“Is the TV set up in the back? I want to see the start of the program.”
Dave Jones nudged him. “Come on, let’s go and eat. Someone’ll have taped it.”
Otley shrugged him away. “Go on in, we’re on the center table. I’ll be a few seconds, go on… Oi, Felix! you want a quick one before we go in?”
Felix Norman had appeared in the doorway, still in his overcoat. “I can’t find a bloody parking space!” he yelled.
The MC had got hold of a microphone and his voice boomed, “Please take your seats, gentlemen, dinner is now being served!” He was obviously under pressure from a row of aged waitresses who were giving him foul looks. “Please go in to dinner!”
At last there was a slow surge into the main hall where the tables had been set up around a central boxing ring. Norman downed his double malt and grinned at DI Muddyman.
“How’s our man? I hope he’s not been in here; he can’t box and drink. When I was the amateur middleweight champion of Oxford, did I tell you, I had ten bouts…”
Someone yelled, “How many years ago was that now, Felix?” Everyone had heard of his boxing prowess, sadly cut short by a hand injury, and no one paid any further attention in the crush as they all tried to get into the main hall at once. Superintendent Kernan was laughing at some joke, the tears rolling down his cheeks, and Otley whistled to him, pointing towards the hall.
“We’re on table six, Mike, right up against the ring!”
As the men sorted themselves out and filtered into the hall, Otley scuttled round the bar and headed for the back room, where there was a small portable TV set. A little unsteadily, Otley propped himself near the door, and was squashed against the wall as the barman came through with a crate of bottles.
Tennison was on screen. Otley squinted. “That’s her, she’s on! What’s she think she’s come as, Maggie Thatcher?”
He inched further into the room to get a better view. As he had organized the benefit night he had been propping up the bar since six-thirty, and the small screen made his eyes water. He could see six of Tennison, six of the bitch! And one was bad enough.
Tennison paused on cue for the footage of Karen’s funeral. She was in fact coping very well. She was now halfway through her discussion with Brian Hayes; she was clear, concise and very direct.
“We know Karen left the offices of the MacDonald Advertising Company soon after six-thirty on the evening of the thirteenth of January this year. She told the people she was working with that she was going home to her flat in Kensington. No one was seen to meet her. She turned left into Ladbroke Grove, towards the side street where she had parked her white Mini.”
The picture cut to Brian. “Karen Howard never returned to her flat. Were you in Ladbroke Grove that night, Saturday the thirteenth of January, at around six-thirty? Did you see Karen?”
Again the picture cut. The screen showed WPC Barbara Morgan, dressed in the dead girl’s clothes, walking away from the film company’s offices.
As Jane was no longer the center of attention, her mother got up from her seat to get a glass of wine. She was told to sit down again and not interrupt the program. She gave Peter a look and pointed to the video machine, whispering, “Is it on the right channel, Peter?”
Mr. Tennison pounded on the arm of the sofa. “Be quiet!”
“Jane’s not on, and I was just asking if you’d checked it’s on the right channel.”
“I have! Now be quiet!”
Mrs. Tennison sighed. The recreation of the dead girl’s movements meant nothing to her; she was a stranger.
Major and Mrs. Howard were sitting in front of their television set, holding hands tightly. The major had not wanted his wife to see the program, but she had quietly insisted. They had been told so little, they knew only the bare essentials about the death of their beloved daughter.
WPC Barbara Morgan was wearing a blond, shoulder-length wig and a jacket similar to the one worn by the real Karen on the night she had been murdered. The jacket had never been traced. The WPC also wore sheer black stockings, a leather mini-skirt and identical black ballet pumps. She actually carried Karen’s own portfolio containing her modeling pictures.
On screen, Barbara Morgan began acting out the last known movements of Karen Howard. Walking casually along Ladbroke Grove, she headed towards the Mini.
The major and his wife watched the last known movements of their daughter, the last hours of her life.
“She looks like her.” The major’s voice was very low and he gripped his wife’s hand more tightly.
“No,” Felicity said, “Karen was prettier.”
The tears streamed down her cheeks as WPC Morgan turned a corner into a side street, stopped by a white Mini and unlocked it. After putting the portfolio in the back she sat in the driving seat and tried to start the car, but the engine would not turn over.
Brian Hayes’s voice accompanied the film. “Having arrived for work at the film studio early in the morning, Karen had left her car lights on, and the battery was flat. A man working on the building site opposite was backing his truck into the street while Karen was trying to start her car. He stated that it was almost six forty-five.”
On the screen, the driver hopped down from his cab and crossed the road to offer his assistance.
“Got a problem, have you, love?”
“Yes, I think the battery’s flat.”
“You need jump leads, love. Sorry I can’t help, but hang on a mo.”
He called across to his mates, asking if they had any jump leads, and was told they had not. The driver suggested that he and his pals could give the car a push, but he had to return to his truck as he was blocking a van from leaving the building site.
“Thanks for your help, but I think I’d better call the AA.”
Brian Hayes’s voice again took up the story. “Karen locked her car and waved to the driver as he moved off. Then she walked back to the main road.”
George Marlow was standing directly in front of the television screen, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his face expressionless, as Moyra entered the room.
“Turn it off, George. What are you watching it for? Turn it off!”
She didn’t wait for George, she turned it off herself. “What are you watching it for?”
With a sigh, Marlow asked, “Why do you think?”
“You tell me?”
“Because somebody out there might have the fucking evidence that’ll get me off the hook, that’s why. I didn’t kill her, but somebody did, and they’re trying to make out that it was me. I want to see if there’s anything I can help them with. Now turn it back on!”
“No!”
“Jesus Christ, Moyra! You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I just don’t want to see her.”
“It isn’t her, she’s dead. That’s a policewoman.”
“I know that,” Moyra snapped. “Why don’t you go out and bloody pick her up while you’re at it?”
Marlow shook his head in disbelief. “Look, how many more times? If I could turn the clock back, if there was any way I could… But I can’t. I picked that girl up and now they’re saying that I killed her. I swear before God that I didn’t, and maybe, just maybe, there’s something in that program that’ll make me remember more. Somebody killed her, Moyra, but not me!”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Then leave the room.”
He bent to switch the set on again but she broke down. “Why? Why did you do it, George? Why?”
“You mean why did I pick her up? Why did I fuck her?”
“Yes! Yes, tell me why!”
“Because she was there, and I was there, and she… She gave me the come-on, and she was… I don’t know why! If I was to say to you that I’d never have sex with another woman, you wouldn’t believe me. She was a tart. I picked her up, we did the business, I paid her. It meant nothing, it never means anything. I don’t cheat on you, Moyra, and I never have.”