by Jo Bannister
‘What if she’d a good reason for not wanting our help?’
‘Like what?!’
‘Like,’ said Gorman through clenched teeth, ‘our mishandling of a situation seventeen years ago cost her both her parents, the right to her own name, and any chance of feeling safe ever again. Like, we threw her to the wolves once, she probably expects us to do it again.’
There was a long pause then. Severick appeared to have mastered the shock. Gorman could see him thinking: fragments of expressions raced across his face like wind-shadow, no sooner there than gone. Finally the ACC said, ‘You’re talking about Felicity Cho.’
Gorman raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And you never guessed till now.’
The older man bristled. ‘Don’t get smart with me, sonny, or I’ll feed you your own entrails. You said it: it’s been seventeen years. I talked to her after her mother died. I don’t think I’ve given her a thought since.’
‘You’re serious? You want me to believe that you didn’t know Felicity Cho and Elizabeth Lim are the same person?’
‘Frankly,’ snarled Severick, ‘I don’t care what you believe. It happens to be the truth, so you’re wasting your time and taxpayers’ money believing anything else, but hell, I wouldn’t want to be the man who came between you and a good conspiracy theory. Let me guess. I’m somehow responsible for what happened to her mum and dad, and now I want to shut her up too and that’s why she’s taken to the hills.’
Reduced to a single sentence, it sounded absurd. But it had made sense when he and Hazel had worked carefully through it, and Dave Gorman hadn’t heard anything yet to prove they’d been mistaken. A bit of ridicule he could cope with. ‘Something like that, sir, yes.’
Severick stared at him angrily. For the first time, the knowledge that he was being accused of something significant, something that wouldn’t go away if he shouted loudly enough, showed in his eyes. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please tell me you’re joking.’
Gorman shook his head. ‘No. I’m not.’
ACC-Crime took a careful step backwards and lowered himself onto the edge of the conference table. For a moment he just sat there, breathing deeply and holding Gorman in a wounded but still predatory gaze. Then he said, ‘Do we need to get IPCC in here?’
‘We might.’ The Independent Police Complaints Commission automatically took over investigations into police officers. ‘But right now, the priority is to find this woman and make sure she’s safe. After that, we can talk about who did what when.’
Exasperation and perhaps a little fear twisted Severick’s words into a plaint. ‘I don’t know where she is. I’ve only just found out who she is! I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for her.’
Gorman didn’t want to believe him. This would be so much easier if all he had to do was convince his ACC that giving up his secrets was now the best way forward. If he really couldn’t help, Gorman didn’t know where else to turn. ‘I think her new identity was provided by Cavendo Security, the firm her father worked for. You were at Division then. Did they inform you of what they’d done?’
Severick shook his head. ‘No. If anything like that had come in, it would have crossed my desk. If Cavendo acted on their own initiative, they never told us about it.’
‘And you didn’t see anything odd about both of Edward Cho’s kids disappearing? After Jerome Harbinger had threatened to wipe his family out?’ Gorman’s voice rose in disbelief.
‘I didn’t know they’d disappeared. I had no reason to contact them again. Anyway, they were always likely to move on – to move in with relatives, to start new careers. They were that age. I’ll tell you again, and after that I don’t intend to repeat it: I didn’t know that Elizabeth Lim used to be Felicity Cho.’
‘Well, somebody knew. And made a determined attempt at carrying out Harbinger’s threat.’
Severick’s hoot of derision almost had to be genuine. ‘Jerome Harbinger’s an old man! He hasn’t been seen in public for years. You think he even cares what became of Edward Cho’s daughter?’
‘Actually, I do,’ growled Gorman. ‘I think he meant it, literally and absolutely, when he threatened the whole Cho family. Family annihilation is pretty unusual, but it’s a recognised phenomenon in circumstances where passions are running high enough. And Harbinger was, by all accounts, about as angry as a man can get without exploding.
‘I think he had Cho run off the road, and I think he probably had someone drown Mary Cho and make it look like suicide. And I think that, if Division hadn’t been so anxious to whitewash its own involvement, you’d have come to the same conclusion. If you had, Jerome Harbinger would have grown old in a prison cell, and Elizabeth Lim would not now be running for her life.’
The small conference room was big enough for a dozen desks, or twenty chairs if people took notes on their knees. It was nowhere near big enough for two substantial men, each angry and indignant, each convinced of the superiority of his position and the stupid intransigence of the other’s. The amount of testosterone flying round the room would have sent a chimpanzee into hysterics.
‘You’re blaming me for that?’ Severick had often been accused of shouting when he thought he was merely being firm. Now even he realised he was raising the roof, and that there were important people beyond the closed door. He made an effort to rein it in. ‘You think I sent the ARU that interrupted the exchange? And that, having got his wife killed, letting Harbinger have the Chos was the price of keeping him from coming after me?’
That was pretty much exactly what Gorman thought, so he said so. ‘Yes.’
There was nothing refined about Tom Severick. His language was habitually as fruity as a greengrocer’s window. But when he was really shocked he fell back on an old Lancashire expression his father used. ‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs!’
Gorman – who was born under the flight-path of Gatwick Airport – wasn’t sure if that was an admission or a denial. ‘Er … yes?’
Severick took a deep breath. In the hall outside, the diners were moving towards their meal. He was hungry too, but this mattered more. ‘Right,’ he said after a moment. ‘Let’s make this really simple. You’re wrong. The ARU wasn’t my call – it couldn’t have been, I wasn’t working that weekend. That’s a matter of record. I was there on the Monday, when the guys whose call it was looked like aristocrats waiting their turn for the guillotine.’
‘And yet,’ said Gorman tersely, ‘no heads rolled.’
‘That’s right. And do you know why? Because nobody did anything wrong. Everybody acted in good faith on the information available to them. That’s not me saying that: it’s the conclusion reached by the internal inquiry – we didn’t have the IPCC then. Due to what the report described as certain weaknesses in strategic leadership, there was no one available at Meadowvale who was both competent and willing to deal with a dangerous and fast-developing situation. Information was coming in quicker than they could process it. Somebody called Division, and we took over. We sent the ARU. Our best guess at that moment was that an armed robbery was in progress.
‘We were never informed, officially or otherwise, that an insurance exchange was going down. Cavendo chose to handle the matter on their own. If it had all gone smoothly, everybody would have said it was a good decision.’ Severick gave a weary sigh. ‘But if Edward Cho had let us know, even on the QT, we could have given them the space they needed until Jennifer Harbinger was safe. Specifically, we could have made sure that no one despatched an ARU because a man wanted in connection with a Post Office raid four months earlier had been seen driving into a supermarket car park.’
Gorman was staring at him, literally open-mouthed. ‘The beat officer who spotted a face from a wanted poster? I thought that was an urban myth. You really expect me to believe that everything that followed, including the deaths of four people, was down to good eyesight and bad luck?’
‘You don’t have to take my word for it,’ said ACC-Crime, in a tone that suggested it might neverth
eless be a good idea. ‘It’s all on record. Call up the file. In fact, why haven’t you called up the file before now?’
But while Gorman, avoiding his fierce gaze, was formulating a response, Severick had the reason. ‘You thought the request would warn me what you were up to. Give me time to – what? – buy a one-way ticket to Venezuela?’
‘Pretty much,’ muttered Gorman rebelliously. The problem was, he didn’t believe it any more. Severick could be lying to him – but he couldn’t expect to get away with lying for much longer, and Gorman detected no signs of alarm or desperate machination in the man’s demeanour.
And coincidences did happen, all the time: it was only when the consequences were startlingly good or devastatingly bad that it started looking like a conspiracy. Someone on routine patrol had spotted a face he’d been told to watch out for, had radio’d it in, and fifteen minutes later the Armed Response Unit had been mobilised. There was nothing intrinsically improbable about a Post Office blagger being recruited for an art raid on a wealthy household.
‘Whose mug-shot was recognised?’
Severick’s eyes widened. ‘Hell’s bells, now you’re asking. It was seventeen years ago. Harry something. Harry … Harry … Clark! Harry Clark. Form as a shooter, hence the ARU rather than just the usual half-dozen lucky sods who happened to be nearest.’
‘Clark was driving the car?’
‘He was. There were two others with him. Clark and another man were taken down at the scene; the third man escaped.’
‘With the painting.’
‘With the Caravaggio.’
‘And Edward Cho never tipped us off? He kept his word?’
‘He did,’ said Severick, ‘more’s the pity.’
Gorman thought some more. ‘And all this is in the inquiry report?’
‘Read it for yourself. There’s no reason not to, now,’ Severick said heavily.
Gorman shook his head in despair. ‘I thought … it seemed to make sense … I thought you could help me find her. Elizabeth Lim.’ His tone hardened. ‘But if Harbinger found her, we should be able to, too.’
‘Harbinger – if it was Harbinger – found her hiding in plain sight, working in a town twenty miles from where she grew up. Which was too close, but she probably felt that the events of seventeen years ago weren’t a threat to her any more. Well, now she knows different, and she’s gone where she thinks he won’t find her again. That makes it harder for us as well. Have you tried talking to Cavendo?’
‘It no longer exists. Hasn’t for fifteen years. Anyway, what more could they tell us? We know now who Felicity Cho became.’
Tom Severick regarded him with disfavour. ‘We don’t know who her brother became, and he’s in the same danger she is. That, presumably, is why the men in the van were told to abduct her rather than kill her – in the hope that she’d lead them to her brother. Well, the same applies to us. Finding one is probably our best chance of finding the other.’
Gorman was silently kicking himself. It was easy to forget that, before he’d attended posh dinners for a living, ACC-Crime had been an experienced and effective investigator. ‘How do we even look for the brother? At least we know where Felicity Cho was ten days ago. It’s seventeen years since we know where James Cho was.’
Severick shrugged. ‘Nobody said it would be easy. Find a line of inquiry and I’ll try to help. But not right now. Right now I’m ready for my tea.’ He headed determinedly for the door and Gorman moved aside to let him pass. ‘I have it on good authority it’s Black Forest gateau for afters. I’d invite you to stay, but …’
‘But what?’
‘You might accept.’
SEVENTEEN
Hazel was itching to confront Jocelyn Harbinger. She wanted to put her suspicions to Jennifer Harbinger’s daughter because, although she knew they would be denied, she wanted to watch her face as Jocelyn denied them. She believed she could tell when she was being lied to.
Most people think that. Most people are wrong. Many police officers think it as well, and they’re mostly wrong too. If they weren’t, there would be no miscarriages of justice. Throughout her training, it had been impressed on Hazel that the only way to know if someone was lying was to identify the inconsistencies that broke their story apart. That listening carefully was much more effective than watching their eyes, or their lips, or the way they scratched their nose.
Ash managed to dissuade her from driving out to the Harbingers’ home in Spell. ‘All you’ll do by throwing accusations at her now is warn her she’s under suspicion. That won’t matter if you’re wrong and she has nothing to hide, but suppose you’re right. You can’t arrest her on the basis of women’s intuition. You couldn’t even if you weren’t on holiday. All you can do is warn her, and give her the chance either to make tracks or to cover them.
‘If it is Jocelyn who’s threatening Miss Lim, she could put herself beyond pursuit in the time it would take Dave Gorman to get back here and make it official. She could be on an airliner going anywhere. Or she could stay right there in Spell, arm herself with lawyers and defy you prove anything. She could even bring forward her plans to hurt Miss Lim and her brother.’
‘I can’t do nothing,’ whined Hazel.
‘Yes, you can. Right now, doing nothing would be a really good idea. Doing nothing won’t risk compromising a murder investigation. Doing nothing won’t bring Dave down on your head, or Division down on his. Doing nothing won’t risk your suspect getting out her chequebook and fireproofing herself. In fact, Hazel, right now nothing is much the smartest thing you could do.’
Ash wasn’t sure he’d convinced her. He went to make coffee, half expecting she’d have gone when he came back with the mugs. He was wrong: he came back and found her talking on her mobile. Her eyes were wide with astonishment.
It isn’t polite to listen to other people’s phone-calls. Actually, it isn’t polite to answer your phone when you’re under somebody else’s roof either, but sometimes good manners have to take a back seat. Gesturing with her empty hand, Hazel indicated that she wanted Ash to listen in. He put down the mugs and leaned closer, but the call ended abruptly before he could make any sense of it.
Hazel went on staring at the mute phone for ten seconds before finally putting it back in her pocket and looking up. ‘Well.’ Surprise had left her breathless. ‘You’ll never guess who that was.’
Ash considered. ‘If I’m patient, I bet you’ll tell me.’
‘Elizabeth Lim.’
Astonishment is contagious: Ash felt his own jaw dropping. That raised many more questions than it answered. The first was: ‘How did she get your number?’
‘From Martin Wade. The prison chaplain – I told you about him. They stayed in touch. Lim and her brother used him to pass messages. She called him earlier today, and he told her to call me.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She wouldn’t say. Well, London – but that’s the same as not saying.’
‘What does she want?’
Hazel didn’t answer directly, which wasn’t like her. ‘Did you get a morning paper?’
‘Yes.’ Ash and Patience had got in the habit of walking into town to open the shop, picking up the paper, jars of coffee and dog treats on the way. ‘It’s here somewhere.’ He found it on the long table, half hidden by a history of the British royal family.
Hazel found what she was looking for. It hadn’t made the front page, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t – at least for Elizabeth Lim – the most important item in the paper. Hazel refolded the page and passed it back.
Dockland killing
The body of a young Chinese man was discovered by two schoolgirls walking home through Bermondsey yesterday evening. Police say he was the victim of a sustained knife attack.
Although they are still attempting to identify him, Scotland Yard detectives believe the killing is connected to a recent upsurge in violence between rival gangs operating in the area.
‘They found her brother.’ Ash�
�s voice was thin, colourless.
Hazel nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘It was nothing to do with gang warfare.’
‘No.’
‘And if the Harbingers found him …’
‘It’s only a matter of time before they find her too.’
‘What does she want to do?’
Hazel shook her head. ‘She doesn’t know. She thought she was safe – that they both were. She thought that breaking her trail, and not telling anyone where she was, would be enough to keep her safe. But it didn’t keep her brother safe, and now she doesn’t know what to do.’
‘What does she want you to do?’
Hazel gave a wan smile. ‘I think she wanted me to tell her what to do. Whether she should come home and ask for police protection, or vanish again and try to buy herself a few more years. I didn’t know what to tell her. I said to give me half an hour and I’d call her back.’
‘Did she give you her number?’
‘No, she rang off.’ She gave a little grimace. ‘She wants to trust me, she just doesn’t know if she can. After what she’s been through, I’m not surprised.’
‘She was distressed.’
‘Of course she was distressed, Gabriel!’
‘If she was upset, she may not have remembered to withhold her number.’
Hazel’s eyes flared wide with understanding. She snatched her phone out again. Then she looked up. ‘So I can call her back. If she answers, what do I tell her?’
‘You can do more than call her. Or if you can’t, Dave Gorman could. He can trace the location of that phone.’
But Gorman wasn’t in his office, was thought to be in London, and wasn’t expected back until Monday. Hazel dialled his mobile number again. It went straight to voice mail.
‘Dave, it’s Hazel. I need you to call me as soon as you get this. If you’re in London, stay there till we’ve talked.’ She couldn’t say any more without compromising herself, or him, if Gorman’s phone fell into unsympathetic hands.
Ash was looking at his watch. The boys had bought it for his birthday: it wasn’t an expensive one but it gave him more pleasure than if it had been. ‘I’d better let Frankie know I won’t be home till late.’