Lynda La Plante - Prime Suspect

She spoke to someone who was invisible to Jane. “I won’t be a sec, darling!”

Peter’s face was like stone. He had not even acknowledged Marianne’s new husband, his old friend.

Marianne was wearing a short, frilly evening dress. Her blond, shoulder-length hair was the type that novelists describe as silky, a real shampoo advert. To Jane’s surprise she seemed much younger than her thirty-eight years.

“Hi, Pete, I’ve brought everything he could possibly need, and a lot he might not…”

Peter turned to introduce Jane. “Jane, this is Marianne.”

“Hi, nice to meet you, it’s good of you to have Joey.”

“Oh, that’s OK, nice to meet you.” She bent down to the little boy, who still clung to his father’s legs. “And you must be Joey? You know what we’ve got? Fish fingers, do you like fish fingers?”

“What else have you got?”

“Chocolate cake, you want some? Yes? Come on, then, let me show you the kitchen.”

She held out a hand to Joey, who shied away at first, but then he edged forward and gripped her hand tightly. “I got a new Revenge of the Joker mask!” he confided.

“Have you? Is that from Batman, then?”

Joey nodded. Anxious to get away from Marianne’s critical gaze, Jane smiled and said, “Would you like a drink, Marianne?”

“No, Steve is waiting…”

Duty done, Jane and Joey scuttled into the kitchen, but Jane could hear every word through the thin door. She showed Joey the cake box, opened it and reached into the top cupboard for a plate.

Marianne smiled and tossed her streaked, blond hair back. She leaned confidentially towards Pete.

“Pete, I’m pregnant.” She gave him a long, direct look.

Peter swallowed. “It’s not…” He glanced nervously toward the kitchen.

“Who knows? Anyway, I really appreciate this. You know what I was like in the early stages with Joey, I’m so sick every morning, awful.”

He pulled himself together. “You look OK!”

“Well, it’s all show. Underneath this I’m white as a sheet and getting hideously fat.” She wasn’t; as far as Peter could recall she hadn’t even put on much weight with Joey. Marianne went on, “She’s not at all what I expected! Is it working out?”

He nodded, and glanced again towards the kitchen door. “You’d better go, I don’t want him getting upset.”

“Oh, he’s fine, and I should say goodbye to… what’s her name?”

“Jane.” Again Peter looked towards the kitchen door. “Jane! Marianne’s leaving!”

The partly defrosted cake was halfway to the plate when it slipped off the bread knife and back into the box, showering Jane in the process. Peter opened the door to see her covered in chocolate and cream, trying in vain to wipe it off with a tea towel.

“Bit of an accident! Good to meet you, Marianne, hope you have a nice dance.”

“Oh, it’s not a dance, just a small dinner party.”

Jane covered her astonishment with a smile. If she had got herself done up in a dress as glitzy as that, it would have been for a ball at the very least.

Joey kissed his mother, apparently unperturbed at her leaving, then ran back to the kitchen to stick his fingers in the blobs of chocolate and lick them.

As the door closed behind Marianne, Jane cocked her head to one side. “So I wasn’t what she expected, huh? Next time I’ll borrow a WPC’s hat!”

There was a crash from the kitchen as the entire chocolate cake, box and all, fell to the floor. Joey looked crestfallen, expecting to be punished, but Jane just looked at the mess on the floor and handed Joey a spoon.

“OK, let’s have tea!”

It was eleven thirty when Shefford completed his interrogation of George Marlow. He discussed the results briefly with Arnold Upcher; he was sure he had enough evidence to charge Marlow. Upcher, tired himself, pursed his lips and gave a small shrug.

“Then if you feel you have the evidence, Inspector, there is little I can do. But he’s been here since early afternoon, that means you’ve got twenty-four hours. You will, of course, inform me if you go for extra time?”

Shefford was confident that he could charge Marlow without having to present all his evidence to a magistrate and beg for the statutory three days’ delay to consolidate his case, or “three-day lay-down”, as it was known. Exhausted though he was, and a little punchy, he was still going strong. His main concern was to get the statements transcribed from the tapes.

Upcher, needing time to review Marlow’s situation, had said little as he took his leave of Shefford. He knew intuitively that something was wrong, but until he had time to digest the case he wouldn’t even contemplate discussing it.

None of it made sense; Marlow was a handsome, attractive male, a man with a good, steady relationship at home. He was popular, he had a job that he thoroughly enjoyed and which brought him good money and his employers had even held it open for him when he was convicted of attempted rape. Upcher had succeeded in getting the burglary charge dropped, and in Marlow’s defense at the trial he had played heavily upon the confusion about which party had made the initial approach, whether both of them had been drunk-they had been seen in the same bar, and Marlow’s claim that she had led him on and subsequently refused him had rung true. In Upcher’s opinion the victim was a very disturbed woman whose evidence was unreliable, and he had been shattered by the verdict. Not just from a professional point of view; his relationship with Marlow was good, he actually liked the man and believed him to be innocent.

Marlow had taken it well, although Upcher was surprised that he had requested his representation for this, a much more serious charge. He had borne Upcher no grudge about losing the case, and had even admitted that, drunk or sober, he should not have forced himself on the woman, even though he had truly believed it was what she wanted. He had said, with a rueful smile, “I’ll never drink more than my limit again, so I suppose some good’ll come out of it. I didn’t hurt her though, Arnold, she made that up, the cops got it wrong.”

Was Marlow a rapist and a murderer? Upcher thought not, and could not believe he had misjudged the man to such an extent. The question occupied his thoughts all the way back to his Queen’s Gate flat.

The Arnold Upchers of this world are expensive, and anyone seeing the tall, angular man in the hand-tailored suit parking his dark green Jaguar in the residents’ bay could have been forgiven for mistaking him for the famous conductor who had once lived in the elegant service block a stone’s throw from Hyde Park. With the remote control he locked his car and set the alarm, allowing the chill night air to clear his head. By the time he reached his door, Upcher was convinced that the police had got it wrong again. Marlow was innocent, and he would prove it.

Jane crawled to bed at midnight. She had exhausted her stock of stories before Joey finally fell asleep, from the three little pigs to a strange mixture of Batman confronting the Ninja Turtles.

Peter was sitting up waiting for her. He flipped the bedclothes back and patted the mattress. “Come in, my beauty! And tell me a story…”

She snuggled into bed and gave him a blow-by-blow description of the goings-on at the police station.

“They were like kids playing at cops and robbers! I don’t know what they were up to, but they stopped me working. They’ve got a nice juicy murder that should have been my case, and you know what I’ve got instead? A dyspeptic accountant who’s had his bloody case adjourned four times in a row! Last time I had to wait at court all morning like a prat until he sent in some fictitious doctor’s note, and then I was told to go away. Next thing, the little sod’ll up and leave the country-I would, in his position. He owes ten years’ income tax and VAT. I’ve got to know the little pest so well over the past three months that I can tell you what he’ll be eating for breakfast, and even when I suggested that another adjournment would be… Am I boring you?”