by Faith Martin
‘I just need to ask them something relating to a recent inquiry. Nothing to worry about, I promise.’
Ophelia Gosling snorted, her large chest rising and falling with the effort, silver and amber jewellery clanking. ‘Right! And we know how much a copper’s word is worth.’
Hillary shrugged. ‘About as much as a politician’s,’ she agreed cheerfully.
And this time, it was Ophelia who burst into laughter.
* * *
It didn’t take her long to track down the church where one Elizabeth Burns had been christened. The rector, a young man still eager to help, had gone through the records himself, and came up with date of birth and confirmation of the surname.
Hillary, resolutely ignoring lunch, found an internet café and trawled the public databases. Armed with both first name, surname and date of birth for Jerome Raleigh’s daughter, she quickly pulled up her birth certificate. It did indeed name Jerome Raleigh as the father, and Alicia Margot Burns as the mother, so there had obviously never been any of this ‘father unknown’ business. Which seemed to confirm the honest and friendly nature of Jerome and Alicia’s relationship.
While she was there, she trawled the database for the marriage registers, but Elizabeth Sylvia Burns had, so far, not married. She probably considered herself to be far too young, just yet. Hillary paused for a moment, then punched in the name of Alicia Burns. She had never married either. Surprising, that. Most women, even the wary, still tended to get married at least once in their lives. Perhaps Alicia Burns was one of those rare women who were able to learn by other people’s mistakes.
Of course, she might have died. That would be one reason why she never married. It might also explain why Jerome Raleigh had moved to Oxford. Although she’d be fully grown now, Elizabeth would have felt the loss of a mother keenly if she had died, and might have contacted her father for some support and succour.
Hillary quickly tapped into the registry of deaths, but when she typed in Alicia’s details, no record came up. More out of the habit of thoroughness than anything else, Hillary typed in Elizabeth’s name next and almost spat out her mouthful of coffee all over the screen when it popped up with the relevant details.
Elizabeth Sylvia Burns had died on 13 March 2013, at the age of twenty.
Hillary stared at the screen, her mind racing. There might be more than one Elizabeth Burns in the world, of course, but surely not someone born on the same day as Jerome’s daughter? With a hand that was shaking now, Hillary put her coffee cup back down and hit the keyboard to go through the procedure a second time.
But it was definitely the right Elizabeth Burns.
For a moment, Hillary simply sat there and stared. Twenty was an awfully young age to die. She called up the death certificate again, and turned her attention to cause of death.
The medical jargon was technical and brief, but it was one that was very familiar to Hillary, since it was one that she’d seen on many a teenager’s death certificate.
Elizabeth Burns had died of an accidental overdose of cocaine.
* * *
Back in Kidlington, Frank Ross ordered a second pint of beer and watched his quarry do the same. Nelson Bonnington, a lanky tree-hugger with delusions of grandeur, was the only animal rights activist that he’d found so far who might have been daft enough to kill Dale. His elder brother ran a wildlife sanctuary that specialized in rescuing foxes and grey squirrels, both vermin under law. Nelson was local, and had been inside once before for beating up a master of hounds at a local hunt. What’s more, he had the reputation for favouring violence over peaceful demonstration.
Frank took his pint to the darkest corner of the pub and watched and waited. He wanted to see if the pillock met up with any of his buddies. If so, he might have boasted to them about doing Dale and they might just be persuaded to turn him in. In Ross’s opinion, all crooks were stupid. But do-gooding crooks were the most stupid of the lot.
As he pondered buying a pork pie and a packet of crisps for his lunch, Frank hoped that it was true that the investigation into the Fletcher killing was now winding down. Rumour had it that they were about to present their findings, and certainly the boss thought so. It would be good to have the thing over and done with.
Somewhat to his surprise, Frank found himself breaking out in a cold sweat when he thought about Superintendent Jerome Raleigh. Not that he was a bad bloke or anything. He was hard, sure. Harder even than Ronnie Greene, and that was saying something. He knew how to treat scum all right. But Ross didn’t mind hard, so long as the man in question was also trustworthy. And in his opinion, Raleigh was as straight as a die. He’d look after him. The boss might be tough, but that was because he was old school. And old school knew what loyalty meant. No, he had nothing to worry about there. So why was his stomach churning as if he’d got a bad case of galloping gut rot?
* * *
Tommy Lynch was sitting in a van on the outskirts of Banbury, watching a bookies shop. The van had a pest control logo on the side but was in fact one of many undercover vehicles used by the squad. They’d had a tip-off that the bookies were going to get raided that afternoon, and Janine had put him on it, even though they were both sure it was rubbish. More likely a rival bookie had phoned it in, hoping that punters would spot the police watching the place, and take their custom elsewhere. Still, if it was raided, and they’d done nothing, it wouldn’t look good.
Tommy would be glad when Hillary got back. Janine was driving him up the wall — carping at Mel whenever she got the chance and giving him, Tommy, all the shitty assignments. He wasn’t even working on the Dale case anymore. Since McNamara had proved negative on the fingerprint match, that investigation was going nowhere fast, and everyone knew it. Janine Tyler most of all.
He sighed, and reached for his thermos to pour a cup of lukewarm tar into the plastic cup. Tommy couldn’t really blame her for being so pissed off. The truth was, Janine was more than half convinced that if Hillary came back, the case would somehow get miraculously solved.
And Mel probably thought the same.
Tommy just missed having Hillary around and would have wanted her back, no matter what. And what the hell was eating Ross? Granted, the horrible little git was always obnoxious, but now he was acting like a cat on a hot tin roof as well.
Oh well. None of it was his problem. He sighed heavily and settled down more comfortably in the van.
* * *
Hillary typed in the words ‘Elizabeth Burns,’ ‘tragic,’ ‘drugs overdose,’ and ‘fatal,’ and waited for the search engine to do its thing. And tried to ignore a dark, nauseous sensation that had begun tugging at her stomach.
Within moments, she was in business. The first thing she clicked on to was a newspaper article, and she felt her heart leap as the familiar logo of the Oxford Times filled the screen.
So, Elizabeth did have an Oxford connection.
And, as she read on, it was the obvious connection as well. Elizabeth Burns had fulfilled her grandmother’s ambition that she do well at school, and had earned herself a place at St Luke’s College in Oxford, to read modern history. She’d done well in her prelims, earning a 2:1, and had looked set to do well in her finals.
According to friends interviewed after her tragic death, Elizabeth Burns had been a friendly, studious, thoroughly ‘normal’ girl, and the last one any of her friends thought might die as a result of illegal drugs use.
Wasn’t that always the way, Hillary thought glumly.
What must her father have felt, back in London, getting the phone call from Alicia, telling him that their daughter was dead? Would he have identified the body? As a policeman, he’d have known the procedure. And as a policeman, he’d have known all about the statistics relating to students and drugs.
Had he warned Elizabeth repeatedly about the dangers? Had she rebelled? Did he feel as if it was all his fault? Perhaps he’d come to Thames Valley only to try and save other Oxford students from the same fate. Perhaps that was why
he’d been so mad keen to see Luke Fletcher, Oxford’s biggest drug dealer, put away.
Yeah. Right.
Hillary took another sip of coffee, but it went down like acid. She was looking disaster in the face and for once, coffee and cynicism wasn’t going to cut it.
As she read on, it only got worse. Elizabeth had been one of four people to die of a drugs overdose that week. One other student — a Malaysian studying engineering, a barman at a Cowley pub, and a shop assistant in a local supermarket, had all died a similar death. Pathologists confirmed that all four had died as a result of injecting from the same contaminated batch.
Cocaine, as every copper knew, was ‘cut’ with all sorts of things by dealers — baby milk being one of the most popular, but the list was horrendous. In her time, Hillary had come across cocaine that had been cut with household detergent, baking soda, flour, even weedkiller. Anything to bulk out the precious white grains and inflate the profit for the dealer.
But in Elizabeth Burns’s case, and that of the three others who died, this particular cut had proven to be lethal.
Feeling sick at heart, Hillary logged off and left for home, the slight niggling pain in her hip all but forgotten now.
* * *
Janine pulled up in front of Mel’s house, and slammed the door of her Mini behind her. She walked up the crazy-paving pathway, ignoring the weeping willows grouped around the ornamental pond, their leaves now turning lime green with the first flush of spring growth, and turned her face resolutely away from the last of the snowdrops and the earliest of the daffodils that rampaged across the immaculate lawns.
She scrambled in her handbag for her set of keys, then opened the letterbox and pushed them through viciously, scratching her palm as she did so and making herself bleed.
‘Bastard,’ she muttered under her breath, as she turned and walked away. From now on, she wouldn’t give the sad old man another thought.
* * *
Hillary got off the train, but instead of walking to her car, headed instead into town. Past Carfax, she headed towards the handsome towers of Christ Church, and on the road opposite, walked through the doors into St Aldates nick.
She’d once worked out of St Aldates for a short time, many moons ago now, while still a sergeant. Her old boss had been DI David Kenwick, long since retired. But her face was known, and the desk sergeant had been a uniformed DC when she’d left.
‘DI Greene, as I live and breathe,’ he greeted her cheerfully. ‘Sorry to hear about the bullet. Things going OK?’
Hillary obliged by giving a blow-by-blow account of the incident, knowing a copper’s love for villain-taking was only exceeded by his love for gossip. Besides, she needed his help and it wouldn’t hurt to keep him sweet.
‘So, I’m still officially on sick leave,’ she concluded with a heavy sigh, ‘but you know what that’s like! I’m bored out of my skull, so I snaffled some cold cases to keep the old brain lubricated.’ She tapped her head. ‘Which is what brings me here. Tell me, is DI Wallace still here?’
‘Wally Wallace? Not hardly — left, must be six, seven years ago now. Retired.’
Hillary knew that. Wally Wallace had lived up to his nickname well, and was probably the last person she’d ever want to speak to. But she sighed heavily. ‘Damn, I wanted to pick his brains over this cold case of mine. Don’t suppose I could check with records? Who’s the dragon guarding the sacred files nowadays? Do I know him?’
‘Jack Findlayson,’ the desk sergeant said with a grin. ‘Hold on, I’ll phone down, let him know you’re coming. I’ll put in a good word.’
Hillary smiled a thanks. Most cops had cold cases that they worried at periodically when times were slow, so she didn’t think she’d be arousing too much suspicion in nosing around at another nick. But she’d have to be careful.
From her research, she knew that the initial investigation into Elizabeth Burns’s death had begun right here. Later, when the exact nature and scale of the crime had come to light, Vice had got in on the act. But she was reluctant to ask Mike Regis for a favour, especially now. Besides, the last thing she wanted was to involve another department. Even though she was sure that she could trust Regis to keep his mouth shut, he was too good a copper not to put two and two together if she suddenly started nosing around one of Vice’s old cases, and Hillary wanted to keep this strictly in-house.
After all he’d gone through, and no matter what the outcome, Jerome Raleigh was entitled to do his grieving in private.
‘Go right on down — remember the way?’ The desk sergeant hung up and pointed a finger through a dingy green door. ‘Black Hole of Calcutta,’ he muttered darkly, although Hillary knew he was exaggerating.
Back in the old days, when she’d first started, old records really were kept in station house cellars and were crammed full of folders of damp paper mouldering away and decomposing out of sight. Nowadays, Records was a well-lit office full of computers.
A uniformed PC stood up as she walked in, but he was silver-haired and tired-looking, the kind of copper who was content to be safe and warm and work regular hours, in exchange for a PC’s salary. Hillary had nothing against such men, though she knew the likes of Janine and Tommy probably scorned them. But it was people like this who kept the whole damned machinery running, as far as she could tell.
‘Constable Findlayson? DI Greene,’ she introduced herself and held out her hand. ‘Thanks for helping me out. The sarge explained?’
‘Cold cases, yeah. Help yourself.’ He nodded to one of the computers, and Hillary took a seat. ‘You’ll have to sign out any papers, and initial photocopies in the book, ma’am,’ he pointed out, and Hillary nodded. In truth, she had no intention of leaving a paper trail behind her. If things turned out as she was beginning to dread they would, the less evidence of her activities she left behind her, the more she’d like it. No, she wanted to get in and out and wrap it up, and put the whole sorry mess behind her.
She wanted to find out that she was wrong about everything; that the dark suspicions that had been eating at her ever since she’d learned how Elizabeth Burns had died were nothing more than the results of her nasty mind. And then she wanted to be able to go home and curl up by the fire, with nothing more strenuous to worry her than what to cook for dinner.
That’s what she wanted.
It wasn’t what she got.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hillary studied the files for a long, long time. At first, she’d automatically started off taking notes, but she’d quickly realised that she was going to have to take Xerox copies after all. Lots of them. But that would mean signing for them.
Which probably wouldn’t do her career much good at all.
Desperately, she reread the files again, looking for a way out. For anything that could allow her to read the facts differently. For any scrap that could prove she’d got it all wrong. But she couldn’t see one.
Superintendent Jerome Raleigh had set up Fletcher to kill him. Not to arrest him, or have the satisfaction of being the one to send him to jail. But to kill him. To outright assassinate the son of a bitch. And now that she knew it, she had to do something about it.
She reread the file yet again, looking for inspiration, knowing that she wouldn’t find it.
Elizabeth’s story was a common one, but no less heartbreaking for that. For a start, she wasn’t a regular drug user, and was not one of those raddled, down-and-out street dwellers that most members of the public thought of when they read of drugs abuse. She’d been smart, pretty, and seemed to have it all together. In point of fact, the investigating officers had found very little signs of drug use in the young girl’s life at all. No track marks on her body, no heavy stashes hidden in her college room. And from talking to her friends and peers, it became evident that Elizabeth had exhibited none of the signs or personality changes associated with long-term, seriously hooked users.
So, she’d been a so-called ‘social’ user then. Nothing to worry about. Everybody did it.
Hillary knew that kind of thinking well. She’d probably started off down the road that eventually killed her by taking the odd E tablet at parties. Went on to try the odd line of coke or two at a private residence now and then, just dabbling here and there. She’d probably told herself that she could take it or leave it. She was young, she was at college, fun was what it was all about. And maybe she’d even have got away with it, too, Hillary thought sadly. Lots did. She might never have become seriously addicted, or fallen foul of any of the other physical risks associated with the habit, or got caught or arrested, or been expelled from college. She might have sailed free and clear, except for one night, when she’d got hold of a ‘bad’ dose. A casual party in another college student’s rooms perhaps. A night that had probably started off as all other party nights had started off — some booze, some dancing, some pairing off. Except that for Elizabeth Burns it had ended in sickness, fitting, and, twelve hours later in the John Radcliffe hospital, death.
And three others, similarly unlucky, had joined her in death over the next week — victims of the same bad dose.
Vice had been able to track the bad batch down to a small-time dealer called Johnny ‘Buster’ Smithers. One of Luke Fletcher’s army of boys.
Now that she thought about it, Hillary vaguely recalled this incident. Although Vice wasn’t her beat, she knew a lot of her fellow officers at HQ had been particularly angry about it. Smithers had been sent down for life, and was later knifed to death in prison in a territory dispute, but Fletcher, naturally, hadn’t even been hauled into court.
And now Fletcher was dead. Shot dead, in odd circumstances, by a gun nobody could find, by a perp nobody could find, while Elizabeth Burns’s father had been heading the raid.
Oh yes, she was going to have to take photocopies. Put it all together and tie it all up in a neat ribbon. Proof of Elizabeth Burns’s identity, the whole shebang.
But she was damned if she was going to leave a trail. Apart from anything else, after being married to Ronnie bloody Greene, she was hardly in any position to point the finger at bent cops. Besides, why should she take the shit? She’d already been shot in the line of duty; she’d done her bit. Let someone else take the flak. Someone who had the rank and had been paid to do it.