SHADOW CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  Jimmy looked blank. ‘You know me. I’m useless at this personal stuff. I can’t read people’s moods any better than the man in the moon. The boss is the boss. He’s a good bloke, so I just get on with my job and leave that kind of stuff to you. Listen, I’m starving. Fancy a pie and a pint? We’re off duty now.’

  Lydia hesitated for a moment. ‘Okay. I’m glad we came back in though. I wondered if the boss would be here, worrying. He takes his responsibilities too seriously sometimes. I didn’t want him hanging around waiting for us, not with his wife as ill as she is. He’s got enough on his plate.’

  * * *

  After a hurried lunch, Lydia finally managed to contact Andrea Ford in the middle of the afternoon.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t make it. There was an emergency down here in Weymouth,’ the detective explained. ‘We only had a two-hour window to raid a drug gang. I tried to phone you but I couldn’t get through. That’s why I called Jimmy.’ Her voice sounded distant and Lydia strained to make out what was being said. ‘The signal’s weak. There must be a line problem at the moment.’

  Andrea’s voice had all but disappeared, so Lydia gave up. Instead, she called the Dorset police communications unit to discuss the problem but was met with a puzzled response. ‘We’re not aware of any issue,’ the technician said. ‘I’ll investigate and get back to you.’

  Lydia sank back in her chair, deep in thought. Finally, she picked up the latest Ministry of Justice report on the prison problem and began to read it. Its contents were deeply troubling. It was clear that the smuggling of goods into prisons had got out of hand, and she could see why. The miniaturisation of mobile phones was making it almost impossible for the prison authorities to prevent them reaching inmates. The latest range would fit inside a lipstick case, designed to slide into a woman’s clutch bag for an evening out, but also easily smuggled into a prison during visiting time. Particularly worrying were those made entirely of plastic, undetectable by the ageing scanning equipment installed in most prisons. They clearly made a mockery of attempts to keep high category prisoners in a communications limbo. Technology was evolving faster than the methods governments used to control its use, and would go on doing so.

  Lydia read on. Smart thinking was required here, not an obvious feature of some of the justice department civil servants that she’d met at security conferences, clearly overworked and undervalued by their political masters. Every single aspect of public service was being systematically stripped to the essentials and run by stressed-out staff. It’s a wonder social structures manage to keep ticking over at all, she thought wryly.

  She looked at the clock. She should have been home hours ago. She slid the report and a few other documents into her bag, grabbed her jacket from the hook and was about to leave the office when her phone rang. It was the communications technician. There had been no issues with county communications over the last few days, and certainly not at midday. One of his colleagues had been on the line to Weymouth police station several times during the late morning and had reported no problems with voice clarity or broken connections.

  ‘That isn’t to say it didn’t happen,’ he went on, ‘the gremlins can strike at any time. The log shows the call coming into your office at noon, the one your colleague took. We couldn’t see any other attempts at calls around that time.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Lydia replaced the phone. Was something strange going on here?

  Chapter 2: Death

  Saturday Afternoon

  Laura Quigley slipped into her daytime coat and draped a scarf around her neck, calling up the stairs, ‘I’m just off to the shops, Tony. I’ll be about an hour. Are you alright?’

  She listened to the muttered, grumpy reply. She couldn’t make out every word, but its meaning never varied. It was always the same when he was ill in bed like this, uttered in a self-pitying moan: you go out and enjoy the fresh air and meet people and leave me alone here, ill in bed, festering. Quite honestly, she was utterly fed up with him and his constant complaining. Other people with coughs and colds didn’t make as much fuss as him. She knew he had chronic liver problems but who was to blame for that?

  She pulled on her gloves, opened the door and stepped out into the fresh air. She tugged the door shut and, as was her habit, tested that the lock was fully engaged. She spotted one of the neighbours across the road, wiping down her front windows, and walked across for a chat. The usual stuff — the weather (chilly for the time of year), prices (getting dearer all the time), men (always moaning about something, and totally useless in the kitchen) and the state of Tony’s health (worsening slowly and steadily). By the time the two women had exhausted these topics, the sky had darkened noticeably, and Laura was concerned that it would soon start raining. She gave her apologies and hastened towards the shops. She occasionally wondered whether to look for a part-time job, just to get out of the house more often and avoid the sour atmosphere created by Tony’s constant complaints. She’d given up work when his various ailments had first developed, soon after he’d taken early retirement. They’d planned to fill their later years with travel and luxurious living, but his liver disorder had put paid to such fancy schemes. The reality was entirely different to the expectations she’d had just a few short years ago. Tony had turned into a lazy, grumpy, monosyllabic, brooding presence in the house and she’d grown to hate him. She must have been blind to have missed the signs all those years ago when they’d first met. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She knew she’d deliberately overlooked them because of the lavish gifts he’d showered on her and the luxury Spanish holidays they’d shared. Miserable git. Why didn’t he just hurry up and die? Shocked at herself for thinking such a thing, Laura shook her head and hurried towards the local supermarket as the first drops of rain began to fall.

  On her return she called her usual greeting. ‘I’m back. Alright?’ She walked through to the kitchen and dropped the bag of groceries on the table before returning to the hall to hang up her coat and hat. Still no sound. She called up the stairs again. ‘I said, I’m back, Tony. Are you okay?’

  Silence. This was unusual, but maybe he was asleep, which he often was mid-afternoon during one of his spells of sickness. She returned to the kitchen, tidied the groceries away and put the kettle on. She glanced at the newspaper. Squabbling politicians, knife crime, poverty and overpaid football stars. She sighed, extracted two mugs from the cupboard and made the tea. A couple of half-hearted stirs with an old teaspoon, a slightly soft biscuit from a dented tin on the shelf and she was ready for the trek up the stairs to her irritable husband.

  She pushed the bedroom door open. He was lying on his front, his face buried in the pillow. Somehow it looked unnatural. She hurried across and grasped his hand, hanging lifelessly over the edge of the bed. It was icy cold. The mug of tea fell from her other hand, spilling its contents over the old mottled-green carpet. She lunged forward, feeling desperately for a pulse or any sign of life. There was none.

  * * *

  Sergeant Rose Simons, West Dorset’s most experienced uniformed sergeant, sat in Laura Quigley’s lounge drinking tea, her eyes flickering around the sitting room before they settled on the tearful home owner.

  ‘This must have come as a terrible shock to you, Mrs Quigley. He was obviously unwell, but no one’s ever prepared for a sudden end like that. You must be devastated. Is there anyone I can contact? Family members?’ She watched Laura’s face.

  Laura shook her head. ‘We never had kids. Tony never wanted any. I’ve got a sister, but she lives in Birmingham. Tony fell out with his brother and sister years ago, and they’ve never kept in contact.’

  ‘We’ll ask one of your neighbours to pop in. It’ll be better to have someone around for a while. Maybe Mrs Grayling?’

  ‘I’ll be okay, honestly. He wasn’t much company at the best of times. In some ways it’s come as a relief as well as a bit of a shock. He was getting impossible to live with, especially on bad days like today. Ever since he retired two years ago, h
e was making my life a misery.’

  Rose observed the woman closely. Would she be capable of hastening the end of the man she’d lived with for several decades? It was hardly likely, but something about the death wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t just the corpse’s face and Laura’s concern about the patio door, something else didn’t make sense. It had been the neighbour opposite, the one called in by the distraught Laura Quigley, who’d told Rose of her concern. Through the frosted glass of their front door she claimed to have seen movement on the Quigley’s stairs, at a time when Laura should still have been at the shops. Had it been the now-dead Tony Quigley, moving around for some reason? But his wife had said he hardly ever rose from his bed on one of his bad days. The man’s slippers were still neatly arranged beside the bed, toes pointing outwards, just as she’d left them when she’d tidied the room after lunch. She was adamant that he would never have left them like that if he’d been up. They’d have been kicked off carelessly.

  Could someone have called? If so, how would he or she have gained entry with both doors safely locked and the windows secured? Could the neighbour have imagined the movement? Rose was unsure. Frances Grayling appeared to be a sharp-witted and observant person, but the afternoon had been a gloomy one, particularly once the rain had started to fall. She had also insisted that the blurred figure she’d glimpsed rapidly descending the stairs in the Quigley’s house had been darkly clad, yet the dead man’s pyjamas had been pale blue. And she’d also been adamant about the speed of descent. Neither Quigley himself, nor his wife, could have moved so quickly. Either she’d imagined the incident or . . .

  Rose looked up as her assistant, PC George Warrander, entered the room.

  ‘The medics have finished, so they’re ready to move your husband out, Mrs Quigley. Is that alright?’

  Laura nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Go ahead. Whatever has to be done, just get on with it. Look, I should have left him years ago. I kept telling myself that, but I was just too weak-minded to actually do it. Well, now it’s happened I can’t pretend to feel things that I don’t.’

  ‘What was your husband’s line of work before he retired, Laura?’ Rose asked.

  ‘He was a prison officer, down at Portland.’ She turned away to gather the mugs together.

  ‘Do you keep a spare key to these French windows hidden somewhere out the back?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Yes. But it’s in a little key safe, with a combination.’

  ‘What’s the combination, Laura?’

  ‘It’s Tony’s birthday. Sixteen eleven. Sixteenth of November. Tony used it for all his combinations.’

  * * *

  ‘What do you think, boss?’ asked George Warrander as they made their way back to the car.

  ‘My nose is twitching a bit and you know what that means,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe you’re going down with a cold?’

  Rose looked exasperated. ‘I’m the one who cracks the jokes around here, Georgie boy. Don’t try to muscle in or I’ll transfer you to the night shift on New Year’s Eve. No, there’s something not right about that death. I think I’ll give Barry Marsh a call and talk it over. I know our local CID will need to get involved but I’m still allergic to Stu Blackman. With family liaison looking after the merry widow, we’ve got some time to dig around a bit. Did you have a chance to check out her supermarket receipt? Do the times tally?’

  ‘Exactly with what she and the neighbour said.’

  Rose often displayed a hard-bitten, couldn’t-care-less attitude but George had quickly learned that this was all for show, part of her coping mechanism. Her offbeat humour was merely a shell, and the quirky behaviour was only partly successful in camouflaging the very efficient and organised approach to work that lay underneath, along with a surprisingly caring attitude. Not that Rose didn’t have a temper. He’d been on the receiving end several times and didn’t enjoy the experience one bit.

  ‘Was there something else that made you suspicious, boss? That movement spotted by the neighbour could just have been a trick of the light.’

  Rose pursed her lips. ‘His face and eyes were a bit pink. Maybe it was down to his illness or the medication he was on, but it sounded a little warning bell.’

  George looked puzzled. ‘So?’

  ‘It can be a sign of smothering, a pillow or cushion pushed hard into the face. The paramedic spotted it too.’

  ‘Ah. And that combination on the key safe was too easy to guess. For someone who knew him, anyway.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  George unlocked the car and waited patiently as Rose walked around the vehicle scanning it carefully, even though it was raining. He’d given up trying to point out the odds against a mad assassin fixing a bomb to the underside of her car, and now merely sat in silence.

  ‘One day, Georgie boy. One day. And then you’ll be glad that I bother to check it out.’

  George wondered if it would ever be worth rigging up a spoof bomb, complete with flashing lights, just to see the effect when she spotted it. No, that would be too cruel. It was her idiosyncratic quirks that made her into the person she was, and he didn’t want to destroy their special relationship. He was very lucky to be her work partner, and he knew it.

  He slid into the car and waited while she walked across to the last member of the paramedic team, busy packing his kit into the ambulance. She was back within a couple of minutes, looking cheerful.

  ‘See? I told you it was going to be a good day,’ she said as she settled into the passenger seat. ‘Gotta date with him. He’s off duty tonight, so we’re going out for a curry.’

  ‘Good for you, boss. But take my advice and steer clear of the Vindaloo.’

  ‘Okay, okay, Mother Hen. No need to nag.’

  George thought it wise not to remind her of their last Indian meal. Her stomach still sounded like a set of leaky bagpipes hours after the meal was over. Instead, he tried the diplomatic angle. ‘Seems a nice bloke. Good looking too.’

  ‘Hands off, Georgie boy. He’s all mine. Maybe I could dip him in curry sauce and lick it all off.’

  George looked at her with horror. ‘Chocolate, boss. It’s chocolate. Maybe honey. But definitely not curry sauce. Trust me on that.’

  ‘No imagination, that’s the trouble with you younger generation. But maybe you’re right. Let’s get going.’ She waited until they turned onto the main road leading into the town centre, then added, ‘Maybe stop off at that chocolate shop on the High Street?’

  * * *

  George Warrander was scheduled for an extra shift that night, working Dorchester’s town centre. Maybe it didn’t quite present the challenges facing the police in some of Britain’s more notorious inner-city beats, but the pub and restaurant area of the town was still fairly lively. He was kept busy by the boisterous groups of youngsters roaming the nightspots, noisily moving from one favoured location to another. George was a natural at this kind of work. It was only a few years since he’d been a student in Bournemouth and he’d loved the nightlife. Maybe Dorchester’s social scene was lower key, but he knew what attracted the youngsters and, more importantly, he knew the kind of behaviour that might spark off trouble. Better to head it off before friction started, rather than waiting for a fight to begin.

  He spotted the off-duty Rose Simons a couple of times during the evening, although he doubted that she’d noticed him. She’d looked entirely focussed on her date, and quite right too. The first occasion was when he saw her enter a pub in the early part of the night, although he’d had to look twice to assure himself that it really was her. He’d never seen her so dressed up before, even at the police Christmas party. She was wearing a tight-fitting red dress and heels. He only noticed the dress because she’d unbuttoned her coat as she approached the doors. Good for her! It was all too easy to make lazy assumptions about how a middle-aged person ought to behave, particularly when she was your boss. Later, he’d spotted her through the window of the curry restaurant, laughing at something either she or her date had s
aid. George kept a closer than usual eye on the immediate locality. He didn’t want his boss’s evening out spoiled by any thoughtless morons out on a rampage. She deserved time for a spot of romance in her life, and George would do his best to ensure she got the chance.

  He turned and watched a group of about a dozen men walk past, heading for one of the town’s less salubrious pubs further down the street. They’d need monitoring. They weren’t the usual mix of Saturday night revellers — half-drunk youngsters tottering about in seriously inappropriate clothing. No, these men were heavily tattooed, shaven headed and intimidating, looking as if they were spoiling for a fight. George radioed back to the station. He didn’t like the look of that lot one bit.

  Chapter 3: Mugshots

  Monday Morning

  Lydia arrived at work early on Monday morning and spent the first hour looking through mugshots on the database. Surely someone as intimidating as the ringleader of the Saturday pub gang would have some kind of criminal record? She was still intrigued by the group’s presence in the bar — had it been purely coincidence, or had it been the result of something a bit more worrying? Had news of the planned meet up somehow slipped out to people who had something to lose?

  None of the faces she flicked through bore a resemblance to the angry man who’d confronted her. She checked the time, not wanting to be late for the morning briefing, and as she looked back at the screen she recognised the next face displayed. It wasn’t the person she’d been looking for, no. Instead she found herself viewing the record of the taller, thinner man from Saturday, the one who’d laid a hand on her antagonist’s shoulder, as if to calm him.

  Lydia examined the details closely. Luke Boulden was a thirty-six-year-old from Weymouth who’d been convicted of several offences since his teenage years, including minor assaults and affray. None of these were serious crimes, but that could be the sign of someone who knew how to remain in the background, out of the eye of the police. Lydia tried to think back to the interaction on Saturday. She’d assumed that Mr Angry was the ringleader of the group, but this man Boulden must have had some influence, from the way he’d followed Mr Angry across the room and attempted to calm him.