Lynda La Plante: Prime Suspect

The painstaking task of checking every forensic sample, the tapes of fibers, the fingerprints, was barely begun, and had brought no results so far. The entire area was combed for a murder weapon without success. In that neighborhood no one ever volunteered information, especially to the police.

Shefford and Otley met up again at Milner Road and spent an hour or so interviewing and looking over the efficiency again, but they discovered nothing new. Mrs. Salbanna, recovered from her shock, was already asking when she could let the room.

Shefford was hungry and very tired. He had a few pints and a pork pie in the local, then kipped down in his office while Otley went home to his flat to fetch his guv’nor a clean shirt. Shefford often stayed over at his place and left a few items of clothing there for emergencies.

Although he could have done with putting his head down for a few hours himself, Otley sprayed the shirt with starch and ironed it, paying special attention to the collar. Pleased with his handiwork, he slipped it onto a hanger and sat down for a cup of tea. He had a system for avoiding washing up; he simply used the same cup, plate and cutlery all the time. He ate all his main meals in the station canteen, and had even given up his morning cornflakes because they were a bugger to get off the bowl if you left them overnight.

The silver-framed photographs of his wife, his beloved Ellen, needed a good polish, but he’d have to leave them until his next weekend off. They were the only personal items in the flat that he bothered with. Ellen had been the love of his life, his only love, since he was a teenager. Her death seven years ago, from cancer of the stomach, had left him bereft, and he mourned her now as deeply as the moment she had died. He had watched helplessly as she disintegrated before his eyes. She had become so weak, so skeletal, that he had prayed, anguished and alone, for her to die.

It has been obvious to everyone at work that Skipper Bill Otley had personal problems, but he confided in no one. His solitary drinking and his angry bitterness had caused many arguments, and his boys, as he called them, had at last left him to himself. In the end, John Shefford had taken him aside and demanded to know what was going on, earning his abusive response, “Mind yer own fuckin’ business, my personal life’s me own affair.”

Shefford had snapped back angrily that when it affected his work it became the boss’s business, and Otley would be out on his ear if he didn’t come clean about what was tormenting him. He pushed Otley to the point where he finally cracked.

Once he understood, Shefford had been like a rock. He was at the hospital, waiting outside the ward, when Ellen died. He had organized the funeral, done everything he possibly could to help. He was always there, always available, like the sweet, beloved friend Otley had buried. When Shefford’s son was born he asked Otley to be godfather; the bereaved man became part of the family, his presence demanded for lunch on Sundays, for outings and parties. He and Ellen had longed for children, in vain; now his off-duty time was filled with little Tom’s laughter and nonsense. So Otley wouldn’t just iron his guv’nor’s shirt; he would wash it, and his socks for good measure. John Shefford meant more to him than he could ever put into words; he loved the man, admired him, and backed him to the hilt, convinced that he would make Commander one of these days. No one would be more proud of him then than Bill Otley.

With the clean shirt over his arm, Otley whistled on his way back to the station.

At eleven, Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison parked her Ford Fiesta and entered Southampton Row police station. It was a crisp, frosty day, and she was wrapped up well against the cold.

She was officially off-duty, but had come in to prepare some final papers for a session in court the next day.

None of the blood samples taken from the efficiency had yielded a clue to the identity of Della Mornay’s killer. Hers was a very common group and the only one found at the scene. But the DNA tests on the semen taken from her body were a different matter.

The new computerized DNA system was still at the experimental stage, but already the results of thousands of tests taken in the past two years had been entered on it. As a matter of routine, Willy Chang’s forensic team ran the result from Della Mornay against the existing records and were astonished to find a match; a visual check on the negatives, using a light-box, confirmed it. The man Della Mornay had had sex with shortly before her murder had been convicted of attempted rape and aggravated robbery in 1988.

Willy Chang was jubilant; here was the lever they needed to press the government into releasing funds for a national DNA profiling system. He picked up the phone.

The message caught Shefford on Lambeth Bridge, on his way home for lunch and only a stone’s throw from the Home Office labs. He hung up the handset, turned the car around immediately and punched Otley’s arm.

“You’re not gonna believe this, we got a friggin’ suspect! He’s got a rare blood group and it’s on the ruddy computer!”

For the past three months DCI Tennison had been working on a tedious fraud case involving a tobacconist who was being sued for non-payment of VAT. The man’s ferret of an accountant had more tricks up his sleeve than a conjuror, and a long series of medical certificates exempting him from court appearances. But tomorrow, at last, Judge George Philpott would complete his summing-up. Known as the legal equivalent of Cary Grant for his good looks and slow delivery, Philpott had already taken two days; Tennison hoped he would finish quickly for once so she would have time to check her desk before the end of the day.

Not that there would be anything of interest; in all her time on the special Area Major Incident Team, known as AMIT, there had been little but desk work. She had often wondered why she had bothered switching from the Flying Squad, where at least she had been busy. The set-up of five DCIs and their teams had appealed to her, and she had believed she would be able to use her skills to the full.

Sitting at her desk, Tennison heard a screech of brakes from the car park. She glanced out of the window in time to see Shefford racing into the building.

“What’s DCI Shefford doing in today, Maureen?” she asked her assistant, WPC Havers. “He’s supposed to be on leave.”

“I think he’s heading the investigation.”

“What investigation?”

“Prostitute found dead in her room in Milner Road.”

“They got a suspect?” Tennison snapped.

“Not yet, but they’re getting all the Vice files on the victim’s pals.”

Tennison bristled. “How did Shefford get it? I was here until after ten last night!”

Maureen shrugged. “I dunno, guv, I think it was a middle-of-the-night job. Probably hauled him out of the afters session in the pub.”

“But he’s only just finished with that shooting in Kilburn-and there were the Iranian diplomats before that.”

Tennison clenched her fists and stormed out. Maureen winced at the banging of the door.

DCI Tennison paced up and down the corridor, trying to talk herself down. Eighteen months she’d been waiting for a decent case, dealing with more paperwork than in her entire time at the rape center in Reading, and now the boss had gone out of his way to give DCI Shefford the case that should have been hers. She’d known when she applied for the transfer that she would be in for a tough time; had she stayed where she was she’d have been promoted to a desk job by now.

But five years with the Flying Squad had toughened her up. She went back to her room and put a call through to the Chief’s office, determined to have it out with him, but he was in a meeting. She tried to work on her statements for the court hearing but her frustration wouldn’t let her concentrate.