A Passion So Deadly

Eleven

Colin Parker considered himself to be a veteran at the game. His twenty-first birthday was still several weeks away but he had been working for Avon Escorts for almost three years.

It was the last Saturday in November, the 28th of the month, and this was just another job for Colin. He was sitting in a corner of the bar of the Portway Towers, which was generally regarded by Colin and his kind as little more than a super-posh knocking shop. The head porter had been on Avon’s payroll for years, and any lonely businessmen or women staying at the Portway Towers had only to make discreet inquiries in order not to remain lonely for long.

Colin looked idly around the bar. Often, although not tonight, there were faces that he recognised at the Portway. Several of the local Toms sat around there regularly on spec, unbothered by the bar staff in return for a bit of commission occasionally. If you worked for Avon, though, you didn’t have to hang around anywhere on the off-chance. You were almost always pre-booked, and the rates demanded meant your customers were likely to be pretty classy. Colin reckoned he was already firmly established at the top end of his trade.

A glass of Diet Coke was growing warm and flat on the table in front of him. It was a pretty boring drink in which he had lost all interest after the first couple of sips, but Colin wasn’t going to risk spoiling anything by going on the booze. He was on duty, after all.

Colin had blow-dried his silky brown hair meticulously, shaved extra carefully — grateful that he was showing no signs of the adolescent acne which still occasionally troubled him — and was wearing his smartest suit, as instructed.

The woman Colin was waiting for had told Paolo exactly what she wanted. And she had indicated that if she were pleased with her escort’s services, if he turned out to be fully satisfactory in every way, there would be a big bonus for him.

Colin smiled to himself. The murder of Marty Morris did not worry him one bit. Marty had been heavily into the gay scene, and Colin wasn’t. Colin had convinced himself long ago that the only dangers in his game lay with the gay trade — after all, how could a woman hurt him? He was young, fit and strong, wasn’t he? And he did kick boxing down the gym every Friday. It would take some tart to do him any damage. Colin really did not consider himself to be at risk. You weren’t if you were sensible, he reckoned.

In any case Colin had already heard that the police suspected Marty’s boyfriend. Dead right too, in Colin’s opinion. Colin knew Jonathon Lee, they all did. He’d even bought some dope from him once. Colin didn’t touch crack — too dangerous, he’d seen what it did to people — but he liked to smoke the odd joint. Colin reckoned that Jonathon Lee was a nasty piece of work beneath all that smarmy smoothness. And, sharing Rose Piper’s opinion although he didn’t know it, he considered Lee to be well capable of murder.

Colin checked his watch. The woman was almost a quarter of an hour late. He glanced around the bar again. He had been told to look out for a tall redhead. Her name was Rachel — but don’t approach her, she’ll come to you, Paolo had instructed. There were only two women in the bar, neither was a red-head, and they were both with men.

Colin began to fidget with his shirt collar. He was a smart dresser, but he liked casual gear best. He didn’t wear a tie very often and he had feared his collar would prove too tight. Seems he had been right. He was sweating. The bar was hot and stuffy, and that added to his discomfort. He looked around him. Bored now. Impatient. He ate a lot of peanuts, for something to do.

Eventually he became aware of the barman looking at him. The man had just answered the telephone and was nodding into the receiver. When the call was over he ducked under the bar and walked briskly across the room.

‘Are you Colin?’ he asked without much interest. ‘Rachel says she’s been delayed. She’ll pick you up by the back door to the car park in five minutes.’

‘Right, thanks mate,’ said Colin, thinking ‘At last!’

He paid for his Coke — he hadn’t done so before because he had assumed Rachel would pick up the tab. You had to watch the pennies in this game just like any other business. He made his way through the hotel foyer and opened the door at the rear which led into the car park.

Outside the change in temperature was dramatic. He shivered as the cold of the damp November night engulfed him. He wished he’d brought an overcoat. He peered around him. The car park was ill lit, shadowy.

A female voice called his name. Where was she, for goodness sake? He couldn’t see her. Then he spotted a dark saloon car with its side lights on, the motor running and the passenger door open. His name was called again. Yes, the voice came from the car, he was sure of it. He walked over to the motor and bent down to look inside. As he did so he felt a vicious punch in the small of his back. His knees buckled. His vision began to cloud. And his last coherent thought was the surprisingly clear realisation that he hadn’t been punched at all. He had been stabbed.

Within less than a minute Colin Parker was dead.

Colin’s body was found shortly after his death by a porter who nipped out into the car park for a quick smoke. No attempt had been made to conceal the body which lay, almost certainly as it had fallen, spread-eagled on the ground only a few yards to the left of the door into the hotel.

‘I know I shouldn’t have touched it, but I didn’t realise he was a goner, you see. I went to help like. And he was still warm, I mean, it was a second or two before I realised he’d snuffed it.’

Young Micky Peters, a skinny undersized lad who didn’t look strong enough to be employed to lug suitcases around, gave the impression that he was enjoying every moment of being the centre of attention when Rose Piper and DS Mellor questioned him. Indeed, thought Rose, it seemed as if finding the body was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in his entire nineteen years.

Once more the scenes-of-crime boys were already at work by the time Rose arrived. By unhappy coincidence she had again been forced to interrupt an evening with Simon at San Carlo. She had been in the process of buying him dinner in a bid to make amends for having walked out of his birthday party when her mobile phone had rung and she had learned of the second murder.

Ironic really. History repeating itself. She winced at the memory of Simon’s glum resignation and made herself concentrate on the task in hand.

For once the internal communications of the Avon and Somerset force seemed to have worked pretty smoothly. DI Pearson from Bridewell nick had been the first senior officer called to the scene — the Portway Towers was squarely in Bridewell territory — but had made contact with Rose’s murder unit as soon as he saw what had happened. Pearson, a very experienced officer, realised at once that the circumstances and manner of death were similar to the case already being investigated. And as he was nearing retirement, and as the city centre Bridewell was always considered ill-equipped and badly situated for major crime inquiries, there had been none of the behind-the-scenes power struggle which might have occurred with a different investigating officer from a different station.

DI Pearson had been quite happy to hand the case on. Relieved almost. He had priorities other than battling to make his name on a big murder case. Those kind of ambitions were long buried in DI Pearson, if indeed he had ever experienced them. It was his pub quiz night, he explained to an amused Rose, when he eventually excused himself from the scene.

Carmen Brown was crouched by the corpse, her bag of tricks at her side. And there was really only one question Rose wanted answered right now.

‘So come on Carmen, is it the same killer? Do we have a serial or what?’

Dr Brown leaned back on her heels and looked up at the Detective Chief Inspector. Her face was pinched with the cold.

‘It’s the same method, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘He’s been stabbed through the small of the back — almost certainly by a knife with a long sharp blade. See?’

The victim was lying on his front, the ragged hole in the back of his jacket clearly apparent. As before, there was not a great deal of blood, but the light material of the jacket had not trapped and stemmed what bleeding there was in the way that Marty Morris’s heavy leather jacket had done. An ominous dark bloodstain had spread over the pale tan of the suit jacket.

Rose struggled to control her breathing. Steeling herself, she focused her gaze on the man’s face. Again the victim was lying with his head to one side. His eyes were locked open and in them Rose could still see terror. It may only have been a fleeting thing, but it was there all right, and remained frozen with death. She was beginning to get used to it. Once more this was a good-looking young man. His hair was clean and shiny, his skin unseasonably tanned as if he had either recently been on a sunshine holiday or had been using a sunbed.

Rose looked around her. ‘No sign of a murder weapon again, then?’ she inquired of a passing SOCO.

The white-suited officer shook his head mournfully. A team of four SOCOs were already at work examining the entire area, three of them on hands and knees. It was going to be a long night.

The Cataldi brothers arrived around 2.00 a.m. and were quite quickly authorised to take the body away.

‘You know, I’ve not been able to look at a bin liner since I started this job,’ remarked Ron Cataldi conversationally as he and his brother loaded the corpse in its body bag into their van.

At Southmead Hospital an exhibit officer as usual supervised the removal of the dead man’s clothes and other effects which were all bagged and labelled ready for forensic examination.

Rose Piper and Sergeant Mellor arrived soon afterwards, just as the body was being fingerprinted. Rose had given up on sleep for that night. In any case her adrenalin was pumping. She doubted she could sleep and she was quite happy to delay going home to Simon. She suspected that Mellor would have been glad to escape for a few hours — but he had apparently not dared to suggest it.

Without comment, the exhibit officer handed Rose an evidence bag containing the contents of the dead man’s pockets. She peered at the various items through the transparent plastic. There was a handkerchief, a pack of Marlboro, a small quantity of marijuana, a packet of Rizla cigarette papers, some loose change and a wallet containing fifty pounds, a Barclays Visa card and a driving licence. The latter two items identified their holder to be Colin Parker, of 1 Park Terrace, Bristol West.

Rose had a small silent bet with herself that Parker would turn out to have been another Avon Escorts boy. For more reasons than one she rather hoped it would prove to be so. A connection like that would be further indication that they were dealing with a serial killer. Rose could not help being excited by the thought of heading such an investigation.

‘Right Peter, check Avon out,’ she instructed. ‘Get a team on to Paolo right away.’

The tall sergeant began to dial into his mobile phone and retreated into the corridor.

Rose stayed in the mortuary a little longer, watching as impassively as she could while the victim was cleaned up ready for identification. There would be a post-mortem examination later that day. Rose didn’t know what more that could tell her. She was desperate for anything to link the two crimes.

Peter Mellor reappeared. He looked animated. He had obviously already got some kind of result. Rose felt a shiver run down her spine. She struggled to remain composed and professional.

‘Paolo’s running scared now,’ said the sergeant. ‘He admitted it right away. Colin Parker was on his books.’

‘Yes!’ Rose half shouted the word and, aware of appraising glances from both Sergeant Mellor and the mortuary attendant, immediately wished she hadn’t. At least she had refrained from punching the air, that was something, she supposed. But she couldn’t hide her satisfaction.

When she spoke again, however, her voice was calm and controlled. ‘I reckon we’ve definitely got a serial, Peter, what do you think?’

Mellor nodded his agreement. That pleased Rose too.

She sensed the makings of a very big case. And she found herself immediately focusing on the Mrs Pattinson connection again.

Mrs Pattinson had already missed one regular appointment with Avon Escorts, Rose learned. Paolo, damn him, had not previously revealed that the woman always used the agency on the same day every month. ‘Well, you never asked that,’ he muttered sullenly when confronted.

However it had not turned out to be such an important miss as it might have been because Mrs Pattinson had failed to surface on that day or any other. And in any case Rose had had a team monitoring Avon Escorts’ telephones since the first murder, ready to spin into action should Mrs Pattinson ever be heard from again.

With the second murder, the disappearance of Mrs Pattinson from the vice scene in which she had apparently revelled gained additional significance. There had always been the possibility that Mrs Pattinson had backed off merely out of fear — of her true identity being revealed as public and police attention focused on Avon Escorts, and perhaps even fear of possibly facing violence herself — and that the evidence which pointed toward her was merely coincidental. Another murder, and still no word from the mysterious Mrs P was yet another coincidence. As was the evidence of the barman who had taken the telephone message from a woman called Rachel that Colin should meet her in the car park. Surely it must be almost certain therefore that his killer was a woman. Everything seemed to be leading to Mrs Pattinson.

Rose felt vindicated in her own judgement. After all, she had always considered the gay killing theory to be stereotyped thinking — and investigations into the life and times of the latest victim indicated that Colin Parker did not have a gay bone in his body.

‘So — are we still after a gay killer, then, Peter?’ she asked DS Mellor somewhat smugly.

She should have known better than to exhibit any degree of smugness. Peter Mellor, who, having so unusually lost his cool already on this case was obviously determined not to do so again, studied her appraisingly.

‘Could be camouflage, boss,’ he remarked. ‘If it was Jonathon Lee who topped Marty Morris, he could have killed again just to take the heat off.’

Rose didn’t really want to be diverted from her pet theory.

‘And Mrs Pattinson’s voice on the phone to Paolo, the woman Rachel on the phone to the barman, was that all Jonathon Lee?’ she asked irritably.

Mellor did not rise to her. ‘Sometimes people hear or see what they think they should,’ he commented evenly. ‘And Lee could have an accomplice.’

‘Peter, I think you’re being stubborn,’ said Rose. Secretly, though, she knew the bloody man had a point.

Soon after Charlie heard the news of Colin Parker’s death he decided to contact the police. Enough was enough. Charlie was really afraid now.

‘Colin was another of Mrs Pattinson’s favourites, you see,’ he told a fascinated Rose Piper. ‘I’ve worked with him. We’ve serviced her together, she likes that...’

Rose thought the young West Indian sounded as if he regarded himself as some sort of prize bull. Presumably he did. And there was an air of bouncy self-confidence about him, in spite of his loudly expressed fears for his safety.

‘I want police protection, that’s what I came here for,’ he demanded.

Rose was sitting across the table from him in an interview room at Staple Hill Police Station endeavouring to appear stem, solemn and unmoved by events — whereas the reality was that she was bubbling over with excitement.

The murder enquiry team had been moved to Staple Hill that morning, as soon as Rose’s superiors accepted her prognosis that there was a possible serial killer on the loose and certainly a link between the murders of Marty Morris and Colin Parker. In Rose’s opinion, Staple Hill — being several miles out of the city centre, the station itself covering the South Gloucestershire area — was not perfectly situated to be the incident room of a Bristol murder. Neither did she have a high opinion of the building housing the Investigation Centre, which was an old portacabin originally constructed as temporary accommodation for the local magistrates’ court. But the rather decrepit cabin remained permanently set up and ready to house a major crime unit such as Rose was heading. State-of-the-art computer equipment in the form of HOLMES TWO, the latest version of the Home Office Large Major Enquiry Systems, an advanced computer system on-line to other stations throughout the country, sat incongruously on cheap wooden tables stained with the rings of a million tea mugs in prefabricated rooms lined with wood-chip paper.

None of Staple Hill’s shortcomings daunted Rose however. She was used to police stations with substandard conditions. In addition, to her immense satisfaction, she had now been officially appointed Senior Investigation Officer of both murders and would expect to be SIO of any possibly linked murders in the future. Rose had more than eighty officers on her team who between them, she could see from a glance at the computer on her desk, had so far made 6047 house calls, completed almost 4000 PDFs (Personal Description Forms) and taken 490 statements. Rose’s further direct involvement with either possible witnesses or suspects had been minimal. Charlie Collins, however, fell firmly into the small category of those she was not prepared to hand on to anyone.

Charlie had turned up unannounced less than an hour earlier at Trinity Road — the St Paul’s police station not far from his mother’s home with which he was most familiar. Fortunately it had not taken the front office clerk at Trinity long to realise Charlie’s importance to the current murder investigation and arrange for him to be driven straight to Staple Hill.

Rose studied the handsome young man. She had not met anyone like Charlie Collins before. She’d been involved in her share of vice cases. She’d met and had to deal with prostitutes and pimps often enough. Avon Escorts and this character were different. Charlie talked about his trade in the way any self-employed businessman might, bemoaning his loss of income in the present crisis.

‘I mean, I can’t work, can I? Too dangerous. And I can’t even sleep under my own roof. That’s not right, is it? You guys are going to have to sort this out. And I gotta ’ave protection, haven’t I?’

‘Just tell me all you know, Charlie,’ instructed Rose, still battling to suppress her excitement. She had a feeling the lad might provide the key to it all if she handled him right. ‘Everything. You help us and we’ll help you.’

Charlie did so. It took a long time. At one point Rose had to ask him to stop while a new pair of tapes were slotted into the recording machine. Charlie was a good talker. He told them all about Avon Escorts, his years working for them, the kind of clients he had, and how good it had always been for him. He even explained how the system worked. The money he earned and how he split it with Avon. He told them over and over about the lifestyle he had enjoyed and about how threatened he now felt.

And, of course, he told them everything he knew about Mrs Pattinson, her likes and dislikes, how she always asked for him, the games she liked to play. And repeatedly he told them how sure he had been from the start that Marty Morris had been killed by mistake instead of him.

‘It should have been me there, you see. I was her special. Not Marty.’

Charlie’s hands on the table before him were trembling. He was obviously in shock. The thought occurred to Rose that this rather extraordinary young man really had seen no special dangers in his way of life before and had genuinely considered his trade not to be so different to any other. Only now, for the first time, was he experiencing any doubts or fears.

‘Where do Avon find all these young men they have on their books?’ she asked, genuinely curious as much as anything else.

Charlie shrugged. ‘We get all sorts,’ he said. ‘Not many are full-time pros like me. A lot of them work at something else during the day.’ He managed a wry smile. ‘It can be quite fashionable in certain quarters, you know. Something you dare your mates to do. You’d be surprised at some of the lads we get. Down the uni they reckon it’s a great lark.’ He affected what he considered to be a posh accent for the last few words.

Rose was getting a fresh insight into an old world. She didn’t think there was much left that life could throw at her that would cause her too many surprises. But Charlie Collins was dead right, she reckoned. She would probably be surprised by a great number of the employees of Avon Escorts, as indeed she had been by Charlie. Charlie, with his mobile phone, his Armani suit and his Gucci brogues, was breaking the mould. Rose didn’t reckon she would have guessed what he did for a living in a million years. He gave the impression of being quite sophisticated and very successful. He had a winning smile and an easy manner which even his obvious stress did not totally conceal. He was of a whole new breed, and so were the rest of them, it appeared. Students out to make what they obviously regarded as easy money and have fun into the bargain with a bit of luck. Charlie had apparently had fun with Mrs Pattinson, you could tell by his body language alone when he talked about her. Mrs Pattinson. Her shadow was everywhere.

Rose leaned back in her seat. ‘Why do you think Mrs Pattinson would want to kill you?’ she asked.

Charlie shrugged. ‘That’s the big problem, I just can’t think of a reason.’

He had intelligent eyes, thought Rose. He was streetwise. Probably nobody could give her a better insight into the mysterious Mrs P than Charlie Collins.

‘We had good times together, over more than two years, don’t forget,’ he continued.

He had no problems talking about his business. He might have been discussing a business associate with whom he occasionally had lunch. Rose was beginning to gain the impression that that was in any case much the way Charlie Collins saw his relationships with his clients.

‘You lot’ll probably ’ave a laugh, but I always thought she liked me,’ Charlie went on. ‘Not just for sex. And certainly nothing to do with paying for it. I can’t imagine her wanting to hurt me or any of the lads, but it’s got to be her, hasn’t it? It really has to be her.’

Rose wished it was even that straightforward. There was even still a small chance that Peter Mellor’s theory about Jonathon Lee might yet prove correct. She wasn’t convinced. Nonetheless, while she had no intention of answering Charlie’s question directly, she did have more questions for him concerning Mrs Pattinson.

‘What if Mrs Pattinson killed because she was being blackmailed?’ she asked obliquely. ‘What if she killed because she was being threatened with having her secret life exposed?’

Charlie grasped what she was getting at immediately. He looked quite indignant.

‘No way!’ he said. ‘Don’t even think about it. Not me. Not any of the lads. Working boys and girls don’t do blackmail. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.’

The interview lasted almost two hours and at the end of it Rose felt she had learned more about the murky world in which both her two victims and her prime suspect had moved than throughout the entire murder investigation so far.

Thanks to Charlie, Rose now believed she was beginning to build up some kind of picture of Mrs Pattinson. But the one thing she had not learned was anything which could help her find the woman. Charlie could give her absolutely no information which could in any way lead to revealing the true identity of Mrs Pattinson. He had had sex ‘with her once a month for over two years and yet she had never at any time said anything which had given him the smallest clue.

‘Of course, I wasn’t trying to find out who she was or anything, but usually they can’t help talking about themselves in the end,’ he told Rose. ‘It’s amazing what they tell you, sometimes. Things they never tell the old man, if they got one, that’s for sure. But she never said a word about herself. Never.’

It was a blow, but Rose had to accept it. Ultimately Charlie Collins seemed to be no more help in unveiling the real Mrs Pattinson than anyone else.

Avon Escorts continued to insist, although increasingly ineffectually as more and more evidence began to present itself concerning the true activities of its employees, that it was both ‘reputable and respectable’. Certainly it kept surprisingly businesslike records, although Rose had little doubt that not all transactions were recorded and she also assumed, quite rightly, that the sums of money listed were not always the full amounts paid.

The more Avon Escorts was investigated, the more Rose came to realise that this was big, big business. Certainly a real money spinner. Even the figures which went through the books alone indicated a healthy turnover and Rose reckoned that was just the tip of the iceberg. Avon supplied both male and female escorts, but specialised in young men.

‘Well, you gotta move with the times,’ Paolo told her honestly. ‘There’s a whole new market out there, you know. Women want what men want, nowadays.’

Rose murmured something noncommittal and thought to herself that women had probably always wanted what men wanted. They had just never dared to act out their fantasies before, even if they had them. And, certainly until confronted so explicitly with the extensive activities of Avon, Rose would have assumed that was still so. As in the majority of cases it almost certainly was, she thought.

Nonetheless, Rose was learning that this was a complex game and she wondered just how many Mrs Pattinsons there were out there, leading some kind of double life.

Paolo, who had plenty of practice at being economical with the truth, needed to be pushed to give more than he had already. But, under pressure, he provided a list of at least twelve young men who had escorted Mrs Pattinson. Unfortunately many of them were known to Avon simply by a Christian name which was often false. He also confirmed what Rose already knew about the wide catchment area for recruitment which Avon enjoyed, and how so many of their escorts had respectable day jobs and merely moonlighted with the agency occasionally.

‘It’s not just extra cash, it’s kicks too for a lot of the boys, the sort we have,’ he told Rose. ‘There’s a lot to be said for a horny middle-aged woman when you’re an eighteen-year-old bursting full of hormones, you see. Our boys have probably got girlfriends who wouldn’t know some of the tricks our clients get up to had even been invented. And if they did they wouldn’t take part in them...’

And that was about as voluble as Paolo got. Mostly he said as little as possible. He did however confirm that Mrs Pattinson’s next regular appointment with Avon Escorts was just days away and was given strict instructions about what to do if she called. He should keep her on the line as long as possible, for a start, to give the police eavesdroppers time to act.

Unsurprisingly Mrs Pattinson did not resurface. Paolo was pleased about that if nothing else.

‘Business is bad enough as it is,’ he remarked to no one in particular as he lounged disconsolately about in the office one day, surrounded by silent telephones. ‘Who’s going to call an escort agency up to its eyeballs in a murder enquiry? The only hope we’ve got is for that bloody Mrs Pattinson never to be heard of again, then maybe, just maybe, the whole thing might go away.’

He didn’t sound as if he believed that though.

Meanwhile Rose ploughed her way through the usual police procedure. As she had expected because of the clinically efficient way in which Marty Morris had been killed, there had been no forensic evidence other than the footprints in the mud, which might lead to his killer. All that forensic had been able to tell from the footprints had been that the Timberland boots which had made them were barely worn. There had been a brave attempt to trace and interview Timber-land owners in the district, but no way of making this comprehensive.

Rose was still awaiting the full forensic report from the murder of Colin Parker, but again death had been caused by one lethal stab involving little or no human contact. She was not optimistic.

She contemplated possible murder motives. There was still no concrete evidence to indicate whether the killer was a man or a woman, only circumstantial stuff and conjecture. And if the killer was indeed a female client of Avon Escorts, Mrs Pattinson or somebody else, was she killing out of self-disgust, she wondered? It was all heavy psychological stuff.

‘God, I could do with a Cracker,’ she said to Peter Mellor. ‘If only it wasn’t such a lot of unmitigated crap.’

‘What’re you talking about, boss?’ asked the sergeant.

‘You know, Robbie Coltrane, Cracker — the man who can see inside other people’s heads, allegedly,’ responded his Chief Inspector wearily.

‘Who, boss?’

Rose shook her head, half-exasperated, half-amused. ‘Television, Peter, television — don’t you have any vices?’

‘I don’t think so,’ replied Sergeant Mellor seriously.

Charlie’s fear increased as every day passed. He was unused to fear, unused even to being unsure of himself.

He had talked through the idea of police protection with the woman Detective Chief Inspector whom he had rather taken a shine to in spite of his instinctive suspicion of and usual dislike for cops. He wasn’t sure what kind of protection the police would really have been prepared to give him in any case, he supposed they didn’t much like his kind, but in the end he had withdrawn his request.

The lady cop had suggested that he should be pretty safe staying with his mother, maybe even safer than at the centre of a more high-profile protection operation. But it had been thinking about his mother that had decided him not to insist. It was difficult enough coming up with some new tale of woe every day to explain to her why he had been unable to return to his flat for so long. The extent of rewiring, and therefore redecoration, required, grew greater every time and he was pretty sure his mother was beginning to find it hard to believe. She was not a stupid woman and he had noticed a funny look in her eye lately that was both sceptical and a little anxious. He certainly could not imagine a story he could come up with to explain away any kind of police presence at or around her home. No. He preferred to allow the Detective Chief Inspector to convince him that he was unlikely to be in any real danger as long as he continued to lie low.

He could not risk his mother finding out the truth about his lavish lifestyle. He found himself breaking into a sweat at the very thought. There were times when he wondered if he wouldn’t rather be killed than have that happen. His mother must never know. That was more important than anything in the world to Charlie Collins.