‘Tell me about it.’
‘Why should I?’ she shouted, stepping forward and slapping him so hard he tasted blood as his cheek impacted against his teeth. ‘You’re no better than them. What about that slag? That blonde bitch, that fucking plonk you’ve been giving one to?’
Tony swallowed the warm salty blood that filled his mouth. ‘You mean Carol Jordan?’ he said, playing for time. How should he play this? Should he lie or tell the truth?
‘You know full well who I mean. I know you’ve been with her, don’t fucking try lying to me,’ she hissed, raising her hand again. ‘You treacherous, faithless bastard.’ Her hand cracked him across the face again, so hard he heard his neck crick under the force of it.
Tears sprang to his eyes involuntarily. The truth wasn’t going to work. It would only earn him more punishment. Praying he could lie with conviction, Tony pleaded, ‘Angelica, she was just a fuck, just someone to scratch the itch. You’d got me so horny with your phone calls. I didn’t know when you were going to call again, or even if you were.’ He allowed anger to creep into his voice. ‘I wanted you and you didn’t tell me how I could get hold of you. Angelica, it’s like you with the other ones. I was filling in time, waiting for my equal. You can’t believe that a mere cop would answer my fantasies, do you? You should know, you’ve had one too.’
Angelica stepped back, shock on her face. Sensing he had made some kind of a breakthrough, Tony pursued her with his words. ‘We were different, you and me. They weren’t worthy of you. But we were special. You must know that, from our phone calls. Didn’t you sense that we had something extraordinary? That this time it would be different? Isn’t that what you really want? You don’t want the killing. Not really. The killing only happened because they weren’t worthy, because they let you down. What you really want is a worthy partner. What you want is love. Angelica, what you want is me.’
For a long moment she stared at him, eyes wide, mouth open. Then confusion took over, as obvious to Tony as a hooker’s come-on. ‘Don’t use that word to me, you worthless scumbag,’ she stuttered. ‘Don’t fucking say it!’ Her voice was a low, throaty scream. Suddenly, she turned on her heel and ran from the room, her heels clattering up the stairs.
‘I love you, Angelica,’ Tony shouted desperately after her retreating footsteps. ‘I love you.’
Carol and DC Morris stood on the doorstep of the small terraced house in Gregory Street. She didn’t need to be a psychologist to read his body language. Morris was fed up at trailing round pursuing Carol’s daft hunch. ‘They must be out at work,’ he remarked after their fourth assault on the doorbell.
‘Looks that way,’ Carol agreed.
‘Shall we come back later?’
‘Let’s go on the knocker,’ Carol suggested. ‘See if any of the neighbours are around. Maybe they can tell us when the Thorpes get back from work.’
Morris looked as if he’d rather be on crowd control at a student demo. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said in a bored voice.
‘You take across the street, I’ll go for this side.’ Carol watched him trudge across the street as wearily as a miner at the end of his shift, shook her head with a sigh and turned her attention to number twelve. This was much more the kind of territory Tony had suggested for their killer. Thinking of Tony just made Carol cross again. Where the hell was he? She really needed his input today, not to mention a bit of support for an idea that everybody else seemed to think was a complete waste of time. He couldn’t have picked a worse moment to go on the missing list. It was unforgivable. At least he could have phoned his secretary and not left her having to field his calls and make excuses for him.
There was no bell on the door of number twelve, so Carol bruised her knuckles on the solid wood. The woman who opened it looked like a caricature from a soap opera. In her forties, her make-up would have been over the top for dinner in LA, never mind mid-afternoon in a Bradfield back street. Her dyed platinum blonde hair was piled high in a lopsided beehive. She wore a tight black sweater with a scoop neck revealing a cleavage the texture of crumpled tissue, shiny blue skin-tight leggings, white stilettoes and a thin gold ankle chain. A cigarette dangled from a corner of her mouth. ‘What is it, love?’ she said nasally.
‘Sorry to trouble you,’ Carol said, flashing her warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Carol Jordan, Bradfield police. I’m trying to get in touch with your next-door neighbours at number fourteen, the Thorpes, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody home. I wonder if you happen to know what time they get in from work.’
The woman shrugged. ‘Search me, love. That cow comes and goes at all hours.’
‘What about Mr Thorpe?’ Carol asked.
‘What Mr Thorpe? There’s no Mr Thorpe next door, love.’ She gave a croak of laughter. ‘It’s easy seen you’ve never clapped eyes on her. Any man that married that ugly cow would have to be blind and bloody hard up. So what’ve you got her for?’
‘It’s just routine enquiries,’ Carol said.
The woman snorted. ‘Don’t give me that fanny,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched enough episodes of The Bill to know they don’t send inspectors out on routine enquiries. It’s about time you put that cow behind bars, if you want my opinion.’
‘Why is that, Mrs…?’
‘Goodison, Bette Goodison. As in Bette Davis. Because she’s an ugly, anti-social cow, that’s why.’
Carol smiled. ‘I’m afraid that’s not a crime, Mrs Goodison.’
‘No, but murder is, isn’t it?’ Bette Goodison crowed triumphantly.
Carol swallowed, hoping the effect of the word wasn’t as visible as it was palpable. ‘That’s a very serious accusation.’
Bette Goodison took a final drag of her cigarette and expertly flipped the dog end across the narrow pavement and into the gutter. ‘I’m glad you think so. It’s more than your mates at Moorside nick did.’
‘I’m sorry you feel you’ve not been well served by my colleagues,’ Carol said in a concerned tone. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what you’re talking about?’ Please God, let this not be a rerun of the Yorkshire Ripper case, where the killer’s best friend told the police they suspected he was the Ripper and the police paid no attention.
‘Prince, that’s who we’re talking about.’
For one wild moment, Carol had a vision of the diminutive American rock star buried in the back yard of a Bradfield terrace. Pulling herself together, she said, ‘Prince?’
‘Our German shepherd. Always complaining about him, that Angelica Thorpe was. And she had no grounds. That dog was doing her a service. Anybody so much as walked down our ginnel and that dog let you know about it. She’d have paid a fortune for a burglar alarm as efficient as that dog. Any road up, a few months back… August, it were, weekend before Bank Holiday, we come home from work, Col and me, and Prince is gone. Now, there’s no way he could have got out of that yard, and he’d have gone for anybody that came in. There’s only one way he could have disappeared, and that’s if he was murdered,’ Mrs Goodison said, stabbing Carol in the chest with her finger for emphasis. ‘She poisoned him and then she got rid of the body so there would be no proof. She’s a murderer!’
Normally, Carol would have walked a mile barefoot to avoid this conversation, but she was in pursuit of Handy Andy, and any oddity was something to be grasped eagerly. ‘How can you be so sure it was Mrs Thorpe?’ she asked.
‘Stands to reason. She were the only one that ever complained about him. And the day he went missing, me and Col were out at work, but she were home all day. I know that for a fact, because she were on nights that week. And when we knocked on her door to ask did she know anything about him going missing, she just smiled all over that ugly gob of hers. I could have put her face in for her,’ Mrs Goodison said emphatically. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m afraid that without evidence, there’s not much we can do,’ Carol said sympathetically. ‘You’re sure, are you, that Mrs Thorpe lives alone?’
‘Nobody’d want to live with an ugly cow like that. She never even has visitors. Not surprising, mind, she looks like a brick shithouse in drag.’
‘Do you happen to know what kind of car she drives?’ Carol asked.
‘One of them bloody yuppie jeep things. I ask you, who needs a bloody great jeep in the middle of Bradfield? It’s not like we live up some farm track, is it?’
‘And do you know where she works?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, my serial’s starting.’
