‘Sounds as if he’s made a packet then, since he left the job,’ Rose remarked as she and Mellor headed for the car park. ‘Do we know how, by any chance, as if I couldn’t guess.’
‘You’d guess right, boss, more’n likely. Property is the official line. But then there’s what you use your property for. The vice boys reckon he just carried on the way he was going when he was in the force. He was running Toms then, everyone was sure of it. And he still is.’
The sergeant paused by the car and looked over the roof at the DCI.
‘There’s something else boss, I’ve got a team giving Paolo the third degree again. There’s a suggestion that Sharpe has a connection with Avon Escorts.’
Terry Sharpe remained every bit as thoroughly unpleasant as Rose remembered him to have been. Now in his early fifties, he was smaller than average for a policeman. His skin was pale to the point of being pasty and his hair, which he wore quite long and combed flat against his head, was totally white. Rose wondered if he bleached it. His eyes were very pale blue and watery-looking. Obscurely Rose thought that he looked a bit like an oversized albino rabbit in a city suit. A suit which was a good grand’s worth, she reckoned. He also wore a ring on the little finger of his right hand with a diamond only slightly smaller than the knuckle of that finger.
The office, on the top floor of the converted warehouse, was as pale as Sharpe’s complexion — white leather furniture, cream carpet, glass-topped desk — and as expensive-looking as his clothes. A picture window offered a stunning view over the Floating Harbour and across much of Bristol city centre.
Terry Sharpe leaned back in his big white leather chair, a small figure quite at home amid the blatant opulence of his own creation. And if he was in any way shocked or even disconcerted by the sudden appearance of his unannounced visitors, Sharpe gave no sign. Indeed he seemed every bit as smug and convinced of his own superiority as the impression Rose had retained of him over the years. Being chucked out of the force did not seem to have affected that one jot. Even before he spoke, Rose began to relish the prospect of being able to deal him an even more devastating blow, and also to realise that this was unlikely to come easy.
‘I hardly knew Wayne Thompson,’ Sharpe said languidly in answer to her first question. His voice was every bit as smug as the expression on his face. His whole philosophy of life seemed to be “catch me if you can”. ‘I’ve got a number of tenants. They pay me rent. They’re not my friends.’
Rose waded straight in. ‘And is that all they pay you?’
Sharpe’s lips curled slightly and he raised one eyebrow quizzically. ‘I really don’t know what you mean, Detective Chief Inspector,’ he said.
‘I wondered if your tenants also gave you a share of their earnings, Mr Sharpe?’
Sharpe reached for a giant Monte Christo cigar from the box on his desk. He did not offer the box around. The thought flitted into Rose’s head that he was in any case the kind of man who would automatically consider that neither a black man nor a woman were suitable recipients of such a gift.
‘Now why on earth would they do that, Chief Inspector?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Perhaps because of your association with Avon Escorts?’
‘A legitimate escort agency, I always understood. And what makes you think I have anything to do with it, anyway?’
‘It won’t be too difficult to find out...’ Rose left the words hanging.
Sharpe shrugged. ‘Please yourselves,’ he said. The curl in his lips was almost a leer now.
He lit the cigar, puffing vigorously, and almost instantly filling the room with smoke. Rose struggled not to cough. She was aware of the man studying her closely.
‘Don’t I know you?’ he asked eventually.
‘We have met, yes,’ she responded curtly.
The slightly puzzled look now evident in Sharpe’s eyes cleared suddenly. His face cracked suddenly into a full-blown leering grin.
‘I remember, little Rosie. A DCI now! Little Rosie Piper. Well, I never.’
Rose forced herself not to visibly react. She was aware of Mellor stiffening beside her. The sergeant knew her so well. Terry Sharpe had called her Rosie all those years ago and she did not hate it any less now than she had then. But she must not let him get to her.
Sharpe was going to be a tough nut to crack, no doubt about that. It also seemed that he had alibis for the times of the murders of Wayne Thompson and of Colin Parker. Sharpe was a man with a busy social calendar. He had been at a local Businessman of the Year awards dinner — and that was a laugh too, thought Rose — when Wayne was killed and in London at a black-tie boxing tournament at the Park Lane Hilton when Colin Parker was attacked. He couldn’t remember what he had been doing when Marty Morris died, and there was nothing in his diary. But he must have been doing something, he always was, he announced.
‘I’ll think of it sooner or later, for sure,’ he said, and he smiled the smug smile through a haze of cigar smoke.
Rose didn’t doubt him, although as far as she was concerned having alibis did not in any case rule him out as a suspect. He was the sort of character who would more than likely pay someone else to do his dirty work, she thought. She disliked Terry Sharpe even more than her brief memory of him had suggested she would, and realised that nothing would please her more than to be able to prove his guilt.
Fifteen
Constance sat very still. The Sun newspaper lay before her, flat on the kitchen table. Rent Boy Killer Strikes Again screamed the front-page banner headline. She had a copy of the Express on her lap. The lead story was the same, of course. It was the same in every paper.
Constance was surrounded by newspaper reports of the third murder. She read each one thoroughly and, when she had finished, folded the newspapers with care and piled them in one corner of the table. The Aga made the whole room glow with warmth, but Constance was barely aware of its comfort. The chill which engulfed her came from her own heart.
It was late afternoon on Saturday, 19th December, the day after Wayne Thompson’s body had been discovered in Bristol and around the same time that Rose Piper was setting off to meet Terry Sharpe. There had been quite a heavy fall of snow earlier on in Chalmpton Peverill, but Constance had not even noticed. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She had been unable to stop herself crying all day. She had, after all, done quite a lot of it lately. Although after the funeral things had seemed to settle down a bit for a few days. She had shut what she knew must be the truth out of her mind, and, for the sake of what remained of her family, had tried to force herself to behave as normally as possible.
Even William had encouraged that — at least when it came to any kind of public appearance. It was William who had made her pull herself together, and forced her to dress and behave the way she had for the funeral. She had known he was right and she had tried to keep that up, she really had. It was all a pretence of course. All a mere façade. But that was all there was left, really. And there wasn’t just William to consider. She also had two lovely daughters, one still at school who so needed the love and support of a calm, strong mother — although even before this latest horror Constance hadn’t really thought she could ever be that again — and the other, a mother herself, who was so nice and kind and normal.
But now, surely Constance could not go on pretending. Could not kid herself that life could ever return to any kind of normality.
She wiped away a tear. She had been sitting at the table almost all day. For once in her life she really did not know what to do next. Losing Freddie was so terrible. Her grief would have been overwhelming under any circumstances. But with everything else that had happened it was unbearable. And her guilt too. They say you always feel guilt when someone close to you dies, however irrationally — but her guilt was not irrational. She knew she had caused Freddie’s death. There was no alternative to believing that. But she had been trying to convince herself that at least it was all over now. That nothing more would happen. It wasn’t over though. It was still going on. All of it. And so it would unless she did something about it. Only she could stop it.