Silent Victims

18

Otley went first, holding the door for Tennison to walk through into the reception area. She was alerted; it seemed unusually quiet. It was the dead time of the afternoon, but even so…

The door to the office was ajar, and Tennison peeked inside. The normally neat desk was a muddle of correspondence and document files spilling their contents, papers strewn everywhere. The desk drawers were open, and so were several of the filing cabinets, as if someone had been hastily rooting through them.

“Looks like he’s about to do a runner,” Tennison observed. “You think he’s been tipped off?”

Otley stepped over the torn-down notice board. He gazed around at the address slips and contact cards, ripped up and scattered over the dank green carpet. He opened the door to the TV room and looked in. Empty. He turned back to Tennison with a shrug.

A sudden crash made Tennison jump. She spun around to find Parker-Jones looming over her, the door to the kitchen swinging shut behind him. He stared down at her, the black curtains of hair framing his sneeringly handsome face.

“Well, I hope you’re satisfied. As you can see, the place is empty.”

Tennison snapped erect. “Mr. Edward Parker-Jones, I am arresting you for questioning regarding the murder of Colin Jenkins. I have to warn you that anything you-”

“I want to call my lawyer,” Parker-Jones said brusquely, striding on to his office. But then he turned in the doorway, all silky charm with a contemptuous edge to it. “Please continue, Inspector, you seem to like the sound of your own voice!”

Seething inside, Tennison followed hard on his heels. She gave the nod to Otley, who repeated the caution. Parker-Jones ignored it, his tall figure moving swiftly around the desk and reaching for the phone.

Tennison beat him to it. Her hand came down on the phone.

“We can do that at the station, sir.”

A muscle twitched in his taut cheek. His long jaw was rigid with anger. Tennison stared up unflinchingly into the deep-set eyes. She beckoned Otley forward, there was a flurry of movement, two sharp clicks, and a moment later Edward Parker-Jones was blinking down in amazement, stunned and incredulous that these stupid thick morons had the nerve to slap the handcuffs on him. Him!

Halliday saw him being brought in. Standing outside his office he had an uninterrupted view the full length of the corridor to the double doors at the top of the main staircase. Two uniformed officers led the handcuffed Parker-Jones through. Even from this distance Halliday could see the dark glittering eyes, the suppressed manic fury in his stiff-legged stride.

The officers guided him toward one of the interview rooms in the adjoining corridor and he passed from view.

Halliday headed for the Squad Room. His shoulder blades felt clammy. He ran his finger inside his collar, clearing his throat as he pushed through the doors. Almost everyone was there, yet the room was eerily quiet. A telephone drilled through the silence and someone quickly answered it. Tennison was standing at her desk, calmly sorting through her interview papers. Damn woman was made of titanium. Halliday went over.

“Parker-Jones’s brief is in reception.” His voice became low and terse, a bit ragged. “You all set?”

“Yes, sir,” Tennison’s hand was nerveless as she slipped the sheets inside the document file. “Some developments this afternoon warranted my bringing in Parker-Jones.”

“I know,” Halliday said. He touched her arm, causing her to look up. “But you’d better nail him.”

“I intend to.” Tennison pushed her hair back over her ears, smoothed the front of her jacket, picked up the document file and snapped it smartly under her arm. She was ready.

Flanked by Halliday and Otley, she marched through the hushed room to the door. It was as if everyone was holding one huge collective breath. Eyes swiveled, watching the neat compact figure, seeing in the set of her shoulders and her raised head a ruthless compulsion, a chilling determination.

Nail him, Halliday had said. And by Christ she would.

Haskons stood near the door. He moved aside. “Good luck, Guv!”

Tennison gave a tight curt nod and went through.

The handcuffs had been removed. Edward Parker-Jones sat straight-backed in the chair, his manicured hands resting some distance apart on the table. If not relaxed, he seemed rather more at ease, the angry glitter in his eyes replaced by an opaque self-concealment, his face an expressionless closed book.

Perhaps the presence of Joseph Spelling, his lawyer, had worked the trick. Spelling exuded probity and restraint, from his starched collar and tightly knotted dark green silk tie to his pinstripe trousers and highly polished black shoes. His pearl-gray homburg hat rested on his briefcase on the table, the initials J.D.S. stamped in gold in the burnished leather.

He regarded Tennison with a faintly quizzical air, prepared to tolerate her even though she was a mere woman doing a man’s job. Seated next to his client, he leaned forward attentively, his bony beak of a nose in the deeply lined face thrust in her direction as she spread the papers out and unscrewed the cap of her fountain pen.

Tennison slowly lifted her head and gazed directly at Parker-Jones.

“On the evening of the seventeenth of this month you have stated that you were at the advice centre, Soho. Is that correct?”

Parker-Jones’s face stayed impassive. “Yes.”

“Could you please give details of who else was there on that night?”

Parker-Jones closed his eyes. How many more times? “Billy Matthews,” he began wearily, preparing to repeat them all again, yet again, but got no farther.

“Statement withdrawn.” Tennison’s voice was quiet, devoid of emphasis or emotion. “Matthews denies being at the advice centre.”

“Donald Driscoll…”

“Driscoll has withdrawn his statement and denied being at the advice centre.”

“Alan Thorpe, James Jackson…”

“Alan Thorpe has stated that he was, on the night of the seventeenth, at the centre.” She paused, seeing in the depths of Parker-Jones’s eyes a mocking triumph. She went on, “He was not only intoxicated from alcoholic beverages, but was also suffering from other substance abuse, and was, in his own words, unable to remember if he was actually there himself.”

“James Jackson,” Parker-Jones repeated steadily, his heavy dark brows knitting together as his eyes bored into her.

Tennison glanced down at the sheet in front of her. “Mr. Jackson made a statement this afternoon contradicting an earlier statement. He now states, under caution, that he was at the advice centre but for no more than two or three minutes.” She raised her eyebrows. “Do you, Mr. Parker-Jones, have any other alibi witnesses that you wish at this stage to be noted?”

Erect in the chair, hands spread on the table, Parker-Jones was an edifice of cold contemptuous arrogance. He tilted his head as Spelling whispered in his ear. They conferred. Tennison tapped the table with her pen. Halliday and Otley, standing side by side against the wall, waited and watched.

“My client will answer,” Spelling said finally, leaning back.

“I realize I have been very foolish,” said Parker-Jones smoothly, and Tennison marveled at how his change in personality could be switched on and switched off at will, in a trice. Now he was conciliatory.

“I can only apologize… but I was trying in some ways to protect Vernon Reynolds. Vernon was at the centre on the seventeenth.”

“Did you speak with Vernon Reynolds at all?” Tennison asked.

“No comment.”

“But you do admit that Vernon Reynolds was at the advice centre on the seventeenth?”

A tiny hesitation. “I have just said so.”

“Did Vernon Reynolds ask you to call an ambulance?”

“No comment.”

Tennison looked thoughtful for a moment. She allowed her eyes to slide up from the desk to his face. “Mr. Parker-Jones, we are in possession of a tape recording made on the evening of the seventeenth, and it will be very simple for us to match the voice on the tape with yours. Did you or did you not call an ambulance?”

Tennison was lying through her teeth, and both Halliday and Otley knew it. They had such a tape, yes, but despite the best efforts of the technical people it hadn’t been possible to identify the voice. Too much static and distortion. She was way out on a limb.

Parker-Jones was half turned away, whispering in Spelling’s ear. Spelling replied, Parker-Jones nodding, and then he turned back.

“Yes, I did. Vernon’s phone was disconnected and he was in a dreadful state. Said that Colin Jenkins and he had argued, and that Colin, Connie, needed a doctor. So, I did place a call to the emergency services…”

Halliday and Otley exchanged relieved looks. She’d gambled and it had paid off. Yet her face betrayed not a flicker, not the slightest sign, and she carried on imperturbably, “What did the emergency services tell you, Mr. Parker-Jones?”

“That an ambulance was on its way.”

“Anything else?”

He shook his head carefully. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why didn’t you leave your name?”

He smiled, somewhat ruefully. “To be perfectly honest with you, the advice centre has had to-on a number of occasions-place emergency calls. Some of the boys, well, they get deeply disturbed when they are diagnosed HIV positive. It’s fear, you see, and then they refuse to go to hospital.” He turned his hands, palms uppermost on the table, a gesture appealing for her understanding. “So I was afraid they might not be willing to respond-”

Tennison cut in, impervious to his smarm.

“Were you informed that there would be a fifteen-minute delay?”

He switched again, face stiffening when he realized she wasn’t buying his bill of goods. “I can’t recall.”

Tennison was all patience and reason as she spelt it out. “But if you were informed that there would be a fifteen-minute delay, it would make sense, as the advice centre is only a few minutes’ distance from Vernon Reynolds’s flat, to…”

They were conferring again. Tennison sighed. She gazed at the ceiling, tapping her pen.

Parker-Jones faced her confidently. “I was unaware of any delays.”

“Why didn’t you call a doctor?” Tennison pressed him. “Or make that short journey?”

He had his answer ready. “At no time did he-Vernon Reynolds-make it appear there was a dire emergency, that Connie…”

“… was possibly unconscious?”

“I was asked to call an ambulance or arrange for one to be sent. I have admitted that I did lie-or did not give you the information when I was asked before about this ambulance call out.” Parker-Jones was back to being reasonable again, doing all he could to help the police with their inquiries. No doubt the influence of his lawyer, urging temperance and moderation. “I apologize, but surely you can understand my reasons-I simply did not want to get Vernon Reynolds into trouble.”

It was neat and plausible and Tennison had no idea how to break through and expose his story for the pack of lies it was. This man was a filthy sadist, a vampire preying on the children entrusted to his care and leaving behind a wreckage of young lives. He’d been doing it for years, in different parts of the country, using Kennington and Margaret Speel and possibly countless others to aid and abet him and cover his tracks. He was a cancerous growth in society that long ago should have been cut out. Tennison was the surgeon, but it was as though the scalpel in her hand was blunted, or had been whipped away the moment she started to operate. He was a devious, clever, calculating, lying, perverted bastard with an impregnable sense of his own superiority. He had friends in high places, money to buy the services of a good lawyer, and sufficient power to put the frighteners on anyone who might be tempted to blow the whistle. He was above the law, that was the contemptuous opinion of Edward Parker-Jones, and Tennison had a horrible, gnawing suspicion in the pit of her stomach that he might be right.

The silence in the room stretched on and on. There was just the rustle of papers as Tennison sorted through the file. Halliday eased his chafed neck inside his collar, his pale blue eyes loose in their sockets. Spelling cleared his throat ponderously. He leaned forward, his quizzical expression making his forehead a maze of corrugations.

“Do you have any further questions you wish to put to my client?”

“Yes, I do,” Tennison said at once. “Mr. Parker-Jones, you have apologized earlier for lying. You lied about the presence of four witnesses that you said saw you on the evening of the seventeenth. One of these witnesses was Billy Matthews, is that correct?”

“Yes, but you must understand,” he said loftily, in a patronizing drawl that infuriated her, “there are a number of them on any given evening…”

“But you were most specific about Billy Matthews,” Tennison butted in. “You said you recalled him being at the advice centre because he was ill.”

“Yes.”

“But as it now transpires, Billy Matthews was not at the advice centre, he was in actual fact in Charing Cross Hospital.”

He brushed it aside. “I’m sorry, I was simply confused as to the exact evening.”

“Really? Even though you called an ambulance for him? That would be the evening of the sixteenth,” Tennison stressed, and was charged with exhilaration to see, for the tiniest split second, a shadow of uncertainty flicker in the deep-set eyes. “On that occasion you did leave your name, and on that occasion you were informed that there would be a fifteen-minute delay. Is that correct?”

“It’s possible.”

“Possible.” Tennison seized on this. “So it would also be possible that when an ambulance was called on the following evening you were fully aware there would be a delay.” She stared him out. “Giving you perhaps even more time to leave the advice centre and go to Vernon Reynolds’s flat. Did you? Did you go to Vernon Reynolds’s flat?”

He was in a corner, but there was a simple way out, and he took it.

“No, I did not.”

Back to bloody stalemate! She couldn’t shake him, couldn’t budge the arrogant bastard. They could sit here all night, her lobbing questions and accusations, and they would just bounce off that smug stone wall, that sneeringly superior shell he had built around himself. He was fucking fireproof. She felt like screaming and yelling and leaping across to tear out his eyes and rip the lying tongue out of his mouth.

Tennison was furious with herself. Not a snowball’s chance in hell of nailing this shit if she allowed her emotions to veer out of control. By an act of will she quelled them. She looked up, her eyes cold, her voice without a tremor as she asked, “Mr. Parker-Jones, are you aware of the existence of certain compromising photographs that belonged to James Jackson?”

Parker-Jones leaned toward Spelling, but they didn’t confer. The lawyer merely gave a long slow blink. Parker-Jones straightened up, wearing a smirk that Tennison wanted to smash from his face.

“No comment.”

“That in many of these said photographs you are pictured with the deceased, Colin Jenkins?”

“No comment.”

“That you were also photographed in various poses with a number of juveniles, and these photographs were taken from your home in Camden Town?”

“No comment.”

“I think you knew of the existence of these pictures, and knew that Colin Jenkins intended to sell them.”

“No comment.”

“On the night of the seventeenth you had James Jackson searching all over London, desperate to track these photographs down.” Her tone became thin and cutting as she replayed the scenario, telling the real story to his face, making him know that she knew. “To track Colin Jenkins down, but you just couldn’t find him, could you?”

“No comment.”

“And then Vera, Vernon Reynolds, came to you in, as you have said, a dreadful state…”

“No comment.”

“… telling you that the very person you were looking for was not only in her flat, but unconscious, alone, and with the said photographs.”

“No comment.”

“You said you would arrange everything. You would even call the ambulance-”

On his lips she saw the words forming and leapt up, slapped her hands flat on the table, her body arched tautly toward him.

“No comment?” Tennison hissed. “NO COMMENT AGAIN? Mr. Parker-Jones, you have admitted you were aware of the emergency services’ delays during this period-”

“No comment.”

“-You used that fifteen minutes to hurry from the advice centre, run over to Vernon Reynolds’s flat. He wasn’t dead, was he? Connie was still alive. And so you made sure, made sure he would never be able to tell anyone about you, Mr. Parker-Jones. You and your friends. It was so easy, wasn’t it? He couldn’t fight back, couldn’t make any attempt to stop you as you set light to him… left him to burn to death.”

She knew, at last, she had him. She was certain she had him, because he said nothing, his long face smoldering and sullen. Then he folded his arms, the corner of his mouth curling up in a little smirk, and she knew sickeningly that she hadn’t.

Tennison stood outside the interview room. She felt so weary that she could have stretched out on the carpet in the corridor and gone fast asleep.

She looked away as Parker-Jones came out. “Good night, Inspector Tennison.” His smiling glance passed over her dismissively. He turned to Otley. “Which way is it?”

Otley led him toward the main staircase. Tennison leaned against the wall. Spelling came out, carrying his briefcase and homburg, followed by Halliday. She watched the lawyer hurry along briskly to join Parker-Jones, who patted his shoulder and pumped his hand. Otley pointed the way and they went off.

Tennison sighed tiredly, rubbing her eyes. “I had to try, Jack.”

Halliday nodded. She was drained, both physically and emotionally, he could see that. He said, not unkindly, “Supposition, intuition, really are worthless. Without hard evidence you didn’t stand a chance in hell. Without a witness who actually saw person or persons unknown set fire to that flat, you will never have a case-especially not against someone like him.”

She looked up at him with a strained mocking smile. “Does this blow my chances? Superintendent?”

“No. You’ll get it. No strings.”

“Guv!” Otley came up. “Jessica Smithy’s back.” He jerked his thumb toward Tennison’s office.

Tennison touched Halliday’s arm. He’d told her what she wanted to know. “Thank you,” she said. She smiled at him, and kept smiling all the way back to her office.

Jessica Smithy handed over a buff-colored envelope. Tennison delved inside and looked at the snapshots of Vernon Reynolds and his family: little Vernon in short pants with his mum and dad, standing on a sunny promenade, the holiday crowd surging around them. Vernon as a lanky teenager in the back garden, one arm clasped around his mother’s shoulder, both of them smiling. Other family snaps-school speech day, weddings, day trips, picnics-and three or four of Vernon, now Vera, as a very young man in a primitive drag outfit he must have compiled from jumble sales. Tennison slipped them back in.

“Is Parker-Jones going to be charged?” Jessica Smithy was anxious to know. She examined Tennison closely, keyed up, smoking rapidly with short little puffs.

In contrast, Tennison felt calm, wearily peaceful. “Still after the scoop, Miss Smithy?” she asked nonchalantly.

“I’m paid to expose the truth. It’s my job, a bit like yours.”

“No, Miss Smithy,” Tennison corrected her, “your job is not like mine.” And as if to demonstrate the truth of this, she opened a file crammed with statements, photostats, photographs, lists of names and addresses, phone memos and faxes, nearly three inches thick.

“But it is criminal that a man like Parker-Jones is able to gain access to young innocent boys,” Tennison mused sadly. With her thumb she riffled through the contents. “All with the blessing of the social services.”

Jessica Smithy turned her head to exhale smoke, but her eyes never left the file that Tennison was idly leafing through. Tennison detached a black-and-white photograph of Jason Baldwyn, holding it up.

“ ‘Keeper of Souls.’ This young boy said that was his nickname-good headline! Nice turn of phrase for a sick pervert…”

Tennison let the photograph slide from her fingers and drop onto the open file. She looked at her watch, and then reached behind for her shoulder bag. “Would you excuse me for a moment?” She came around the desk and went out, picking up the buff envelope on the way.

Her footsteps receded down the corridor.

In the silence Jessica Smithy slowly edged around the desk, craning her head. She nudged the corner of the file with her thumb, aligning it more directly into her field of vision. With a swift glance to the door and back, she took hold of the photograph and stared at it.

Several minutes later the door opened a crack. Tennison peered through. Her back to the door, Jessica Smithy was bent over the file in a cloud of smoke, microcassette recorder close to her mouth, sifting through the thick bundle of papers.

Tennison eased the door shut and released the handle from her clammy palm.

She was heading for the staircase when Otley emerged from the Squad Room, his wrinkled raincoat draped over his shoulder. He cocked his head. “You off then?”

Tennison nodded. “Miss Smithy’s in my office. Give her another fifteen minutes, then get rid of her.” She held out the buff envelope. “Oh, and would you make sure these photographs get delivered to Vernon Reynolds.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Otley tucked them under his arm. His head went back, watching her through slitted eyes. “Superintendent next, is it?”

“I think so,” Tennison conceded, cool and poised.

“I guess my mate didn’t have the right strings,” Otley said. He made it sound casual and indifferent, but she could feel the bottled-up force of his resentment, the boiling anger.

“No, he just didn’t know whose to pull,” she told him.

“You live and learn.”

“Not always the best man wins,” Tennison responded glibly, matching his cliché with one of her own.

She walked on, feeling his stare burning holes in her back.

“Good night,” she called out, not turning.

Otley’s lips moved, spitting out volumes of silent abuse, calling her every stinking name under the sun, and he knew plenty-

Tennison whipped around, catching him in the act, a huge exuberant grin spread across her face. She crouched, aiming her finger at him, cocked her thumb and shot him dead. She blew smoke off the barrel and bounced down the stairs.