The Eighth Day (Jason Ford Series) Page 4

  Go on, now!

  Kate made her decision, her hand closed over the hard, cold object, cooled her sweaty palm. It seemed to throb in her grasp like an inanimate thing that had suddenly come alive, maybe it had been sleeping and she had awoken it. She experienced a sudden urge to cast it from her, to send it clattering across the shop. And run for the door, dropping the brushes as she went. You can’t do anything to me, I didn’t steal anything.

  Instead she dropped the hobby knife with its retractable blade into the pocket of her jeans and stood by the till, the paintbrushes in her hand, waiting for the shop assistant to finish her phone call.

  5.

  The vice squad headquarters was an insignificant 3-storied red brick building half way down Walton Street. The casual observer might have mistaken it for yet another office block, possibly some bureaucratic department of the district council where everything was recorded in triplicate and filed for possible future reference. And never used. The fact that the information was futile trivia was of no consequence. It provided jobs.

  On the contrary, the files within these offices were of vital importance, no detail was overlooked in the relentless campaign against drugs and prostitution. In its twelve year history the department had amassed every available scrap of information on the city’s pushers and addicts, pimps and prostitutes, a computerised data system that was instrumental in hundreds of arrests and successful prosecutions.

  At the head of this operation was the man who waged this war with a ruthlessness that transcended all the expectations of a loyal and dutiful officer. Detective Chief Superintendent Clem Dawson had been its first chief, HQ posting, and had stayed. Twice he had turned down promotion, once at ACC, because this was his vocation, his own personal vendetta against prostitution. Drug running came a close second.

  Detective Superintendent (Divisional Supervisor) Frank Melton often had his decisions overturned by the chief. He had long learned to live with that. It wasn’t humiliation, it was departmental procedure from the top. The boss was a law unto himself; you didn’t have to like him but, by God, you had to respect him.

  Detective Chief Inspector Cliff Fallon didn’t see it that way but he kept his feelings to himself; he was too professional to voice his personal opinions. If ever he made it to the top then he would change things. Until that happened, he would do as he was told. That way you kept your job and qualified for your pension.

  The duo of detective sergeants were the workhorses; they didn’t expect anything else. The DCS knew, that was all that mattered. When promotion was on offer they hoped they might be lucky.

  Detective Sergeants Arnold and Ford had nothing in common, off duty neither would have bought the other a drink, least of all accepted one. That was a good working formula, there was no chance of friendship impairing their combined sense of duty. They had a job to do, they did it well.

  Particularly Ford.

  Together they supervised eight detective constables. A task force of thirteen in total, a compact unit. They didn’t consider the odds against, that was too demoralising a prospect. One job at a time then move on to the next.

  Dawson’s hatred of prostitutes was well known both inside and outside the force. On more than one occasion the press had dubbed it ‘a vindictive campaign that wasted the court’s time’ and hinted at legalised brothels. Kerb crawling in the city’s red light area had dropped by 50% over the last five years as he vowed to drive the whores off the streets; this had resulted in an escalation of hookers working legally from their homes, flats and bedsits, according to their status. A local contact magazine was still sold in the seedy newsagents, attempts to ban it had failed. Stickers offering sexual services appeared nightly on telephone kiosks and in the railway station area. The prostitutes needed money to finance their drug addiction, they would find it somehow by the only profession they knew.

  Six months previously a prostitute had been found murdered, the press fuelled yet another ‘Ripper’ scare. Dawson went through all the correct procedures, assisted the CID only to the extent of his obligations. An enemy casualty, one whore less. But nobody could fault the enquiry. So far the killer had not been found.

  Heavily built with thinning grey hair, Clem Dawson’s only known vice was a pipe of tobacco. Had smoking been outlawed, doubtless he would have kicked the habit.

  Bushy eyebrows and a florid complexion created the image of which he was probably unaware. He shunned publicity, press conferences were delegated to the Divisional Supervisor. Dawson was a man of few words, brusque to the point of rudeness. His greatest failing was PR.

  His private life, such as it was, was private. His home was a modest house on the fringe of the stockbroker belt, an anonymity which was all part of the man’s make-up. Only that way could he have become the legend he was. Giants were created out of supposition, familiarity bred mortals.

  Clem and Maggie Dawson worshipped every Sunday. In the cathedral. Wearing his charcoal grey suit that fitted only where it touched his pear-shaped body, his ungainly walk down the slabbed pathway to the west door was unlikely to mark him as a distinguished police officer except to those who knew him. His humility on the Sabbath was in no way an act of hypocrisy, the tenderness in the way he took his wife’s arm. Inside the magnificent edifice he knelt to pray, did not merely lean forward briefly as did many of the congregation.

  He prayed earnestly, spoke to his God.

  Maggie Dawson was several years older than her husband. She was both taller and heavier, wore dresses that had gone out of fashion two decades ago and her grey hair was fastened in a bun on the back of her head. Her lined features might have been made reasonably attractive by her discreet use of make-up. But looks were unimportant to her; cleanliness was next to Godliness but cosmetics created an artificiality that was a lie in the eyes of the Lord, she had once told a Conservative Tea Club meeting. She had often been quoted on this.

  The Dawsons were childless. One found it difficult to imagine there ever having been a sexual relationship within their marriage or even if they had ever been young. Affection, companionship certainly, but not passion. They had been born that way, they lived that way. You got a crazy notion that they would go on forever. Dawson would retire but he would not change. When that day came nobody would know how he and his wife passed six days of the week but they were guaranteed to attend matins on Sunday.

  Melton addressed him as ‘boss’, Fallon ‘sir’. They enjoyed the chief’s holidays more than their own. On several occasions he had been known to recall them from leave or to suspend leave. The unit was afraid of him in varying degrees. With the possible exception of Ford.

  Detective Sergeant Jason Ford was Dawson’s protégé. Via Melton, down through Fallon. No commendations for a job well done but Ford didn’t get his arse kicked when there was a balls-up (which was rare), so everybody knew how it was. What mistakes you made, you learned by. The chief was grooming a future successor, maybe five or ten years hence.

  Ford had that ruggedness, self-assurance, that were the making of a good cop, he even looked the part out of uniform. A few years ago his size would have disqualified him from entering the force; these days it was quality, not quantity, that counted. Short-cropped dark hair, a nose that had been broken in adolescence and never re-set, muscle that gave him a stocky appearance.

  A man of few words, he only said what was necessary, in clipped tones. Often when he was ‘swanning’ around the red light district with Arnold he did not utter a word all night. If he spotted something, a suspicious slow moving car or a prostitute pressing herself back into a doorway, his nasal grunt was a signal to his companion either to stop or to follow. Arnold had learned to interpret the other’s various utterances. He tolerated them because Ford was a good man to be out with.

  When suspects had to be interviewed, the DCI left it to Ford. A shrewdness and cunning, combined with that same ruthlessness spawned by the Chief usually got results. They had one indisputable common denominator – a hatred of prostitu
tion and all that it encompassed. It was a trade in death whichever way you looked at it; women sold their bodies, spread fatal diseases via their despicable clients. So that they could buy the drugs they craved. So that they died, too.

  If the vile trade had just wiped out hookers and their clients, that would have been fine, rid the world of a scourge and its perpetrators. But it didn’t, it dragged in innocent kids, killed them, too.

  Eliminate prostitution and you hit the drug trade – hard. That was fantasy, an impossibility. So you just waged a continual war, hatred and revenge eating up mentor and protégé alike like a slow cancer.

  But Ford didn’t have anything to live for outside the force. If he had at the outset, he didn’t now. He had known for a long time that his wife was having an affair, she didn’t even try to hide it these days, didn’t bother with alibis any longer for those nights she was out. Sometimes she didn’t come home at all.

  He wondered if they had ever really been in love. Probably not. There had been a strong physical attraction on both sides, it had grown stale, palled. The tension hadn’t helped; a policeman’s wife always lived with the fear that one night her husband might not come home. Rather than sit in, jumping every time the phone or the doorbell rang, she had taken to going out. Maybe in the beginning she had resisted the temptations, he would never know for sure. He didn’t want to know, any more than he wanted to know who the other man was. Good luck to them both.

  He just wished that they could get it over and done with, that Serena would go. That way he would know where he stood. He wouldn’t marry again, maybe not even another relationship.

  The streets were deserted tonight, the only parked vehicles belonging to those who had the misfortune to live in this degraded area. Dawson’s purge on kerb-crawlers had been effective to the extent of driving the trade underground. A lull. The hookers were still scared after Amanda Chapman’s murder. Her murderer had gone to ground, they wouldn’t catch him now unless he killed again. A one-off. The press had gone quiet on their Ripper story.

  A girl in a mini skirt was walking down the opposite pavement. She saw them, knew an unmarked car by instinct. They couldn’t touch her unless she loitered. She quickened her pace. She was on reconnaissance, sussing out the situation like Arnold and Ford were. A cat and mouse game.

  “We’re wasting our time,” Arnold halted at a junction, turned left.

  His passenger gave no sign that he had heard, Ted Arnold could be annoyingly negative at times. Ford scrutinised every alley, every doorway. Where once a score or more girls had stood, now they were devoid of life, just the odd prowling tom cat or scavenging mongrel. The pavements and gutters were littered. Lights shone behind curtained windows; the mode of business had changed.

  Ford grunted suddenly, straightened. The driver braked instinctively. Fuck you, Ford, you’re barely human at times. Most of the time.

  The Montego slowed to a crawl. Arnold couldn’t see anything but obviously his colleague had spotted something.

  Another grunt, more nasal. Stop.

  The car was at a standstill, its engine ticking over. Ford depressed the door handle and his seat belt simultaneously, swung himself out on to the pavement. Now there was a purposefulness about his every movement, a tensing of his small, powerful frame. A half crouch, peering into an alleyway past a boarded up shop. A beast of the night hunting by scent; it knew where its prey lurked, was moving in for the kill.

  Momentarily Ford was swallowed up by the shadows, then he reappeared, his fingers gripping the wrist of a lanky, shabbily dressed girl, leading her back to the car.

  Arnold let out his pent up breath, sighed his frustration as he recognised the female in the light of a streetlamp. Loony Liz, the most well-known hooker on the beat. For Christ’s sake, there was nothing to be gained by booking her!

  “I’m arresting you, taking you to the station,” there was a viciousness in Ford’s softly spoken words. “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  For fuck’s sake, you stupid bastard.

  The nearside rear door opened, Liz slid along the seat, made way for her companion. “Hi, there, Sergeant!”

  Arnold half-turned, caught Ford’s eye, there was something almost fanatical in the other’s expression.

  “Is it really worth it?” Arnold asked.

  “Just doing our job. Get going, we don’t have time to hang around.” Because we have to get back here, see what else we can find.

  “I‘aven’t fucked tonight,” their passenger spoke regretfully, “so I ain’t done nothin’, ‘ave I?”

  “Soliciting”, Ford’s tone was abrupt, he sat looking out of the window.

  Liz giggled.

  “Shut up!”

  Arnold let in the clutch, the car glided forward. This was one time you really got pissed off with Jason Ford. Liz didn’t do anybody any harm, she wasn’t even on drugs, she couldn’t afford them. Her customers were those who went to her either in desperation or because they couldn’t afford one of the other girls. Fifteen quid up against a wall in some dark alley. Five quid for a rub, ten quid for a blow job. Some of the time she slept rough.

  They were almost at the turn into Walton Street before she spoke again. “There’s a new girl on the job now, Sarge.”

  “Who?” Ford’s head jerked round.

  “Dunno her name, saw her for the first time last night. Big girl. Fair Hair.”

  “Where?”

  “’Er was standin’ on the corner of Junction Road tonight. If you’d left me alone, gone on down, you’d’ve seen ‘er.”

  Ford was slipping out of his seat belt as they turned into the station yard. A couple of the DC’s could see to Loony Liz, charge her and let her go.

  He and Arnold had to get back fast, see if they could find the girl of whom Liz had spoken. Liz knew every pro on the beat; a stranger on the job was an interesting turn of events.

  “Stay right there,” he spoke aside to Arnold as he bundled their charge out of the car. “I’ll be right back.”

  Arnold kept the engine ticking over, the other would be as good as his word. He yawned his boredom. Tracking down pimps and pushers offered a challenge, they usually did a stretch. Slags off the street got a minimal fine, went back out to earn the money to pay it off. Whoever this ‘new girl’ might be, it was hardly worth the petrol to go and bring her in.

  But that was Ford, big or little fish, he didn’t let up until he got a conviction.

  Three minutes later they were on their way back down to the red light area.

  6.

  Kate was savouring the days of preparation. That abortive mission down to the red light district had been both foolish and dangerous, even as a reconnaissance it had served no purpose. Because the only car that had crawled the streets that night had undoubtedly contained undercover vice squad officers. She had pressed herself back into a darkened alley and watched it go past. After that she had headed for home. She had been scared.

  Next time, though, it would be different.

  With hindsight, had she picked up a ‘client’ she would have performed nothing more than a clumsy mutilation. She would have received bad press; her revenge mission would not have been credited with the artistry it deserved. For circumcision was an ancient art.

  She wondered why she had not thought of the Jewish library adjoining the synagogue before. Because she had been too impetuous, had not given enough thought to planning. Anticipation was as pleasurable as the deed itself.

  It took courage to go into the library. It was so much smaller than the public one, the gloom lit by wall lamps above each section of shelving. The place smelled heavily of incense.

  “May I help you?” An ageing man wearing a black skull cap looked up from a desk just inside the door, regarded her quizzically.

  Her stomach knotted, she had a momentary urge to run. She thought her vo
ice quavered as she replied, “I’m working on a project, a history of Judaism. I wondered if I might do some research?”

  “With pleasure,” he smiled, waved a hand in the direction of the books. “We close at four. You may read whatever you like but we don’t allow the books to be borrowed except by members of the synagogue.” You’re a Gentile, I can tell.

  “Thank you,” she felt herself start to tremble with relief.

  At least he had not asked about her project. A re-take of A level RE might have sounded feasible. Except when you were all knotted up with guilt and fear.

  She found the History of Circumcision virtually straight away. It told her everything she needed to know.

  The Modern Medical: Often performed without a full anaesthetic, using only a local. Cut at the first tip and slice behind the lips of the glans penis (the ridge around the penis head). The foreskin is then cut on both sides until the incision meets. In the case of an adult, stitching is required.

  Jewish: The night before the circumcision the ritual knife is wrapped up and placed beneath the patient’s mattress. Equipment: -

  Silver probe to loosen the foreskin

  Silver shield for holding the foreskin

  Ritual knife: the handle is made of silver or gold with Hebrew inscriptions.

  First, the foreskin is pulled out and probed. Then the circumciser draws the foreskin through the shield. The split in the shield is very fine and thus protects the penis head. The sharp ritual knife is drawn swiftly over the surface of the shield, severing the foreskin.

  The foreskin is placed in ashes to preserve it and will be buried with the circumciser when he dies.

  The penis is then sucked, the saliva acting as a healant. The cut edge of the foreskin is folded back and it will quickly grow over the wound. Antiseptic powder is sprinkled on the wound.

  Islamic: The victim is tied up or restrained. In Africa, the patient must blow a whistle as the cutting is done. The knife resembles a small billhook.