Lynda La Plante - Prime Suspect

Tennison nodded without speaking. Moyra didn’t really want to talk about Della, this was not why she had wanted the men out of the room, there was something else. Moyra tugged at her skirt, darting glances at Tennison, her whole body twisting and turning, her hands picking at her own false nails. She looked at Havers, chewing at her lip, then back to Tennison. Then she leaned forward, her chin in her hand, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear.

“He… he did it to me once,” she whispered. Tennison leaned closer, but Moyra immediately sat back, coughed and stared at Havers. Tennison waited patiently while Moyra straightened her skirt yet again, twisted her hair. Then she released a deep sigh.

This time she didn’t whisper. She faced the wall. “He made this thing, with straps, for here.” She touched her arm. “He said it made… it made the vagina tight, you know, stretched out, but it hurt me. I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it.”

She hung her head, as if the horror was slowly seeping into her brain. She still couldn’t face Tennison; her head sank lower and lower until it was nearly resting on her knees.

“I didn’t know, I didn’t know… Oh, God forgive me, I didn’t know…”

Moyra buried her face in her arms and began to sob.

Amson, Muddyman and Shrapnel were all leaning against the wall of the corridor when Tennison’s face appeared in the glass panel. She opened the door.

“George Marlow was home by ten thirty that night, but he went out again at a quarter to eleven. She doesn’t know what time he returned.”

She stood very erect, head up, eyes blowing. “We’ve got him,” she said quietly.

George Marlow lay in his cell, staring at the ceiling. A uniformed officer outside kept a constant watch through the spyhole.

The key turned in the lock, and Marlow sat up, swinging his feet to the floor as his solicitor, Arnold Upcher, stepped in.

With a glance at his watch, Upcher said, “Five minutes!” to the officer, who remained in the open doorway, Upcher put his briefcase down on the bunk and faced Marlow.

“They are charging you on six counts of murder, George.”

Marlow shook his head, sighed, and looked up. “I don’t know what’s going on, Arnold. On my mother’s life, I haven’t done anything.”

Arc-lights had been brought into the King’s Cross lock-up to improve the illumination. White-suited Scenes of Crime men were moving in to start photographing and fingerprinting. The place was strangely quiet; only the constant rumble of the trains and the distant sound of a chained dog barking disturbed the silence.

The Rover had been surrounded by plastic sheeting. One man was kneeling on the plastic, leaning in through the open door, combing the fitted carpets with great care, passing anything he found to an assistant beside him.

DI Burkin and DC Jones were examining a row of old metal lockers.

“Oh, look at this!” exclaimed Burkin, holding up a hideous mask with cut-out eyeholes by his fingertips. He dropped it into a plastic bag.

In the next locker, Jones had found suits, shirts, ties, shoes, all covered in plastic dry-cleaner’s bags.

“Even his sneakers, look… Neat bastard.”

Burkin sniffed. “Jesus, this place smells like an abattoir.” He turned to stare at the wall where Marlow’s chains and torture instruments hung, his nose wrinkling in disgust.

Two men were crouched near the wall, prodding at a small drain with sticks. Above the drain, where a single tap was fitted, a makeshift shower had been rigged up, with a plastic shampoo spray and a plastic curtain, spotted with black mold and streaked with blood. Beside it a dish contained soap, wire brushes and a plastic nail brush.

“This is caked in blood, we’ll need swabs of it all,” one of the men was saying. “Ugh, the drain’s clogged with it, and this looks like skin…” He covered his face. “Jesus, the stench!” he mumbled, retching.

Burkin had found a handbag. He handled it carefully, wearing disposable plastic gloves. Inside was a wallet; he flipped it open.

“It’s Karen Howard’s!”

More arc-lights came on, bathing the Rover in a bright pool of light. The SOCO was holding a pair of tweezers up and peering at the tiny item they held.

“The carpet’s been scrubbed, smells of cleaning fluid, and it’s damp. What’s this? Looks like a tiny gold screw.” He dropped it into the bag his assistant held open for him and something else caught his attention. “Was your girl blond?” he called over to Burkin and Jones as he carefully stashed a single blond hair into a bag.

Burkin was examining a jacket, peering at it through the plastic bag. “I got one of these jackets from his flat, he must have two sets of clothes… See his shoes, did you take his shoes from the flat?”

DC Jones wasn’t ready for it, couldn’t understand how it happened, but one moment he was doing his job, sorting through the gear, and the next he burst into tears. He stood there, unable to control his sobs, almost in surprise.

Burkin put an arm around his shoulder. “Go an’ grab a coffee, a few of the others might feel like one, OK?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I dunno what made me get like this…”

Peering into the cabinet again, Burkin replied, “We all go through it, Dave. I think it’s just natural, a release… Mine’s black, no sugar.”

Jones threaded his way across the duckboards, mindful of the plastic sheeting. He had to turn back because he couldn’t remember if it was four black and six white or the other way round.

The silent shadows of the men loomed on the walls where hideous splashes of blood, and worse, had dried. The greenish glow of the fluorescent lights and the brightness of the arc-lights did nothing to lift the dank darkness, the stench, the horror. This was where that sweet girl was brought; he could only imagine her terror, only imagine it.

DI Burkin had pulled out a thick black wardrobe bag, the kind used by the uppercrust type of dry cleaners. It was strong, would have fitted a full-length evening gown, and it had a zip from one end to the other. It was slightly open at one end and he could see a tangle of blond hair jammed in the teeth. They knew Marlow was strong-this had to be how he had carried his victims undetected, zipped up in the wardrobe bag, hung over his arm…

It was not for Burkin to find out, that was down to Forensic, but be wondered. He placed it into a see-through evidence bag, tagged it, then bent to check over Marlow’s shoes. They were all neatly wrapped in clingfilm, ready to slip on and walk out, or walk into Della Mornay’s efficiency. No wonder they had been unable to find a single item, a single fiber, in her room.

The tape recorder emitted a high-pitched bleep, and Tennison started talking.

“This is a recorded interview. I am Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison. Also present are Detective Sergeant Terence Amson and Mr. Arnold Upcher. We are situated in room 5-C at Southampton Row Metropolitan Police Station. The date is Thursday the first of February, nineteen ninety. The time is four forty-five pm.”

Tennison nodded to Marlow. “Would you please state your full name, address and date of birth?”

He leaned forward and directed his voice towards the built-in microphone. “George Arthur Marlow, twenty-one High Grove Estate, Maida Vale. Born in Warrington, eleventh September, nineteen fifty-one.”

“Do you understand why you have been arrested?”

He gave a half-shrug. “I guess so.”

“It is my duty formally to caution you, and warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence. You have been arrested on suspicion of the murders of Karen Howard and Deirdre Mornay. Do you understand?”

“I am not guilty.” Marlow turned and looked at Upcher.