by Faith Martin
Of course, she’d probably known, as Regis had the moment he’d been told of it, that her chances of finding a second drugs haul on the Time Out would be practically zero. But then again, if a miracle had happened and she had been successful, she’d be woman of the hour, with a promotion almost certainly guaranteed.
If he’d been in her place, he’d have done exactly the same.
‘Mellow is still on the warpath.’ Colin Tanner suddenly materialised at his desk. He slipped into the chair opposite his boss and nodded at the report he was reading. They were back at the Big House in Kidlington after spending most of yesterday at St Aldates nick. But with charges now filed, and with plenty of Indians around who had no need of cowboys, Regis decided to check in with his temporary mates back at Kidlington. Only to walk into this quagmire.
‘I reckon it’s more to do with Greene taking along the blonde as much as anything else,’ Colin added. Regis looked at him blankly for a minute, then smiled knowingly.
‘Ah. You can understand why she did it, though. Greene, that is.’
Colin gave his boss a long thoughtful look that caused him to shift in his seat. ‘Oh, yeah, she did good. But she’ll be feeling the backlash for some time yet. I hear the Yorkie Bars are going to interview her again today.’
Regis snorted, then followed his sergeant’s gaze. Janine Tyler pushed through the door and made her way to her desk.
‘I’ll bet she’s stiff as a board,’ Colin mused. Although he hadn’t seen the blow to her back, he’d taken enough wallops in his time to imagine it. And injuries always felt worse a day or so afterwards.
They watched, amused, as Mel emerged from his office and walked over to the blonde girl.
‘Janine, you didn’t have to come in. Wouldn’t it be better to take some sick days? Have a break while you can?’
Sick days were like gold. In fact, so precious were they that most coppers were loath to use them when they were feeling ill, preferring to inflict the flu on their workmates and suffer in a nice warm office, so as to use them when Arsenal were playing.
‘I’m fine,’ Janine said dismissively, hoping nobody was watching and wishing Mel would sod off. The last thing she wanted was a reputation for being teacher’s pet. Or Mellow Mallow’s latest squeeze.
‘OK. I was wondering, did you fancy eating out tonight? Save you cooking?’
Janine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was he hitting on her? Now, of all times?
‘Thanks, sir, but I think I’ll have an early night tonight. You know, take it easy.’ She kept her eyes on the file she was busy not reading.
Mel smiled, an automatic defence mechanism that was wasted on the top of her head. ‘Sure. Another time, perhaps.’
But they both knew he wouldn’t be the one doing the asking.
Janine sighed heavily, and not totally in relief.
‘DI Greene’s not due to come in until two,’ Colin mused innocently. Floor-show over, his eyes followed the loser back to his office. Silly sod should have known better than to push his luck.
‘So?’ Regis snarled dangerously.
His sergeant grinned, unabashed. ‘Nothing.’
* * *
Gary approached with some trepidation. Luckily, the praying mantis that lived on the boat next to Hillary’s wasn’t home. He supposed, philosophically, that it was only a matter of time before he answered the call of her knowing eyes. Didn’t they say every lad should have one middle-aged woman lover, just to show him what was what?
Thing was, he couldn’t seem to summon up the enthusiasm for it.
‘Anyone in?’ he called, feeling foolish as he always did, wishing Hillary would have a doorbell fitted.
‘Come on down.’ The muffled voice sounded sleepy. Had he caught her trying to catch up on forty winks? Like the rest of the constabulary world, he knew about the raid in Oxford yesterday, and the grapevine had it that his step-mum had been well in on it.
‘Sorry, were you kipping?’ he asked, following her voice down the cramped passage into the lounge.
Hillary rubbed her eyes. ‘No,’ she lied. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come to get the gory details about Luke Fletcher’s nasty little wake-up call?’ she said, heading for the kettle. The water trickled out of the tap like a dehydrated bladder. Damn, she’d have to fill the water tank. She glanced at Gary, wondering if she could wheedle the offer of doing it out of him.
‘I dare say he wasn’t a happy bunny,’ Gary said, grinning widely.
‘Especially if he’d already sold that stash on, in which case we’ll be investigating his murder soon,’ Hillary said, with a certain amount of very un-copperlike relish. Gary looked vaguely uncomfortable and Hillary realised that he was still too young to actively want anyone dead. Hillary could have told him that given a few more years on the force, he would be thinking like her, after he’d seen a few more dead teenagers who’d wasted their lives and other people’s money on crack, or heroin, or whatever they could get their hands on. Or when he’d seen a few more obscenely wealthy drugs barons like Fletcher walk free from court, due to expensive lawyers, bribed juries or threats to witnesses.
But she didn’t tell him.
‘Biscuit?’ she said, thinking of Alfie Makepeace and his digestives.
‘No, thanks.’ Gary plonked himself down in one of the two armchairs.
‘Good, because I haven’t got any.’ If she bought them, she’d eat them, so she didn’t buy them. It made sense to her.
‘I came to give you this back.’ Gary reached into the duffel bag he was carrying and brought out a battered, yellowed paperback.
She took it and looked at the title. ‘Bonecrack. Thanks, but I don’t like Dick Francis.’
‘You must have done once. You bought it.’
‘Huh?’
‘Look inside.’
Hillary, bemused, opened the cracked cover and read the inscription.
‘Oh. It was your dad’s,’ she said flatly, and listened, frowning and sipping her coffee, while Gary told her about the call from the sergeant at Bicester nick.
‘If I was you, I’d forget all about that,’ she advised wisely. Which reminded her. ‘Have you seen the Yorkie Bars yet?’
‘Yeah. A preliminary interview when they first got here. They reckon, as far as I can make out, that I was too young to be Dad’s accomplice before joining the force, then too lowly afterwards. I guess they must have heard that Dad never rated me much, and agreed with him.’
‘My, my, you are in an upbeat mood today.’ Hillary grinned. ‘If I were you, I’d thank your lucky stars that your dad finally did you a favour.’
Gary fought against a smile, then had to give way. He rubbed his face, which, thankfully, resembled his mother’s more than Ronnie’s, and sighed. ‘Well, I’m on nights, so I’d better get some kip myself.’
Hillary nodded. ‘You can doss down here if you like. Save driving back to Witney.’
Gary looked around the cramped room. ‘No thanks.’
Hillary grinned wryly. Good choice, she thought.
She watched him gulp his coffee down, and then glanced again at the book.
Odd. She couldn’t remember ever giving Ronnie a book. The bastard wasn’t interested in the written word, unless it came in the Sun and was accompanied by a picture of a topless model.
She tossed it onto what passed for a bookshelf, and went back to bed.
* * *
Her mobile woke her, barely three hours later. For a moment, Hillary had an uncanny sense of deja vu. The last time her mobile had woken her, it was a summons to Dashwood Lock and the unlovely body of Dave Pitman.
‘Yeah? DI Greene.’ She sat up in bed, running a hand across her head and, feeling its grainy texture, wished that she’d washed her hair before climbing back into bed. But a shower was out of the question until she’d filled the water tank.
She hated living on a boat.
‘Boss, it’s me,’ Janine said. ‘We’ve fo
und out where the Time Out was moored before Gascoigne, Makepeace and Pitman took it out. A siding down in the smoke. Mel wants us to check it out.’
Hillary yawned widely. Oh, he did, did he? Well, thanks a lot, Mel. Obviously he was still pissed off with her.
But wait. If she was in London, she couldn’t be in the office where the Yorkie Bars wanted her. Come to think of it, she might be doing Mel down in assuming he was still giving her scut work as a slapped wrist for yesterday’s shenanigans.
‘Right. Tell you what, you come here and park up and we’ll take my car down. I don’t suppose you feel much like driving.’
Janine didn’t. It was an unspoken rule that the junior officer always drove, especially if they were heading into alien territory. She supposed she should feel grateful to have a DI as thoughtful as Hillary.
‘Right, boss,’ she said heavily.
* * *
The siding was in the north of the city, surrounded by the usual graffiti-covered redbrick warehouse walls, illegally parked cars and litter. Even so, the community of barges looked bright and cheerful, painted all the colours of the rainbow, their side panels decorated with the traditional flowers, castles and nature scenes.
One boat, Halcyon Daze, was festooned with kingfishers. As Hillary approached it, amused at the dry wit who’d named it, she reckoned the nearest they ever came to seeing a kingfisher around this urban hell-hole was when someone threw an orange and blue chocolate wrapper off the bridge.
‘We’re to see one George Harding. On the Willow Wand. Should be up here, boss,’ Janine said, pointing.
Hillary nodded. ‘You’re sure Mel cleared it with the locals?’
‘Yes, boss,’ Janine said, but like Hillary, didn’t really expect anyone from the local nick to turn up to give them a hand, or even to see what the Oxonians wanted. These days nobody had staff to spare on anything but the essentials.
‘Here it is,’ Janine said, unnecessarily.
The boat was a small, strictly one-user affair that would have driven Hillary mad within a week. She thought her own home was tiny.
‘Mr Harding?’ Hillary called, having no intention whatsoever of getting on board. She reckoned it had three rooms at the most. A lounge-cum-kitchen, with a tiny cubicle loo and shower off it, and one turn-around-and-you-knock-your-elbows bedroom.
A moment later a bald head appeared on the prow and a little garden gnome of a man popped up and onto the towpath. He had rounded red cheeks, twinkling brown eyes, and really should have been dressed in blue trousers and a red jerkin with big brass buttons. He suited his boat perfectly.
Hillary could feel Janine beside her, struggling not to laugh.
She held out her ID card. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Greene, and this is Sergeant Tyler. We’re here about the Time Out. It was moored here for some time, earlier in the spring. I believe a colleague of mine has been in touch with you?’
‘That’s right. I was expecting you. Can’t say as I know what it’s about. Mind you, it don’t surprise me if that curly-haired lout is in trouble with the law. His sort always are.’
Hillary nodded. At least the witness was going to talk. In fact, they’d probably have trouble stopping him. Living on the boat, he probably didn’t get much chance. Still, that was better than trying to squeeze out every word from him, like a reluctant orange.
‘You mean Jake Gascoigne?’ she said, recognising the description.
‘Never knew his name. Didn’t want to.’
‘Can you remember when the boat was first moored here, Mr Harding?’
Harding, who could have been any age from forty to seventy, scratched his bald head alarmingly. Janine looked hastily away across the canal.
‘I reckon it were April. Or maybe late March. Anyway, the buds were coming out on the trees.’
Hillary blinked, then noticed a solitary tree — birch, was it? More likely alder. It didn’t look exactly magnificent, whatever it was. Still, if you lived here among all this man-made mess, you’d probably notice the annual life cycle of the one and only thing of any natural beauty.
‘I see. But the curly-haired lout wasn’t on it, then, is that right?’ she asked, giving him a winning smile.
He brightened perceptibly. ‘No. The curly-haired lout wasn’t,’ he agreed. ‘He came later. Along with the older one and the ugly git. The good, the bad and the ugly, I called ’em.’ He chuckled.
He actually chuckled. Mr Harding had a full, rich, chortling chuckle, just the kind a garden gnome would have.
Janine bit her lip and stared harder at the canal.
‘I see. So you got on all right with the older man?’ Hillary said. ‘I mean, he’d be the “good” one of the good, the bad and the ugly, right?’
‘Yeah, right. He was OK. The ugly sod was a foul-mouthed so-and-so. Always effing and blinding. Alfie was polite.’
‘He told you his name?’ Hillary was surprised.
‘Nope. I heard the ugly one call him that once. They didn’t seem to like the curly-haired one much, neither of them. Showed good taste, if you ask me.’
‘Can you describe the man who actually moored the boat up here?’
‘Nope, didn’t see him. Just woke up one morning, and there was a new boat. Happens all the time. Boats come and go. Nobody stays here long. Not unless, like me, they got a job nearby.’
Hillary nodded. She recognised his invitation to ask what his job was, but knew they’d be here all day if she did.
‘Did you ever see anyone else visit the boat? With bags, or boxes, or anything like that?’ she asked instead.
‘Nope.’
Figures, Hillary thought. Whoever had delivered the boat, they’d brought it already stuffed to the gills with dope.
‘I wonder if you might be kind enough to look at a picture for me,’ Hillary said. She nodded to Janine, who withdrew one of the pictures of Dave Pitman’s body from her briefcase. ‘I’m afraid the man in the photograph is dead, but it’s not really gruesome.’
The pink cheeks paled a little, but George Harding was a trooper and nodded willingly. He didn’t have to look long at the photo.
‘Yeah, that’s him. You can’t mistake a face like that, can you?’
Indeed you couldn’t, Hillary thought. She prodded and prompted a bit more, but there was nothing more useful to be gained from the witness.
Still, it put Dave Pitman firmly on the boat when it left in April.
Of course, proving he was still on the boat, let alone that he’d fallen — or been pushed off it — in Dashwood Lock in early May was something else entirely.
* * *
Frank Ross was not happy. His little canary of two days ago had gone missing. Probably owed too much money to the bookies. Either that, or the news of a blow to Luke Fletcher’s fortunes had prompted the little weasel to head for the hills, just in case anybody had noticed him talking to a copper barely a day before it happened.
Still, Frank knew where there were plenty more of his kind to be found, and he was currently feeding one of them now.
He watched with barely concealed disgust as Cyril Jackson wolfed down the last piece of cod and started on the chips. Jackson was a sad sod, once a decent B&E man partnered with an old-time safe cracker. They’d specialised in offices, mainly solicitors, who’d likely have secrets they wanted kept, and could generally be relied upon to provide fodder for blackmail. When his partner had died of old age, Jackson had spent a lot of time in and out of nick, before falling in with Fletcher’s gang, strictly as a gofer.
Frank reckoned he wouldn’t be holding on to that job for long, either. He wasn’t quite all there, as his granny would have said. Which was probably why he didn’t have the sense to tell DS Frank Ross to shove his free fish and chips. No doubt word would get back to Fletcher that Jackson had been seen talking to him, but that would be Jackson’s problem.
‘So, you were saying how hard the lads took Pitman’s death,’ he prompted.
Jackson, his grey hair greasier than the
chips he was eating, nodded, his laden fork moving in time with his head. ‘Oh, ah. Not because anybody liked him, o’ course.’ Jackson suddenly laughed, startling the other patrons, and causing the owner to scowl at them. ‘He wasn’t called The Pits for nothing. But everyone knew Mr Fletcher would be angry about it. On account of the skimming, like.’
Jackson, impervious to the jolt he’d just given Ross, reached for the vinegar bottle and splashed it across the chips. He then added a cascade of salt.
‘Oh, the skimming,’ Ross said casually, his heart racing. ‘He thought the old geezer, Alfie, was up to no good, then?’ he said craftily, making Jackson convulse in laughter again.
‘Not him. Old Alfie’s straight as a die. Everyone says so. No, it was Knifey they was keeping an eye on.’
‘Knifey? You mean Jake Gascoigne?’
But Jackson, who only knew what he knew from keeping his ears open and his mouth shut while simultaneously being thought of as having a screw loose, didn’t know Knifey’s real name.
But Frank reckoned it didn’t matter.
It was the best couple of quid he’d ever spent on fish and chips in his life.
Frank drove back to the Big House, never for a moment considering that he had almost certainly cost the harmless and hapless Jackson a severe beating, and possibly even his life.
* * *
Hillary was at her desk when Frank came in, looking like the bee’s knees. The Yorkie Bars, so Mel had told her, had been and gone on being informed that she’d been urgently required down in London. For some reason, he’d said with a bland smile, they’d gone away with the impression that she was going to be there all day.
It was nearly two, and she wasn’t officially due to start work until three. So much for time off. She was reading the autopsy report in more detail. Regis, who’d been closeted with Mel for most of the morning, wandered over.
‘Anything?’
Hillary looked up, realising for the first time that his eyes were dark green. She didn’t know many green-eyed people.
‘No. Well, maybe. It’s puzzling. Read this.’ She put her thumb on the relevant passage, and Regis read it quickly.