Tennison shook her head, smarting at her own blithe assumption, her own crass ignorance. The probation service had to deal with dozens, scores, perhaps hundreds. She only touched the tip of the iceberg. She got up and started to leave.
“I suggest you contact Edward Parker-Jones, he runs the advice centre.” Margaret Speel was trying to be helpful, but her voice remained brusque. These people waltzed in, knowing nothing, and expected miracles. She was sick to death of it. “If Billy’s there, then I can try and do something for him.”
Tennison nodded slowly. “What do you think of Edward Parker-Jones?”
She wasn’t expecting such a simple question to produce such a reaction. Margaret Speel’s eyes blazed fiercely.
“He should be given a medal! It costs one thousand five hundred a week to keep really young offenders in an institution, and more staff than-”
“Did you ever come into contact with a Colin Jenkins- Connie?”
“No.” Her mouth snapped shut.
“Do you know a James Jackson?”
“I know of him but I have never had any professional dealings with him.”
Pick the bones out of that.
Tennison thanked her politely, but Margaret Speel was already striding off, and the Detective Chief Inspector imagined she could see steam coming out of her ears.
Mark Lewis’s studio was off the Whitechapel Road, down a maze of streets behind the sooty redbrick Victorian edifice of the London Hospital. It was on the first floor above a Chinese take-away, and something of the exotic oriental influence had seeped upstairs to the photographer’s studio, which also housed his office and darkroom.
Lewis minced rather than walked. An ex-dancer, he moved lithely and fast as lightning around the black-draped studio. Haskons and Lillie got dizzy just watching him zoom about the place-setting up his camera, arranging the lights just so, explaining to his model-a young black guy with an oiled gleaming torso, posing on a white pedestal-precisely what he was after with expressively floating gestures and a snapping of the fingers. But he was a professional, and good at his work, with a real feeling for it. There was also a steely quality to him, a certain watchfulness in his brown eyes, a thinning of the soft mouth, as if hinting that what you see is not all you get.
He said he could give them ten minutes. He took them along a narrow passage into his office, the darkroom in one corner behind a plywood partition. It was a large room with a skylight, two of the walls covered in silk hangings with oriental motifs. There were paper Chinese lanterns, glass wind chimes floating in the still air, and brass gongs of different sizes. And under a miniature spotlight, a display of Buddhas, fiery dragons, and mythical Eastern gods.
Next to the darkroom were several large cupboards, a row of filing cabinets, and a desk with a leather, gold-embossed appointments diary.
It all seemed legit. To Lillie, Mark Lewis was exactly as he appeared to be-a poofter photographer with curled hair that was remarkably dark and lustrous, given his age, on the downward slope of forty.
“Red curly hair, about five seven, slim build. His nickname was Connie, real name Jenkins,” Haskons said.
He and Lillie were sitting on the couch. Mark Lewis had too much nervous energy to stay in one spot for long. He was continually on the move, a figure of medium height dressed in a black shirt, open at the neck, and tight-fitting black trousers, black socks, black moccasins.
Haskons produced a photograph. “This was taken when he was about nine. We’re just trying to trace people that knew him, may have known where he lived.”
“No need firing names at me. I don’t remember names-faces yes, I never forget a face. Now I am very busy, but if you can give an idea of the time he came to me, then you can look at all the portfolios-”
He leaned over from the waist to squint at the photograph. “No. Don’t know him.”
“Some time last year maybe?” Lillie ventured hopefully.
Lewis went to the office alcove and returned, thudding down three huge albums onto the mosaic coffee table. Spinning around, he was off to the filing cabinets, plucking out brown folders bulging with glossy prints.
“Don’t you keep a record of clients?” Haskons asked. “Dates of the sessions?”
“Some don’t like to use their real name. I am strictly cash up front and cash on delivery-and I pay VAT and taxes,” Lewis said, giving them a direct look. “I run this as a legitimate business.”
He dropped the folders on the coffee table, and was spinning off somewhere else. They couldn’t keep track of him.
Haskons exchanged glances with Lillie. As detective sergeant, Richard Haskons was the senior of the two, but they had operated together as a team for so long that the question of rank never interfered in their working relationship. They both turned to watch Lewis.
“… I just take the photographs. If it’s for publication, then I charge so and so. If it’s for a private collector, then it’s between myself and the client.” He swished aside a black curtain masking off the darkroom. “I print up all the negs, I do everything myself. I am, my dears, a one-man show. I had an assistant once,” he confided, “but-Trouble, with a big T.” He smiled briefly. “I’ll be in the darkroom.” He went inside and drew the curtain.
The two detectives took an album each, turning the pages.
At full throttle, Shirley Bassey suddenly shattered the peace and quiet, belting out, “The minute you walked in the joint, I could see you were a man of distinction…”
DC Lillie nearly fell off the couch. Haskons was singing along at the top of his voice-
“Hey, Big Spender… spend a little time with me.”
After the far-from-veiled warning from Halliday, Tennison was on her mettle. It was the cock-handed way he had gone about it that riled her. Telling her to lay off Parker-Jones was as good as waving a red flag at a bull. The man had as much sublety as a sledgehammer.
She called DI Hall into her office. She didn’t know whether Hall was Halliday’s man or not, but she intended to find out.
“If it wasn’t Jackson-if I’ve been going in the wrong direction-then I need another suspect, another motive. And it was just something you said that I’m a bit confused about…”
Arms folded, Tennison leaned against the desk, studying her shoes. Speaking slowly, as if thinking out loud, she went on, “If I remember correctly, you said the advice centre had been targeted before I came on board… did that include Parker-Jones himself?”
“Not the man. It was more his boys. It’s where they all congregate, one of the first places for the really young kids.”
Tennison’s “Mmmm,” was noncommittal. “And was it sort of inferred you all stay clear of him?”
Hall fiddled with the knot in his tie. He wasn’t very comfortable, kept adjusting his position in the chair.
Tennison looked at him. “Larry, if I have to initiate a full-scale swoop-that’s kids, Toms, pimps, punters-close down clubs, coffee bars, centres-and I am under pressure to get it under way, and…” She bent down to his eye level. “… Parker-Jones’s name keeps on cropping up.”
“Yeah, but-” Hall’s poor tie was getting some stick today. At this rate it would end up as bad as Otley’s. “But we never found anything… look, I know this is off the record, okay? The Chief Inspector before you was warned off. Parker-Jones is a very influential man, got friends in high places, and we sort of backed off him.”
Tennison pointed to the wall. “And this came from the Guv’nor?”
Hall nodded, chewing his lip.
“Okay, okay… and then Operation Contract got the green light for the big cleanup.”
“Well, you know what happened-we knew it-waste of time.” Hall was stumbling over his words. “Chief Inspector Lyall was out, I think he’s in Manchester now. I honestly don’t think there’s anything subversive going on, but…”