Joe Johnson looked like a criminal, to most people who came across him.
The police know that criminals come in all shapes and sizes, that the biggest villains often look the most innocent and straightforward people: that is part of their equipment. But the public have some fairly straightforward ideas about what they usually call a ‘jailbird’. Such a man – female criminals are much less sharply etched in the public mind – usually has flat features, short, straight hair, minor scars about his visage, and narrow eyes.
Joe Johnson had all of these. He also had unusual irises in those eyes. They were grey, but the remarkable thing about them was that they seemed completely dead. Watchful, even sharply observant, but dead to all emotion. It was not just that they concealed his feelings; with a little practice, most people can do that, though the writers of fiction do not acknowledge it. It was rather that these eyes gave the impression that no emotions at all took place behind them. It was very unnerving to the people who received most attention from those grey eyes.
And on this Tuesday morning, several people found themselves under that intense scrutiny. When he was making a tour of his business interests, Johnson didn’t spare his employees. They were left in no doubt of what he required.
Among other things, Joe Johnson was a successful pimp. Living off immoral earnings, the law called it, but the law was usually stumbling along well behind Joe Johnson. You needed witnesses to bring a court case. But the people who might have put Johnson behind bars were not willing to testify in court about the things he did. He had people who made sure of that. Fear was a powerful weapon, the best of all tools for men who made their money as Johnson did.
He was bigger than this now: he didn’t need to go round collecting his money. Most of the time, he sent one of his minions out to do that. But he liked to keep himself in touch; hands-on management, they called it. Besides, he enjoyed frightening the women who worked for him.
There was quite a lot of money due to him after the weekend’s activities. Sally Aspin had the notes ready for him. ‘Ninety-four pounds,’ she said, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice.
‘It’s not enough.’
‘It’s right, Mr Johnson. It’s half of what I took, honest it is.’
He looked at her steadily, letting the distaste creep slowly into the flat features. ‘Then you’re not taking enough, are you? Simple as that.’
She was thirty-eight, looking five years older in the morning light. She had the blonde hair and buxom figure that men usually found attractive. But she was running to seed a little now. Her heavy breasts were sagging somewhat, even in the best, expensive bra she kept for her work on the streets. He was surprised to see no dark at the roots of the hair; perhaps the flaxen shade was natural to her, after all. But the hair had lost the lustre it had shown in her heyday, and the conventionally pretty face was looking heavy-featured now, with the suspicion of a double chin, and deepening lines around the eyes and the mouth.
He would dispense with her soon. She was getting very near her sell-by date, this poor man’s pin-up. In a year or so, perhaps, he would replace her with a younger model, and she would be banished from his patch. Meantime, there was a thousand or two more to be squeezed from her ageing body. He said, ‘You’ll have to work harder. Put your back into it. Use your assets.’ He laughed harshly at his own joke.
Sally Aspin wasn’t laughing. She’d made herself up carefully, knowing Johnson would be calling for his money this morning. Now she was willing herself not to cry, knowing the tears would ruin her eyeshadow, knowing from previous experience that Johnson saw tears only as a sign of weakness. She said, ‘It’s hard, coming into winter. They’re not as randy as they are when the weather’s warmer.’
‘Or you’re not as tasty as you once were. The other girls still bring in the money, Sal.’
She sought desperately for words which would convince him. It had been easier with her first pimp. He’d been small-time, less relentless. He’d knocked her about a bit, from time to time, but at least he’d been open to argument if she’d had a bad week. And he’d been willing to take payment in kind, had Steve. He’d have a roll in bed with her, knead her ample curves, and go away happy. She wouldn’t try paying that way with Johnson: not ever again.
Sally had never found out what had happened to Steve. He’d disappeared. This hard, brutal man had thrust his way into her house and told her that he’d bought out Steve’s patch, that she wouldn’t be seeing Steve any more and would be paying her dues to him in future. Steve, even with the odd back-hander across her belly or her face, seemed now to represent a lost Eden, when the money had come easy, the streets where she plied her trade had been protected, and they’d even had a few laughs.
Sally Aspin thrust out her pelvis and said with a foolhardy hint at jauntiness, ‘They haven’t the same money, most of them, not coming up to Christmas. But what they have, Sally will have out of them!’
‘Will she indeed?’ He smiled a mirthless smile and took her chin into his hand before she could shrink away from him, holding her face up towards the light. ‘You’ll need to convince me of that, you know. The wear and tear’s getting to you, girl! The wrinkles are beginning to show. The punters don’t like old meat. And there’s plenty of kids queuing up to put young meat on the counter for them.’
He was hurting her. She tried to pull her chin away from him, but he sank his thumb and his fingers harder into her cheeks as she tried to withdraw. The pressure distorted her words as she said, ‘There’s plenty of them want a – a more mature woman. They have more confidence with a woman who knows what’s what, some of them.’
It was true enough: some of the shy ones were happier with someone who showed them the ropes, led them on a little. Why then could she not make the argument more convincing, why did she quail before Joe Johnson’s harsh, pitiless grey eyes?
He gripped her face harder, digging his nails into the flesh where her chin met her neck for a last, sadistic second before he let her go. ‘Is that so? No accounting for tastes, is there? Must be perverts, to take someone like you, given the choice. You’d better get out there and find more of these perverts, then, hadn’t you? Up your takings for your Uncle Joe.’ He laughed at that thought, stringing his mirth out as he caught her shuddering despite herself.
Then he pocketed his money and went out to his Jaguar. He’d give the poor cow four more months. Perhaps five, if she was lucky. Take her through to the lighter nights, when there were more punters about and the work became easier, and then drop her for some kid. It would give him plenty of time to recruit a replacement.
Best part of the job, that was, recruiting.
The Scenes of Crime team discovered a few things during their detailed examination of the bleak site where the body had been found. The most important one was that the girl had not been killed there.
There were footprints around the puddles, in the damp cindery waste where a mill had once stood. Too many footprints. Children played in the area, as Tommy Caton and Jamie Betts had done. More importantly, adults used it as a short cut, on their way to work or home from the pub. There was a multitude of footprints available, once you studied the ground closely. Some of them probably belonged to a murderer, but which ones?
It seemed likely that the girl had been dumped in the shed immediately after she had been killed, for the evidence of hypostasis suggested that she had not lain anywhere else but the shed. That meant that the footsteps which interested them were not going to be the most recent ones, but imprints which had been made at least two days and possibly longer ago than that. And it had rained over the weekend: not the torrential downpours which would eliminate all traces of where people had trodden, but three periods of steady, obfuscating drizzle.
Jack Chadwick, the SOC officer, brought in the forensic boys to take careful moulds of several shoe and Wellington boot prints from near the entrance to the rotting shed. The murderer’s might well be among them, but Chadwick had as yet no idea which ones they were.
The women Joe Johnson was visiting were very different in appearance, and came from very different backgrounds. The one thing they had in common was that they were alone in an uncaring, even hostile world. Joe preferred it like that. It made things much simpler, when people were alone.
Katie Clegg was twenty-seven. She had two children, plus an ex-husband who wasn’t keen on paying maintenance and wasn’t easy to track down. She was a willowy brunette, pretty enough to attract serious male attention. But most of the men veered away when they found she had two children in tow. And Katie was cautious about any lasting attachment: once bitten, twice shy, her friends said, and she was forced to agree with them.
She lived in a small nineteen thirties semi-detached house, pebble-dashed and drab, reaching the age when it needed a lot of maintenance. She was watching at the cheap wooden bay window for Johnson’s arrival, anxious to give him his money and have him gone. She didn’t want to be linked with a man like that by the ageing eyes which peered out from behind the curtains around her. She was the subject of quite enough local gossip already.
Joe Johnson would not have registered as an intelligent man in any standard test. But he had that instinctive shrewdness in assessing situations which many successful criminals possess. He sensed the nervousness in Katie Clegg immediately and knew that she wanted to be rid of him. So he sat down uninvited in an armchair and determined to stay for a while.
‘Thought we should review your activities, young Katie,’ he said unpleasantly. ‘Assess your progress and set ourselves future targets.’
He had thought to bewilder her, but Katie Clegg was not unfamiliar with business gobbledegook. She had been a personal assistant to a sales director before her life went wrong. She said without looking at the man in her chair, ‘I have done everything you asked of me.’
‘So you have, Katie, so you have. So far. And I’ve done everything to protect you. The law’s been kept off your back. No one has interfered with your patch. No other employer has threatened to take over your services.’
He had hesitated fractionally over the word ‘employer’; Katie gave an involuntary, bitter smile. ‘And you’ve had no reason to complain about your takings from me.’
Johnson grinned back at her. He liked a feisty woman. It made a change from the defeated demeanour of most of the women he used: like flattened grass, they were. A bit of spirit was all right in a woman. Especially when you held all the trump cards in your hand. He nodded at her. ‘You’re doing all right, Cleggy.’ He lifted the hundred and fifty pounds she had just given him upon the palm of his hand and nodded his satisfaction. ‘Might be time to think of a little expansion.’
Kate’s face clouded. This was why she feared this man’s visits more than anything in her life; more even than police exposure and disgrace; far more than the men to whom she sold herself, who were mostly pathetic creatures. She said dully, ‘I’m doing all I want to do. All I can do. Four nights is enough and more than enough. I’ve two children to look after.’
He smiled up at her, taking his time, taking care to drop his threat so that it would make maximum impact. ‘Two children who might end up in care if anyone chose to give the authorities the details of how you support them, Katie. Let’s not forget that.’
She found herself holding on to the back of an upright chair for support as her head swam. Someone should kill this man: he was vermin. But no one would. Life didn’t work like that. She wanted to pick up a knife from the kitchen and fly at him, but she knew she could not do that. Those round-faced, innocent children in the new school uniforms she had bought for them would be lost without her to look out for them. ‘I’m only doing this as long as I have to, you know that.’
He allowed himself a broad smile this time, looking up into the white, oval face, mocking her naivety. ‘You might have to do it a bit longer than you think, Kate. It might not be you who makes the decision about hanging up your knickers and suspenders.’
‘I’ll go whenever I can. I don’t intend living like this for a second longer than I have to!’ She spoke the words slowly and through clenched teeth, looking not at Johnson but through the window at the dank and dripping garden.
He waited until she glanced down at him, as he knew that she eventually must. ‘All I’m saying is that you could earn yourself a little more, Katie Clegg. Maybe even keep the extra completely for yourself, as a generous bonus from a grateful employer. I might be prepared to take my extra commission in bed, from a looker like you.’
She clenched the back of the chair with both hands, feeling sick as the full implications of his words sunk in. She said as carefully as she could, ‘I’m not available, Mr Johnson.’
He laughed, then stood up unhurriedly. ‘Funny attitude for a tom to take, that. Just trying to put a little more cash in your pocket, young Katie. I’m sure you could use it.’
‘I can manage. Maybe I’ll get some maintenance, next month.’
‘And maybe you’ll see a herd of flying pigs. But I wouldn’t rely on it.’
He took his leave of her on that. Little pep talk would keep her up to scratch. And he wasn’t joking: he wouldn’t mind an hour or two in the sack with the delectable and feisty Katie Clegg.
It was the uniformed police, pursuing the dull but necessary routine of house-to-house enquiries, who came up with a possible identification for the dead girl.
The information shot quickly up to the top-storey office of Chief Superintendent Tucker and straight down again to the desk of DCI Peach. The information was dodgy, and it would need an identification of the body to confirm it, but the age and the initial description of the girl who had gone missing were right.
She was from Lancashire, but not from Brunton. She came from a village on the other side of Bolton: about twenty miles away. The next of kin seemed to be the parents. There had been no report of a missing person from them. If this was their daughter, someone would have to break the news to them that she was dead.
Joe Johnson’s third call was on a nineteen-year-old.
Toyah Burgess was more nervous than either of the others. Or perhaps, having seen so much less of life, she was merely less skilled in concealing her feelings. She was only nineteen, but already an experienced prostitute.
She had the money ready in an envelope on the window sill by the door for him. A hundred and fifty pounds. It was a lot for what he offered her. But she was in no position to resist; it had taken a couple of sharp warnings from Johnson’s heavies to make that situation clear to her.
The glint of a knife blade near her face beneath the street light; a huge fist raised for a moment above her small head with its golden hair. No blow struck: they were under strict instructions not to damage the goods which were on sale. And once they started, they didn’t always know where to stop, these men: they were not employed for their restraint.
Joe Johnson counted the money slowly. He knew it would be right; these women had more sense than to try to cheat him. But he enjoyed watching the tension build in the young face beside him. She hadn’t invited him into her living room, so he looked round the hall. ‘Nice carpet. New, isn’t it? I must be paying you too much!’ He laughed at his witticism.
He didn’t pay her at all, she thought. He took money from her: took much more than his due of what she earned by lying on her back for men. And lying in other positions and doing other things too. He didn’t know the half of it, this man, with his smooth suits and his scars and his blank, frightening eyes. She said, ‘The carpet didn’t cost much in the sale. And we shared the cost.’
‘Very nice, that, being able to share. Nicer still, if you could up your takings a little. As I’m sure you could, an attractive young beauty like you!’ He smiled into the wide, frightened blue eyes, ran his gaze approvingly over the bleached blonde hair, dropping his scrutiny first to her breasts and then to the triangle where her legs met her stomach beneath the cheap cotton dress.
‘I’m taking all I can, Mr Johnson. I can’t charge them any more.’
‘You could get more customers, though, with a little effort. Make a killing while you can, girl, is my advice. Looks don’t last for ever. Been talking to one old slag this morning that I’ll have to put out to grass before long. So don’t you keep sitting on a fortune – get it out and use it, I say!’ He laughed out loud at the coarseness of the thought, keeping his eyes still on the triangle of her assets.
Toyah Burgess was young, despite her experience on the game. She was still green enough to think she could ask for concessions from Joe Johnson. She took a deep breath and embarked on the words she had planned before he came. ‘As a matter of fact, I was going to ask you if you would consider cutting the rate I have to pay you, Mr Johnson. The percentage of what I take seems an awful lot to pay, for what I get out of it.’
Johnson’s smile died very slowly, as if he could scarcely believe what he was hearing. It was replaced by something very different; when Toyah recalled his face in the small hours of the night, as she did several times in the days which followed this meeting, it seemed to have the terrifying savagery of an ogre.
He transferred his eyes back up to the young, fearful, heart-shaped face. ‘Think you’re not getting value for money, do you, my dear? Pity, that. I keep the competition away from your patch, young Toyah. Even a youngster like you would have to work a lot harder for her money if there were other tarts flashing their fannies around the street! You’d soon find your dainty little quim wasn’t in such demand if you had to put it on the counter and let the punters choose, I can tell you!’
He was getting really annoyed now, his voice surging upwards on the rising tide of his anger. Toyah thought he was going to hit her unless she could do something to stem that tide. She said despairingly, ‘All right, all right! I was only asking if you could see your way to a little reduction. If you can’t do that, we’ll go on as we are! Sorry I asked, honestly I am!’
He stilled his breathing, controlled the excitement which had risen in him with her distress. Then he growled at her, ‘I hope you do, Toyah Burgess. Because I’d hate anything to happen to you!’
‘Happen to me?’ She echoed his words stupidly, her fear making her speak when she should have been meekly silent. She knew a lot about men and their sexual demands now, but still very little about the rest of life.
‘Yes, dear, happen to you, that’s what I said.’ He reached out, following her as she flinched away, and took her small chin into the iron grip he had fastened upon the fleshier jowls of Sally Aspin an hour earlier. ‘Because it’s me who provides you with protection, you know. Protection against the people who prey on people like you. Peddling your pussy might be an easy way of making money, but it can be a dangerous one. Not everyone in the game is as kind and considerate as Joe Johnson, you see. Look what happened to that girl the other night. The one who was dumped in that shed on Dover Street. That Sarah Dunne. I’d hate anything like that to happen to you, Toyah Burgess.’
Toyah wondered how Joe Johnson knew the name of the dead girl.
He held her chin for a moment longer, her pain increasing as his grasp tightened still more. Then he released her, studied the marks his hand had left on her flesh for a moment, nodded twice at her to emphasize his message, picked up the envelope with his cash, and was gone without a further word.