‘We’re still looking for her but it shouldn’t be long.’
Rooney squeezed between a row of chairs.
‘Lorraine Page?’ Fellows asked again, but no one answered him and she was forgotten as Rooney prodded the photograph of Didi, the last victim.
‘What if our killer — and I’m excluding Mathews just for a moment — was looking for this particular woman or man — the transsexual? Looking for her because she and Mathews were blackmailing him.’ There was a low murmur and Rooney held up his hand. ‘Let me finish. Take a look at them. Tough, hard-faced women, all bleached blondes, all prostitutes, as was this victim.’ Again he tapped Didi’s picture. ‘It’s a possible motive because I think Hastings was also being blackmailed and possibly by Mathews...’
The men listened, giving each other sidelong looks. The Chief loosened his tie. Mathews had admitted at no time to blackmailing anyone. Rooney continued to repeat almost verbatim what Lorraine had said to him. He did not mention her part in piecing it together, or that she was the witness who had been attacked by the killer. Just before he gave the name of her suspect, he felt a hot flush spread through his body. The Thorburn family were powerful and all Rooney had was Lorraine’s theory. They did not have enough evidence: her own admission that Janklow had been her attacker would, as she rightly surmised, be tough to prove. As she had said, it would be her word against his. And as yet no incriminating evidence linked him to the murders. Until he had more on Janklow, Rooney decided he would keep his identity to himself.
The room was silent. The Chief stared at Rooney — they all did — and Andrew Fellows’s face wore a half smile. It was hard to determine whether it was through disbelief or because he was impressed.
Rooney decided he might as well go for the big prize. He nodded to Hastings’s picture. ‘He used a garage to park his car, the S and A company. I’ve not gone into this in any depth but a number of the company’s employees were checked out against the description we had from the anonymous witness. The S and A garage is owned by a Brad Thorburn.’ Fellows gasped at this but no one paid him any attention. Rooney continued, ‘I’m not suggesting anything without further evidence. Obviously considering the family’s connections, I have not, until tonight, even voiced my suspicions.’
‘Just what are you implying?’ Fellows asked, his face pink with agitation. Rooney looked at him then, and at the Chief who became aware that Fellows should not have been privy to this statement and suggested that he might wish to leave.
Fellows had not disclosed that he knew Brad Thorburn. He was unsure as to why not but, then, he hadn’t been asked. He intended to drive straight home but changed his mind and headed for Thorburn’s house.
Jake saw the patrol car even before he turned into the road. Lorraine was in the back seat.
‘You want me to drive past the cops?’ Jake asked.
‘Yeah, but not for the reason you think. I’ll go in but in my own time. There’s somebody I want to talk to first. I misjudged Rooney. He must have told them about me.’
She ducked out of sight as Jake passed the police car, turning left at the top of the road before he stopped.
‘Where we going?’ Rosie asked.
‘I need to talk to Andrew Fellows. I won’t do anything crazy, believe me. I just want to run a few things past him.’
‘I’ll drive you,’ said Rosie.
Lorraine hesitated before she agreed. Jake got out and Rosie moved into the driving seat. He watched them drawing away from the pavement but not until they were almost out of sight did he walk off.
The car backfired. Jake whipped round. It had sounded like a gun blast. It made him uneasy and he wished he’d stayed with the two women. He also wished he’d asked a lot more questions, but as he walked on he also realized that he had been part of Lorraine’s cover-up story about the attack. He shook his head. He had known as soon as he saw the injury that it hadn’t been caused by a fall, as she’d said. With all her lies, Lorraine had not only used Rosie but himself. The more he thought about it, the more angry he became, and now he started to wonder where Lorraine got all that money from. He remembered the way she clutched it when he’d stitched up her wound. She was one hell of a liar, he told himself. Maybe there was more to the cops hanging around than either he or Rosie knew.
Rooney had now told the agents about Craig Lyall, again using Lorraine’s evidence. When the Chief got back, Rooney was in the hot seat. Berillo wanted to know why he had been withholding so much evidence, and neither discussed it with him nor provided the agents with the information on Mathews’s blackmailing activities.
‘I only pieced it together tonight. Like I said, it’s just supposition. I’ve been up all night on this. I hadn’t finished interviewing Mathews when the FBI took over. You tell me how such an important suspect with all this high-tech surveillance on his cell was able to slit his wrists. Don’t lay that on me, I wasn’t even in the station. It’s down to the FBI.’
The agents took his gibes and accusations without expression. One of them, a blond, square-jawed man, was making copious notes as Rooney spoke.
‘You’re seriously saying that Brad Thorburn is a suspect?’ demanded his chief. The atmosphere in the room was uneasy. Bean remained silent throughout: he was wondering why Rooney had never mentioned any of his findings to him.
‘I never said Thorburn was a suspect. I believe it’s his brother, Steven Janklow.’
The blond agent, tight-lipped with anger, asked if Janklow fitted the description of the killer given to Rooney’s department after Hastings’s body had been found. Rooney shifted uneasily. As he had never seen Janklow or interviewed him, he was hesitant.
‘I’ve not interviewed him. All I know is he knew Hastings and—’
‘And?’ snapped the Chief. Rooney felt as if they were all against him, closing in on him. He pulled at his bulbous nose, half wishing he’d kept his big mouth shut. He took a flyer, lying through his teeth. ‘I held back giving you this information until I’d checked in the files for a possible vice charge against Janklow in the past. So far I’ve not been able to trace it and it was just told to me by one of the workers at the garage. I didn’t want to act on hearsay — well, not until I’d run it past you. I could be wrong on all counts.’
The Chief glanced at his watch and then said, ‘You go through those vice records, Bill, immediately — but until you have more evidence we make no contact with the Thorburn family for two reasons. If our man is Janklow, we need hard facts to arrest him, and the Thorburn family is high society and powerful.’ The Chief said the last sentence directly to the blond FBI man: ‘In other words, back off the Thorburns until I say so.’
The agents departed, with a show of obvious irritation towards Rooney, and the Chief called him into his office. He turned on him in a fury, demanding to know what the fuck he’d been playing at.
‘Just trying to do my job.’
‘Come on, Bill, who are you kiddin’? You’re just pissed off because the FBI have been brought in. If you’d even had half of what you blurted out tonight we could have held them off. What else are you holding back? You’d better come clean with me, Bill.’ He stared hard at Rooney and then asked about Lorraine Page.
Rooney covered like an old trooper. ‘She’s my informant but I didn’t know until tonight that she knew Mathews or that she was with him the night Holly was murdered.’
‘I want her brought in because I want to talk to her. I want to know just what the hell Mathews was up to.’
‘It’s in his file. He’s been in for blackmail and extortion, along with his porno rap.’
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s it. Like I said, let me dig into Janklow’s past a bit more and then I’ll get straight back to you.’