Crooked Street

by Priscilla Masters

Inwardly, Joanna groaned. Mike had put it so clumsily.

  Eve Glover turned her rather beautiful blue eyes full on Mike and spent a minute assessing the burly policeman with his powerful build and ready grin. Sensing the missing man’s wife was about to go all girly on them, Joanna braced herself. But while Eve’s attention was diverted it gave her the chance to focus her mind in another direction. What if Jadon wasn’t having an affair but his beautiful and probably bored wife was? Might that be a reason for his disappearance? A rival lover? Might the little white lie Jadon had fed his beloved be no more than male bravado? Considering the insecurity she had sensed from the wedding photograph Joanna thought it was possible.

  She watched the woman warm towards her detective sergeant and wondered. She was not above taking advantage of women’s instinctive trust in her sergeant. Sometimes it brought results.

  But Eve soon turned back to her and her voice was cold. ‘Jadon has private clients,’ she said with extreme and careful dignity. ‘They pay a great deal for his expertise in finance. Some of them he has to visit every week. Clients with money,’ she added. ‘He has to keep them sweet.’

  ‘Do you know any of their names, love?’ Korpanski was really milking this one.

  ‘Oh no,’ Eve said, with cleverness adding, ‘it wouldn’t be professional for him to discuss business or clients’ names with me. It would break confidentiality.’

  Where had she picked this one up from? Joanna wondered.

  Mike was still in pursuit. ‘Jadon didn’t socialize with his clients?’

  ‘No.’ Said firmly.

  ‘You never met any of them?’

  Eve frowned at him. ‘No – I’m sure in time I would have but no, I never did.’ She pressed her lips together, still frowning, then repeated, ‘I never did. It was just what Jadon told me.’ Another bright smile. ‘He’d keep me really entertained about his work.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ But Joanna was thinking, We don’t have time for this. Not now. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Did he stay out late sometimes entertaining clients?’

  ‘Very occasionally. But it was business,’ she insisted.

  ‘Did he mention any venues – restaurants, hotels, clubs they went to?’

  Eve shook her head. ‘Not especially,’ she said. ‘And the latest he was ever home was ten and he’d always let me know.’

  ‘What about your husband’s other friends?’ Joanna asked. ‘Family? Old school friends? Anyone apart from his work colleagues?’

  ‘Only Jeff, Leroy and Scott,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Leroy,’ Joanna said. ‘He didn’t seem to have a clue where your husband was.’

  Eve opened her mouth and closed it again. ‘We did sometimes …’ sounding as though she’d just remembered something and was trying to be helpful, ‘… socialize. The three of them came to our wedding with their partners. And we’ve been for a drink with them all a couple of times. I get on really well with Leroy’s wife.’

  ‘What’s her name, love?’ Korpanski couldn’t resist a quick grin at her.

  Joanna braced herself for a flamboyant name but was disappointed.

  ‘Pat,’ Eve said. Then added: ‘She works in the council offices.’

  ‘Here,’ she said, with pride, passing her phone to the DS to read off her contacts. ‘That’s her number. She rang me yesterday and told me to keep in touch.’

  Korpanski took a note of it and passed the phone back to Eve. He would love to have taken the phone and retrieved all the data it would hold – calls made, calls received, text messages. Oh yes, he sighed. Mobile phones held life’s information – if you could get hold of it, legally.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, holding her gaze for just a little longer than necessary. She giggled then put her hand up to her mouth.

  ‘Any time, Sergeant,’ she said, and Joanna had great trouble not rolling her eyes at him. Like Mrs Glover the DS was a huge flirt who used his undoubted physical attraction to obtain maximum information from the fair sex. What none of the women realized was that DS Mike Korpanski was a very happily married man with two children whom he adored. He just wasn’t going to be playing around however tempting the offer. It was all a game to him and a means of extracting information.

  ‘OK,’ Joanna said. ‘Do you know where they all live?’

  Eve looked upset and a little confused. ‘No. We always met them out somewhere and they’d sort of talk about work.’

  Sort of? Joanna looked innocent. ‘Anything specific?’

  Eve looked at her sharply, her head jerking around and Joanna rephrased the question with a smile. ‘Anything that will help us find your husband?’

  Eve looked even more confused.

  ‘What about your family, love?’ You had to give it to Mike – he could charm the birds off the trees. If anyone was going to winkle information out of this feather-head it would be the DS.

  ‘My family?’ She put a hand up to her throat but it didn’t stop them seeing the ruby flush that blotched her neck. ‘My mum and dad are separated,’ she said quickly, as though rinsing out some dirty underwear. ‘We don’t see much of them.’ She frowned. ‘They were both a bit nasty about Jadon so we didn’t make much of an effort to see either of them.’ She gave a watery, damaged smile. ‘New partners, you know?’

  A bit nasty about him. What had they picked up on that Eve, obviously, had not?

  ‘What about Jadon’s family?’

  Eve looked awkward. ‘He doesn’t really have any.’

  Joanna frowned. Everyone has a family. She, Matthew, Korpanski. They all had family. As, undoubtedly, did the missing husband. He hadn’t been dropped from the sky. Somewhere there must be a mother, a father, possibly siblings. Something else to put on the to do list. Look into another question. Who was Jadon Glover?

  If he didn’t turn up soon the list of areas to explore could be as long as Pinocchio’s nose – and growing.

  She had to ask it. ‘So who else was at your Italian wedding?’

  ‘Just Leroy, Scott, Jeff and their partners and two really good school friends of mine.’

  ‘Oh.’ It all sounded a bit sad to Joanna and it appeared the same to Eve. She looked down at her fingernails, long, professionally manicured, Red Gel with small daisies painted on them. ‘We wanted just close family and friends,’ she said in a whisper.

  Joanna didn’t point out that none of these people actually was family, close or otherwise. Neither her mother nor her father had attended, new partners or otherwise. The intrigue surrounding Jadon Glover’s disappearance was compounding.

  She stood up. Then a thought struck her.

  ‘Exactly when did you last see Jadon?’

  ‘When he left in the morning,’ Eve said. ‘Day before yesterday. He usually leaves quite early. Round about seven. It was nearer half past on Wednesday.’

  ‘Any particular reason he was a bit late?’

  Eve shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, patently wondering why the question. ‘It just happened that way.’ Then she flushed an even brighter red and Joanna knew. They’d been making love. Oh, wow! But as with other statements it told her something. If Jadon had been making love to his wife the morning he went it was unlikely he was anticipating running off with a mistress. In fact, everything in his disappearance suggested it had been unexpected. Car parked in the usual place, routine Wednesday visit. Not impossible but unlikely he’d gone with another woman …

  ‘Look,’ she said, awkward now and embarrassed for the woman. ‘We have work to do, people to talk to. Keep my number and get in touch if you hear anything.’

  Eve grabbed at her arm and asked again. ‘What do you really think’s happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Joanna said honestly. ‘And I’m not paid to make guesses. It’s my job to look into it and that, I can promise, will be done. We’ll be examining the car but all appeared in order there.’ Something struck her then. Just a small detail. ‘He parked at the supermarket every week. Did he do your shopp
ing there?’

  ‘No. I didn’t even know he knew it existed,’ Eve said with a cynical smile. ‘Jadon doesn’t “do” supermarkets.’

  It didn’t surprise Joanna.

  EIGHT

  While Joanna and Mike were interviewing Eve Glover other officers had divided into two teams fanning out into the area around the supermarket. Their brief was to make a cursory search of anywhere where Jadon Glover might be, hurt, alive or dead. At the same time a board had been erected in the car park asking if anyone had seen him. They had also contacted local media and had started a house to house. Joanna was directing the operations and kept coming back to the deserted mill.

  It seemed the obvious place to start.

  Big Mill dominated the area, standing over Macclesfield Road like an unwanted guest at a birthday party. Built in 1857 by William Sugden, it had once homed a thriving weaving industry. But as the mills were no longer working the buildings had been abandoned. A few had been turned into antiques centres but as that industry too had hit the doldrums they had gradually closed down and fallen into disrepair and dereliction and now they radiated an air of doom. They were a living testament to work and jobs long gone; a film set for a violent thriller, a backdrop for minor crime … Six storeys high, twenty-one bays long and five bays deep, Big Mill was huge, the largest in the town. There had been plans to turn it into residential flats but the developer had fallen on hard times and now it was boarded up though hardly villain-proof. Lead thieves had clambered on to the roof and helped themselves. It was a miracle that no one had fallen through to their death. Like many derelicts it was a magnet for the homeless and drug dealers, runaways and the odd couple wanting illicit sex.

  The result was that it was well known to the police and the people who lived in the surrounding houses were frequently picking up the phone to report suspicious activity. Two teams of four officers couldn’t hope to do more than a cursory job of searching the entire place but they worked their way through as carefully as possible. By the end they could be pretty certain that Jadon Glover was not here.

  Alive or dead.

  There were other areas near to the Sainsbury’s car park that warranted a sift through: patches of wasteland, a child’s play area. Nothing yielded anything obvious. If Glover didn’t turn up or they had some other clue as to what had happened to him they would have to do a more thorough job. Joanna listened to the reports coming in and wondered. Had he been picked up in another car?

  But so far they had drawn a blank. And the list of Jadon’s Wednesday evening clients helpfully emailed through by Scott Dooley didn’t help much except give them a focus for the house-to-house enquiries.

  Friday, 7 March, 9.30 p.m.

  Monica Pagett was sitting up in bed when Stephanie Bucannon came in. She had been transferred that very morning and now found herself in Brooklands Nursing Home in Leek, in a small but private room. And she had found a familiar face. She looked at the girl with affection. ‘I’m thinking,’ she said. ‘Wondering whether the doctor’s right and that I’ll never be able to live in my cottage again.’ She heaved out a long sigh. ‘It isn’t what I want but …’ She gave a mischievous smile at the health care assistant. ‘I thought I’d live in that cottage for ever,’ she said. ‘I thought someone would find my body frozen to death one year in late March two months after I’d met my end.’ Her face twisted as she recalled one of the doctors’ and social workers’ most powerful arguments. ‘If you were in trouble who would hear you shout that distance when the wind howled loud enough to drown out any scream and the snow was banked up six feet either side of the road?’ And, ‘How would the emergency services reach you, Monica, if you fell again and the weather was bad? How would anyone even know you were in trouble? A slip. A fall. It was fortuitous that your neighbour rang that morning and when she got no answer called round to find you on the floor.’

  Monica had not gone down without a fight. ‘It’s the way we do things out there on the moors. We look after each other.’

  Now all she recalled was the social worker’s sceptical silence.

  And she had to accept what it meant. ‘I’m not going to get back there, Stephanie, am I? I may as well sell it.’

  The girl perched on the bed and touched her hand. ‘It must be hard for you. You were born there, weren’t you?’

  ‘Lived there all my life.’

  ‘So to sell it must be a terrible wrench.’

  ‘It is,’ Monica said stoutly, ‘but I don’t have much choice, do I?’

  ‘I’m not even going to try and answer that,’ Stephanie said, trying to put a smile back on Monica’s face.

  Monica was silent for a moment, reflecting. Truth was Brooklands didn’t seem to be as bad a place as she had imagined. The staff seemed kind, the lunch and tea she’d had were better than she ate at home and it was so warm here. Warmth, except on a very few summer days, was something she was unused to. Winters spent on the moors had been cold from October to March. It was just that Brooklands wasn’t home. She smiled at the girl. Stephanie’s grandfather had been a moorlands farmer. Eric Bucannon had been a neighbour of hers, living only four miles away, practically on the doorstep in the sparsely populated area. Neighbours were few and far between in the Staffordshire Moorlands so she had known Stephanie from a little girl. Monica had always liked her even if her dad had broken the mould and was a poncey solicitor somewhere in London – a foreign country to her. But Stephanie had returned to Leek which endeared her to Monica. Also, the girl had treated her with dignity when she had arrived, calling her Mrs Pagett instead of jumping in with her Christian name. She treated her as though she was only physically infirm rather than mentally gaga.

  And she realized that Monica would find it hard to adjust. She understood her real home circumstances: used to an outside loo, a solid fuel Rayburn that had to be stoked with wood and coal, being cut off by snow for weeks at a time and the isolation of a house where her nearest neighbours were a mile away across muddy fields. And now this: central heating, hot water, an en suite, meals cooked for her. Company.

  But the moors still called her back.

  NINE

  Monday, 10 March, 9 a.m.

  The weekend had passed without Jadon turning up or any clue as to his fate.

  Scott, Leroy and Jeff were having a pow wow in their office.

  ‘Tasha’s got a friend who works at Sainsbury’s,’ Scott was saying. ‘She told me that the police have been down there sniffing around a black Shogun Warrior. It was removed by the police on a low loader. She didn’t catch the number but it’s bound to be his.’

  His two friends gawped at him.

  Jeff spoke for them all. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘Come on,’ Leroy said. ‘Bloody obvious. He’s done a runner.’

  ‘What,’ Jeff said scornfully, ‘with just a few hundred quid? When our income’s steady and topping a hundred grand each? Not worth it.’

  Scott spoke again. ‘How do we know it is just a few hundred? He’s the one that meets the clients, drums up new business. He could have been filching money away for years and we didn’t know.’ Scott had planted the cat firmly in the centre of the pigeons.

  Jeff narrowed his eyes, looking feline and sneaky. ‘He wouldn’t have left that pretty little missus of his behind. Come on, you two. He bloody well worshipped her. He’d never leave her. He just wouldn’t.’

  ‘Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe she’s playing a double game too,’ Scott continued. ‘Maybe they’re off to Spain or something taking a load of our money with them. Maybe she’s planning on joining him.’

  Leroy looked concerned. ‘You think? You really think?’

  Scott sat back in his chair, folded his meaty arms and spoke to his colleagues. ‘Look, you dimmocks, his car’s here. His missus is home. The police have been called in. Put two and two together. He’s run off with money. We’d better check our records and start cleaning stuff up.’

  ‘We’re legal,’ Jeff Armitage pointed out.

>   Leroy laughed. ‘Some of the time, sure. But the rest – hey …’

  The other two were silent at this then Scott said slowly, ‘He could have been set on, robbed. He always had a pocket full of cash, didn’t he?’

  ‘Who’d dare do that with us three ready to sort anyone out who went for him? We watch each other’s backs. We’d protect him.’

  ‘Maybe some barmy druggie or something. Someone off his head.’ It was all Leroy could think of.

  ‘So where’s the body? The police have checked the hospitals. He ain’t there.’

  ‘If some smackhead’s bumped him off when they was off their heads they wouldn’t exactly be at their cutest hiding the body, would they?’ Scott said. ‘If that’s the case the police’ll soon find him.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ Scott, as their leader, was anxious to focus their attention on what was important. Now. ‘What about now, all the money we’re still owed. We can’t just drop the business, let it all go. We can’t afford to. We’ve got to pick up the strands.’

  Come on, my pretties. Send another into the ring. I’m ready for you.

  It’s all about the money, love. Money, money, money.

  Korpanski spent Monday afternoon dealing with Billy the Basher’s insurance fraud, liaising with a nice guy called Roger from the insurance company who was only too glad to have events and dates from the DS. Roger was happy to let the police take care of it and conduct a civil case to recover costs. As for the criminal case, the wheels of law ground slowly but in the end they would grind exceedingly fine, a fact which gave Korpanski a feeling of warm happiness. Billy the Basher might not end up in prison but he would be cleaning the streets of Leek and its surrounds for a few months and his fine would be hefty. Better – if Billy didn’t play ball they could put him away. And – this was a nice touch – he would be unable to find an insurance company to cover him so would not be able to drive – legally – for a long time yet. And if he broke the law – again – they would soon pick him up – again. Yeah. Korpanski felt this was a good day’s work.