Prime Suspect 3: Silent Victims (25 page)

It came out in a gabble. “I dunno, she’s not on tonight, she had a cold. She’s stayin’ at Mark Lewis’s.” Vera let out a long quivering moan. “It’s the truth, Jimmy, honestly . . . that’s how she knows everything.”

Jackson looked back along the street. A taxi was standing outside the wrought iron, glass-domed entrance to the club. Two figures came out, tripping across the pavement in their high heels, hurrying to avoid the thickening rain. One of them wore a red wig. They climbed in.

Jackson let go of Vera. She dodged past him, staggering in a blind panic, banging into the wall.

Half-stunned, she heard the car door slam. Jackson drove off the pavement and did a U-turn, blue exhaust fumes billowing up. Vera leaned her head against the wall, watching his taillights disappear, feeling the trickle of blood on her cheek.

Otley had gone the whole hog and taken the lot of them to a greasy spoon diner two blocks along from Waterloo Station. Leading the ragged-arsed, snot-nosed, filthy, stinking tribe in, he felt like Fagin, devious mastermind of London’s poor dispossessed youngsters, the forgotten underclass.

Alan Thorpe he knew well, most of the others he knew by sight. He made it his business to put names to faces. Tennison might have muscled in on his graft in uncovering the kids in Manchester and Cardiff, but Otley was confident that there was more than one way of skinning a cat. This sorry, scurvy bunch held the key. Otley was about to turn it.

He bought burgers and fries all around, with plenty of Cokes, milk shakes, and tea to wash them down. They occupied two tables, set at right angles, in a corner next to the steamy window. He told them to keep the noise down, but with food inside them, fags lit, they were a rowdy, foul-mouthed lot. More than once, Otley saw the manageress casting a disapproving look to their corner. But with their bellies full, he’d got them relaxed, got them talking, and the last thing he wanted was to start throwing his weight around by showing his I.D. So he held tight, hoping there wouldn’t be trouble.

Otley reared back, hands raised defensively, as another kid sidled in and sat down.

“Hey, what is this! Think I’m made of money, do you?” The kid’s two grimy fists rested on the scratched Formica table. “S’okay—here!” Otley tossed a fiver. “Get what you want, and a cuppa for me.”

The kid, whose name was Frankie, scurried off to the counter like a starving rat.

Alan Thorpe went on with his tale. “So how it works—he, Jackson, picks yer up from the station, right?” He squinted up at Otley with his one good eye. “Wiv me? An’ that ’ouse—one you was at—he takes us there, like, an’ he—”

“He never done me!” Disco Driscoll boasted, tapping his chest. He looked about twelve but was possibly fourteen, a half-caste kid in a torn green baseball jacket. Filthy matted hair hanging over his eyes, mouth smeared with ketchup. “I got me own gaff!”

“No, you ’aven’t, yer fuckin’ liar!” Thorpe shot back.

Otley half-covered his face, looking over his hand at the other customers. It was after one in the morning, but it was still pretty busy, with overspill trade from the station.

“I’m not,” Driscoll said, pulling a face. He turned to Otley, and said fiercely, as if it was a matter of real pride, “He done ’em all, but he ain’t done me, he done ’em all.” He gave a defiant nod.

A pug-nosed boy named Gary Rutter said, “He keeps yer there, like, gives yer stuff. He gives yer gear, so, like, yer don’t mind stayin’—know what I mean?”

Frankie returned from the counter with a cheeseburger and fries, a raspberry milk shake for himself and tea for Otley, slopped over into the thick saucer. He plonked the change down onto the greasy table, strewn with mashed chips and ketchup.

“The woman behind the counter said you can’t take the cup out, and that you’re a pervert!” he chortled, giving Otley a gap-toothed grin.

“Know what that means, do you?” Otley asked Frankie.

“Him? He don’t know nuffink,” Alan Thorpe said derisively.

A middle-aged man and woman got up from a nearby table and went out, muttering darkly and shaking their heads. Otley huddled over the table, keeping his voice low.

“Did you all know Connie?”

“Nah, we don’t know him—pervert!” Alan Thorpe jeered.

Otley cuffed him lightly on the back of the head. “You know what pervert is—I’ve seen you in a film with Connie . . .”

Alan Thorpe went a mottled pink as the table erupted with raucous laughter. Hooting loudly, the lads started throwing chips at him.

“He’s a pervert, he’s a pervert!” Frankie chanted.

Incensed, Alan Thorpe reached over and belted Frankie on the side of the head. It was getting out of hand. Otley waved his arms.

“Come-on-now! Cut it out, or we’ll be thrown out.”

Alan Thorpe wasn’t through. He swung another punch at Frankie, then grabbed a fork and tried to stab him with it.

Otley pushed him down, fingers splayed against the bony chest, and slumped back into his own seat. “What am I?” he asked wearily. “The pied piper?”

Lillie turned the key in the front door and let himself into the gloomy passageway leading up to Mark Lewis’s flat. He passed the key back to Haskons, who slid it into its hiding place under the outdoor rubber mat.

Across the street, Jackson drew up, and killed the lights. He saw the shadowy figure in the dress and red wig stooping to replace the key. So Red was sick, was he? Too ill to do his act. That bitch Vera had lied again. It was all fucking lies.

In the dim streetlight he watched the figure straighten up and totter inside, lifting the hem of his dress. The door closed. Jackson patted the pocket of his leather coat, just to reassure himself. A light went on in the flat above. Jackson lifted the handle and the door clicked open.

The manageress had the phone in her hand. She peered around from the kitchen doorway, keeping a beady disapproving eye on the gang in the corner. Ten of them now, not including the bloke, flocking in like wasps around a honey pot. She set her jaw and started to dial.

Fag in his mouth, Alan Thorpe was on a boasting streak. Not yet fifteen, he was a forty-a-day lad, when he had the money.

“I done arson, robbery, indecent assault and . . .” He frowned into space. “Can’t remember the other, I got four though,” he bragged.

Otley needled him. “Not as many as Connie.”

“Connie? Huh! All he ever done was dirty old men.”

“That wasn’t what I heard.”

“When he lived at Jackson’s he went out more’n any of us,” Alan Thorpe confided, looking up through his fair lashes. “He liked it.”

“That’s true, that’s true,” Disco Driscoll said. Probably high on lighter fuel or something, Otley suspected, which accounted for his slurred, rapid speech. “That’s true—he went for whole weekends, didn’t he?”

“Yeah! That film I did was nuffink!” Alan Thorpe stubbed out his cigarette on a paper plate and stuck it upright in the sugar bowl. “I just got me arse tanned—me dad gimme worse. Connie was doin’ the nobs.”

The heads around the table nodded. Connie had been chosen for better things, moved in higher circles. Several of them—Thorpe, Disco Driscoll, Kenny Lloyd, Gary Rutter, Frankie Smith—at one time or another had served time at Jackson’s place, observed Connie’s comings and goings. None of them liked him, stuck-up little poofter.

Disco Driscoll fixed blurred eyes on Otley. “He wasn’t like us, different you know, always sniffin’ around, lookin’ for fresh meat, I reckon he got a back hander. . . .” He tilted his matted head, seeking Otley’s ear. “You know Billy OK Matthews? Well, when he first came up, he was, what . . . ?” He looked to Alan Thorpe. “Ten? Yeah, he’d be about ten. His mother’s bloke raped him, so he’s a bit—you know.” Driscoll screwed his finger into his head. “Connie nabbed Billy fast, didn’t he?” he said, gazing blearily at the others.

“You think Connie was paid for finding young kids then?” Otley said casually. Inside, he felt the opposite of casual. His nose twitched. He could almost smell it, he was that close. He’d got their confidence, and they were spilling the lot, only they didn’t know it. To them it was just shop talk.

Alan Thorpe nodded, lighting another cigarette. He sucked in the smoke like a seasoned professional, which was what he was. “Yeah, for the films like . . .”

“Who was the bloke in the mortarboard?”

“The what?” Kenny Lloyd said, sniffing up a greenish candle drip from the end of his nose.

“The gown,” Otley said, plucking at the lapels of his raincoat. “He had a cane.”

Kenny despised them, and his pale young face showed it, mouth twisted. “He’s a pervert, they’re all perverts. Big posh ’ouses, lotta dough—dirty bastards!”

Otley’s heart was trip-hammering. He kept his eyes hooded as he looked around at them, shaking his head disbelievingly, grinning his snide skeptical grin.

“You scruffy buggers were never taken to posh houses—who you kiddin’?”

Haskons knelt on the mat, leaning into the bath, soaping his face and hair. The shower curtain hung down, obscuring his upper body. The red wig was balanced on the edge of the washbasin, a bedraggled ferret of a thing after Haskons had sweated into it all night. He still wore his dress, open down the back, the half undone corset straining at its straps.

He groped for the shower head on its flexible stem. The water was too hot. Blindly, he spun the taps, adjusting the mixture. The water hissed out and gurgled down the drain, covering the creak of the door as Jackson came in sideways, bringing his hand out of his pocket, the click as the knife sprang open also lost in the hissing and gurgling, and in Haskons’s grunt as he bowed his head into the bath.

Slowly, Jackson reached out to the plastic curtain. Drag it down over the bitch. Wrap it around her and in with the knife, clean and neat and quick. His fingers gripped the edge of the curtain. The plastic rings clinked and jostled on the rod.

Haskons raised his head, soapy water running down his face. “Can you untie the ruddy corset strings! I can’t get it off . . .”

He heard the plastic rings clash and ping as Jackson tore the curtain off the rod. Blinking wildly, trying to clear the soap from his eyes, Haskons saw the gleaming blade. He twisted his body, half leaning into the bath, his feet churning at the mat as he tried desperately to get out of this exposed and vulnerable position. From the corner of his eye he saw the blade swoop. Tensing his body against the impact, he swung out his right arm in a helpless reflex action, and in the next instant had the breath knocked from his body as Lillie hurled himself at Jackson. Tangled together, the three of them crashed to the tiled floor between the bath and the washbasin.

Lillie had hold of Jackson’s knife arm, but he wouldn’t let go. Haskons struggled to get up, feet slithering. He grabbed out for support, hitting the shower head, which spun around, spraying water everywhere.

Lillie got a handful of Jackson’s hair and held him still while he punched him in the face, really laying into him. Jackson bucked and squirmed, boots flying. Lillie hit him again. “Drop it!” A boot whacked into Lillie’s ribs, making him gasp. “Get the bastard’s legs!” he yelled at Haskons.

Together they pinned Jackson to the floor, Haskons hanging on to his legs. Jackson tore his head free from Lillie’s grasp and butted him in the face, making blood spurt. This made Lillie mad. He cracked Jackson across the mouth. He dug his thumbs into Jackson’s wrist, jerked it viciously, and the knife went skittering away. This time he got two handfuls of hair and banged Jackson’s head against the tiled floor. Then for good measure smacked it sideways into the washbasin pedestal. This seemed to work, so he did it again, twice more.

“That’s enough,” Haskons panted in his ear. Lillie did it again.

“HEY—THAT’S ENOUGH! Get off him!”

“It’s my blood,” Lillie said. He was trembling all over. He still had Jackson’s spiked greasy hair entwined in his white-knuckled fists. “And I’m not gettin’ off him,” he snarled. “Tie his legs.”

Otley wasn’t altogether surprised when, behind Disco Driscoll’s tousled head, he saw the red and blue stripe of a Panda car sliding in, its blue light casting a ghostly aura through the steamy window.

They all trooped out, Otley leading the way, and stood on the wet pavement, the lads jostling one another and sniggering. The two uniformed PCs were from south of the river; they didn’t know Otley, and he didn’t know them. He took one of them aside and produced his I.D. The other policeman, barely out of his teens himself, kept watch on the motley bunch of giggling boys.

Alan Thorpe grinned up at him insolently, nodding toward Otley. “He’s a copper, you stupid git!” The lads hooted, loving it.

The young policeman made a grab at him.

“Leave him alone, he’s with me,” Otley said, coming over.

“See, what did I tell you?” Thorpe chortled, and gave the young PC the finger.

Otley beckoned. Alan Thorpe and Kenny Lloyd followed him a few paces. “You two want a ride around in a Panda? Take me to that posh house? Yeah?” He slid his hand inside his jacket. “Tenner in it—what d’you say?”

The two lads exchanged looks. Thorpe nodded. “Okay.”

They had only a hazy idea of where the house was—“Somewhere just off the Heath,” according to Kenny. With the two uniformed officers in front, Otley and the boys crammed in the back, they drove up through Highgate and circled the northeast fringe of Hampstead Heath. Up here, the large detached houses stood safe and secure behind tall hedges and wrought-iron fences. The red ruby eye of a burglar alarm glowed from each one. When they’d covered Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, and Aylmer Road north of the golf course, Otley was growing impatient. “Now, come on, this is the fifth road. Is it here or not?”