‘I don’t understand. I specifically cited Brian Jacobs to you when you asked me if Dominic O’Connor had any enemies.’
‘You did. You prompted us to interview him. It was an interview for which he seemed well prepared.’
‘Brian is a very well organised man. I don’t see why he should apologise for that. It’s been an asset to him in his work for many years now. You need to be well organised, if you’re handling a company’s finances.’
She hadn’t known she was going to say that. She heard her pride in her man coming out in her words. Peach gave her what she regarded as an odious smile before he said, ‘No doubt Mr Jacobs was well briefed last week on the actions and movements of our murder victim. No one was better placed to give him that information than Dominic O’Connor’s PA.’
‘You’re barking up the wrong tree.’ She felt the lameness of the cliche even as she delivered it. But more original and effective words wouldn’t come to her. ‘Brian Jacobs didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor.’
She lapsed into ‘Dominic’ for her dead employer whenever she was under stress. Peach wondered if at some time she had been one of the string of women everyone said O’Connor had bedded. ‘You won’t expect us simply to accept a statement like that, Mrs Parker. Especially as you chose to conceal your relationship with a man whose bitter and permanent enemy has now been brutally murdered.’
‘Brian was certainly his enemy. But I didn’t disguise that. I gave you Brian’s name when you asked me for enemies of your murder victim.’
‘Yes. It seemed very frank and helpful of you at the time. As it was no doubt intended to be. But you deliberately withheld the information that you had a close relationship yourself with Brian Jacobs.’
‘I’m not ashamed of that! I’ve been divorced for three years. One of the things everyone tells you is that you have to pick yourself up and live the rest of your life. That’s what I’m doing, and you aren’t going to stop me, DCI Peach!’
Clyde Northcott regarded her steadily as she glared furiously at his boss. ‘Where were you last Friday evening, Mrs Parker?’
For some totally illogical reason, she found she wanted to explain why she’d kept that name, wanted to tell him defiantly that she would be changing it soon to Jacobs, wanted to tell him that Brian would be back in charge of the financial division at Morton’s if everything went according to plan. She swallowed hard and controlled all of these impulses. ‘I was at home in my own house, the one I have lived in since my marriage failed and I received it in the settlement. I live there with my son, but he was out on Friday evening.’ She piled on the irrelevant details, as if hoping she could convince them of more vital facts by accuracy with this useless surrounding data.
‘Is there anyone who could confirm this for us?’
‘No, there isn’t! You’ve got me down as a suspect for Dominic’s murder now, have you? Just because I chose to regard my relationship with Brian Jacobs as a private matter when we spoke on Monday?’
Northcott responded with a calm smile. ‘We’d like to eliminate you from all suspicion, if we could, Mrs Parker. It would make our job easier, as well as helping you.’
‘Well, you can’t!’ She heard herself sounding like a petulant child and knew she wasn’t doing herself or Brian any good here. ‘Look. Brian hated Dominic O’Connor and in my view he had good reason to do that. I’d even be prepared to admit that Brian was a little unbalanced about it. But that doesn’t mean he killed him.’
Peach came back in immediately on that. ‘It gives you both a good motive. Having Dominic O’Connor off the scene is convenient for both of you. Perhaps more than convenient. Is Brian Jacobs hoping to replace this man he hated here?’
She thought furiously. They or their team had talked to lots of people in the firm in the last couple of days, including the MD. Probably someone had told them about this idea she had planted on Brian’s behalf, so she had better not deny it. ‘He may well do that. I’ve spent the last few days stalling callers on my phone, so that I know better than anyone that the firm needs someone urgently. I can’t think that they are going to get anyone better than Brian, who knows this business well and now has experience elsewhere to add to that knowledge.’ She said it defiantly, making a case for her man because it was what she wanted to do, irrespective of whether that was the right strategy here.
‘And where was Mr Jacobs last Friday?’
‘I expect he was at work in the afternoon and on his own in the evening. You’d better ask him.’ Suddenly, she wished she’d said they were together at the time of the murder, but it was too late for that now.
Peach smiled at her, as if she had made some kind of mistake. ‘Someone will ask him that, Mrs Parker.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Someone may be asking him that at this very moment.’
And checking whether our stories tally, she thought. She was a novice at this game, whereas this man had played it many times. She tried to force confidence into her voice. ‘Brian’s got nothing to fear from you. He didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor.’
But for the first time, Jean Parker had a small, secret doubt about that.
The Vice Squad moved in like a small army. It had been a huge operation and it had gone on for several months. But on Friday, May 10, the Asian men who had been luring and sometimes virtually kidnapping under-age girls from care homes into prostitution and worse were taken into custody. On the same day and at the same time, there were arrests not just in Brunton but in two other towns, one in Lancashire and the other in Yorkshire.
The Asian men looked thoroughly sinister in the photographs secured by the press. As the men who had fronted the operation, they received most of the publicity, which was appropriately damning. These were shocking crimes, involving multiple rape for the most unfortunate of these girls and dreadful suffering for all of them. It was the most despicable sort of crime, practised on some of the most vulnerable members of a troubled society. It was right that the criminals should be seen in the harshest spotlight, however untypical they might be of the Muslim community which had harboured them. But these arrests and the accompanying publicity weren’t going to do much for race relations in Brunton, with its thirty per cent Asian population. Percy and Lucy Peach were glumly aware of that.
DS Lucy Peach had been no more than a small part of the vast organisation which had secured this result. But she was determined to be involved in the arrest of Linda Coleman; when you had worked hard to secure a collar, you wanted to witness it personally. She supervised the arrest and charging of two young Asian men, who had treated her with the contempt they accorded all working women when she had questioned them during the earlier stages of the investigation.
One of the most satisfying factors in the arrests which were carried out on that Friday morning was that the shadowy figures who had financed this grim business were also brought to justice. Too often the major criminals who put up the money for vicious enterprises like this got away with it, because of lack of evidence. They had skilful and highly rewarded lawyers and they often sheltered behind the respectable facade of more legitimate businesses. But this time the links had been established early in the investigation. Moreover, the Asian men they had paid to handle the dangerous processes of recruitment soon split on the people who had financed them, once they found that their own arrests were inevitable. Fear of long jail sentences and what might happen behind the high walls of British jails loosened tongues. The attitudes of the men who had treated the care-home girls so abominably turned suddenly from arrogant to desperate.
Linda Coleman, whose husband was already awaiting trial for the murder of James O’Connor, was arrested on the same morning as the men she had paid and directed to recruit the under-age girls to this squalid servitude. Her conceit was her Achilles’ heel. She had believed until the last minute that she was unassailable, that her lawyers insulated her from anything as sordid as arrest. She left it too late to try to get away, in the belief that her wealth and what it bought for her would keep her secure.