Rose had not been as disappointed as she might have been. For a start it seemed likely that Mrs Pattinson had made at least some attempt to disguise her appearance. Charlie admitted that he always reckoned the blonde hair was a wig, and that he had never seen Mrs Pattinson’s real hair. And when confronted with the possibility Janet had said she’d never thought about it, but now she did, yes, perhaps that sleek blonde bob was just too perfect to be Mrs Pattinson’s own hair.
‘It was always exactly the same length, too,’ Janet had remarked in a wondering kind of voice, almost as if she were a member of some weird religious sect who had just seen the light. ‘I mean, I saw Mrs Pattinson virtually every month for the three years I’ve been at the Crescent. I suppose you might have expected her hair to have varied occasionally in all that time, mightn’t you?’
Rose sighed, going over all the conversations, all the different lines of enquiry, seeking to weave the threads together into something constructive. Every statement taken by her team was on the HOLMES system. Sometimes there seemed to be almost too much information, too much to take in.
She wandered out of her office in the direction of the coffee machine across the yard in the main body of the police station. She wasn’t alone in the investigation centre, of course, even though it was a Sunday. This was a major crime and a number of officers were at work, but Staple Hill was quieter than on a weekday. Rose wasn’t sure whether that helped or hindered the remains of her thought processes.
Not without difficulty she persuaded the machine to part with a polystyrene cup containing a lukewarm khaki-coloured liquid masquerading as coffee. Back in her office one sip of it was enough. She pushed the cup to one side, grimacing in distaste.
For the umpteenth time she tried to put herself inside Mrs Pattinson’s head. Was sex really all there was to it, was that Mrs P’s only driving force, or was there something more?
Rose attempted to imagine the kind of life the woman led when she wasn’t cavorting with the boys from Avon. She must have money — the Avon boys didn’t come cheap and neither did the Crescent Hotel, and both Charlie and Janet talked about how beautifully she dressed in expensive designer suits. Presumably she either lived somewhere within easy reach of Bristol, or travelled regularly to the city, perhaps on business. What was her home life like, Rose pondered. Did she have a husband and a family? And if so, how did she explain her absences? There were so many unanswered questions.
The only evidence against Mrs Pattinson continued to be circumstantial. But Rose just wished there were not quite so much of it. She also wished fervently that she could find more to incriminate Terry Sharpe.
By the following morning Rose had her wish. Painstaking inquiries into the life and times of Sharpe conducted over the weekend had gradually compiled some very helpful material. Paolo eventually admitted that Terry Sharpe was his ‘sleeping partner’ — an appropriate choice of phrasing for an escort agency, Rose thought.
Meticulous checking of records also revealed that, in addition to all his other dubious activities, Terry Sharpe was also a part owner of the Crescent Hotel. To Rose this indicated at once that the hotel was probably not quite as respectable as it had at first seemed to be, its façade of exclusivity perhaps a front for all kinds of activities. Indeed she had half suspected from the beginning that might prove to be the case — but she had been honest enough with herself to be aware that her hunch was based more on her instinctive dislike of the hotel manager, Henry Bannerman, rather than anything more substantive. The Terry Sharpe connection firmly established a link between the Crescent Hotel and Avon Escorts — a link which before Sharpe came on to the scene, her team had not been able to prove.
There was more too. Telephone records showed that Sharpe and Henry Bannerman kept almost constantly in touch. Bannerman, it seemed, received a regular bi-monthly payment from Sharpe, paid directly into his bank account. Terry Sharpe was actually a director of the Crescent Hotel’s holding company. In addition he was not only Wayne Thompson’s landlord but also provided accommodation for several other young men and women on the books of Avon Escorts. And it seemed it was Sharpe who had put Avon Escorts together — a modem escort agency functioning within a shaky semblance of respectability — and then left Paolo and his people in charge of the everyday operations while he took a hefty slice of the profits.
The name of Terry Sharpe kept reappearing, and Rose actively wanted to believe that he was responsible for the murders. Perhaps the whole Mrs Pattinson scenario was just a remarkable red herring? She pondered that question, not for the first time, as she and Peter Mellor breakfasted on rather good scrambled egg in her favourite Staple Hill cafe.
‘It doesn’t really hang together, boss, that red herring thing, you know that, don’t you?’ mumbled the sergeant through a mouthful of buttery eggs.
Rose nodded. ‘All the same, I think we’ve got enough new information to have another go at Sharpe. What do you reckon?’
Mellor shrugged. It was less than forty-eight hours since the first thoroughly unsatisfactory session. The sergeant’s lack of enthusiasm was patently obvious.
‘If you want the truth, boss, I don’t believe it’ll get us very far. He’s tough as old boots. But, by God, I’d like to get the bastard!’
In an unusual display of emotion, his second in a surprisingly short period of time, Mellor thumped the table so hard with his clenched fist that tea slopped from both their cups.
Rose grinned, ‘I wish you’d stop messing about and say what you mean, Peter,’ she remarked drily.
This time Rose gave instructions that Terry Sharpe be brought to Staple Hill. Many suspects are completely intimidated by being taken to a police station, and are inclined to roll over once they find themselves shut in a formal interview room with two officers and a tape recorder. Terry Sharpe, Rose had realised before even starting this line of attack, was highly unlikely, with his police background and dodgy track record, to fall into that category. But it had been worth a try. And she certainly had not expected him to remain quite as smug as he did.
A very public pick-up at his office, a high-speed race to the station, and as much of a mauling as she and Peter Mellor dared hand out failed to shift his cool one jot.
‘I’m a businessman, darlin’,’ he said, his pale face giving nothing away. ‘I have fingers in a lot of pies...’
‘Everything you do is centred around the vice trade,’ said Rose, ignoring, although with some difficulty, his use of the term ‘darling’ because she knew it had been his deliberate intention to rile her. ‘Vice is the basis of your entire so-called “business”.’
Terry Sharpe’s features hardened. The ever-lurking smirk merely twitched around the corners of his mouth.
‘Prove it,’ he said.
‘I intend to,’ replied Rose.
Linking Sharpe with the vice trade was one thing. Seriously linking him with murder was another.
Rose was eating again. Alone this time, she had nipped out of her office for a curry. The last thing she needed after that big breakfast earlier, she knew only too well. She suspected she was finally putting on weight although she hadn’t dared go near the scales. There might have been a couple of supperless nights at home with Simon but once at work she seemed to snack and munch all day. Comfort eating, she supposed dolefully. She couldn’t quite understand herself. One minute she was bristling with excitement, adrenaline pumping, because she was heading a major murder enquiry, and the next minute she was slumped into deep depression convinced that nothing was ever going to be solved and that she would merely leave a string of dead bodies in her troubled wake.