MURDER IN THE GARDEN

by Faith Martin

  ‘Well done, lads,’ Evans said, grinning.

  ‘Guv.’ Both men nodded. They knew they’d have to give statements back at the nick before they could even think of going home, and Evans, understanding their need, let them go without much more than a cursory nod.

  He looked back at the house and waited for Neville Colt to join him. Briefly, as he climbed out of his heavy protective clothing, the bomb disposal man gave him a rundown of what he’d found.

  ‘So no explosives at all?’ Evans asked, surprised.

  ‘None. Only these in each of the rooms upstairs.’ Neville held out one of the cassette recorders. Evans stared at it as though it were a live cobra, making no move to handle it.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Colt said, with a grin. ‘I’ve gone over it. It’s perfectly safe. By the way, my lads will be at the house most of the night, just making sure there’s nothing nasty hidden away in there. But my guess is there never were any explosives in there.’

  DCI Evans nodded. He picked up the cassette recorder and depressed the play button. And nearly dropped it, as a loud recorded BOOM echoed around the street.

  Two of the bomb disposal men stopped and looked at them curiously. Evans, shaken and sick to his stomach, could only shake his head as Neville Colt burst into laughter. But then, the bomb squad, Evans knew, were famous for their weird sense of humour.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It felt strange being interviewed in her own nick. Granted, they were not downstairs in an interview room, and she hadn’t, obviously, asked to have a solicitor present. But even so, Hillary felt a distinct sense of irony as she took a seat in front of Marcus Donleavy’s desk. The chief superintendent sighed, and rubbed a hand across his forehead.

  It was nearly eight o’clock at night, and it had been a long day. Next to Hillary sat DCI Gawain Evans and Marcus’s secretary, who, having been asked to work late, was now taking notes. A machine recorded all that was being said. A record somewhat belying Marcus Donleavy’s opening words.

  ‘This is, of course, an unofficial interview, Hillary. That will take place sometime tomorrow afternoon, I imagine, with an independent review board. Right now, this is simply a fact-finding operation. Are we all agreed?’

  Hillary smiled wryly. Everybody in the room knew that this debriefing was bound to be the starting point for any inquiry, and set the tone for the whole procedure. But both DCI Evans and Hillary were willing to play along. After all, it suited them both.

  ‘First of all, Hillary, have you heard from the Radcliffe concerning Inspector Mallow’s condition?’

  Hillary cleared her throat carefully. ‘She’s still under observation, sir. Her gynaecologist isn’t happy about her level of hypertension, and she’s been given a course of drugs to help prevent miscarriage. But they want to keep her in overnight, and they’re still not saying if she can go home tomorrow. From what I can gather, I think it unlikely. She’s had a severe shock, after all, and even without the complications of pregnancy, DI Mallow needs time to recover.’

  Donleavy gave a crooked grin. Now the gauntlet had been thrown down, and any officer assigned to interview Janine Mallow was well and truly warned. If she should have a miscarriage at any point, guilt had just been apportioned, before the first word had been spoken. As had been Hillary’s intention all along, of course. And it all but guaranteed that any questioning of her ex-sergeant would be gentle.

  Beside Hillary Greene, DCI Evans caught Donleavy’s eye and carefully looked away. Like Donleavy, he understood what was happening here, and was beginning to understand just why DI Hillary Greene’s stock was so high at Thames Valley.

  He hadn’t really got to know the woman during the Mallow investigation, and he was beginning to realise that it was very much his loss.

  ‘Quite. Perhaps, DI Greene, you could give your report now?’ Donleavy said quietly.

  Hillary spoke slowly and carefully for nearly half an hour as she described the events of that afternoon, beginning with the desperate plea for help from Janine that she’d taken in Paul Danvers’s room and ending with the arrival of Donleavy on the scene. After she’d finished, the chief superintendent asked her a few clarifying questions, and then dismissed her.

  ‘Go home and get some rest,’ he ordered briefly. ‘I’ll see that you’re not bothered again tonight.’

  Hillary nodded gratefully, turned and left. Both men watched her straight-backed, calm exit, then Donleavy sighed, and turned off the tape recorder. He dismissed his secretary with gratitude and asked her if she could stay on even longer and transcribe the notes. She, of course, agreed and left quietly.

  Evans had apprised them all of the events in Thame. He’d been in the car heading back to HQ when news had broken of the events in a small orange shed back in Kidlington, which had so unexpectedly solved and closed his case. Now, the senior officers looked at one another thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, it all seems straightforward enough,’ Evans began cautiously. ‘Any news from forensics yet?’

  ‘Only early prelims,’ Donleavy said. ‘But there’s nothing to contradict DI Greene’s version of events.’

  Yet.

  The unspoken word lay ominously between them.

  Evans sighed and stretched. He’d be glad to get back to London, and he certainly didn’t envy Donleavy the months ahead. Even if an independent inquiry finally cleared Janine Mallow of any major wrongdoing, the press was still going to have a field day. And if, as both men privately thought, there was just a little bit more to the Myers affair than met the eye, then things could get very nasty, very quickly.

  ‘Well,’ Evans said, ‘I need to stand down the team. And they’re still mopping up in Thame. I’d better show my face back there.’

  Both men rose and solemnly shook hands.

  * * *

  The next morning Hillary came in early. And, as expected, the moment she stepped into the lobby all conversation stopped, leaving a heavy silence. Then the desk sergeant called out a cheerful greeting. Hillary smiled at him wanly and nodded.

  Hillary knew as she climbed the stairs that everybody would have heard what had happened, and formed an opinion by now. And she had a very good idea what the majority of her fellow officers were thinking.

  In the main office she endured a similar drop in noise level as she walked through the door. Then Sam Waterstone, at his desk by the door, was the first to talk to her, his voice loud and meant to be heard.

  ‘Hello, Hill. A good result yesterday. Well done.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Thanks, Sam. It’s not the way I would have wanted it, but I’m not complaining.’

  Her words broke the spell, and by the time she’d got to her desk she’d had her back metaphorically slapped by all those she passed, and their unstinting support gave her a boost.

  Not surprisingly, she’d hardly slept a wink.

  She slung her bag on to her desk, and set to work. And the first thing on her agenda was to get an arrest warrant in the Eddie Philpott case before she could be waylaid by the review board. She reached for the telephone, glad to find her favourite judge had just got in to his office, and got the paperwork under way.

  Keith Barrington was next in; he shot Hillary a quick glance as he settled himself at his desk. Like everyone else, he was dying to ask her for a first-hand account of yesterday’s events, but didn’t have the nerve. Gemma and, to Hillary’s surprise, Frank Ross came in together, Ross giving her a quick, assessing look.

  ‘So the blonde bombshell offed Myers then,’ he said bluntly. ‘Good for her. And at least you had the guts to stick by her,’ he added grudgingly.

  It was, Hillary thought with a wince, what everyone else was thinking but not saying.

  ‘Lovely to see you too, Frank,’ she said drily, earning a few smiles and sniggers from the rest of the room. ‘Since you’ve decided to put in a full day’s work for once, you can nip down to the county court and get this.’

  She waved the arrest warrant documents at him. He sighed and reached for them
. He’d just started to rise when Hillary saw him pause and begin to smile. And since a smiling Frank Ross was always guaranteed to be a cause for alarm, Hillary too rose and turned around. Superintendent Brian Vane was crossing the room towards her. His face was tight with some kind of suppressed emotion, and Hillary felt her spine stiffen.

  DCI Danvers also spotted him and quickly emerged from his cubicle to follow his immediate superior to Hillary’s desk.

  Gemma felt the room become tense and quiet and felt her own nerves stretch. She glanced quickly at her boss, wondering whether Hillary knew what it was all about, but her DI’s face was as tight and grim as Vane’s own.

  ‘So, DI Greene,’ Brian Vane’s opening words, quiet though they were, carried clearly. ‘You chose to ignore all my warnings and get involved in DCI Evans’s operation?’

  Hillary sighed slightly. ‘You’re mistaken, sir,’ she said levelly. ‘I’ve had nothing to do with Mel’s case.’

  ‘Don’t give me that!’ Vane responded. ‘I distinctly remember telling you not to encourage DI Janine Mallow’s unfortunate and insubordinate determination to interfere in the investigation into her husband’s murder.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hillary remained cool. ‘And I did my best to—’

  ‘Did you or did you not tell her to do a house-to-house of the main road, looking for reluctant witnesses to Superintendent Mallow’s shooting?’ Hillary tensed. Shit. Who had told him that? She caught Frank Ross smirking, and shot him a quick, keen look that everyone in the room caught.

  The silence suddenly became electric.

  ‘Janine needed to do something, sir — she was going mad being inactive. And since she was suffering with hypertension, which could have threatened her pregnancy, I thought some harmless activity—’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Vane said. He hadn’t yet raised his voice, but it trembled with either triumph or anger — Hillary couldn’t tell which. ‘When you received that call for help from DI Mallow yesterday, it was your duty to report it instantly to your superior officer. You had no authority to go to the scene or interfere. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘A fact I’m sure the inquiry will also be keen to underline,’ Vane emphasized, making it clear that he’d make damn sure of it.

  ‘I’m sure they will, sir,’ Hillary agreed meekly.

  Vane’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as a belated sense of self-preservation rippled over him.

  When he’d heard about what had happened yesterday, he’d been overjoyed. It had dismayed him to learn that DI Hillary Greene was going to be assigned so closely to him, and he’d been searching ever since for ways to get her shuffled off sideways. With yesterday’s debacle, he’d thought the opportunity had at last been handed to him on a platter. She’d broken so many rules there was no way she was going to get off with anything less than a severe disciplinary warning. Maybe more. Consequently, he’d been looking forward to this confrontation all morning. Now though, he felt the first shimmer of unease. Somehow it was all getting away from him, yet even though he couldn’t tell how, he knew that Hillary Greene was to blame.

  ‘I’ll be talking to the chief constable later, DI Greene,’ he said. ‘I’m warning you now, I take an extremely serious view of your conduct.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Brian Vane glanced around and became aware of a hostile wave of eyes watching him. He nodded briefly at Danvers, closed his lips firmly together and began to walk away.

  Hillary let him get almost halfway across the room before turning to Paul and saying in a clear voice, ‘Sir, I’m sending Frank to the courts for the arrest warrant. Can I bring in my chief suspect in the Philpott case?’

  Danvers blinked, caught by surprise, and opened his mouth to tell her that he needed to be briefed first, since he still had no idea what she was getting at with her report. But then he realised that he could do no such thing — he simply could not let her down with the whole room watching and listening.

  ‘Of course, DI Greene. You’re confident of the outcome?’ he asked, needing some sort of reassurance from her none the less.

  Hillary smiled her gratitude at him, knowing full well that she now owed him one. ‘Yes, sir. I think a full confession is likely,’ she said confidently.

  ‘Good work, DI Greene,’ Paul said warmly, and Brian Vane’s back stiffened as he continued through the silent room and out of the door.

  ‘Silly bastard,’ Frank Ross said furiously, glaring at Vane’s back. He knew, as Hillary knew, that Vane had just seriously blown it.

  Ross’s apparent condemnation broke the silence, and somebody began to laugh.

  Danvers retreated back to his office and sat shakily down in his seat. Only now was the enormity of what he’d just done beginning to sink in. He’d given Hillary the authority to arrest someone for murder without having the least idea of who it was, or why Hillary thought him or her guilty. More than that, he’d just helped her in whatever power play she was conducting against Vane.

  And all of that with possible disciplinary charges hovering over her. It had not been smart — and he wouldn’t have done it for anybody else. He only hoped Hillary knew just what the hell she was doing.

  It was only then that DCI Paul Danvers began to realise just how deeply his feelings for Hillary Greene were affecting his judgement. And knew that something would have to be done about it.

  ‘Gemma, you’re with me,’ Hillary said crisply to her sergeant, who nodded calmly and reached for her bag.

  Outside, they took Gemma’s car, with the sergeant driving. It wasn’t until they were pulling out of the car park that Gemma realised she had no idea where they were going.

  ‘Which way, guv?’

  ‘The Knott,’ Hillary said briskly.

  Gemma drove, her hands feeling tense on the wheel. Like everyone else, she was overflowing with adrenaline and felt twitchy. ‘That was some scene back there,’ she remarked, deciding now to take the bull by the horns.

  Hillary, who was staring morosely out of the window, turned and looked at her, almost uncomprehendingly. Gemma swallowed hard. Damn, her boss had some balls. She’d just taken on a detective superintendent, and seemed practically not to have noticed. ‘With Vane,’ she added. ‘Guv, was it wise to make an enemy of him like that?’ she added nervously.

  Hillary grunted. ‘Vane always was my enemy,’ she said darkly. ‘And there’s nothing I can do about it, so there’s no point wasting any effort soft-soaping him.’

  Gemma drew in a sharp breath. ‘So the scuttlebutt’s right,’ she said, making Hillary turn her head sharply.

  ‘What scuttlebutt?’ she asked, and listened as Gemma told her that the whole station was wondering why she and the super were at loggerheads.

  ‘That nick’s worse than living on bloody Coronation Street,’ Hillary grumbled.

  ‘But won’t Vane have the perfect excuse to get rid of you now, guv?’ Gemma asked nervously. For better or worse, Hillary Greene was the key to her own promotional prospects, and should Hillary fall from grace, any kudos Gemma had gained from working with her would quickly fade away.

  Hillary glanced across at her and grinned. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said softly. ‘Let me tell you a few facts of life, Sergeant. Nearly everybody at that HQ loved Mel Mallow. And all of them have been choking down outrage and bile for months at having his killer swanning around and sticking up two fingers at us. Now Mel’s wife has killed him, and everybody back there is doing a mental jive in celebration, even if they can’t openly show it in front of the brass. Are you with me so far?’ Gemma nodded. She knew from overhearing the uniforms in the car park that Hillary was right. Everyone had been gleeful over Janine Mallow’s shooting of Clive Myers, and considered it righteous. Especially since word had come back from Wales about the discovery of Gary Firth’s body. Added to that, ballistics had been working all night, and just an hour ago had confirmed that the rifle found in the shed had been the same weapon that had been used in the killing of Detective S
uperintendent Philip Mallow.

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  ‘And, by association, everyone is on my side for sticking by her, and putting my arse on the line as well. Right?’ Hillary said, without any indication of either pleasure or pride in what she’d done.

  Gemma glanced at her warily. ‘Right.’

  ‘And now Vane has just publicly given me a rollicking, practically admitting that he’s going to do everything he can to see me go down for it. Yes?’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘So what do you think people are doing now, back at HQ?’

  Gemma sighed. ‘Guv, the fact that the rank and file are on your side won’t help you when Vane starts talking to the chief constable,’ she warned.

  Hillary sighed patiently. ‘You’re still not getting it. Think like the top brass. They have a potential PR and media nightmare looming. All they can do is ride it and try to direct it. So Janine Mallow is going to be the heroine of the hour. She prevented Clive Myers from claiming his third victim, a serving police officer. Right now, she’s in hospital, bravely fighting to keep her baby. What do you think’s going to happen to anyone who tries to rock the boat?’

  Gemma grinned. ‘Oh.’

  Hillary smiled grimly. ‘Yes. Oh. The chief constable is not going to take too kindly to Vane stirring up an ants’ nest right now. Not with reporters skulking about, hot for a story. He’s going to be told to toe the line and shut up.’

  Gemma let out her breath in a slow whoosh.

  ‘Why do you think Frank called him a stupid bastard?’ Hillary asked, beginning to smile. ‘Let’s face it, he was hardly likely to be sticking up for me, was he?’

  Gemma laughed. Then frowned. ‘Guv?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who are we about to arrest? For Philpott’s murder, I mean?’

  ‘The obvious suspect,’ replied Hillary. ‘Nine times out of ten, Sergeant, it’s always the obvious suspect who did it.’

  Gemma frowned. ‘Oh. Right.’

  * * *

  Half an hour later Donleavy entered the observation room and nodded to a nervous-looking Paul Danvers. Both men turned to face the one-way mirror. Inside interview room number three, Hillary Greene and Gemma Fordham sat facing Rachel Warner.