A Narrow Return

by Faith Martin

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hillary got back behind the wheel of her trusty – well, perhaps not that trusty – car for the first time in nearly two years and turned the ignition key. She half-expected it to cough like an asthmatic donkey before braying into silence, but it started smoothly first time. She patted the steering wheel in silent apology for ever having doubted it, and, leaving her bike propped up against the wall of the pub for now, turned and headed out of the hamlet.

  She passed a car parked on the side of the lane without giving it a second thought, and was back at HQ within five minutes.

  In the office, she asked Sam for his report. ‘Start with Lucy McRae,’ she began. ‘You went back to her flat yesterday evening?’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ Sam said, careful not to meet Vivienne’s eyes. Since it was unpaid overtime, Vivienne hadn’t bothered to turn up, but since Hillary Greene hadn’t asked him specifically if he’d been alone, he didn’t volunteer the information.

  Consulting his notebook, he scratched his head absently. ‘She’s only been living there for a few months – apparently the man she was living with died. None of the neighbours like her that much, guv – the women say it’s pretty obvious that she thinks of herself as a cut above the rest of them, and that she’s always on about finding somewhere better soon. And I got the feeling that though most of the men might fancy her, she wasn’t interested in any of them. I sensed that one or two had tried it on and been well and truly told where to get off! I suppose none of them are rich enough for her blood, if you get my drift.’

  Hillary nodded. It tallied with her own opinion of Lucy McRae rather well.

  ‘And the bling?’ she prompted.

  Sam was already nodding. ‘I found an old lady on the bottom floor. She says the delivery vans started arriving only a day or so ago – she can’t remember if it was Tuesday, Wednesday or yesterday – time’s a bit fluid to her, I think. But first a big fridge arrived, then the big-screen telly, then something else she couldn’t identify.’

  Hillary smiled. ‘Right. We’ll have to have another word with Lucy soon – see if we can pin her down about why she’s suddenly so flush. OK, next. How did you get on this morning tracking down Grace McRae’s movements on the day Anne died?’

  Sam flushed in excitement. Jimmy Jessop watched him with a fatherly smile. No doubt he remembered, just barely, what it felt like to be so young and eager.

  ‘It turns out the old lady could have done it, guv,’ Sam said dramatically.

  Hillary, apparently unimpressed by this revelation, merely nodded. ‘Explain.’

  ‘She was at bingo all right – a regular session was held at the village hall in Middleton Stoney. We tracked down several people who remember seeing Grace McRae there, and found the minibus driver who collected the old folks and took them there and back. But the thing is, guv, the minibus driver told us that there was a regular bus service that passed through the village, with the next stop being Chesterton.’

  Sam paused for a breath. ‘Trouble is, we can’t find anyone, well not yet, who can say for sure that Grace McRae went back on the minibus. The bingo session would have lasted from one o’clock to two forty-five, and I’ve been onto the bus company, and they e-mailed me the timetable for the year 1990–91. And there was a bus that would have got her to Chesterton in time to kill her daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Good – that shows initiative,’ Hillary put in, making Sam blush with pride.

  Vivienne said flatly, ‘Actually that was my idea.’

  ‘Then it was a good one,’ Hillary said, smiling at her.

  Vivienne smiled wryly. And thanks very much for that grudging pat on the back, she thought sourly. It was obvious to her that Sam Pickles, that long lanky piece of string cheese, was the boss lady’s blue-eyed boy. Not that she cared. The only boss she was interested in pleasing was the hunky Steven Crayle.

  ‘So we can’t rule Grace McRae out,’ Hillary mused.

  ‘I don’t suppose her DNA was tested against the hair that was found on Mrs McRae’s body, was it?’ Sam asked, then immediately felt stupid. If it had, it would be in the case file, and he knew damned well it wasn’t. ‘Sorry, silly question.’

  ‘And in order to do that now, we’d probably have to get a court order to dig the old lady up,’ Jimmy put in. ‘I doubt we’d be able to find a sample of her DNA just lying around, not after all this time. She’s been dead and gone for over ten years. And you don’t even want to know about the paper work involved in getting an exhumation order.’

  ‘Besides, the hair was almost certainly that of a male,’ Hillary said. ‘If I remember the forensic report clearly.’

  ‘Of course, we’ve made great strides in DNA profiling in the twenty years since then,’ Sam put in eagerly. ‘We could turn the hair over to Sergeant Handley for an up-to-the-minute analysis. He loves that sort of thing. He’s always boasting that he’s got friends in all the forensics labs, and can pull strings to get quick results if need be.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Hillary agreed. ‘But don’t forget, we’re running on a limited budget here, and that sort of testing costs a lot of money. I think we’ll hold off until we get it tested against Mark Burgess. About that, Jimmy?’

  ‘Yeah, guv. I’ve called him and arranged to get a mouth swab early next week. I’ve also managed to track down a judge for the warrant, but it probably won’t get done today. And then it’s the weekend, so we’re probably looking at Monday sometime.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘When you’re there, see if you can get Mrs Burgess to give a sample too – we might as well eliminate her properly.’

  ‘Want me to get her included in the warrant?’

  ‘Might as well, although I think it’s highly likely she’d volunteer anyway,’ Hillary said. ‘If she refuses, I’ll be very surprised.’

  Jimmy grunted. ‘Sounds as if you don’t much like her for it, guv?’

  ‘No. But don’t let us get discouraged. We’re making progress. Plodding away might not be glamorous and would make for a boring TV programme, but it’s getting us there. And speaking of plodding away – Sam, Vivienne, I want you to go to Peter McRae’s school. He was in some kind of trouble there at the time of his mother’s murder. I want to find out what it was. You never know what might turn out to be relevant.’

  She turned and looked at Vivienne, waiting for the snide comment. Perhaps sensing it, Vivienne kept her pretty red-painted lips very firmly shut.

  Hillary smiled, nodded, and left them to it, giving Jimmy a passing wink as she went.

  The McRaes had all gone to school in the nearby market town of Bicester. A large, sprawling comprehensive, it reminded both youngsters uncomfortably of their own school days, which were not that long past.

  Feeling very grown up flashing their ID badges with the Thames Valley Police Service logo, they were quickly directed to the headmaster’s secretary’s office.

  She was a middle-aged woman with a rounded belly, rounded face, and rounded greying bun perched high on top of her head. She reminded Vivienne of someone you’d see on a child’s set of playing cards. Mrs Bunn the baker’s wife, or some such stupid thing. But she had sharp blue eyes that watched them both carefully, and she said not a word as they explained, somewhat less than succinctly, what it was they needed. Since they tended to take turns in explaining what they wanted, the woman kept looking from one to the other, like a spectator at a tennis match.

  ‘Let me get this clear,’ she said, when they’d finally finished. ‘You want to find out what kind of trouble an ex-student of ours was having in the summer of 1991?’ She sounded both slightly disbelieving and incredulous, as if they might as well have asked her to produce Lord Lucan.

  Sam felt his heart sink.

  ‘Well, to begin with, Mr, er, Pickles,’ she began sardonically, and Sam felt himself flush, ‘I can’t give you access to any student files. The data protection act, and all that – but I don’t need to go into the finer details of that with you, do I? Being a consultant to the police a
nd everything.’ Her lips twitched briefly, and Sam saw in that instant how absurd he and Vivienne must look to her. Two teenagers, barely out of school, playing a grown up game of detectives. She must be fighting the urge to tick them off and send them back to their classroom with the advice to do better next time.

  He realized he had to do something to retrieve the situation, and wondered what Hillary would do. But since he didn’t have enough experience to figure out what that was, he decided to appeal to her better nature instead.

  ‘Look, his mother was murdered, Mrs Usherwood,’ Sam said quietly. ‘The case is being re-opened. Our boss, Detective Inspector Hillary Greene,’ he gave her back her old title without a qualm, ‘is following every lead, in the hope of finding something new. I think it’s important that we all do our bit to help her, don’t you?’

  Mrs Usherwood blinked, then sighed.

  ‘Let me see if we have a member of staff still with us who was around then. I think that’s the best I can do.’ She turned on her swivel chair and began to tap industriously on the computer.

  ‘Yes, you’re in luck. There are only two – Mr Portman, but he’s out sick today. And Mr Cleeves.’ She pulled up the classroom schedules and consulted her watch. ‘He’ll be finishing his geography class in ten minutes. That’s in the big building at the front, right-hand corner 6B. If you wait outside you’ll probably have a few minutes to talk to him before the next class arrives. In the meantime, I’ll consult the minutes of the meetings around then, and see if I can trace any sign of Peter McRae having come to our attention. And if it was a disciplinary matter, it almost certainly will have done. Will that do?’

  Sam stood up at once and smiled with relief. ‘Thank you, Mrs Usherwood.’

  Outside, Vivienne let out a long, whistling breath. ‘Bad-tempered old trout,’ she muttered. ‘I had a cookery teacher like her. Hated her guts.’

  Sam laughed and shook his head. ‘Being back at a school gives me the willies,’ he agreed.

  They found 6B fairly easily and after hanging around the corridor for five minutes, heard the bell go, and stood aside as a hoard of noisy, bored 13-year-olds filtered by. They then pushed their way into the vacated room.

  In the classroom, the walls were covered with colourful maps, along with photographs of erupting volcanoes, peaceful-looking glaciers, majestic mountains and aerial shots of river deltas and island atolls.

  A man stood behind a desk. In his early fifties, he was tall, lean and with a full head of blonde-going-silver hair and pale blue eyes. Beside him, he could feel Vivienne going onto full sexual alert, and he felt a spurt of irritation wash over him.

  What was it with her and older men? Didn’t she know that little girls in search of a Daddy replacement were so retro?

  ‘Mr Cleeves?’

  ‘Yes?’ The blue eyes sharpened on them and he smiled, revealing even white teeth. Attractive crows’ feet appeared at the side of his eyes.

  Wow, what a dish, Vivienne thought, quickly pulling out her ID and taking charge.

  ‘Ah, I thought you were a bit old to belong to my next class,’ he mused. ‘Please, have a seat. What can I do for you?’

  Phil Cleeves watched the two strangers take a seat, and felt his heart rate accelerate. Their IDs said they weren’t even proper constables, so it was ridiculous to feel this alarmed. But he couldn’t help it. He didn’t like the police. He never had, and over the years had been careful to avoid having anything to do with them. He sat back down behind his desk, his traditional seat of power, feeling the need to re-assert some authority.

  ‘You were here twenty years ago, right?’ Vivienne asked, sitting not on one of the backless stools, but on a desk instead. She let one long leg dangle, and made sure her skirt was hitched up high enough to show a little bit of thigh.

  Phil didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Crikey, that makes me sound as old as Methuselah. But yes, I’ve been here nearly twenty-two years now. For my sins.’

  Again he smiled.

  Vivienne smiled back.

  ‘Do you remember a pupil called Peter McRae?’

  Phil’s palms began to sweat. He frowned slightly. ‘Peter McRae? Good grief, do you have any idea how many pupils I’ve taught over the years? Why on earth should I remember one out of thousands? Unless, that is, he did something to bring himself to my attention. Is he in some trouble with the police? If he was a bit of a delinquent, I might be able to dredge him up from memory. What did he look like?’

  ‘You might remember him, sir, because his mother was murdered when he was attending school here. Anne McRae. She lived in Chesterton,’ Sam put in.

  ‘Oh hell, yes!’ Phil sat up straighter in his chair. ‘I remember that all right. And now, yes, of course I remember Peter. A bright enough lad, but apt to be a bit lazy, mind. Yes, of course. I hope he’s not in any trouble?’ he asked, looking from Vivienne to Sam. ‘You being with the police and all?’

  ‘Oh no sir, nothing like that,’ Vivienne put in quickly. ‘We’re reopening his mother’s case, that’s all. It was never solved, you see.’

  ‘Oh,’ Phil said, feeling his shoulders slump with relief. ‘I see.’ So that’s what had brought them here. ‘Well, needless to say, I wish you luck. But I still don’t quite see how I can help.’

  Neither do I, Vivienne thought sardonically, but said brightly, ‘During our investigations,’ hell that sounded good, ‘we’ve come across reports that Peter was in some kind of trouble at school. Naturally, anything that reflects on the McRae family dynamic at that time is of interest to us.’

  She was rather proud of her vocabulary, and only hoped that, as a teacher, it was making a good impression on the blonde hunk.

  Phil blinked. ‘OK,’ he said, sounding rather less than convinced by her premise. ‘But from what I remember of Peter, well, of all the McRae children actually, he was a well-adjusted kid. They all came here, you know. Jenny McRae, now, she was the one for getting into trouble. She seemed to be perpetually in detention. And if I remember rightly she was sent home drunk once or twice as well. But not Peter! If he was in any trouble here at school I don’t remember hearing about it.’

  ‘What about the other one?’ Sam asked. ‘Lucy.’

  ‘Don’t remember her,’ Phil said casually.

  Vivienne sighed. ‘So Peter wasn’t about to be expelled or anything?’

  ‘Good grief no. He was positively well-behaved compared to some. Bright enough too. He had his own little coterie of friends, who were nothing special, but then again, he didn’t get caught up with the bad element either. I’d have said his school life was strictly average.’

  ‘Did you ever meet his mother, Mr Cleeves? Sorry, what’s your first name?’ Vivienne asked.

  ‘Phil. And I’m not sure. If she attended the PTA meetings, I might have met her. In fact, I must have, but I can’t say as she sticks in my memory.’

  And she would have done, Sam thought, if Anne McRae had come here on the warpath. He had a feeling that their murder victim had a way of making her presence felt. ‘Well, thank you, sir,’ Sam said, realizing that they weren’t going to get any further here. Perhaps Mrs Usherwood would have found something in the school records for them.

  Vivienne got reluctantly to her feet. ‘Well, if you think of anything, Mr Cleeves, please give me a call,’ she said, scribbling her name and private number onto the back of a standard Kidlington HQ card and handing it over.

  Phil smiled at her and took it.

  ‘I certainly will,’ he glanced at the card, ‘Miss Tyrell.’

  Outside, a long queue of curious 15-year-olds watched them leave, one or two of the male ones calling out softly explicit comments to Vivienne, which she pretended to ignore.

  ‘What a hunk,’ she said, once they were out of earshot of the munchkins.

  ‘Yeah, I could see you fancied him,’ Sam said flatly. ‘Come on, let’s see what the gorgon lady has for us.’

  But, alas, Mrs Usherwood had nothing for them. There was no m
ention in any of the school documents concerning Peter McRae. If he had been in any trouble, it had not become official.

  That evening, Hillary Greene returned home, and found a large, pink envelope lying on the roof of her boat. It had no stamp or frank marks, and had obviously been hand-delivered.

  She picked it up and took it into the Mollern, hoping that it might be a card or a note from the landlord or his son, congratulating her on re-acquiring her car.

  Of course it wasn’t.

  It was a Valentine’s card, albeit a very late one with a big silk-padded pink heart on the front.

  Inside was the usual gooey, standard Hallmark piece of poetry, and a few printed words:

  ‘For my true soulmate. I think of you always.’

  It was, of course, not signed.

  Hillary sighed, and put the card in her bag. She stood still, and looked around.

  And then she began to search, carefully.

  Nothing was missing. But by the time half an hour had gone by, she knew that someone had been on her boat.

  She swore roundly and with feeling.

  She grabbed a can of furniture polish and set it beside the sink, then poured some pine disinfectant into some hot water and set about cleaning her boat from top to bottom. One of the advantages of living in a small space was that it didn’t require much cleaning, and after about only an hour, with the sheets changed, and every surface gleaming, she felt a little less violated.

  But it was not exactly how she’d expected to spend her Friday evening.

  Phil Cleeves wasn’t having much of a good time either. Once he’d driven home from school, he spent the next hour tracking down someone he badly needed to speak to.

  Then he had to have a stiff gin and tonic before he could pluck up the courage to ring the telephone number he’d finally uncovered.

  To make the call, he drove into town and used a pub call box. He didn’t want to use the public phone boxes in town, just in case a call could be traced through a telephone card, which was all that they accepted. And there was sure as hell no way that he was going to use his own landline or even a pay-as-you-go mobile.