A Passion So Deadly

Fourteen

Wayne Thompson’s back was aching. He reached behind him with one hand, exploring gingerly. Ouch! He resented his back ache. After all, it was only when he was forced to put in long hours on the day job that it played him up like this. Wayne Thompson was a big strong lad, but his height — he was well over six foot — did not help his tendency to suffer back trouble, and he didn’t enjoy being a builder’s labourer. He didn’t like fetching and carrying in all weathers. And digging played his back up more than anything. But recently he hadn’t had much choice. His other employment had more or less dried up.

It was Thursday, December 17th, the evening of the same day that Inspector Barton paid his fruitless visit to Constance at Chalmpton Peverill. Christmas was only just over a week away, thought Wayne, and that at least was good news. He got two days off on full pay then, and the boss had hinted there might be a bonus as well if he continued to pull his weight.

If his back could stand it, more like, grumbled Wayne to himself. He slicked down his abundant head of dark brown hair, pulled on his expensive knee-length fur-collared leather overcoat, bought in better times, admired his good looks — which he reckoned were not being put to any worthwhile use at all at the moment — for one last time in the hall mirror. Then he set briskly off along the towpath by the Feeder, the inland waterway which links the River Avon with the Floating Harbour, to his favourite pub down by Temple Mead Railway Station where he drowned his sorrows in eight pints of lager. At the end of that lot even his back ache didn’t seem to be such a problem any more.

The journey home to his little bedsit in a ramshackle old Victorian house in Barton Hill always seemed to take longer. He prided himself that he could hold his beer, did Wayne, but he weaved a bit as he walked. He was in control though, and dark as it was along the towpath Wayne didn’t feel in any danger. He wasn’t likely to fall. He’d done this late night walk often enough after a few beers, hadn’t he?

But on this occasion Wayne didn’t make it home. He was only fifty yards or so from the lock and the footbridge where he usually crossed the Feeder when he seemed to lurch unnaturally to the left. Uttering not a sound, and with only a gentle splash, Wayne Thompson pitched sideways into the murky water.

They found him early the next morning. The corpse, floating face-down in the water, its feet tangled in weed sprouting from the bank, was spotted at first light by a woman out walking her dog.

She raised the lock-keeper who promptly dialled 999 and was told not to touch anything until the police arrived. But by the time the lock-keeper and the woman returned to the body, a couple of passing joggers had also spotted it and were in the process of clumsily dragging the sodden corpse on to the tow-path.

A police patrol car, fortuitously close by when the driver was alerted on his radio, arrived on the scene just three or four minutes after the 999 call was made and its two occupants jumped from the car shouting to the joggers to leave the body alone and stand back.

One of the two officers did his best to keep the joggers, the lock-keeper and the dog-walker as far away as possible while his colleague checked that the man pulled from the water was indeed dead. There wasn’t any doubt. Police Constable Smithers touched ice-cold flesh and found himself shivering inside his warm coat. This was his first body but he knew it would not be his last. He had to cope. With difficulty he maintained control of himself. He was nineteen years old and new to the job, but maybe it was partly the fact that he was a probationary constable still attending regular sessions at the National Police Training School in Cwmbran that made him so observant. PC Smithers took a good long look at the corpse and noticed that there was a small gash in the back of the dead man’s coat. It was a good coat too, and the policeman was pretty sure somehow that it wouldn’t have been put on with a tear in it. And PC Smithers was well aware of the two other recent stabbings of young men in the Bristol area.

He was unable to stop shaking, however much he fought against it, but he wasn’t sure now if that were caused by the shock of being confronted by a dead body or by the feeling of excitement which was beginning to engulf him. He just hoped nobody else was aware of it. Swiftly he stepped back and used his police radio to contact his senior officer.

The SOCOs, in the truck which served as a mobile incident room, arrived within fifteen minutes with Rose herself only minutes behind them. She had already been in her office at Staple Hill when the call came through from the Chief Inspector at PC Smithers’ station — she seemed to be getting in earlier every day — and had roared across town to the crime scene, this time beating Carmen Brown by a good twenty minutes.

It was raining yet again and the SOCOs were erecting a tent to protect the murder scene. The body lay awkwardly face-down along the side of the towpath. The ground was muddy. A number of assorted footprints were visible, none of them particularly clearly. Rose suspected that, if they had not been too distorted by the steady rain, one or two at least of the footprints would prove to come from a size ten Timberland boot. Thankfully the weather and the hour meant that only a handful of particularly resolute joggers and dog-walkers had passed by the towpath so far that morning. She gave instructions to seal off the crime scene, deciding quickly just how big an area she wanted fenced off.

‘Nobody’s been near since we got here, ma’am,’ said PC Smithers.

Rose could see that the young PC was shaking. She knew he was trying desperately to hide his youthful inexperience beneath a thin but eager façade of efficiency. She had done it often enough, after all, she remembered.

The constable gestured to the joggers. ‘They were dragging the body out of the water when we arrived. We just told them to drop it and come away.’

Rose nodded. She took in the little group of joggers, dog-walker and lock-keeper. You could almost see them bristling with self-importance. They weren’t going anywhere, she thought, and in any case there was a second plod who seemed to be standing guard over them.

She went into the mobile incident room — at least it was dry there — removed her quilted raincoat and pulled the obligatory white paper suit over her indoor clothes. Fortunately she was wearing a trouser suit that day, which made things easier, and certainly she was considerably more suitably dressed than she had been when she was called to the first murder. By the time she stepped out of the truck the tent had been properly erected and the crime scene taped off according to her instructions. She stepped over the tape fence, shoulders hunched against the weather, glad of the shelter the tent gave, however inadequate.

The demands of modem forensic investigation did not pay much heed to climatic conditions. There was a limit to how many layers of clothing you could keep on beneath the requisite paper suits. Rose tried not to think about her own physical discomfort, although she did fleetingly wonder if it were actually a statistical fact that outdoors murders almost always happened in the winter or if it were just her imagination. Hers and the Cataldis’.

Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the body lying at her feet. Almost certainly the corpse was male. More than that, there was little she could be certain of and she wasn’t going to touch anything until Carmen Brown arrived. But as she bent over the body she was almost sure the observant young constable — presumably the one who had greeted her at the scene — was about to be proven right. There was definitely a hole in the back of the leather coat the dead man was wearing. Everything pointed to a stabbing just like the other two.

Rose experienced the familiar frisson of excitement. She knew something PC Smithers had yet to discover. Cops were like racehorses. The more experienced they were, the more excited they got at the prospect of the big one.

She stepped back over the tape fence. The young policeman was standing rather stiffly a few yards back, still showing signs of the shakes.

‘Was it you who spotted the slash in his coat?’ she asked.

‘Y-yes, ma’am,’ replied PC Smithers.

Poor chap is stammering now, thought Rose.

‘Well done, constable,’ she said out loud.

Smithers turned slightly pink. Pride or embarrassment or a bit of both, wondered Rose.

While she waited for Carmen Brown to arrive there was little more she could do except talk to the witnesses. And here Rose Piper got lucky again. An observant plod and an observant witness, all in one day, she thought to herself.

The woman who found the body claimed she had recognised the corpse at once, in spite of agreeing that she had not been able to catch the merest glimpse of his face. It was actually his clothing that she had recognised.

‘It’s that Wayne Thompson. I live opposite his mother in the council houses round the corner — well, it’s either him or someone’s nicked ’is coat,’ said Mrs Josephine Bird, with the self-righteous certainty of someone who was quite enjoying being the centre of attention although trying not to show it. ‘I’d know that coat anywhere, I would. Nobody else round ’ere’s got a coat like that. Great fur collar an’ all...’

Mrs Bird was a small quick woman whose appearance rather suited her name. And it soon became apparent that, while probably not in the same class as Marcia Spry and certainly not blessed with the advantages of a close village community in which to operate, Mrs Bird did have a certain penchant for immersing herself in other people’s business. She admitted, rather grudgingly, that she hadn’t known Wayne well, but yes, of course she could tell Rose what he did for a living.

‘He’s a builder’s labourer, isn’t he? Works darned hard, I should think. That coat must have cost a few bob and he’s good to his mother. Always has been. This’ll kill her, you know.’

Rose Piper recognised that Mrs Bird could be a very useful source of information, but reckoned she personally didn’t wish to listen to any more from the woman. For once she was actually looking for a team to whom to delegate. With some relief she saw that not only had Carmen Brown just arrived, but also DS Mellor along with two of her murder enquiry detective constables. Rose gave instructions that Mrs Bird should be escorted to Staple Hill and a full statement taken from her.

On her own radio she called back to the Investigation Centre and asked DI Jordan to run every check possible on Wayne Thompson of Barton Hill.

‘I want to know as much as we can about him as fast as we can, Phyllis,’ Rose instructed. ‘Most important of all, I want to know if he’s not where he should be, if he’s missing. Oh — and check out Avon.’

Carmen Brown went straight into the mobile incident room and like Rose quickly emerged fully kitted up in scene-of-crime apparel.

Rose stood for a while watching her crouched at work beside the corpse and silently bet herself another month’s salary that Wayne Thompson would turn out to have had a night job with Avon Escorts. This was beginning to get scary. It really was turning into the big one. Rose just hoped she was big enough to handle it.

Eventually the pathologist stood up and beckoned Rose closer. The Detective Chief Inspector took her usual deep breath, banished her uncharacteristic feelings of self-doubt and composed her features into an expression of lack of concern.

The Feeder seemed to be smelling particularly ripe that morning, she thought, and its acrid aroma was not going to help the habitual nauseousness she experienced when forced to come close to death.

Although the body had already been moved once, having been dragged out of the canal by the joggers, Carmen Brown still intended to examine it closely where it lay before moving it again. The doctor gestured towards the hole centrally positioned in the back of the victim’s leather coat. Once again it was surprisingly small and neat.

‘Definitely another stabbing,’ she said, with a small tight smile.

‘Same weapon as before?’ asked Rose, her excitement mounting again, making it easy now for her to forget the cold and even to overcome her usual nausea.

‘Let’s wait till we get him into the mortuary, shall we?’

Pathologists could be so damned pedantic, thought Rose. Carmen Brown wouldn’t tell you the time unless she had a watch with a second hand.

The doctor called to two of the SOCOs standing chatting, waiting for her to finish her preliminary examination.

‘OK, let’s see what our boy looked like, shall we?’

The body was swiftly and efficiently turned over so that it was lying face-upwards now. Rose took another quick sharp, and she hoped silent, gulp of breath.

The victim had a nasty head injury which had turned his forehead into a concave shell, the white bone clearly exposed, and his lips were drawn back in a meaningless skeletal grin revealing even teeth. This time the eyes were mercifully closed, perhaps as an involuntary reaction to landing in icy water.

Neither of the other victims had suffered any injury except the one lethal stab wound. Rose said nothing, waiting for Dr Brown, who was once again crouched by the corpse, this time intently studying the head, to give her verdict.

Eventually the pathologist looked up at her. ‘Can’t be sure until I get him back to base, but I’d guess the head injury happened after he’d been stabbed, almost certainly when he fell in the canal,’ she said.

She glanced over her shoulder. There was a broken supermarket trolley sticking out of the waterway just behind them and in the shallow water right by the bank you could make out the shape of some hostile-looking stones and boulders, one or two of which protruded out of the water.

‘Could have hit his head on almost anything,’ the doctor remarked.

She looked down at the body again. ‘He can’t have been in the water long judging from his condition, not more than eight or nine hours, I shouldn’t think.’

‘He was floating face-down when he was found, any significance in that?’ asked Rose.

Carmen Brown shrugged. ‘Only that he couldn’t have drowned. A drowned man sinks as his lungs fill with water. Our man must have been dead when he hit the water — but there was never much doubt about that with the wound he’s got in his back.’

‘Why do bodies always seem to float face-down anyway?’ Rose didn’t really know why she asked that. She certainly hadn’t expected to be taken very seriously. But Carmen Brown looked thoughtful.

‘In this case a lot of air was trapped in that coat, I reckon. But you’re right. With men anyway. It’s all to do with the distribution of fatty tissues and the head and feet being the heaviest bits.’

She turned away then, not attempting to explain further. Very scientific, considered Rose. And she was still standing looking down at the body, contemplating the idiosyncrasies of the human form, when Phyllis Jordan called through with the news that Wayne Thompson had not turned up for work that morning. And his next-door neighbour, on the grounds that he was normally seriously disturbed by a noisy Wayne Thompson returning from the pub, was pretty certain he had not returned home that night either. A team was on the way to break the probable bad news to the young man’s mother, and they hoped she would later be prepared to assist in identification.

Detective Inspector Jordan had one final bit of news to impart, and could not completely disguise a quiet note of triumph in her voice as she did so.

‘It won’t astonish you to learn, boss, that Wayne Thompson did a regular moonlight for Avon Escorts. And our Mrs Pattinson was very fond of his services. That Paolo is getting to be quite cooperative. In quite a panic nowadays, he is. We don’t need the thumbscrews at all any more.’

By midday the body of Wayne Thompson, delivered as usual to Southmead Hospital by the Cataldi brothers, had been formally identified by his distraught mother.

In the afternoon Rose — fortified by a particularly large and juicy hamburger, in deference to her perhaps strange tendency to be better able to control her nausea with a full stomach than an empty one — attended the post-mortem examination conducted by Carmen Brown. This was little more than another formality, although the pathologist was able to confirm her earlier prognosis that Thompson had suffered his head injury after death, presumably while falling into the canal. As in the two earlier murders there was no doubt that he had been killed by a single vicious stab wound made by a long and sharp-bladed knife of some kind.

Later, back at Staple Hill, and picking a moment when Peter Mellor was nowhere near to hear her make the call because she knew he would disapprove, Rose phoned Charlie Collins at his mother’s home. She gave only her Christian name.

Rose had had several further meetings with Charlie, some officially at the station and some more informally. She was convinced that Charlie must know something, however inconsequential it might seem and quite possibly without realising it himself, which could just give her the start she needed to unravel the whole affair.

‘I’ll meet you in the bar of the Portway Towers at six o’clock,’ she instructed, and added with a small smile, ‘I’m sure you know it.’

Charlie was wearing a deep-tan jacket over a cream silk shirt and paler tan trousers. The clothes were well cut and classy. As Charlie joined her at a corner table Rose was aware of one or two curious glances from the barman. That wasn’t surprising. It was quite likely that the barman knew exactly who Charlie was and what he did. Charlie, it seemed, had always been a very successful escort — a busy boy.

‘Tell me again, Charlie,’ she encouraged. The young man sighed. She could forgive him, this was after all the umpteenth time she had asked him to relive his meetings with Mrs Pattinson for her, and however much detail she demanded he go into, nothing new or revelatory had so far presented itself.

Mrs Pattinson had just never talked about herself, Charlie told her yet again, and certainly had never revealed to him anything of the other life Rose was sure that she must have.

Charlie was leaning quite close to her now, that silly drink he always ordered, Campari and orange — he wasn’t really a drinker; apart from champagne, he only liked sweet drinks — almost forgotten on the table beside him, reliving his various meetings with Mrs Pattinson.

‘...So that was the first time she asked for a second boy,’ he said, his voice low and husky. ‘And I told you before what she liked us to do, didn’t I? The things she dreamed up...’

Rose had become aware that as their meetings had progressed Charlie’s descriptions of his sexual adventures with Mrs Pattinson had become increasingly more explicit. She had reasoned with herself that any details at all of Charlie’s relationship with the mysterious Airs P were relevant, and might even be crucial. Nonetheless, listening to that resolutely sexy voice describing his carnal adventures could be quite mesmerising on occasions.

Swiftly Rose interrupted him. ‘OK, I’ve heard enough of that,’ she said as sternly as she could manage, although she was aware that her voice sounded almost squeaky in comparison with his.

Charlie smiled. He had a pleasing grin and the most beautifully white and even teeth she had ever seen.

‘Have you?’ he asked, and his eyes were locked on to hers.

‘Behave yourself,’ said Rose lightly.

She was well aware that Sergeant Mellor thought her relationship with Charlie had already become too close, and he might be right, she reflected. She knew she had already gone against procedure in her dealings with him. And certainly it had crossed her mind that were Charlie in a different line of work, and were she not investigating three murders in which he had an involvement, she might just find him rather attractive.

Wryly she considered that in her nick nobody would bat an eyelid if she were a bloke and Charlie were a call girl. Perk of the job, she’d once heard a Bristol vice cop describe a session with a prostitute. Not without some difficulty, she forced herself at least to behave as if she were the one in charge.

‘Right then, young man,’ she said, downing the remains of her half pint of bitter. ‘I’ve got a husband waiting for me at home, and goodness knows who you’ve got.’

‘Me mum,’ responded Charlie with an even wider grin. ‘But I won’t have if she ever gets wind of any of this lot, that’s for sure.’

It was only just after 8.00 p.m., quite early by her standards, when Rose got home. But unfortunately Simon had called Staple Hill soon after she had left at a few minutes before six, and had been told his wife was on her way home. On the strength of that he had begun cooking an early supper for them both, his own speciality pasta dish — penne with spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and slivers of fresh Parmesan.

The remains of it, dried-up and unappetising, just as the fateful lamp chops had been all those weeks earlier, were still in the oven. Simon was not in the best of moods — something she was having to get used to nowadays, she reflected.

‘I’ve told you, I had a meeting with an informant,’ she said for the third time.

‘Well, why didn’t they know at the station then? Why did they think you’d gone home?’

Rose realised she must have disappointed Simon yet again and sympathised with his obvious frustration, but she wished he didn’t get so belligerent when he was upset.

‘Because it was unofficial,’ she said patiently. ‘Like many of the most worthwhile interviews are. What is this, Simon? You’re interrogating me, for goodness sake!’

‘I just want to know where you’ve been for two hours. Is that so unreasonable? I am your husband, allegedly, aren’t I? You’ve been drinking, I know that. And you had the car.’

Rose sighed. ‘Two beers. I had a drink at the Portway Towers with one of the Avon escorts who is particularly involved in the murder case, if you must know.’

‘What?’ Simon sounded outraged — again, thought Rose.

‘You went to the biggest pick-up joint in town with a male hooker? Terrific! Great! What kind of bloody woman would do that?’

‘A policewoman, perhaps, Simon.’ Rose spoke more sarcastically than she had meant to, but that was too bad. It had been another long hard day. These almost nightly battles with Simon were becoming more than she could cope with.

Simon pushed his hair back from his eyes, and there was just the merest flash of the little-boy charm with which she had fallen so in love in the first place.

‘Oh Rose, what’s wrong with us?’ He gestured almost plaintively at the table behind him, laid for dinner. There was a candle on it burned almost down to its polished brass holder and an opened bottle of red wine. ‘I just wanted us to have a nice time together for a change, I was so pleased you were going to be home early, that’s all.’

For a moment all Rose wanted to do was take him in her arms. But his petulance and, it seemed to her, his determination not to respect her job or her right to execute it how she and nobody else thought best, had really got to her.

‘Look, Simon, I just don’t have the energy for all of this right now — I’m trying to run a murder enquiry. I’m sorry about supper, but I’m not very hungry anyway. I’ll just watch TV in the bedroom for a bit and have an early night, if you don’t mind.’

She spoke with icy courtesy, no warmth at all in her voice. She knew she was hurting him even more, and she didn’t really understand why she was doing it. He had handed her the olive branch and she had turned away again. But somehow she couldn’t help herself.

‘What do I have to do, Rose...?’ she heard him begin, his voice raised and angry again, as she left the kitchen. She couldn’t begin to tell him. Instead she shut the door firmly behind her, anxious at least to avoid further argument.

It was a bloody good job she’d grabbed that hamburger at lunch-time, she thought to herself wryly. These supperless nights were beginning to become a habit.

The next day Rose found that the pressure she was already under to charge Paolo with living off immoral earnings had been stepped up. Her day started with an unwelcome bout of verbal fisticuffs with her senior officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Titmuss.

Ironic at this stage really, she thought, as it seemed that the third murder had already put Avon Escorts almost entirely out of business. As Paolo had accurately predicted, the punters didn’t want to know about an outfit at the centre of a murder enquiry. Even those who weren’t frightened by possible physical danger were not going to risk getting caught up in the blaze of unwelcome publicity surrounding Avon.

Rose did not want to bring charges against Paolo and continued to fight against doing so.

‘I need him free,’ she told Titmuss. ‘He and Charlie Collins are the only hope we’ve got of getting a lead on Mrs Pattinson. And we have to find that bloody woman.’

‘You’ve got one last chance, Rose, to do it your way, and I mean last chance,’ responded the superintendent, a dapper man, always immaculately dressed, whose priorities Rose thoroughly mistrusted. She considered that he was much more interested in his standing in the Bristol community than the nitty-gritty of police work.

However, she managed, just about, not to show how angry he had made her. The need to keep the Italian Bristolian on the streets was only half of the reason why she didn’t want to charge Paolo. The official half. Unofficially she was irritated by the small-mindedness she was facing. She was hunting a serial killer and all around her people were wittering their outrage about an escort agency which catered for the latent sexual desires of women as well as of men. Not for the first time Rose wondered if either her colleagues or the general public would be so offended if Avon ran only female prostitutes.

Sitting at her desk later, the door to her office propped open, revealing the hubbub of the busy incident room working at full pace, Rose managed somehow to be lost in her own thoughts. The Feeder was still being dragged for clues but predictably nothing had been found so far and Rose had no expectations that anything would be. The murder weapon remained the property of the murderer, Rose assumed. Ready for the next time. She actively hoped not now. Things were beginning to run away from her, she feared. She really did not know quite where to go next. Yet at the same time she dreaded being replaced as SIO. This was her case. She suspected Titmuss would never have put her in charge of it in the first place, let alone kept her there as long as he had, were it not for the man’s eternal desire — politically motivated, of course — to appear liberal and forward-thinking. And that was a joke for a start.

Her reverie was interrupted by Peter Mellor.

‘Name of Terry Sharpe mean anything to you, boss?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Rose was momentarily startled.

‘Seems he’s Wayne Thompson’s landlord,’ continued the sergeant.

Rose immediately found herself right back in the real world, absolutely alert. Terry Sharpe was a former Bristol vice cop who had been sacked from the force after getting too close to the trade he was supposed to be controlling. That had been around thirteen years ago, not long after Rose had joined the Avon and Somerset as a young uniformed probationary constable every bit as green as the boyish PC she had met by the side of the Feeder the previous day.

Sharpe had even been suspected of involvement in the murder of a young woman prostitute in Bristol. Nothing could ever be proved, but the case had never been solved. Rose had been assigned, as a woman officer, to accompany the detective teams investigating the murder as they moved among the city’s vice community. Some of the girls they talked to were under age. They were all frightened. Rose had met Sharpe once back then, and known immediately that he was the kind of policeman she hated more than any other human being, the kind who believed they could make up the rules as they went along. Sharpe had seemed to her to be a thoroughly unpleasant character, well capable of everything he might ever be accused of, and Rose could still remember the mocking look in his eye. He had always contrived to give the impression that he was one jump ahead — and most of the time he had indeed seemed to be just that.

There had been a smattering of press speculation and a lot of gossip. Ultimately Sharpe lost his job, which was something, in Rose’s opinion, although not nearly enough. The feeling inside the force was that he had literally got away with murder. And it had all left a very nasty taste.

One way and another, the DCI was quite excited by the prospect of finally catching up with Terry Sharpe.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what the bastard’s got to say for himself, shall we? Do we know where to find him?’

‘He’s got a big house up at Clifton and flash new offices in one of those old tobacco-bonding warehouses they’ve just converted,’ said Mellor. ‘I got it checked. He’s in his office even though it’s Saturday.’

‘Good.’ Rose was already on her feet. And this time, if he thought that his SIO could be better employed than conducting an interview herself, the sergeant made no comment.

‘Sounds as if he’s made a packet then, since he left the job,’ Rose remarked as she and Mellor headed for the car park. ‘Do we know how, by any chance, as if I couldn’t guess.’

‘You’d guess right, boss, more’n likely. Property is the official line. But then there’s what you use your property for. The vice boys reckon he just carried on the way he was going when he was in the force. He was running Toms then, everyone was sure of it. And he still is.’

The sergeant paused by the car and looked over the roof at the DCI.

‘There’s something else boss, I’ve got a team giving Paolo the third degree again. There’s a suggestion that Sharpe has a connection with Avon Escorts.’

Terry Sharpe remained every bit as thoroughly unpleasant as Rose remembered him to have been. Now in his early fifties, he was smaller than average for a policeman. His skin was pale to the point of being pasty and his hair, which he wore quite long and combed flat against his head, was totally white. Rose wondered if he bleached it. His eyes were very pale blue and watery-looking. Obscurely Rose thought that he looked a bit like an oversized albino rabbit in a city suit. A suit which was a good grand’s worth, she reckoned. He also wore a ring on the little finger of his right hand with a diamond only slightly smaller than the knuckle of that finger.

The office, on the top floor of the converted warehouse, was as pale as Sharpe’s complexion — white leather furniture, cream carpet, glass-topped desk — and as expensive-looking as his clothes. A picture window offered a stunning view over the Floating Harbour and across much of Bristol city centre.

Terry Sharpe leaned back in his big white leather chair, a small figure quite at home amid the blatant opulence of his own creation. And if he was in any way shocked or even disconcerted by the sudden appearance of his unannounced visitors, Sharpe gave no sign. Indeed he seemed every bit as smug and convinced of his own superiority as the impression Rose had retained of him over the years. Being chucked out of the force did not seem to have affected that one jot. Even before he spoke, Rose began to relish the prospect of being able to deal him an even more devastating blow, and also to realise that this was unlikely to come easy.

‘I hardly knew Wayne Thompson,’ Sharpe said languidly in answer to her first question. His voice was every bit as smug as the expression on his face. His whole philosophy of life seemed to be “catch me if you can”. ‘I’ve got a number of tenants. They pay me rent. They’re not my friends.’

Rose waded straight in. ‘And is that all they pay you?’

Sharpe’s lips curled slightly and he raised one eyebrow quizzically. ‘I really don’t know what you mean, Detective Chief Inspector,’ he said.

‘I wondered if your tenants also gave you a share of their earnings, Mr Sharpe?’

Sharpe reached for a giant Monte Christo cigar from the box on his desk. He did not offer the box around. The thought flitted into Rose’s head that he was in any case the kind of man who would automatically consider that neither a black man nor a woman were suitable recipients of such a gift.

‘Now why on earth would they do that, Chief Inspector?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Perhaps because of your association with Avon Escorts?’

‘A legitimate escort agency, I always understood. And what makes you think I have anything to do with it, anyway?’

‘It won’t be too difficult to find out...’ Rose left the words hanging.

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Please yourselves,’ he said. The curl in his lips was almost a leer now.

He lit the cigar, puffing vigorously, and almost instantly filling the room with smoke. Rose struggled not to cough. She was aware of the man studying her closely.

‘Don’t I know you?’ he asked eventually.

‘We have met, yes,’ she responded curtly.

The slightly puzzled look now evident in Sharpe’s eyes cleared suddenly. His face cracked suddenly into a full-blown leering grin.

‘I remember, little Rosie. A DCI now! Little Rosie Piper. Well, I never.’

Rose forced herself not to visibly react. She was aware of Mellor stiffening beside her. The sergeant knew her so well. Terry Sharpe had called her Rosie all those years ago and she did not hate it any less now than she had then. But she must not let him get to her.

Sharpe was going to be a tough nut to crack, no doubt about that. It also seemed that he had alibis for the times of the murders of Wayne Thompson and of Colin Parker. Sharpe was a man with a busy social calendar. He had been at a local Businessman of the Year awards dinner — and that was a laugh too, thought Rose — when Wayne was killed and in London at a black-tie boxing tournament at the Park Lane Hilton when Colin Parker was attacked. He couldn’t remember what he had been doing when Marty Morris died, and there was nothing in his diary. But he must have been doing something, he always was, he announced.

‘I’ll think of it sooner or later, for sure,’ he said, and he smiled the smug smile through a haze of cigar smoke.

Rose didn’t doubt him, although as far as she was concerned having alibis did not in any case rule him out as a suspect. He was the sort of character who would more than likely pay someone else to do his dirty work, she thought. She disliked Terry Sharpe even more than her brief memory of him had suggested she would, and realised that nothing would please her more than to be able to prove his guilt.