Crooked Street

by Priscilla Masters

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Titles by Priscilla Masters

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A Selection of Titles by Priscilla Masters

  The Joanna Piercy Mysteries

  WINDING UP THE SERPENT

  CATCH THE FALLEN SPARROW

  A WREATH FOR MY SISTER

  AND NONE SHALL SLEEP

  SCARING CROWS

  EMBROIDERING SHROUDS

  ENDANGERING INNOCENTS

  WINGS OVER THE WATCHER

  GRAVE STONES

  THE VELVET SCREAM*

  THE FINAL CURTAIN*

  GUILTY WATERS*

  CROOKED STREET*

  * available from Severn House

  CROOKED STREET

  A Joanna Piercy Mystery

  Priscilla Masters

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2016

  in Great Britain and 2017 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  eBook edition first published in 2016 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2016 by Priscilla Masters.

  The right of Priscilla Masters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8666-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-769-2 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-836-0 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  The world’s a city with many a crooked street

  And death’s a marketplace

  If life was merchandising which men could buy

  The rich would live

  The poor alone would die.

  Taken from a Staffordshire jug, circa 1820

  I’m named after a princess, so my mother told me. A princess? Well, we all have our dreams – our nightmares and our problems. My mum said that I was and always would be a princess and when I was a child I was fool enough to believe her. I guess that was her dream and it permeated into my mind so I believed I deserved the life of a princess. Mistake number one. I had a lot to learn.

  These days I have another dream. Not the Martin Luther King sort about kids of different colours all playing together. That happens already, doesn’t it? I mean, look at any street in any part of the UK. Kids all playing together, black, white, brown, yellow, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist. What’s the difference anyway? They all believe in being good. Just in different ways. Nah. My dream is much more impossible than world peace. My dream is personal, purely for myself: a cottage. A pretty, cream-washed cottage with roses climbing up the walls like the cottages on old-fashioned boxes of chocolates. My cottage is somewhere in the country where I can open my door and see lambs playing around. Never mind children. I’ve seen plenty of them. No, what I want to see is cows and sheep. Fields. No cars. Just miles and miles of fields rolling towards the sunset while I sit there with a glass of cold white wine. I don’t ask for love. I had that once and look where it got me. Bloody nowhere. I want this house. I don’t care if it’s not in great condition or if it’s a bit old fashioned. I want it and I want no one to come knocking on the door every Wednesday night.

  There is something else I want that’s every bit as impossible as my quiet cottage. I’d like to have some money in my bank account. To go to the ATM, ask for a balance on screen and not have the letters DR after the figures. I don’t mean I want a lot of money in there. I don’t want silly money for a private jet or designer clothes. Not for posh holidays and a big flashy car. No, I just want to be able to go to the ATM and for it to give me some of my own money instead of laughing, embarrassing me and amusing the queue behind me by displaying rude messages. ‘You’re friggin’ jokin’, darlin’.’ All right, it doesn’t actually say that but you know what it’s thinking – if it can think at all. Maybe it’s just my paranoia that believes that behind an ATM is a malevolent and malicious brain.

  What do I want the money for? Oh, just luxuries like food, or rent, or the electricity bill. Maybe the odd bottle of wine and a couple of cigarettes a day. Nothing excessive. Keep my car on the road – legally. Not to have to worry, worry, worry all the time. Those are my dreams. Not much, is it, compared with being a princess? More than anything, I want a life free of debt.

  But I can tell you now my dreams are about as unattainable as me climbing Mount Everest tomorrow or having a weekend trip to the moon and back.

  That’s my situation.

  Sometimes I confess I get down and I worry about my future. Unlike when I was three years old, wearing my plastic crown and believing my mother’s fables, I now know I’m never going to be royalty or anyone important. I’m just me. At school one of my teachers said I would never make anything of myself or my life.

  She was right.

  But what am I going to do about it?

  ONE

  Wednesday, 5 March, 10 p.m.

  DI Joanna Piercy was late home. Investigating an alleged fraud by a local garage, she and Mike had felt the exhilaration of nearing their quarry for importing fake parts and lost track of time. When she had looked at her watch it had read 9.45 p.m. ‘Time to go home,’ she’d said, stretching her arms. Working on a computer is not a healthy way to spend a few hours. She’d felt cramped and stiff. With a feeling of guilt she’d logged off the machine and together they’d headed for the car park and their separate vehicles.

  When she arrived at Waterfall Cottage Matthew was as
leep on the sofa, his hair tousled, his mouth slightly open, breathing deep and regular. Dead to the world. She bent forward to kiss the top of his head, caught the scent of whisky on his breath and then drew back, alert. Matthew only hit the whisky when he was troubled. Her gaze moved to the coffee table and she picked up a bottle of Glen Livet – half empty. Not simply asleep then.

  ‘Matt?’ she said softly.

  He stirred, mumbled something as he surfaced slowly to consciousness then finally sat up, his fingers still grasping the whisky tumbler.

  ‘Matt,’ she said again.

  He tried to smile but it came out as a troubled frown.

  She sat down beside him. ‘Bad day?’

  He drew in a deep sigh and nodded, staring ahead of him. ‘Bloody awful,’ he said, not meeting her eyes, and took another sip of whisky. ‘Really bloody awful.’

  She waited.

  ‘Little kid,’ he enlarged. ‘Accident.’ Then, putting his glass down: ‘No accident. It wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t the first time the kid had been hurt.’

  She didn’t even try to untangle his words but waited for the explanation.

  ‘Just a kid,’ he said. ‘Four years old, Jo.’

  She sat down beside him. It was something most pathologists dreaded, performing a post-mortem on a child. Unavoidable but always distressing. Particularly when …

  ‘His name was Rice.’ Matthew tried to smile and failed, just looking more distressed. ‘Where do they get these names from? Maybe he was meant to be Rees. Or Rhys.’ He bunched his shoulders together. ‘I don’t know. Social services’ case. Slipped through the net, they said. Little kid, four years old, weighed fifteen pounds. He’d been starved, beaten.’ He lifted his troubled eyes. ‘How can people do it, Jo?’ he asked. ‘How can they be so cruel? To a child?’

  There was no response to this except, ‘Was it the mother?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Father? Mother’s partner?’

  Again he shook his head. ‘Grandmother,’ he supplied. ‘Mother …’ He shrugged. ‘She wasn’t there anyway and there is no father or father figure. No. It was the grandmother who …’ He couldn’t say any more but slurped down another mouthful of whisky.

  TWO

  Thursday, 6 March, 12.10 a.m.

  She rang the police station just after twelve. She had sat, anxious when ten o’clock came and went, watching the news, then a comedy show, increasingly uneasy, watching the minutes tick by and absorbing the silence – no car in the drive, no footsteps, no key in the front door. No shout of ‘Hi there.’ Nothing. So she set a time when she would finally acknowledge that something was wrong and watched the minutes tick by on her laptop, telling herself that she would wait until just after midnight when she picked up the phone and dialled 101.

  ‘My husband hasn’t come home,’ she said in her clear voice when the phone was finally picked up by the central line before being transferred to Leek.

  DC Danny Hesketh-Brown smothered a grin, at a loss for what to say, every comment seeming inappropriate. ‘Umm.’ He started by taking down her details. ‘What’s his name, love?’

  ‘Jadon.’

  ‘Surname?’

  ‘Glover.’

  ‘And what time did you expect him home?’ He looked around him, making a face at his colleague, the traditional eyebrows raised, palms displayed, the non-verbal equivalent of, You what?

  Eve persisted. ‘He’s usually home by nine. He’s three hours late.’ Her voice rose. ‘He’s never late.’

  ‘Well …’ Hesketh-Brown was still at a loss. He began with an inoffensive, ‘How old is your husband?’

  ‘Thirty-two. We’ve been married two years. He’s never been late before. He’s very reliable.’

  ‘Have you tried his mobile?’

  Eve was affronted. Did he think she was an idiot?

  She replied with dignity: ‘It goes straight through to answerphone. I’ve left messages.’

  ‘When did you last speak to him?’

  ‘Six. I rang him,’ she raised her voice, ‘at six to ask him to pick up some … stuff … on the way home.’

  ‘Is he in a car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Hesketh-Brown said. He was a soft-hearted guy and the woman sounded distraught. ‘Give me the make and number of your husband’s car and I’ll see if anything’s come in.’

  ‘J4DON. It’s a black Mitsubishi Shogun Warrior.’

  Hesketh-Brown winced and continued, ‘When you spoke to him did he sound all right?’

  ‘Yes. Fine. Absolutely as normal. He said he was running late and not to bother with tea.’

  ‘And where was he?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. Probably in his office in Hanley. Or out visiting clients.’

  ‘What does your husband do?’

  ‘He works for Johnston and Pickles, an accountancy firm in Hanley, as a financial advisor.’

  Hesketh-Brown drew breath. Financial advisor? He could do with one of those – not that he had any bloody money to be advised about.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said cheerfully, ‘give me all your details – your names and phone numbers, home and mobiles.’ He was scanning his screen as he spoke. ‘Nothing’s come in so far on his car but we’ll look out for it.’ He couldn’t resist adding, ‘It shouldn’t be too hard to find.’

  Eve Glover sniffed.

  ‘I’ll let you know the minute anything turns up, Mrs Glover. In the meantime, you ring me back on this number, direct dial, mind, if he turns up. If he’s just had a flat tyre it’ll save us a lot of bother. How about that?’ He tried to sound cheery but already Hesketh-Brown’s mind was thinking of the four ‘S’s’: sex, sozzled, smash-up, sanity (loss of).

  ‘Thank you.’ She seemed reluctant to put the phone down.

  It was a busy night in Leek. Plenty for the depleted force to deal with. Burglar alarms going off when they shouldn’t; a shop window smashed by drunks. A couple more having a sing song in the square and a report of a cat burglar which turned out to be a teenager who’d forgotten his keys and thought he’d access his friend’s house balanced on a wheelie bin via the bathroom window. Unfortunately he’d not only forgotten his keys but also, apparently, which house his friend lived in. He went to the wrong one and alarmed a middle-aged retired couple into dialling 999. And then, to top it all, at four a.m. there was a nasty car accident in Bottomhouse which necessitated the attendance of the air ambulance and shut the road for two hours. But the car was not the missing man’s, which would have wound up the problem nicely. It all took time and needed written reports, scenes sealed off and so on, but to his credit Danny Hesketh-Brown did run a few checks on the missing man and his vehicle. No accident report. In a quiet moment he ran a few more checks. Mr Jadon Glover appeared to have no criminal record. Hesketh-Brown tried his mobile phone number and left a message asking him to get in touch with the police and his wife who was concerned at his late return.

  At 6.30 a.m. he spent roughly five minutes again running through the likely scenarios. Car breakdown? Not so far. Another woman? Possibly but a bit silly not to cover his tracks better. He was in for the rolling-pin treatment if and when he did turn up. A drink or six with his mates? Yep, maybe he was slumped somewhere, possibly blotto on a friend’s sofa. Hesketh-Brown chuckled to himself, the mockery of the sober towards the inebriated. And in the morning? A blinding hangover plus an angry wife to face when he woke up.

  If that was the case he didn’t envy Mr Glover. His wife sounded very certain of herself. Mrs Eve Glover, he believed, was not expecting to be side-lined.

  6.45 a.m.

  Matthew was finally asleep but his mind was not resting. He was tossing and turning and Joanna knew from previous experience that he was probably having troubled dreams and the little boy with the strange name would be somewhere in the tangle of her husband’s mind. She laid her head against his shoulder and put her arm round him, trying to calm him, reassure him, reaching out for his hand. He grasped
it and his breathing deepened and gradually became more regular.

  THREE

  Thursday, 6 March, 7.45 a.m.

  Joanna drew back the curtain and knew she could cycle in to work this morning. It was fine and dry. Get back on the saddle, pump up those legs. After the storm of last night the sun beamed down on them, promising warm spring then summer nights … Just around the corner.

  Matthew stirred and sat up. ‘Ouch,’ he said, rubbing his temples. ‘Remind me not to drink whisky again.’ He looked a little shame-faced.

  She sat on the bed and ruffled his hair. ‘It’s nice to know you’re not quite perfect,’ she said, kissing him. ‘So what’s for breakfast, whisky-breath? Alka-Seltzer?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, wincing and touching his temple with tentative fingers. ‘That and coffee. Lots of cups of strong coffee.’

  ‘And Matt,’ she said when she came out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her hair, ‘don’t beat yourself up over this. You’ve done the best you can. The little boy isn’t your responsibility, you know. At least you know the grandmother will never do anything to any child again and she will be convicted on your evidence.’

  He blew out his cheeks and met her eyes. ‘It’s up to the police,’ he said. ‘I can document his injuries and point the finger. It’s up to them to present the case.’

  She kissed the top of his head and he continued, ‘I know what you’re saying, Jo. And thanks. But I can’t say I feel much better.’ He ran his fingers down his face. ‘Well, hey, today I have to face another day.’ He grimaced. ‘They always say pathologists shouldn’t have feelings. Little Rice wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last but that pathetic body.’ His face was twisted in pain. ‘Those tiny, skinny, helpless arms.’