Monday morning Superintendent Isles gave me permission to interview Jason Lee Gelder at HQ, where he was being held. I cleared my diary and reallocated a few tasks to accommodate him. Dave had driven to Cambridge over the weekend, to look at Sophie’s room in the students’ quarters. He was a lot happier now that he knew where she’d be staying, and told us all what a smashing place it was. Expecting displays of enthusiasm from him is normally like expecting impartial advice from your bank manager, but today he was full of it. I decided to attempt to harness the quality.
“And I’ve a special little job for you, Sunshine,” I told him.
“Like what?” he asked. From him, that’s eager.
“One I wouldn’t trust to anybody else.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good. I want you to go to Boots and buy one hundred condoms.”
“A hundred condoms!”
“That’s right. You can put them on your expenses.”
“You want me to buy a hundred French letters and put them on my expenses?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You can cocoa!”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I! Go buy them yourself.”
I found a notebook with empty pages and put it in my pocket with a couple of fibre-tipped pens. “You just can’t get the staff,” I said standing up and sliding my chair under the desk.
Sparky had his cheeky grin on. “So, er, things are looking up, are they?” he asked.
“No, they’re not,” I snapped, adding: “If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.”
“Why a hundred?” he asked. “With your luck a packet of three would last you until the use-before date.”
“You can be very hurtful,” I told him, opening the door and switching the light off.
“Yeah, it was a bit. Sorry.”
“That’s OK. How much are they, these days?”
“Johnnies? A pound for two from the machine in the Spinners’ bog.”
“Is that plain or flavoured?”
“Plain. The flavoured are two quid for three.”
“You seem to know all about them.”
“I read the machine while I’m having a pee. What do you do?”
“Try to drown a fly. That’d be fifty quid, and I’d have to go to the bank for coins. And then the machine would run out and I’d have to ask the barman for my money back. It’ll have to be a chemist’s.”
“Are you serious?” he demanded.
“Never more. Want to change your mind?”
“No.”
“Fair enough, but I’ll have to put it on your record. I’m off to HQ, to talk to young Mr Gelder. Try not to breach too many guidelines while I’m gone.”
I parked in town and went to Boots. The condoms were on the self-service shelves but there was a small queue at the pay counter, so I wandered around for a few minutes until it had gone. Fetherlites came in packs of a dozen, costing?8.85, so I’d have to buy…I did the mental arithmetic…six twelves are seventy-two, seven twelves are eighty-four, eight twelves are ninety-six…nine, I’d have to buy nine packs, which would leave eight condoms over. Ah well, they might come in handy, some day.
The queue had gone so I gathered up a handful of packets. Dammit! There were only eight on display. Ninety-six. That meant I needed two packets of three to make up the shortfall. I added them to my collection and headed towards the counter.
A woman got there before me, but that was OK. I fell in behind her, my purchases clutched to my body, as she handed over a brown bottle of tablets and a ten pound note. The grey-haired assistant looked at the bottle and turned towards the glassed-off enclave where the pharmacist was busy counting pills.
“Paracetamol!” she shouted, and he raised his head and nodded his consent to the sale.
A wave of panic swept through me. Was she about to yell “Condoms!” to all and sundry when she saw what I was buying? “You know that they contain paracetamol, don’t you?” she told the customer, who said that she did. Personally, I’d have thought that that was why she was buying them. And as it said Paracetamol in large letters across the label, it seemed not unreasonable to assume that she knew the chief ingredient.
“Can I, er, take those, please,” I mumbled, when it was my turn, half expecting her to warn me that I’d never make a baby if I wore one of these, on the off-chance that I was a lapsing Catholic. I passed the bundle two-handed across the glass-topped counter, followed by my credit card. She was counting them when the phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, placing my goods in a neat pile and turning to answer it. Unfortunately Durex packs are shiny and rounded, and don’t stack up well. They slid over and spread-eagled themselves across the counter, fanning out like a hand of cards. I turned and smiled guiltily at the baby in the arms of the young girl who headed the queue that was forming behind me. The girl smiled back at me.
Seventy-six flippin’ quid they cost. And thirty pence. I grabbed the bag that the assistant handed over and turned to flee, only glancing at the five women and two men in the queue behind me enough to notice that the last man looked suspiciously like my window cleaner. As I passed him he touched my sleeve. I turned to say hello, but he just said “Receipt.”
“Pardon?”
“You forgot your receipt.”
“Oh, thanks.” I went back to the counter and the grey-haired assistant passed it to me. I felt as if I ought to make a witty remark, but she was already listening to her next customer.
Jason Lee Gelder wasn’t what I’d expected. I try not to be fooled by first impressions, but he took me for a ride. I shook hands with his brief, the duty solicitor, when he introduced himself, although we meet nearly as often as the swing doors down at the Job Centre, and sat down opposite them.
“Is it Jason or Lee?” I asked.
“Er, Jason,” he replied. He had the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen, short fair hair in a sensible style, a high forehead and a full mouth and jaw-line. When it came to looks, he was a heart-breaker, and I could imagine the girls falling for him like lemmings off a cliff. But nature gives with one hand and takes away with the other.
“Right, Jason,” I began. “Are they looking after you well?”
“Er, yeah.”
“I see they’ve given you your own clothes back.”
“Er, yeah.”
“We were allowed to collect some from his home,” the solicitor explained, “but most of his clothes are with your forensic people.”
“For tests,” I told Jason. “We do tests on them.” Before either of them could speak again I said: “This is an informal interview, to clear up a few things about this and another case. We are not recording or taking notes, but I have to tell you, Jason, that you are still under caution and anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” he said, which meant that he was probably the only one of us who did.
“Which newspapers do you read, Jason?” I asked.
He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat and stared down at somewhere near his navel.
“The Sun?” I suggested. “Or the Sunday Sport?”
He shook his head and curled up even more.
“If I may,” the solicitor interrupted. “Jason has reading difficulties. He doesn’t buy a newspaper.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback for a moment. Then I remembered the magazines that were found in his room. “You like pictures, though, don’t you?” I asked. “Which paper has the best girls in it? Tell me that, Jason.”
“Dunno,” he mumbled.
“But you look at them?”
“I suppose so.”
“Which ones?”
“Dunno.”
“Where do you see them?”
“All over.”
“Such as?”
“Anywhere.”
“Tell me, Jason. I’m trying to help you.”
He shrugged his shoulders and looked towards his brief for help. The solicitor waved a palm towards me in a gesture that said: “For God’s sake tell the man.”
“In the pub,” he replied.
“What?” I began. “You mean, people leave them in the pub and you collect them?”
“I don’t collect them. I just ’ave a look.”
“Where else?”
“Mates’ ’ouses. All over.”
“Which papers do you like best?”
“I dunno. They’re all the same.”
“The Sport?”
“Sometimes.”
“The UK News? Do you like the UK News, Jason?”
“Dunno if I do or not.”
“Where do you get your magazines from?”
“From mates.”
“Do you buy them?”
“No. We just swap them.”
It always looks good in the report of a trial: Police found a number of pornographic magazines in the accused’s house. Of course we did, because they’re all over the place. There isn’t an establishment in the country that employs a majority of males where you couldn’t find some sort of unofficial library of top-shelf literature, and that includes most police stations. Jason would have been more interesting to the psychiatric profession if we hadn’t found any sex books at his home.
“Tell me about your girlfriends,” I suggested.
“’Aven’t got one,” he replied.
“But you’ve had one, haven’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Good looking lad like you,” I said. “With a little car. Wouldn’t have thought you’d have any problem pulling the birds. Am I right?”
“Sometimes.”
“Who was your last girlfriend?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Can’t or won’t? How long since you last had a girl in the car, Jason?”
He thought about it, his brow a rubbing-board of furrows. “’Bout three weeks,” he eventually volunteered. “Maybe a bit longer.”
“So that would be before Marie-Claire Hollingbrook was murdered,” I said.
“Yeah. ’Bout a week before.”
“How did you learn about her murder?”
“In the pub. They were talking about it in the pub.”
“Did you know her?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see her?”
“No.”
“So you didn’t recognise her from her picture in the papers?”
“No.”
The solicitor leaned forward and said: “Inspector, could you possibly explain where this line of enquiry is leading? My client has strenuously denied any knowledge of Miss Hollingbrook or any involvement in her death. There are several hours of taped interviews in which he answers all questions fully and satisfactorily.”
“There is some rather heavy evidence against your client,” I pointed out.
“Which is being contested,” he rejoined. “There are precedents, Inspector, in which DNA evidence has been discredited. We are currently investigating the whole procedure for taking and examining samples from both the crime scene and witnesses.”
Here we go, I thought. O.J. Simpson all over again. O.J. bloody Simpson. It wasn’t my job to give him lines of defence, so I just accepted what he said. I turned back to Jason and asked: “What was this girl called that you last went out with?”
“Dunno,” he replied.
“You don’t know? Didn’t you ask?”
“Yeah, but I’ve forgotten.”
“Well try to remember. It could be important.”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“OK. Let’s go through it. Where did you meet her?”
“At that club in Heckley with the daft name.”
“The Aspidistra Lounge.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Go there a lot, do you?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“What nights?”
“Sometimes Thursdays, and most Fridays.”
“And what night did you meet this girl?”
“Not sure. Think it was Friday.”
“So what did you do?”
“What did we do?” he asked, looking even more bewildered.
“Did you dance?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
“Buy her a drink?”
“Yeah.”
“What did she drink?”
“Lager. And Blastaways.”
“Blastaways. Right.” I knew that was a sickly combination of cider and a ready-made cocktail called a Castaway. “And did you ask her name?”
“I suppose so.”
“Which was?”
“Can’t remember.”
It’s at times like this that I wished I smoked. I could take out the packet of Sobranies, flick one between my lips, light it with my gold-plated Zippo and inhale a long satisfying lungful of nicotine-laden smoke. All I’d have to worry about was an early grave from cancer, not trying to keep an uncommunicative twerp like Jason from spending the rest of his natural being used as a trampoline in an open prison.
“Did you take her home?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Straight home?”
“Er, no.”
“Where did you go?”
“To the brickyard.”
Atkinson’s brickyard was long gone, but the name lingered on. It was now a lawned-over picnic site, only the red shards poking through the grass indicating its industrial past. More people meet there after dark for sex than ever eat at the primitive tables during daylight hours.
“Did you have sex with her?”
“Yeah.”
“In the back seat?”
“No, in the front.”
“Really! Wouldn’t you have found it more comfortable in the back?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“We just started, you know, snogging, in the front, and that was it.”
“You were carried away.”
“Yeah. Well, she was. Dead eager for it, she was.”
“She took the initiative?”
“Yeah.”
I expected his brief to interrupt, but I think he was as fascinated as I was by the sexual mores of the young. I dragged the conversation back on course. “Was she on the Pill?” I asked.
“No.”
“So what did you do? Risk it?”
“No.”
“You’d gone prepared.”
“Yeah.”
“Very commendable. So did you arrange to see her again?”
“Not really. I said I might see ’er in the…the whatsit, the club.”
“You don’t sound as if you were keen. Why not?”
“Because she was a slag, that’s why.”
“But you must have asked her name.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Which was…?”
“Can’t remember.”
I turned to the brief and told him that we were going to have a five-minute break. I said I was trying to help his client and the name of the girl might be of use in my line of enquiries. Jason was in hot water about as deep as it gets, and anything he told me could only help his case. I suggested they did some serious thinking.
Les Isles wasn’t in his office, and Nigel was nowhere to be found, either. Two DCs were busy in the main office, working at computer keyboards that were in danger of being engulfed by the paperwork heaped around them. Who invented the expression paperless office? Woody Allen?
“Where’s the boss?” I asked the nearest DC.
“Mr Isles?”
“Mmm.”
“Review meeting at Region. It’s Mr Priest, isn’t it?”
I didn’t deny the fact and we shook hands. He’d attended one of my talks at the training college and said he enjoyed it. “I’m interviewing Jason Gelder downstairs,” I told him, quickly adding: “with Mr Isles’ permission. Nobody told me he was ESN.”
“Who, Mr Isles?” he replied with a grin. “That explains a lot.”
“I meant young Gelder.”
“Sorry about that. Strictly speaking, and according to the experts, he’s not. Put in layman’s language, he’s thick, but he’s not slow.”
“I see,” I said, “or at least, I think I do. Where does he get his money from?”
“He works for a living, down at the abattoir. Spends his working day scraping flesh from animal skins. They pay him fairly well because nobody wants to do it, and he goes home stinking like an otter’s arse.”
“Right. Thanks for your help. Thick but not slow, I’ll have to ponder on that one.”
Down in the interview room Jason was slumped at the table and the brief was leaning on the wall, a polystyrene coffee cup in his hand. He shrugged his shoulders as I entered and resumed his seat.
“Where were we?” I asked, briskly, rubbing my hands together. “Didn’t you want a coffee, Jason?” and was rewarded with a shake of the head.
“So what was this girl called?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he stated, staring straight at me. The brief must have given him a hard time because he looked as if he’d been crying.
“What did you talk about? If you did any talking?” I asked.
“Not much,” he replied.
“How old was she? Did you ask her that?”
“No, I don’t think I asked.”
I wasn’t surprised. What was that other one from Pete Drago’s list of sexual aphorisms: If they’re big enough, they’re old enough. “How old did you think she was?”
“About eighteen. She was about eighteen.”
“So she wasn’t under age.”
“No, definitely not. She’d left school.”
“Did she work or go to college?”
“I don’t know.”
“So if she was over sixteen why won’t you tell me her name.”
“Because you won’t listen,” he sobbed. “I keep telling you, I don’t remember.”
“OK,” I said. “Let’s go through it again. You meet this girl at the Aspidistra Lounge, either on Thursday or Friday night…”
“Friday,” He interrupted. “I think it was Friday.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“No.”
“Right. You buy her a few drinks, have a dance and a smooch, and take her home. Did you stay right to the end?”
“No.”
“What time?”
“Dunno.”
“Before or after midnight?”
“About midnight.”
“Then you went to the brickyard, had sex with this young lady in the front seat because you were both too desperate to climb into the back, and that was that. You had ten minutes of passion but didn’t bother seeing her again. Why not?”
“Because she was a slag. I’ve told you once,” he stated, almost shouting at me now. I decided to push him.
“A slag! Aren’t all the girls you pick up slags?” I demanded.
“No. Not all of them.”
“But this one was?”
“Yeah.”
“Was Marie-Claire a slag, Jason. Was she another slag?”
“I don’t know. I never met her.” Tears were running down his cheeks and he turned to the brief for help. “Why won’t they believe me?” he begged.
“Because you’re not telling the truth, Jason.” I stated. “This girl at the club; what was she called?”
“I don’t know!”
“Why are you protecting her, if you think she was a slag?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe me. You don’t believe anything I say.”
He was cracking. I’d closed on him. “What wouldn’t I believe?” I asked.
“Anything.”
“Tell me what I wouldn’t believe, Jason.”
“I can’t.”
“Why? Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because!”
“Because what?”
“Just because.”
He’d turned a ghostly white and was hyperventilating. The solicitor placed a hand on his arm, saying: “Jason, if there’s something you have to say, I think you should tell Mr Priest. It can’t do you any harm.”
Jason stared at me, defiant, and I stared back at him. “Go on, Jason,” I encouraged. “Who was she?”
“I don’t know her name.”
“You said we wouldn’t believe you. What wouldn’t we believe?”
“You’d ’old it against me. Gang up on me.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because it’s what you do.”
“Tell me what you know, Jason,” I asked.
“Tell Mr Priest,” the brief added.
Jason breathed deeply a few times, gathering his strength, then blurted the words out. “’Er dad’s a copper,” he informed us.
“A copper?” I echoed. “What sort of a copper?”
“A detective. He’s a detective. At ’Eckley nick.”
It wasn’t what I expected, or what I wanted to hear. Images of him having it away with his kid sister, or his probation officer, or some other unlikely person, were swirling around in my mind, but not this. “Are you sure?” I asked, my voice a whisper.
“Yeah. She said ’er dad was a detective, in the CID at ’Eckley. I didn’t ask ’er, she just told me.”
“But…you can’t remember her name?”
“No.”
“Good,” I mumbled. “Good. I think that will do for now.”