The Hidden

by Sally Spencer

  Smith sighed. ‘All right.’

  ‘Where do you work, Mr Smith?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Is this really relevant?’

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘I’m not actually working at the moment,’ Smith said.

  ‘So you’re unemployed.’

  ‘I prefer to think of it as resting between periods of employment – a little like an actor.’

  ‘And what do you do for a living when you are working, Mr Smith?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘I’m a counsellor.’

  ‘And what does that mean exactly?’

  ‘It means that when people have problems in their lives, they come to me and I counsel them.’

  ‘Are you trained?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘I’m not sure quite what you mean by that,’ Smith said evasively.

  ‘I mean that if I asked you to produce a certificate from an institute of higher education, would you be able to do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So basically, you’re unqualified.’

  ‘I have a natural talent for the work, and I have learned much from watching others.’

  ‘So you’re sensitive to other people’s emotions and concerns?’

  ‘Highly sensitive.’

  ‘Except that when you’re playing Diplomacy, your opponents hardly exist as people at all.’

  ‘I have the ability to delineate my work from my pleasure.’

  ‘I wish I could do that,’ Meadows said reflectively. ‘You say you didn’t know Mary Green?’

  ‘That’s right – I never met her.’

  ‘How about the parents – Mr and Mrs Green?’

  ‘I don’t know them, either.’

  ‘What about Mrs Brown?’

  ‘No, I don’t know her.’

  He realized his mistake the moment that the words were out of his mouth, but by then it was too late.

  ‘Now that is interesting,’ Meadows said. ‘If you’d asked me that question, I’m sure I’d have said something like, “Do you mean Mrs Joan Brown who used to be landlady of the Rising Sun, or are you talking about Mrs Gwyneth Brown, the vicar’s wife?” But not you! You don’t know any Browns.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Smith agreed, through teeth which were almost clenched. ‘I don’t know any Mrs Browns.’

  ‘How strange, when Brown is such a common name,’ Meadows mused. ‘And come to think of it, Green’s a common name, too.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Not to mention “Smith”.’

  ‘You really have to go now,’ Smith said.

  ‘There are a couple more things—’ Meadows began.

  ‘You really have to go now,’ Smith repeated.

  And he was right. They had nothing on him, and if he wanted them to leave, there was nothing they could do about it.

  With three of them in the technology room, there was no room for anyone to move, and so, with some show of reluctance, Colin Beresford had stepped out into the corridor.

  That had been ten minutes earlier, and now he was starting to worry that maybe Jack Crane was not presenting the evidence in the right way, and DCI Dixon would dismiss this line of inquiry as a complete waste of time.

  And it was vitally important that they catch this feller, he told himself, because somehow the belief had become fixed in his mind that if they didn’t catch him, Monika would never come out of her coma.

  The door opened, and Rhino Dixon squeezed his big frame through the technology room’s narrow opening into the corridor.

  ‘He’s a smart lad, yon Crane, despite him having got his mind all messed up by going to university,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir, he is a smart lad,’ Beresford said, not quite ready to feel relieved yet, but pretty close.

  ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that it was Mary Green on that motorcycle, and there’s absolutely no doubt that the man who was driving it is our murderer,’ Dixon continued.

  Beresford felt a sudden (and totally unexpected) wave of doubt wash over him. Yes, he thought that the feller on the bike was the murderer, and yes, he had been praying that Dixon reached the same conclusion. But Rhino’s cast-iron certainty unsettled him. Because when you were so certain, you ignored anything that didn’t fit neatly into your theory – and when that happened, you could get things so very, very wrong.

  ‘Yes, Crane’s done a good job,’ Dixon continued. ‘I’ll make sure it’s written up in the most glowing possible terms.’ He checked his watch. ‘Now if I was you, I’d take young Crane out for half a dozen pints of best bitter, if that is, university boys drink best bitter.’

  ‘What about the investigation, sir?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘What about it?’ Dixon asked, putting on a fair show of being completely mystified.

  ‘Well, we need to trace the licence plate, and then we can—’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that,’ Dixon said. ‘That’s nowt but coolie work. The real job has already been done, and what’s left is no more than a mopping up operation. My team can handle all that, easily enough.’

  ‘With respect, sir, I’d like my team to play a central part in the rest of the investigation, too,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Ah, but there’s the point,’ Dixon asked, his voice hardening a little. ‘It’s not your team at all, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Beresford asked, knocked completely off-kilter by the unexpected nature of the words.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Dixon confirmed. ‘It’s DCI Paniatowski’s team – and right now, she isn’t here to command them.’

  ‘I don’t see what difference that makes, sir,’ Beresford said. ‘DCI Paniatowski trained us to operate indep—’

  ‘Of course you don’t see what difference it makes,’ DCI Dixon interrupted him. ‘That’s because you’re seeing this through an inspector’s eyes, looking up – a sort of worm’s eye view, if you like – while I’m viewing the whole matter from above, which means I’m able to get everything in perspective.’

  That was the biggest load of bollocks he’d heard in a long time, Beresford thought, but it was clear that the DCI wasn’t going to budge, so there was no point in arguing.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Colin – we’ll get your man for you,’ Dixon continued, ‘and Crane will get a nice big gold star on his very next report card.’

  But it wouldn’t be Crane’s face in the papers, Beresford thought. Not that that really mattered. The only thing that did matter was arresting the bastard who’d attacked Monika, and as long as he was confident that DCI Dixon was the man for the job, he really had nothing to worry about.

  The problem was, he had been growing less and less confident by the minute that DCI Dixon really was the man for the job.

  PC Harry Nettlebury had joined the police force because he craved excitement, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that he’d have found more thrills and spills as a bouncer at the Women’s Institute.

  Take this latest job as a prime bloody example. There was a murderer on the loose – a man who, moreover, had left a senior police officer in a serious condition. And what part had PC Nettlebury to play in the chase? He and his partner had been driven to the woods in a police van along with half a dozen other young constables, and told to search a specific section of it inch by balls-aching inch.

  That was what they been doing for the past several hours.

  And what was it they were looking for?

  Ah, well, you see, nobody seemed to know that, but they were not, presumably, looking for the half a dozen used contraceptives that he’d discovered during the course of his search, and, as per instructions, had bagged up.

  As he searched, there was a part of him that said he had had enough of this lark, and he’d find some other line of work, but there was another part (a much more powerful part) which accepted that, while his mother had never wanted him to join the police force, she’d wring his bloody neck if he left it now.

  ‘I think I’ve found something,’ said PC Cowgill, Nettlebury’s
current partner, who was working along the other side of their allotted strip.

  ‘More rubber johnnies?’ Nettlebury asked in disgust.

  ‘No, I think it’s a woven basket of some kind,’ Cowgill said.

  Suddenly, the whole thing was becoming interesting.

  Nettlebury turned, so that he was crouching next to his partner, and looked at Cowgill’s discovery.

  It certainly looked like the corner of a wicker basket, poking out of the ground from beneath a bush.

  ‘Maybe we’d better call the skipper,’ Cowgill suggested.

  Bollocks! Nettlebury thought. They hadn’t called the skipper when they’d found the rubber johnnies, and he could see no reason to call him now.

  ‘I think it’s wedged in some kind of hole – maybe a collapsed rabbit warren,’ Cowgill said.

  It seemed likely, Nettlebury thought.

  ‘I’m going to try and prise it free,’ he told his partner.

  ‘I still think we should get the skipper,’ Cowgill said worriedly.

  But Nettlebury had already got a grip on the projecting corner, and was trying to coax it out of the ground.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ he told his partner.

  And then, suddenly it was. The basket flew out of the ground as if it had a will of its own, and Nettlebury, caught off-guard, lost his grip of it in the middle of performing an involuntary backward somersault.

  By the time he righted himself, Cowgill had placed the basket on more level ground and was in the process of lifting the lid.

  ‘Careful,’ Nettlebury warned him, ‘it might be a bomb!’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Cowgill asked, pulling his hand away from the basket as if it had just burned him.

  ‘Do I think it might be a bomb? No, not really,’ Nettlebury said, lifting the lid himself.

  It did not take him long to regret wresting the honour from his partner. The sandwiches, inside the basket, were being earnestly worked on by the most revolting looking maggots he had ever seen, and the stench was overpowering.

  Nettlebury banged the lid down again. He gagged, but did not vomit, and after a couple of breaths of fresh air, he began to feel slightly better.

  ‘Now you can call the skipper,’ he said in a voice which, even to him, seemed half-strangled.

  The two cars had been parked on Birch Avenue – one up from number 27, one down from number 27 – for nearly half an hour. Each car contained two men, and they had been carrying out what in the fashionable jargon du jour was called a ‘target assessment survey’. What that meant in practice was they were doing their best to ensure that the men who would be carrying out phase two of the operation did not come up against any unpleasant surprises.

  The men about to enact phase two were sitting in an unmarked van just up the road, dressed in full riot gear.

  They had already been briefed by DCI Dixon.

  ‘This Jim Coles is a dangerous man,’ Dixon had said. ‘He’s killed a girl, and put a senior police officer in a coma, so I don’t want you taking any unnecessary chances. On the other hand, I don’t want you using unnecessary force, either, because if his brief manages to get him off on the grounds of police brutality, I’ll show the officers involved what real brutality really is.’

  Now, Dixon was sitting in his Mercedes-Benz, next to the unmarked van. Beside him, in the passenger seat, was DS Higgins, who was already wearing a stab-proof vest, and, once he was back inside the van, would be donning one of the heavy helmets.

  They watched, as another van, this one bearing the logo of the local television network, drove slowly down the street, and came to a halt opposite number 27.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ Dixon said.

  ‘I don’t imagine you were,’ Higgins said, with a grin.

  ‘So who tipped the buggers off?’

  ‘It was probably some subordinate of yours who thought it might be good for your image if there was film of the team that you lead arresting a vicious murderer,’ Higgins speculated.

  ‘Yes, that was probably it,’ Dixon agreed. ‘What I should be doing now is telling someone on my team to make sure that the television van is clear of the area before I send any men in.’

  ‘Should you, sir?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘On the other hand, the very act of moving the van on might alert our suspect to the fact we’re here, and thus make taking him into custody a much more dangerous procedure,’ Dixon mused.

  ‘Just what I was thinking, sir,’ Higgins said.

  Dixon glanced down the road.

  ‘The television people should have had time to set up by now, so let’s do it,’ he said.

  It was the first time any of the officers in the back of the police van would have had to face a murderer, and the atmosphere was tense – a mixture of subdued excitement and barely concealed fear.

  ‘Don’t worry lads, you’ll do what you need to do,’ Higgins told them. ‘And just think how chuffed your mums will be when they see you on the telly.’

  ‘How’s she going to recognize me with this bloody big helmet on?’ one of the constables asked – and all the others laughed.

  That was better, Higgins thought – that was the frame of mind he wanted them in.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to the driver.

  The van moved slowly down the street, as if the driver had a delivery to make, and was not sure he had the right address.

  When it stopped in front of the suspect’s house, Higgins clicked on his radio.

  ‘Are you in place, Team B?’ he asked.

  ‘Affirmative, we are in place,’ a slightly metallic voice replied.

  ‘Then go!’ Higgins said.

  The back doors of the van flew open – just as, on the street parallel to this one, the back doors of a similar van would be flying open – and six pairs of heavy boots hit the ground.

  Now was the time when every second mattered – the time when niceties went by the board – and with that in mind, the leading officer did not waste time lifting the gate latch, but instead kicked it open with his boot.

  The officers rushed up the path, trampling the borders of delphiniums as they went. It took them no more than five seconds to reach the front door, and it was only another five before the bobby with the hand-held battering ram had reduced the lock to a piece of twisted junkyard metal, and had pushed open the creaking, splintered front door itself.

  Higgins checked quickly over his shoulder, and saw that the news crew had – just as he’d asked them – waited until the unit had reached the front door before starting to get out of the van. By the time he emerged with the prisoner, he thought, they would be in just the right position to do the scene justice.

  Then he wiped all thoughts of the media out of his mind, and stepped into the hallway.

  Two of the team were already disappearing up the staircase, another two were heading down the corridor towards the kitchen, and a fifth was waiting outside the front parlour door for Higgins’ instructions.

  From inside the parlour, he could hear the sound of the television, but whoever was in there wasn’t watching it. Whoever was in there was waiting – maybe with a knife in his hand – for someone to come through the door.

  As Higgins reached out for the door handle, his heart had moved into over-drive.

  It should be all right, he told himself. He was wearing both a stab-proof jacket and helmet, for God’s sake. But as DCI Dixon had warned them earlier, Jim Coles had killed Mary Green and put Monika Paniatowski in hospital – and he had nothing to lose by causing another serious injury.

  Higgins opened the door. Two people – a man and a woman in their late fifties – were sitting on the sofa. The woman had a china teacup in her hand, and was holding it rigidly as though she were a wax dummy. The man sat open-mouthed, his eyes fixed blankly on the flickering television screen.

  They were both, understandably, in a state of shock, and had been since they had been presented with a series of noises which they had been unable to process i
nto a coherent narrative, because nothing remotely like this had ever happened to them before.

  Shocked, they might be, but Jim Coles, murderer, they certainly weren’t.

  Higgins held out his warrant card, confident that it was a complete waste of time.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Higgins,’ he said. ‘I want you to keep calm, because there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.’

  From overhead came the sound of banging in the bedrooms, and the couple on the sofa instinctively, though without any real comprehension, raised their eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘Forget that for the moment!’ Higgins said. ‘I need to identify you. Are you Mr and Mrs Coles?’

  The woman showed absolutely no reaction at all, but the man did manage a slight nod.

  ‘We need to talk to your son, Jim, Mr Coles,’ Higgins said. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  Coles nodded.

  ‘So where is he?’ Higgins asked.

  Mr Coles raised a trembling hand, and pointed at the wall directly in front of him.

  ‘Are you saying that he’s next door, at number 25?’ Higgins asked.

  Because if he was next door, it was just possible that he might be able to slip away in all the confusion.

  ‘No,’ Mr Cole said, in a thin, broken voice, ‘he’s there.’

  Where? He was still pointing at the bloody wall, Higgins thought.

  And then he had the sickening realization that Mr Coles wasn’t pointing at the wall at all, but at the fireplace, and, more specifically, at the china urn which was resting on the mantelpiece.

  He walked over to the mantelpiece, to get a closer look. The urn was mounted on a small wooden plinth, and there was a brass plaque attached to the plinth.

  Jim Coles

  1958-1977

  A beloved son

  Sadly missed

  Higgins turned, and looked out of the window. The news cameraman was in place at the shattered front gate, and the television reporter was standing beside him. He had promised them a scoop, but all he had to offer them was a fiasco.

  The boss would have his balls for this, he thought – and, inside him, it felt as if someone he was very close to had just died.

  Louisa sat next to her mother’s bed, looking for some sign of life – for a little of the spark that she had come to associate with this woman.