A Passion So Deadly

Seven

The investigating officer assigned to the murder of Marty Morris was Detective Chief Inspector Rose Piper of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. She arrived at the scene of the crime wearing a big black overcoat buttoned up around the neck. Only she knew what she was wearing underneath. Rose Piper had been at her husband Simon’s fortieth birthday party when she got the call. Nonetheless, she hadn’t wasted a moment getting to the Crescent Hotel.

Rose, young for her rank at only thirty-three, particularly young for a woman at that rank, was a career policewoman and she relished the idea of a juicy murder. Not for the first time, her marriage had to take second place, even on such a special night. She had merely told Simon she had to go to work, whispered a brief apology giving him little or no chance to reply, and slipped quickly away. She had been aware though, of his hurt angry stare following her as she left the restaurant, abandoning him to their friends.

But she certainly wasn’t going to allow anyone else to muscle in on a murder like this one. It had been given to her, and she wasn’t going to let it go. Rose was based at Southmead Police Station, conveniently placed for Southmead Hospital which housed the city mortuary, and Marty Morris had been murdered in Clifton, an area squarely in her Southmead patch. Rose was rather glad about that. In fact she could hardly wait to get stuck in. She had asked for a pair of Wellington boots to be ready at the scene but hadn’t even considered taking the time to change her clothes for more suitable apparel. She had just thanked God for the big black coat as she walked out into the street and over to the patrol car which had been sent to pick her up — not only did it completely cover the unsuitable party attire she was wearing underneath, it would also keep her warm and dry on a cold drizzly evening. She also thanked God that the bash, in the stylish private room at the back of Bristol’s fashionable San Carlo restaurant, hadn’t been going long enough for her to have had more than one drink and a few sips of a second before her mobile phone had called her into action.

She liked a drink when she had the chance, did Rose. She liked a good party. And she had been looking forward to this celebration with her husband as much as she knew he had. But nothing was more important to her than the chance to show what she was made of on a really big case. However it might seem to the public reading the newspapers, you still didn’t get a nice juicy murder all that often in the UK. Most of them, Rose was well aware, turned out to be boring domestics, and called for no real policing skills at all.

Rose had always secretly been sorry to have missed out on the Fred West affair which, as it had centred around Gloucester, a mere thirty miles from Bristol, had fallen into the domain of the Gloucestershire Constabulary. In Bristol alone there were six police stations, all with strictly defined territories, all with detectives of sufficient rank to be put in charge of a murder inquiry. You had to get lucky to land a juicy one, that was the way Rose saw it. There was nothing like solving a good murder to give your career a quick hoist up the ladder. And she wasn’t going to put herself in a position where it would be her own fault if she missed out on this one, that was for certain. So if that meant upsetting Simon, well, it wouldn’t be for the first time. He’d get over it. He always did. She could get around him. She always could.

Rose hunched her shoulders against the weather, shoved her hands deep into her pockets and made her way briskly along the path through the overgrown gardens of the Crescent Hotel towards the crime scene which was already cordoned off and brightly lit by portable floodlights. A duck-boarded route had been laid down away from the murder victim’s path, now part of the protected crime scene — but the drizzly rain continued and the boards were treacherous, particularly for a woman wearing absurdly high-heeled bright orange shoes. To her annoyance the boots she had requested had been forgotten and eventually the inevitable happened. Looking ahead at what awaited her instead of watching her step she slipped off the greasy wood and landed in a particularly unpleasant puddle — that was the end of her extravagant shoes, Rose suspected. She realised that the young uniformed police constable escorting her had noticed what she had done and was studying her closely waiting for a reaction. She gave none.

Rose was the most feminine looking of women, small, slight, fluffy blonde hair fairly obviously owing most of its colour to a good hairdresser, and lots of make-up. She also dressed like an extremely feminine woman and not like the usual conception of a policewoman at all. Certainly most people who might be confronted by her in the street, even if she was dressed for work and not for her social life, would never dream that she were a police officer, and definitely not a Detective Chief Inspector.

Rose Piper’s looks were very deceptive. She was about as tough and ruthlessly ambitious as they came. She was also clever.

She stopped outside the tent which had been constructed around the body of the murder victim, and stood silently for a moment studying the situation.

The SOCOs — scenes of crime officers — were already at work within the patch of ground now surrounded by a tape fence and were combing the cordoned-off area for evidence. It was down to Rose, as Senior Investigating Officer, to eventually decide the extent of the area to be sealed, but the SOCOs had got there first this time and they were an experienced bunch who knew well enough what had to be done. All wore white paper suits, overshoes and surgical gloves.

A similarly clad character, smaller and slighter than any of the others, crouched on the ground, bending over the body. Rose presumed at once that this was Dr Carmen Brown, even though the doctor had her back to the policewoman and the hood of her paper suit was pulled up over her head concealing her distinctive auburn hair. The stature and attitude of the Bristol-based Home Office pathologist, whose territory included the entire area policed by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, made her virtually unmistakable.

Rose was always pleased to see Carmen Brown. There were only forty or so Home Office pathologists in the country, of whom just a handful were women, and Rose knew that, just like her, Carmen always felt under pressure to do a better job than the men.

The DCI made no attempt to step within the crime scene. She was not yet suitably clad. But as she stood, taking it all in for a moment, the biggest and burliest of the white suits inside the cordon spotted her and called out to her in greeting.

‘Evening boss,’ said a strong male voice.

It was Rose’s sergeant, Peter Mellor, and she was relieved that he was there before her. She had assumed he would be as, unlike her, Sergeant Mellor had been on duty that evening. Mellor was a graduate entrant to the force, a big man physically and mentally, black, just twenty-five, married and a father already. He had a strong sense of morality and was a high achiever with little time for those who did not share his capabilities or his ideals. But even if he was sometimes just a little too unbending for Rose’s taste, he was a top-class copper and having him there already would speed things up no end for her, she knew that. Mellor was every bit as clever as she was, she suspected, and considerably more methodical. He had an incisive brain and an ability quickly to gather and sift information. He would already have learned all that was so far possible, she was quite sure of that.

Indeed, without waiting to be asked, the sergeant stepped outside the hastily erected tape fencing and began to brief her.

The victim was a young black male, he told Rose. And even Carmen Brown — who continued to examine the corpse without acknowledging Rose’s arrival, if indeed the thoroughly engrossed doctor had even noticed it — was not prevaricating about the cause of death on this one, said Mellor. It seemed the young man had been stabbed in the back. Just once.

‘Murder weapon?’ asked Rose briskly.

‘No sign, boss. There’s a couple of good footprints in the mud though. Very distinctive. Big size. I’m pretty sure they’re Timberlands actually — got a pair myself.’

Rose nodded. In that case it was a pity Timberland boots were as popular as she knew them to be, she thought.

‘Time of death?’

‘The doctor’s hedging her bets on that one like they always do,’ replied Sergeant Mellor. ‘But she’s prepared to speculate that it was around twenty-four hours ago.’

‘Was the body moved here after death, then?’

Peter Mellor shook his head. ‘They don’t think so, boss. No sign of that.’

‘So a body has been lying here undetected all this time, right through the day? In a hotel garden in the middle of Clifton?’

Sergeant Mellor shrugged. ‘Apparently nobody uses the gardens at this time of year. You can see how overgrown it is around here. This path leads to a gate in the wall back there, but you can drive right up to the main entrance and there’s a car park at the front too. Visitors all go in that way and the staff use the tradesman’s entrance which is also round the front.’

Rose nodded. ‘Do we know who the victim is?’

‘We think we know his name. We found a wallet on the ground beside him which looked as if it had fallen from his jacket pocket. Not much in it, about £30 in cash, a couple of photographs, no credit cards. But there was a membership card to the Riverside Health and Fitness Club, in the name of Marty J. Morris.’

Rose nodded again. She knew the Riverside, it had a gymnasium which specialised in body building and was particularly popular with the gay community.

‘Is he known at the hotel?’ she asked. ‘Has anybody interviewed the management or staff yet?’

‘No boss. We were waiting for you. But the whole area has been secured. Staff and guests all know that nobody leaves the premises until we say so.’

‘Good. OK. I’d better have a closer look, I suppose. Where can I get kitted up?’

Rose looked around her without much enthusiasm. The rain which seemed to have been falling intermittently for days had mercifully stopped while she and Sergeant Mellor had been talking. But drops of water were still showering from the trees and shrubs above her head and the ground around the scene of crime, including the path, had been turned into a bog by tramping feet, although tarpaulin sheets had been laid down in the immediate vicinity of the body.

‘They’ve given us a couple of chalets — there are some suits in room nine over there,’ said Peter Mellor, pointing vaguely through the undergrowth.

Rose picked her way further along the muddy path, aware that the care she was taking was really a lost cause as her shoes were definitely already history. There was a police constable in the room brewing tea with the kettle provided for the hotel’s guests. Unceremoniously Rose turfed him out. She removed her black overcoat, exposing a bright orange velvet suit with a plunging neckline and a short straight skirt, its hemline several inches above her knees. She had bought it at vast expense especially for her husband’s birthday party because she had known Simon would adore it — ironic in the circumstances. Although he was a man disinterested in his own clothing, he loved to see Rose in stylishly sexy clothes, particularly in bright colours — the kind of clothes she would never normally wear to work, which was undoubtedly part of their attraction because he considered that she wore them especially for him, as indeed she did. Certainly she hadn’t wanted to reveal the undoubtedly provocative little orange number to Somerset’s finest and she hadn’t wanted to ruin it in all the muck out there, either.

Hesitating only for a moment she removed her skirt, wrapping it in her black coat and placing the bundle carefully on the bed, and pulled on the paper overalls on top of her suit jacket. Sighing resignedly, she yanked plastic galoshes over her spoiled shoes, hoping that the sharp heels wouldn’t break through them.

When she was ready she took a few deep breaths before entering the fray. She had wanted a juicy murder and it looked like she had got one. But, paradoxically, Rose could never quite get over the initial shock she experienced each time she was confronted with a dead body. She had lost count of the number she had seen now. In her earlier uniformed days there had been the usual mix of road-accident victims and other incidental deaths. Once she had had to break into an old man’s house and had found him lying dead on his kitchen floor. She could still remember the stench which had greeted her. He had died of a stroke, it turned out, several days earlier.

This would be only the second murder enquiry she had headed, although it already looked as if it might be the most interesting she had ever worked on, but she had assisted on many more. Bristol was a tough city. Domestics and gang fights might not make a detective’s reputation, but they still counted.

Nonetheless she had to steel herself. She certainly knew better than to show any sign of weakness. She had learned that a long time ago, she thought to herself, as she ducked under the tape fence and approached her city’s latest victim of violent crime.

Carmen Brown was now standing up and this time she turned around at once as Rose approached. The doctor was a youngish woman, even smaller and more slight of build than Rose, with intelligent eyes and, although so young, already a permanent somewhat world-weary expression which detracted from her natural prettiness.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said the pathologist, by way of greeting.

‘And good evening to you, too, Dr Brown,’ responded Rose.

They were two women in jobs which remained predominantly male territory. They liked and respected each other, understood each other even. They both knew how hard each had had to work to achieve the success that they had so far attained. There was never any need to articulate their mutual respect.

Rose’s gaze was drawn to the ground at Carmen Brown’s feet. The body was spread-eagled there, lying awkwardly on its front, one arm thrust out as if in a bizarre fist-clenched salute, the other tucked beneath the torso, legs apart. The leather jacket the victim was still wearing concealed the fatal wound Rose already knew was somewhere on his back. Bending a little closer she could see the rip through which the blade of the weapon must have passed. It was a surprisingly small abrasion, the damage to the jacket only slight.

The victim’s head was to one side and Rose could see his face clearly in the bright lights which so starkly illuminated the scene. He was lying partly in the shallow ditch running alongside the path, and his head and upper body were at a lower level than his legs and feet, explaining probably why the contents of his pockets seemed to have dropped out as he fell forwards and slightly downwards. His entire body was covered in splashes of gooey mud. The rain which had been falling so steadily throughout most of the previous twenty-four hours had washed the mud into rivulets and the corpse was soaking wet, although Rose reasoned that it would have been protected from much of the earlier downpour by the arc of rhododendron. The victim’s eyes were wide open as if frozen in fright. Obliquely Rose found herself trying to imagine what it would be like to know you were about to die a violent death, and then, remembering that this young man had been stabbed just once from behind, wondered if he had even known. The mouth of the corpse was stretched open in a skeletal grin, made all the more startling by the even whiteness of his teeth contrasting with the deep ebony of his skin.

Rose forced herself to bend further over in order to take a closer look. There was very little blood and no smell. It is a myth that sudden death causes victims to urinate or to defecate. Carmen Brown, who attended between forty and fifty deaths a year, once told Rose that she had only seen that on one occasion when she had been called to examine a young woman who had hanged herself. Hanging was the only exception and even then not always, but the sudden snapping of the spinal cord in a vertical position sometimes caused pressure on the bladder, forcing it to open. Rose shuddered. The amount of macabre information she had stashed away over the years was quite frightening.

In this case there was very little external indication of violent death — although as Rose leaned closer to that distorted face, to those staring eyes, she suffered her usual chronic reaction. The shock of death never failed to hit her.

She gagged, putting her hand to her mouth, somehow retaining the presence of mind to pretend she was having a coughing fit. Men could show human frailty occasionally and get away with it, even be applauded for it — women could not, certainly not if they wanted to reach the top in the police force, Rose believed.

She stepped back, forced herself to recover quickly, and spoke to the pathologist.

‘Died twenty-four hours ago, I gather?’ she said.

‘Time of death is an inexact science as you well know, Chief Inspector,’ replied Carmen Brown coolly.

‘And I also know you’re never far out, doctor,’ Rose responded, continuing in the formality the other had begun, although the two women frequently called each other by their Christian names and certainly did if they met off duty.

Rose looked around her carefully. ‘What do you reckon did for our boy, then?’ she asked.

‘A knife of some kind with an extremely long blade,’ answered the pathologist. ‘It could have been just an ordinary carving knife but it would have had to have been razor sharp. Probably a butcher’s knife of some kind, but then, loads of people have those in their kitchens nowadays. You can clearly see the incisory wound in the small of his back.’

Deftly, Dr Brown lifted the victim’s jacket and shirt so that Rose could see the deceptively small entry wound centrally placed just below his shoulder blades. Even on the skin immediately surrounding the stab wound there was little blood.

‘And there’s very little tearing either to the victim’s clothes or skin,’ Carmen Brown continued. ‘With a wound like this the bleeding would be almost entirely internal. That knife slipped straight in. Easy. And deadly. You’re hard-pressed to miss a vital organ of some kind if you stab somebody in the middle of their back.’ The doctor looked thoughtful. ‘Probably hit the spinal cord, must have sliced through at least one major artery — could even have ruptured a lung. Depends on the angle...’

Carmen Brown might have been giving the prognosis on a broken-down car. All pathologists were like that, able to discuss and investigate the most gruesome detail with absolute professional detachment. Rose assumed that was the only way they could work. She suppressed another shudder and had to fight back a second threatening attack of nausea.

‘So, what can you tell me about the victim?’

No longer in close contact with the body, the pathologist pushed off the hood of her white suit with the back of one hand, releasing a cascade of auburn curls somehow quite incongruous amid the sterile austerity of the crime scene. She glanced down at the body lying at her feet as she spoke.

‘He was a fit young man in his early twenties or perhaps even a little younger. About five foot seven inches, stockily built. Good teeth. An old bruise on his right temple. Wore contact lenses. And he died at once.’

Rose’s attention was momentarily diverted by the noisy banter of a familiar double-act behind her. The Cataldi brothers, the coroner’s pick-up men, had arrived.

Carmen Brown followed the policewoman’s gaze. ‘There’s nothing more I can do at the scene in conditions like this,’ said the pathologist, waving a hand vaguely at the sodden ground and dripping foliage. ‘We may as well get him bagged up,’ she continued.

Ron Cataldi, the elder and slightly larger of the brothers, passed a folded stretcher over the tape-fence.

‘So when are you two ladies going to find us a body in a nice warm sitting-room somewhere?’ he asked, an easy grin spreading across his broad face. Another of Bristol’s small Italian community, his voice still bore just the faintest hint of Mediterranean lilt.

‘What, and leave you guys with nothing to grumble about?’ responded Rose.

She liked the Cataldis, everybody did. Their job was to collect bodies whenever a post-mortem examination was required — not just the victims of violent crimes, but all accident and sudden death cases — and deliver the corpses to the nearest mortuary. All coroners’ offices employ a full-time team like Ron and Tommy Cataldi. In the Avon and Somerset constabulary, with the blunt graveyard humour common in the police force, they were invariably known as The Body-snatchers.

The Cataldis, who covered the entire Bristol area and probably collected a dozen or so bodies a week in their blue Ford Transit van with its blacked-out rear windows, got through their work by assuming an attitude of relaxed joviality. Their way of dealing with death was to lighten the moment whenever possible, and their manner was such that not only did they get away with it, to the other professionals involved they were always a welcome arrival, however grim the occurrence requiring them. Ron and Tommy wore neat dark suits at all times and at first glance, Rose always thought, they looked and sounded like Mafiosi a long way from home. Then you learned how surprisingly gentle they could be. They had a natural sensitivity about them. Rose had many times witnessed these two big and apparently bluff men coming into a situation where they had to deal with shocked members of the public and sometimes grieving relatives, and do so with a sympathetic deftness she only wished she could emulate.

Tonight, though, there were only professionals about. No public in attendance who might not in such circumstances appreciate the finer points of Tommy and Ron’s almost obligatory repartee — which therefore continued fluently as the SOCOs began to carefully lift the body on to the open body bag.

‘Oooh, careful with that zip, lads,’ said Tommy. ‘Good job he’s still got his trousers on...’

‘Yeah, it’s ’is lucky day, really, only he don’t know it,’ interspersed Ron.

Rose raised her eyes heavenwards. Carmen Brown did not even seem to hear. She continued to study the victim intently as he was being zipped into the grey plastic body bag, almost as if she were asking him to tell her more. Eventually she bent down and reached into her medical bag lying on a tarpaulin sheet by her side and produced three transparent evidence bags which she passed to Rose.

‘When I took his temperature I found these little items almost hidden by his leg, close to where we found his wallet,’ she said matter-of-factly.

One of the plastic bags contained three packets of condoms. The second a small quantity of cannabis resin and the third a scrap of paper on which was scribbled a telephone number.

It was Peter Mellor, back in the Major Incident Room already set up at Southmead Police Station, who dialled the number. His call was answered quite quickly in spite of being just past midnight and in a manner which indicated that calls at all hours were commonplace.

‘Avon Escorts,’ said a voice with a strong Bristol accent.

Sergeant Mellor replaced the receiver.

‘You must have heard of Avon Escorts, boss,’ he told Rose a few minutes later. ‘They’re little better than a mobile knocking shop, and they provide boys as well as girls. A male Tom, that’s what our lad is.’ Mellor could barely keep the contempt from his voice. ‘I’d stake a month’s pay on it...’

Rose had started to feel very tired. She was, sitting at her desk, legs stretched before her, resigned now to revealing her sexy orange suit which looked just as out of place and attracted just the same sort of raised-eyebrow half-appreciative, half-amused glances in the station as she had known it would at the scene of the crime. But at least it stood less chance of being ruined at the nick than at a muddy crime scene, with a bit of luck anyway, she had been idly thinking to herself as yet another of her colleagues, called back on duty, did a double-take at the sight of her as he entered the already buzzing Incident Room.

Sergeant Mellor’s words banished all such trivia from her weary brain. The news jerked her into full alertness. She was instantly excited. Rose had quite a lot of imagination for a copper. She immediately found herself thinking about the Yorkshire Ripper and the other cases throughout history of serial murders of prostitutes. Had she possibly got a similar case on her hands with a new twist — the victims being male prostitutes? She accepted that she was probably being fanciful. The murder was more than likely a one-off. But a little guiltily she also realised she was half hoping that would not prove to be the case.

Avon Escorts had a proper office in a small prefabricated-looking building on the outskirts of the city centre alongside the A38, the main road which links Bristol with Bridgwater, Taunton, and then runs into Devon. It operated as a bona fide business, VAT rated and paying tax. The front was quite simply that it was an escort service, a perfectly legal enterprise, and if any of its employees were involved in additional activities, that was nothing to do with Avon. Rose learned that the vice boys had been keeping an eye on the outfit for years, but Avon Escorts was efficiently run and had never been involved in any kind of scandal. It and its operatives had always kept out of trouble — until now.

The agency apparently tried to run a full twenty-four-hour service. The office number Peter Mellor had called had had a divert on it, but that didn’t take long, with modem telecommunications technology, to trace. On this occasion the calls were being referred to the home of one Paolo Constantino, of 16 Clarence Terrace.

Rose knew that the correct procedure for a Senior Investigating Officer was to send a team round. But she could rarely resist taking a first-hand look at anyone she reckoned was likely to become a key figure in a case. It didn’t always make her popular.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

It was 1.00 a.m. when Paolo — who liked his sleep and had been fitfully dozing between telephone interruptions — was summarily awakened by the hammering on his front door. Like Charlie, he had a nice home — a small Victorian terraced house which had been attractively renovated — in a nice area. He was horrified to discover the police on his doorstep. He didn’t need that, he really didn’t.

There were four of them. A small blonde woman in a big overcoat, a tall black man wearing a grey suit and two uniformed constables. Quite a turn-out. Who did they think he was, for goodness sake? Bristol’s Al Capone for the millennium?

It was the small blonde woman, just a slip of a thing really, who almost pushed him back into the hallway.

‘Paolo Constantino? I’d like a word with you.’

She managed to make the simple remark sound quite ominous.

‘I am Detective Chief Inspector Piper of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary and I have some news for you,’ she continued, her voice quietly controlled yet somehow extremely menacing. ‘Marty Morris is dead. He’s been murdered.’

If it had been her intention to shock Paolo, she certainly succeeded. But he did his best to look noncommittal, disinterested even.

‘Marty who?’ he heard himself say.

‘Don’t give me that shit!’

Paolo started. Paolo was as streetwise as they came, but he was confused by the contrast between the way the blonde woman looked, feminine almost to the point of frailty in his opinion, and the way she spoke and behaved.

Paolo didn’t speak. If he could stay silent for long enough, he might be all right, he reasoned. He sincerely wished that he didn’t have to deal with this in the middle of the night. Paolo, perhaps curiously in his chosen trade, was not at his best at night and did not function well at all if his sleeping pattern was disturbed. The agency phone had only been switched over to him because the old man who normally handled the night-time referrals — answering the late phone for Avon Escorts was, after all, a good all-cash pension-boosting number which involved no travelling expenses — was ill. Paolo played for time, trying desperately to gather his thoughts.

After a brief pause the woman chief inspector continued.

‘The evening before last Marty Morris was stabbed in the back in the grounds of the Crescent Hotel in Clifton and it’s my belief that he was on a job for you when he was attacked. Now, are you going to tell me about it here or would you rather come down to the station?’

Paolo was waking up now, beginning to think a little more clearly. The evening before last at the Crescent Hotel. Christ, he thought. Mrs Pattinson!

He reminded himself that Avon Escorts had never had any trouble with the filth before. Paolo himself had no police record, he had always managed to remain a step ahead. The police turned a blind eye to discreet prostitution unless there was trouble, that was his philosophy, and had been the secret of the success of Avon Escorts. Problem was, there was trouble now. You couldn’t get much bigger trouble than a murder. His partner, of whom Paolo was actually a little afraid, would have to be informed pretty smartish too — and he wasn’t going to be best pleased. Still, one problem at a time.

Resignedly, Paolo led the intimidating party of police officers into his sitting-room.

The truth was that he had already been mildly anxious about Marty. The lad should have been round the office in the morning to hand over half his fee and he’d never turned up. But Paolo hadn’t thought about him being hurt. He’d more or less assumed that the boy had gone on a binge of some sort. Marty liked his blow, Paolo knew that much about him, and his kind were inclined to go missing from time to time when they got a bundle of money thrust at them. Paolo had been concerned only because he had thought he was going to have to sort Marty out. Remind him to behave himself. Help him recollect where his loyalties lay.

‘Yeah, OK, Marty was on a job for us,’ said Paolo eventually. ‘A straight escort job, you understand. We’re a respectable agency.’

‘Spare me the commercial,’ snapped the women inspector whom Paolo, rendered unusually observant by a combination of native cunning, grim realism and long experience, thought might be inclined to sometimes over-compensate for her extremely feminine appearance.

‘I want to know exactly where Marty was supposed to be going,’ she continued relentlessly. ‘I want the time of everything. I want every detail. I need to know whether he reached his destination before he was killed and who he was going to meet.’

So Paolo told her. Everything he knew. He didn’t have any choice.

‘Marty was booked for Mrs Pattinson...’ he began.

‘Yes, I am absolutely sure,’ said the manager of the Crescent Hotel an hour or so later. ‘Mrs Pattinson didn’t check in here yesterday. It would be on the records and anyway Janet, the receptionist, knew her well by sight.’

Rose did not like the man. Henry Bannerman was plump with greasy skin, his bald head shining almost unnaturally, and exuded a smug self-confidence which his appearance certainly did nothing to merit. His face was fleshy and his somewhat beady eyes blinked incessantly within deeply folded layers of skin.

Rose thought she wouldn’t trust him as far as you could roll his unpleasantly rotund form downhill. Nonetheless, she was fairly sure that he was telling the truth.

And it was somehow no surprise also to learn from Henry Bannerman how thoroughly Mrs Pattinson had protected her anonymity.

‘Didn’t you think it was strange in this day and age that this Mrs Pattinson always paid in cash?’ Rose asked the hotel manager, with only a slight edge to her voice.

Bannerman shrugged. ‘We do still take real money here,’ he said.

His voice had a patronising whine to it. Rose made a mental note to pay more attention to the supercilious bastard at a later date. However, Janet the receptionist indeed confirmed the Chief Inspector’s belief that the man had not been lying to her — not so far, at any rate.

‘Oh no, I haven’t seen Mrs Pattinson at the motel for more than two weeks now,’ Janet sleepily assured the two detective constables, sent around at once by Rose, who unceremoniously raised her from her bed just before 4.00 a.m.

The girl — her plump cheeks which coloured so easily glowing increasingly redder as she became more awake and more aware of what was happening — also confirmed that Mrs Pattinson paid cash in advance. Always.

It was about an hour later, at around 5.00 a.m., that Rose decided she could continue no longer without sleep. She had already appointed an office manager she was sure she could work well with, a woman inspector, Phyllis Jordan — whom she had known for many years and considered to be a first-rate organizer. Fortuitously Phyllis had come on night duty just as the murder investigation had been swinging into operation, and, yes, she had assured Rose, she would stay at her post until the Chief Inspector returned to the station as soon as possible after grabbing a few hours sleep.

A police driver took Rose home to the spacious bungalow, 1970s’ vintage, which had been home for her and Simon for almost five years now. She wasn’t quite sure how she had ended up in a bungalow. She hated bungalows. But this one, on the outskirts of Bristol, did have spectacular views to the southwest out over the Mendip hills.

Simon seemed to be sound asleep, but had somehow contrived to be sprawled across almost the entire breadth of the double bed. That was going to make it very difficult to creep into bed without waking him. And she didn’t want to do that unless she had to. It had been planned that the party last night would be very special indeed. Toni, the manager of San Carlo, had produced a customised menu for the occasion and festivities had been expected to continue into the early hours.

Rose had left Simon surrounded by his closest friends, but she knew that the whole thing would have ceased to be special at all for him once she had gone. Although so little had been said she was well aware of how upset he must have been, and how angry. And she didn’t want to have to deal with all that now. She was too tired.

She undressed quietly without putting on the bedroom light, draping the prized orange suit carefully over a chair, and then tried to find a corner of the bed into which she could slot herself without disturbing him. It was a lost cause. As she gently attempted to move one of his arms, just a few inches, he woke up with a start, peering at her through the half-darkness. The curtains were open and the street-lamp a few yards down the road outside gave the room a certain pale illumination.

Simon’s silky brown hair had fallen across his eyes. He brushed it away in one of those gestures that had been part of his attraction for her when they had met nine years earlier. Simon had just left college after deciding relatively late in life that he wanted a career change. He had been a school teacher. Now he was a social worker. And he was dedicated. She liked that in him. Although she was pretty sure he didn’t much like her dedication to her chosen career. In fact she suspected that he would prefer her to be almost anything other than a police officer — mercifully the only thing he had in common with her mother with whom Rose had a distinctly strained relationship — although he had yet to tell her so. Indeed, often she thought he did not want her to be dedicated to any career. Simon badly wanted children, had done for some time. He was seven years older than her, he reminded her frequently, and he didn’t want his kids to have the oldest father in town. Rose was still not ready, and sometimes wondered if she ever would be, although she did not admit that to her husband.

Simon had known, of course, both what her job was and her attitude to it, from the start. She had been a keen and newly promoted sergeant at the beginning of their love affair. But nothing would have made any difference then. When Rose met Simon the world had, for a time, stopped revolving for both of them.

They had fallen in love swiftly, deeply and irrevocably, after bumping into each other — literally — on a train from the West Country to London. As Rose, somewhat precariously clutching a plastic beaker of coffee, had been manoeuvring her way back from the buffet car to her seat at the rear of the train, Simon had been manoeuvring his way towards it. And just as they were attempting to squeeze past each other in the middle of a carriage the train had lurched dramatically. Both were sideways on in the passageway between the rows of seats, trying to give each other as much room as possible, and not, at that point, looking at each other at all. The sudden movement of the train propelled Rose forwards, pushing Simon backwards on to the table behind him, their two alarmed faces suddenly pressed close together. Then Simon had smiled — he still had such a wonderful gentle smile — and Rose had melted. It had been difficult for her to find her feet again because her legs had felt like jelly. Simon had started to laugh. He told her later it was because she was gaping at him, as if in some kind of shock, her mouth wide open.

It had been shock. A shock wave. Amazement that it was possible to feel whatever was coursing through her whole being — just like that. She had become aware that the coffee, squeezed out of the plastic beaker past the lid when her grip on it had involuntarily tightened as she fell, was dripping down one of his trouser legs on to his shoe. She had started muttering apologies. He had continued to laugh, he hadn’t been able to stop, and it had been the laughter of great joy, he had explained many times when they had relived the encounter. Without meaning to she had started to laugh with him, and it seemed perfectly natural that when they eventually managed to disentangle themselves, he had escorted her back to her seat, forgetting whatever it was that he had been going to the buffet car to buy.

They had spent the rest of the journey together. He had been going on a course at the LSE, she to take a few days leave with her sister, who lived in Islington with her civil servant husband. Simon had telephoned within minutes of her arriving at her sister’s home and Rose had been waiting for the call, while at the same time telling herself resolutely that she would never hear from him again. They had spent the next evening together, and the evening after that, and the evening after that. Indeed they had not really been apart since.

Rose had always felt that their meeting sounded like something out of a bad Mills and Boon novel. Nonetheless it never ceased to give her warm glow to remember it. And she quite enjoyed telling new acquaintances, who asked the inevitable question of how she and her husband had met, that she had jumped on him aboard an Inter City express train.

Simon propped himself on one elbow and used the hand with which he had been attempting to brush his hair out of his face to rub his eyes. Rose smiled at him warmly, still locked in the memory of their splendid beginning and forgetting for a moment all the tensions which had latterly entered their relationship.

But there was small chance, it seemed, of Simon, whose smile she still so enjoyed, smiling back at her. His lips were set in that sulky line she had become increasingly more familiar with.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said irritably. ‘First you bloody wreck my party and then you wreck my night’s sleep. Couldn’t you have gone into the spare room?’

She flinched away from him. For a brief moment, she had been thinking, in spite of her extreme tiredness, how nice it would be to make love to him, to cuddle up to his warm body and let him sleepily explore hers. Their love-making was still good, although not as frequent as it used to be. It could be sometimes earthy and urgent and sometimes gentle and sweet and undemanding. The latter was what she would have liked then — but she patently wasn’t going to get it.

She did understand his irritation. Simon was disappointed. He felt let down. The party had been important to him. And she had undoubtedly jerked him awake into that uncomfortable limbo when you were still a bit drunk but the hangover was beginning too.

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. And she meant it, although not enough to actually regret what she had done. To her it had been the only possible course of action.

He did not reply, but merely turned his back and seemed to fall almost immediately asleep once more. Again in spite of her exhaustion, she lay awake for a few minutes.

It would be all right in the morning, she assured herself, it usually was. Simon would forgive her, he usually did. He still loved her, she had no doubt about that. And she still loved him. It was just that they were so different. They didn’t seem to want the same things or even want to do the same things. She loved almost all sports, both playing and watching. He hated sport. They appreciated different kinds of music, read different sorts of books, enjoyed different films and TV programmes. And, perhaps most devastatingly, they rarely even liked the same people. But you don’t think about things like that when you fall in love. Not the way she and Simon had fallen in love.

Fleetingly she wondered if Simon had ever strayed. Goodness knows, he was attractive enough not to be short of opportunity, and sometimes she thought she wouldn’t altogether blame him. He was a modem, liberal-minded man, but he still wanted a wife. And she was only barely that. She had at least been faithful to him — so far. But occasionally — particularly after solving a difficult case — she had to admit that she had been tempted. She had always enjoyed sex, yet, perhaps curiously even though she had been only twenty-four, had not had a single serious relationship with a man before Simon. Her ambition in her career had, of course been part of the reason for that — she had never seemed to have the time. But that wasn’t all of it.

As a young single woman Rose had relished the thrill of sex without ties and of quite casual one-night stands too. She had often been told that was unusual in a woman — but that, of course, had always been by a man.

Even thinking that way made her feel disloyal, as if she was betraying the man she loved. She resolved that she would make it all up to him. That she would show him how much she loved him. Maybe even try for the child Simon so wanted.

But all of that, naturally, would have to wait until her current big case was over. When you were heading a murder enquiry you could not let yourself worry about anything else. You had to clear your mind and your desk of all except the case in hand. You could not carry baggage.

Rose Piper’s last conscious thoughts before she sank into much-needed oblivion were not of her husband, but of the murder investigation she had been placed in charge of. Who was Mrs Pattinson, she wondered? Almost certainly that was not her real name. And where was she? Was Mrs Pattinson really the killer? And would she strike again?

One thing Rose knew for certain. She had to find her.