‘Right. And I suspect you have eye-watering interest rates?’
It was Armitage who responded to this in a wheedling tone. ‘We got to make a living.’
‘OK. So where is Jadon?’
The three looked at each other.
‘Truth,’ Joanna prompted.
‘We don’t know.’ Scott had decided to play honest with them.
‘Did he have a mistress?’
‘You must be joking.’ Leroy was quick to defend his chum. ‘He was devoted to Eve. They’d only been married …’
‘Two years,’ Korpanski supplied.
‘Yeah, so no, he was not playin’ around.’
‘Would he have been carrying a lot of money last night?’
Scott averted his gaze, obviously uncomfortable at the question. ‘Depends what you call a lot,’ he mumbled.
Joanna took a step nearer Scott. ‘Don’t play funny games with me,’ she warned.
‘Under a grand,’ he supplied quickly.
‘Has he been fiddling the books?’
‘We’re checking up but we don’t think so.’
‘Have any of your clients threatened him?’
All three shook their heads. Scott supplied the truth. ‘Goes with the job a bit. Nothing serious.’
‘Right, so from you,’ Joanna said, ‘we want his likely movements last night and then a list of the clients he would have been visiting. All right?’
It was Scott Dooley who nodded for them all.
On the way back to the station they decided to keep the known connection between the missing man’s wife and Johnston and Pickles to themselves – just for now. It possibly had nothing to do with the situation but in Joanna’s mind coincidence was a rare occurrence. Her curiosity had been well pricked. The real question was what did it have to do with Glover’s disappearance? If anything?
Korpanski was still chewing over Glover’s deceit regarding his career. ‘I suppose an accountant does sound a bit better than a blood-sucking leech.’ To her surprise he suddenly grinned. ‘Sometimes blokes do want to make out they’re more important than they are.’
She turned to look at him and registered an unusual sight. Korpanski blushing? Now that was worth a picture. In colour.
‘In my youth I’ve been a brain surgeon a couple of times,’ he admitted.
Joanna burst out laughing. She couldn’t imagine anyone looking or sounding less like a brain surgeon than Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski. Well-muscled and bull-necked, even if his tattoos had been covered up no one would swallow the fable that he was a brain surgeon. Copper was written all over him right down to his size eleven feet. She recalled Phil Scott’s take on the situation, reflected how they had both gone down that road and lied about their careers. Then she remembered something else. ‘When I was about fourteen I did meet an astronaut at the local club.’ He had been shorter than she, pimply and pale, very unhealthy looking. Maybe he really had been orbiting the earth for a few weeks.
‘But you weren’t married to him for two years,’ Mike pointed out.
‘No. That might have been a bit more difficult to keep up.’
‘Exactly.’
‘At least I knew what Matthew did for a living.’
Korpanski hesitated before he responded, ‘But you didn’t know the most important thing about him, Jo.’
‘Which was?’
‘That he was married.’
She was silent. She hadn’t known it – not for certain – but she had guessed. Married men have a certain stamp on them but she hadn’t pursued the subject. She had kept her blinkers firmly fixed on either side of her eyes, ignoring anything on the periphery of her chosen field of vision.
‘Well, whatever we think of doorstep money lenders there’s a place for them today. Jadon Glover was obviously making a reasonable living – his wife not working, nice house, expensive car. What’s to be ashamed about? Do you really think Eve would have cared how he put the bread on the table or the wine in her glass?’
‘I don’t know, Jo.’ Korpanski was trying his hardest not to sound aggrieved. ‘I haven’t met her.’
‘Yet. Don’t worry, Mike,’ she said. ‘If her husband doesn’t turn up you almost certainly will.’
They were turning into the station car park when Joanna spoke again. ‘There is another alternative,’ she said. ‘That it wasn’t simply the money lending that’s led to his disappearance. Maybe our Jadon was doing something else underhand or illegal.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know – drugs or something.’
‘Or maybe he knew his wife would disapprove of money lending even if it wasn’t illegal.’
‘And you think that’s the solution? That she found out what he did, didn’t like it and he didn’t dare come home? I don’t think so, Mike,’ she said sceptically. ‘I don’t think that’s why he’s gone AWOL. For now I’m sitting on the fence, hovering between nothing’s happened to our man and he’ll walk back into his wife’s life with minimal explanation and we can let whatever it is go and get back to our policing.’
They had finally battled their way through the congestion that always seemed to typify Leek these days. Maybe they did need a bypass. The debate would swing on and on maybe never reaching a conclusion. In the meantime, the residents and visitors to Leek would continue to sit and fume in the traffic. What an appropriate verb.
The first thing Mike did when they returned to the station was ring Eve Glover again. But even from across the other side of their office Joanna could hear the tone of the conversation and knew that Jadon, wherever he was, was not at home. She left the room to have a chat with some of the other officers. When she returned, Korpanski was putting the phone down, looking awkward. ‘I, er …’
She faced him. ‘Let me guess,’ she said, her arms folded. ‘You’ve agreed to go round and comfort her. Mike,’ she said, ‘we haven’t got anything to give her except the fact that her husband’s been lying through his teeth about where he works and appears to have vanished. Now why would you want to spend time visiting someone with nothing to give her? Huh? Except that you can’t wait to meet her?’
‘I just thought I’d check her out.’
‘Because?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, from what you say she’s every man’s fantasy.’
She smiled.
‘I just thought I’d check her out, Inspector, love.’ He managed to pull off Leroy’s accent to a ‘t’ and it made her smile. Then she moved on. ‘Haven’t we found his car yet?’
‘Don’t look like it.’
‘Then we need to keep looking,’ she said wearily.
Across the moorlands, beyond the barren hills, damp, mossy ground and empty landscape, a cottage stood stark and neglected against the grey sky. The wind whispered softly through gaps in the windows, entering cold rooms and empty bedrooms, stirring the vegetation outside in what had, until a few months ago, been a well-tended garden. Dividing the plot was a row of concrete stepping stones which led to an outside privy. The door rattled a little in a slight breeze. Chilly air moved around. A plank of wood dropped to the floor, startling a brown rat into watchful alertness.
SIX
Friday, 7 March, 8 a.m.
Monica Pagett was lying in a hospital bed thinking over the unwelcome news that had been given to her that morning. She could hardly bear to think it. She closed her eyes, closer to tears than she had been for many years. Ninety-five years old and life had been reduced to this? If she could have she would have stamped her foot. But that was denied her.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Pagett.’ It was a deputation of a nursing-home owner, social services and the consultant under whose care she had been since the fall had broken her hip two months ago.
The consultant had been kind but his words had not been. ‘You’re going to need residential care.’ Politely he had waited while she absorbed his words.
And she had. ‘You mean I can’t go home,’ she said bluntly.
The woman from
the SS had spoken next. ‘In such an isolated house and with such …’ she paused delicately, ‘… basic amenities. We’ve taken a look there. Done an assessment. Even your toilet is outside.’
Monica protested. ‘I’ve managed with that all my life.’
‘Not with a broken hip.’ This time it was the manager of the care home who spoke.
Monica looked from one to the other and read only a steely kindness in their faces. But they didn’t understand her character. She was a tough moorlander. She’d been stuck behind snowdrifts, waited for hours in the rain for a bus that never came, lived on food dug from frosty ground and broken the ice to draw water from a well when the pipes were frozen. ‘And if I refuse?’
The consultant drew in a long, reluctant breath. ‘We have a few options,’ he said. ‘We could refuse to discharge you. We could detain you under Section Five, the nurses’ holding power. Or …’ his blue eyes were as transparent as the sea, ‘… we could let you go with some support and see what happens. But I don’t recommend that.’
‘Why not?’
It was turning into a challenge. ‘Because you could be stuck in bed, fall, hurt yourself and lie there for days. We can have carers come in.’ He stopped. ‘Look, Mrs Pagett, you’re a tough and independent lady. I respect that. But I have experience of what can happen in cases like this. Why don’t we reach a compromise? Initially go to the residential home for a month. See how you go and we’ll reassess after your hip has healed and you’ve had some physiotherapy.’
She’d looked at him sharply. Oh, he was a clever one.
And she’d had no option but to agree.
Joanna knew at some point she would have to speak to her Chief Superintendent, Gabriel Rush. She planned to give Jadon twenty-four hours to see if he turned up or, alternatively, if anything happened to arouse their suspicion, but she still hesitated. In the old days she would have gone straight to Chief Superintendent Arthur Colclough. They would have discussed the likely possibilities and formed a plan together. But Gabriel Rush was a different kettle of fish. He lacked a sense of humour. They’d had a shaky start and things hadn’t got much better. Not yet anyway. She’d decided he’d been prejudiced from the beginning against the detective whom he had seen as Superintendent Colclough’s little pet, token senior female officer in the Leek station, appointed as a sign of progressiveness. She smiled. Token female? Maybe when she had started but these days women outnumbered the serving officers in Leek. Besides, what Rush had failed to realize was that Joanna had been genuinely fond of her superintendent and he of her. What might have started out as a political statement years ago had morphed into mutual respect. But that affection had had its fallout. If Rush resented her, Joanna, in turn, resented him taking the place of the senior officer she had been so fond of, and from the beginning she had been apprehensive about her new boss. With Colclough she’d known exactly where she was. He’d supported her ideas and protected her from the very worst of herself, slapping her wrist when she stepped out of line. But nothing worse. Even on the odd occasions when she had, frankly, broken the rules with very nearly tragic results – not to herself but to her sergeant. Colclough might have been indulgent but Fran Korpanski had never forgiven her. CS Gabriel Rush was still an unknown quantity. So, that morning, before braving the office, almost in desperation, she checked yet again whether Jadon Glover had turned up. Again she met with a negative from an even more distraught wife. So she made her way reluctantly along the corridor towards the chief superintendent’s office. She was not relishing the thought of consulting with him but at the same time she didn’t have the authority or the budget to proceed on this without his support and agreement.
As she walked at a snail’s pace she knew the argument only too well: damned if you do; damned if you don’t, with the added bonus of a public outcry if it turned out there was a case to investigate and she’d dragged her feet.
She found Rush in his office, scowling into a computer screen, head down, glaring. Without even looking up, he spoke. ‘Sit down, Piercy,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got word that one of our …’ he looked up and there was an unexpected gleam in the pale eyes the colour of boiled peppermints, ‘… more infamous families will soon be on their way home from Her Majesty’s favourite hotels.’ He looked back at the screen. ‘Fred from Winson Green, Hayley from Drake Hall, Tommy …’ He looked up, pale eyes cold as Arctic ice meeting hers, ‘… from Stoke Heath and Kath from Winson Green. Quite a family,’ he finished drily. ‘Can we expect trouble from the Whalleys?’
She heaved out a sigh. ‘I don’t know, sir. Maybe.’ She thought for a moment and added, ‘Probably.’
Rush’s lips tightened. ‘Between them they’ve done quite a stretch,’ he said. ‘Surely prison will have reformed them?’
She looked at him incredulously. And if you believe that. Then suspiciously. Was this a joke? She still didn’t know how to take him.
‘I wouldn’t count on that, sir,’ she said flatly, her voice neutral.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It rarely does. Now to what do I owe this social visit, Inspector?’ She searched his face for a glint of fun, found none and spoke.
As concisely as she could she explained the circumstances of the never-before-missing man, his wife who held him in such esteem and his false claim to work for a firm of financial advisors who didn’t appear to know of his existence. She added his real occupation and saw his face darken. Well, now she knew one thing about CS Rush. He didn’t approve of doorstep money lenders.
‘Hmm,’ he said, unruffled. ‘Financial advisor. Payday lenders.’ He heaved out a sigh and wafted his words away with a wave of his hand, ‘Whatever you want to call them. Interesting lot. Wonder who the clients are that they have in their stranglehold.’
Was it deliberate or accidental that her shoulders twitched? She felt her entire body stiffen. Consciously or unconsciously, with that one word Rush had put his finger over a throbbing pulse.
Stranglehold.
‘I’m waiting for a list of his clients,’ she said. ‘Apparently he had a regular run on a Wednesday evening. We have no bank account or mobile phone activity since six p.m. on Wednesday evening.’
He looked straight at her and quickly put his finger on another pulse. ‘And his car?’
‘We haven’t found it yet, sir.’
His mouth twitched. ‘Then I suggest you try the new Sainsbury’s,’ he said. ‘Car park’s big enough to swallow up a jumbo jet.’
She tried not to grin. The image was funny. But he was right. Where else would you hide a car except in a car park? ‘We will, sir. And I’d like to further interview the men that Mr Glover claimed he worked with … dig around a bit. Mobile phone records. Nothing heavy,’ she added quickly, reading correctly his look of alarm, ‘unless we find something untoward but … We’re going to need your permission, sir.’ Then it burst out of her. ‘Why would he build up a tissue of lies to his wife, sir? She had no telephone numbers for his colleagues; she didn’t have the address and their business premises are difficult to find. If she had rung Johnston and Pickles she’d have found out they’d never heard of him.’
CS Rush’s mouth bent in an almost-smile. He looked almost kindly. Only almost. ‘Don’t waste too much time focusing on that, Piercy,’ he said, ‘and don’t neglect your other work. Keep the Whalleys in mind and these insurance scams need to stop. Focus on finding Glover’s car. That’s my advice. If you find that we can at least make a start, get the forensics boys to look over it. That should help you.’
She smiled. The first time she’d ever smiled at Rush. ‘Thank you, sir.’ She wanted to say so much more, to thank him for his support and direction. It was the second time he had acted as her superior. But he was absorbed in his computer screen and somehow, she felt, thanks would appear creepy. She still longed for Colclough though the longing was not quite so strong.
SEVEN
But the day proved disappointing and, like many early days of investigations, yielded nothing of use unti
l 6 p.m. Rush was right. In the corner of the new Sainsbury’s car park stood a black Mitsubishi Shogun Warrior. A car that was the diametric opposite of a vehicular wallflower. It stood more like Brad Pitt as Achilles in Troy. A big, black, stroppy-looking vehicle. It screamed and shouted and yet it had stayed invisible for forty-eight hours. Planted right in the middle of the car park, no one had noticed it until the vigilant PC Jason Spark.
Joanna and Mike zoomed in a noisy squad car, scattering a couple of tardy supermarket trolley pushers. ‘So he didn’t do a runner in this,’ Joanna mused as they pulled up in front of it.
‘Locked?’ she asked Jason. PC Jason Spark, whom she had privately nicknamed PC Bright Spark. He was no pinup, with ears that stuck out, very irregular teeth, carroty hair and an inexhaustible supply of bouncy enthusiasm. When she’d turned the tight corner into the car park and seen Jason standing there, on guard, self-conscious and patently proud of himself, her heart had done a little skip. She’d always known he’d make a good copper, right back to the days when he had been an unwaveringly optimistic police cadet. PC Spark had recently fulfilled his dream of being a regular officer of the law.
And here he was.
The Mitsubishi was already cordoned off when they arrived and Jason hardly relaxed his stance as they approached, Joanna making observations as she slipped her gloves on and examined the exterior. ‘No marks. No dents. Neatly parked, square in the space.’ She tried the door. ‘And locked.’
PC Spark grinned broadly, waiting for his pat on the back.
She addressed him. ‘I take it our missing man hasn’t lost himself up the aisles of Sainsbury’s?’
Spark got the joke and laughed dutifully. ‘They have CCTV, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken a peek. Looks like he was on his own. Walked back towards the exit. It’s quite a flashy car,’ he observed with reverence and a tinge of envy. ‘The guy who wheels the trolleys back to the entrance says he’s noticed it before on a Wednesday evening. Usually parked here for a couple of hours.’
Crooked Street Page 6