Murder in the Village (DI Hillary Greene)

by Faith Martin

  Of course, he’d always known that the inquiry into the Fletcher incident would be riddled with holes, holes that would never get filled, and would irritate the hell out of the brass. That he could live with, and survive. He might not get promoted again, but that had been something he’d been willing to chance.

  What Marilyn had told him, however, was another matter altogether. He’d been surprised to hear from his former girlfriend after so many years. Less surprised to hear that a reporter had interviewed her for some background to a piece they wanted to do on him. The press were like vultures, after all, and right now, he was hot news. Perhaps they were already scenting blood? Perhaps it was the fear that they might have that had prompted him to ask Marilyn to describe the journo. Perhaps just coppers’ instinct.

  But was he glad he had! Now he took a long deep breath and slowly closed his eyes. Although the description of a forty-something woman with a long bell-shaped cut of nut-brown hair and a curvy figure could describe many women, Jerome knew it simply had to be Hillary Greene.

  What had put her on to him so fast? She couldn’t have seen or heard anything that night to rouse her suspicions. He opened his eyes and sat up, shaking his head. Since when did a cop as good as Hillary Greene need reasons to know when something was off? Her sense of smell had probably been telling her for some time that her new boss needed watching.

  It made him sad. Under other circumstances, having someone like her on his team would have been a dream come true.

  As it was . . . He got up and slipped on his jacket. Time to do some snooping of his own. If he was to survive the next few months, he needed something on her. And quick. And since her only weak spot was that dirty dead husband of hers, that’s where he’d have to start.

  * * *

  Hillary stopped off at HQ on her way back from the station, even though she suspected that she’d be about as welcome as a flea circus at a cat show. Her hip was playing her up after her day in London, and the first person she saw as she limped through into the big open-plan office was Frank, sitting at his desk.

  Typical.

  ‘Frank,’ she said dryly, and raised an eyebrow as he jumped like a scalded cat, spilling coffee down his shirt front before turning to look at her.

  ‘Oh, hello, guv,’ he muttered. Something about the lack of a sneer made her give him a distinct double-take. He looked terrible. Well, even more terrible than usual. His tie had even more food stains on it, and his chubby cheeks had an even darker depth of stubble. Bags were gathering under his eyes, and he looked as if he hadn’t changed out of his shirt for a week. But it was more than that. Along with the shambolic outer appearance, there had always been a miasma of ill will surrounding her husband’s old friend and her greatest critic that was now oddly missing. For some reason, it scared her. It made her world feel out of kilter somehow. The sky was grey, her car needed exchanging for a newer model, England always lost at cricket, and Frank Ross was a right pain in the arse. And if any one of these details changed, it left her feeling wrong-footed somehow.

  ‘You all right, Frank?’ she asked sharply.

  The fat shoulders shrugged. He had his back to her now, and didn’t look around. Worse yet, there was no sarcastic comeback. What the hell was eating him? It surely couldn’t all be put down to the fact that Janine Tyler had been put in working charge of the Malcolm Dale case.

  As if thinking about her had summoned her up, Janine Tyler’s voice suddenly cut through the air as she entered the office. She was talking to Tommy. ‘I think we’ll have to get McNamara back in. He’s . . . Oh, hello, guv,’ she added, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm as she spotted Hillary sitting in her old place. A look of panic crossed her face and Hillary quickly held up a hand in appeasement.

  ‘Just touching base. I’m off home in a minute,’ she reassured her quickly.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here at all,’ Mel added, poking his head out of his cubicle. ‘How the hell are you supposed to heal if you keep dragging your sorry carcase in here?’

  Hillary’s lips twisted into a smile. It was so nice to be home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Thanks for the welcome wagon,’ Hillary said wryly, eyeing her boss and old friend warily. He looked as if he hadn’t slept properly for a week. She turned her attention to Janine, and lifted an eyebrow. ‘You were saying about McNamara?’

  ‘This isn’t your case anymore, Hill,’ Mel said, before Janine could speak. ‘Why don’t you go home and get some rest. You look like hell.’

  ‘You say the nicest things to me. But you know I’ll sleep easier if I get to hear all the latest first, so be nice.’

  Mel rolled his eyes, but shrugged.

  Janine, not looking best pleased, heaved a massive sigh, seeing the writing on the wall. Why couldn’t DI Greene keep her big nose out of it? This was her case now! Reluctantly, the young blonde woman tossed her bag on her chair and sighed. ‘I was just saying, with the mad shoe salesman out of it—’ she managed to say this without gritting her teeth or blushing, ‘—I think we should take a closer look at McNamara. I was talking to one of those Tory biddies this morning, and they think McNamara’s chances of getting the nomination to run as their candidate have skyrocketed since Dale’s death. They even expect him to win the seat itself, since, according to their polls or whatever, they’re almost certain to get a “sympathy” vibe going. Apparently, when someone dies in the saddle, so to speak, it brings out the loyalty in voters. Or so she said.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘It seems a bit far-fetched to me. It’s not as if McNamara was overly ambitious. Or at least, he didn’t come across that way to me.’

  Janine shrugged, unconvinced. Now that she’d had to rule out her prime suspect, she wanted another lead to follow, and fast. She could feel the case stagnating underneath her, and she was damned if it was going to happen on her watch. She needed a result, dammit. ‘Well, there’s not much else to go on, guv,’ Janine said mutinously, shooting a poisonous look at Mel as she did so, fully expecting him to back her up. She’d moved out most of her stuff from his place yesterday, and was feeling the loss keenly. The bastard owed her!

  Already the small semi she shared with her three friends seemed awfully cramped. So Mel could bloody well help her out at work.

  ‘The wife inherits under the will, but she’s got such a rich and doting daddy, I just can’t see that going across to a jury as a believable motive,’ Janine continued, holding out her hand and ticking off her fingers one by one. ‘For another thing, the final reports are through on the autopsy, and they think that there’s no way she could have bumped him off and still be placed at the scene where she had her flat tyre. Even taking the time she arrived at the bridge party as a final indicator, they still think he died later. So she’s out of it. He has no obvious enemies that we’ve been able to find, no hidden vices that might have led him astray, and house-to-house have come up with squat. So what’s left?’

  ‘Any word on his business?’ Hillary asked, without much hope. She’d have heard if there had been.

  ‘No,’ Janine said flatly, glowering at Hillary. ‘Fraud have taken a look at his books and finances. Squeaky clean. Also, he has no business rivals to speak of — let’s face it, the world of sporting equipment isn’t exactly cut-throat.’

  ‘There’s still the GP girlfriend,’ Tommy put in, ‘and her hubby.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘How did you get on with them?’

  Janine opened her mouth to object, then closed it again, knowing it would be pointless. When Hillary Greene got the bit between her teeth, there was no stopping her. It was a quality Janine respected, except when it trampled all over her! Instead, she contented herself with tapping her foot impatiently but loudly as Tommy brought Hillary up to date on his findings.

  No one had seen Larry Knowles at his local pub on the night of the murder, so it seemed Gemma Knowles had got it wrong when she said that she thought he’d been out that night. It made collusion between them less likely, in Hillary’s opini
on. People who plotted murder together usually got their stories and alibis down pat.

  Unfortunately, Tommy went on, nobody saw either of the Knowleses’ cars in Lower Heyford on the night in question, or either of the Knowleses themselves. Furthermore, the fingerprints found in the Dales’ kitchen and still unaccounted for belonged to neither of them. Janine had had them both fingerprinted yesterday.

  ‘Which is why I think we should concentrate on McNamara,’ Janine reiterated stubbornly. ‘And get him printed right away.’

  ‘He’s a solicitor, right?’ Mel said warily. ‘He could turn shirty, stand on his rights.’

  ‘Solicitors aren’t exempt,’ Janine snapped.

  ‘Never said they were,’ Mel said, with the air of a man getting used to practising his long-suffering patience. ‘Just tread carefully is all I’m saying, and explain that we need them for elimination purposes only. And if he still refuses to be printed, or calls in a brief, then we’ll start looking at him with a more beady eye.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ Janine said, and glanced significantly once more at Hillary. The sentiment ‘Are you still here?’ couldn’t have been made more plain if she’d spoken it out loud. Hillary smiled mirthlessly and got to her feet.

  * * *

  She’d made herself some scrambled egg on toast for her tea, and was sitting in the boat’s only armchair, the tray balanced on her lap, when she suddenly noticed it.

  The Dick Francis book wasn’t on the shelf with all the other paperbacks. A mouthful of food seemed to stick in her throat, and she had to force herself to swallow hard to get it down. Slowly, telling herself not to panic, that it had probably fallen on to the floor when a passing craft had gone by too fast and rocked the boat, Hillary slid forward and got on to her knees, setting the tray to one side. The wound in her hip twinged painfully as she did so.

  Carefully, she scanned the meagre rows of books, wondering if she could have moved it from its usual place without realising it. But none of the other well-read classics were out of place. She quickly glanced behind the small radiator, then on the floor all around. No book.

  It was definitely gone.

  Shaking now, she levered herself back on to the chair. Her hands felt cold. Then she got up and grabbed her keys from the hook by the sink and made her way up the narrow corridor to the prow of the boat.

  Outside, the wind had got up, and dusk was falling. She had to be careful how she picked her way along the dark towpath, watching out for the ropes of moored craft that could often trip the unwary.

  Puff the Tragic Wagon started first go, but as she pulled out of the tiny village of Thrupp on to the main road, she felt curiously disembodied; she couldn’t quite feel her feet on the pedals of the car and the noise of traffic sounded muted, as if she’d succumbed to a head cold. Travelling into Oxford, she was going against the rush-hour traffic that was streaming out, and so made good time. Soon she was parked in a rapidly emptying St Giles, and making her way to her favourite internet café.

  She had memorized the numbers to her husband’s hidden bank account many months ago now, and once seated inside with a cup of cappuccino, had no trouble logging on. As she did so, she thought of Frank Ross and his strange behaviour and gave a mental head-shake.

  Ross had known and been friends with Ronnie Greene long before Hillary met him and married him, and nobody doubted that Ross, to a very much lesser degree, had benefited from Ronnie’s illegal animal parts smuggling operation. Was it possible the poisonous little git had finally found his old friend’s hidden stash?

  As she manipulated the keyboard and waited, heart pounding, for the bank’s logo to pop up on the screen, Hillary felt slightly sick. If Frank had found Ronnie’s hidden bank account, he wouldn’t have looked scared, would he? Or at least not subdued, not worried. He’d be over the moon, gloating and full of beans, surely?

  The screen asked for Ronnie’s password, one that she’d been able to guess from the fake quotation, supposedly written by herself, on the paperback’s inside page. She typed it in quickly, made a mistake, and forced herself to take a deep breath and do it again. Then she waited, her heart pounding.

  The screen went blank, then popped up with all the details of the account. All those noughts. The money was still there. Hillary wasn’t aware that she’d been holding her breath until she felt it rush out of her in a wave of relief. Or was it relief? All at once, she had a sudden insight that, sitting there in the aromatic warmth of the café, part of her had been hoping it would be gone. At least then the question of what to do with it wouldn’t still be hanging over her.

  Although she had never touched a penny of it since discovering it, and the mere thought of spending any of it had made her feel sick, she was only human after all, and the knowledge that she had access to over a million quid had been a satisfying one. The thought that she’d have money ‘just in case’ had made her feel secure. Even so, on more than one occasion she’d almost convinced herself to give the whole lot away to some charity or other. Once, she’d almost told Mel that she thought she might have discovered where her crooked late husband’s ill-gotten gains might be stashed, and asked him to let the brass take over. But she’d never done it.

  Now, sitting in the café, staring at the screen and thinking about the missing book, she knew that this was it; the luxury of prevarication was finally over. It was crunch time.

  Someone had been on her boat. Someone had taken the book. Maybe Frank, but probably not. If he’d found it, surely he’d be on his way to Acapulco by now.

  Maybe Gary, her stepson, had taken the Dick Francis book. It had been Gary who’d given it to her in the first place. What if he’d got around to thinking about it more deeply and realised its true significance? After all, he knew his father well, and knew how he’d thought, the same as Hillary.

  Her finger hovered over the keys. It would be so easy to simply press a few buttons and transfer it all — to set up her own numbered account in the same bank and use a different password. The money would be safe then, and who’d know?

  Except then, of course, she’d be as dirty as her husband had been. Right now, she was a righteous copper. OK, so she’d found the money and hadn’t yet reported it, which didn’t exactly put her on the side of the angels. But that was not the same thing as actively seeking to keep it.

  What the hell was she going to do?

  Then a very nasty thought suddenly hit her. What if it wasn’t Frank or Gary who’d found it. What if it was Paul Danvers?

  Slowly, Hillary leaned back in her chair. When Ronnie had died in a car crash, and evidence about his illegal activities had come to light, York had sent down two detectives to investigate the corruption. Danvers and another, even more experienced officer, who’d made it his life’s work to catch bent coppers. They’d quickly uncovered evidence of Ronnie’s guilt all right, but hadn’t found a scrap of evidence against her, simply because there hadn’t been any. She and Ronnie had been estranged for years, and she would have turned the bastard in herself if she’d known what he’d been up to. Frank Ross had been lucky to escape going down too. Ronnie simply hadn’t trusted him enough to allow him to be implicated, which is why the investigation hadn’t been able to officially link Ross to Ronnie’s schemes. But everybody knew Ronnie had bunged dosh Ross’s way from time to time.

  After the inquiry had been wound up, Danvers had transferred from his York HQ down to Thames Valley — ostensibly in search of promotion. But he’d tried to keep close to Hillary, even inviting her out, before she’d made it plain that that simply wasn’t going to happen. Once or twice she’d wondered if the operation to find Ronnie’s loot was still going on — only this time undercover. It had always seemed too much of a coincidence that Danvers should turn up at her own nick, only months after the investigation had supposedly been concluded.

  So far she’d been half-convinced that it was just paranoia on her part. But what if it wasn’t? What if undercover officers from another force were even now watching her, wa
iting for her to make her move? Just the thought of it brought her out in a cold, cold sweat.

  She glanced around the café, but saw only students, kids playing games, and some more serious-looking older men and women, probably doing projects that were work-related. But barring the kids, any one of them could be undercover.

  Hillary almost laughed out loud. It was no good. If she felt this guilty just sitting here looking at evidence of her husband’s greed, what the hell would she feel like if she actually touched the money — even if only to transfer it? In her heart of hearts, she didn’t really think Danvers or any team was watching her. She thought her radar would have let her know.

  But even so, they might be. And she simply couldn’t go to jail. Cops in jail didn’t live long — or if they did, they came out as twisted as corkscrews.

  Suddenly Hillary felt extremely stupid. Just what the hell was she doing here? This wasn’t her. This fear, this guilt, this indecision. What did any of this have to do with her, or with her life?

  With a grunt, she came out of the website and pushed her chair back. She had better things to do — like find Dale’s killer and discover just what the hell her super was up to.

  * * *

  When she got back to the boat, a visitor was waiting. For just a second, as a dark shape moved out of the shadows lining the towpath and stepped in front of her, she half-expected to hear Paul Danvers’ voice arresting her on suspicion of profiteering. Instead, Mike Regis’s voice sounded calm and warm and blessedly normal in the dark night.

  ‘At last! I was thinking of giving up and going home.’

  Hillary swallowed the bile back down, swore viciously and then laughed just a shade hysterically. ‘Sorry — bad night,’ she said, as she sensed Regis’s surprise. ‘Come on in — I’ve got a bottle of wine in the fridge.’ That and a tub of margarine and a head of lettuce going brown. But who was going to offer him dinner?

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  He duck-walked under the low door and followed her down the length of the boat, glancing around as he did so. He’d been on her boat before, and it still felt as claustrophobic now as it had then. ‘Take the good chair,’ Hillary said, indicating the armchair. ‘There’s a deckchair under the foldaway table. I’ll have that.’