Peter Robinson: The Price of Love and Other Stories

Someone had placed a broad strip of Sellotape across her mouth.

Banks turned his head to look up at the others, clustered around him. Their faces blurred, started to spin. He got to his feet feeling dizzy and staggered as far away from the body as he could before throwing up against the wall. He felt a comforting arm on his shoulder and saw Albright towering over him.

“You all right, sir?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Banks. “Just give me a minute.” He took a few deep breaths and steadied himself against the wall. “Can anyone rustle up some coffee?” he called out.

Albright glanced at one of the DCs, who disappeared in the general direction of Oxford Street.

“Make it strong and black,” Banks shouted after him.

The rest of the morning passed in a haze. There was paperwork to be done, files to be opened. Hatchard organized the incident room, called the meetings and handed out the actions. Even Roly Verity came by and pitched in. Banks did his bit, too. Hungover or not, he had helped get a murder investigation rolling so many times before that he could do it in his sleep. Except the circumstances were different every time. And it wasn’t usually someone he knew.

Hatchard invited him into the inner sanctum at noon for an update, a pot of fresh coffee sitting on his desk, and a plate of chocolate digestives beside it.

“What have we got so far?” Hatchard asked.

“The police surgeon estimates time of death somewhere between midnight and three,” Banks said. “Dr. O’Grady’s tied up most of the day, but he’ll get to the postmortem as soon as he can. Preliminary findings indicate death due to strangulation.” He paused and glanced over at Hatchard. “It appears as if someone came up behind her and hooked his forearm around her throat.”

“Was she killed where the body was found?”

“Seems that way, sir, according to lividity. We’ll know more later.”

“Any signs of defensive wounds?”

“She got in a few scratches, broke a fingernail or two. We bagged her hands.”

“You knew her, didn’t you?”

Banks paused and helped himself to coffee and another biscuit. “I wouldn’t say I knew her, sir,” he began. “I interviewed her informally on three occasions about the murder of Pamela Morrison. They were friends and flatmates. You can see the notes I wrote up in the case files.”

“I’ve seen them. I know it’s all aboveboard. There’s obviously a connection with the other murders, given the Sellotape and all. What do you think it is? What did she tell you?”

“She didn’t really know anything, sir, but she did help put me on to Stafford. I mean, she described a man she had taken to her room who had acted in a frightening way and gone on about regaining innocence and purity, about being able to restore it to her, though he didn’t actually harm her in any way. She was able to give a decent physical description. I like to think it would have helped us catch him if things hadn’t turned out differently.”

Hatchard put a match to his pipe and a cloud of cloying blue smoke filled the air. Banks almost retched again, but he buried his face in his coffee instead. It helped. “You think this man was Stafford?” Hatchard asked.

“Yes, sir. I’m certain of it.”

“But Stafford is dead. Why do you think the girl was murdered? It could hardly be to shut her up, as she’d already spoken, and besides, it no longer mattered.”

“I think she was killed as an example, sir, a warning.”

“A warning?”

“Yes. By Micallef.”

“But—”

Banks held his hand up. “Please listen to me, sir. Micallef is in the property development business, among other things, and Stafford was chairman of an important government steering committee on development issues. I think that’s how they met, and I think Micallef made his... er... other services available to Stafford.”

“You think he knew? I mean, what Stafford was like?”

“No, sir. I don’t think so. At least not at first. I doubt that Micallef would stand for someone killing his girls like that, if only from a business perspective. I think he kept that part of the transaction at arm’s length. Stafford could meet the girls through the clubs, which is how I think it happened, and they would be made available to him in the usual manner. Micallef didn’t get his hands dirty with the actual pimping. But I do think that after the second one he was starting to realize there was something wrong. Maybe he thought someone was targeting him. Or maybe he guessed the truth. Either way, he was getting paranoid. And the girls were getting understandably jumpy.”

“What about Stafford’s suicide?”

“This is where it gets a bit nebulous, sir,” Banks admitted. “I think that Micallef realized it was Stafford soon after the Maureen Heseltine murder and went to visit him. We did get a vague description from a neighbor of a man leaving Stafford’s house around the time he probably died. Tall, fair-haired, smartly dressed.”

“But the witness didn’t see his face.”

“No, sir. That’s why I said it gets a bit nebulous.”

“But you think Micallef killed Stafford?”

“I think Micallef went to talk to him and one way or another persuaded him to commit suicide. It’s possible that Stafford was already on the verge. He’d tried it before. He’d also just got a prescription of sleeping pills a couple of days previous to his death. I think Micallef tipped the scales. I doubt that he actually killed him, but he pushed him to it. Anyway, there’s nothing can be proven there. Stafford goes down as a suicide. Micallef carries on as normal.”

“But there’s more?”

“Yes, sir. I think that Micallef also found out that Jackie Simmons had given me the description. It’s probably my fault, sir. I did talk to her on a number of occasions, and perhaps I wasn’t discreet enough. He must have seen us together, or someone did who told him.”

“You can’t blame yourself for this, Alan.”

“I wish it were different, sir. I should have been more careful. I... dammit, I liked the girl. I even told Micallef that Stafford, whose identity we didn’t know at the time, had scared one of his girls. Maybe he put two and two together and knew it was Jackie who’d told me that. Christ, maybe I even did want to reform her, save her. I don’t know. But I liked her. And it’s my fault.”

“You think Micallef strangled her?”

“Him or one of his minions. First thing we did this morning was run down his alibi, and as expected, it’s as solid as it usually is. He was playing cards with five respectable citizens in a flat near Mayfair. They could be lying. More likely he got Benny or maybe one of his Chinese Triad pals to do it.”

“Micallef’s in with the Triads?”

“As far as they’ll let anybody be. His hang-out is a Chinese restaurant on Gerrard Street known to have connections with 14K. I think it’s a drug connection but I don’t have anything to back that up.”

“But why kill the girl? What possible threat could she pose to him with Stafford dead, a suicide?”

“A statement. A warning to the others.” Banks shrugged. “A man like Micallef... it’s the way he operates. Fear.”

“So what next?” Hatchard asked.

“The usual. Keep asking around, searching for witnesses. I’ll have another friendly chat with Micallef, which will get us precisely nowhere. We’ll pull in Benny, which will get us just about as far, and maybe have a word with some of our paid informants in the Triads, see if they got wind of anything.”

“Christ, I remember things used to be a lot simpler in Soho,” said Hatchard, resting his pipe on the ceramic ashtray. “We used to know who all the villains were and where they were most of the time.”