by Jo Bannister
She believed that too. It was etched in every line of his face, the awkward, unhappy set of every muscle in his body. He was a terrible liar, like Guy insisting he hadn’t raided the cake tin when there were crumbs all over his jumper, but even if he’d been much better at fibbing he couldn’t have been that good. He looked broken. He looked more like the man she’d first met than he had in two years.
Hazel put her hand on the table. After a moment she extended it towards him.
Ash made no move to take it.
‘Gabriel – you have to meet me halfway.’
He stared at her hand, then at her face. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want me touching you,’ he murmured.
The smile came more easily than she’d expected. ‘That ship sailed long ago.’
It crept into his face that he knew what she was saying, but still didn’t quite dare to believe it. ‘We can get past this?’ It was much more a question than a statement.
‘Stranger things have happened. Actually, stranger things have happened to us.’
She drove Ash and Patience home to Highfield Road. The big stone house was empty, the curtains drawn back, no lights showing. Diffidently, he asked if she would come in; almost without hesitation she agreed.
The house felt cold. Ash apologised, hurried to put the central heating on. He went to take her coat, then worried that she might want to keep it until the heat came through. As if they were strangers, and he wanted to be polite.
As Patience walked between them into the kitchen, Hazel could have sworn she saw the dog wink.
Ash made coffee. An hour later, when Hazel still hadn’t left, he put a stew to reheat in the oven and set the table.
After supper they talked about David Sperrin.
Hazel described the scratches Sperrin had spent the last minutes of his life carving into his flesh, through a pin-hole in his jeans that no one would notice until his body was stripped. She was not wholly dissatisfied to see Ash turn pale.
‘It’s hard to imagine that kind of single-mindedness,’ he murmured. ‘That much strength of purpose.’
‘He was very angry,’ Hazel remembered. ‘He was consumed by a kind of furious grief that he hadn’t been able to save that girl. That fate had put him in a place where he, and she, thought he might have done, and then he couldn’t. There was a bit of him, I think, that almost wished he’d died trying. That put a higher value on his self-respect than on his life.’
‘It’s something that people sometimes say. I don’t think many of them follow through.’
‘David always wrote his own rules. He didn’t have much of a family life – well, you know that. Apart from Pete and his sisters in recent years, I never heard that anyone held him in much affection, or that he felt anything much for anyone else. That’s usually a recipe for emotional meltdown. But if people are sufficiently strong-minded, sometimes they turn social isolation to their advantage. Instead of peering wistfully through windows at other people’s lives, they turn their backs on the chocolate-box version of happiness – the trophy spouse, the two-point-four children, the flash car and split-level executive home – and fashion a world that fits them better. I think that’s what David did. I don’t think he gave a damn for what anyone else thought of him: the only opinion he cared about was his own. It was his tragedy that what happened at Myrton left him feeling like a failure.’
‘And yet, what more could he possibly have done?’
‘Well – this,’ said Hazel. She brought the file she’d been taking home in from the car and spread its contents on Ash’s kitchen table. ‘He found the people who killed the girl we’re calling Rose. And he left us a message to tell us who they are. And – God forgive me – I can’t read it.’
Ash turned the image towards him. ‘Could it be a Chinese character?’
‘We thought of that. Dave Gorman got in an expert. It didn’t mean anything to her.’
‘It looks a bit like a vase …’
‘… Of flowers,’ finished Hazel. ‘Yes, everybody says that. Well, the brothel I found called itself China Roses. But I already knew that, and David knew I knew, so what would be the point?’
‘What else could it be, then?’
She shrugged, at once helpless and angry. ‘I don’t know! I didn’t know when I first saw it, and now I’ve been staring at it for three days and I still don’t know!’
Ash indicated the photograph. ‘What about this mark here? Just under his knee.’
Hazel got up and walked behind him, to see where he was looking. She hadn’t noticed anything other than the scratches; and indeed, the mark was so faint it might have been an artifact of the photography, except that clarity is of paramount importance in autopsy photographs.
‘A bruise?’ she hazarded.
Ash nodded. ‘Probably. Maybe it’s a hangover from his encounter with the train.’
But it didn’t altogether look like an old bruise, the yellow and purple staining surviving at the edges after the centre of the lesion has dispersed. Hazel dug in the file for her copy of the FME’s report. ‘No, the doctor reckons it was a newly acquired contusion that never had time to develop. Possibly from a blow, possibly from something he bumped into.’
‘I don’t imagine he just stood quietly while they decided what to do with him,’ said Ash.
‘No, I don’t suppose he did.’ Hazel frowned, reached for the photograph and studied it more closely. ‘I’ve seen something like this before. Rose had marks like this on her legs. More prominent but in exactly the same place, just under the kneecap.’
‘Which doesn’t really sound like the result of a scuffle,’ ventured Ash.
‘We wondered if she’d been hobbled, to restrict her movements. We wondered – well, all right, I wondered – if it meant she’d been brought through a public area, an airport or ferry terminal, where someone would have noticed if she’d been handcuffed. But I don’t think David went through an airport between here and Coventry. And I think someone would have noticed if he’d been wearing a skirt long enough to cover his knees!’
‘Then perhaps it was something he bumped into,’ said Ash. ‘Something they both bumped into. Perhaps in the place where they were kept there was some kind of structure that made it hard not to bang your knee on it.’
‘What kind of a structure?’
He tried to picture it. ‘If the shed where they found David was some kind of a transit point, where migrants were held for onward transport, there was probably somewhere they could be locked up. Storerooms, or’ – he swallowed – ‘cages. Perhaps there wasn’t much leg-room. Or perhaps there was a window they could see out of only by kneeling on the windowsill.’
Hazel shook her head. ‘There were no windows. Dave Gorman said there was nothing inside, just an empty space. I suppose there could have been cages, if they dismantled them and took them away when they left. It was big enough, and high enough, to drive vehicles inside, so no one would see what they were doing.’
Ash frowned. ‘Vehicles plural?’
‘We found a girl who travelled in an earlier shipment. She said they used both a lorry and a van. The lorry for long distances, the van for making deliveries. That’s what David saw at Myrton.’
She related other things Soo Yen had remembered about her journey from Shanghai. It didn’t take long: for all that the girl had done her best to help, she hadn’t had much useful information to pass on. Of course, it had been in the traffickers’ interests to keep their charges in the dark.
‘One thing she said,’ Hazel finished. ‘One of the traffickers seems to be a woman. Soo Yen never saw her, but she heard the drivers talking. It sounded as if the woman was the one who gave them their orders – told them where to go, who to collect, where to take them.’ She grinned. ‘They called her She Who Must Be Obeyed.’
It had got late while they were talking. Hazel gathered her file together and shrugged her shoulders back into her coat. ‘I’m going home. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ She let herself out at the front
door, and never noticed that Ash didn’t answer her, that he didn’t move, that all the colour had once again drained from his face.
TWENTY-TWO
Gabriel Ash had never been a good sleeper, even when his life was at its calmest. He’d always been able to find things to think about, often to worry about, in the quiet reaches of the night. He’d tried going to bed early and going to bed late, reading something uninvolving, and cocoa. On the whole he preferred the insomnia. Like most poor sleepers, he usually got some sleep, and often rather more than he thought he had. He found he could function reasonably well even after a run of bad nights, as long as he didn’t fall into the trap of worrying about it.
Tonight was different. He had neither the time nor the emotional energy to spare for worrying about insomnia when his head was filled, filled, with the desperate conviction that he now knew what had brought Cathy to England when every scintilla of self-preservation she possessed should have been telling her to stay away.
He didn’t even go to bed until three in the morning, by which time his body was chilled through and he could hardly drag himself up the stairs. He lay in a cold cocoon of bedding, and a cold sweat of fear, with no prospect of sleep, aware of every one of the night’s seconds dragging by, until a little after six.
He didn’t dress. He pulled a sweater on over his pyjamas, made a pot of coffee and took it back upstairs.
Patience looked up from the end of his bed. In theory she had a basket in the corner. In practice, she slept curled up beside him, pressed into the small of his back. So if he had a bad night, she had one too.
She said, So what are you going to do?
‘I’m not sure I should do anything,’ he countered warily.
Yeah, right, she yawned, you’re really good at doing nothing. At dodging the difficult decisions. It’s why your life is so devoid of incident and interest.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ he demanded. ‘Tell Dave Gorman that not only have I been harbouring a wanted criminal, not only did I help her get out of the country, but there’s a good chance she’s a prime suspect in his current investigation? Which will mean, of course, Hazel knowing that my wife may have been responsible for the murder of her friend.’
Is that what you think?
‘I can’t prove it,’ he said evasively. ‘Not to a jury’s satisfaction; perhaps not even to mine. It’s not much more than a notion, really, based on the timing of Cathy’s arrival, the manner of her departure, and what I know about who and what she’s become.’
But is it what you think?
‘God help me,’ whispered Ash. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
The lurcher’s caramel-coloured eyes were compassionate. Then what choice do you have? she asked. People have died. One of them was a friend of ours. If you have any information about the people responsible, you have no right to keep it to yourself.
‘If you can call it information. It’s only a theory. A hypothesis. I don’t know how much help it would be.’
Exactly. You don’t know. You need to share it with someone who does.
‘Hazel already knows that Cathy was here.’
Has Hazel any reason to think there’s a connection between her and the traffickers?
‘Well, no …’
No. But you have.
‘I can’t talk about this to Hazel!’ The mere idea filled him with dread.
Hazel will find out. If Cathy is involved, sooner or later Hazel’s going to know. It would be better coming from you now than from someone else later.
‘What if I’m wrong? It could easily be a coincidence. Things Cathy said that I’m reading too much into. I need more information before I do anything that can’t be undone.’
What kind of information?
‘The police may have evidence that puts Cathy out of the frame completely. Dear God, I hope they have.’
If you start asking questions, Hazel will want to know why.
‘I shan’t ask Hazel.’
Detective Chief Inspector Gorman had never had any difficulty sleeping. He fell asleep every night as soon as his head hit the pillow, or the back of his armchair, or sometimes the wooden screen dividing the snug from the rest of The Poacher’s Arms. The Poacher wasn’t Norbold’s official coppers’ pub, but it had the massive advantage of being within spitting distance of Gorman’s flat. When they woke him up at closing time, he could be home and asleep again in two minutes.
He was woken by his phone a little before seven. The fact that his alarm would have roused him within minutes anyway did nothing to salve his sense of injustice.
He didn’t need to look at the caller display. ‘What do you want, Gabriel?’
‘I didn’t wake you, did I, Dave?’
The polite response on these occasions is to deny it, however sleepily. ‘Yes,’ growled Gorman.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘What do you want me to do – sing you a lullaby?’
‘No, I mean, that’s why I’m calling so early. I’ve been awake all night. I nearly called you an hour ago.’
‘And I’m supposed to feel grateful that you didn’t?’
There was a pause. ‘Shall I call back later?’
Gorman relented. ‘No, I’m awake now. What’s the problem?’
‘Something Hazel told me. She said you’re looking for a woman in connection with the people smuggling.’
‘That’s right. Someone overheard the lorry drivers talking about her. Why?’
‘Did they give any kind of a description? Anything you could identify her from?’
‘Nothing. Why?’
If ever there was a time to learn how to lie, it was now. ‘I – er – um – thought …’ What? How could he explain his suspicions without confessing everything? A psychic dream? An alien visitation? At least that would have the merit of some truth. Gorman wouldn’t believe he’d overhead something in the pub, and it wasn’t the sort of information you stumbled across in a second-hand bookshop.
‘Come on, Gabriel, spit it out. You’ve been thinking again, haven’t you?’ Gorman said darkly. ‘I’m sure I’ve warned you about that.’
‘Well – in a way. It’s probably nothing. I thought it was in the middle of the night, but now it’s morning I think perhaps … You know how it is. You can think you’ve cracked cold fusion in the middle of the night.’
Gorman had almost no idea what he was talking about. ‘It’s still the middle of the night as far as I’m concerned,’ he grumbled. ‘I’d like to think you had some reason for waking me, other than to discuss your fantasies. If you’ve had a bright idea about who this woman might be, for God’s sake tell me before one of us dies of old age.’
‘I’m probably wrong …’
‘Every chance,’ agreed Gorman. ‘And when you get round to giving me a name, maybe I’ll be able to tell you. Gabriel – spit it out! Now!’
‘Oh God,’ Ash moaned, defeated. ‘Dave – is there any chance it could have been Cathy?’
Now Gorman was wide awake. ‘Your Cathy? Your wife? Why the blue blinding blazes would you think that?’
‘I’ve seen her, Dave. Here, in Norbold.’
Even now, the old question over Ash’s sanity made it easy to dismiss what he said, even for someone who knew him as well as Gorman did. The temptation to play amateur psychologist was too strong. ‘Gabriel, you imagined it. Wherever Cathy is now, she’ll be giving Norbold a wide berth. A berth as wide as a continent, if she’s any sense. If you caught a glimpse of someone in a crowd, or passing in a car, and thought you recognised her, well, that’s understandable. She meant a lot to you at one time. You’re bound to think about her still, to wonder where she is, what she’s doing …’
Ash spelled it out as clearly as he could. ‘She stayed in my house for three days.’
People talk about cutting silence with a knife. This silence would have required a chainsaw. It was thick and gnarly, and dripped with import like resin from an old pine. Ash didn’t dare break it, and Gorman wasn’t
ready to.
Finally the DCI said, ‘Why am I hearing this now?’ There was iron in his tone.
Ash knew he was in trouble. He didn’t expect Gorman to protect him from the consequences of his actions because they were friends. He clung to the faint hope that he might get a fool’s pardon. ‘You said it: she’s my wife. I couldn’t turn her in.’
‘You could. You should have done.’
‘I know.’ Though Gorman couldn’t see him hang his head, he could hear it.
‘Where is she now?’
‘I don’t know. I left her in a field in Cambridgeshire.’
‘Why?’
So Ash gave him a digest of everything that had passed between them. The divorce papers that guaranteed their mother would have no part in his sons’ upbringing. The business deal that had gone wrong, that explained her covert return to England. His certainty that only a genuine crisis would have induced her to take the risk. The timing: how she’d arrived soon after the episode at Myrton, and left immediately after the murder of David Sperrin.
‘I didn’t put any of it together,’ he assured Gorman abjectly, ‘until Hazel told me about the other girl, and the lorry drivers, and She Who Must Be Obeyed. Then it all made a kind of sense. At least, I think it does. That’s why I needed to talk to you as soon as was reasonable – or slightly sooner,’ he amended apologetically. ‘I was desperate for you to tell me you’d identified this woman, that she was a fifteen-stone Birmingham granny and you already had her in custody.’
‘Hazel told you that?’
‘She was here last night. We were talking about David, trying to work out what had happened.’
DCI Gorman had benefited from these brainstorming sessions of theirs too often in the past to object to one now. Ash deliberately concealing a wanted criminal in his house for three days was a trespass of a whole different order. ‘You’re telling me Hazel knew about Cathy?’