by Faith Martin
An old man further down the grass pathway was busy hoeing up some withered-looking plants, and barely glanced up as she opened a gate and stepped through. As she did so, she looked left and right, and saw the white van man further up the path that ran parallel with the road, heading east.
Janine saw him begin to turn his head. Quickly she ducked back through the gate, her heart pounding. The old man paused in his hoeing and watched her curiously. Janine managed to give him a weak smile, then cautiously looked around the hedge again.
The white van man had disappeared from view.
Quickly, she set off up the same path, her eyes scouting the area ahead as she did so. There, the allotments turned at right angles with the others, the chains of land heading east–west. Rows of sheds lined their length, obscuring her view of what lay beyond. She could only hope that the white van man had gone behind them. Otherwise she’d lost him.
She began to trot, rather awkwardly, her breath coming in harsh, hard gasps. A stitch in her side made her swear under her breath. She felt suddenly foolish, imagining herself through the old man’s eyes. With her burgeoning belly and flat shoes, she was probably waddling along like a pregnant duck.
Then she reached the first shed, and had to lean against it to catch her breath. Shit, she was out of shape. Her stomach cramped warningly, and she bent over, taking long, deep breaths, waiting for the pain to subside. When it did, she moved cautiously between two sheds and, pressing her back to one of them, very slowly poked her head out for a better view.
All that met her gaze were yet more allotments, this time running all the way to the back gardens of a row of council houses that lined the road opposite.
She searched in vain for the sight of a medium-built man, wearing dark blue overalls.
But the white van man had vanished.
* * *
Back in Thame, DCI Gawain Evans watched grimly as a large black van pulled up a few yards in front of him, releasing from its rear a swarm of men wearing black overalls and helmets with tinted visors. Each of them bore a stitched-on tag identifying them as bomb disposal officers.
Already the respectable residential street was awash with panda cars, and the whole street was in the process of being evacuated. A bewildered old lady from the house a few yards down was even now being led out through her garden gate by a solicitous WPC. It was only when they passed by his car that Evans could see that the woman was clutching an interested and friendly Yorkshire terrier close to her scrawny chest.
‘Sir, Sergeant Blunkett reckons the surrounding area will be clear within the next five minutes.’ The speaker was an anxious-faced PC, leaning down to speak through the open car window. He kept flicking his eyes towards the Myers house, as if expecting it to go up in a spectacular bloom of explosive flames at any second.
‘Fine,’ Evans said curtly. The youngster nodded and backed away, putting some distance between himself and Evans, who’d parked his car right out front and hadn’t yet moved. Evans didn’t blame him. If it weren’t for the fact that he was in nominal charge of this shindig he’d have put some distance between himself and the house as well.
But from the car he could see the tense forms of the two coppers inside, and he was damned if he was going to let them see him scuttle away and hide.
He’d already contacted the team leaders back at DI Gregg’s house to warn them of the situation. Although it seemed likely that Myers had snapped at last and was upstairs in the house, contemplating the ‘final scenario’ where he got to go out in a blaze of glory, there was another option.
It was more than possible that this situation at his Thame house was just a diversion Myers had set up in order to keep them distracted. They had, after all, no positive proof that Myers was still in the house. True, he hadn’t got out of the house painter’s truck, but there was still the chance he’d managed to give his watchers the slip some other way.
And whilst everybody was busy here, Myers might be making a move on Gregg. Which is exactly what he’d told Gregg’s protection squads. Consequently, they were on high alert back in Kidlington as well.
Evans fought off the urge to check in, yet again, to see if they’d spotted anything at the Gregg house. Instead he got out of the car as the leader of the new arrivals approached. He was a tall man, and although Evans couldn’t see the colour of his hair, given the helmet, the man’s eyebrows were a fierce ginger. He also had the pale freckled skin of a natural redhead. He observed Evans with large, watery grey eyes.
‘DCI Evans? Neville Colt. Have you any idea what explosives we’re talking about here? Or their likely deployment?’
Evans grunted. ‘Not a bloody clue. Your best bet for assessing the situation is to write messages for those two in there,’ Evans gestured towards the house, ‘and see what they can tell you.’
The bomb disposal expert turned to look where he was pointing, and frowned. ‘We’ve got people inside? That’s just great,’ he muttered under his breath. Then he shrugged. ‘You’ve approached the house?’ he asked sharply.
Evans smiled grimly. ‘Only as far as the lawn beneath the front window. When I arrived, my men beckoned me over and held up a piece of paper for me to read, telling me the place was rigged to blow. They can’t use their mobiles or the landline, apparently. Myers, that’s the home owner, claims to have both of them rigged in some way.’
‘You never leaned on the window glass?’
‘No.’
‘Or touched the actual glass?’
‘No.’
Neville Colt nodded. ‘Know much about this Myers character?’
‘Ex-army,’ Evans said briefly. ‘And from what I’ve been able to prise out of his old regiment, although his area of expertise was firearms — namely high-velocity sniper rifle fire — he’d know enough about explosives and their makeup to do a reasonable job.’
Neville Colt swore softly under his breath, and turned to two men, who were hovering behind him. ‘OK, lads, you heard the man. Let’s set up the gear and get a preliminary view.’
‘What’s the game plan?’ Evans asked, as the other two men trotted off.
‘First we’ll set up the roving cameras and do a recce of the perimeter,’ Colt said, standing arms akimbo and looking at the house thoughtfully. ‘See if we can see any wiring or little plastic boxes that shouldn’t be there. Then we’ll see about finding a hole somewhere where we can fit in an endoscopic camera, see if we can get a look inside. Your men aren’t confined in any way, I see.’
‘Only to the living room,’ Evans said.
‘Oh?’ the bomb man said sharply.
‘They tell me the door slammed shut behind them when they entered — they’ve found fishing line attached to a cassette recorder and stuff like that.’
Neville Colt sighed heavily. ‘So the likelihood of booby traps has got to be high?’
Evans nodded. ‘Oh yeah. This bastard likes to keep us on our toes. Oh yeah, and I haven’t told you the best bit yet.’
Neville Colt’s ginger eyebrows lifted.
‘He could be lying on his bed upstairs with his finger on a detonator,’ Evans told him.
Colt blinked and glanced back at the house. ‘Well isn’t that just dandy,’ he said.
* * *
Hillary Greene tapped on the door to Danvers’s office and heard him call for her to come in.
‘Hillary, how’s it going?’ He looked up as she pushed open the door and stepped inside.
He’d taken off his dark grey jacket, and his ice-blue tie was loosened, as was the top button of his shirt. His well-cut blond hair gleamed in the overhead lighting.
‘Sir,’ she said heavily, ‘I’d like your permission to apply for a warrant of arrest in the Philpott case.’
Paul Danvers smiled widely. ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ he said, and meant it. Since becoming Hillary Greene’s immediate boss, she’d been making him look very good, solving all the murder cases he’d given her so far. And now, here it was without even a week hav
ing gone by, and she was ready to put another case to bed.
But when he looked up at her she was still standing by the door, having made no move to sit down, and for someone about to bring in a killer, she didn’t seem to be very happy.
‘Something wrong?’
Hillary Greene smiled grimly. Where to start? ‘I should have known who it was from day one, sir,’ she said bleakly. ‘But I missed it.’
Paul Danvers glanced sharply behind her, only relaxing when he saw that the door was firmly closed. Which meant that they couldn’t be overheard. Good.
‘Come in and sit down,’ he ordered. ‘If you’re going to beat yourself up for not being perfect, you might as well be comfortable whilst you’re at it.’
Hillary smiled weakly. ‘Sir,’ she said wearily, and started towards the chair.
* * *
On the other side of Kidlington, Janine Mallow carefully edged round one of the allotment sheds and looked inside the grimy window.
It was empty.
She moved to the next one. Also empty.
Then she heard something — a footfall, or some kind of movement, and froze. A moment or so later, at the end of the pathway, a middle-aged woman carrying a seed tray went into one of the sheds, and Janine let out her breath in a whoosh.
Where the hell had Myers gone?
She moved further down the grass path, listening intently. Over in the distance she could hear a steady scrape-scrape noise and realised that it must be the old man still doing his hoeing. From the shed further down, she could also hear the woman moving about. A few birds twittered and tweeted, and there was a faint shush of traffic from the roads.
And then she distinctly heard a human voice. It came from far away and sounded odd, then it was abruptly cut off. It sounded vaguely familiar, and yet, for the life of her, Janine couldn’t understand what it was exactly that she was hearing.
She hesitated, listening hard, but the odd, distant human voice was now silent. She gave a mental shrug and began her careful check of the allotment sheds once more. Grimly, they reminded her of a previous murder case, when Hillary Greene had solved the murder of a young teenage boy found stabbed to death in his father’s allotment shed.
Relentlessly she turned her head and looked through yet another grimy window.
No murdered teenage boy and no white van man either. Janine sighed heavily. Dammit, where the hell could he have gone?
* * *
‘OK, the perimeter’s clear,’ Neville Colt said to Gawain Evans as the two men studied the monitor in the back of the bomb disposal squad’s van. ‘Bring Rover back.’
The technician operating the radio-controlled mounted camera nodded and set the trundling device on a course back to the van.
Inside Clive Myers’s house, Ray Porter watched the trolley head back to the van, and wished he were doing the same. It had seemed like days since they’d first stepped into this nightmare, although it had only been a few hours.
‘What do you suppose they’re going to do now?’ he plaintively asked Mervyn Jones, who was sitting comfortably in one of the armchairs and staring morosely at a painting of a ship in full sail.
‘Dunno. One of them will try and come in, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Anybody coming our way yet?’
‘No,’ Porter said, sounding aggrieved. ‘They’re still talking. Wait! One of them’s starting to pad up. Shit, he looks like a walking Michelin man. Come and see.’
Mervyn Jones heaved his bulk out of the chair and stood behind Porter’s tense, quivering shoulders. And as he watched, a man who was indeed very well padded headed towards them.
In his hand he had a piece of paper.
When he was level with the window he looked carefully around, then stepped on to the lawn and, without actually letting the paper touch the window, held the piece of paper flat, so that it could be read.
I’M COMING IN THE FRONT DOOR.
BARRICADE YOURSELVES BEHIND
HEAVY FURNITURE.
DON’T MOVE UNTIL A BOMB DISPOSAL OFFICER COMES FOR YOU.
DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.
GOOD LUCK.
‘Oh shit,’ Porter said gruffly. ‘This is really it, then?’ For the past hour he’d been impatiently waiting for something — anything — to happen, and for someone to rescue him from his predicament.
But now that it was happening he suddenly felt so scared that he could actually feel his knees going weak.
It was Mervyn Jones who raised both thumbs, pointing them up in the universal sign of understanding, and turned away from the window.
‘Right then, let’s get in a corner,’ Jones said briskly. ‘The outside corner over there, I think,’ he added, pointing to the house wall that abutted on to the garden. In his opinion, if the house was rigged to blow, then it was the inside of the house that was most likely to provide the real danger spots. ‘Let’s get the settee right in front of us, and an armchair either side. We can use the back of the settee as a sort of roof, which should keep at least some of the rubble off us if anything does blow.’
Ray Porter stared at him aghast.
Mervyn Jones took one end of the settee and glanced up at him. ‘Come on. Shift!’ he said sharply.
Ray Porter jumped, then reached for the other end of the settee.
* * *
Janine Mallow realised that the white van man was no longer on the allotments. He couldn’t be. She would have seen or found him by now.
So the only place he could have gone was into a back garden of one of the houses opposite. But which one? And then it occurred to her that it hardly mattered, since he’d almost certainly gone right on through the garden, past the house and thus out on to the road the other side. In which case, she’d lost him well and truly, and the sense of frustration made her want to scream out loud.
Grimly, she jogged down the path between two allotments, and saw a row of tall, wooden-planked doors leading off in a seemingly endless row. Apparently, all the houses here gave access from their back gardens to the allotments.
She headed to the far right, and started to try the handles.
The first was locked.
As was the second.
As was the third.
Then she heard that strangely tinny, distant human voice again — and this time caught some words. Amongst them was ‘aisle one,’ and ‘trained cashiers,’ and ‘checkout.’ And it suddenly hit her.
The voice was the voice she heard when shopping in her local Sainsbury’s.
And suddenly she knew where she was. She was close enough to the big shop near the roundabout to be able to hear the voice within whenever the front doors opened to admit a customer.
And DI Peter Gregg’s house was within spitting distance of that shop.
Shit! It was Myers she’d seen. It had to have been.
And she’d just lost him!
* * *
Hillary Greene reached for the folder in her hand, and opened it out. She selected several pieces of paper, some of them interview statements, others dry forensic reports, and shuffled them into order.
Danvers watched her, aware of a tight tension in his shoulder blades.
No matter what she said, he didn’t believe for a single moment that she could have mishandled a murder investigation. For all that she was still mourning Mel and had lost weight, was obviously fighting off a headache and was exhausted from lack of sleep, it still never occurred to him that she was going to give him anything but the name of the murderer and the evidence to convict.
‘Sir, if you’d start by reading these,’ Hillary said, ‘I’ll then give you my conclusions.’
Not, Hillary thought wearily, that he’d need them. Anyone reading the evidence she’d just presented would be able to see at once just where the blame lay.
She leaned back in the chair, and stared blankly at the wall behind Danvers’s bent blond head. Mentally she began to compose her letter of resignation.
* * *
Janine Mallow was almost at the end
of the row of back gates before she found one that wasn’t locked. So convinced was she that they must all be barred that she almost fell through the door when it opened for her.
She found herself on a small square of green lawn, in the middle of which was one of those round washing-line contraptions full of toddlers’ clothing.
The window facing her was obviously the main living-room window of the house, which threw her for a moment, as she was expecting it to be the back kitchen window.
As she headed off to the side of the house, however, where a narrow concrete path led her through to the other side, she quickly realised that the ‘back’ garden — rather confusingly — was situated at the ‘front.’ She supposed the architects had designed the row of houses that way for a reason. Perhaps it was something to do with the orientation of the sun. Or, more likely, when the houses had been built, the allotments had been open fields or pastures, and the architects had figured that the residents would rather have the rooms with the views for their main living areas.
Whatever the reason, when Janine stepped through from the narrow side passage, she found herself in a large, spacious, rather pretty front garden.
She followed the path around, glancing quickly into the kitchen window as she passed. But no scandalized mother or curious onlooker gazed back at her, and no one came out to demand what she was doing, so she walked up the neatly edged path, past well-maintained shrubs and a new-looking shed, on to the front gate.
There she paused to glance around, trying to get her bearings. The roof of the big Sainsbury’s shop was now clearly visible over to her left. Using that as a guide, she tried to gauge where Gregg’s home must be.
With a start she realised it must be one of those in the newer-looking estate just over the road. In fact, one of the low-maintenance gardens she could see about 500 yards ahead of her must be Gregg’s.
‘Bloody hell,’ Janine muttered. All of these houses had a ringside seat of the rear of DI Peter Gregg’s house. So there must be cops stationed all around here on this street, Janine realised, with a lift of her spirits. Nobody guarding Gregg could have failed to check out this rear access. All she had to do was find them and warn them.