Lynda La Plante - Silent Victims

They were conferring again. Tennison sighed. She gazed at the ceiling, tapping her pen.

Parker-Jones faced her confidently. “I was unaware of any delays.”

“Why didn’t you call a doctor?” Tennison pressed him. “Or make that short journey?”

He had his answer ready. “At no time did he-Vernon Reynolds-make it appear there was a dire emergency, that Connie…”

“… was possibly unconscious?”

“I was asked to call an ambulance or arrange for one to be sent. I have admitted that I did lie-or did not give you the information when I was asked before about this ambulance call out.” Parker-Jones was back to being reasonable again, doing all he could to help the police with their inquiries. No doubt the influence of his lawyer, urging temperance and moderation. “I apologize, but surely you can understand my reasons-I simply did not want to get Vernon Reynolds into trouble.”

It was neat and plausible and Tennison had no idea how to break through and expose his story for the pack of lies it was. This man was a filthy sadist, a vampire preying on the children entrusted to his care and leaving behind a wreckage of young lives. He’d been doing it for years, in different parts of the country, using Kennington and Margaret Speel and possibly countless others to aid and abet him and cover his tracks. He was a cancerous growth in society that long ago should have been cut out. Tennison was the surgeon, but it was as though the scalpel in her hand was blunted, or had been whipped away the moment she started to operate. He was a devious, clever, calculating, lying, perverted bastard with an impregnable sense of his own superiority. He had friends in high places, money to buy the services of a good lawyer, and sufficient power to put the frighteners on anyone who might be tempted to blow the whistle. He was above the law, that was the contemptuous opinion of Edward Parker-Jones, and Tennison had a horrible, gnawing suspicion in the pit of her stomach that he might be right.

The silence in the room stretched on and on. There was just the rustle of papers as Tennison sorted through the file. Halliday eased his chafed neck inside his collar, his pale blue eyes loose in their sockets. Spelling cleared his throat ponderously. He leaned forward, his quizzical expression making his forehead a maze of corrugations.

“Do you have any further questions you wish to put to my client?”

“Yes, I do,” Tennison said at once. “Mr. Parker-Jones, you have apologized earlier for lying. You lied about the presence of four witnesses that you said saw you on the evening of the seventeenth. One of these witnesses was Billy Matthews, is that correct?”

“Yes, but you must understand,” he said loftily, in a patronizing drawl that infuriated her, “there are a number of them on any given evening…”

“But you were most specific about Billy Matthews,” Tennison butted in. “You said you recalled him being at the advice centre because he was ill.”

“Yes.”

“But as it now transpires, Billy Matthews was not at the advice centre, he was in actual fact in Charing Cross Hospital.”

He brushed it aside. “I’m sorry, I was simply confused as to the exact evening.”

“Really? Even though you called an ambulance for him? That would be the evening of the sixteenth,” Tennison stressed, and was charged with exhilaration to see, for the tiniest split second, a shadow of uncertainty flicker in the deep-set eyes. “On that occasion you did leave your name, and on that occasion you were informed that there would be a fifteen-minute delay. Is that correct?”

“It’s possible.”

“Possible.” Tennison seized on this. “So it would also be possible that when an ambulance was called on the following evening you were fully aware there would be a delay.” She stared him out. “Giving you perhaps even more time to leave the advice centre and go to Vernon Reynolds’s flat. Did you? Did you go to Vernon Reynolds’s flat?”

He was in a corner, but there was a simple way out, and he took it.

“No, I did not.”

Back to bloody stalemate! She couldn’t shake him, couldn’t budge the arrogant bastard. They could sit here all night, her lobbing questions and accusations, and they would just bounce off that smug stone wall, that sneeringly superior shell he had built around himself. He was fucking fireproof. She felt like screaming and yelling and leaping across to tear out his eyes and rip the lying tongue out of his mouth.

Tennison was furious with herself. Not a snowball’s chance in hell of nailing this shit if she allowed her emotions to veer out of control. By an act of will she quelled them. She looked up, her eyes cold, her voice without a tremor as she asked, “Mr. Parker-Jones, are you aware of the existence of certain compromising photographs that belonged to James Jackson?”

Parker-Jones leaned toward Spelling, but they didn’t confer. The lawyer merely gave a long slow blink. Parker-Jones straightened up, wearing a smirk that Tennison wanted to smash from his face.

“No comment.”

“That in many of these said photographs you are pictured with the deceased, Colin Jenkins?”

“No comment.”

“That you were also photographed in various poses with a number of juveniles, and these photographs were taken from your home in Camden Town?”

“No comment.”

“I think you knew of the existence of these pictures, and knew that Colin Jenkins intended to sell them.”

“No comment.”

“On the night of the seventeenth you had James Jackson searching all over London, desperate to track these photographs down.” Her tone became thin and cutting as she replayed the scenario, telling the real story to his face, making him know that she knew. “To track Colin Jenkins down, but you just couldn’t find him, could you?”

“No comment.”

“And then Vera, Vernon Reynolds, came to you in, as you have said, a dreadful state…”

“No comment.”

“… telling you that the very person you were looking for was not only in her flat, but unconscious, alone, and with the said photographs.”

“No comment.”

“You said you would arrange everything. You would even call the ambulance-”

On his lips she saw the words forming and leapt up, slapped her hands flat on the table, her body arched tautly toward him.

“No comment?” Tennison hissed. “NO COMMENT AGAIN? Mr. Parker-Jones, you have admitted you were aware of the emergency services’ delays during this period-”

“No comment.”

“-You used that fifteen minutes to hurry from the advice centre, run over to Vernon Reynolds’s flat. He wasn’t dead, was he? Connie was still alive. And so you made sure, made sure he would never be able to tell anyone about you, Mr. Parker-Jones. You and your friends. It was so easy, wasn’t it? He couldn’t fight back, couldn’t make any attempt to stop you as you set light to him… left him to burn to death.”

She knew, at last, she had him. She was certain she had him, because he said nothing, his long face smoldering and sullen. Then he folded his arms, the corner of his mouth curling up in a little smirk, and she knew sickeningly that she hadn’t.

Tennison stood outside the interview room. She felt so weary that she could have stretched out on the carpet in the corridor and gone fast asleep.

She looked away as Parker-Jones came out. “Good night, Inspector Tennison.” His smiling glance passed over her dismissively. He turned to Otley. “Which way is it?”

Otley led him toward the main staircase. Tennison leaned against the wall. Spelling came out, carrying his briefcase and homburg, followed by Halliday. She watched the lawyer hurry along briskly to join Parker-Jones, who patted his shoulder and pumped his hand. Otley pointed the way and they went off.