‘Within the next five minutes. When did she take off?’
‘Stacey spoke to her directly after she spoke to you. And then she spoke to me. And I left about fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Fuck. This is a nightmare.’
‘There’s one thing you could do,’ Tony said, moving over into the fast lane.
‘What?’
‘You could call Franklin and ask him to intercept her.’
Ambrose snorted. ‘That’s your idea of a solution? We’ll end up with a Mexican stand-off between Jordan and Franklin while Vance hightails it out the back door, over the hills and far away.’
‘Please yourself,’ Tony snapped. ‘I’m just trying to save her life, that’s all.’ He ended the call and coaxed another five miles an hour out of his protesting engine. ‘Oh, Carol,’ he groaned. ‘Please don’t do anything brave. Or noble. Just sit tight. Please.’
Sam Evans had never lost his appetite for getting out on the street and talking to people. He didn’t have Paula’s skills in the interview room, but he was good at drawing people into conversation then sussing out when to charm and when to lean. He could slip straight back into his working-class accent, and that helped when you were dealing with people at the bottom of the heap. Sam opened his mouth and they imagined someone who wasn’t condescending or judging.
When Paula had passed on the background she’d got from the sergeant in Vice, the obvious next step had been to find Kerry Fletcher and bring her in, out of harm’s way. Paula needed to stay in the office, pulling together any information that might give them a lead on where to find Eric Fletcher. Meanwhile, Sam would do his best to find Fletcher’s daughter.
Temple Fields on a Saturday night was thronged with people. Drag queens, beautiful boys, striking baby dykes with their tattoos and piercings, and Lady Gaga wannabes were the eye candy, but there were plenty of more conventional-looking people out for a good time in the gay bars and restaurants that lined the streets. The area had shifted from hardcore red-light zone to gay village back in the nineties, but the new century had made it more eclectic, with the hippest of the straight young people happy to hang out in what they perceived as the cool clubs and bars. Now, it was a heaving mix, an anything-goes part of town. And there was still a thriving kerbside sex trade, if you knew where to look.
Sam weaved his way through the crowds, alert for female and male prostitutes. Sometimes they saw him coming, smelled ‘cop’ on him and melted away into the anonymous crowds before he could speak to them. But he’d managed to talk to half a dozen of the women. A couple of them had completely blanked him, refusing to engage in conversation at all. Sam suspected they knew their pimps were watching.
Two of the others denied any knowledge of Kerry Fletcher. A fifth said she knew Kerry though she hadn’t seen her for a day or two, but that was probably because Kerry usually worked Campion Way, not the main drag. So Sam had moved down towards the boulevard that separated Temple Fields from the rest of the city centre. There he’d found a more informative source.
The woman was leaning against the wall in the mouth of an alley, smoking and sipping on a coffee. ‘Christ, can’t I have ten fucking minutes to myself?’ she said as Sam approached. ‘I don’t give freebies to the Bill.’
‘I’m looking for Kerry Fletcher,’ Sam said.
‘You’re not the only one,’ the woman said sourly. ‘I’ve not seen her tonight, but her old man was round looking for her last night.’
‘I thought he’d been warned off?’
‘Maybe so. He’s turned the volume down, that’s for sure. But he still hangs around, watching her every move. She turned on him last night, though. Told him to fuck right off.’
‘How did he take that?’
‘He didn’t have much choice, she went off with a punter.’
‘So what was he saying to her to wind her up?’
‘I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I was trying to earn a fucking living. He was going on at her about how it’s not safe on the streets. That somebody’s killing whores like us and she should come home. She said she’d rather take her chances out on the street than with him. And he said he’d do anything she wanted if she’d just give up selling herself on the streets. And she said, “I just want you to stop this. Now fuck off.” Then she walked away and got in this bloke’s car.’
‘Have you seen them go at it like that before?’
The woman shrugged. ‘He’s been trying to freak her out about there being a serial killer out there.’ She curled her lip in disdain. ‘Like we don’t know there are bastards out there who get off on hurting us. You don’t do this job if you’re worried about health and fucking safety. We all know it, all the time. We just try not to fucking think about it.’
‘What did he do then, her dad?’
She tossed her cigarette end on the pavement and ground it out. ‘He did what he was told. He fucked off. Now I’d like you to do the same.’ She waved her fingers at Sam in a shooing motion. ‘Go on, you’re ruining my trade.’
Sam backed away and watched the woman totter to the kerbside on insanely high heels. What he’d learned didn’t take them much further forward. But it was corroboration. And when you were building a case, sometimes that was the best you could hope for.
51
There was something blissful about the way the blue light carved a line through the traffic. Cars and vans scuttled sideways like crabs when they spotted her. Carol especially loved the ones who were pulverising the speed limit till they saw her in their rear-view. Suddenly they’d brake and slew into the middle lane with an air of, ‘Who, me, guv?’ When she passed them seconds later, they’d always be staring resolutely straight ahead, their vain pretence glaringly obvious.
Sometimes people genuinely didn’t see her. They were lost in music or Radio 4 or some football phone-in on Talk Sport. She’d get right up behind them then give them a blare on the horn. She could actually see one or two of
