Lynda La Plante: Hidden Killers

The kitchen window looked out over the small back garden. It had a low fence; each property had a similar type, and the end of terrace had a high brick wall. Edwards and Moran watched Allard climbing up and taking two attempts to make it to the top.

‘Get out, cut him off,’ Moran shouted.

As Edwards raced down the road, Moran hurtled out of the front door and threw himself into the patrol car. He started up the engine and did a fast U turn, the tyres screeching as he drove to the end terraced house.

Edwards was bending over, panting and gasping for breath, and they could both see the black taxi disappearing down the road.

‘Shit.’ Moran hit the steering wheel with his hand as Edwards got in beside him.

The numerous small turnings up ahead gave no sighting and Edwards radioed in to Gibbs to inform him they were following a black taxi with Allard as passenger.

Moran shook his head. ‘We’re not following, we’ve bloody lost him.’

‘There it is, up ahead,’ shouted Edwards. Moran put his foot down and at speed overtook the taxi and swung the car to stop directly in front of the vehicle. There was no passenger, just a very startled cab driver who put his hands up in the air, terrified.

Gibbs and Jane were walking down Berwick Street. They had stopped by various strip clubs, some closed and not opening until the evening. At one small dingy club, Gibbs had removed a photograph of Janet, and the bouncer was very unpleasant and abusive, saying she had not worked there for weeks, that she was black trash and a loud-mouthed bitch.

Armed with Janet Brown’s photo, they continued moving along the road, and stopped at the adult bookshop. The blinds were down, and the ‘closed’ sign in the window. Gibbs hammered on the door but no one answered as it was too early in the afternoon, and Berwick Street was almost empty.

‘Let’s do another round of the clubs,’ Gibbs said, as they moved off. They were just turning into Wardour Street when Peter Allard got out of the Underground station in Oxford Street. He did not go via Wardour Street but walked down Regent Street, turning left into Argyle Street and passing the Palladium Theatre, then Liberty and the Magistrates’ Court to head into Berwick Street from the opposite direction. He was very tense, constantly looking over his shoulder.

He got to the adult bookshop, but made no attempt to try to gain entrance by the shop’s front door; instead he eased warily towards the small white door beside it. It was chipped and peeling and had no number or door knob, but a substantial key hole, and just above it was a small eye hole for anyone on the other side to check who was at the door. He gave two bangs of his fist and waited; he then repeated it, and pressed closer.

He heard the key turning, and the door was inched open by Stevie, the pot-bellied owner, who was wearing a pyjama top, stained trousers and slippers.

‘Hello, Stevie, lemme in.’

‘Shit, we’re not fuckin’ open.’

‘Yes you are, lemme in.’

Stevie begrudgingly unhooked the chain and opened the door. He knew Allard because he was a regular customer and bought his porno magazines and steroids from the shop, but he didn’t like being bamboozled to open up. He walked along a dirty, bare-boarded narrow hallway, passing the door that gave access into the shop, Allard following behind. Above were the rooms the girls used for their clients and where Stevie had been sleeping. They continued into a small back room with racks of stacked magazines, some of them still boxed and some in an old locked cabinet as they were obscene adult pornography with graphic content. There were also drugs bagged and tagged, and bottles of extremely potent steroids.

‘What you want? Take your pick, but make it fast.’

Allard said he wanted the pills, not any magazines, and Stevie unlocked the cabinet, selecting the usual container and held it in his hand.

‘You got the cash?’

Allard dug into the deep pocket of his tracksuit jacket with his left hand as if he was about to hand over the cash, but he used his right to bring out the nunchuck he had tucked into his waistband at the back. He was so fast, Stevie didn’t see it coming, and the crack against his scalp was so vicious he sank to his knees. He tried to grab hold of one of the racks containing the magazines and it toppled over onto him. Allard stepped over the unconscious man, and picked up the container, before turning back and out into the small corridor.

He knew this area, knew the girls rented the upstairs squalid rooms. This was where he had first met that tart Angie, and this was the place the red-haired kid worked – the kid Marie had described, that took his money. Just thinking of his wife made him tense with rage. He’d find her and when he did, he’d beat the living daylights out of her.

He went up the stairs and checked each dingy room before he sat on one of the dirty sheets, opened the container and took a fistful of small yellow pills.

It was getting dark and Soho was coming alive. Gibbs and Jane met up with Moran in the car park they had used previously. By now Moran had assigned a few uniform officers to search for Angie as well as Allard. There was one positive piece of news, and that was they had now been granted permission to start lifting the paving stones at the Allards’ previous residence. As they had his passport they knew he could not escape abroad.

‘Allard will be looking for Janet, and as we’ve not been able to trace her, maybe he’s having the same problem.’

Jane said nothing. They were sitting in Moran’s patrol car and the smoke was making her eyes run as the men were all chain smoking.

‘She’s a wily lady. I mean, she took me inside that estate, I saw her get into the lift, and she was lying. Press the sixth floor, she said, it’s the one where someone stubbed their cigarette out. I saw her do it and then left. I never went up with her…’

Jane agreed. ‘We knocked on every door on the sixth floor, apart from two. Maybe we need to go back. None of the residents were that helpful, they just slammed the doors in our faces.’

Gibbs sighed. ‘Listen, this is not my case, pals. I’ve been legging it around all afternoon and it’s now getting dark; the tart could be anywhere, and so could Allard.’

Moran stubbed out his cigarette and turned to Jane. ‘You want to give it one more try at that estate, and I’ll do another round of the clubs? Spence, just drop her off, and Jane, radio in if you find her.’

Gibbs drove Jane out of the car park as Moran and Edwards started to head towards the red light district. They stopped to buy a hot dog each and then heard the ambulance approaching with the lights flashing and bell ringing. A uniform officer approached and said that there was an altercation in Berwick Street at the adult bookshop and the woman who owned it had called in the police.

Moran watched as the still unconscious Stevie was carried on a stretcher into the ambulance and the paramedics began to try to resuscitate him. His wife was sobbing and swearing at the same time as she said she would find the bastard. Her husband had only one dried wound to the side of his head; apart from that there was no other physical sign of violence. She said it had to have been some pervert after money but she had already locked up the cabinet of drugs.

Moran was standing in the corridor where the rack of magazines still lay on its side as Stevie’s wife became very agitated and wanted him to leave as she was going in the ambulance.

‘I got to lock up… you can come back another time.’

‘Shut up,’ Moran snapped.

‘I am not leaving without locking the doors, it’ll be an open bloody invitation, there’s stuff in here worth a lot of money.’

Moran turned on her and told her to be quiet again, when he saw a trail of blood, not from beneath the rack but closer to the small staircase. She tried to interrupt him again but he ordered her to go and get in the ambulance.