“Oily public school oik, sanctimonious, self-righteous prig,” the ACC’s voice trails away from this trace of unusual anger as she almost sneers. “Orlando Bloomington-Fitzgerald, no less, you could not make it up.”
The Bishop of Ancaster Cathedral, ‘himself for once, not an underling’, the local MP and junior Minister, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur, the leader of the County Council and his Chief Executive Officer, had all complained personally to everyone by phone and follow up emails about how they were being pressed with intrusive and unwarranted questions about a private dinner party. Nevertheless, they had answered reasonably and fully, they said, and yet were then harassed again later as to why they had forgotten the presence of two Chinese women and used the same words as all the other guests.
I commend Whittle and Fenwick for being busy once I dropped them back from our Albion House interview.
The ACC smiles for the first time, nodding approvingly, “Good kids. This pressure is orchestrated, as was the initial cover up. All of these people are ringing everyone they know locally and nationally - save the media of course.”
“Lord and Lady Macbeth,” I comment.
At least Valentine has not added his name to the onslaught against us. I am wrong. Bull has been especially vitriolic on behalf of the D’Eynscourte Estate apparently.
“Formal letters from lawyers for all of these people will come tomorrow, no today,” the ACC warns and after a pause. “Likely all written by Hakluyt’s merry men.”
She goes on, “You know the Chief Constable retires next year and is hoping for a Knighthood or even a Lordship to add to his other baubles.”
I nod as she layers some of my mother’s homemade jam I have found in the fridge onto a croissant, “That brings complications.”
Lucinda is stony faced at such an indiscretion as I nod, we are all aware that the man – known as ‘our great and glorious leader’ in the ranks, primarily because neither adjective applies, nor the noun – was the one factor that almost kept me out of my present post. Any issue that sullies the Chief’s record, his endless quest for public honours, and lucrative consultancy work in the future, terrifies the man. My continued presence in his force is his worst nightmare, an ongoing blot on his much-desired escutcheon.
Never mind our force’s appalling and still falling clear up rate for major crime, a growing controversy over our failure to deal adequately if at all with gangs quietly exploiting youngsters in care, and a gnawing awareness nationally that the north of Ancaster County is almost a safe haven for serious national or international criminals to operate from, provided they do not commit crimes locally.
Public opinion and national pressure were the reasons for the ACC taking over responsibility for actual policing, charged ‘to shake things up and put a stop to these alleged developments,’ as the Chief put it publicly. It was the ACC who had insisted on forming a second Major Crime Team, with me at its head, covering the key northern parts of the county and shifting Odling and Creel to cover the south. It was a red line for her taking on the role apparently.
The Chief had not been happy at her insistence on my role but had to accept it. Then. Still, it is my being with the force that is guaranteed to send him into apoplexy, my name that he sees as having tarnished the good name of his force these past seven years rather than Creel’s abject failures or Steve Rankin building an evil empire unrivalled anywhere in England. It did not help that the papers constantly vilified him for my continued presence in police ranks, often almost ignoring those wider issues in the process.
57
Lucinda’s handsome face is a hard mask as she hands me the local rag and one of the national tabloids, both out a few hours ago.
“The reason I am so ragged this morn darling,” her deep voice laughs. “Merian Standard, and all the other local rags in their group for Ancaster County, carried this story. Local radio followed up plus anyone and everyone locally, regionally, nationally, newspapers, Internet news outfits, radio, television, even some international. I am surprised there is not a pack of journalists parked outside your door already and you have not been plagued with calls.”
She stops to let me read. The room is warming but I feel so cold even in heavy jumper thrown on as they arrived. My innards are clawed by unseen hands as I stare at the full front page colour image in the Merian Standard of my helping Parsons into her car with my lane as the backdrop.
The headline blares out in huge black letters, “Cop Suspected of Killing Wife and Toddler Finds New Romance.”
They watch quietly as I force myself to read the next four pages raking over my story from start to finish, including photographs of Bess and Grace looking angelic, one of me scowling when released from questioning, another of me exhausted after training, and Parsons in uniform and then in civvies along with a potted biography of her career. Someone has been very busy. The flashes of movement in my bushes on Tuesday morning as I saw Parsons into the car are now explained. Jerry stopped the drone operator but we missed this one. At least they did not catch Amy on camera, which would have only made things worse. They missed Whittle and just got lucky.
The national tabloid carries the same images and rehashes the whole story in three pages before a thundering editorial asks pointedly if ‘Can such a man lead a Major Crime Team? Be a cop at all? No, No, No!” A side story tells how the rank and file agree that morale in Ancaster Police has deteriorated, along with results, over the past seven years precisely because I remain to sully their good name. All the quoted PCs and Sergeants are anonymous, of course, or possibly fictitious. Three local MPs condemn me personally for ‘not doing the honourable thing’ and call for me to be dismissed, lose my pension and essentially would like me placed in the stocks forthwith and forever.
“Sergeant Parsons knows?” I ask quietly, without looking up, reading her potted biography again. It is just too intrusive, detailing how Parsons was to marry her Police Constable groom-to-be at one time before he broke it off and moved to New Zealand. ‘She kept it all very secret but has never been the same since,’ a senior officer is quoted as saying. I knew nothing of any of this, did it happen after the Sergeant and I stopped talking?
“Told her on the phone, seeing her next,” Lucinda says pointedly, “but we have an officer stationed outside her flat, and your mother’s, and at the end of your drive, lest any of you be door-stepped by reporters. They did not contact me for a comment at all until it was too late to include it. Deplorable.”
She tries to lighten the mood, “I take it you do not want to be on any radio or television news or chat shows this morning, or Sky News prime time here and by satellite for Fox in the USA? They are always ready to kick someone when he is down, especially a Brit.”
I simply do not respond as she hands me a further batch of newspaper cuttings, saying, “Rest assured, we will be drowning in reporters, film crews within hours and for the ACC’s Press Conference later. It is all across Social Media too, Facebook is alive with it, Twitter storm with those websites and bloggers who want you sacked getting heavy followings this morning.”
Lucinda drinks her third coffee of the morning, quite a feat for a health nut, who normally allows herself only one a day. Her hands twitch for a cigarette.
They do not ask but I explain in any event. Parsons came to talk to me early about the case, arriving soon after six and leaving at eight. I have my time stamped CCTV and Jerry as witness.
Lucinda will put that on the police web site and send out a scathing rebuttal, “And fight for several months to get a retraction in one paragraph on page thirty if we are lucky. I will get myself on anything I can, television and radio today to hammer the rebuttal home. The ACC can stress it later at the press conference.”
She sighs deeply, “Sadly that will be all about you, not the poor dead woman,” Lucinda says, shaking her head. “Cannot alter that.”
***
Numerous croissants and pain au raisin, enough coffee to last me several days, have been devo
ured. I am rising, assuming the women want to go.
The ACC shakes her head to stall me.
“More complications Caleb.”
My first name, another warning of the deep waters we have entered.
“Whenever we come to Chinese involvement, I suspect we may hit agreement to pursue things but no help in reality,” the ACC says heavily, asking for yet more coffee.
It may be conspiracy as Daniel and I surmised. It may just be what important people can do: throw their weight about and get results to suit them. The rich rule the poor; the strong the weak.
But sense screams this is not that big a deal: a dinner party talks business. Yes, it is confidential but we can be trusted with it. A woman is tragically killed by one of the cars, seemingly an accident, a small court case, a fine or probation for the chauffeur, end of story. Yes, the mystery of the body being moved raises serious questions but even that may not be relevant to all the very important people hurling their weight around here.
As I explain those thoughts, the ACC’s words are laced with tiredness, “A cynic might say this is all orchestrated - local big wigs apply pressure on specifics, the media spread some seedy gossip on a side issue and stoke the fires against you and us, and then the third wave …”
Oddly she looks a little lost for a moment.
“Far welter’d,” I ask in the silence, to allow her time for recovery.
I explain to the puzzled Lucinda, “Ancaster phrase for when a sheep falls on its back. Short legs they cannot usually get upright again. Unless helped they can perish in snow or mud. For humans, means you are in real trouble. Far Welter’d. Says it all?”
Both women manage a smile as the ACC almost groans, “And then from early this morning, it got political.”
“The Foreign Office rang, they have heard that Chinese bankers and diplomats might be involved in the woman in the ditch case, despite my saying it is a routine investigation, probably a hit and run. I did not mention the body being moved.”
The ACC had authorized the attempt to arrest the women, which of course the Foreign Office had stymied. Though we have since learnt the women had already flown off before our warrant to detain was issued in the first place. She stares at her hands as I tell of how the Hakluyts still only admitted the two Asian women existed when they realised that we already knew.
“I think they delayed seeing me, telling us, until the Chinese women flew away - after meetings with our government and who knows who else?”
I tell them of land around Ancaster Acre being bought up, at a speedy rate since the Brexit vote, by the women’s D’Eynscourte Bank and the D’Eynscourte Estate.
The ACC muses to herself, “Senior executives from a major Chinese bank so the powers that be are not happy if we involve these women in our investigation. ‘Bigger picture’ they said, I was expecting ‘national security.’ That will come. We may be upsetting a major Chinese bank, their government, important people in the world’s new super power.”
I stare blankly as the ACC imitates the posh plummy voice of a Foreign Office mandarin, “And all over some jolly silly road accident that you are taking far too seriously, ACC Hamnet.”
She holds a warning hand up, “But Caleb, this was an Assistant Permanent Secretary, not the sort who would be calling me at four in the morning unless wheels are in motion, big wheels.”
Like her, the Chief Constable has been called too, she says. By the Foreign Office, the Department of Business and he is expecting and dreading a call from the Prime Minister’s Office this very morning.
“Progress for our country, our people, not to be put at risk - is the clear message. I imagine the newly elected Police Commissioner; the Council and local MPs will be brought into the firing line again by these people on this tack today too.”
They have not heard so I tell them: a witness has come forward who may know the dead woman.
“I need to know as soon as you are certain with a positive identification,” the ACC says heavily.
Lucinda coughs, “This is nasty, cynical, but it would help in this morass of official testosterone that is being thrown at us - if this dead lady were someone of some consequence so that some of the press at least would call for her case to be treated seriously, whether it upsets the Chinese or not?”
It is a point, no matter how unpleasant.
Lucinda shrugs, clearly longing for the breeze in her hair as she rides free on a sandy Ancaster beach with her children.
The ACC breaks the moment, moving to the window as shafts of grey daylight cut through the gloom outside and says heavily “Unofficially, tread hard but careful.”
More lightly, “Officially you go ahead as normal DCI Cade, a young woman is dead, whether by accident or design. We need to pursue it. We are coppers, not diplomats, politicians or investment facilitators.”
Ancaster folk are laconic, phlegmatic, granite-faced, disinclined to show emotion or reaction. It is part of living with agriculture, the natural world and the elements as they roll inevitably round; nature’s cycle moving unerringly on, with us part of it, and hence stoic to what happens to us. After all what can we do to change the elemental rhythms of life?
I am just so, blank on the surface now. What will be, will be. But my time is coming. I can feel it as my roaring succubus stirs within to recover or avenge my family.
58
Showered, shaved in happy companionship with my imaginary Grace, suited and booted, I step out to my car. It is only eight o’clock, still chill dark but thankfully with no more snow overnight for my thirty-mile drive. Hatten Enderby, a wonderful name for a handful of houses, slips by; a place of renown where birds froze in flight and fell dead that terrible winter of popular memory sixty years ago.
On the outskirts of Ancaster City, I slip into Police headquarters by its back entrance, unnoticed by the crush of journalists already corralled and queuing to enter the conference room door. The security guard says not a word after pointedly delaying me to study my pass when he knows me well. I ignore the half dozen hostile bodies that brush coldly past me in a back corridor as they leave for patrol.
I meet Whittle in the atrium adorned with its Christmas trees and decorations, a hum of activity as the day shift comes on, the buzz extinguished as people notice me. The tabloid and the Merian Standard are scattered on every table, in every hand it seems.
Meeting me Whittle clearly knows of the articles but ignores the subject, explaining excitedly that the witness is called Polly Verity and the dead woman is Phillipa, known as ‘Pippa’ Langstaffe, a well-known writer and film maker.
Things are already re-arranged. Gadd will continue with the burglaries and farm thefts in the office. Sergeant Parsons and Fenwick will today take statements from the Hakluyts and their staff, and interview Lord D'Eynscourte and Bull, the estate manager. With information from Ms Verity, the Sergeant has already asked the Met to secure the dead woman’s London home and sent a patrol car to the dead woman’s rented cottage in Aisby, a village fifteen miles south of Ancaster City.
“Close to Ancaster Acre too,” I say quietly. “And way beyond our search area.”
Once my squad was on the case we drew up a ten-mile radius from Albion House to canvas. No wonder we did not get any response, we needed to be thirty miles further south.
Whittle was on call for our squad last night. The witness arrived at four. They could not wake me. I nod even as a memory of long ago fleetingly rises and falls away before I can grasp it. Pippa Langstaffe? Phillipa. Did I know her once? Bess would remember instantly. And if the dead woman knew me, why not mention it to break through my mother’s hostility?
Whittle has more news. Forensics in London have confirmed that the silver Bentley is the one that hit the woman, the pathologist re-confirms that impact killed her following my request. ‘Bentley’s paint and headlight fragments match.’ But forensics cannot help tell us the driver or passengers, the car had been professionally cleaned inside before the Met team got there. ‘Normal pract
ice, nothing untoward, the agency say,’ Whittle repeats doubtfully.
***
Her eyes dance with the thrill of the chase coming to fruition as we reach one of the soft interview rooms down a corridor off the atrium. On entry, all I can see is a mass of blonde and beautifully orchestrated hair as the woman almost hunches over the table, out of body even as she clutches a cup of tea in a china cup. The woman Police Constable keeping her company discreetly leaves. As I approach the visitor looks up with eloquently forlorn eyes like a lost fawn.
The woman is truly beguiling. Her deep blue eyes have a hint of silver to them as they look unblinking at me. She stands to shake hands with a firm grip, revealing a long dark overcoat which covers a pair of deep blue trousers and sensible thick roll neck jumper that matches. She hesitates before sitting once more. About to say something, thinks better of it.
Memory stirs again to stop as the PC returns with a new pot of tea, cups and saucers for three, and a plate of biscuits. I pour, puzzled with myself more than anything, while observing. The woman is as immaculately turned out as the dead woman in every respect and I can see immediately how the two would be friends of a feather.
The room’s soft pink walls, subdued lighting, light green carpet and matching deep sofa and armchairs give a quiet tone to proceedings.
Ms Polly Verity, a long-time friend of the dead woman, sits on the sofa facing the armchairs where Whittle and I take up positions across the coffee table.
Her voice is strong, husky Home Counties, ‘We talk for an hour twice a week wherever she is in the world, Whats App all the time, usually meet daily when she is in London.’
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 35