‘Penetrate her?’
She nodded, a hint of pink blossoming on her cheeks.
‘How can you be sure this girl in Ireland won’t talk?’ Patrick asked.
‘She was paid extremely well and . . . Mervyn Hammond got involved. I believe he made certain threats, explained to her, in a very nice way, of course, how the media works, how her life would be over if this ever came out. And I think he made promises too, that he would help her if she ever got into one of the talent industries. Do some positive PR for her. Vile man.’
From what he’d seen of Hammond, Patrick had to agree with her assessment.
‘This could be extremely helpful,’ he said, glancing down at his notebook, which he angled so Hattie couldn’t see it. The key words he’d written down, which tallied with Rose’s and Jessica’s murders, were underage, crop, hotel room and, underlined, no sex.
Suddenly, they had a prime suspect. A prime suspect who just happened to be one of the most famous men, not just in Britain but in the whole world.
‘I need to talk to this girl,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I need her name, Hattie.’
‘Oh God, it’s all going to come out that I’ve talked to you.’ She put her hands over her face. ‘I didn’t mean to say so much.’
Patrick looked wryly at the empty wine glasses on the table.
‘You can’t talk to the girl, Detective. It’s impossible.’
‘Nothing’s impossible, Hattie,’ he said.
Chapter 20
Day 6 – Patrick
On the way back to the incident room, Patrick had a moment of brain-panic – the realisation that there were so many layers of thought going through his head that they all swirled together like tutti-frutti ice cream, and separating them out into a cogent to-do list seemed as impossible as restoring the ice cream back to its original ingredients. He parked in the staff car park and pulled out his Moleskine and a pen, balancing the notepad on the steering wheel so he could try to get it all down before he forgot:
Get update from Peter Bell re key card
“ “ “Gareth
Brief Suzanne
Get Mervyn Hammond in
Find out name of girl Shawn attacked – MH should know
Check on Gill
Chicken fillets/washing powder/binliners
Winkler – what’s he up to??
He paused after this last one and underlined Winkler’s name again. Although they were meant to be working together on this case, it occurred to Pat that he hadn’t seen anything of his ‘colleague’ – how that word stuck in his craw – since the last team briefing. During the Child Catcher case, Winkler had gone off on his own and almost screwed up the whole operation. He was pretty sure Winkler’s apparent lack of interest in this case would prevent that happening again, but he couldn’t help but feel a tickle of anxiety.
Even though the list needed to be four times longer, Pat decided it was enough to be going on with. Most of those things were doable that afternoon. He toyed with the idea of ringing Gill first, having just had a sudden grim vision of her and Bonnie, stuck in front of the TV on this cold wintery day, Bonnie chatting to her Barbies and Gill ignoring her, staring with unseeing eyes at the screen . . . He shuddered. No, it wouldn’t be like that. Gill wasn’t like that anymore.
Yet he could never quite shake the worry that she might be, that she was just hiding it well when he was around.
He got out of the car and pulled out his phone to call her, but then saw Peter Bell heading towards his own car, remote key in his hand.
‘Cyber-Crime office only open mornings these days?’ Patrick enquired. He hadn’t meant to sound snippy, but it came out that way, and Bell’s fleshy face folded into a brief scowl that he immediately covered up with an obsequious smile.
‘Ha ha, Guv, no, far from it, actually. I’m back off to the Travel Inn to check out something I’ve unearthed about their room key system. Just a theory I’m going to test. If it works, I think we’ll have our answer as to how the perp managed to get in.’
Patrick nodded with surprise and pleasure. ‘That’s excellent! I was about to come and ask if you were getting anywhere. Nice work, Bell.’
The man’s smile was genuine this time, displaying yellowy teeth crossed slightly at the front. He wasn’t a looker, poor guy, thought Patrick.
‘Well, as I said, it’s just a theory at the moment, but I’m reasonably confident . . .’
‘Keep me posted. That would be a big step forwards.’
Bell gave Patrick a mock salute, almost poking himself in the eye with his car key in the process, and Patrick swallowed a grin.
By the time he’d got into the incident room he decided he’d ring Gill later. Suzanne was standing by the water cooler with her back to him, and he couldn’t help but take a moment to let his gaze sweep up and down her body. Her long blonde hair was in a loose, glossy sheet almost to her waist, emphasising her trim hourglass figure in a pencil skirt and tight white shirt . . .
Suddenly aware of someone hovering behind him, Patrick snapped out of his reverie and turned to find Gareth Batey by his right shoulder. The man did have a habit of lurking anxiously. He needed to be far more assertive, thought Patrick. He was a good solid cop, bright and efficient, but this slightly weird diffidence didn’t do him any favours.
‘Gareth,’ he said. ‘I was about to come and find you. Did you hear we’ve got a potential lead on the key card?’
Batey nodded. ‘I was coming to tell you the same thing,’ he said in his soft Scottish accent. He was wearing a fuzzy sort of woollen tie in heathery colours and Patrick wondered if it was a statement or a reminder of his Highland origins. ‘I’ll go with Bell back to the Travel Inn, if that’s OK with you.’
‘Good idea. Report back to me later,’ Patrick replied, slightly distractedly, as Suzanne was walking back to her office, draining a paper cone of water on the way. She lobbed the empty cone with perfect accuracy into a waste paper bin five feet away. When she saw Patrick, he thought he saw her eyes light up. But perhaps he was deluded.
‘I’m just back from interviewing Hattie Parsons from OnTarget’s record company,’ he said, catching up and falling in step with her. ‘Very interesting. But potentially tricky – can I fill you in?’
She gestured him into her office. ‘Tricky why?’
He explained what Hattie had said about Shawn Barrett and the underage girl in Dublin, and that Mervyn Hammond had gone to great lengths to cover up her complaint. ‘Hattie says she can’t remember the girl’s name, but I reckon she could find it if Mervy-boy won’t tell us. He definitely knows it.’
‘Let’s get him in, then,’ Suzanne said. Patrick noticed she had slipped off her high shoes under the desk, and the sight of her stockinged toes had the usual effect on his groin.
‘Who – Barrett or Hammond?’
‘Hammond first, get the lie of the land.’
Patrick groaned. ‘He’s as slippery as a barrel of eels, but yes, I think you’re right. I’ll lean on him. Can you imagine the media shit storm we’ll have on our hands if we have to haul in the singer from the world’s biggest boy band?’
‘Never a dull minute,’ said Suzanne, smiling at him. ‘But better we expose this now, if it’s true, than have another Operation Yewtree in thirty years.’
Patrick agreed. Every day seemed to bring a new story about historic cases of rape or sexual assault by some former TV favourite or pop star.