Vanessa harrumphed. What did they expect? Treat prisoners like it’s a hostel and they’ll take advantage. ‘Prison officials have declined to comment at this stage, but it’s understood that former TV presenter and Olympic athlete Vance hijacked a taxi that had been hired to take the other prisoner to his workplace. Over now to local MP, Cathy Cottison.’
A plain woman in an unflattering neckline appeared on St Stephen’s Green outside Westminster. ‘There are many questions to be answered here,’ she said in a strong Black Country accent that Vanessa struggled with. ‘Jacko Vance is a former TV star. He’s only got one arm. How on earth did he fool the prison staff enough to get out in the first place? And how is a prisoner like Vance anywhere near the sort of prisoner who goes out on day release? And how come a prisoner gets in a taxi by himself, without an escort? And how does a one-armed man hijack a taxi without a weapon? I will be putting these questions to the Home Secretary at the first opportunity.’
Vanessa was paying serious attention now. Heads would roll over this. And where heads rolled, recruitment opportunities were not far behind. To her disappointment, the news angle was left behind as they segued into the back story of Vance the athlete, Vance the TV personality and Vance the killer. Her focus began to drift away, then suddenly, a familiar figure appeared on the screen. ‘Psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill, seen here with a police colleague, was instrumental in exposing Vance’s crimes and bringing him to justice.’
Of course. It had completely slipped her mind that Tony had been involved in the Jacko Vance case. Most mothers would have been proud to see their only son featuring so positively in a national news story. Vanessa Hill was not most mothers. Her son had been an inconvenience since even before he’d been born and she’d managed to sidestep anything approaching a maternal response to him. She had set her face against him from the beginning and nothing he had done had changed her position. She despised him and scorned what he did for a living. He wasn’t a stupid man, she knew that much. He had the same knack for insight that she possessed. He could have turned his gifts to good use, made a success of himself.
Instead, he’d chosen to spend his days with killers and rapists and the scum of the earth. What was the point of that? Honestly. Remembering he’d been thwarted by her bastard son almost made her feel like rooting for Jacko Vance. She turned away in disgust and took out her phone to check her emails. Anything had to be better than watching that rubbish on the telly.
15
There was something desperately sad about the flat that Nicky Reid had shared with Suze Black. The worn-out furniture had clearly been culled from the meanest of second-hand shops. The scenic photographs on the walls looked as if they’d been cut out of magazines and slotted into cheap IKEA frames. The carpet was threadbare, its colour lost in the mists of time. But it was both cleaner and tidier than Paula had expected. It felt like a room put together by a pair of kids playing at keeping house.
Nicky caught her observant eye and said, ‘We’re not scum, you know. We try to live a decent life. Tried.’ He pointed to a bowl of oranges, apples and bananas on a side table. ‘Fruit and stuff. Proper food. And we pay the rent.’ He crossed one skinny denim-clad leg over the other and folded his hands over his knee. The campness of the posture undercut his attempt at dignity and Paula felt even more sad for him.
‘I’m sorry about Suze,’ she said. ‘What happened to her is unforgivable.’
‘If you lot had listened when I reported her missing … If you’d taken me seriously … ’ The accusation hung in the air.
Paula sighed. Her tone was tender. ‘I understand why you feel so angry, Nicky. But even if we’d gone on red alert when you reported Suze missing, we’d have been too late. I’m sorry, but the truth is, she’d been dead for some time before even you knew she was gone. I know you feel guilty, Nicky, but there’s nothing you could have done different that would have made any odds to the outcome.’
Nicky sniffed loudly, his eyes bright. Paula couldn’t decide if it was cocaine or grief; judging by Kevin’s body language, he’d already made his mind up.
‘She was great – Suze,’ Nicky said, a wobble in his voice. ‘I’ve known her for years. We were at school together. We used to bunk off and go down the video arcade, hang around smoking and playing bingo with the pensioners.’
‘You both had problems with school, then?’
He gave a scornful little laugh. ‘School. Home. Other kids. You name it, me and Suze managed to get in it up to our fucking necks. She’s the only person who’s still in my life from back then. Everybody else fucked me over then fucked off. But not Suze. We took care of each other.’
Paula reckoned he was relaxed enough now for a harder question. ‘You’re both working the street, right?’
Nicky nodded. ‘Rent.’ He looked up at the cracked ceiling, blinking back tears from big blue eyes that were the stand-out feature in his narrow bony face with its thin lips and chipped teeth. ‘We couldn’t do anything else. Suze tried working in the corner shop, but the pay was crap.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘I don’t know how people manage.’
‘Most people don’t have an expensive drug habit,’ Kevin said, not unkindly.
Nicky flicked at a tear with the tip of his fingers. ‘So fucking sue me.’
‘Suze was doing heroin, am I right?’ Paula said, trying to get back on track.
Nicky nodded and began picking at the skin round his thumbnail. ‘She’s been using for years.’ He flashed a quick look at Paula. ‘She wasn’t, like, off her tits. Just nice and steady, like. She could cope. On heroin, she could cope. Off heroin?’ He sighed. ‘Look, I know you think we’re shit, but we were doing OK.’ He reached for his cigarettes and lit one. As an afterthought, he offered one to Paula, who managed to refuse.
‘I can see that,’ Paula said. ‘I can see how hard you’ve been trying. I’m not here to give you a bad time for any of it. I just need to be sure whether Suze died because of something in her life or because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Nicky straightened up, uncrossing his legs and gripping the seat of the chair. ‘There was nobody in her life who would want to do Suze a bad turn. I know you think I’m bigging her up because she’s dead, but that’s not how it was. Look, she was a hooker and a heroin addict, but she wasn’t a bad person. She never had a pimp. She just had a dealer who looked after her.’
‘Who was her dealer?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not going to name names. That would be stupid and I’m not stupid. Whatever you might think. Look, she was a good customer. And she brought other customers to him, so he took care that nobody gave her a bad time. Nobody poached on her pitch. Everybody knew the score. When those fucking East European bitches turned up at the building site, they thought they could work the Flyer when the weather turned shitty.’ Nicky smirked. ‘That didn’t last long. Those Russian fuckers think they’re hard, but they’re not hard like Bradfield hard.’
‘How long had Suze been working the Flyer?’ Kevin asked. He knew Paula didn’t like her flow being interrupted, but he hated feeling like a spare part.
Nicky scratched his head, crossing his legs again. Paula wished she had Tony Hill’s ability to read a person’s body language. She’d recently been on an interrogation course that had devoted some time to the subject but still she felt as if she was only skating over the surface. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘It feels like forever, you know?’