‘Bar supplying her with a permanent presence, I’ve no idea. And unless the letters get overtly threatening, I can’t see how I could justify the expense. So we play a waiting game, I suppose.’
‘What if the implicit threat does become explicit?’
‘And what if she didn’t imagine being followed and having President Bush eyeballing her? Mark, I don’t know! I almost wish he would contact her directly – with a box of choccies, or something harmless. Then we can get on to suppliers. A genuine lead.’
‘And if he happened to doctor the choccies, that would give us another lead.’
‘Let’s talk to her about being followed, at least.’ She called up Dilly’s work number, and left a message. Then she left another on her mobile. ‘She must be working out of the building. Drat and double drat.’
‘Tell you what, since there’s absolutely nothing else either of us can do till we get back to work, let’s check out that Elham cottage. It’s only a couple of miles out of our way…’
Jill Tanner was on the phone, literally tugging the roots of her hair. But it didn’t seem to Fran, standing silently in the open doorway of Jill’s office, as if it was to style her hair in that outdated Afro she favoured. At last she flung the phone down, turning sharply. Leaning her arms on the nearest filing cabinet, she buried her face in them.
Before Fran could move across to hug her where she was, however, she pulled herself straight, and made a great show of burrowing in the top drawer for a file, which she flicked through irritably and replaced. But she did keep the next, though slinging it hard on to her desk meant some of its contents sprayed out.
Fran gathered up those her side of the desk and laid them quietly down. ‘Fancy a cuppa? I need a sounding board.’
Jill’s face suggested for a moment Fran was paid enough to hire a private one. But, sighing so her shoulders slumped, she nodded. ‘Of course, guv. Only I’m—’
‘Kettle’s hot, coffee-maker’s primed,’ Fran declared. Her office was much more private than Jill’s. As she walked through the outer office, in a draught caused by all those flapping ears, she added, projecting just enough, ‘I really don’t know where I’m going with that case the Chief’s landed on me. I thought another pair of eyes…’
‘No need to mess around, ma’am,’ Jill said, standing to attention before Fran’s desk.
Fran was momentarily diverted. When she’d done wrong at school, she’d have stood just like that. What did McDine make his miscreants do?
‘For goodness’ sake, Jill, take the weight off your feet. I meant exactly what I said. And now you make me think I should have meant something else. What, precisely?’ She plonked two mugs of green tea on the desk, and sat. ‘Jill, please sit down. And bugger that “ma’am” nonsense.’ The phone rang. She leaned across to reroute it. ‘You and I know each other better than that. How long do we go back? Thirty years? Well, then.’ Stony silence from the visitor’s side of the desk. ‘Shall I tell you my problem first? Or will you tell me yours?’ Tom’s auntie’s and her own homemade biscuits having gone the way of all things tempting the flesh, on to her hips, Mark had supplied her with much dourer oat biscuits, an eye to their glycaemic index, no doubt. She fished out a packet and put it on the desk. Jill stared as if it were a snake.
‘OK. Me first, then. I told you I’ve got a local celebrity being stalked. The name is need-to-know only, I’m afraid. Like you, I’ve no leads at all. Except, in my case, the Bible…’
She paused, eyebrows raised humorously. Eventually Jill supplied the sort of words she’d hoped for, ‘And even in these heathen times, quite a lot of people read that.’
‘Quite. So do I offer her terribly expensive protection, knowing the stalker may do nothing, or simply keep a watching brief hoping he doesn’t take this for acquiescence and do something dreadful?’
‘Sounds like a Bramshill exercise,’ Jill managed.
‘All too real. Past lover? Present fiancé?’
‘Or some guy in a dirty mac who really thinks he has a relationship with her? Watch and wait, I’d say – all reasonable precautions being taken, of course. Maybe watch and pray!’ She managed a grin. ‘But you didn’t really need my advice for that, did you? That was just so no one in the team knew you were going to bollock me.’
‘Why should they think you needed a bollocking?’
‘Because I’m getting nowhere fast.’
‘Either,’ Fran inserted, with a grin somewhere between compassionate and conspiratorial. ‘So who are you sharing your problems with? Are you an upwards or downwards woman these days? Joe Farmer or one of your team?’
‘What problems?’
‘The getting nowhere fast problems. Tom Arkwright, now – he’s a smashing listener. He kept me going when my parents were so ill last autumn, bless him. Or Joe – he’s terribly new and he knows he’s only temporary, so a daily natter might make him feel more secure. Especially if he managed to say something useful. Or at least thought he did.’
Jill managed a doleful snort. ‘I thought so. He’s been grassing me up.’
‘For not getting an immediate result? Come off it! Which reminds me, just as a matter of interest, have you any idea what’s happening about my assault? I know I said I wanted to be treated exactly like Josephine Public, but surely even she should know what’s happening to her assailants. Especially she, actually.’
‘You mean no one from Canterbury’s been in touch? That’s bloody shocking.’ Grabbing a pall-point, she scribbled on the back of her hand.
Fran nodded mildly. ‘They’re probably rushed off their feet. But I do seem to recall we had some policy about keeping victims informed every step of the way.’
‘Which you drew up, if I remember right, guv. I’ll snap at a few heels.’ She sighed again, exhaling the last drop of energy from her body.
‘You’re sure you’re all right, Jill? You’re looking a bit peaky, come to think of it.’
‘Oh, the lads will be sure it’s my time of the month,’ she said with a savage grin.
‘One joke about that and I’ll have them on toast, Jill. And that’s a promise.’
But Jill didn’t take up the challenge. ‘That or I’m menopausal.’
If she was kind before, now Fran was empathy itself. ‘And are you? Because there’s a lot can be done these days.’ Surreptitiously she patted her own HRT patch, her amulet of good health.
‘Not as far as I know. Let’s just say my get up and go has got up and gone.’
‘What drove it away? And would a game of tennis bring it back?’ It all too clearly wouldn’t. ‘Oh, Jill – come on. You can trust me. As a friend, for goodness’ sake! Or if not me, a counsellor. You know you can get an absolutely confidential referral. It’s not like the old days when stiff upper lips and post-traumatic stress ruled.’ Breezy wasn’t working. She dropped her voice. ‘I hate seeing you like this, love.’
She’d gone too far. Jill clammed. Her voice ultra-bright, she got up. ‘If that’s it, then, guv, I’d best get back.’
‘Fine.’ There was no point in poking a dead fire, as they said somewhere or other. She got up to see her out of the room. ‘So long as you remember that the door’s always open. Whatever the problem, here or at home.’
‘Chartham mean anything to you?’ Mark demanded, as he joined her for their canteen lunch.
‘That nice village where Dilly lives?’
‘The same. And I’ve just had these particulars arrive. Fran, my lovely, it looks as if this house might just have our name on it.’
‘Like that Elham place did?’ she asked ironically.
‘Well, they can’t all be as bad as that. Look at this.’ He dropped some faxed sheets beside her plate of salad.
The cottage he pointed at was the sort of Kentish village domestic architecture that demanded a village green, complete with cricketers, a pub and a church. The second sheet wasn’t so clear, but all the same something made her swallow coleslaw the wrong way. ‘Do my aged eyes deceive m
e or is that a suit of armour in that shot of the lounge?’
Mark peered, arm at maximum stretch. ‘I’d need a magnifying glass to tell.’
‘Or some reading glasses. Come on, presbyopia is a sign of maturity. And you can’t say my specs aren’t chic. You’d be able to peer meaningfully over them. Here, for goodness’ sake borrow mine. They’re supposed to be unisex, after all.’
Reluctantly, disdainfully even, he took them. ‘You’re right. It is a suit of armour. Do you think it comes with the house? Or we could make an offer for that, too! Look – just the right size garden for us. A pond. A terrace. Enough rooms to invite my kids to stay – if you don’t mind, that is.’
‘Of course I don’t.’ If only she could believe they would come. ‘Tell you what, I could make an excuse to go and see what Crime Prevention have done about Dilly’s security and check it out.’
‘Er…’ He looked both cunning and guilty. She was hard put not to reach over and plant a smacking kiss. ‘Let’s do better than that. Come on: get that down you and let’s look at it together. I’ve got some time-off-in-lieu owing.’
‘I thought you’d got wall-to-wall meetings.’
‘I could have sent you in as my substitute, but I shall send apologies.’
‘Mark!’ She was genuinely outraged.
‘It just looks so perfect. We won’t see it properly if we leave it till this evening.’
She had a very bad feeling about this. But he so rarely thought about even bending a rule, let alone breaking one, she’d better go along with him.
‘Dilly’s cottage first?’ She pulled up short. ‘Actually, is it appropriate for us to move in so close to a client, as it were?’
‘You’ll have sorted Dilly’s case by the end of the month. We shall be living in that cottage till we’re carried out feet first.’
Mark might not have been at that meeting, or even at his desk, but he assuaged his conscience by spending the entire journey on the phone, time off in lieu or no TOIL.
Fran was happy enough. She’d always liked driving, and today’s light traffic gave her a chance to scan the countryside as she drove. Any day now it would be greening into spring. She might not be an Easter bride but to be an Easter co-mortgagee would pretty well do. What greater way to show your love for each other than by tying yourself into expensive property till the end of time? And this cottage was definitely at the top end of the range they’d allowed themselves, even though retirement lump sums would eventually pay off much of the balance.
Almost as if touching wood, and despite her caveat about putting work first, she chose a different way into the village from the one she’d used to approach Dilly’s cottage. This involved a level crossing. It was closed. She cut the engine as she waited for not one but two local trains, which crossed on the crossing. Was this a good omen or a bad? At least the village had a station, even if it was little more than a halt. How many times a day did trains to and from Charing Cross stop there?
Mark still officially chuntering away and now checking something in his diary, she treated the crossing-keeper to what in her younger days would have been a dazzling smile and pressed on. She picked her way through the village and parked right at the cottage gate.
Mark cut the call with unreasonable haste, almost tumbling from the car in his efforts to see the cottage close up. ‘Fran, my sweet, this is it! Isn’t it lovely?’ He put an arm round her shoulders, as if to embrace their new home as well.
She nodded, swallowing hard as she burst his bubble. ‘Perfect.’ She turned him gently but inexorably. ‘Pity about the view.’ There, just across a picturesque bubbling stream, was a mill. Not the historic and picturesque corn-grinding sort with sails or a big waterwheel. No such luck. A Forties or Fifties brutalist papermill.
As one and in silence, they got back into the car. Mark didn’t make any further calls, and even cut off an incoming one. Fran merely pointed the car towards Dilly’s cottage and drove.
She stopped, very suddenly. ‘Oh, my God.’
Mark was out of the car as quickly as she was. A huge bunch of flowers sat on the front-door step. A quick glance showed a legitimate Interflora envelope. But it was the flowers themselves that constituted the problem. Lilies, white roses, white freesias, all sorts of other white flowers Fran didn’t know the name of made up either a beautiful wedding bouquet or a classy funeral spray.
‘Is this just what we were dreading? Has he got hold of her home address at last?’
Mark nodded at the little camera that was supposed to watching their every move. ‘At least that will help ID the delivery driver as genuine. We hope. Or not.’
The camera seemed remarkably uninterested in their presence, though she’d had an idea it was supposed be alerted by movement and to track whatever was making it. She bobbed around. It stayed put. She literally scratched her hair. It ignored her. It ignored her when she pulled Mark’s sleeve, like an importunate child, and told him.
‘Let’s worry about that later,’ he said. ‘Let’s check the flowers first. Do you reckon they’re a genuine Interflora delivery?’
Fran eyed the spray. ‘You’d have to be a pro to produce an arrangement as good as this, wouldn’t you? It’s way beyond my stick-’em-in-a-vase-and-hope skills.’
‘Any latex gloves in your car?’
‘Does swag get carried away in bags?’
Very carefully they eased out the envelope and opened it. Inside was what looked like a bona fide Interflora card, with another giving maintenance instructions.
‘With all my love,’ Fran read aloud. ‘But no initial, let alone name. I smell – apart from these lovely flowers – a brown furry rodent.’
‘So what’ll you do?’
‘Call Dilly. If these really are from a friend, she’ll want them, won’t she?’
‘I can see you would!’
‘If not, she probably won’t give them house-room. In which case, I’ll give this card to Mike the Miserable in the vain hope he’ll find something other than pollen. Then I’ll drop off the flowers to wherever Dilly wants them delivered – a hospice or something.’ She phoned Dilly’s work number, to her alarm getting put straight though to the newsroom without being asked for any ID at all. Someone needed their ears chewing.
Dilly was out on a story, was she? At least her male colleague offered to do no more than take a message.
‘You can’t give me her mobile number?’
‘Absolutely not. It’s against company policy. Sorry.’
‘But this is very urgent. It’s the police.’
‘If you give me your number, I’ll call and ask her to phone you back. That’s the best I can do.’
‘It’s a very good best. Well done!’ Fran identified herself. ‘I do have her mobile number in fact, but it’s great to see people being careful. Thanks. Now,’ she added grimly. ‘if you could just put me through to your switchboard again…’
‘Flowers?’ Dilly sounded completely bemused. ‘Oh. You think they’re from…him, don’t you?’
‘No idea,’ said Fran cheerfully, lying through her teeth. Had the stalker known Dilly’s address all along and for the last couple of weeks continued to send the letters to TVInvicta as a bluff? If only she could move Dilly out. Bloody Daniel McDine and his piggish principles! ‘They’re lovely. Shall I send you a photo down the line? No? Well, if you weren’t expecting them, I’ll check them out with Interflora, if that’s OK with you. And have a look at anything the security cameras have shown up. Now, do you want to keep them, if you don’t know their provenance?’
‘Of course! I love flowers!’ And she still hoped they were Stephen’s, didn’t she?
‘Shall I leave them on your step or stow them somewhere safer?’
‘Round the back, maybe? Behind the water butt?’
Cutting the call, Fran obliged. And then swore, the sort of verbal blast Mark had probably not heard from her in years. ‘Look here. Under this flower pot.’
‘Bloody hell! Is that what I
think it is? Her front door key?’
It certainly opened the front door. So they stowed the flowers in the sink, locked up and, using one of Fran’s latex gloves as an envelope, popped the key through the letterbox.
‘Death-wish or denial or what?’ Fran demanded as Mark drove back to Maidstone.
‘Maybe she didn’t even know it was there. Maybe the previous owner? It is a village after all.’
‘And she’s switched her phone off.’ She composed a pithy message. ‘Hello, Dilly. This is Detective Chief Superintendent Harman here. I thought you’d like to know what I’ve done with your flowers, and, more to the point, how I was able to…’
Interflora personified helpfulness. The flowers had been ordered in a central London shop, by a man paying cash. Since Fran was on official business, they handed over the phone number of the shop.
A pleasant voiced woman with the hint of a Yorkshire accent answered Fran’s enquiry. She checked her computer, declared that it was she who’d served the customer and said that he’d dictated the message. After some thought she recalled that he wore glasses that reacted to the light, but as he’d stood in direct sun for the course of the transaction she’d not been able to say much else.
Fran’s stomach sank. Spectacles. Stephen. Oh, dear.
‘Well spoken. Middle years – at least forty-five, but with the spectacles and the hat he wore—’
‘Hat?’
‘One of those with a wide brim like detectives used to wear in old black and white films.’
‘A trench coat too, by any chance?’
But the irony was lost.
Not many people wore hats, however, these days. If they did, they had good enough manners to remove them in public. Was this a disguise? A mocking disguise?
‘And when was this?’ In her irritation she’d almost forgotten to ask. She jotted the response. ‘Two weeks ago?’
‘It’s quite usual for people to specify a date in the future, Chief Superintendent.’
‘And to pay cash – it must have been quite expensive?’
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