck and shit, I didn’t mean it, but I kept on pulling it tighter and tighter . . . ’

He sobbed, using his hands to show how he had pulled the bra, crossing his wrists as it tightened round her neck, and then tightened it in a knot.

‘I got scared and ran off with her bag. It wasn’t for the money, I swear before God it wasn’t for the money. I didn’t know how much she had until I got home.’

Jane went to the ladies’ locker room to hang up her uniform jacket before going off duty. She saw an upset-looking Kath sitting on a bench and hesitated before going over to ask if she was all right.

‘Yeah, Kenneth Boyle just confessed to killing Julie Ann. It was so sickening listening to him go over it all. He’s being charged now by DS Gibbs and will appear at the Magistrates’ Court in the morning. It’s weird, I just want to cry. But I tell you, Bradfield’s a cool bastard. Just as I thought he was feeling sorry for the pathetic little shit, he laid it on him that he also killed the kid she was expecting. His voice was harsh and you could tell he loathed Boyle. Gibbs is the same, they kind of do a double act, but they got him to admit everything, no big drama it was just . . . ’ She sighed. ‘It wasn’t making me feel good, which I honestly believed it would, you know, getting closure, but all I could really think of was what a waste of life. Anyway this time he won’t get banged up for months, he’ll be there for twenty-five years at least.’

Back in her room at the section house Jane couldn’t stop thinking about what Kath had said about the waste of life. By the time she had got undressed and was ready to take a shower, she didn’t feel like having anything to eat, or God forbid, going to the pub or sitting in one of the TV rooms.

Lying down on her bed, she found herself thinking of Bradfield and his remark ‘Chance would be a fine thing’. Did he mean that he expected an approach by him to be rejected? She curled up and tucked her hands under her chin. At the beginning of the investigation she hadn’t been impressed by his manner but now she knew she was infatuated and even in awe of him. Over and over again she had been surprised by him: the time she had seen him gently touch the dead girl’s foot, his kindness at the Collinses’ house before he knew about their daughter’s beating, how, drunk outside the pub, he’d told her that he felt as if they were the only ones who cared.

She remembered, too, all the odd things he had said to her, unsure if they were complimentary or not. She curled up tighter because now, lying alone in her room, she had to admit to herself that she hoped that he did like her.

Give me just a little bit of your heart now, baby . . .

Crossing the station yard to prepare for the early shift parade at 6 a.m., Jane was startled to see a disgruntled Sergeant Harris carrying a large black bin bag.

‘Morning, Sergeant,’ she said overbrightly.

‘Bradfield’s lot had a big booze-up in the CID office last night. The cleaner was refusing to deal with the mess until I offered to help, so I’ve had to schlep out these ruddy beer cans and bottles. Christ only knows how much they all put away, but I heard someone had to carry WPC Morgan to a taxi.’

‘Can I help?’

‘No, it’s done. You can go out on foot patrol today, seven beat covering Shoreditch on the far end of the ground.’

‘Can I get a panda car to drop me off?’ Jane was surprised, yet pleased that Harris was letting her out on patrol for once.

‘No, bloody well walk or get a bus. There’s an outstanding call from last night on that beat so get the details from the control room.’

Jane spoke with the PC who was manning the phones and radios. It transpired the call had come in at midnight, but as it was very busy no one was available to attend and the disgruntled caller was told someone would visit him in the morning. The PC handed Jane a copy of the message and said the night-shift operator had told him the caller had some information about a possible robbery. Jane asked why the CID weren’t dealing with it and the PC said the caller had a squeaky voice and sounded ‘a sandwich short of a picnic’. Jane guessed it was the same person Harris had put the phone down on the day before. She looked at the caller’s details. His name was Ashley Brennan and he lived in Hoxton Street. Gathering up her things, she booked out a Storno radio and put it in her handbag before heading off to catch the bus.

There was a faint drizzle and Jane was wearing her police-issue cape to keep herself dry. She laughed as she recalled the night shift on patrol when she and Kath had eaten fish and chips under their capes so no one could see.

She reached the terraced row of new, expensive-looking flats, and checked she had the correct address before pressing the buzzer for the Brennan flat. She waited a while and, when there was no answer, pressed again. A distorted female voice asked if she was delivering groceries. Jane gave her name and rank, then there was a crackle and whistling sound. Unsure if she had been heard she was about to repeat herself when the door clicked open.

Jane walked up the four flights of carpeted stairs and took a few moments to get her breath back before knocking on the door. She noticed there was a mezuzah screwed to the doorframe. The front door was opened by a small, overweight woman in her mid-forties wearing a floral blouse and grey pleated skirt with pink slippers.

‘Mrs Brennan?’ Jane asked, guessing she was Ashley’s mother.

The woman gave her a quizzical, confused look. ‘Thought you were our grocery boy. I was expecting an early delivery.’

‘Mrs Brennan?’ Jane asked again.

The woman pressed her finger to her right ear and Jane heard a high-pitched whistling sound.

‘I’m very deaf, what do you want?’

Realizing that she was wearing a hearing aid, Jane spoke loudly and slowly.

‘I am WPC Jane Tennison from Hackney Police Station and I’d like to speak to Ashley Brennan.’

Mrs Brennan called out Ashley’s name and said that a policewoman was here to see him, but there was no reply. She let Jane into the comfortable-looking flat. She knocked on a closed door.

‘Ashley, come out of your room – there’s a policewoman here who wants to talk to you.’

‘ABOUT TIME, LET HER IN.’

‘She is in, dear.’

‘I MEAN IN MY ROOM.’

Jane recognized the squeaky voice coming from the room as the one from the previous morning’s phone call. Mrs Brennan opened the door and gestured for Jane to go in.

‘Do you want me to come in with her?’

‘No,’ Ashley said.

Jane eased past Mrs Brennan, who was pressing her hearing aid and causing it to whistle again.

‘I’m expecting some groceries.’

‘Go away, Mother.’

‘He doesn’t have many visitors. Is it about my disabled parking?’

‘GO AWAY, MOTHER.’

Ashley Brennan was sitting at a large wooden desk on a specially adapted swivel chair, which had a head rest, thick padded arms and an extra wide-cushioned seat. He was obese – at least twenty stone – and had a huge protruding stomach and thick fat arms, but tiny feminine hands. His size made him look much older than Jane suspected he actually was. He wore a cotton T-shirt and baggy tracksuit trousers, and as he swivelled round to face Jane she noticed he had small feet encased in embroidered slippers.

On the desk there was a telephone, filing tray, jeweller’s-type magnifying glass, tweezers, soldering iron and bits and pieces of wire lying around next to an electrical circuit board of some sort. Behind him, on top of a long wooden cabinet, there were two reel-to-reel tape-recording machines and two large pieces of electrical equipment with numerous dials and yellow-coloured arrow meters. Jane suspected they were radios of some sort, but only because they were attached to a large aerial hanging out of the window.

‘She’s as deaf as a post,’ he said.

Ashley had a yarmulke perched on the back of his head and his hair was thick and dark, parted to one side and oiled flat, but rather strangely he had a handsome face with dark eyes and a small nose.

‘I’d like to see your identification, please.’

‘But I’m in uniform.’

‘You can never be too careful.’

Jane opened her shoulder bag and handed him her warrant card which he inspected and handed back. He invited her to pull over the chair that was next to his single bed and said she could use one of his pillows as a cushion.

She declined the offer of the pillow, picked up the chair, and sat opposite him.

‘I have to say it’s about time someone took me seriously. I have called so many times, and to all the local stations. I was thinking about calling Scotland Yard or writing an official complaint to the Commissioner about it.’

She sat poised with her notebook and pencil ready, assuring him that as a police officer and employee of the Commissioner she was there in an official capacity and would treat anything he told her seriously.

‘Before we start can I just have your full name, age and date of birth for the record, please, Ashley?’ Jane asked.

‘Ashley, no middle names, and my surname is Brennan. Aged twenty and born 20.6.52.’

‘You’re nearly twenty-one then,’ Jane remarked.

He opened his desk drawer and took out a large diary then swivelled round in his chair and pointed to the radio equipment.

‘The one on the left is an RCA AR88, renowned for its performance and reliability as a surveillance and intercept radio during the Second World War. Works on six bands and uses fourteen tubes in a double preselection superheterodyne circuit . . . which I have modified to listen to the radio channels as well. The one next to it I’m very proud of as I built it myself. It’s an SSB transceiver with silicon transistors and Plessey integrated circuits.’

The high-pitched voice she had recognized was even more obvious as Ashley needed to take short breaths between sentences.

Jane wished he’d get to the point of why he’d called the police, but she didn’t want to offend him further by showing a lack of interest.

‘And the bits on the desk, is that your latest creation?’ she asked, hoping he wouldn’t go into too much detail.

He looked at her as if she’d asked a silly question. ‘No, it’s the circuit board and bits for my mother’s bedside radio that went on the blink. It’s obvious I’m fixing it.’

Jane asked politely if he could move on to exactly why he wanted to speak with a police officer, and poised her pen ready to write in her notebook.

‘I inadvertently picked up the transmission using the RCA when I was trying to tune into a station. At first I thought it was radio hams messing about, but the other night I became really concerned about their conversation. One was using the call sign Eagle and referred to the other as Brushstroke. Eagle said, ”Stay quiet, it’s a rozzer,” which of course I knew was another name for one of you lot. Then there was a loud, metal-type banging sound and Eagle got quite panicky saying the rozzer was looking in the café window, but they seemed to relax when he’d gone. I’ve a list of dates and times for everything I recorded on my reel-to-reel.’

Jane stopped writing and looked up at him. ‘Sorry, did you say recorded?’

‘Yes, I like to record radio programmes and listen to the ones I enjoy again. This was different, very suspicious with no names used, and they were not trained in radio etiquette as sometimes after saying “over” they continued to speak instead of waiting for a reply.’ He gasped and coughed.

Jane asked if he was able to determine the area that the transmission came from and he snapped impatiently that it could be a one- to two-mile radius, which in terms of London covered a lot of possible locations. He then detailed all the times he had overheard the conversations and said he had joined all the recordings together so the police could listen to the complete tape without changing reels.