“A journalist.”
Tennison felt a jolt in her spine. She stared at Vera.
Jessica Smithy sat on the edge of the table, smoking, tapping her cigarette ash on the floor. Beside her were two empty cups of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich on a paper plate. With unconcealed impatience she was watching DI Hall, who a moment before had answered the wall phone. He was nodding. “Yes, she’s still here.”
He cradled the handset and turned to her, a deprecating smile on his lips, fidgeting with his tie.
“Choose them yourself, do you?” Her slender leg in its Gucci shoe swung to and fro like a relentless metronome.
Hall fingered his tie. “No, my girlfriend does,” he responded brightly, beaming.
Jessica Smithy’s hazel eyes flashed, sliding off somewhere. “I’d get rid of her.” She blew smoke in the air, tapped ash on the floor.
“I tried-I told you-gave you all the clues. It was me that said the advice centre, even said Parker-Jones’s name, and it was me that told you about Jackson, me who told you about the press…”
Vera scrabbled in the box for another tissue. She discarded the sodden one and noisily blew her nose. She discarded that one too and wrenched out a handful to wipe her damp face.
“I went back to the flat because I’d forgotten a sequinned choker.” The tears welled up again. “Connie was still there, talking-talking. I just listened for a second, I didn’t want to interrupt, but I could see them, the door was just ajar, and he was showing her my album.” Vera gazed up beseechingly at Tennison. “She was looking at my photographs… you don’t understand, do you?”
Her arms folded, Tennison looked down at her watch.
“There were some loose pictures of me before, before… of my mum and dad, private pictures, no show business ones, just my mum and dad, my brother.” Vera’s face crumpled. She talked on through her crying. “I hurt them enough… I don’t ever see them, so the pictures are very special. After all I had done for him, he was selling me, too.”
She wiped the tissues under each eye, one at a time, and with a loud sniff straightened her back. Smoke trailed up from the cigarette in the ashtray but she didn’t pick it up.
She said huskily, “I didn’t want to make a drama, not in front of the press woman. I just called him out of the room, said I wanted to talk to him. He swore to me he wasn’t letting her have a single picture. She left a few minutes later, and I went in to check my album. He lied. There were a lot missing, so I confronted him. He swore he hadn’t given her anything, he said she must have stolen them, but he was such a liar, and, and… and I got hysterical. I hit him. With an ashtray, I think. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but he fell down, I helped him to the sofa. And he-he gave me that smile of his, he had such a sweet smile. And, then, he closed his eyes, and I couldn’t feel his pulse. He was-he was dead.”
Silently, without expression, Vera stared in front of her, tears rolling down her cheeks and dripping onto her lemon yellow blouse.
“Did you call an ambulance?” Tennison asked.
“No, my phone’s not working. I told Mr. Parker-Jones and he said he would…” She trailed off.
“What? Do what?”
“Take care of everything. Call the ambulance.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know,” Vera said, and in the same dead voice, “I want to go to the toilet.”
“We are terminating the interview at three forty-five P.M. in room D oh five as Mr. Vernon Reynolds has asked to use the bathroom.”
Tennison switched off the tape and looked to Otley. “Take him with you.”
Vera stood up, very tall and slender. “I was put in prison when I was not much older than Connie. That’s what I am scared of. Inside they’re all Jacksons. I was raped every night, that’s what I’ve been so scared of.” She clutched her handbag under her arm and went to the door. “I’ve wanted to tell you, but I was just scared.”
She turned and looked at Tennison with large reproachful eyes.
“You’re horrible. You just pretended to like me. Why can’t you take me to the ladies?”
She followed Otley out.
Otley stood at the washbasins, attempting to flatten the recalcitrant points of his shirt collar. She was taking her bloody time. He sighed, glancing at his watch.
“Come on, Vera, love!”
A toilet flushed and Halliday emerged from one of the cubicles, buttoning his jacket. “Who’s in there?”
Otley looked to the cubicle door, Vera’s high-heeled shoes visible underneath it. “Sorry, Guv, it’s Vernon Reynolds…”
He drew Halliday aside, speaking from the corner of his mouth.
“He’s admitted that he struck Colin Jenkins. We just finished questioning him.”
Behind them, beneath the cubicle door, a thick pool of blood was forming, spreading around Vera’s spiked heels.
“So it wasn’t Jackson after all,” Halliday said, raising his eyebrows.
Otley turned. He snarled, pushing Halliday roughly out of the way, and dived for the cubicle door. “Get someone up here fast!”
Halliday dithered, old woman that he was, and looked around helplessly.
“She’s cut her wrists!” Otley yelled, putting his heel to the lock.
Spurred on at last, Halliday slammed through into the corridor. By now he was running. “GET SOMEONE IN HERE…!”
He ran on as Tennison came out of the ladies toilet. Hurtling into the gents she came upon a bloody scene. Vera was propped in a sitting position against the tiled wall, legs stuck out, one shoe off, limp as a rag doll. Blood was spurting from both wrists. The front of her dress, her legs, the floor, were soaked in it. A smeared red trail led from the cubicle where Otley had dragged her.
Tennison grabbed the roller towel and gave it a fierce, frantic jerk, pulling the end loose from the machine. She kept pulling, unreeling a long white tongue, as Otley ran water in the basin.
Tennison knelt at Vera’s side, her knees in the pool of blood.
“Vera, hold on! It’s going to be okay-listen to me, can you hear me?” The blood was pumping out. She gripped Vera’s upper arm, squeezing with both hands. “Hurry, she’s losing an awful lot of blood…”
Vera’s head lolled from one side to the other, her wig slipping askew. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept mumbling.
“Vera, listen to me! Can you hear me? You didn’t kill Connie, do you understand?” The eyes were glassy, unfocused. “He was still alive.” Tennison stared into the ghastly white face, streaked with blue mascara. “The fire… it was the fire.”
Vera looked at Tennison, eyelids drooping shut, and her head flopped forward onto her chest. Otley dumped the soaking roller towel onto the floor and began binding it tightly around Vera’s arms.
Halliday barged in, heaving for breath. “There’s a fifteen-minute delay on the ambulance call out…”
Tennison snapped, “Then get a car organized-”
She whipped her head around as it sunk in what Halliday had just said. Fifteen Minute Delay. Her lips thinned. “And one for me.”
She looked to be grinning, but it was fixed in place, frozen to her lips, icy and implacable.
“I am bringing in Parker-Jones personally.”
A furious Jessica Smithy marched along the corridor, Hall in close pursuit. “Half past two-I have been here since half past two!” she raged. Hall grasped her by the elbow and she gave him a withering look that would have scorched asbestos. “I want to go to the ladies.”
Hall colored up and released her.
Jessica Smithy’s eyes sparkled dangerously as she spied Tennison coming toward her. She plonked herself in Tennison’s path, taller by several inches, her expression haughty and indignant.
“You have no right to waste my time,” she stormed, tossing her head imperiously.
Tennison, her blouse and jacket cuffs, the hem of her skirt and knees caked in blood, let her have it. “I have every right, and I will hold you for as long as I want. You have lied. You have withheld vital evidence-and you have wasted my time.”