‘Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him you were at Julie Ann Collins’ post-mortem, or that you got it from me. Harker was very impressed, though, and not just with your knowledge,’ he said with a wink, making her blush again.
‘Take a bit of advice from an old sweat like me. You’re a sharp cookie, Tennison, and the stuff with the Bristol and the screw marks on the door was a good spot. But never try to run before you can walk, not in this job. As a probationer it’s always best to keep your eyes and ears open and mouth shut, or you’ll fall into a heap of shit before you know it.’
During the journey back to the station in the uniform patrol car Bradfield sat in the front passenger seat flicking the pages of his notebook back and forth and going over everything George Collins had said.
‘That’s a shedload of money his daughter nicked. It meant she was flush with cash for the two weeks before her body was found.’
‘Do you think the serial numbers can help trace where she was over that period?’ Jane asked.
‘Be a bloody lucky stroke if they did. The money could be anywhere by now, especially if she was buying smack with it. That cash will have been moved around faster than a ferret. Two grand is a lot of bloody money, and scumbag drug dealers like Big Daddy and Dwayne “Shoes” Clark are probably the sort of people who’d kill to get their hands on it.’
‘Interesting that she told her father she’d been raped – do you think that was true?’
He sighed. ‘I dunno. She lied about most things and slept with punters for a living, so even if she was alive nobody would believe her, or would just think that rape goes with the risky territory, so to speak.’
‘If we find who strangled her he’s guilty of a double murder because he killed her child as well.’
He slowly turned in his seat to look at her.
‘Sadly, no. If an unborn child dies because of injury to the mother rather than injury to the foetus it’s neither murder nor manslaughter. You could never prove the intention to kill, or transfer of malice. Even child destruction under the Infant Life Act wouldn’t stick as the foetus was too young.’
‘How do you know all that?’
‘CID course when I was first made detective. We had to learn all the different acts and offences off by heart. Fail an exam and you were out – back to uniform.’
‘Sounds pretty intensive.’
‘It was, and still is,’ he said, and paused.
‘It’s not easy to become a detective then… ’
‘We need to find the bastard, or bastards, who killed Julie Ann. So far we seem to keep moving one step forward and then end up back at square one. Now, I’d really appreciate it if you kept quiet and let me concentrate.’
‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry,’ she said, surprised, as he’d done most of the talking.
At the station they joined DS Lawrence, who’d returned before them and was now checking over and listing the items taken from the Collinses’ house. The contents of the patchwork shoulder bag were laid out on a table, the drugs paraphernalia to one side and the rest to the other. Lawrence stood beside Bradfield as they looked over some thin, cheap-looking silver bracelets, elasticated beaded necklaces, some plastic toy animals and an unused Tampax. DS Lawrence made a joke about it being effing useless considering her condition. There was also a cheap bright pink lipstick, and an empty purse made of Moroccan leather with a broken clasp. A medical card in the name of Julie Ann Maynard was for the Homerton Hospital Drug Dependency Unit, and then there were scraps of paper with names and contact numbers. Bradfield told Jane to copy all the names and numbers down and start making criminal-records enquiries on them, and DS Lawrence could then take the paper for fingerprinting, along with the empty plastic bag of what had most probably been heroin.
Jane looked down at the items on the table – the bracelets reminded her of Janis Joplin who had worn so many bangles on her wrists. Some words from Joplin’s ‘Piece Of My Heart’ began to sing out in Jane’s mind:
