Tennison (28 page)

Anjali O’Duncie was now a gibbering wreck, sobbing and wailing whilst continually claiming that all she was doing was trying to help down-and-out addicts by giving them somewhere safe to stay. She was adamant her brother was a good honest man since he was clean.

‘What will happen to me now?’

‘That depends on what your brother has to say when I nick him, but for now you ain’t going anywhere until I find him. DS Gibbs will take you down the cells.’

No sooner had Bradfield finished the interview with Anjali than he received a phone call informing him that the surveillance unit had lost Dwayne Clark and he hadn’t returned to his address in Chalk Farm. DS Gibbs had expected Bradfield to be livid with him but was surprised at how calm he was under the circumstances. The reality was he knew they’d find Dwayne again, but his priority was to find Terrence O’Duncie and hopefully collar the so-called ‘Big Daddy’ for the murder of Julie Ann and Eddie. He told Jane to get on to Camden Council and ask where all the squats were located in Primrose Hill and in particular any old four-storey houses. They knew by now that the phone number attached to the note DS Gibbs had copied from Dwayne was that of a call box located in Primrose Hill.

It didn’t take Jane long to get a result. There was a four-storey terraced house that had been occupied by a number of ‘hippie types’ for eighteen months. The premises were in King Charles Road and had been empty and boarded up for five years before the squatters moved in. The street was expensive and fashionable, the local residents all very wealthy people, and although many had complained to the council there was nothing they could do under ‘squatters’ rights’. Also the previous occupant had died and no known next of kin had as yet been traced. The local uniform officers had visited the premises a couple of times due to loud-noise complaints, but the squatters had always been apologetic and polite. The house had even been raided on one occasion after an anonymous drugs tip-off but nothing had been found.

‘Where’s WPC Morgan?’ Bradfield asked Jane.

‘She’s in court this afternoon with the burglar she arrested.’

‘Right, you’ll have to come with us then. No doubt be a few women and kids in the place so I’ll need a plonk for the gentle touch if it starts kicking off.’

Jane hated it when her male colleagues referred to female officers as ‘plonks’. It was insulting, and even more so to think that only the women should have to play nanny to kids. However, she bit back a retort, glad to be able to gain further experience by going on the raid to arrest a suspect for Julie Ann’s murder.

The tall grey-bricked Victorian terraced house occupied by the squatters was close to the Regent’s Canal, where the body of Eddie Phillips had been found. The building, with its sash windows and black wrought-iron fencing, was the same shape and size as all the others in the street. The only things that marked it out from its neighbours were the cracked, peeling paintwork and the unwashed windows. Two rake-thin young white males were sitting outside it on the grimy steps leading up to the front porch and smoking cigarettes. One had bright, red-dyed hair like David Bowie, and was wearing skintight flared trousers with patches and embroidered flowers, and a floral shirt with frills. The other pasty-faced kid had frizzy hair, and his skintight cat suit, worn with high wedged boots, made him look as if he had just left the stage of the musical
Hair
. Two young girls came out and sat with the boys, sharing the cigarettes. Their hair was braided and one girl had flowers either side of her head. They were equally pale-faced, with heavy dark mascara and black liner round their eyes. Their floating long dresses had layers of beads and their wrists were covered in cheap bangles. Both girls had filthy bare feet. Two small children in dirty vests, and one in a sodden towelling nappy, were playing with coloured marbles on the pavement.

Blasting out from an open window on the top floor was the Jimi Hendrix song ‘All Along The Watchtower’, and it was obvious some of the youngsters were stoned. They laughed as Bradfield, followed by Gibbs then Jane, headed up the steps to the front door. When Bradfield showed his warrant card they applauded and started making grunting noises like a pig. He wasn’t in the mood for their bad attitude and lack of respect.

‘Unless you all want to be nicked and your kids taken into care I suggest you shut up, behave and answer my questions, starting with . . . Is Terry O’Duncie in?’

No one said anything.

‘You might also know him as Big Daddy? So, last time I’ll ask . . . Is he in the house?’

A child no older than six spoke up and said that Terry was in bed sleeping and his mother pulled him towards her and told him to shut up.

‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ Bradfield said and laughed as he pulled out two photographs from his inside jacket pocket then held them up for the group to see. One was of Julie Ann and the other of Eddie Phillips.

‘Any of you ever seen these two kids here?’

They all looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. The young boy was about to say something, but his mother tugged at his arm and he said nothing. Their attitude annoyed Bradfield even more, especially as they hadn’t made a real effort to look at the photographs. He flung them down on the lap of the David Bowie lookalike and ordered two of the uniform officers accompanying them to round everyone up and contain them in the front room of the house. He told the group that he would be searching the premises for some time so they could all take a good look at the photographs to see if they helped jog their memories.

The hallway had bare floorboards and the rooms leading off it had nailed-up makeshift curtains made from tatty old bits of sheets and other badly stitched-together materials. Threadbare mattresses, stained sleeping bags and broken furniture littered every room; beer and Coke cans lay in corners and takeaway cartons of rotting food spewed out of old plastic bags. Jane shuddered and gagged slightly as she saw a plate of rancid food crawling with maggots. Gibbs laughed and said they’d be good for fishing. She could see he and Bradfield had become hardened to searching disgusting slums. The smell of incense from smouldering joss sticks permeated the air, but still failed to disguise the heavy scent of marijuana.

In one room a young girl with silk flowers pinned to her long blonde hair was sitting cross-legged peeling potatoes, the multitude of bracelets on her arms jangling as the peel fell onto the soggy newspaper between her legs. She looked no older than sixteen, had eyes like a panda’s and wore a pretty torn floral smock which made her appear innocent.

‘Looking for Terry O’Duncie. Which room is he in?’ Gibbs asked, showing her his warrant card.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied nonchalantly as she sliced a potato into quarters and dropped it into a plastic bowl of water by her side.

Gibbs had another set of photographs which he held in front of her. She continued peeling a potato and said in a very upper-class voice that she didn’t know who had stayed at the squat previously as she’d only been there a couple of days.

Jane followed Bradfield as he checked out the kitchen. It was full of used pans and plates piled in a big sink full of greasy water and broken mugs. A large, filthy-looking disconnected old cooker had a Calor gas stove from a VW camper van on top of it and a big pot of vegetable stew was bubbling away. The windows had newspaper stuck over the broken glass and a bedraggled cat was up on the draining board scavenging for food and licking dirty plates. The numerous open black bin bags stank of rotting food. Jane had been disgusted with the mess left in the station kitchen by the officers but this was far beyond anything she had ever come across, and to think that the squatters were cooking for and feeding the young children, never mind themselves, was shocking. She held her breath as she gave a cursory glance around. Through the cracked window in the back door she could see even more open bags of rubbish left to rot, and presumed there were no dustmen collecting from the house. She couldn’t wait to get out of the foul kitchen. She took a deep breath: if her mother knew where she was and what she was doing she would have heart failure.

The Jimi Hendrix song continued at a deafening level, and having no luck downstairs the team headed up to the first-floor landing. The stairs were strewn with cigarette butts and empty cans of beer. Wine bottles on every other step held different-coloured candles; wax had dripped down the sides of the bottles and onto the stairs.

Posters and prints were pinned up on the yellowing, damp-stained landing walls. The floor was covered with a heavily soiled fitted carpet, which appeared to have once been dark blue and good-quality shagpile. Jane pushed open a bedroom door and undid the wooden shutters of the large double bay window to let in the light. She saw that the walls had been painted bright blue and were patterned with white stars and yellow moons and sprinkled with glitter. Sleeping bags and tatty blankets were strewn over the floor along with tin plates and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette stubs and old marijuana roaches. The smell in the room was a mixture of stale sweat and damp and the heady incense gave off a sickening flowery perfume. Candles of every shape and size stood in pools of hardened wax and a lit amber-coloured cone candle flickered in one corner.

Bradfield stared in disgust. ‘Christ, how many kids are dossing down here? It must be a bloody fire hazard with all these candles.’

Jane bent down to pick up a plastic bag and look inside but Gibbs pulled her hand back. He took a pen out of his pocket to flick the top of the bag open and it was full of used hypodermic needles.

‘You prick your hand on one of those and the next thing you know is you’ll be really sick with hepatitis.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘You need to read General Orders more often: there was a warning about it. You can get hepatitis from an infected person’s blood, semen, or other bodily fluids, and it will badly damage your liver. The stupid bastards are sharing and reusing the same needles. If you see any of them with yellow, jaundiced-looking faces, sure bet is they’ve got it.’

A relieved Jane thanked him for his timely intervention. In reality she was so taken aback by the squalor she was unsure what she should or should not be doing.

Bradfield had seen enough and eager to get his hands on O’Duncie headed out into the corridor to go up to the next floor. Jane checked out a bathroom: the smell was worse than that of the decomposing body at the mortuary. She retched as she saw that the toilet was filled with unflushed faeces and urine, and the bath full of vomit. From the rust-stained taps and filthy washbasin it was obvious the water had been turned off for some time.

Jane went onto the landing as DS Gibbs came out of another bedroom and jerked his thumb back towards the room. ‘Two more teenagers out for the count in there. Looks like they were making clothes or something – lot of cut-up material and sewing stuff. I told ’em to get dressed and go down to the front room with the others.’

The music was still blaring from the room on the top floor, though the song was now Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Child’ and the volume had been turned up slightly.

‘That’s my favourite of all his hits – the guitar licks are just unbelievable. He could even play the thing with his teeth, you know,’ Gibbs said and started to do a bit of air guitar, making Jane smile. She was getting to like him more and more: he was quite a character.

They both heard a short shrill whistle and looked up to see DCI Bradfield leaning over the balcony crooking his finger for them to come up to the top floor. As they joined him Jane noticed the carpet was much cleaner and the landing window had old red drapes like theatre curtains still hanging on the original rail. Bradfield told them he had checked out two of the three rooms and found them empty. When the first Hendrix song had stopped he had heard a male and female voice in the room at the end of the corridor.

Bradfield crossed to the closed door. It was fitted with a Yale lock, but it didn’t look like a professional job. He turned to Gibbs. ‘Come on, stuff this softly-softly approach. Do your Bruce Lee bit and kick the door in, Spence.’

Gibbs took three paces back then two quick steps forward and, raising his right foot, kicked hard on the Yale causing the door to fly open and the lock to splinter away from the frame.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ a deep voice said from inside the inky dark room.

As the natural light from the hallway filtered in they could make out a naked black man lying on top of a young white girl with blonde hair braided in two long plaits.

‘Police, stay where you are,’ Gibbs shouted above the music as he ran over and pulled the curtains open letting the light flood in.

They all recognized O’Duncie from his mug shot, even though his face was contorted with rage. He rolled off the woman and stood up. She screamed and instantly pulled the orange bed throw over her naked body.

O’Duncie in the flesh was a very handsome, broad-shouldered man with a well-defined muscular body and collar-length wavy Afro hair tied with a multicoloured bandana, Jimi Hendrix style. A heavy silver neck chain attached to a black studded cross hung from his neck and his wrists and fingers were covered in silver bangles and gold rings.

‘Sit down on the bed now,’ Bradfield shouted as Jane blushed at the sight of his naked body.

‘It’s not true what they say: my dick’s bigger than that,’ Gibbs said in a demeaning way.

‘Get the fuck outta here!’ O’Duncie shouted.

‘I hope you’re talking to the teenager,’ Bradfield said, nodding at the girl lying on the red-velvet-framed bed. She was terrified and pulling on some underwear and a kimono under the bed throw.

Bradfield went over and turned the stereo off. It had two large speakers and seemed expensive and new. He could see a power cable extension lead that went up through an open hatch into the loft and he suspected O’Duncie was stealing the neighbours’ electricity.

Jane looked round the room. The ceiling was black with stuck-on gold stars, the walls painted in psychedelic colours and adorned with pictures of rock stars like Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Sheepskin rugs were scattered over the floor; crimson and blue silk throws hung from a pole at each end of the bed so that it looked like a sheikh’s tent. There was an array of expensive candles stuck in various gilt candle-holders more suited to a church and a wooden cross was fixed to the wall above the bed’s headboard.