by Hayden, Mark
Fran and Helen exchanged a glance. It was Helen who responded. ‘Not if we have anything to do with it. She’s bad news, that girl. What are you asking about her for?’
‘It’s her father,’ explained Fran to Helen. ‘He’s the deputy chief constable.’
‘That’s right. I’ve been looking through some of DS Griffin’s old cases, and it seems he was called out to a shop in Earlsbury one Saturday morning in the summer. The owner had caught Pandora shoplifting. Do you remember hearing anything about that?’
‘No, thank the Lord. Was it in July?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Because Lizzie went through a phase of trying to impress Pandora. Even invited the girl to her birthday party. It didn’t last because Lizzie and her real friends just aren’t cool enough for the likes of Pandora.’ She sighed and waved her hand towards the outside world. ‘Do what you like. If it’ll help bring us closer to knowing what happened to Pat, I don’t care. Besides, Hope lost her father, too.’
‘Thank you. We won’t take up any more of your time.’
Back in the car, Hayes asked if he really thought the bomber had been with Patrick when he died.
‘Him or a friend of his, but I don’t think we’ll find out from Francesca or Helen Lynch. Let’s get you home.’
It was a plain van that brought Clarke’s first shipment of new money. He received a call, and the next morning he waited at the lock-up in his Land Rover to keep warm. Right on time, the shipment arrived, and one crate was unloaded from the hydraulic ramp at the back. He used his sack barrow to wheel it into a corner. He recognised the driver – it was one of the men who had extracted him from Four Ashes Farm after the shootout with Croxton. The man didn’t say a single word and didn’t ask him to sign for anything.
Clarke swapped his thermal gloves for latex ones and levered the top off the crate. There was some straw, and then a collection of Afghan village goods. The craftsmanship on some of the metalwork was exquisite, and he put it aside to take to his father at Christmas. Although the old man had sold up the antique shop some time ago, he still liked to keep his hand in.
Underneath the final layer of straw was the cash. Another half million – but this time in Euros. Damn. He was going to have to go to bloody France in this weather, and he didn’t fancy trying to smuggle his AK47 through the Tunnel.
He repacked the crate and locked up. Driving back down the yard, he saw the Kirkham men heading into the farmhouse, just as a florist’s van appeared. He pulled up and went over.
‘It’s for a Mrs Kelly Kirkham,’ said the delivery driver, holding out a small but intricate Christmas wreath.
Joseph said, ‘Some mistake, lad. We’ve not ordered that.’
‘I did,’ said Clarke.
‘What?’
‘Sign for it, and I’ll explain inside.’
Joe took the wreath and they headed inside. While they were taking their boots off, Clarke whispered to him, ‘Look, I’m not being funny, but I wanted to make up for the pheasants. You give it to her.’
‘No. It’s you that needs the Brownie points,’ said Joe, and he thrust the wreath into Clarke’s hands.
Clarke took it over to the table. Kelly seemed genuinely touched. ‘It should last outside until the New Year with all this cold and wet weather.’
Joseph nodded his head. ‘We haven’t had a wreath on the door since Joe’s mother left. Thank you, Conrad.’
Kelly flashed him a smile. ‘You’re not trying to make David jealous, are you?’
‘No, never,’ said Clarke. ‘For the record, I’m seeing someone, but they’re away on business. I hope she’ll be back next summer.’
‘What’s she like? Is it serious?’
‘I’d like it to be serious, but she’s had a lot going on in her life. And she’s a bit younger than me.’
‘How young?’
‘A bit younger than you, I think. She’s twenty-seven.’
Kelly looked at him open-mouthed. He might as well have expressed an interest in her daughter, so aghast was her look. Then she remembered her manners. But not for long. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, Conrad, how old are you?’
‘Thirty-seven.’
She sat down with a bump. ‘Oh my God. How long since you’ve seen her?’
Clarke shifted from one foot to the other. Joseph was giving him an evil grin and said, ‘See what we have to put up with? She’s like this all the time with her mates. Sit down, lad, before you faint.’
‘I saw her in the summer, before I went to Afghanistan, and that was only for five minutes. The last time I really saw her was in the spring.’
‘You can’t see her like this,’ said Kelly, gesturing at him from his shaved head to his socks. ‘She’ll find someone younger if she comes home to you looking like that.’
‘Here,’ said Joe, ‘leave the poor bloke alone. He got blown up this year.’
Kelly was shaking her head. ‘You need a makeover, Conrad.’
He looked at her smooth skin and at her husband’s cheerful youthfulness. They had been at school together and were of an age. She was right: Mina already had a new jaw and would soon have new teeth. Behind the curtain of hair, she was a young woman who had once enjoyed a vibrant social life. If she made a full recovery, wouldn’t she want to do so again?
‘Would the baby’s car seat fit in the Land Rover?’
‘Yeah. Are you taking me up on the offer?’
‘If your husband doesn’t mind.’
Joe made an expansive gesture with his hand and that made it somehow worse. Clearly the man thought he was no threat to his marriage whatsoever. It was Joseph who spoke up, ‘If you’re going out, Kell, can you get that new Christmas tree you’ve been on about? I’ve some money for it.’
Kelly nodded.
Clarke said, ‘Shall we go to Preston?’
Kelly shook her head. ‘No. This is serious business. We’re going to the Trafford Centre; anything else would be too little too late.’
Clarke drank his tea and suffered the indulgent gazes of the Kirkham family. Even the baby seemed to pity him.
David Nechells walked into the interview room and looked carefully around him before sitting down. He and Tom studied each other for a second. The one chink Tom could see in Nechells’ armour was that this was a man who would have preferred to be in a suit. Apparently, the wearing of uniform on all occasions had been brought in by the new Chief; archive pictures of Nechells showed that he had rarely worn it before. Consequently, the buttons glinted rather than gleamed, the creases didn’t go all the way to the top of his trousers, and his belt was doing a little too much work to hold in his paunch.
He was still a deputy chief constable though.
‘Thank you for your time, sir. We’ll try not to keep you too long,’ was Tom’s opening remark. He cringed inwardly, but couldn’t help himself. As if to reinforce his natural superiority, Nechells waved away his apology like Louis XIV accepting the grovelling of some courtier.
Tom gritted his teeth and went through the formal notices, and then he took a deep breath. ‘This investigation requires us to take witness statements from all officers and staff present at the budget strategy day at the Victoria Hotel. Can you recall that day?’
‘If I have to. It wasn’t my favourite day of the year so far. Just as we’re starting to make headway with some of the gangs in Birmingham, and we’re getting crucial intelligence on Islamist activities, they tell us that we’ve got to cut our budgets. Not just cut them but slash them. Makes me wonder whether it’s worth applying for chief constable jobs in a climate like this.’
Another way of putting him down. Tom pressed on. ‘I understand that the meeting went on rather late and finished at six minutes to eight. Can you talk me through what happened next?’
‘I turned on my phone, put on my coat and left the building.’
‘Did you get any messages?’
Nechells eyes narrowed and his tone shortened. Ever so slightly. ‘Yes, I did. Fro
m my wife, wanting to know why she was at our daughter’s parents’ evening on her own. It didn’t go down very well.’
‘Did you reply to the message?’
‘Why on earth do you want to know that? It can’t possibly have any bearing on your investigation.’
‘I should have made myself clearer. I don’t need to know the contents, just whether you actually spent time composing a text message.’
‘Yes, but it was a three-word message – Sorry. Just finished.’
‘And then what?’
‘At that time of night, it takes forty minutes to get to Stourbridge if you put your foot down. I reckoned I’d make it in time to see the last few teachers and go back to the others if there was a particular problem.’
‘So you left fairly quickly?’
‘Yes. I sent the text, grabbed my coat and put it on as I was heading down the corridor.’
‘Did you see anyone else?’
‘No – or if I did, I don’t remember. I just got out and got into the car. What’s this about?’
‘I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you that DS Griffin, DC Hooper, Dermot Lynch and Robert King were all shot that night, and that I’m conducting an investigation into corruption centred on DS Griffin.’
Nechells became tight-lipped. ‘I have nothing to add to what I’ve said already. The meeting finished, I left, I went straight to St Modwenna’s. I spoke to no one on the journey and sent only one message. I have no idea what any of the other officers or staff were doing. Oh … the Chief seemed in no rush. I noticed that.’
‘Thank you. That’s very clear.’ Of course Nechells would notice what the Chief was doing, thought Tom. I’ll bet he spent the whole day trying to second guess his boss’s views and then pretend they were his own. Tom moved some papers on the desk and prepared himself for the next question. Nechells didn’t show any sign yet that he was ready to go.
‘How did the parents’ evening go?’
‘Fine.’
‘It’s just that I understand that Pandora can be a bit of a handful.’
‘Just come out with it,’ said Nechells. ‘I know what you’re going to say.’
‘Then I’ll say it. Your daughter was caught shoplifting earlier this year, and the store manager called the police. DS Griffin attended.’
‘Yes, he did. And before you say anything, I didn’t know what was going on until afterwards. I was down in London visiting my mother that day. She’d just come out of hospital. DS Griffin was on duty when the call came in, and he recognised my daughter’s name.’ Nechells put his hands on the desk. ‘I can only imagine that Griffin thought he was doing me a favour. I didn’t ask him to – and to be honest, I would have preferred it if he had sent someone who had no clue who Pandora was.’
‘Are you saying that DS Griffin was instrumental in convincing the manager not to press charges?’
‘I know that for a fact because my wife told me. Griffin didn’t have my mobile number, of course, so he rang home and spoke to my wife. It would have happened with any child of a similar age. She hotfooted it down to the station, and Griffin told the manager that – to save them both the trouble of sorting out the paperwork – he would read the riot act to my daughter.’
It was feasible. The police looked after their own, even when it meant bending the law. Griffin would much rather curry favour with the deputy chief than have to administer a formal caution that would go on Pandora’s record. ‘And did he read her the riot act?’
‘Yes. With my wife present. He scared Pandora witless. She’s not as tough as she likes to think she is.’ Nechells smiled to himself. ‘I rubbed salt into the wound by dragging her back to the shop to apologise. It was a very difficult summer holiday this year, I can tell you.’
‘Thank you for being so frank, sir. There’s just one more question, for the record. Have you had any other contact with DS Griffin?’
‘Yes. There was a major incident a couple of years ago, which I led. Griffin was on the team, and I watched him interview a suspect. He was rather good. I spoke to him afterwards. Other than that, I’ve nodded to him a few times and we’ve often been at the same events or in the same presentations.’
‘And nothing else.’
‘No. I’ve told you that.’
‘You have. That’s all, sir. DC Hayes and I will be writing up a statement. As Pandora wasn’t charged with any crime, there won’t be any need to bring her into it.’
‘As you wish, but don’t leave her out on my account. I would have preferred it if she had been charged.’
The deputy chief picked up his hat and left them to it. Hayes was giving him daggers as he walked out of the room, and Tom was desperate for the man not to look back. As soon as the door had closed, she said, ‘Bloody typical. Rich white girl gets away with it. Poor black girl gets a record. It makes me sick.’
‘Me, too, but I don’t think race had anything to do with it. If Nechells had been black – like Khan, for example – I’m sure Griffin would have done the same.’
‘Khan’s not black, sir. He’s Asian.’
Tom held up his hands in surrender, but Hayes wasn’t finished. ‘And did you see the way he stared at me? If I hadn’t been wearing a jumper, I would have had to move. He kept trying to look at my tits.’
There was no answer to that. After the first few minutes of the interview, Nechells had shifted slightly in his seat so that he was facing Hayes, but Tom thought that he was trying to see what she was writing, not to give her the once-over.
‘So … you don’t like him. Do you think he’s telling the truth?’
She flicked through her notes for a second. ‘Yes, I think he is. At least, I don’t think he’s telling outright lies. I just get the feeling we weren’t asking the right questions. But even if we had, I’ve no idea whether he had anything to do with it.’
Tom had to agree with her.
After all she had been through at the hands of various maxilo-facial surgeons, Mina didn’t think it was possible to have odontophobia, but she did: the thought of walking into the dentist’s surgery was almost more than she could bear.
The market square in Cairndale was quite sweet, in sort of grim Northern way. Most of the buildings were old, and she was no architect, but she thought that the grey stone looked quite nice. Except that it was the same colour as the grey sky and the grey cobbles which disappeared under the stalls of the Saturday market.
A small section had been cordoned off in the middle, and a notice from Cairndale Town Council said that the Christmas Tree would be erected there from Monday, and that the lights would be switched on at a ceremony next Thursday featuring the Salvation Army Band. Quite a big event, evidently. She felt an awfully long way from Chiswick as the crowds milled past her. Everyone gave her a wide berth, and at first she thought it was because she was the only non-white person anywhere. Then she realised that they were like that all the time. People up here really were more polite.
Six of them from the prison had been dropped off at the edge of the market, and five of the women had gone to Saturday jobs in various shops. They were all close to the end of their sentences and were being allowed a chance to get a reference from a real employer. ‘You’ll be rich,’ Mina had said in the minibus. ‘Even at minimum wage, you’ll be on three times your prison rates.’
‘Aye, but we don’t get it, do we?’ responded one of them. ‘It’s all kept back until we leave. I’m due a few hundred now.’
The prison was very open compared to her last place. There were hardly any searches unless you had gone into the community, apparently, and many of the women had mobile phones. Mina wondered if she should get one. The clock struck ten, and she couldn’t wait any longer. The dentist’s window had a smile in it. A six foot wide smile made of stained glass. It sent shivers down her spine, and she had been standing with her back to it to avoid looking at the nightmare vision. She turned round, covered her eyes and pushed open the door.
A buzzer sounded in the back,
which was good, because there was no one on duty. She could tell that it was a private practice because the curved reception desk was made of polished wood and the carpet was thick enough to soak up most of the sounds. Almost immediately, a young and rather attractive dentist came through to meet her.
‘Hello there. I’m Luke Morrison: you must be Mina.’
He held out his hand for a firm handshake, and his smile was a wonderful advert for his own work. Except that, surely, he couldn’t do his own dentistry, could he?
‘Yes. Mina Finch. From the, erm…’
‘HMP Cowan Valley. Yes. That doesn’t matter here – I’m only interested in your teeth. Go through to the surgery, and I’ll be with you in a minute. It’s at the top of the stairs.’
He pointed to the back, and Mina walked up the staircase. She had swapped some cigarettes yesterday for the loan of some skinny jeans, which made her feel quite good about herself, and she opened the door to the surgery with a flourish. A few steps into the room, she sensed someone behind her.
‘Hello, Mina.’
‘Conrad!’
She whirled round and, without thinking, she threw herself in his arms. He lifted her off her feet, and she buried her face into his neck. He had a new smell. A clean, almost industrial smell with a hint of something metallic; it was the first time he hadn’t stunk of cigarettes. He held her off the ground for a long time and then lowered her gently to the floor.
She stood back and brushed her hair away. It wasn’t just a new smell. He was wearing a new leather jacket over a chunky-knit sweater and a grey knitted cap. Her eyes travelled down to a smart pair of jeans and new brown brogues. On the way down, her eyes had paused where he was showing just how pleased he was to see her. She felt a response inside her and nearly ripped his new jeans off in the surgery.
The thought of the dentist was like the cold wind at the prison. It ran down her back and she swallowed with fear. ‘What are you doing here, Conrad? If anyone finds out, you’ll go straight to jail.’
‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ As he said it, the little smile twitched up the side of his mouth, and she hit him on the chest.