by Jo Bannister
She looked at him. He looked at her. He said nothing. She said nothing more. They changed the subject.
Ash said, “So what would make a rabid racist head-butt a war memorial? He’s just found out that Hitler lost?”
Hazel gave a helpless shrug. “Something must have brought it on. He’s lived in this town for years and never attacked it before.”
Ash was thinking. The fear he’d seen in the young man’s eyes haunted him. The fear, and the certainty. “A man like that—a man so well known for his beliefs and his violence, a man whose random outbursts are in fact entirely predictable—could almost be used as a weapon. By someone who wanted to keep his own hands clean. And probably neither Barclay nor anyone else would ever suspect.”
Hazel’s brow furrowed with the effort to follow. “A weapon?”
“It’s not easy to kill someone and make it look like an accident,” explained Ash. “There’s almost always forensic evidence to say it’s a lie—bruising on the body that’s more typical of someone fighting for his life, fluid in the lungs that isn’t the right kind of fluid, blood settling in the tissues that shows the body was moved after death. These are the kinds of things any pathologist would notice. It’s a lot easier to get away with murder if you can shift the blame onto someone else—particularly if that person is helpful enough as to do the actual deed for you. So everyone thinks they know what happened and why, and nobody even wonders if something was happening behind what everybody knows. If someone else was pulling the strings.”
He noticed the silence and looked up, to find Hazel staring at him. “What?”
“Er—nothing,” she said hurriedly, and a more socially astute man might have seen the blush on her cheek. “Yes, I suppose it’s possible, if someone was clever enough.” For how could she say what she was thinking, which was, They’re wrong, aren’t they? They’re all wrong. You’re no more mad than I am, and when you get that traumatized brain in gear, it cuts like a laser.
And now everything you’ve said to me I have to reassess. Because I dismissed half of it, the half that didn’t fit with what I thought I knew, in the belief that you probably imagined it. I don’t think you imagined any of it. You may have got some of it wrong. You were concussed. But what you think happened is pretty much what happened, and what you think Jerome Cardy said to you is pretty much what he said. And if you think someone took him out of your cell and put him in another where, half an hour later, Robert Barclay was going to be slung, already foaming at the mouth and looking for someone to batter, there’s a damn good chance that happened, too.
Ash had no idea what was going through her mind, but he could see that something had pulled her up short. “Hazel? What is it?”
For a moment she didn’t answer. She was organizing her thoughts and trying to calm her jumping nerves. She had no illusions about what this might mean. Then she said quietly, “Gabriel, I need you to tell me again what happened. All of it. Everything you can remember.”
One thick eyebrow climbed. “Remember? Or just think I remember?”
“Everything,” insisted Hazel. “I think I’ve been doing you an injustice. I think we all have. I know I said you probably dreamed some of it. I think I was wrong.”
CHAPTER 14
WHEN DETECTIVE Inspector Gorman called, Hazel offered to drive Ash back to Meadowvale.
“I can walk.”
“I have to go anyway. I have to talk to Mr. Fountain.”
Ash regarded her with concern. “Is that wise?”
She managed a nervous smile. “I think it’s necessary. I have information about a murder that probably no one else has. I have a theory that could explain what happened. I can’t keep it to myself.”
“If you’re wrong, it could make things difficult for you.”
“If I’m right, it’ll make things difficult for me. I don’t think it has to matter. If I am right and do nothing for fear of a backlash, what kind of a police officer does that make me?”
“I could tell DI Gorman.”
That would keep her safely out of the loop. But it wouldn’t have the same effect. “No offense, Gabriel, but he doesn’t have to take anything you tell him seriously.”
“Rambles With Dogs.”
She nodded apologetically. “Mr. Fountain does have to listen if I make an allegation about another of his officers. He may not like it, he may not believe it, but he can’t ignore it. And he will get to the bottom of it.”
Hazel left Ash with DI Gorman and was heading for Fountain’s office when she met Miss Patel in the corridor. The chief superintendent’s secretary consulted a note on her clipboard. “Constable Best. IPCC want to see you. In the committee room.”
“Now?” Hazel was taken aback. Not because she hadn’t been expecting it, but because of the timing. “Can they wait half an hour?”
Miss Patel favored her with the sort of look Patience sometimes gave Ash. “I don’t believe so, no.”
There were two of them, both wearing suits. A man and a woman; at least one of the suits had a skirt. Intelligent, unforthcoming faces. They introduced themselves politely but without any warmth, any overlay of camaraderie. This was business from the moment Hazel stepped through the door to the moment they were finished with her, and they weren’t going to forget it and they didn’t want her to forget it, either. They weren’t here to trick her or to trap her. They were here to get everything she knew, everything she thought she knew, and everything she only thought about the death of Jerome Cardy.
And that, in the end, is what they got. They didn’t get it out of her by torture, by intimidation, even by particularly clever questioning, just by sheer thoroughness. Every word Hazel uttered was noted, analyzed, and explored for where it might take them. Thinking about it afterward she had no fault to find with either their manner or their technique. It was an object lesson in how to get everything possible from a verbal interview without crossing any of the lines. Hazel almost felt she should be grateful for the tutorial. And maybe she would be, when she’d finished feeling shell-shocked at how much she’d said, how unreservedly honest she’d been. Everything she’d meant to put before Chief Superintendent Fountain came out in the course of her interview with the IPCC.
As it was happening, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Of course they needed to know about her suspicions—they were central to their investigation into the death in custody of a twenty-year-old law student. Only after they’d dismissed her, polite as ever, and she was splashing cold water on her face in the washroom did she begin to see how it would look. Now she really needed to talk to Johnny Fountain. And she really didn’t want to.
* * *
Fountain heard her out in a silence that was worse than abuse. There were no interjections of “What?” and “Why?” and “In the name of God!” She didn’t even hear him catch his breath. But the silence spoke volumes.
She’d known this was going to be a difficult interview. She was telling him something he’d never expected to hear about one of his longest-serving officers. And she had no proof, and her only witness was the village idiot. She’d known, driving Ash to his interview with DI Gorman, working out what she was going to say, that she’d have a thick high wall of shared history to break through. Fountain wouldn’t want to believe her. He’d want to believe what his colleague of ten years, Donald Murchison, had told him, that he’d put Jerome Cardy somewhere safe and he’d be alive today if he’d stayed there.
But she thought that if she stayed calm and presented the evidence, including Ash’s recollections, in an organized and coherent way, however reluctantly he would come to the same conclusion she had. That it might still be a combination of bad luck and coincidence, but the package as a whole was sufficiently worrying that it needed to be examined thoroughly. That she had no choice but to put it in front of him, and he’d have no choice but to open it.
That was before she was waylaid by IPCC. Now she was telling the chief superintendent that she’d given the parcel to someon
e else, whose priorities might be the same but whose modus operandi might be very different, so that whatever discretion the facts might have left him had been wrested away before they were even put before him. He’d been rendered impotent in his own police station.
So he was angry. Of course he was. Hazel understood that absolutely. She hoped he understood how it had happened—that she hadn’t meant to put him in this situation, it had come about in such a way that she could only have avoided it by dishonesty. She couldn’t tell from his face, and so far he had said almost nothing. She doubted this was a good sign.
When she’d finished, she stood in front of his desk—he’d asked her to sit when she went in, but she’d thought it better not to—with her hands behind her back, waiting to see which way the wind was blowing and how strongly. Still he said nothing.
He was thinking. Wondering how much damage had been done, and whether any of it could be repaired, and whether it would be better to try or to stand back and see what happened. A silly chit of a newbie constable, still wet behind the ears, had had an attack of the Nancy Drews and been stupid enough to tell IPCC. The fact that the investigators had heard her out didn’t mean they believed a word of it. They’d seen a lot of overenthusiastic young constables in their careers, were well aware how badly they could misread a situation. How their judgment improved as experience grew and enthusiasm waned a little. How that first year they all wanted to catch Al Capone.
Finally he blew out a long sigh. “Okay, Hazel. I don’t need to tell you that you should have come to me with this, not IPCC. I know that wasn’t deliberate, but honest to God, girl, if you don’t know just by instinct when to say what’s on your mind and when to keep it there, I’m left wondering if this is the job for you. Have you any idea the harm you may have done? Not just to Donald Murchison—to yourself as well. Who else have you talked to?”
Hazel’s eyes and voice were low. “No one.”
“Keep it that way. The guys from IPCC know better than to spread it around, although these things have a way of leaking out under the door. If it does—if it gets out that you’ve accused Donald Murchison of covering up something this serious—I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect you from the consequences. I’ll try, but it won’t be easy.”
“C—c—?” She swallowed and tried again. “Consequences?”
Fountain shook his leonine head as if surprised that the doings of young constables still had the power to wrong-foot him. “You don’t know what you’ve done, do you? You really don’t. Look. You know how many rules govern the way we do our job. Two hundred years of good policing distilled into paragraphs and clauses on thousands of printed pages. And some of them are laws, and some of them are regulations, and some of them are just guidance, but all of them are important. You know this—you studied hard, you got good marks in your exams.”
The words might have been a compliment. The way his voice hardened suggested that no compliment was intended. “And you fell into the trap waiting for those who get good marks in written exams: You thought you knew it all. You thought a fresh eye and a good brain were worth more than thirty years of experience. You thought you’d spotted things, made sense of things, put things together that had escaped the notice and/or understanding of those of us who’d grown old and gray and dull-witted in the job.
“And then, Hazel,” he bored on relentlessly, “you forgot the most important rule of all. Well, both of them, actually. The first is that you’ve got two ears and one mouth because you need to listen twice as much as you talk. And the other is that there are people in this police station who may one day have to die to protect you. They don’t want to, they’ll do everything they can to avoid it coming to that, but if it does, they will put their lives on the line to save yours. And they’re willing to do it, accept it as part of the job, because they think if the need arose, you’d do it for them.
“When we talk about backing one another up, that’s what we mean. Not covering for someone’s iffy expenses claim. Not reconciling your statements in advance because you can’t expect a magistrate to understand that there isn’t always time to do things by the book. But standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the worst that the bastards out there can throw at us, and if we’ve nothing better to cover a colleague’s back, we use our own. I’ve done that, and I’ve had it done for me. Everyone here has—well, everyone who’s had time to wear out their first pair of boots. Donald Murchison has, several times.”
His voice, that powerful, authoritative voice that made people a street away stand up straighter, had been rising until he knew he was in danger of shouting. He took a moment to calm his temper. But he had by no means finished with her.
“And you’ve accused him of—what? At best, falling asleep on the job and lying about it. At worst, conspiracy to murder a man in custody. Hazel, there are people here who’ve worked with Donald Murchison longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve worked with him for ten years. Don’t you think if he was capable of something like that, I’d know? Or do you think it just didn’t occur to me that it could be anything other than simple bad luck? Of course it occurred to me. I had all the information in front of me that you had, and rather more. I even had a statement from Gabriel Ash. What I didn’t have was your touching belief that you can trust anything he says.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough,” he went on, the voice rising again despite his best intentions, “having come to this absurd conclusion, instead of discussing it with me, you took it to IPCC. The Independent Police Complaints Commission now knows that one of my officers, admittedly a very junior one, suspects a rather more senior one of being an accessory to murder.” Finally he abandoned all efforts to hang on to his patience. “What the hell kind of a position do you think that puts me in? I can’t back both of you to the hilt! The best I can do is point out to the IPCC that, in policing terms, you’re still in nappies and the occasional mess on the carpet is only to be expected.”
Hazel, white-faced, wondered if another apology might help. She wasn’t sure it was called for, but if it would defuse the situation, she was willing to try. But a peremptory hand waved her to silence.
“They may accept that. They’re going to give me some very funny looks, I dare say I’ll be the butt of a few good jokes at the Division Christmas party, but with luck—with a lot of luck—it may go no further. If you believe in the power of prayer, that’s worth praying for.
“I have to tell you, regaining your colleagues’ trust will be harder. It may not be possible. If this gets out, they’re going to feel you didn’t just stab Sergeant Murchison in the back, you stabbed them, too. I don’t know what you can do to persuade them that you won’t do it again, the next time you want to make an impression on the top brass.”
There are worse things for a police officer to do than bursting into tears, but not many. A bit like knocking over an elderly nun on a zebra crossing when you’re taking your driving test, it’s pretty much the end of the line. Another of those unwritten rules that you can’t afford to break. You hold on. You wait till you’re alone. Family, and very close friends, are the only ones who ever see you cry.
Hazel knew that if she cried in front of Chief Superintendent Fountain, he’d probably stop glaring at her in furious disbelief and put his arm around her instead, but that would be worse. The end of all her hopes. If none of her colleagues trusted her, and her chief superintendent thought she was pathetic, she could kiss good-bye to her police career. She’d worked hard to get here. People had expected her to go far. Now, it seemed, she had a great future behind her; and maybe she’d been wrong, and maybe she’d been naïve, but she’d acted from honorable motives and she still thought her concerns hadn’t been given the consideration they deserved. But she was damned if she was going to cry.
“Sir, I really don’t think you’re being fair. I’ve given this a lot of thought. I believed—I still believe—that it could be coincidence, but the chances of it being something else were too high to ignore. I was on my
way to see you when I was redirected to IPCC, and once there I answered their questions as honestly as I could. I thought, and I still think, that was my duty.
“I understand that this is the last thing you expected to have to deal with. I’m sorry it was me who came up with this instead of a more senior officer who’d worked for you for years and whose judgment you’d learned to trust. But that’s not what happened. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But I think someone with a lot more experience on the job than me needs to look at it properly before you write it off as a rookie mistake.”
He said nothing, just kept looking at her. But from the way his eyes widened slightly, she thought she’d managed to surprise him. Again. She wasn’t sorry. She was already in such deep water that splashing probably couldn’t do her any more harm.
Unless it attracted sharks.
Finally Johnny Fountain sucked in a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, and shook his head bemusedly. “All right.” He almost sounded defeated. “If you want me to look into it, I’ll look into it. I’ll have to speak to Sergeant Murchison, and the other officers who were on duty that night. I’ll even—God help me!—have to talk to Rambles. But you understand, any chance we might have had of playing this down goes out the window the moment I get involved. That’s what you want, is it? You’re sure?”
Hazel drew herself up to her full height and squared her shoulders: what had been described to her in training as “filling the uniform.” She’d liked that, and remembered it, and she did it now not to impress and reassure a member of the public but so that Fountain would never know how devastated his assessment had left her, how uncertain she now was of what had seemed so obvious. But it was too late to back down. She’d rather be proved wrong, with all that would follow, than be thought weak and mean-spirited. Her career would be over either way, and she’d rather be shot down in flames than slowly choked. Like Desdemona.