Wages of Sin (12 page)

It was a long time before he ceased to pant, and when his breathing slowed and his eyes opened, he found her looking at him curiously. It took him a moment to return fully to that room with the thick velvet curtains and the deep scarlet lampshade. She said, a little reluctantly, ‘You can have a cup of tea before you go if you like. I shan't be going out into the cold again. It's a raw night out there.'

Katie made it a practice not to rush regular customers out of the place. You wanted to encourage them to patronize you again, and most men were foolish enough to believe that you might have a little affection for them, even after money had changed hands.

Yet this time she was glad when the man refused. There had been something very fierce about him at the end, some dangerous force she did not want to analyse too deeply.

Katie Clegg shuddered, wanting only to get back to her children and her other, normal life. She couldn't see any other way of earning the money she needed, but it worried her, sometimes, how much she now knew about men and the darker side of sexual life.

Tom Boyd smiled to himself as he went out into the darkness and privacy of the night. It had been good, that. He had gone further than he'd gone before with that line of sex, and discovered how much the brutality of it excited him. He'd used a certain savagery before; he'd even been checked for it in his early days in the police, when he'd given young thugs more than the rules allowed. But he'd never combined violence with sex in this intoxicating way before.

Perhaps it was his exhilaration which made him careless. He didn't even look up and down the quiet road as he emerged from Katie's house, didn't see the men waiting in the shadows beneath the straggling shrubs at the end of the short front garden. He was opening the door of the Vectra when the hand fell upon his shoulder and the voice said, ‘We'd like a few words with you, sir. At the station in Brunton, if you don't mind.'

Tom Boyd did mind. But as he saw the warrant card in the pale light of the street lamp, he knew there was no escape.

I
t was a huge modern house on a generous plot. It had six bedrooms, six bathrooms, garaging for five cars, and an indoor swimming pool with its own heating plant and changing rooms. Though the building had been completed only three years earlier, the gardens had an established air. Mature trees had been brought in with their huge root-balls intact and planted with special machines.

Money was never in short supply here. Some people called the development vulgar, but they were perhaps a little envious. The rawness of the bricks would merge happily into the setting after a few years. Brunton did not have many places of this quality, and this one would become one of the most desirable of all with the passing of time.

Almost the modern equivalent of the old manor house, where the occupant controlled most of what went on around him. But this was no manor house. This place was an architectural witness to the fact that crime paid. ‘Hurst Leigh' was the name spelt out tastefully in the plaque on the tall gatepost. It was a name devised for something much more modest and rural than this ostentatious pile.

In so far as he loved anything, Joe Johnson loved every brick of this house.

Percy Peach, on the other hand, regarded the edifice with considerable distaste as he studied it through the elaborate wrought-iron security gates at the end of the drive. The place was a reminder to Peach that villains sometimes won, and he did not like that.

The electronic gates eased slowly back after he had rapped out his name into the microphone on the gatepost, and Lucy Blake drove the police Mondeo over the gravel and parked it neatly beneath the high northern elevation of the Johnson mansion. A maid opened the oak door and said, ‘Mr Johnson is expecting you. He's in his study.' Ignoring Peach's snort at the word, she led them over plush carpets into a room with dimensions which most people would have welcomed in a sitting room.

Joe Johnson sat behind a big desk and watched their entry with a sardonic smile. It was a big desk, with a red leather top and an elaborate brass inkstand whose pens were never used. There was a leather Chesterfield on one wall, matching armchairs, where he indicated that his visitors should sit, a table of luxuriant house plants beneath the low Georgian window, prints of Alpine scenes on the walls. A copy of the previous weekend's
Sunday Times
lay on the table. The room's atmosphere of uncontroversial good taste might have been fashioned for a show house in a new development of luxury properties.

The only jarring note was struck by a cinema poster from the
Godfather
series, showing Don Corleone leering at his Mafia henchmen. Peach decided that this lurid and arresting image was the only thing in the room chosen by Johnson himself.

Joe Johnson sat back on his desk chair and looked down on the two he had positioned carefully below him in the armchairs. ‘Thought I'd have our little discussion here at home,' he said with a smile which would have sat well on a shark. ‘Don't like the filth coming into my working environment: it gives the workers a bad impression.'

Peach returned the smile with interest. ‘We could always do this at the station, if you prefer it.'

‘I don't think so. It's a long time since I was on a farm, but I distinctly recall that I didn't like the smell of pigs.'

Peach looked round the luxurious modern room. ‘Didn't think you'd be a
Sunday Times
reader, Johnson: part of the image, is it?'

Johnson gave him an oily smile. ‘It's not this week's edition. It's from January 2003. I keep it for the News Review section. There are two whole pages about the cock-ups the police made in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. I enjoy reading accounts of police incompetence.'

Lucy Blake decided she'd had enough of hungry dogs circling each other. She said, ‘I didn't tell you why we had made this appointment, Mr Johnson. We want to speak to you about the murder of Sarah Dunne.'

Johnson ignored her for a moment whilst he finished his eye contact with Peach. Then he swung his chair through thirty degrees to look her unhurriedly up and down, letting his gaze linger on the nyloned knees where they met the leather of the chair. It took Lucy a real effort of will not to pull at the hem of her skirt; she wished irrelevantly that she had worn trousers to come here. Against her wishes, she found herself saying, ‘That's the girl who was killed last Friday.'

Johnson nodded. ‘I thought I'd heard the name. She was murdered, wasn't she? And you haven't solved it yet, or you wouldn't be here looking for Joe Johnson's help! Isn't there some statistic which says that if you don't solve a murder mystery within the first week you don't solve it at all? Your week will be up tonight – and Miss Marple here obviously still hasn't a clue!' He turned back to the scowling Peach, then laughed at his witticism. The mirth did not extend to his cold grey eyes.

He reached into the top drawer of the desk, extracted a cigar, removed the band, and lit it carefully, in a long drawn-out charade of contempt. ‘I'd offer you one, Peach, but I know you mustn't smoke on duty. And I'm sure this pretty lady isn't the kind of dyke who goes in for fat cigars.'

Peach tried not to show his physical tension. This odious man had defrauded the public of millions, had made more millions from vice, had almost certainly killed men, or had them killed. But in this context he was still officially a member of the public, helping the police with their enquiries. He was not under arrest, could refuse to answer their questions, could dismiss them from his house at whatever moment he chose. He said through clenched teeth, ‘So where were you last Friday night between nine and eleven, Johnson?'

Johnson grinned, his grey eyes as expressionless as stone. ‘You can do better than that, Peach. For the record, I expect I was in one of my clubs. I usually am, on a Friday night. But you don't for a moment think that I killed that stupid girl.'

‘Your hard men might have killed her. Your enforcers.' He rolled his contempt round the last word.

‘What a vivid imagination you have, Peach! It seems to have become more vivid, since your promotion.' He tapped the first grey disc of cigar ash into an ash tray, enjoying telling the man three yards away from him that he knew all about his elevation to DCI.

Lucy Blake said, ‘You said the girl was “stupid”, Mr Johnson. What reason have you to call her that, if you never knew her?'

For a moment, he was disconcerted. Joe Johnson was not used to being challenged these days. He was surrounded by yes-men; even the most violent people among his entourage were there to do his bidding, not to query his thinking. He said, ‘Did I call her stupid? Well, perhaps that's because my experience has led me to think of all girls as stupid. Sorry about that, darling!'

She tried to mimic his insulting grin, to throw it back at him as a mirror would. ‘You can do better than that, Mr Johnson, if you choose to. Even you.'

He looked at her for a moment, refusing to be offended, letting a leer creep over the flat features, trying hard to convey to her just what he would like to do to her in other circumstances. Then he said, ‘All right. I'm sorry that poor girl was killed, but she was stupid to be roaming the streets of Brunton on her own at that time of night. It's a dangerous place after dark. The police don't seem able to keep order, you see!'

‘It's not easy with your gorillas roaming free,' said Peach.

‘Don't expect me to shed crocodile tears for that girl. Any girl who goes round trying to sell herself is asking for trouble.'

It was his first mistake: probably the result of overconfidence, of enjoying the discomfiture of the CID officers too much.

Peach said, ‘How'd you know she was on the game, Johnson?'

‘It was in the papers.'

‘No. That information has not been released.'

A pause. Johnson puffed his cigar and smiled. ‘I must have assumed that any young girl who was on the streets at that hour was trying her hand at tarting. And it seems I was right. Perhaps I should be in the CID!'

‘She'd been warned off, hadn't she? Warned not to interfere in a prostitution racket controlled by Joe Johnson.'

‘Don't know what you mean, I'm sure. Prostitution racket? I make my money legitimately, from my casinos and my clubs. And not just round here, either! I make more than a rozzer could ever dream of making, Piggy Peach!' Joe Johnson looked unhurriedly round the warm, spacious room and out at the grounds to emphasize his point. ‘She was asking for trouble, being on Alexandra Street at that time of night.'

‘Know where she was killed, do you, Joe? Well, we'd expect that, when it was one of your men who topped her.' Peach's black eyes stared triumphantly from beneath his bald pate.

‘She was killed on the streets, up that way somewhere. I'm sure I read that. Or heard it on the television.'

‘You didn't, because that information also has not been released. Sarah Dunne's body was found in a shed, on a mill site that had been cleared for rebuilding. The television pictures showed that scene, and the newspaper and radio reports implied that she died there, because we haven't told anyone any different. We don't know exactly where she died, or didn't until now. It's interesting that you should be able to enlighten us. But not unexpected. That's why we came to see you.'

‘I don't know where she died.'

‘Can't expect us to believe that now, Joe.' Peach was somehow making effective bricks out of tiny wisps of straw.

‘If I happened to realize she'd been killed elsewhere and then dumped in the shed, it was just a lucky guess.'

‘You're too modest, Johnson. Not lucky, and not a guess, I'd say. Just well-informed.'

‘I know nothing about this girl's death. You can't pin it on me, Peach!

‘Make a note of this conversation, will you, DS Blake? Put down that Mr Johnson knew that the girl was on the game and knew exactly where she died, when that information has not been given in any official press release.'

Lucy went through the elaborate ritual of producing her small gold-plated ball pen and making an entry in her notebook. Johnson affected a lack of interest, but his nerve broke as the silence stretched and DS Blake wrote diligently. ‘You can't use any of this in a court. I haven't even been cautioned.'

‘True, that. But a prosecuting counsel may ask us about the impressions we formed at this stage of the inquiry, you see. Make an additional note about Mr Johnson's attitude, will you, DS Blake? I leave the actual words to you.' He turned his attention back to the flat-featured man across the desk. ‘She's very good with words, DS Blake. Not just a pretty face, you see.'

‘You won't pin this on me, Peach.' The cloak of urbanity, which had never sat easily upon Joe Johnson, had dropped away completely now. The lips were thin with fury and the scars were showing more clearly on the forehead above the thin, sallow face.

Peach stood up. ‘Not yet, maybe. But give us time. The only weapon the dead have is that they can afford to be patient, you see. One of our officers will be in to your office for a list of your staff: we shall need to question them – thoroughly, in the light of what you've revealed today.'

‘I haven't revealed anything.'

‘Really? Note that, DS Blake. Even the nastiest members of our society are vulnerable, when they do not have self-knowledge. You're making me into quite a philosopher, Joe. Don't leave the area without informing us of your movements, will you?'

Father Devoy said his prayers, but they didn't seem to work. His most frenzied supplications to the Lord seemed worthless, these days, whenever he prayed about himself.

It was Friday night again, a week since that poor girl had died, and Satan was taunting Father John again. He could keep the Devil at bay when he had the work of his ministry to help him. He had put evil to one side whilst he heard Confessions for an hour, listening behind the screen of his airless cubicle to the petty sins of the parish, summoning his weightiest tones for the occasional adulterer or wife-beater. Sometimes, in the worst cases, the two came together, and Father John wondered which was the greater of the evils.