High-Wired

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘He has his uses then?’

  ‘Yes – but they’re few and far between in my opinion.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Fate dealt Detective Inspector Olivia Hardy a cruel blow that evening when her mobile rang at about eight o’clock. Hal and Lauren halted their chat as she answered it, then fell silent as she began to bluster and her face drained of colour. After only a couple of minutes she ended the call, let the hand that held the phone drop into her lap, and simply stared into space, silent as the grave.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Hal, rising and moving over to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘Who was that, and whatever did they say to upset you so?’ By now, quiet tears were streaming down her face.

  ‘I just don’t know what’s going on anymore,’ she said quietly. ‘That was the manager from Hibbie’s office. He said she hadn’t been in work for over a week, and he hasn’t heard anything from her. He’d assumed she was ill, but then I left that message on the answer service at lunchtime asking them to get her to ring me. She’s gone, Hal. She’s not here and she’s not in work. I wonder if she was ever at that friend’s at all?’

  ‘She must have been, if she’s only been missing from work for a week. She’s been gone much longer than that.’

  ‘How could I not have noticed how long she’d been gone? How was I content with just the odd word on the phone or a text? I’ve been trying to get her for the last three or four days and she’s not answered her phone or replied to any of my texts.’

  ‘Have you got the number of the friend she was supposed to be staying with?’

  ‘In my handbag,’ she replied, beginning to scrabble in it. ‘Why didn’t I know the exact dates of half term? What sort of mother am I who doesn’t even notice that her son is taking drugs and her daughter has run away from home and abandoned her job?’

  She was suddenly reduced to helpless sobs. ‘First my son nearly dies, and then my daughter disappears, and where am I? At work, of course, totally absorbed in what’s going on there, instead of making this house and everyone who lives in it my priority.’

  Suddenly she sat up straight, her face a mask of horror. ‘You don’t suppose he’s got her, do you?’ she asked, staring at Lauren.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That evil bastard, Trussler. You’ve already been a target. Your address and phone number were probably supplied by our mole. What if the slimeball ran into Hibbie and he found out who she was? He could be holding her now, doing all sorts of unspeakable things to her, and we wouldn’t know anything about it. I’ll kill him if he has laid so much as a finger on her. I’ll kill him with my own hands! I’ll put out the lights in his eyes and send the bastard to hell!’

  ‘Don’t fret like that, Liv,’ cut in Hal. ‘Give me the number of her friend and I’ll ring her. Mothers can be very scary. Maybe she’ll be more willing to speak to her friend’s dad.’

  She handed over a crumpled piece of paper, and added, ‘It’s that Sadie – you know, the one I don’t like because I think she’s sneaky.’

  ‘She’ll be putty in my hands, you’ll see,’ Hal assured her, and went off to the kitchen to make the call. He didn’t want an hysterical Olivia breaking in on his quiet questioning.

  Lauren went over to take the place next to her, seating herself in the space vacated by Hal. ‘Chin up. It’ll probably turn out to be a storm in a teacup,’ she chided.

  Hal was gone for over ten minutes, and when he came back, he held up a finger to quell the questions already spilling out of his wife. ‘Let me tell it without any interruptions,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘There’s no point in speculation without knowledge and facts.’

  Lauren put an arm around Olivia’s bulk while Hal told his story. ‘She was staying with her friend – at first. Apparently there’s this lad – no, no, Liv, don’t interrupt me, or I shan’t go on. He’s quite a few years older than her. They wanted to move in together, but she knew we’d say she was too young. While she was staying with her friend, she and this lad made their plans to run off together. When the plans were ready, off they went. That must have been about the time she stopped answering your texts, Liv.

  ‘She told her friend that if we got in touch, to say nothing, but she felt too guilty about that, and had to tell me what little she knew. They said they were going to London, and that they wouldn’t be back. She hasn’t heard anything from them since, and if we hadn’t phoned her, she was going to ring us tomorrow: that’s how bad she was feeling about what Hibbie had done to us.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Olivia, strangely calm.

  ‘Michael,’ replied Hal.

  ‘She’d been mentioning a Michael rather a lot before she went. Hal, how are we going to find her?’

  From just outside the door, a young voice spoke. ‘I heard all that. Leave it to me, Mum, Dad. I’ve got contacts who were friends with both of us. If anyone can get to the bottom of where she is, it’s me.’

  ‘Ben, come in and join us,’ invited Hal.

  ‘But you’d better leave any investigation to the professionals,’ his mother warned.

  ‘They wouldn’t have a clue. I’ll wager a tenner that I find her before them. I know her. I know her friends, and my friends know them too. We’ll ferret her out.’

  ‘Ben, I thought I knew her. I thought I knew you, too, but that hasn’t helped me lately. I don’t seem to know either of you, and I’m ashamed of myself for concentrating too much on my job, and not enough on my children.’

  ‘You know I was slipped those drugs. You know me almost as well as I know myself. Hibbie’s sixteen, which is a very difficult age for girls, I’ve heard, and she thinks she’s in love. That alters everything. You haven’t ignored or neglected us. We’ve both been very stupid in our own ways,’

  Olivia was silenced by the maturity of what Ben said, and Hal cast an admiring eye at his son for the backbone he was displaying. ‘Anything you can do will be most appreciated, son,’ he said, breaking the small silence that had fallen over them.

  ‘I’d better get into the office and file a missing person’s report,’ stated Olivia, rising from her seated position, but Hal immediately took her by the shoulders and pushed her back down. ‘You’re going nowhere now. You can get a good night’s sleep first, and tackle it fresh in the morning, and I want no arguments about that.

  ‘Come on, Olivia, take one of your magic tablets, and we’ll both tackle this together tomorrow,’ said Lauren sensibly. ‘At least we know she hasn’t been abducted, we just don’t know where she is right now.’ Olivia had no choice but to obey, though not without a small revolt.

  ‘I’m going to call it in tonight before I go up. It’ll mean that things will get going tomorrow a bit earlier, and give them a march on the hunt for her.’

  ‘Do you really have to, Liv?’ asked Hal, a look of concern on his face.

  ‘I won’t get any rest if I don’t at least get the ball rolling.’

  The next morning, Olivia was frantically hurling papers out of her bureau, looking for a fairly up-to-date photograph of her daughter when there was a ring on the doorbell, and she went to answer it, totally amazed to see the uniformed figure of PC Shuttleworth on the doorstep. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t found her already, have you?’ Her face gave away the fact that hope had awakened.

  ‘No, ma’am. I’m terribly sorry, ma’am, but someone had to come,’ he spluttered, nervously shuffling his feet with discomfort.

  ‘Had to come for what?’

  ‘To look, ma’am. It’s procedure. Nothing personal, ma’am.’

  ‘Shuttleworth, whatever are you burbling about. Come in and tell me coherently why you’re here.’ Olivia was feeling the beginnings of frustration at his seemingly unconnected ramblings.

  Hal’s deep voice behind her made her jump. ‘I expect he’s come to search the house to make sure we haven’t murdered our daughter and concealed the body somewhere about the premises,’ he pronounced. ‘And don’t worry, Constab
le, we won’t take it personally.’

  The inspector was whey-faced as the implications of what was happening sunk in. It was something she simply hadn’t thought of, and its reality shocked her. This was something they did to other people, not something that happened to her.

  ‘I-I’m sorry, Liam,’ she stuttered. ‘It simply didn’t cross my mind that this would have to be done. Come in and go where you must – but I won’t vouch for the place being as tidy as it should be.’

  ‘That’s not my place to comment, ma’am. I’m just here on orders, so if you wouldn’t mind …’

  Olivia finally thought to stand aside to let him in, and Hal showed him the stairs and asked if he’d like to start up there. ‘Just do your job, Constable, and ignore us. Olivia’s well aware of what needs to be done before you can begin to search elsewhere.’

  Olivia had fled to the kitchen where she could have a good cry, which was how Hal found her. ‘There, there, baby, don’t upset yourself. You know, more than anyone else, that this is just routine.’

  ‘I know,’ she sniffed, blowing her nose into a piece of kitchen towel. ‘It’s just that it’s my daughter, and my house being searched for her body.’

  As Hal put his arms round her, Lauren entered the kitchen and said, ‘I just bumped into Liam Shuttleworth on the landing. He’s not boarding with you or anything, is he?’

  ‘He’s searching for Hibbie’s body,’ shouted Olivia, suddenly furious at the hand fate had dealt her. ‘Sorry, it’s not your fault. I just can’t believe that this is happening. What have I done to deserve this?’

  ‘It’s nothing you’ve done … and it’s nothing you haven’t done either,’ said Hal, seeing Olivia about to butt in. ‘It’s just bad luck that both of our chicks chose the same time to rebel against the nest. Don’t blame yourself. All that will do is render you useless for doing what you should be doing, and that won’t do anybody any good, least of all the good people of Littleton-on-Sea, who rely on officers like you to keep them safe in their beds.’

  ‘But I’ve got to stay here today,’ she countered.

  ‘This is the last place you should be. I doubt they’ll find her today, so the best thing you could do is go in and get on with nailing these bastards who have been murdering people, including an innocent teenager,’ Lauren advised her. ‘Come on, let’s get going. They’ll be in touch if there’s any news or progress.’

  When they reached the station, news was just coming in about a body found on the end of the pier. It was a bizarre discovery by a surveyor who was looking over the old structure as part of its regular off-season maintenance. He had seen what appeared to be a figure right at the end of the pier, one that seemed to be fishing from a deckchair, and he’d wandered down to say hello and comment on the weather, a necessary part of English culture.

  When he’d got to the deckchair, he said something about how cold it was for the time of year, but got no answer. Going round to the front of the chair to see what had so engaged the man’s attention that he did not answer, the surveyor had found that the rod was attached to the man’s underarm with tape, and there was a neat bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. He was not merely distracted by his fishing; he was stone cold dead.

  The man had wasted no time in reporting this matter to the police. As Olivia and Lauren sat down at their desks and were informed of this grisly discovery, the surveyor was being delivered to the station to make his statement, and the body had been identified as that of Dennis Trussler.

  ‘Well, there goes our only suspect on whom we had forensic evidence,’ said Lauren with chagrin.

  ‘Too bleedin’ right,’ agreed Hardy. ‘We’ll have to get the other two jokers in again for questioning. One of them has got to break sometime, and maybe this is the thing that will get them singing. It’s got to be a punishment killing. I said all along that this was tied up with drugs, and that that accident we went to together was somehow involved in all this. We’ve got to get to the bottom of it before someone else is killed.

  ‘Has anything been heard from the hospital to let us know how our Mr Hanger is? Sergeant?’

  ‘No. I’ll give them a ring now, see if he’s come round again.’

  INTERLUDE

  In a shabby room above a business on the seafront, a man was clearing out what served for his office. He removed several sheaves of paper from files and started to shred them. When he’d done that he took a bundle of other papers down the back stairs to the yard and burnt them. Back upstairs in the office again, he removed all personal items from his desk – including a pistol – then took a duster and wiped every surface that he could have touched. He wouldn’t get caught with that old one! This took quite some time.

  When he’d finished, he packed up the last bits and pieces from the top of his desk and phoned his cleaner, an old lady who lived a few streets away, and told her to come in early today and give his office a good polishing, as he was likely to be subject to a snap inspection from above.

  These trivialities dealt with, he donned a coat with a high collar that he turned up, then a slouch hat that shadowed his face, before leaving for the railway station. He’d soon disappear in the anonymous streets of the capital …

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hardy was of a mind to let them stew for a couple of hours, but before she’d decided on exactly how long, there was a phone call for her to go up to Superintendent Devenish’s office immediately, if not sooner. ‘What the hell have I done now?’ she asked of nobody in particular, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the thought of visiting their resident dragon.

  ‘Perhaps he wants to know if you need any more officers to help with the investigation,’ suggested Lauren hopefully.

  ‘There!’ replied Hardy, pointing out of the window. ‘Is that a flying pig I see? I think not, oh naïve one. More likely, he wants to bawl me out for not solving the case sooner.’ She could not have guessed in a million years just exactly what was on Devenish’s mind this morning, however.

  More nervous than she cared to show, she popped into the Ladies’ on her way and ran a comb briefly through her hair, then renewed her lipstick, pulling down her blouse and skirt to disguise any wrinkles, before reluctantly climbing the final flight of stairs to the superintendent’s lair. She knocked the door somewhat uncertainly, and jumped when the summons to enter came.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ she greeted him, her face a blank.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector. Please take a seat,’ came the reply. Devenish was rather like a shark. His face showed little expression until he pounced, whereupon it became as animated as a cartoon character’s. He then returned to impassive again once he had finished chewing his victim into easily swallowed pieces.

  ‘I have summoned you here,’ he began, ‘to ask you about your team’s progress on the unfortunate run of violent murders from which the town has recently suffered. Please give me your verbal report, DI Hardy.’

  Hardy cleared her throat, which suddenly felt like sandpaper. ‘We have forensic evidence due from the boatyard, sir, which will, I believe, link all four of the men suspected of the murders to the killings. These, we believe, took place at said boatyard, and should produce bloodstains, even if these traces are very small.

  ‘We also have reason to believe that the man who was seriously injured in a car accident on the day before the first victim was found is tied in with the murders, all of which are drug-related. I, personally, shall be visiting him in hospital again to see what further information I can get out of him.

  ‘Of the four men we suspected of carrying out the killings, one has been reported found dead, apparently fishing at the end of the pier, but I’ve got a hunch that that was a planned assassination rather than a pure and simple murder. It has all the signs of a professional job, from what I’ve heard and could be seen as a punishment from higher echelons for doing a shoddy job, in that we’re on to them, sir.’

  ‘Good work,’ said Devenish, with a glint of steel in his gaze, before continuin
g. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d get all the evidence and reports to my office by the end of the day, and stand down from the investigation.’

  Olivia was poleaxed by this request.

  ‘But … why on earth would you want us to do that? We’re pretty close to cracking it.’

  ‘Because you are treading on the toes of another investigation much more important than this one, and it takes priority. There are members of another team who are undercover, and have been for some considerable time now, and we need not to blow their cover, and to leave them a clear field to wrap up this case.’

  ‘But that’s not fair!’

  ‘Fair or not, DI Hardy, I have my orders, too, and I have to comply. Don’t think that these men will be unpunished, for they will be brought to justice, but simply not by us.’

  ‘By whom, then? Sir?’

  ‘Inspector, this is on a need-to-know basis, and you, simply, do not need to know. You’ll just have to have faith in my judgement and that of my seniors.’

  ‘But you just can’t switch me off like that. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to my team.’

  ‘I can and I have. Consider this case closed as far as you are concerned. Now, I don’t want you to go near it anymore. Disobedience will result in disciplinary action for you and for anyone else who assists you. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Hardy sullenly.

  ‘Before you go,’ he added, as she was already halfway out of her seat, ‘I have been apprised of your personal circumstances, and consider it my duty to order you to take three days’ compassionate leave. You can’t think straight with such a situation preying on your mind, and I like my officers to be one hundred per cent focused on the job in hand.’

  ‘But I don’t need any leave. Work helps to take my mind off …’