A Passion So Deadly

Nine

Simon had obviously slept in the spare room. Rose did not check whether or not he was still in bed. She just showered and dressed as quickly as possible, grabbed a quick cup of tea without which she really could not start the day, and left the house.

It was just before seven. There would be the usual team briefing in the murder incident room at 8.30 a.m. After that Rose planned another visit to the Crescent Hotel. She felt the key to it all must lie there somewhere. The only chance of tracing the mysterious Mrs Pattinson seemed to be through the Crescent. She had intended to blitz the place as soon as the identification of the body was over and she was actively looking forward to giving that slimy little manager a good going over.

The early briefing passed uneventfully. Certainly nobody had any kind of break-through to report. Rose gave the obligatory pep talk, stressed the importance of finding Mrs Pattinson, and then, accompanied by Peter Mellor, set off for the Crescent Hotel.

On the way out, two veteran detective constables were standing chatting by the coffee machine. Rose had particularly good hearing. Sometimes she was not sure whether this was a blessing or a curse.

‘There she bloody goes again — and God knows when she last interviewed anyone before getting the big murder,’ she overheard one remark sarcastically to the other when they presumed she was safely out of ear-shot.

She didn’t know whether Peter Mellor had also heard, but she was aware of the old-fashioned look he gave her as they climbed into their car. Most rank-and-file policemen and women think that no officer over the level of sergeant ought to be on the road at all, let alone interviewing suspects. Certainly the place for a senior investigating officer is considered to be firmly behind his or her desk. Indeed, Rose knew she was going to have to watch it or she would face censure from above for doing too much running around and not enough organising. Perhaps it was because she was still new to the top job that she could not resist.

At the Crescent Hotel DS Mellor remained stiffly disapproving of everything — of a woman buying sex, of the hotel, of Avon Escorts, and of the murdered young man whose unsavoury way of life he seemed to regard almost as a personal slight. But Mellor’s grim presence was almost a bonus when Rose gave the hotel manager the third degree she had been so looking forward to.

She had already discovered from the housekeeper that, as far as the woman knew, Mrs Pattinson had not once been still in residence when the maids had arrived to clean her room in the mornings. Rose suspected that the mysterious Mrs Pattinson slipped quietly away as soon as she finished doing whatever it was she did with the young men from Avon.

‘She never stayed overnight, that’s the truth, isn’t it?’ Rose was quite openly aggressive with Henry Bannerman now.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Bannerman replied, but he was not nearly as smugly superior as he had been on the night that Marty Morris’s body was discovered. Rose wondered exactly what he was hiding. She was quite sure there was something.

‘You must have known what Mrs Pattinson was using your hotel for, it was quite obvious, surely?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Bannerman, attempting to bristle, but not succeeding very well.

The interview was conducted in the hotel manager’s office, Bannerman sitting behind his desk, DCI Piper sitting on the upright chair opposite him and DS Mellor standing by her side. The sergeant moved menacingly forwards and leaned on Henry Bannerman’s desk so that his face was only inches away from that of the other man.

‘This place is little more than a knocking shop, that’s what I think,’ he said. ‘And personally I’m not going to be happy until I’ve closed it down.’

The sergeant’s voice was cold and quiet. Rose found him quite frightening when he was like this, so the effect on Henry Bannerman came as no surprise.

The pompous little man cringed in his seat. There was no sign at all now of the patronising attitude which had previously so irritated Rose. That gave her considerable satisfaction. But nothing much else was gained by the confrontation. If Henry Bannerman knew anything more about Mrs Pattinson, Avon Escorts, or Marty Morris and his violent death, then he certainly wasn’t telling.

As the Detective Chief Inspector and her sergeant left the hotel, Peter Mellor’s mobile phone rang. He listened in silence for a couple of minutes and it seemed to Rose that his face hardened as he did so.

‘It seems that our young friend batted for both sides,’ he said grimly. ‘He had a gay lover who didn’t like what his boy did for a living one little bit. Obsessively jealous, he’s been described as apparently.’

‘We might be getting somewhere at last, then,’ commented Rose. ‘Do we have a name?’

‘Yep. Smoothie called Jonathon Lee. We know him apparently. Given to outbursts of violence, particularly if he’s been on the crack. Into that too and deals in the stuff, so it’s more than likely young Marty was as well. They’ve picked him up, by the way. Taking him into the nick now.’

‘What are we waiting for?’ asked Rose.

Mellor regarded her without a deal of enthusiasm.

‘Shouldn’t we get a couple of DCs to talk to him, boss?’ he said.

Rose knew that was what she should do. Mellor wasn’t often wrong. That was why she liked to work so closely with him. She also knew what the lads had started to call him too. And if she knew, she assumed that so did he. ‘Her ladyship’s bum boy.’ Rose was the wrong sex, too young and had the wrong colour hair. Whether or not she was a good police officer was not always a factor in the Avon and Somerset Constabulary.

No matter. Other people’s opinions were something else she couldn’t worry about. She could only do things her way.

In Chalmpton Peverill that morning, Constance could not concentrate on everyday farm routine, however hard she tried. She went through the motions, of course, but her mind kept wandering. She had so much to think about.

Midway through the morning she gave in to temptation, poured herself a whisky and sat down at the kitchen table with the telephone. Her call was not successful and was in any case interrupted by Freddie in search of coffee.

‘Who was that?’ he asked in an automatic sort of way as she replaced the receiver in its cradle.

‘Nobody,’ she said.

Freddie glanced at her inquiringly.

She realised she had sounded short.

‘I was trying to phone William,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t there.’

Freddie’s glance switched to the large whisky before her. It was unlike Constance to drink so early in the day. She realised another explanation was called for.

‘My tummy’s a bit dicky again and I thought a drop of Scotch might settle it,’ she said, and, seeing the instant panic this simple remark aroused in Freddie, immediately wished she hadn’t.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You’re not still being sick, are you?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing, honestly.’

‘I wish you’d go to the doctor, you look so tired.’ He took her chin in one hand, raising her face slightly towards him.

‘I’m all right, really,’ she protested.

‘Have a lie down anyway, I do wish you would.’

‘This afternoon,’ she promised, and made herself flash him a cheery smile.

Jonathon Lee, Marty Morris’s lover, was every bit as smooth as Sergeant Mellor had promised. He was a white man in his late thirties, of average height, slimly built, beautifully dressed, meticulously courteous and, on first acquaintance, appeared deceptively pleasant in manner. His pupils were dilated, Rose noticed, a sure sign of drug abuse, but she could appreciate what young Marty Morris had seen in the older man. Jonathon Lee possessed considerable charm, and it was only as the interview progressed and he became slightly agitated that he displayed the other side to his nature. His mouth tightened and turned downwards, his voice dropped almost to a hoarse whisper, and everything about him led Rose to suspect that he was capable of great cruelty. He was wearing a heavy gold ring on the little finger of his right hand which he twirled continually with the thin bony fingers of the left.

Rose found the mannerism inexplicably disconcerting. It was definitely easy for her to believe that Lee had beaten up young Marty whenever he felt like it, and Marty could well have been afraid to leave him even if he had wanted to. But if their information so far was correct he may not have wanted to. Because if the lad had been hooked on crack cocaine and Lee was a dealer with almost unlimited access to supplies of the drug, that would have made Lee the most attractive man in the world to Marty Morris, regardless of his tendencies towards violence.

Lee was an obvious suspect. Not only did he have a history of mental instability and drug abuse, neither could he account satisfactorily for his movements on the evening of Marty’s death.

‘I’d been on the crack, you know how it is,’ he muttered.

‘No,’ Rose retorted sharply. ‘I don’t. Tell me.’

‘Well, when I’ve scored I don’t know where I am or what’s going on, sometimes, you see...’ Lee paused, as if realising what he had said. ‘No, no, I’d never hurt Marty. It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t do anything like that...’

‘Mr Lee, Marty Morris had a rather nasty bruise, just beginning to fade, on his right temple. Were you responsible for that, by any chance?’

‘’Course not.’

‘We know you can be violent, Mr Lee. Particularly when you are under the influence of drugs. You had a lover whom you knew was a male prostitute and you hated that. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you never hit Marty during your relationship?’

‘Well, I may have given him a slap once or twice, but that’s all, honest.’

Lee tried one of his most charming smiles, a little late in the day, but Rose could not get any further.

‘Bound to be him, guv,’ said Peter Mellor over a lunch-time drink in the Compton Arms. ‘Motive, opportunity, everything. And out of his mind.’

‘What about Mrs Pattinson then?’ asked Rose. ‘If Lee is our killer, where does she fit in?’

‘We’ve only got Paolo’s evidence that she called at all.’

‘OK. But he is so sure of himself and has no reason that I can think of to lie. Let’s assume for the moment that Mrs Pattinson did call.’

‘Well, maybe she waited for Marty, then saw Lee attack him and did a runner.’

‘Peter, we believe that she pays young men to have sex with her in a hotel room. This time it seems that she phoned Avon Escorts yet she hadn’t even checked in to the Crescent,’ said Rose. ‘It just doesn’t add up.’

‘At least Lee’s got more or less the right-sized feet,’ said Mellor. ‘We’ve now checked that those were Timberland bootprints, and they’ve been measured. Size ten. Lee says he takes a nine. All that calls for is a thick pair of socks.’

Rose sighed. ‘I know what you’re getting at, Peter. You wouldn’t expect a woman to be wearing a pair of boots that big. But you see, I actually reckon that smoothie Lee would be no more likely to be wearing a bloody great pair of Timberland boots than a woman.’

Mellor was making an effort to concentrate on analysing the facts, Rose knew that, but he still looked grim. She suspected that he was thinking about the effect this latest bit of juicy news about Marty Morris’s sexuality would have on the victim’s father, the man Mellor seemed to have such regard for. The Reverend Morris’s little boy was about to be revealed to be not only a male prostitute but also gay, and possibly a junkie. She could understand why Peter Mellor would like the case buttoned up fast, even more than she would. At least the Reverend Morris’s agony would not then be prolonged.

Rose watched her sergeant take a swig of his pint, his face screwed up almost as if the drink were poisoning him. He certainly wasn’t enjoying it, but then he didn’t seem likely to be able to enjoy anything much at the moment.

‘Why don’t you tell me about it, Peter?’ she invited.

The sergeant put down his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. ‘Don’t know what you mean, boss.’

‘Peter, this case is really getting to you. It’s unlike you, that’s all.’

Mellor managed a wry smile and took another drink of his beer, this time without quite as much apparent distaste. When he spoke again his voice was quiet, his manner pensive.

‘I grew up in St Paul’s, you know that. In one of those tower blocks down the Stapleton Road — and you don’t get much rougher than that. I had no father — well, none that I ever knew. My mother was too busy trying to scrape a living to take much notice of me. She wasn’t too fussy how, either...’

Mellor paused. Rose studied him enquiringly. Was he suggesting that his mother had been on the game? If he was, it seemed he did not intend to spell it out.

‘When she wasn’t working all she wanted to do was party,’ he went on. ‘She was pissed or stoned half the time, and I ran wild as a kid. One way and another it’s a miracle I’m sitting here with you, boss. I was destined to end up in and out of prison myself rather than putting villains behind bars, no doubt about it.

‘The Reverend ran a youth club. He saw it as a kind of mission in life to try and give a chance to youngsters who didn’t have any. He always had time. For a bit he was like a kind of father to me. Nearest I ever had. More than anything else he taught me that I had a brain, and how to use it.’

The sergeant had a faraway look in his eye. Rose realised that until this moment she had known absolutely nothing about his background beyond the fact that he had been a graduate entrant to the force.

‘So, if you were so wild, how did the Reverend Morris tame you the way he did?’ she asked. ‘He must be a very persuasive man.’

Peter Mellor smiled again. ‘He is. He makes you trust him and he makes you want to please him. But there was more to it than that. I was just ten years old when I was caught trying to break into a car to nick the radio.

‘There used to be this policeman then who patrolled St Paul’s, an old-fashioned copper. A big man, in every sense of the word. He wasn’t put off by the riots either. He was like the Reverend, he believed that kids like me should always be given just one chance to make good. And he ran his patch by his own rules. So he didn’t take me in, didn’t put me through juvenile court or any of that crap. Instead he gave me a deal. I had to join Reverend Morris’s youth club, I had to do exactly what the Reverend told me, and if I didn’t keep my nose clean, the next time he caught me he’d lock me up and throw away the key. I believed him. I understood deals. I was streetwise.

‘That was the beginning of it. The Reverend made me feel as if I was worth something. Nobody had done that before. I started working at school instead of fooling around all the time. The rest is history.’

He paused again, then, as if remembering that he was supposed to be a coolly cynical police detective, added: ‘Sorry, all a bit cliché-ridden really, isn’t it?’

Rose leaned back in her chair. ‘And that’s why the Marty Morris thing makes you so angry?’

‘Of course. He was born with more chances than any black kid in Bristol, with a father like that. Look what he became. A rent boy, a poof and a druggie. It makes me sick.’

Rose could see the sergeant’s brow furrowing again. She still didn’t like to hear him talking like that, although maybe she understood his motivation a little more. And she remained much less convinced than most of her colleagues seemed to be, not just Peter Mellor, that Jonathon Lee would eventually be proven guilty of murder. But then, neither was she as prejudiced, either racially or sexually, as most of them. She decided to try to lighten the moment.

‘Speaking of clichés, don’t tell me it was because of that one good policeman that the poor little underprivileged black kid grew up to join the honkie police force?’ she asked, her affectionately bantering tone taking the edge from her words.

‘No way,’ said Mellor. ‘I wanted to go to university and I didn’t want to survive on a grant. It was either the police or the army and I reckoned I stood marginally less chance of getting shot if I became a cop.’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ responded Rose with a grin. ‘I’ve always had you down as a cold calculating bastard, Mellor. I’d hate to have to change my opinion...’

The sergeant gave a little snort which may have been the beginning of a laugh.

‘And you, boss? So what about you? Why did you become a cop?’

Rose looked away. It was so long since she had even thought about it.

She had been born and brought up in the Somerset seaside town of Weston-super-Mare. Her father, whom she adored, had held down a stupefyingly boring job as a clerk with the local council. And he worked ceaselessly in order to satisfy the unquenchable desires of Rose’s mother to keep up appearances. In latter years Rose had regarded her mother as a kind of slimmer Hyacinth Bucket without any of the humour.

Rose’s father, still only in his early forties, died of cancer when she was thirteen and Rose had blamed her mother entirely for this on the grounds that it was she who had forced him into mindless soul-destroying daily drudgery and therefore destroyed his will to live. Only much later did Rose accept that this arbitrary judgement was completely unfair. But at the time she was going through a stage when she blamed her posturing and rather unintelligent mother — not always so unfairly — for almost everything.

From that moment on Rose had only two great aims in her young life. She wanted to escape from her mother, whose small-minded attitudes she came increasingly to resent and dislike, and at the same time she wanted to shock the woman.

Failing dismally to find a dreadlocked Rasta or anyone else suitably disreputable enough with whom to run away from the lace-curtained terraced house, Rose decided to go to the opposite extreme. She announced that she was going to join the army, ironically the same alternative Mellor had considered to a police career. This also had the required effect. Her mother was horrified — but so, when she began to find out more about her allegedly chosen profession, was Rose. She didn’t like the idea of square bashing one little bit and she certainly was not going to join any outfit which didn’t treat women as equals.

This made her eventual decision to switch her allegiance to the police force even more baffling, Rose reflected wryly. Even now she could recall no positive reasoning behind it. Often, and only half jokingly, she would remark that she could merely assume that she had been going through a stage of having a uniform fetish. However, joining the police also produced the required result of both winning the disapproval of, if not actually shocking, her mother who certainly did not think it a suitable career for a young lady, and efficiently securing Rose’s escape from home.

Something else, quite unexpected, happened. From the moment the nineteen-year-old Rose was taken on as a probationary constable by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary and installed in a Bristol section house, she had known at once that she was in the right place — that she had chanced upon the only job she would ever want. And she knew also that she was going to do everything within her power to get to the very top of her trade. Her determination disturbed her sometimes. Even she sometimes found her habit of getting what she wanted rather disconcerting.

She glanced back at Sergeant Mellor. Oh no, she thought. Oh no, you don’t. This is not going to turn into a mutual therapy session.

‘Why did I become a cop?’ she repeated, smiling. ‘You’ve just given the answer to that, Peter.’

‘Sorry, boss?’

‘Exactly — to hear a man call me boss!’

That night Peter Mellor carried on drinking, which was totally out of character. Normally he rushed straight home to his wife and child at the first opportunity. He was that kind of man.

On this day, though, he was depressed, which was also unusual, and angry with himself. He had lost control on more than one occasion lately. Now he also considered that he had made a fool of himself. He sincerely wished he hadn’t told Rose Piper the story of his life. He’d even come precariously close to telling her his mother had been a Tom, and the only person in the whole world he had ever revealed that to was his wife. He somehow couldn’t have married Rebecca without confiding in her and the complete lack of concern she had demonstrated had made him love her more than ever. The truth about his mother remained Peter Mellor’s deepest, and in his opinion, darkest secret. He could never quite get over the idea that he had in some way been to blame for what his mother had been, or at the very least that he shared what he saw as her shame. He had cut the woman out of his life as soon as he’d become old enough to stand on his own two feet and for some years had succeeded in hardly even thinking about her. Not until this damn case. The DCI was right. It was having quite an effect on him. Certainly it wasn’t like him to open up the way he had. And his lapse had been made all the more apparent, he felt, because the guv’nor had so starkly refused to share the same kind of confidence. Something of a betrayal that, he reckoned. She’d coaxed all that stuff out of him and then backed right off, just making that silly crack about being called boss which had been guaranteed to make him feel even more of a prat.

Sitting alone on a bar stool in a pub which he hoped nobody he knew ever frequented, Mellor ordered a second large whisky chaser for his third pint of bitter. He could feel his head beginning to swim and this was an unfamiliar and disconcerting sensation for him.

Mellor was really fed up. He had considerable respect for Rose, particularly for her flair and intuition — never his strongest qualities, he knew — but she often operated on such a disconcertingly emotional level. Sometimes he longed for a more regulated working life, and rather wished he worked for a straight-down-the-middle old-fashioned sort of copper. Preferably a man too.

He also thought that if Rose Piper didn’t start spending a lot more time at her desk instead of running around trying to do everyone else’s job for them she was going to find herself in big trouble. All he wanted was for this case to be wound up as quickly and efficiently as possible. It was stirring up far too many forbidden memories for him.