Silent Victims

8

“There is nothing like a dame… Nothing in the world. There is nothing you can name that is anything like a dame!”

Shirley Bassey had been replaced by the soundtrack of South Pacific, and Haskons sang lustily along. He and Lillie were working their way through the albums. There were hundreds of photographs, mostly black and white, all of them featuring gorgeous young men and svelte pretty boys in various states of undress. The shots of couples were suggestive certainly, but not strictly pornographic.

“Some great-lookin’ fellas, they must all work out like crazy,” Lillie said. “Here, look at this one.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Leafing through the album, Haskons couldn’t be bothered; he’d seen enough naked male flesh to last him a lifetime. Even the show tunes were beginning to bore him. “I’ve had worse taken on me holidays.”

“What, kissin’ blokes?” Lillie sniggered.

“Piss off! I mean in swimmin’ trunks.” Haskons flipped over a page, scowling. “This is a waste of time. I got some that go back to the seventies. I dunno what we’re doing here, why we’re here…” He threw out his hands. “If he did a bit of modelin’, so what? What we lookin’ for?”

His bleeper sounded. He reached inside his jacket to kill it, and looked around the room.

“You see a phone?”

“Mr. Lewis? Can I use your phone!”

Mark Lewis cocked his head. He half-turned from the processing bench. In his left hand he held a thick bundle of ten-by-eight glossy prints, color and black and white. With his right hand he was feeding them, one by one, into a bath of acid. They fizzed and buckled, turned brown and sank to the bottom in a gray-brown slimy sludge.

He leaned toward the black curtain.

“Be my guest! I can’t come out, I’m working on some negs. Phone’s on the shelf in the passage.”

He stayed there until he heard Haskons move away, then quickly turned back to the bench and carried on methodically feeding the prints into the acid bath.

When Haskons returned he found Lillie examining the lock on one of the large cupboards. Haskons called out, “Thanks, Mr. Lewis!” and said in Lillie’s ear, “That was Kathy. Tip-off. If there was anyone doing the real heavy stuff, then this is our man…”

Lillie had taken out a bunch of keys. He selected one and slid it into the lock. It clicked open.

“Hey, watch it!” Haskons whispered. “We’ve no search warrant.”

From top to bottom the cupboard was filled with videotapes. Lillie pulled one out and looked at the label.

“He’s messing us about. Never said anythin’ about this lot.” He showed Haskons the label. “ ‘Adam and Adam.’ That’s original.”

Haskons went over to the darkroom.

“Mr. Lewis, we need to talk to you a minute.”

He pushed the curtain aside and peered in. Mark Lewis’s startled face craned around over his shoulder. He shifted across, attempting to shield what he was doing. Haskons went in and shoved him out of the way. He saw the photograph Lewis had just dropped into the bath and reached for it.

“No! Don’t!” Lewis anxiously paddled the air like an hysterical schoolgirl. “It’s acid, it’ll burn your hand off!”

Lillie appeared, in time to see Haskons lifting the print out of the bath with a steel ruler. Crinkling and turning brown, the image was still discernible. A naked, beautiful boy with curly red hair.

They lay on Tennison’s desk, a dozen or more of the large color photographs of Connie in various artistic poses that Mark Lewis hadn’t had a chance to dispose of. Otley picked one out at random. It happened to be of Connie bending over, firm round buttocks presented to the camera like two peaches.

Tennison leaned against the windowsill, pushing her cuticles back with the clip of her fountain pen. She said thoughtfully, “Parker-Jones is regarded as the Mother Teresa of Soho… and he’s Jackson’s alibi.” She scratched her nose with the fountain pen clip. “There’s something that doesn’t quite sit right. If Jackson was looking for Connie because he owed him money, why-if we presume he found Connie-why didn’t he take it?”

Otley shook his head and tossed the photograph down. There was a tap at the door and Haskons looked in. “Mark Lewis is in interview room D oh two. We’re getting a video room set up, view Connie’s tapes.”

Tennison nodded to indicate she’d be right along. She followed Otley to the door. The phone rang. “You go ahead,” she told him, and reached for the phone. “Chief Inspector Tennison’s office.”

It was Dr. Gordon’s receptionist. Tennison listened, frowning. “Is this bad news? Is it the tests?”

She moved around the desk to sit down. She closed her eyes, listening. “Yes, yes… I’ll come in. Thank you.”

She put the phone down and sat silently for a moment, rubbing the back of her hand. Snapping awake, she opened the top drawer and took out her diary. Underneath it was the cassette tape she’d hunted high and low for. She took it out and turned it over.

Kathy came in. “You wanted DCI Lyall’s contact number. He’s in Manchester.” She put the paper down. “I think the Sarge…” She paused. Tennison was thumbing through the pages of the diary, chewing her lip. “You okay?”

Tennison banged the diary shut. “Kathy, you didn’t put this tape in my drawer, did you? It’s the ambulance call-out tape.”

“No.” Kathy turned to go.

“You don’t have a cigarette, do you?” Tennison said.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t smoke,” Kathy said, leaving.

The diary and the tape lay side by side on the desk. Tennison stared at them, pulling distractedly at the neckline of her blouse. She tossed the diary back into the drawer and slammed it shut.

DS Richard Haskons and DI Ray Hebdon were in Taped Interview Room D.02 with Mark Lewis. As the arresting officer, Haskons was having first crack. Hebdon stood watching, arms folded, his tie pulled loosely away from his collar. The atmosphere was close in the small room, and he imagined he could smell Mark Lewis sweating. Or maybe it wasn’t his imagination; the photographer was highly agitated, twisting a handkerchief in his heavily veined hands, the nails neatly manicured and coated in clear varnish.

“Go on,” Haskons prompted.

“I last saw him about four, perhaps five days before the fire. He wanted some photographs-not the explicit ones, just some head and shoulders…”

“And?”

“He never showed up.” Lewis looked his age now, deep lines etched into his forehead, the skin rough and open-pored on his sagging cheeks. His confident, finger-snapping breeziness had been utterly punctured. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “Look, I was only destroying them because I know he’s dead and I just didn’t want to be involved.”

The door opened and Tennison walked in. She’d run a comb through her hair, freshened her makeup, and was, outwardly at least, calm and composed.

“DCI Tennison has just entered the room,” Haskons said into the microphone. Tennison mouthed Thank you. Haskons continued. “Did he say what he wanted the photographs for?”

“I assumed Connie was maybe trying to do some legit modeling work. He… well, he was a very good-looking boy. Quite a star.”

“When he came to you on the other occasions, when these”-Haskons tapped the three or four photographs on the table between them-“these were taken, did he commission them himself or did somebody else?”

“Those,” Lewis said, blinking down at them, “well, he paid for them. I suppose he was going to try for work on spec.”

“Did you ever see Connie with anybody else?”

“You mean apart from the other models?”

“Yes. Did you ever see Connie with anybody?”

“No,” Lewis said, hardly moving his lips.

Haskons pressed him. “So he always came to the studio alone?”

“Yes, apart from the other people in the session. He was always alone.”

Haskons looked at Tennison, standing alongside Hebdon. She gave the slightest of nods. It wasn’t necessary now to imagine Mark Lewis sweating, it was plainly visible, his dark curly hair clinging damply to his forehead. The handkerchief resembled a length of twisted, grimy rope.

“What about the videos?” Tennison asked, closing the other claw in a pincer attack. “We know what business you are in, Mr. Lewis, we know about the videos. Now, was Connie ever seen with anyone else when he came to your studio? I’m not talking about the models-did anyone ever bring him to your studio?”

“No, he was always by himself.” Lewis looked up, his eyes shifting from face to face, an abject appeal. “He was very beautiful, very special, very professional. It was just business-”

“Mr. Lewis.” Tennison wasn’t moved by any kind of appeal. “We know you made videos with underage boys.” Meaning, we can throw the book at you any time we like. “So did you ever see Connie with anyone?”

“Somebody was with him, once,” Lewis mumbled. He cleared his throat. “No idea who it was, but he paid for the film. Sat watching… I’m going back at least a year, eighteen months.”

“How much did this film cost?” Haskons asked.

Lewis wiped his neck with the grimy rope. “Two thousand.” He swallowed. “Pounds.”

“Describe him,” Hebdon cut in sharply.

“Who?”

Hebdon leaned over the desk. “The man with Connie. Describe him. How old for starters?”

“Oh!” Mark Lewis made a vague, fluttery gesture. “Well, be about late fifties, maybe older. Tall, gray-haired, gray… he was all sort of gray, really, pinstriped suit, smart, had a briefcase…”

“How did he pay? Check or cash?”

“Cash.” Lewis nodded emphatically. “He had the cash in the briefcase.”

Tennison bent down to have a quiet word in Haskons’s ear. He leaned to one side and whispered back, “He waived his right…”

“So he’s made his call, yes?” Tennison murmured, and was assured by Haskons’s nod. Mark Lewis watched them with glazed, slightly moist eyes. He visibly jumped when Hebdon said, “Did he take part in the video? This gray-haired man?”

“Well… not physically.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Haskons said beligerently.

Lewis stammered, “He s-said what he wanted, t-told me what he wanted Connie to do.”

“Have we got the video?” Haskons asked him.

“Oh, no-that one never even had a copy made. He took it out of the camera. All the others we made came after. Connie got a bit of a taste for it.”

It was the first direct answer he’d given that Tennison actually believed. Everything else had had to be, quite literally, sweated out of him. She said, “You got an address for Connie? A phone number?” Mark Lewis shook his head. “No?” Tennison said icily, pointing at the tape recorder. “Would you please answer the question?”

“No, I don’t know where he lives,” Lewis said meekly.

“Lived, Mr. Lewis. Connie is dead. How did you contact him when he was alive?”

Lewis stared dumbly at the table, squeezing the wet rag of a handkerchief. The door was pushed open, and Otley beckoned to Tennison. She went over and had a whispered conversation.

With a tight, icy smile, Haskons said, “We’ve a stack of your films starring Connie, and you want us to believe you had no way of contacting him?”

“… search warrant…”

Lewis stared glassily past Haskons’s shoulder, having caught Otley’s words. He saw Tennison nod to Otley, who disappeared. She came back in and shut the door of the humid, claustrophobic room as Hebdon leaned over the desk, putting his face close to Lewis’s.

“Mark, you’re getting in deeper. You’ve just admitted you filmed Connie eighteen months ago. He was still a minor.”

“I-I didn’t know how old he was. He told me he was eighteen!”

Tennison barked at him, “Mr. Lewis, how did you contact Connie?”

Dalton tapped and came in. He wanted a word. With a sigh Tennison followed him into the corridor.

“I think you should have a look at it, it’s just a home video.”

“Of Connie?” Dalton nodded. “Okay, we’ll take a break in ten minutes.” She looked into his eyes. “How you feeling?”

Dalton shrugged it off, waggling his hand with the bandage on it. “I’m fine, no problem.”

She watched him walk off down the corridor. No question about it, he wasn’t fine, far from it, and maybe there was one hell of a problem. She went back in. Lewis was hoarse and ragged, squirming in the chair, his collar, his shirtfront, drenched with sweat.

“I’d leave a message and he’d call me… I never knew where he lived, I swear.”

He hadn’t much resistance left. It was a token effort. Tennison knew they had just about squeezed him dry. But not quite.

“So, if I, for example, saw one of your films, and wanted to contact somebody in it… I’d get in touch with you?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“I’d go around to the advice centre and stick up a note for him.”

“Advice centre, which advice centre?”

“One in Soho, near some old flats.”

“Did you get paid for carrying these messages back and forth?”

Rather late in the day, Mark Lewis decided this was an affront. “No. No, I did not get paid.”

“You just did it as an act of kindness?” Hebdon said, with only the faintest sarcasm.

“Yes.”

Tennison opened the small top window, and then opened the larger one. The fresh clean air was delicious. “Do you know Edward Parker-Jones?” she asked, breathing deeply and turning to him.

“He runs the advice centre.” Lewis nodded. “But I don’t know him. He wouldn’t approve, you know…” His eyebrows, as suspiciously dark as his hair, went up and down. “Very straight.”

Tennison took a pace nearer and asked quietly, “Why do you think Colin Jenkins was murdered?”

“I don’t know.”

Tennison let the silence hang for a moment. She didn’t believe him, and she didn’t not believe him. For the time being, the jury was still out.

She moved up close to the table, standing very straight, looking down on him.

“Mr. Lewis, you were read your rights, and you said that you did not require any legal representation. You were also granted permission to make a phone call, which you did. I now have to inform you that a warrant has been requested for a search to be carried out at your premises, and you will be held in custody until formal charges are presented.”

She tapped Haskons on the shoulder, who rose, tugging his jacket straight, and together they left the room. Mark Lewis was slumped in the chair, gray-faced, wrung-out, looking sixty-five if he looked a day.

Striding along the corridor toward the viewing room, Tennison stabbed the air. “We want bank statements, address books, phone numbers, fax numbers. We want names of his clients. We want tax payments, VAT payments-we’ll throw the lot at that seedy, revolting pervert and do his place over tonight.”

Haskons strode along with her, keeping pace, just. He’d seen her in this mood before, when they’d worked together on a murder case. She was like a woman possessed. She bloody well was possessed, Haskons thought, by whatever demon it was that drove her.

The room was full, the reflected light from the screen showing up the thick wreathes of smoke hanging near the ceiling. The men were enjoying it, laughing uproariously and shouting out lewd remarks. There were high-pitched squeals, effeminate ooohs and aaahhs, as they mimicked the participants in the cheap, tawdry drama that had been shot by shaky hand-held camera in Super VHS PornoScope.

Boys’ night out, Tennison thought sourly, standing in the doorway. All they were short of was a bar, and later on a blond striptease act with forty-four inch tits. Superintendent Halliday was there, she saw, sitting near the front. From this angle she couldn’t tell if he was laughing too, or even enjoying it. All in the line of duty.

Some of the men noted her presence, but it didn’t inhibit them. Probably gave the whole thing an extra charge, that snooty bitch with the cast-iron drawers watching this filth.

But Tennison wasn’t shocked by the images, nor even disgusted. She was simply, and very deeply, saddened by them. That boys and young men should do this to make money was enormously dispiriting; that others should pay to see it, and get pleasure out of watching it, was even worse. She herself felt grubby and demeaned at witnessing this joyless, miserable, pathetic shadow play.

She signaled to Dalton. A general moan went up as he stopped the VCR and a snowstorm filled the screen. The fluorescent lights flickered on. Tennison moved to the front.

“Could just the officers directly concerned in the Colin Jenkins inquiry please remain. Everyone else… show’s over.”

Chairs scraped as the men filed out. Halliday, staying where he was, crooked a finger. Tennison ground her teeth, hoping it didn’t show. She looked attentive.

“I’d keep a record of all these tapes,” Halliday said gravely. He looked at her from under his brows. “Don’t want any to go walkabout.”

Tennison’s sober expression matched his. She leaned closer and said confidentially, “I’d like you to listen to the Mark Lewis interview.”

Halliday nearly smiled and immediately stood up, pleased that his new DCI was inviting a second opinion.

Tennison watched him leave, metaphorically dusting her hands. That’s got rid of him.

The team settled down to watch the Connie video. “What we watchin’ then?” asked Haskons as Dalton started the machine and stepped back beside Tennison’s chair.

“Gone With the Wind, what d’you think, pratt,” came Otley’s reply.

They all waited as the screen jumped and buzzed. Tennison looked up and said quietly, “You know, Brian, if you need to talk, there’s always me, or there’s a very good counselor.”

Dalton didn’t move, though it seemed, Tennison acutely sensed, as if he was withdrawing tightly into himself. Both his hands were clenched, the bandage on his right hand vivid against the bloodless skin. A muscle twitched in his cheek. He stared straight ahead at the screen, fragmented pictures starting to form.

Tennison turned away as the film proper began.

A desolate, windswept children’s playground. Pools of water on the cindery ground. A row of swings, some with broken seats, creaking to and fro on rusted chains. The shaky camera panned to the left, picking up a slight, red-haired figure in a padded red-and-black baseball jacket and sand-colored chinos. The wind ruffled his curly hair as he sat down on one of the swings and gently rocked. The camera moved in close until the boy’s face filled the screen. He had a sweet shy smile. Fringed by long auburn lashes, his brown eyes sparkled. He had a fair complexion and skin soft as a girl’s. He giggled, biting his lower red lip with small white teeth.

“Hi! My name is Connie. I am fourteen years old, and…”

Again the infectious giggle.

“I’m sorry, I’ll start again.” He straightened his face. “Hi! My name is Connie…”

He couldn’t keep it up. He covered his mouth. “This is stupid.” He pointed off camera. “It’s Billy’s fault, he keeps on pulling faces at me!”

A cross-eyed Billy appeared, features contorted in a dreadful grimace. It was too much. Connie had broken up, hanging onto the swing, helplessly wagging his head from side to side. Someone’s hand whisked Billy out of sight, but it was past saving, Connie had had it.

“Get Billy Matthews brought in,” Tennison said quietly, face set.

The video went off and then started again as they tried for another take. This time a straight-faced Connie, his eyes still moist from laughing, gave it his best shot.

“Hello. My name is Connie”-the same shy, sweet smile filled the screen-“and I’m fourteen years old…”

Otley and Hebdon had St. Margaret’s Crypt, Haskons and Lillie the Bullring, WPCs Kathy Trent and Norma Hastings the underpass next to Waterloo Bridge.

It was a fine night, with a pleasantly mild breeze blowing off the river. The waxing quarter-moon rose up behind the distant towers of Canary Wharf, a dusty orange-red scimitar seen through the haze of the capital.

The chances of finding Billy Matthews were slim. Just one punk kid among the hundreds sleeping out on the streets, dossing down in shop doorways, huddled on the concrete walkways and beneath the brick archways on the South Bank.

Norma hated it. To the drunks and dossers, she and Kathy were two respectable, well-dressed young women, and as such fair game. They got the lot, and had to endure it. The obscene invitations and suggestions, the grimy faces jeering at them from the shadows, the beggars and buskers accosting them at every corner. Down by Cardboard City, at the tea wagon run by two middle-aged women, they came across a gang of kids with a skinny dog on a bit of string. The kids took off as they approached them, scattering in all directions. One of the boys stumbled, and Kathy managed to get near him, a fresh-faced lad with ragged blond bangs, his face showing signs of a recent beating.

“Do you know Billy Matthews? Have you seen him?”

Fear in his eyes, Alan Thorpe picked himself up and stumbled off past the cardboard and wood shacks lining the viaduct walls, ducking out of sight in the labyrinth of shantytown.

Kathy looked hopelessly at Norma. They both felt like giving up. Drunken voices sang, argued and swore in the darkness. On a tinny, crackling radio, Frank Sinatra boasted that he’d done it his way. A busker with an out-of-tune guitar sang “She said, Son, this is the road to hell,” while a reeling drunk clutching a bottle of Thunderbird yelled out in a hoarse voice that boomed and echoed under the viaduct, “Oh, when the saints… Oh, when the saints… Oh, when the saints go marchin’ in…”

Keeping close together, Kathy and Norma moved along the slimy, littered pavements. A head was thrust out on a scrawny neck, its front teeth missing. “Hello, girls! This way to the National Theatre, have yer tickets ready-pul-ease!” He cackled with insane merriment.

Norma evaded his clutching hand, and bustled on quickly, shuddering. She touched Kathy’s arm, having had enough, about to retreat from this underworld of the damned-to hell with Billy Matthews-and there he was, lying against the wall, wrapped in a filthy sack. He was in a terrible state. They weren’t even sure, at first, if he was alive or dead.

Kathy felt for his pulse. “Radio in for an ambulance! Norma!”

Norma came back to herself, fumbling for her radio. She was sick to her stomach. Along the pavement, the busker with the broken guitar was singing her song.

“This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway-

Oh no, this is the road to hell.”

Jessica Smithy didn’t give the Sierra Sapphire time to stop before she was out from behind the wheel of the black BMW, switching on the tiny microcassette recorder and holding it concealed in her gloved hand. Carl, her photographer, was a few paces behind as she crossed the quiet tree-lined street, thumbing the auto flash on the Pentax slung around his neck.

Jessica reckoned she deserved this break. She had waited over an hour, since 9:45, listening to The World Tonight on Radio 4 and the first five minutes of Book at Bedtime. At last she had been rewarded. She flicked the long tail of her Hermès scarf over her shoulder and patted her knitted ski hat down onto her razor-trimmed, slick-backed hair. Tall and athletically slender, she had a sharp, fine-boned face and quick, darting hazel eyes. Intelligent and tenacious, she never let a good story escape her grasp, and she scented that this one was high-yield plutonium.

“Excuse me, Inspector Tennison? Are you Detective Chief Inspector Tennison?”

Tennison locked the door of her car. She turned warily, eyeing the woman and the bearded man with the camera with deep suspicion.

“I’m Jessica Smithy. I have tried to contact you, I wondered if you could spare me a few minutes…?”

Evidently, Tennison couldn’t. Briefcase in hand, she marched around the back of the car to the pavement. They pursued her.

“Can you give me an update on Colin Jenkins?”

Tennison pushed open the wrought-iron gate. Without turning, she said, “There was a formal press conference yesterday. I have no further comment.” She banged the gate shut and went up the short path to her front door.

“But is his death still being treated as suspicious or accidental?”

Jessica Smithy hovered at the gate as Tennison let herself in.

“Are you heading the investigation?”

The door was firmly closed.

“Shit.” Jessica Smithy kicked the gate viciously and switched off the recorder.

At 10:35 P.M. Billy Matthews was being rushed along a corridor toward the emergency resuscitation section. The red blanket was up to his chin. Eyes closed, a dribble of blood-streaked saliva trailing from his open mouth, his pale peaked face was drenched in sweat. His hands clutched the edge of the blanket, as a child seeks to cuddle up warm in the comfort and security of a favorite fluffy toy.

Trotting alongside, the nurse leaned over him anxiously. Billy opened his eyes, blinking away sweat.

“I’m okay.” He smiled up at her. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”