‘Because it was unofficial,’ she said patiently. ‘Like many of the most worthwhile interviews are. What is this, Simon? You’re interrogating me, for goodness sake!’
‘I just want to know where you’ve been for two hours. Is that so unreasonable? I am your husband, allegedly, aren’t I? You’ve been drinking, I know that. And you had the car.’
Rose sighed. ‘Two beers. I had a drink at the Portway Towers with one of the Avon escorts who is particularly involved in the murder case, if you must know.’
‘What?’ Simon sounded outraged — again, thought Rose.
‘You went to the biggest pick-up joint in town with a male hooker? Terrific! Great! What kind of bloody woman would do that?’
‘A policewoman, perhaps, Simon.’ Rose spoke more sarcastically than she had meant to, but that was too bad. It had been another long hard day. These almost nightly battles with Simon were becoming more than she could cope with.
Simon pushed his hair back from his eyes, and there was just the merest flash of the little-boy charm with which she had fallen so in love in the first place.
‘Oh Rose, what’s wrong with us?’ He gestured almost plaintively at the table behind him, laid for dinner. There was a candle on it burned almost down to its polished brass holder and an opened bottle of red wine. ‘I just wanted us to have a nice time together for a change, I was so pleased you were going to be home early, that’s all.’
For a moment all Rose wanted to do was take him in her arms. But his petulance and, it seemed to her, his determination not to respect her job or her right to execute it how she and nobody else thought best, had really got to her.
‘Look, Simon, I just don’t have the energy for all of this right now — I’m trying to run a murder enquiry. I’m sorry about supper, but I’m not very hungry anyway. I’ll just watch TV in the bedroom for a bit and have an early night, if you don’t mind.’
She spoke with icy courtesy, no warmth at all in her voice. She knew she was hurting him even more, and she didn’t really understand why she was doing it. He had handed her the olive branch and she had turned away again. But somehow she couldn’t help herself.
‘What do I have to do, Rose...?’ she heard him begin, his voice raised and angry again, as she left the kitchen. She couldn’t begin to tell him. Instead she shut the door firmly behind her, anxious at least to avoid further argument.
It was a bloody good job she’d grabbed that hamburger at lunch-time, she thought to herself wryly. These supperless nights were beginning to become a habit.
The next day Rose found that the pressure she was already under to charge Paolo with living off immoral earnings had been stepped up. Her day started with an unwelcome bout of verbal fisticuffs with her senior officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Titmuss.
Ironic at this stage really, she thought, as it seemed that the third murder had already put Avon Escorts almost entirely out of business. As Paolo had accurately predicted, the punters didn’t want to know about an outfit at the centre of a murder enquiry. Even those who weren’t frightened by possible physical danger were not going to risk getting caught up in the blaze of unwelcome publicity surrounding Avon.
Rose did not want to bring charges against Paolo and continued to fight against doing so.
‘I need him free,’ she told Titmuss. ‘He and Charlie Collins are the only hope we’ve got of getting a lead on Mrs Pattinson. And we have to find that bloody woman.’
‘You’ve got one last chance, Rose, to do it your way, and I mean last chance,’ responded the superintendent, a dapper man, always immaculately dressed, whose priorities Rose thoroughly mistrusted. She considered that he was much more interested in his standing in the Bristol community than the nitty-gritty of police work.
However, she managed, just about, not to show how angry he had made her. The need to keep the Italian Bristolian on the streets was only half of the reason why she didn’t want to charge Paolo. The official half. Unofficially she was irritated by the small-mindedness she was facing. She was hunting a serial killer and all around her people were wittering their outrage about an escort agency which catered for the latent sexual desires of women as well as of men. Not for the first time Rose wondered if either her colleagues or the general public would be so offended if Avon ran only female prostitutes.
Sitting at her desk later, the door to her office propped open, revealing the hubbub of the busy incident room working at full pace, Rose managed somehow to be lost in her own thoughts. The Feeder was still being dragged for clues but predictably nothing had been found so far and Rose had no expectations that anything would be. The murder weapon remained the property of the murderer, Rose assumed. Ready for the next time. She actively hoped not now. Things were beginning to run away from her, she feared. She really did not know quite where to go next. Yet at the same time she dreaded being replaced as SIO. This was her case. She suspected Titmuss would never have put her in charge of it in the first place, let alone kept her there as long as he had, were it not for the man’s eternal desire — politically motivated, of course — to appear liberal and forward-thinking. And that was a joke for a start.
Her reverie was interrupted by Peter Mellor.
‘Name of Terry Sharpe mean anything to you, boss?’ he asked.
‘What?’ Rose was momentarily startled.
‘Seems he’s Wayne Thompson’s landlord,’ continued the sergeant.
Rose immediately found herself right back in the real world, absolutely alert. Terry Sharpe was a former Bristol vice cop who had been sacked from the force after getting too close to the trade he was supposed to be controlling. That had been around thirteen years ago, not long after Rose had joined the Avon and Somerset as a young uniformed probationary constable every bit as green as the boyish PC she had met by the side of the Feeder the previous day.
Sharpe had even been suspected of involvement in the murder of a young woman prostitute in Bristol. Nothing could ever be proved, but the case had never been solved. Rose had been assigned, as a woman officer, to accompany the detective teams investigating the murder as they moved among the city’s vice community. Some of the girls they talked to were under age. They were all frightened. Rose had met Sharpe once back then, and known immediately that he was the kind of policeman she hated more than any other human being, the kind who believed they could make up the rules as they went along. Sharpe had seemed to her to be a thoroughly unpleasant character, well capable of everything he might ever be accused of, and Rose could still remember the mocking look in his eye. He had always contrived to give the impression that he was one jump ahead — and most of the time he had indeed seemed to be just that.
There had been a smattering of press speculation and a lot of gossip. Ultimately Sharpe lost his job, which was something, in Rose’s opinion, although not nearly enough. The feeling inside the force was that he had literally got away with murder. And it had all left a very nasty taste.
One way and another, the DCI was quite excited by the prospect of finally catching up with Terry Sharpe.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what the bastard’s got to say for himself, shall we? Do we know where to find him?’
‘He’s got a big house up at Clifton and flash new offices in one of those old tobacco-bonding warehouses they’ve just converted,’ said Mellor. ‘I got it checked. He’s in his office even though it’s Saturday.’
‘Good.’ Rose was already on her feet. And this time, if he thought that his SIO could be better employed than conducting an interview herself, the sergeant made no comment.