‘Irene Bentley – although she asked me to call her Renee – and her son was called John. He was an aggressive sod, not even so much as a thank-you for helping his mum. He didn’t want me in the flat so frogmarched me out.’
‘Villains can smell the Old Bill a mile off. You need to be careful, Jane. Never go on the rough estates without backup.’
‘It was a lesson learned, Kath. Anyway, what’s this about a dead body? Sergeant Harris mentioned something.’
Kath said that she didn’t know too much, but handed Jane a copy of the teleprinter message sent to the Yard.
‘Poor thing was-’ Kath began before breaking off to answer the phone.
Jane sat down behind the desk and started to read the message. The body was found early morning on the recently built Hackney Marshes Adventure Playground, close to the Kingsmead Estate. The victim was an unknown white girl with blonde hair, believed to be fifteen to eighteen years old, wearing hot pants, a white blouse and blue platform boots.
Kath finished dealing with the phone call. ‘You read it? Poor kid, just awful, so young.’
‘It doesn’t say how she died,’ Jane noticed.
‘They’re waiting for the post-mortem, but I heard it was pretty obvious… the bastard used the girl’s own bra to strangle her to death.’
‘How horrible.’
‘From the way she was dressed, and the junkie tracks on her arms, they think she was on the game and may have been turning a trick at the playground. They’re setting up the crime squad office as the incident room for the murder.’
The door to the comms room opened and Sergeant Harris stuck his head in. ‘DCI Bradfield wants to see me in his office about the murder and he’d like a cup of tea, Tennison, milk and two sugars with some digestive biscuits. Same for me as well, and when you’ve done that take over from me on the duty desk and cover the front counter as well.’ He left, banging the door shut behind him.
‘Pleasant bugger, isn’t he?’ Kath said, giving Jane a smile.
‘Key to getting on his good side is to keep your head down and “Yes, Sarge, no, Sarge, three bags of grovel, Sarge.”’
The canteen was closed so Jane went to the small kitchen annexe instead. As usual it had been left in a mess and she was revolted by the state of it. Above the sink there was a water-splashed, hand-written notice taped to the wall: ‘Leave it as you’d expect to find it… TIDY & CLEAN!’ She shook her head in disgust. The sink was full of old tea bags, dirty mugs, cutlery, and plates caked with crusted HP and tomato sauce. She put the kettle on the gas cooker, rolled up her sleeves, picked out the used tea bags, tipped out the greasy cold water from the plastic bowl and filled it with hot water and washing up liquid. As she washed the dirty dishes a male officer walked in, dropped three dirty mugs and plates in the sink, said, ‘Thanks, love,’ and walked out. Jane sighed, finished the washing up, dried the dishes and then stacked them on the open shelves.
Jane carried the two mugs of tea and the biscuits on a tray to the DCI’s office and, balancing it on one knee, she tapped the door which immediately swung open, almost causing her to drop the tray. Cigarette smoke billowed from the room and the stench was repulsive.
‘About bloody time, I thought you’d gone AWOL again.’ Sergeant Harris grabbed the tray from her. ‘Take these Polaroid photos of the murder scene back to the incident room next door and give them to Sally the indexer.’
Outside the DCI’s office Jane had a quick look at the six small pictures Harris had given her. She hadn’t yet been to a murder scene. She had attended a non-suspicious death of an eighty-year-old man with angina. He’d been found dead in his bed from a heart attack, but that was nothing compared with this. The pictures of the young female victim shocked her, particularly the close-up shot of the heroin-needle marks on the girl’s arms. Worse was the close-up of the victim’s face, with the bra wrapped round her neck. Her bulging eyes were dotted with red spots and her swollen tongue protruded from her mouth. Blood trickled down from where she must have bitten it whilst being strangled.
Jane felt queasy as she walked into the incident room, only to find it empty. She assumed that the detectives must be down at Hackney Marshes or out making enquiries near the scene. The medium-sized room looked cramped with eight old wooden desks and chairs taking up most of the floor space. There were two telephones and a large carousel on top of one of the desks, with a pile of indexing cards next to it. On the wall a map of Hackney Police Division was dotted with different-coloured pins denoting where robberies, burglaries, assaults and other incidents had taken place in the last few months. Next to the map was a large sheet of white paper with a description of the victim, the location, date and time of the discovery of the body, and the name of the lab sergeant dealing with the forensics. A note pinned to the wall stated that the postmortem would be at Hackney Mortuary.
