by Alison Bruce
‘Of course.’
After he’d gone, she went up to check on Kimberly. Her bedroom door was still firmly closed and her breathing obviously too quiet to carry through the walls. She was glad that Kimberly was finally managing to sleep.
Gully sat herself down on the stairs, because she sat on the stairs at home when she needed to think.
She didn’t entirely believe Kincaide, but all that weighed against what he had said was a belief in her own ability to judge character. There was nothing about Goodhew that struck her as being anything but ordinary, so she couldn’t imagine him romancing half the station, somehow.
Then, again, there was definitely something about the way Mel looked at him.
In the end Gully decided the real question was whether it was any of her business, and that depended on two things: whether it had an impact on her work or on the reputation of the police. That sounded a bit self-righteous. No wonder she didn’t have any mates yet.
Time for another biscuit.
As she stood up, she heard a sound, and for a second thought it might have been caused by pressure on a stair tread. She froze, taking care not to alter her balance and risk causing another creak. Then it came again, and this time she could tell it originated from Kimberly’s room.
Gully moved up to the next step.
The third creak was more distinctive, and this time she identified it as the sash window being eased up inside its snug-fitting frame.
If Kimberly was too hot to sleep and needed the window open, why was she trying so hard to keep it silent?
Gully guessed there might be a rational explanation, but decided she wouldn’t wait to think of one. Kimberly could be out of the window and away by then.
Gully crept two or three steps closer, until she had a firm grip on the handle, then burst the door open wide. The only light in the room came in along with her from the landing. She saw a dim figure start, and her hand groped around until she found the switch. As she flicked it on, the first thing she saw was a fully clothed Kimberly, her face flushed and very wide awake.
Gully pushed past her, reaching the window in time to see a second figure retreating back over the high garden wall.
‘Who’s that?’ she demanded.
Kimberly stripped down to her underwear before she replied. ‘None of your business,’ she said, glaring. ‘I don’t like being spied on.’
Gully felt her cheeks redden to a hot, dark shade. ‘Are you going to bed now?’
‘No,’ Kimberly snapped, ‘I don’t think I can sleep.’ She took her dressing gown from the end of the bed and slipped it on.
Gully turned away and stomped back down the stairs. Kimberly followed, no doubt moving like some sultry lingerie advert; hot, silent – and hiding something. The last hour had revealed far more than Kimberly’s 36DD lace bra.
Gully recognized Kimberly’s ‘caught out’ expression. The sexy underwear. Skin aglow with the sheen of perspiration. The mystery man scuttling away.
This wasn’t the behaviour of a worried mother.
Except the man was no mystery. Gully had positively identified him.
And his wasn’t the behaviour of a trustworthy DC.
Goodhew had just affected her job, and her employer, and she didn’t care whether that judgement seemed sanctimonious or not.
She called in to the station and explained that she needed a break, asking for someone to replace her until morning. Bottom line, it was now her business. No doubt she’d be in trouble over this, too, but sometimes simply doing the right thing outweighed the consequences.
Goodhew returned to Parkside just long enough to discover that there was no new information waiting for him. No emails, telephone messages, or notes from Marks. No clues to anyone else’s progress either.
Nothing.
He walked home, then drew a chair up close to his window. A small but powerful telescope mounted on a tripod was already pointing at Parkside Police Station. It gave him a clear view of the all the windows facing on to Parker’s Piece, and a partial view of the nearest adjacent side. He could see his own desk, Marks’ office and anyone who came or left via the main entrance. He watched the building for several minutes, hoping for the visit of inspiration.
There was nothing to see.
He’d spent an afternoon merely chasing a potential witness, a task which came with the unspoken message that Marks was keeping Goodhew on the periphery. Goodhew wanted to phone him; he didn’t believe for one second that his boss was at home and asleep. But first he knew he had some threads that needed to be mentally tied down. There were too many of them flapping around, and they needed tethering before they started wrapping round his brain like a tourniquet.
It had been a little over twenty-four hours since the fire, and, if Stefan had a little luck on his side, Goodhew could imagine that it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to conceal Riley for that period. Trickier once the child’s photo hit the national press and the public turned hungry for every last detail. Trickier still if Stefan didn’t intend for either of them to be found.
Goodhew had only a small window into the investigation but he knew that public tip-offs had resulted in police divers searching the Cam out towards Grantchester, and that the police helicopter had been circling over the farmland backing on to the chalky slopes of the Gog Magog hills.
Other strands of the investigation were less easy to pinpoint. He suspected Kimberly was hiding something. Not to do with Riley’s disappearance – but what then? Rachel, Jay, Anita, the Celeste, the Lewtons: every other strand was connected to her and it was impossible to guess which of them had any relevance at all.
His attention was drawn away from the station to encompass the whole vista; the darkness was a great leveller, unlit windows were indistinguishable and the lit ones were just glowing geometric shapes. In the dark there was little identifiable architecture: the buildings constructed of glass and prefabricated slab jarred less than usual against their more traditional neighbours. The cars were just headlights, tail lights and, once in a while, a glint of chrome. And people were just smudged dots. It was the composite of all these that made up the city.
It wasn’t a question of what elements to include in the picture. It took each house and school and office to make Cambridge. It made sense that it took everything, from the Grand Arcade and the curve of the Cam right through to the rising bollards and abandoned bikes. Start to remove those things and gradually it would become the wrong Cambridge, or maybe not even Cambridge at all.
When he’d returned to his flat, it had been with little expectation of going to bed. Sleep never came easily to him and he’d drifted into the bad habit of either flaking out on his battered leather settee and waking up again in the small hours, when the pre-dawn chill took hold of him, or else lying in bed reading until the small hours and then passing out. Either way he rarely enjoyed more than five hours’ sleep each night. Just because he couldn’t rest didn’t mean he wasn’t tired. And now he could see how this new thought of his related to the investigation, but was just too fatigued to translate it into action.
He plugged in his jukebox and let the Bel Ami warm up before leaving it to run on the random free-play setting. He knew he needed to go to bed, but made coffee instead, opening his last two days’ post as the kettle boiled. Three bills and two offers of credit cards. At the bottom of the pile was the envelope his grandmother had passed to him. He took all the correspondence and the coffee back to the window seat. The envelope was A4 size and made of an off-white vellum with a woven texture more than strong enough to hold its weighty contents. It was the kind of envelope only ever used for documents connected to death or property or family provenance. Or in this case all three.
His grandmother called him money-phobic. He was sure he wasn’t, but just holding the envelope left him slightly nauseous. He drank half his coffee before looking inside.
What his grandmother had called ‘a letter’ consisted of a quarter-inch-thick sheaf of papers each bearin
g the letterhead of his grandparents’ solicitors, Mason, Willis and Wollaston. Just as she’d said, it did confirm the final transfer of assets from his grandfather’s estate into his own name.
News of that inheritance had been a recent and complete shock; until then he’d believed that everything had passed to his parents when he was eleven; that it had long since been spent on everything from his unhappy private education to the social-climbing stint that had eventually wrecked their marriage. In fact their inheritance had been only a fraction of his, and the idea that he’d inherited far more than it had taken to destroy his childhood was now proving too much for him to assimilate.
He flicked through the pages: the items ranged from a box of ‘sundry books’ held in storage to his flat and the entire building beneath it. All he wanted was some clue that might explain the origins of it all. There was nothing which seemed remotely personal until he reached the bottom of the pile. Pinned to the final sheet was a square, white notecard, and he knew, before he detached it, that it was one of his grandmother’s. He turned it over. There was just one sentence written in her artistic hand: Don’t worry about where it came from, it’s nothing bad, just enjoy.
It wasn’t long before his thoughts were drawn back to Rachel Golinski. He then wondered who else might still be awake and what tomorrow would bring. Behind him the jukebox hummed, and in front of him Cambridge slept. He closed his eyes and let the day fade away. His post slid from his lap to the floor, but he didn’t stir.
Sleep was finally reaching Stefan Golinski.
He spat and the result hit the floor like a dead jellyfish. He thought of Rachel’s expression. At least Mule had shown fear, but she had just looked insolent. His anger was slipping away but he still believed she was a bitch. A treacherous, deceitful slag.
He’d loved her like she was a goddess, set her on a pedestal so high that falling from it was bound to be fatal. And, when that pedestal was constructed of nothing but a teetering pile of filthy banknotes the collapse was inevitable.
And from this he understood one thing: life was about money, always about money. No one was above it or immune from it.
Right now he regretted the day he’d met her.
And her fuck-up of a mate.
But right now was all he had, and his anger extended far beyond Rachel and Kimberly. His head hurt; it thumped and felt heavy. He wanted to sleep.
He didn’t know whether there was enough time left to settle every score.
He tried to think what he’d achieved, and which bits he regretted. Only time would tell. It just might not tell him. Inside his own head he grinned at himself. Hadn’t he always known it would end like this? Not exactly like this, but in this way – like Butch Cassidy, like Harrelson’s Mickey Know, like Vincent Vega.
He wanted to go out fighting, to see death reflected on the faces of those that betrayed him. And it didn’t matter whether his own death followed instantly.
He closed his eyes and slept, with his teeth gritted into an expression that merely resembled a smile.
DC Michael Kincaide was asleep in front of the TV when Jan Kincaide arrived home. She sat on the other settee and used the remote to silently catch up on the news headlines via Teletext. A couple of times she glanced across at her husband, as if expecting to see there the answer to a question she hadn’t yet put into words. There was no revelation, though; just that same old niggle of discontent and the ongoing puzzle of whether he was part of the problem or part of the solution.
She turned off the TV by kicking the wall switch with the toe of her boot.
She considered waking him and urging him to go to bed, but in the end she threw the spare duvet over him, killed the lights and left him there.
Once Kimberly was certain that PC Gully’s replacement was asleep, she dialled the numbers, pressing each digit firmly and without haste.
Anita answered straight away. ‘You shouldn’t be calling.’
‘It doesn’t matter, we’ve made a mistake.’
‘What mistake?’
‘The whole thing. We should have trusted them.’
‘We can’t change things now.’
‘Listen to me. We have to.’
‘You’ll never keep him. They’ll take him away from you, I know they will.’
‘But you never thought of how we were going to end it. We don’t have a plan.’
‘I told you, I’ll go forward when it’s safe.’
‘It won’t work.’
‘Go to sleep, Kim. You’ll feel differently tomorrow.’
Riley Guyver lay on his blanket. His earlier ill-temper had long since subsided into a broken pattern of sobs and sniffs. Once every few minutes he had repeated his order, ‘I want Mummy.’
But the once robust demand had faded, and was now no more than a whisper, the last gasp of rebellion: ‘I want Mummy. I want Mummy. I want Mummy . . .’ Until the whisper faded into nothing, and anyone listening would have thought he’d already gone to sleep.
TWENTY-TWO
Goodhew woke with a start, the only sound was the amplified scrape of the stylus on the run-out of whatever the last track had been. He rose quickly and turned the jukebox off, before it could select the next single, then returned to the window and stooped to collect the scattering of post which lay on the floor.
He put the pages in the right order then checked there were none missing before sliding them back into the vellum envelope. Stupid, really, since they couldn’t have gone anywhere while he slept; but he knew that checking and rechecking was part of his MO.
Like now glancing down the lens of the telescope and making a quick survey of Marks’ office.
He frowned and pulled back, then looked over towards the station with his naked eye. He peered back through the sight, shut one eye and nudged the scope around by a couple of degrees.
Yes, he had seen it right: Gully was there in Marks’ office. And he knew, from her swift and purposeful moves, that whatever she was up to wasn’t happening with her boss’s consent. She’d switched on the overhead lights. That was a sensible move; far quicker and less suspicious than fumbling around in the gloom.
She tried the filing cabinet first, found it was locked. She spun round and he guessed she was looking for the key. For once, the tension had drained her face of all colour, no hint of blushing. Her lips were pressed together in determination.
And his instincts told Goodhew that this scenario added up to very bad news.
DI Marks had a single filing cabinet and Gully guessed that if there were any personal files in Marks’ office, that’s where she’d find them.
She’d pulled at the handle but wasn’t surprised to find it locked, even so, she didn’t hesitate. Though drawn to the idea of stepping back out into the corridor and shutting the door quietly behind her, she’d made a rational decision to do this and backing out wasn’t now an option.
She could picture Marks’ car key, which hung on a ring along with a lone house key, so if he didn’t carry the one for the filing cabinet with him, she figured there were high odds of finding it here in his office. It wasn’t lying on top of the cabinet itself, so she turned to the desk and immediately found it hanging by an elastic band from the desk key which still sat in its lock.
Obviously DI Marks was not the head of crime prevention.
Gully’s heart began to thump. She wondered why nature generated such a distracting noise at the moment she needed to concentrate and hear clearly.
She slid the key from the desk and turned back to the filing cabinet. Her trembling fingers fumbled to grip the other key, and her heart beat harder as she stabbed it into the lock.
The drawer rattled open, creaking and groaning along its ten-inch journey to the front of the runner. She glanced over her shoulder at the door then dragged her gaze back to the files. No one would come in.
She found Goodhew’s file in the third drawer down; it hung at the front of about ten others. His file was the fattest: not quite the encyclopaedia that Kincaide
had hinted at, but very large, especially for a DC of only a few months’ standing.
Afterwards she would wonder why she hadn’t just left it there, why this proof of its existence wasn’t enough to convince her that Kincaide was telling the truth. Perhaps it was human nature or a kind of Pandora instinct that made her pull it out.
She held it with the spine resting in the palm of one hand, then opened the front cover so she could see the first page. It was a photocopy of Goodhew’s initial application, and the following pages were copies of training evaluations and exam results.
The originals would be held by HR, but it seemed that Marks had decided to keep his own complete set of records. Did this mean he did so for all the staff, or just Goodhew? She slid open the drawer again and checked the names on the first couple of files; no one she knew. There weren’t enough files there for one per member of Marks’ team, in any case.
She held her breath as she thumbed through the tabs. She checked each name and still recognized no one.
So there had to be some reason that Goodhew was the only one to be monitored this closely. Her heart resumed its thump-thump-thumping. She’d found nothing that proved Kincaide right, though. She knew she should leave now, come back when Marks was alone and unburden her suspicions. Risk looking stupid. Risk making serious allegations that could damage someone’s career.
She knew someone could walk in at any moment. She also knew that she’d seen a file that she was not supposed to know existed. And it was there for a reason.
If she was going to get caught, it may as well be red-handed. She opened the file with a decisive flick that revealed the pages at random. It fell open at a section filled with sealed manila envelopes.
She rested the open file on the top of Marks’ desk. Each envelope was stuck in the middle only. A tingle ran across her scalp and darted down her neck as she considered whether she should open it. She glanced towards the window. It’s the third floor, Sue. No one’s watching, she told herself.