By a Narrow Majority

by Faith Martin

  She didn’t like that thought. Usually, she was the one that did the dumping – only two boyfriends of hers had ever been the first to break it off, and both times it had left her smarting and fuming. She didn’t take rejection well.

  And this was far more serious than either of those losers dumping her. Mel was her first boyfriend to be on the job as well, in a position to do her career prospects good; the first to be so much older than her, to actually be marriage material. But perhaps she was reading it wrong. Mel had a lot on his plate, what with working under the boy wonder from the Met, Jerome Raleigh. Maybe he was just feeling generally stressed out.

  Maybe.

  But if Mel thought he could just dump her, he’d soon learn differently.

  She leaned on the doorbell again, but nobody was going to answer. At this time of day, hubby was almost certainly at work. She went back to the car, made a quick phone call to records, and learned that Lawrence Peter Knowles worked, surprisingly, for a construction company, as a bricklayer. They were currently throwing up a series of warehouses out near Kidlington airport.

  Mindful of her boss having to keep Gemma talking until she gave her the all-clear, Janine put her foot down.

  *

  Larry Knowles was a tall, lanky man with a mass of sandy hair, a smattering of freckles, and watery blue eyes. He was working steadily on an outer wall, laying bright red bricks at a surprising rate. His motions were fluid and unthinking, and when Janine walked up to him, he didn’t notice her at first. A wolf-whistle, from across the construction site, eventually made him look around.

  He smiled and straightened up. ‘Take no notice,’ he said dismissively, as another wolf-whistle followed the first. Janine, who was used to attracting male attention, had already filtered it out. She showed him her ID and saw the usual wariness enter his eyes. She cast a quick look around. A cement mixer was grinding noisily away a few yards to their left, giving them as much privacy as anybody could hope for on a building site.

  ‘Mr Knowles, can you tell me where you were two nights ago, between five and ten?’ she jumped right in.

  Larry Knowles slowly lowered the brick in his hand back on to a pile and lodged his trowel into some still-wet cement. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘Just routine, sir,’ Janine lied.

  Larry sniffed, then wiped the back of his hand across his nose, making the sergeant wonder what had prompted such a chic and sophisticated woman like Gemma Knowles to marry a man such as this one. Perhaps opposites really did attract.

  ‘I worked until six, as usual. Went home. Gemma, my wife, was still at work. There was a message on the answer phone to say she’d be working late. I got something out of the freezer and cooked it. We ate when she got in, watched some telly, and went to bed.’

  Janine jotted it all down, her face giving nothing away. ‘Did you go out at all? To the pub maybe?’

  Larry Knowles shook his head. ‘Nope.’

  Janine nodded, a sharp tug of excitement making her shorthand fly faster. It didn’t tally – well, not exactly – with Gemma Knowles’s statement. ‘Did you tell your wife that you’d been to the pub?’

  Larry Knowles slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. It was a defensive gesture that didn’t go unnoticed. He stared at his feet for a while, then looked up at Janine. She realized he wasn’t going to answer and tried a more aggressive approach.

  ‘Does the name Malcolm Dale mean anything to you, Mr Knowles?’

  The bricklayer sighed heavily. There was something really weary in that sound. ‘What is this? What’s up?’ he demanded bluntly.

  ‘Just routine, sir,’ Janine repeated the lie. ‘Do you and your wife have a good marriage, would you say, sir?’ she asked, knowing she was hardly being subtle. If her boss was here, Hillary Greene would no doubt be handling this very differently. But what the hell. This was her way of doing things.

  Something interesting happened to Larry Knowles’s face as Janine asked the question. Not anger, but a knowing, almost shamed expression darkened his face.

  ‘In other words, what was someone as smart and classy as Gemma doing marrying a working-class know-nothing brickie like me?’ Larry said, repeating almost word for word Janine’s earlier thoughts.

  So he had a chip on his shoulder. Not surprising. A lot of people must have wondered the same thing. And boy, did this man know it. Janine, having learned the trick from Hillary, said nothing. Most people didn’t like silence, and would say anything just to banish it.

  ‘My marriage is none of your business,’ Larry Knowles finally said and bent down to pick up his trowel. ‘Now, if that’s all.…’

  ‘You never said whether or not you knew a Mr Malcolm Dale sir,’ Janine said quickly.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Larry said, laying the next brick in three short movements, and reaching for the next.

  ‘And you don’t want to change your statement about what you did two nights ago?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Janine nodded, and walked away.

  Hillary, now back at HQ, listened without interruption as her sergeant reported her conversation with Larry Knowles almost verbatim. When she’d finished, Hillary sighed heavily. Another one with no alibi. Great.

  ‘Sounds to me as if he turns a blind eye,’ she mused out loud. She’d managed to snatch a rather wilted salad from the canteen and was still feeling hungry, and thus, grumpy. Tommy, who’d been updating the Murder Book, glanced across.

  ‘Blind eye, guv?’

  Hillary nodded. ‘He married up, and he knows it. Wife’s better looking, got more brains, more class. And I reckon there’s money in her background too. So if she occasionally strays – well, he thinks, that’s only to be expected, isn’t it? Can’t expect to keep her, can he? She’s bound to realize what a mistake she made. Best just to pretend it isn’t happening. Perhaps she won’t leave him. I’ve seen that sort of mindset before.’

  ‘What the shrinks call low self-esteem,’ Janine put in with a twist of her lips. Men could be such wimps.

  ‘Or sound common sense.’ Hillary was never loath to play devil’s advocate. ‘Thing is, the poor mutt doesn’t realize that his wife, by and large, is probably perfectly happy with her marriage. She’s got a husband who doesn’t compete with her on a professional level, who’s got a steady well-paid manual job that keeps him fit and healthy. The last thing a GP would want is hassle at home. If she gets bored and strays now and then, so what?’ Hillary shrugged. Ronnie had cheated on her with every blonde bimbo that wandered across his path. Fidelity was something he thought only applied to sound systems. She knew all about maladjusted marriages.

  ‘Even so, he could have got jealous,’ Janine said. ‘One affair too many? The straw that broke the camel’s back.’

  Hillary nodded, going along with the hypothesis. ‘He could have thought the “working late” message really meant she was with her lover. Could have gone over to confront them, expecting to find his wife there.’

  ‘But she wasn’t.’ Janine carried the scenario further. ‘So he thinks this is the perfect opportunity, goes in, bops our vic, and takes off.’

  But even as she said it, it didn’t quite gel. If he’d gone hotfoot to Lower Heyford expecting to find Gemma and Malcolm together, wouldn’t he have been relieved to find Malcolm alone after all? Or at least, wouldn’t some of the heat have gone out of him? And why would Malcolm Dale have invited him in? Did he even know what Gemma’s husband looked like?

  ‘And did he take the murder weapon with him?’ Hillary asked quietly. ‘So far, there seems to be nothing missing from the family home. So the murder had to be premeditated.’ She too didn’t quite like the ring of it. But with no alibi, both the Knowles pair were still firmly in the frame.

  ‘Check it out, Tommy,’ Hillary said. ‘See if he really did go out to the pub – what’s the local called?’ she asked Janine, who checked her notebook.

  ‘The Black’s Head.’

  ‘Oh, very funny,’ Tommy said, an
d they all laughed.

  ‘No, that’s really what it’s called,’ Janine insisted.

  ‘Well, see if he was in that night. He might have forgotten about calling in,’ Hillary said wearily. ‘If not, see if any of his neighbours can put him at home, cooking dinner, when our vic got clobbered.’

  ‘Guv.’

  Janine looked up as Frank came in. He tossed some reports on to Hillary’s desk, then jerked his head up to indicate the ceiling. ‘Have to go upstairs in a bit.’

  Hillary’s face tightened. She hadn’t forgotten. The raid was on tonight. But exactly why Jerome Raleigh was keeping Frank Ross, of all people, so tightly in the loop, still worried her. When Frank had gone, leaving the scent of old beer, cigarettes and stale sweat behind him, Janine reached into her bag and brought out some air freshener.

  Hillary glanced at her watch, saw it was getting on for three, and decided it was time to fill her team in. There was no-one within earshot, but she pulled her chair a little closer to her desk anyway, indicating she wanted a private huddle. ‘Tommy, Janine, something’s on for tonight.’

  Janine instantly caught her tone, and scooted closer. Tommy, looking more surprised, simply sat and waited. Slowly, carefully, and leaving nothing out, Hillary told them about the raid, and the super’s instructions to keep it quiet. When she was finished, Janine looked ready to chew the table legs. To think that Mel, the bastard, knew all about it, and hadn’t told her.

  ‘I wondered why you lot seemed to be upstairs so often just lately,’ she snapped. Then, remembering Frank Ross’s unsubtle head-nod a while ago, flushed with genuine rage. ‘Don’t tell me that toe-rag Ross has been in on this all the while?’

  At this insult, Tommy jerked a little in his seat.

  Hillary shrugged helplessly. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she told her outraged team. ‘It wasn’t my idea. The super has his own way of doing things.’

  Janine subsided a little. ‘He was right to keep it quiet,’ she agreed grudgingly. ‘Everyone knows Fletcher’s got ears in this place.’ It galled her to say it, as much as it galled Hillary to hear it.

  ‘So, it’s back to Bletchington,’ Janine said. ‘Funny, the Knowles’s living there. But it’s got to be a coincidence, right?’ she asked sharply.

  Hillary, who didn’t usually like coincidences either, had a quick think about it, then reluctantly nodded. Fletcher was blamed for nearly anything and everything dirty that went on in their patch, but even she couldn’t see why he’d want to murder a wannabe Tory politician. Or have anything to do with a local GP and her husband who might or might not have anything to do with it.

  That was taking paranoia a little too far.

  ‘The Fletcher farm’s a mile or so out of the village proper,’ Hillary said. ‘And, besides, everyone’s got to live somewhere.’

  As per the super’s instructions, everyone worked their full shift, then left as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. Because she lived so close to work, Hillary went home and changed into black trousers and black sweater, and wore her oldest, dullest brown coat, before heading out to the rendezvous point at Brian Doyle’s farm, a half a mile from Fletcher’s place. She suspected that all the others had gone straight from work to the farm, and only hoped they’d had the sense to stagger their arrival. The last thing they wanted was for a Fletcher lookout to spot a load of cars in convoy, turning into Doyle’s place.

  She headed for an open barn, where a man stood in the darkness, beckoning her. She could only just make him out in the moonlight. She nudged Puff the Tragic Wagon under cover, noting Mel’s car, but not Janine’s Mini. They’d probably arrived together, cutting down on the volume of traffic. Likewise, she saw Tommy’s car, but not Frank’s, and a luxury saloon that could only belong to the super.

  The Tactical Firearms Unit, she supposed, would have come in the usual heavy-duty vehicles, and would have been parked well away, and probably hidden by ex-army camouflage gear.

  So, she was the last to arrive. More demerits with the new super? It was hard to tell with Raleigh. He never seemed to show either approval or disapproval of her. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

  ‘They’re all in the kitchen.’ The man who’d beckoned her into the barn appeared at her car door the moment she opened it, and hissed into the darkness.

  She wondered what the farmer was making of it all. Was he excited, or scared? No member of the criminal fraternity would ever have even given a passing thought to helping the police nail Luke Fletcher. But an honest farmer was a different proposition altogether. It made Hillary uneasy as she walked to the farmhouse and tapped quietly on the door. She only hoped nothing bad would touch this family, or this home, tonight.

  Sometimes, the weight of being a copper seemed to land on her from a great height. Sometimes, she thought about a million pounds sitting in a Caribbean bank account, and thought about retiring to the sun. About never having to worry about someone else’s safety again.

  The door was opened, and Mel gestured her inside. The farmhouse kitchen was warm, smelt of stew, and was full of people. Mike Regis was there, although she hadn’t seen his car in the barn, and he looked across at her the moment she walked in. Like her, he was dressed in his darkest, oldest clothing. His green eyes watched her move across the room, then he turned back and resumed his conversation with Colin Tanner, the man who’d been his sergeant for years.

  Superintendent Raleigh nodded at her, but remained in one corner, a radio clamped firmly to his ear. Obviously, the TFI were already at stage A, and were closing in quietly on the target.

  ‘Make sure you’re loaded up with flat-nosed ammo,’ she heard Raleigh say into the mike, and felt a chill go down her spine.

  Flat-nosed bullets were often used by the police because there was less chance of a flat-nosed bullet going straight through a body and killing someone else behind the target. It brought home to her, more than anything else, the seriousness of the situation.

  She saw Tommy frown, and wondered if he’d caught her shivering like a terrified whippet. She turned away from the quiet, tense atmosphere and glanced outside. Brian Doyle was nowhere to be seen. Come to think of it, none of the Doyle family was present. Perhaps the wife and kids were holed up in the living room watching Emmerdale and pretending that none of this was happening.

  She hoped so.

  Although none of the ‘regular’ coppers in this room would be going in until the Tactical Firearms Unit gave the all-clear, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.

  Tommy appeared at her elbow, a big, quiet, calm presence. ‘Guv, you really think we’re going to nail Fletcher tonight?’ he whispered.

  Hillary shrugged. Nailing Fletcher was everybody’s fantasy. The untouchable, murderous, drug-dealing scumbag who lived high on the hog right under their noses. They’d tried to get him before, and always failed. But this time?

  ‘Who knows,’ Hillary whispered back. ‘If Fletcher is there. If the drug shipment arrives. If Fletcher’s caught red-handed. If the paperwork’s in order. If someone doesn’t bribe the judge, if the stool pigeon testifies and doesn’t end up dead in the canal.… Hell, Tommy, your guess is as good as mine.’

  The drugs might never arrive, and then everyone would stand down and go home, sick with a sense of anti-climax.

  After nearly twenty years in this game, Hillary wouldn’t have bet a penny on the outcome either way.

  It was nearly two hours before it was confirmed that the drugs shipment had arrived. Or at least, that the three-man team their source said would be carrying the new drug Squaddie, had arrived.

  According to Raleigh’s supergrass, the three-man team was from up Liverpool way, anxious to sell their wares down south. They were doing an ‘introductory’ deal with Fletcher, who should, right now, be holding 100,000 quid in ready cash in his hot and greedy little hand.

  She glanced at the clock, as Raleigh, over in the corner, listened intently, the radio seemingly glued to his ear. Every now and then he’d speak, giving a
running commentary to the deathly silent room, as relayed by one of their lookouts.

  ‘The car’s pulled into the outside rear barn.’ Raleigh sounded tense but controlled. ‘Two have entered the premises – the third has stayed with the car.’

  Hillary, like the rest of them, was following the action intently, and thinking it through as and when the information came in. Someone staying with the car was a complication. It meant the TFI would have to send a two-man unit in to neutralize the car driver.

  They’d also have to start ‘mopping’ up the outer perimeter too, in one smoothly co-ordinated effort, before anybody moved in on the farmhouse proper. Nobody wanted to get caught in crossfire, and Fletcher was bound to have lookouts scattered throughout the farmyard and surrounding area.

  ‘Direction microphones are picking up voices. Being recorded.’ Again Raleigh spoke, again everyone listened. Janine began to pace, then stopped.

  Still, everyone waited, everyone imagining what was going on at the site. Fletcher’s chemist would be testing the drugs for sure. Would they have a guinea pig, a volunteer, who would take a sample and see how high it got them? Fletcher would have no shortage of volunteers. He liked to keep some of his dealers hooked. Not all. Just some.

  ‘The team leader has given the go-ahead for stage B.’

  Hillary tensed. That was the point of no return. Stage B called for the TFI to simultaneously move in on the targets patrolling the outer perimeter. They’d have been in position for hours, pinpointing the lookouts and guards. ‘They have a go,’ Raleigh added simply, for the first time lowering the radio and looking at the others. ‘Let’s get to Checkpoint Charlie.’

  The order acted as a safety valve, with everyone moving, letting out pent-up breaths, and glad to have positive action at last.

  As Raleigh walked outside ahead of everyone else, Hillary saw him reach into his pocket for his mobile phone. He must have pressed speed dial, for he only pressed one button. As he disappeared into the dark of the farmyard, she saw him put the phone to his ear, but he spoke so quietly, she couldn’t hear what he said. Then she forgot about it in the co-ordinated rush to get moving.