A Passion So Deadly

Twenty-One

Rose Piper arrived at Charlie’s apartment block little more than ten minutes after his murderer had left. But she didn’t know that. Neither did she know that the murderer, ironically, had used the same method of entering the block as she was about to.

As she stood on the pavement outside Spike Island Court she was momentarily surprised, but not really alarmed, to get no reply when she pushed the intercom button for flat thirty-six. Fortunately a resident appeared with a key, and by virtue of an apologetic smile and a mumbled excuse, Rose managed to gain entry without having to play the warrant-card trick.

She took the lift to the third floor where she found that the door to Charlie’s flat was slightly ajar. This did alarm her somewhat. Rose called his name, got no response and then tried to push the door open. It stuck after just a few inches. She leaned against it, pushing it as far as she could and then squeezed her way in around the edge.

Charlie’s body was blocking the way.

Rose uttered a small involuntary cry and dropped to her knees by his side. He had fallen on his back and his bloodied and broken face stared unseeingly up at her. Charlie Collins was only barely recognisable. His nose and cheek bones had been smashed to pieces. There was more than one concave recession in his head and his hair was matted with blood and tangled with small pieces of bone. His torso had not escaped attention either. One arm was lying at an impossible angle, indicating that it was fractured. Charlie had patently been the victim of a quite frenzied attack. Rose hardly needed to check his pulse to know that he was dead, but she did so anyway.

For just a few seconds she felt as if she were frozen with shock. Then her training took over. She operated on auto-pilot. Swiftly she used her police radio to contact her own HQ to report the crime and to call an ambulance, although she was quite sure that would prove to be a waste of time.

Leaning against the wall in the hallway for support, she felt as if her legs could barely hold her upright. But she was functioning — just about. And a frightening thought crossed her mind. Charlie’s wrist had felt warm when she had checked his pulse. It was possible that his murderer was still in the apartment. The doors to the bedroom and the kitchen were both closed. She craned her neck to peer through the open door into the living-room. She could see no sign of life and neither could she hear any sound.

She resisted the urge to search the flat properly. At worst she could end up being attacked herself and at best she would get a rollicking from the SOCOs for messing up evidence. Instead she left the apartment, this time being careful to touch as little as possible, and waited outside in the corridor.

Back-up was with her within minutes, but even the short wait on her own had been long enough for the grim reality of what she had walked into to overwhelm her. Rose never failed to be affected by the sight of a dead body, but this was only the second time she had ever actually discovered one. Also, it was the first time she had ever seen a dead person that she had known — and, she had long ago admitted to herself, in spite of everything and her better judgement, a person she had grown fond of.

She felt much worse even than she usually did. Poor Charlie looked so awful too — she had never seen a corpse that had been so badly beaten. She knew she was shaking and was only just in control of the waves of nausea which were spasmodically rising from the depths of her belly, causing her to gag.

It was a relief to hand the situation over. Peter Mellor turned up within minutes and, even in her shock and distress, it gave Rose some fleeting sense of satisfaction to note that the expression of stiff distaste he had always worn when dealing with the living Charlie Collins had departed swiftly with the young man’s death.

In fact Mellor looked uncharacteristically flustered, and Rose guessed that he was wondering if he would have dealt with Charlie Collins’s call for help any differently had he not disapproved so strongly of the boy. Rose, still a professional in spite of feeling so wretched, did not see how he could have done but neither did she think it would do her sergeant any harm at all to experience self-doubt for once.

Detective Chief Superintendent Titmuss also made an extremely rare scene-of-the-crime appearance, but then this one undoubtedly held far-reaching repercussions. Doctor Carmen Brown, Rose was told, was on her way.

And if anyone noticed the state the DCI was in, they were tactful enough not to mention it.

Rose suddenly couldn’t take any more of it. She did not want for the moment to have to look again at Charlie Collins’s battered face and broken body and she knew exactly what she did want to do. In fact she couldn’t wait.

‘I’ll be back,’ she announced briefly, and left a rather surprised-looking Peter Mellor to it.

Outside she battled for control. Charlie Collins’s ruined face was right inside her head. The handsome young man lying obscene in death in his own home. The nausea was suddenly too much for her to fight. She reached her car but could go no further. Holding on to the door handle for support she started to retch and had little choice except to bend over and be heartily sick on the tarmac, splashing the wheels of the vehicle. It was a relief to vomit, and she actually felt very slightly better as she straightened up — only vaguely aware of a typical Spike Island yuppie type hurrying past and resolutely pretending that he hadn’t noticed what she was doing.

Rose couldn’t care less. The enormity of the murder of Charlie Collins and all that it might signify was everything to her. She mopped herself up as best she could, using the box of paper tissues she always kept in her car. Then she started the engine, manoeuvred her way carefully out of the car park, aware that her hands were still trembling slightly, and set off purposefully in the direction of the A38 heading north towards Gloucester.

She was going to Eastwood Park to see Constance Lange.

Rose saw Constance glance at her in some surprise when she was taken to her cell by a prison officer. She supposed she looked a mess. She certainly felt it.

Constance, by comparison, contrived to look elegant even in these surroundings. She was wearing an unmistakeably cashmere sweater over a straight calf-length skirt. As a prisoner on remand she was allowed to wear her own clothes and, although she continued to refuse to see any of her family, she had accepted readily enough the clothing which her elder daughter Charlotte, resigned to not being a welcome visitor, had in any case sent to the prison.

It occurred to Rose obscurely that Constance Lange would probably contrive still to look elegant even if she had to wear prison garb. And there remained an eerie calm about her. Rose wondered if the news she was about to break might shake that at last.

Technically Rose should not have been there at all now that Constance was awaiting trial. Certainly she could not demand to see Constance, and it had been a relief when she arrived at Eastwood Park and the accused woman had agreed to see her.

Quite bluntly she told Constance about Charlie’s death and the manner of it. There was just the briefest flicker of response. Rose could only imagine what was going on inside the other woman’s head. Constance, sitting on her bunk bed, merely stared silently at her family photograph, almost as if nothing that she had heard had anything remotely to do with her.

‘Constance, Charlie’s death is just too much of a coincidence not to be connected to the other murders,’ Rose told her. ‘He was trying to get hold of me when he died. I reckon he had something important to tell me. And I can’t help thinking that Charlie might well have been killed by the same person who murdered the others. Now that could not be you.’

Constance still didn’t speak. Rose sighed and continued.

‘I believe you know the truth. Please will you tell me? We must put a stop to these killings.’

Constance raised her eyes at last from the photograph and met Rose’s earnest gaze. She looked haunted. It occurred to Rose that she might genuinely have been driven quite out of her mind. Constance had been interviewed by police psychiatrists already, of course, who had pronounced her quite sane. Suddenly Rose was no longer sure of that.

She carefully studied the woman sitting before her on her little bunk bed. Certainly nothing much seemed to register properly with Constance Lange any more.

Rose had one more go. She reached out and touched the other woman’s arm. Constance flinched but did not draw away.

‘You’re not a killer, Constance, are you?’ asked Rose, and the tone of her voice made it apparent the question was quite rhetorical. ‘You shouldn’t be here, should you?’

At last the imprisoned woman’s composure seemed to drop. And eventually she spoke. She sounded faraway, as if she had shut her mind off from all reality.

‘I can’t be let out,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t be set free, it’s all my fault.’

Rose had to give up in the end. Constance appeared to have nothing more to say. She answered all subsequent questions with silence. Rose watched her as she picked up the family photograph and hugged it close to her. It was extraordinary to think how perfect Constance Lange’s life had once been and that this one picture was all she had left of it.

Rose sighed. Beaten for the moment. But starkly aware that the mystery was even greater now.

The next morning Rose had the first of a series of new rows with Chief Superintendent Titmuss.

‘You had absolutely no right to visit Constance Lange,’ he told her angrily. ‘You could jeopardise the entire case stepping out of line like that.’

‘I interviewed Mrs Lange informally concerning a new crime, the murder of Charlie Collins, sir, and she willingly agreed to see me,’ responded Rose with a confidence she did not feel. Privately she suspected that Titmuss was quite right and that she had indeed contravened PACE, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. ‘And with this fresh development, I also believe it would now be quite wrong to allow her prosecution for the three earlier murders to go ahead, sir,’ she continued, taking a deep breath.

Titmuss exploded. ‘You’re getting above yourself, Detective Chief Inspector,’ he stormed. ‘The woman has confessed — and you will just get on with the job you are paid to do. Which is to keep murderers behind bars where they belong.’

Rose tried to speak. He silenced her abruptly with a raised hand.

‘There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the murder of Charlie Collins is connected with the other killings,’ the chief superintendent continued, sounding more dogged than angry now. ‘I’ve talked to Doctor Brown already as I’m sure you have. The method used was completely different for a start — not that you need to be a pathologist to see that!’

Rose continued to stand her ground.

‘We should at least double-check everything with forensic,’ she said. ‘Maybe there’ll be some DNA this time. Something we can compare with the earlier murders.’

The Superintendent’s voice began to rise dangerously again. His impatience with her was quite obvious.

‘There was no struggle, Rose. This Charlie Collins died from the first blow more than likely, according to Dr Brown. As for forensic — if they come up with anything to indicate a connection with the previous murders, then we’ll think again. Meanwhile Constance Lange stays exactly where she is. There is no question of dropping charges.

‘And forensic aren’t going to come up with anything, by the way. They can’t — because we already have the person responsible for the first three killings banged up.’

Rose could not hide her frustration. ‘That’s catch-22, sir,’ she said.

Her boss looked really irritated now. ‘Rose, I’m beginning to think you’re getting too close to this case,’ he said.

Oh, Jesus, not that old chestnut, thought Rose. She forced herself to sound reasonable when she replied, keeping her voice level only with a great effort.

‘Not at all, sir.’

Her senior officer merely grunted. ‘I want you to lead the Charlie Collins case because of how well you knew the lad and all the knowledge that you already have which may be relevant to his murder. That should give you a head start — as long as you didn’t know him too bloody well, of course, Rosie.’

Chief Superintendent Titmuss smiled when he made the last remark but it didn’t in any way lessen the message. And Rose could not believe he didn’t know how much she hated being called Rosie, either. She stared at him in amazement.

‘I’m sorry, sir?’ she said, turning the sentence into a question.

‘You heard me, Detective Chief Inspector. Do you think I go around this nick with a blindfold on and cotton wool in my ears?’ He shook his bespectacled head almost sorrowfully. And when he spoke again his voice was just a little gentler. ‘Look Rose, if I believed any of that crap you wouldn’t be on the case at all, OK? But you have to understand that this is a new murder enquiry, you said so yourself, and that’s the way I want it treated. You’ve got a budget to deal with as well as everything else and I don’t want you going over it because you’re desperate for some obscure reason of your own to get a case dropped against a woman everyone else reckons is as guilty as hell. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He made himself clear all right. Rose knew only too well that the Avon and Somerset, like all British police forces, had to pay forensic laboratories for work carried out on their instructions. Superintendent Titmuss certainly didn’t want a big bill brought about by one of his staff attempting to mess up what seemed to be a rather nicely solved case.

Boiling over with resentment, Rose quickly left her superior’s office. Sometimes, if you want to hang on to your job, you have to keep your mouth shut. Even Rose Piper understood that. Nonetheless she didn’t trust herself to stay in the room with the bloody man a second longer than she absolutely had to.

Rose was having an extremely bad day. There was something else happening to add to her misery. The trial of Terry Sharpe and Paolo Constantino, accused of living off immoral earnings, was due to be wound up that afternoon — and it looked very much as if Sharpe was going to get away with it.

In spite of the murder of Charlie Collins, Rose had heard enough of the evidence to be thoroughly sickened. And watching Sharpe himself in the witness box had been a truly nauseating experience.

No, he’d had no idea that Avon Escorts was being run as anything other than a reputable escort agency, that had always been his intention as one of the founders of the business. He had been very disappointed to learn anything other.

And as for the Crescent Hotel, well, didn’t all hotel rooms get used for various kinds of illicit purposes occasionally? He really didn’t know what the manager was supposed to do about it, let alone a director like him who was not even involved in the day-to-day running of the place.

Surely he couldn’t be held responsible for the activities of the young men and women to whom he let his assorted properties in absolute good faith. He was only their landlord, after all.

Sharpe was good in the witness box. He always had been, Rose had been warned, and he was a plausible character too, when he wanted to be. The case against him fell like a pack of cards. And as she watched, Rose realised she had probably been too preoccupied with other things and had not given the weaknesses of the prosecution nearly enough attention. She felt she carried considerable blame for what she had realised — well before the jury was asked to deliver its verdict — was fast becoming the inevitable result.

Annoyingly Paolo, who as the front man for Avon Escorts actually sent boys and girls out to clients, did not have the same ability to wriggle. His lawyer protested valiantly that Paolo was not responsible for what his escorts got up to beyond the call of duty — that was their affair. But the jury obviously did not believe a word of it. They were however quite taken in by the obsequious Terry Sharpe.

Paolo was found guilty and went down for twelve months. Sharpe was cleared.

Outside the court, and already smarting, Rose had to endure a confrontation with the former policeman. Sharpe looked smugger than ever.

‘Next time pick on someone your own size, Rosie darlin’,’ he leered at her.

Rose supposed that slapping his face would not help her position in life a great deal, but wondered fleetingly if it wouldn’t be worth it.

Summoning the last vestiges of her self-control she walked away in what she hoped was dignified silence — and without resorting to violence. But for the first time in her working life Rose began to wonder if her future really lay with the police force.

She made a conscious decision that she was going to do everything in her power to unearth the truth about the rent boy murders, even if it meant bending the rules, and whoever she might upset — including Superintendent Titmuss.

The opportunity came more quickly than she might reasonably have expected.

The next day Constance Lange tried to kill herself by making a noose from her bedclothes which she suspended from the light fitting in her cell. Predictably the make-shift arrangement collapsed when Constance kicked away the chair on which she had precariously balanced. Her weight at once pulled the light fitting from the ceiling and she fell heavily on to the tiled floor. She was bruised and shaken but remained very much alive — her greatest injury a badly sprained ankle.

And she had asked to see DCI Rose Piper.

Rose arrived at Eastwood Park late that afternoon accompanied by Peter Mellor. She thought that for the first time during their association Constance looked really vulnerable — as if the act were finally over and she knew it. She had a nasty black bruise on her forehead and her eyes were dark with pain. Mental pain. Rose was pretty sure she would barely be aware of any physical pain.

The inspector again felt a bond with the woman lying helplessly before her. This time she sensed it more strongly than ever before, and there was something in the way Constance was looking at her that made her suspect, also for the first time, that Constance might feel it too.

‘I’m glad you’re still with us, Constance,’ she said quietly.

The other woman smiled wanly. ‘I’m not, I’m really not,’ she said.

‘Why did you want to see me?’

Constance looked uncertain. ‘I’m not sure,’ she murmured eventually. ‘There are things I could tell you, but I don’t know...’

Rose was aware of Sergeant Mellor by her side shifting impatiently in his seat.

‘We should be formally re-interviewing the bloody woman in a tape room with her brief there, or not at all, boss,’ he had said quite correctly during the drive from Bristol.

‘I don’t know if she’s ready for that,’ said Rose. ‘She just asked for a visit, that’s all...’

Peter Mellor had mumbled something about how murderers should be given not what they asked for but what was good for the rest of society and, in his opinion, life would be a lot less troublesome if Constance Lange had succeeded in killing herself.

Mellor continued to believe in Constance’s guilt as much as did everyone else, Rose knew, and he didn’t really want to waste any more time on the deaths of a few male hookers, either. She had overheard him grumbling to that effect on the telephone only the previous day — having quickly recovered, it seemed, from any lurking guilt he might have felt following the murder of Charlie Collins. Mellor was fed up with his boss’s obsession with raking over old ground, and he had made that quite clear to Rose, who had only brought him with her to Eastwood because she so wanted to have him on her side. The man could be infuriating, but she had great respect for him — and liking too, although at that moment she did not like him as much as she usually did. She had rather hoped that this bedside visit might throw up something to shake her sergeant’s certainty — but to begin with, at any rate, it did not seem that that was going to happen.

‘Don’t you think it would help if you told me the truth?’ prompted Rose.

Constance had resignation written all over her.

‘It won’t help me,’ she murmured.

‘It might help someone, though, mightn’t it, Constance? I still think you’re the only person who can stop all this. Isn’t that why you asked to see me?’

Constance half-nodded.

Rose, ignoring Mellor’s fidgeting, was gently persistent. Eventually Constance eased her bruised body in her bed. She looked as if she had just made a decision.

‘Can I talk to you alone?’ she asked the Chief Inspector.

Rose agreed at once, aware instantly of the further disapproval of her sergeant whose body language was more articulate than that of anyone else she knew, she thought. Nonetheless she waved him out of the room.

Afterwards back in Bristol she went straight to see Superintendent Titmuss.

‘Constance Lange wishes to be formally re-interviewed, sir,’ she told him.

‘Rose, what did I tell you?’ Titmuss demanded of her angrily.

‘Prisoner’s rights, sir,’ responded Rose. ‘I’m just the messenger. Oh, and it won’t cost anything sir, will it?’

Rose knew she was pushing her luck but she was past caring. At least he wasn’t likely to be calling her Rosie for a bit.

Superintendent Titmuss left her in little doubt that he would deal with her insubordination later, but agreed for arrangements to be made for a new interview. He had no choice and Rose had known that.

All she cared about was that Constance Lange’s new statement be put on the record as soon as possible. Rose only had the merest outline of it so far. But she had learned enough to realise that the story Constance had to tell would shock even the most case-hardened copper.

Alone in her hospital bed, Constance pondered her decision. It was the hardest she had made so far — much harder than deciding to confess to murder. She was about to completely break her own heart, to cause herself even greater agony than she had so far suffered, she knew that. But once again she was quite sure of herself. Again she was certain she was doing the right thing.

Nothing could end her own torment, not even death. All that was left in the world for her was pain — but she could not let this go on. She was actually glad that her pathetic attempt at suicide had failed. Perhaps she had not really wanted it to succeed. She had one final task, and it was a vital one. She could not be responsible for any more deaths, and she was becoming increasingly certain that there would be more. She hadn’t believed that at first — but now she believed it absolutely.