Prime Suspect (Prime Suspect (Harper)) (21 page)

“How many is it for?”

“There’ll be six of us. It’s got to be something simple, I haven’t cooked for so long I don’t think I could cope.”

“Tell you an easy one—fresh pasta, a little cream and seasoning, then strips of smoked salmon. Plenty of good crusty bread, and fruit and cheese to follow. Are any of them vegetarians?”

The front door banged open and Peter appeared, with the
News of the World
open at the center pages.

“Are any of your friends vegetarian, Pete?”

Ignoring her, Peter read aloud from the paper: “ ‘George Marlow opened his heart to our reporter. He wept, saying he was an innocent man, but the police are making his life a misery . . . ’ ”

Jane tossed her head, thinking he was joking. “Very funny!”

He laughed. “I’m serious! They’ve got a terrible picture of you, like something out of a horror movie. Dragon Woman!” He dodged her as she grabbed for the paper, and continued reading in a Monty Python voice. “This is the woman detective in charge of the murder investigation. To date, her only words have been 'No comment.’ Should be at home with me, mate!”

Jane’s next attempt to get the paper from him succeeded, but she tore it in half in the process. “Now look what you’ve done!” he teased.

But she wasn’t listening. Her mouth hung open as she scanned the article. She screamed, “My God, they’ve got pictures of my surveillance lads!”

Still laughing, Peter was reading over her shoulder. “ ‘Marlow states that he is being hounded by a woman with an obsession—to lock him up . . . ’ ”

“It’s not bloody funny! It’s buggered everything! We can’t have any more line-ups, with his face plastered all over the papers. Not to mention the boys; I’m going to have to pull them off him now their cover’s blown!”

She stormed out to the telephone, leaving Pam and Peter staring at each other. Pam whispered, “I think I’d better go.”

George Marlow walked quickly up the steps of a large, detached house in Brighton and through the open front doors. A pair of glass swing doors admitted him to the hallway.

Following the directions of the receptionist, Marlow entered a high-ceilinged, airy room with windows overlooking the sea. Several elderly people were quietly playing draughts or chess, while one or two just sat silently in armchairs, their eyes focused on a future that no one else could see.

He knew where he would find her; alone in her wheelchair by the window, gazing out towards France. He walked silently towards her, stopped two or three feet away.

In a low voice that could not be heard by the other residents, he began to sing, “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high . . .”

His mother turned in her chair, her face lit with joy. As her son kissed her gently on both cheeks, she picked up the refrain.

“ . . . And don’t be afraid of the dark; at the end of the storm there’s a golden sky, and the sweet, silver song of a lark . . .”

Mrs. Marlow, or Doris Kelly as she used to be known, had spent the entire morning getting ready for his visit. Her make-up was perfect, her lipstick and eye shadow perhaps a trifle overdone, but she was still a beauty, retaining a youthfulness in her face that was, sadly, not mirrored in her once-perfect body. She had grown heavy, and the scarves and beads, chosen carefully to disguise the fact, didn’t help. Her tiny hands, perfectly manicured with shell-pink varnish, glittered with fake diamonds.

“Hallo, my darling!”

When he kissed the powdery cheek, he could feel the spikes of her mascaraed eyelashes. She smelt of sweet flowers. The big china-blue eyes roamed the room as if acknowledging the other residents’ prying eyes.

“Take me somewhere special for lunch, George, I’m ravenous, simply ravenous. How about the Grand Hotel? Or we can have morning coffee, I’d like that. They’re so kind at the Grand.”

He gathered her things into a carrier bag and hung it on the back of her chair, then wheeled his mother out, pausing beside gray-haired docile old women for Doris to smile and wave gaily, and elderly gentlemen who begged her to sing their favorite songs that evening.

“Oh, we’ll have to see, Mr. Donald . . . Goodbye, William, see you later, Frank . . .”

She loved the fact that even here she was a star. On Sunday evenings they hired a pianist, and she would sing. “The old fools love to be entertained, George, but the pianist has two left hands. Do you remember dear Mr. McReady? What an ear he had, pick up any tune . . . But now, without sheet music, this young man can’t play a note.”

She sang snatches of songs as George tucked her blanket around her swollen legs, and called and waved until they reached the end of the driveway. Then she fell silent.

“Shall we have our usual stroll along the front, work up an appetite, Ma?”

Doris nodded, drawing her blanket closer with delicate pink-nailed fingers. George started singing again, “When you walk through a storm . . .” but Doris didn’t join in.

“Come on, Ma, let’s hear you!”

“No, darling, my voice isn’t what it was.” She put a hand to her head. “Did you bring me a scarf?”

It was high tide, and the spray was blowing onto the promenade. He parked the chair beside a bench and brought out a silk square. Folding it carefully, he handed it to her.

“Thank you, darling. I was asking Matron if we could get a better hairdresser, only I need a trim, but I don’t like the young girl that comes in. Oh, she’s very sweet, but she’s an amateur . . .”

George watched her tie the square over her head, carefully tucking in the hair. “You have to watch these girls, they cut off far too much . . .”

George could see the reflections of her past beauty as she tilted her head coquettishly. “All ship-shape, am I, darling?”

He nodded, and gently pressed a stray curl into place. “All ship-shape. Now, how about singing me ‘Once I had a secret love, that dwelt within the heart of me’ . . . ?”

Sitting in her wheelchair, wrapped in her rug, she swayed to the rhythm, her hands in the air like an old trouper. Being together like this brought the memories flooding back to both of them, and they were laughing too much to finish the song.

“You always like the old ones best. Remember that Elvis medley I used to do?” She sat up straight and played an imaginary piano as she sang, “Love me tender, love me true, all my dreams fulfil; for, my darling, I love you, and I always will . . . That was your Dad’s favorite. I don’t know what he would think about this . . . What does that Moyra think of it all?”

George’s face fell. “Now, Mum, don’t start. Moyra’s a good woman, and she’s stood by me.”

He took a newspaper from the carrier bag. It was folded so that the article about him was on the outside. Managing to grin at her, he asked, “What did you give them this photo for? I hated that school.”

Mrs. Marlow pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve. “Your dad would turn in his grave . . .”

“Don’t cry, Mum, don’t . . . I’m innocent, Mum, I had to do something to prove it. They’ll lay off me now, and I got paid a fair bit. I’ll get a new job—they gave me good references. Things’ll turn out, don’t you worry.”

He walked to the railings at the edge of the promenade and threw the paper into the sea. When he turned a moment later to face her, his hands were in his pockets.

“Which one’s got a present in?” he demanded. “I want a song, though, you must promise me a song.”

She made a great performance out of it, finally fooling him into giving her a clue to which pocket his gift was in. He presented the perfume with a flourish and she made him bend down for a kiss. Her warmth and her love for him shone out, despite her fears.

On the way back to the home they sang, “Why am I always the bridesmaid, never the blushing bride?” vying with each other to sing the silly bits and breaking into giggles.

Moyra was doing the ironing. While George put the kettle on he was singing “Why Am I Always the Bridesmaid?”

“Every time you go to see her you come back singing those stupid songs,” Moyra complained.

“That was by way of a proposal,” he said as he put coffee in their mugs and poured the boiling water. “I reckon it’s time I made an honest woman of you.”

“Not if your mother has any say in the matter; I was never good enough for you in her eyes!” Moyra retorted. “And I notice she gave the papers that photo of you in your posh school uniform . . .”

He handed her a mug of coffee. “Did I ever tell you about—”

She interrupted him. “How beautiful she looked at the school prize-giving? How all the lads said she looked like a movie star? Yes, you did!”

“But I’ve never told you about afterwards, after the prize-giving.”

“I dunno why you go on about it, you were only at the school two minutes.”

“I walked Mum and Dad to the gates. They were all hanging out of the dormitory windows, giving her wolf-whistles. Mum was being all coy, you know, waving to the boys. She didn’t want them to know we didn’t have a car, that they were going to catch the bus. And then, just as we got to the gates, the wind blew her wig off. They all saw it . . .”

Moyra spluttered through her mouthful of coffee. “You’re kidding me! Blew her wig off!” She laughed aloud.

Offended, he blinked. “It wasn’t funny, Moyra. My dad ran down the road to get it back, and she just stood there, rooted to the spot . . .” He raised his hands to his own hair. “I didn’t know her hair had fallen out. Dad helped her put the wig back on, but the parting was all crooked. Underneath all the glamour she was ugly; an ugly stranger.”

“And everybody saw it? Did she ever talk about it?”

“She never even mentioned it.”

“I always thought it was just old age, you know. I’ve never said anything to her, but it’s so obvious. How long has she been bald, then?”

“I don’t know. She still pretends it’s her own hair, even to me, says it needs trimming and so on.”

“Well what do you know! Underneath it all the Rita Hayworth of Warrington is really Yul Brynner in disguise!”

He looked at her for a moment, then laughed his lovely, warm, infectious laugh. He slipped his arms around her and kissed her on the neck.

“Did you mean it, George? About getting married?”

He lifted her in his arms and swung her around. “I love you, Moyra—what do you say, will you marry me?”

“Will I? I’ve had the license for two years, George, and you won’t get out of it.”

He smiled at her. Sometimes his resemblance to his mother took her breath away. He was so good-looking, every feature neat and clean-cut. Doris had been a real looker, and George was the most handsome man Moyra had ever known. Held tight in the circle of his arms she looked up into his dark eyes, eyes a woman would pray for, with thick dark lashes. Innocent eyes . . .

“I love you, George, I love you.”

His kiss was gentle and loving. He drew her towards the bedroom.

“George! It’s nearly dinnertime!”

“It can wait . . .”

DCI Tennison stared at the headline, furious. Then she ripped it down from the Incident Room door. She took a deep breath, crumpled the paper into a ball and entered the room.

The men fell silent, watching her. She held the ball of paper up so they could all see, then tossed it accurately into a waste-paper basket.

“OK, we’ve all read it, so the least said about it the better. But it’s not just me with egg on my face.”

She crossed to her desk and dumped her briefcase. “It makes our surveillance operation look like a circus.”

“Any word on what their readers’ survey came up with, ma’am?” asked Otley with a snide smile. “For or against female officers on murder cases?”

She gave him an old-fashioned look. “Oh, you’re a biased load of chauvinists, and there’s thousands more like you!”

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” chipped in Dave Jones, “you could always get a job in panto!”

He was holding up the photograph of her from the paper, but it had been added to in felt-tip. She started laughing and clipped him one.

Maureen Havers walked in as he raised his hands to defend himself. She tapped Tennison on the back.

“Why me? I didn’t draw all over it. It was him!” Jones pointed to Burkin, who hung his head, although he couldn’t really give a fuck. When she’d gone, Jones would get a right clip round the earhole.

Tennison turned to Havers, who told her she was wanted on the top floor.

“Oh well, here it comes. See you all later.”

Otley claimed everybody’s attention as soon as she had gone. “Right, we’ve all had a jolly good laugh, now get yer pin-brains on this lot. We want all these unsolved murders on the computer, so we can cross-check them for any that occurred when Marlow was in the vicinity.”

As they went reluctantly to work, Maureen Havers had a word with Otley.

“You finished with the Oldham files? Only they haven’t been put on the computer . . .”

“I’ll sort ’em, love. Haven’t had a chance to look through them yet.”

Havers began to distribute more files around the Incident Room, which was greeted with moans and groans. Otley rapped his desk.

“Come on, you lot, settle down. Sooner you get this lot sorted, sooner we’re in the pub. As an incentive, first round’s on me!”

But a pint wouldn’t compensate for the tedious slog of sifting through hundreds of unsolved murders. Otley opened the Oldham file he had already checked over; he knew there was a problem, and now he had to work out the best way to deal with it.

The bar was full of familiar faces. At one of the marble-topped tables several of the lads were discussing the unsolved murders.

“I’ve looked at twenty-three cases,” Muddyman said, “all around Rochdale, Burnley, Southport; and I’ve got one possible but unlikely . . .”

Rosper cut in, “There was a woman found in a chicken run in Sheffield. Reckon she’d been there for months. The chickens were knocking out record numbers of eggs!”

“You know they’ve been feeding the dead ones to the live ones, that’s why we’ve had all this salmonella scare. Got into the eggs,” Lillie contributed.

“This woman was seventy-two, an old boiler!” Rosper chuckled.

They were suddenly all aware that Tennison had walked in. She looked around, located Jones and went to lean on the back of his chair.