‘I believe you know the truth. Please will you tell me? We must put a stop to these killings.’
Constance raised her eyes at last from the photograph and met Rose’s earnest gaze. She looked haunted. It occurred to Rose that she might genuinely have been driven quite out of her mind. Constance had been interviewed by police psychiatrists already, of course, who had pronounced her quite sane. Suddenly Rose was no longer sure of that.
She carefully studied the woman sitting before her on her little bunk bed. Certainly nothing much seemed to register properly with Constance Lange any more.
Rose had one more go. She reached out and touched the other woman’s arm. Constance flinched but did not draw away.
‘You’re not a killer, Constance, are you?’ asked Rose, and the tone of her voice made it apparent the question was quite rhetorical. ‘You shouldn’t be here, should you?’
At last the imprisoned woman’s composure seemed to drop. And eventually she spoke. She sounded faraway, as if she had shut her mind off from all reality.
‘I can’t be let out,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t be set free, it’s all my fault.’
Rose had to give up in the end. Constance appeared to have nothing more to say. She answered all subsequent questions with silence. Rose watched her as she picked up the family photograph and hugged it close to her. It was extraordinary to think how perfect Constance Lange’s life had once been and that this one picture was all she had left of it.
Rose sighed. Beaten for the moment. But starkly aware that the mystery was even greater now.
The next morning Rose had the first of a series of new rows with Chief Superintendent Titmuss.
‘You had absolutely no right to visit Constance Lange,’ he told her angrily. ‘You could jeopardise the entire case stepping out of line like that.’
‘I interviewed Mrs Lange informally concerning a new crime, the murder of Charlie Collins, sir, and she willingly agreed to see me,’ responded Rose with a confidence she did not feel. Privately she suspected that Titmuss was quite right and that she had indeed contravened PACE, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. ‘And with this fresh development, I also believe it would now be quite wrong to allow her prosecution for the three earlier murders to go ahead, sir,’ she continued, taking a deep breath.
Titmuss exploded. ‘You’re getting above yourself, Detective Chief Inspector,’ he stormed. ‘The woman has confessed — and you will just get on with the job you are paid to do. Which is to keep murderers behind bars where they belong.’
Rose tried to speak. He silenced her abruptly with a raised hand.
‘There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the murder of Charlie Collins is connected with the other killings,’ the chief superintendent continued, sounding more dogged than angry now. ‘I’ve talked to Doctor Brown already as I’m sure you have. The method used was completely different for a start — not that you need to be a pathologist to see that!’
Rose continued to stand her ground.
‘We should at least double-check everything with forensic,’ she said. ‘Maybe there’ll be some DNA this time. Something we can compare with the earlier murders.’
The Superintendent’s voice began to rise dangerously again. His impatience with her was quite obvious.
‘There was no struggle, Rose. This Charlie Collins died from the first blow more than likely, according to Dr Brown. As for forensic — if they come up with anything to indicate a connection with the previous murders, then we’ll think again. Meanwhile Constance Lange stays exactly where she is. There is no question of dropping charges.
‘And forensic aren’t going to come up with anything, by the way. They can’t — because we already have the person responsible for the first three killings banged up.’
Rose could not hide her frustration. ‘That’s catch-22, sir,’ she said.
Her boss looked really irritated now. ‘Rose, I’m beginning to think you’re getting too close to this case,’ he said.
Oh, Jesus, not that old chestnut, thought Rose. She forced herself to sound reasonable when she replied, keeping her voice level only with a great effort.
‘Not at all, sir.’
Her senior officer merely grunted. ‘I want you to lead the Charlie Collins case because of how well you knew the lad and all the knowledge that you already have which may be relevant to his murder. That should give you a head start — as long as you didn’t know him too bloody well, of course, Rosie.’
Chief Superintendent Titmuss smiled when he made the last remark but it didn’t in any way lessen the message. And Rose could not believe he didn’t know how much she hated being called Rosie, either. She stared at him in amazement.
‘I’m sorry, sir?’ she said, turning the sentence into a question.
‘You heard me, Detective Chief Inspector. Do you think I go around this nick with a blindfold on and cotton wool in my ears?’ He shook his bespectacled head almost sorrowfully. And when he spoke again his voice was just a little gentler. ‘Look Rose, if I believed any of that crap you wouldn’t be on the case at all, OK? But you have to understand that this is a new murder enquiry, you said so yourself, and that’s the way I want it treated. You’ve got a budget to deal with as well as everything else and I don’t want you going over it because you’re desperate for some obscure reason of your own to get a case dropped against a woman everyone else reckons is as guilty as hell. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He made himself clear all right. Rose knew only too well that the Avon and Somerset, like all British police forces, had to pay forensic laboratories for work carried out on their instructions. Superintendent Titmuss certainly didn’t want a big bill brought about by one of his staff attempting to mess up what seemed to be a rather nicely solved case.
Boiling over with resentment, Rose quickly left her superior’s office. Sometimes, if you want to hang on to your job, you have to keep your mouth shut. Even Rose Piper understood that. Nonetheless she didn’t trust herself to stay in the room with the bloody man a second longer than she absolutely had to.
Rose was having an extremely bad day. There was something else happening to add to her misery. The trial of Terry Sharpe and Paolo Constantino, accused of living off immoral earnings, was due to be wound up that afternoon — and it looked very much as if Sharpe was going to get away with it.
In spite of the murder of Charlie Collins, Rose had heard enough of the evidence to be thoroughly sickened. And watching Sharpe himself in the witness box had been a truly nauseating experience.
No, he’d had no idea that Avon Escorts was being run as anything other than a reputable escort agency, that had always been his intention as one of the founders of the business. He had been very disappointed to learn anything other.
And as for the Crescent Hotel, well, didn’t all hotel rooms get used for various kinds of illicit purposes occasionally? He really didn’t know what the manager was supposed to do about it, let alone a director like him who was not even involved in the day-to-day running of the place.
Surely he couldn’t be held responsible for the activities of the young men and women to whom he let his assorted properties in absolute good faith. He was only their landlord, after all.
Sharpe was good in the witness box. He always had been, Rose had been warned, and he was a plausible character too, when he wanted to be. The case against him fell like a pack of cards. And as she watched, Rose realised she had probably been too preoccupied with other things and had not given the weaknesses of the prosecution nearly enough attention. She felt she carried considerable blame for what she had realised — well before the jury was asked to deliver its verdict — was fast becoming the inevitable result.