Narrow is the Way

by Faith Martin

  The trouble was, she had no clear idea of the geography around here. She paused, listening, and heard only the sound of an approaching train. There was obviously a railway line close by. She skirted the trees, listening anxiously for the sounds of hostilities, but could hear nothing but her own quickened, nervous breathing.

  She felt slightly sick. Once again, she wished Tommy Lynch was with her.

  She moved back into the ploughed field, half-crouched in spite of her protesting back and straining calf-muscles, and made her way to the far end of the spinney, where she hunkered down and considered her position.

  She was fairly sure at this point that Owen Wallis was all right. He certainly hadn’t shouted for help. She tried to take some comfort in the thought that whoever was in the spinney was probably more afraid than she was. Unless, of course, he was a psychopath who didn’t do fear. In which case he was probably salivating at the thought of strangling someone else: her for instance.

  Hillary shook her head. No sense thinking like that. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trying to prevent pins and needles, then saw movement between the trees and peered hard. Yes! It was definitely a human shape.

  The thing was – was it Owen Wallis or the watcher?

  ‘There he goes, there, stop him!’ The shout was obviously from the outraged farmer, some yards further back, and Hillary jumped, stood up, dropped the torch, and raced after the fleeing figure, now way off to her left.

  Hillary knew many officers worked out at the gym, took martial arts courses, did marathons and swimathons for charity and what not, but she was not one of them. And boy, did her body remind her of it now. Within a few hundred yards of the fleeing figure she could already feel the beginnings of stitch. And although she was wearing sensible lace-up flatties, they weren’t exactly trainers, and the wet ground was heavy going. Her breath began to sound like a steam engine labouring up a hill.

  She could hear Owen Wallis cursing somewhere behind her, making the lumbering sounds of an outraged bull elephant. She hoped she didn’t sound quite that bad and had to fight the urge to giggle. It was nerves, of course, but even knowing that didn’t stop her giving a sudden grunt of laughter.

  The figure in front of her finally cleared the ploughed ground, plunged through a hedge and disappeared. Hillary desperately put on a last-ditch burst of speed, hit the same gap in the edge, and found herself yelping in pain.

  Thistles, lots of thistles, tended to have that effect.

  She heard a curious ‘pinging’ sound up ahead, followed by a yelp of pain that was definitely not her own, and, thus encouraged, plunged forward straight into a barbed-wire fence. She heard the same ‘pinging’ sound as before and swore long and hard as the wire cut fabric, flesh and blood.

  Her flesh and blood, dammit.

  She managed to get disentangled and squeezed through. As she did so, she heard a slithering sound a little further along, and took off towards it, only to find herself abruptly running pell-mell down a steep gradient, covered in what felt like gravel. She let rip with a surprised shout and instinctively dug in her heels, leaned back to try and stop herself from going face forward, and sat down abruptly on her backside. Stinging nettles and sharp stones kissed her hands and wrists as she scrabbled about for purchase, for now she could hear a roaring, truly terrifying noise.

  And too late, far too late, realized what it was.

  There was light – a sudden bright circle of light that lit up the bare branches of trees and the shingle in front of her, like something out of an alien abduction movie. And, turning her blood to ice, came the unmistakable sound of a train’s warning siren blowing urgently.

  She was all but on the railway track now, and an express train was heading straight for her.

  She leaned back against the wet prickly earth, tucking her legs up under her protectively as the train roared by. Rectangles of light from the train’s windows passed by in a blur, faces and scenarios rushing by. A man reading a paper, a little girl looking out and staring at her with big eyes, her little red mouth pursed in an ‘O’ of astonishment. An old lady, looking equally surprised.

  As well she might.

  Hillary knew that long-shanks must have managed to get across the line before the train had arrived, and knew she’d be in no condition to take up the chase once the train had gone by. Her heart was going like she’d been popping speed all day, and she had to keep swallowing hard to fight down the urge to throw up. Her sides hurt, she stung all over and, as far as near-death experiences went, this one you could keep.

  ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers,’ she muttered as the last, lighted carriage sped by and the train disappeared around a bend in the track.

  Above her, she heard Owen Wallis arrive at the edge of the embankment and could imagine him peering down the incline. ‘Hey! Hey! Is everything all right down there?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s all right,’ Hillary yelled back. ‘But I lost him.’

  She leaned forward, resting her forearms atop her bent knees, and took long, calming breaths. She could feel herself shaking, and was vaguely aware of Owen Wallis clambering clumsily down to sit beside her, the top of his arm just pressing slightly against hers. She found his silent presence oddly comforting. For a moment, the two of them simply sat there and watched the moon shine benevolently on the railway lines. Then the farmer said bluntly, ‘Well, sod it.’

  Hillary couldn’t have said it better herself.

  chapter seven

  Jerome Raleigh looked up as someone knocked at the door to his office, then slowly rose as Chief Superintendent Marcus Donleavy entered. ‘Sir,’ Jerome said neutrally, his face showing neither dismay nor anticipation at having the newly promoted officer return to his old haunts only a day after his celebratory party.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Marcus said, with a brief grin. ‘I’ve only come to see if you’ve got any last minute queries, then I’m off.’

  Jerome nodded to a chair and hoped the chief superintendent would be as good as his word. Marcus Donleavy was nobody’s fool, and Jerome sure as hell didn’t want him looking over his shoulder in the months to come.

  ‘Thanks, but everything seems to be running smoothly,’ Jerome assured him.

  ‘You’ve talked to all your staff?’ Marcus asked casually.

  ‘Yes, finished yesterday. No surprises. Except, perhaps one?’

  Marcus lifted one silver eyebrow and then grinned again. ‘Let me guess. Why haven’t I managed to get rid of Frank Ross yet?’

  Jerome spread his hands wordlessly.

  ‘For many reasons,’ Marcus began. ‘For a start, he was a great pal of Ronnie Greene, and when the shit hit the fan about his corruption, sacking another known crony would only have given the press and knockers even more ammunition.’

  Jerome nodded, hoping his superior officer couldn’t see just how interested he was in what Donleavy had to say about Frank Ross, and was careful to keep his tone strictly light. ‘But surely, even before it all came out, he must have been a pain in the neck?’

  Marcus nodded. ‘Oh yes. And other points south. This is where the second reason comes in. In spite of it all, Frank Ross has got one of the best system of narks in the squad. He’s old time. He was on the beat forever. Grew up amongst the scum. He understands them in a way that the new up-and-comers never will. It comes in handy. No two ways about it.’

  Jerome thought about it for a few moments, understanding what Donleavy wasn’t saying, as well as what he was. In a pitched battle with hooligans, you’d want the surprisingly benign-looking Frank Ross firmly on your side. And when you needed to put the wind up someone, it would be Frank Ross you sent out on the errand. Nasty yes, and in an ideal world, the likes of Frank Ross wouldn’t ever be needed. But Jerome Raleigh knew – and knew very well – that the police didn’t operate in anything approaching an ideal world. And nothing he was hearing sounded alarm bells. In point of fact, he was more sure now than ever that cultivating Frank Ross would be a good idea.

>   ‘Sticking with that particular team,’ Jerome continued smoothly, ‘Tommy Lynch seemed promising. He was bright, still eager, and willing to learn.’

  ‘Yes, we normally put those we think have real potential with DI Greene for a while. She’s good at training them up.’

  ‘Did I detect some tension between the other sergeant, the good-looking blonde woman, and Philip Mallow?’

  Marcus sighed. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Mel’s a good man, as you’ll see. But he has a bit of a weakness when it comes to women.’

  ‘That could be awkward.’

  ‘Hillary certainly finds it so,’ Marcus mused. ‘But she can cope.’

  ‘You rate her,’ Jerome said simply. ‘I was surprised she wasn’t at your party last night. Did she have something else on?’ If so, why wasn’t I informed, he added silently.

  ‘Only if you want to count playing chicken with an Inter-City Express,’ Marcus said drily, and quickly explained the events of the previous evening, as related to him by Hillary. Jerome listened silently, without interrupting. ‘Apparently,’ Marcus finished, ‘this farmer got a really good look at the suspect as he came barrelling out of the woods and all but rammed into him. It was a full moon, and Hillary said he seemed confident that he’d be able to identify him again. So she brought Farmer Jones straight back here and oiked the resident artist out of it, to do both an identikit drawing, and a straightforward sketch. She’s asked for the results to be run in today’s local papers. She might get a nibble.’

  ‘Was she hurt?’

  ‘Hillary?’ Marcus said, sounding slightly surprised. ‘No. At least, she didn’t say. Mind you, she isn’t the sort to go looking for sympathy. I expect she got the usual spate of cuts and bruises. Probably scraped some skin off various parts when she slid down the railway track. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Bloody lucky she didn’t fall onto the lines. Then we’d be having a very different conversation,’ Jerome said mildly.

  Marcus shot him a look. ‘She’s not gung-ho, if that’s what you’re after,’ he said, after a thoughtful pause. ‘On the other hand, if an opportunity presents itself, she’ll always go for it.’

  Jerome nodded. He’d have to remember that.

  Marcus sighed and got to his feet. He hoped the new man from the Met was going to work out. But at the moment, he wouldn’t lay bets either way.

  Janine Tyler leaned across the scratched, nicotine-stained interview table and shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, come on, Leo,’ she said scornfully. ‘You’re really trying to tell me that your woman was putting it about with another bloke, and you didn’t give a monkey’s? Do I look as if I was born yesterday?’

  ‘Nah, darling, you look much better than any squalling new-born brat,’ Leo ‘The Man’ Mann assured her, with what she supposed was meant to pass for charm.

  Janine sighed heavily. ‘Spare me, Leo. Let’s get back to Julia Reynolds shall we? You obviously have a penchant for beautiful women. Julia was quite a looker, wasn’t she? A real catch for the likes of you. No offence.’

  ‘None taken, darlin’, Leo Mann grinned lasciviously. ‘And you can offend me any time you like.’ His rap-sheet gave his age as twenty-four but he hardly looked eighteen. He was skinny, with a blond skin-head cut, tattoos, nose and eyebrow-piercing, the lot. He was dressed in an old Grateful Dead T-shirt, grungy with age, and denims that looked as if they could get up and walk, all by themselves. He was wearing a lot of silver jewellery. Not gold. Silver. Janine found it faintly fascinating.

  Silver. As the Yanks would say – go figure.

  ‘Mind you, she wasn’t so very beautiful when we last saw her,’ Janine carried on thoughtfully. ‘Her face was all purple-red, her tongue sticking out. She looked gross.’

  Leo Mann shifted his bony backside on the seat and looked, for the first time since they’d hauled him in for interview, faintly uneasy. ‘Poor cow,’ he said flatly. ‘But I didn’t do nothing to her. And you can keep me in here till kingdom come, and you won’t get me to say I did, ’cause I didn’t. See?’

  ‘Come on, Leo, you know as well as I do that you’re handy with your fists. I’ve got the charge sheet right here to prove it,’ she went on impatiently.

  Leo Mann leaned forward. He had the words LOVE tattooed on both sets of knuckles. Not LOVE on one and HATE on the other. Again she found the idiosyncrasy faintly fascinating. She only lifted her eyes from the pale-blue letters when he began to speak.

  ‘And do you see on any of these here charge sheets,’ – he tapped hard on the pieces of paper littered across the table – ‘where it says I knocked about a woman?’

  This time it was Janine who shifted unhappily on her seat. Because, of course, Leo Mann knew as well as she did, that he had no previous for aggro to women.

  ‘I love me mum,’ Leo said, and nodded. ‘My old man scarpered when I were ten. Mum brought me up. She wouldn’t have no messing about when it came to knocking women about. Now then,’ he added, tapping a fingertip on the table pointedly once more, before leaning back in his chair and crossing his skinny tattooed arms across his skinny chest.

  Janine sighed, and started all over again.

  Hillary smiled grimly as Graham Vaughan handed her a cup of tea. The cup and saucer (no mugs in Graham’s office) looked to her to be genuine Spode. She’d met Graham through a friend of hers, Tania Lay, way back in the uni days. The solicitor hadn’t been out of the closet then, and was pretending to date a female friend of Tania’s. Now he’d been openly living with an architect from Stoke-on-Trent for nearly ten years. ‘How is Brian nowadays?’ Hillary asked.

  ‘Still trying to make shopping precincts look attractive,’ Graham said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Rather him than me! So, what time are the enemy due?’ she asked wearily.

  ‘Thomas Palmer is the man we’re dealing with. His solicitor is a chap called Mike Pearce. I don’t know him, or his rep.’

  ‘And this Palmer is determined to try and grab all of Ronnie’s assets?’

  ‘Only the ones he knows about,’ Graham said with a laugh, and a very shrewd look at his client. Hillary felt her stomach clench and hoped her poker face was intact.

  ‘Come on, Graham, not you as well. You know as well as I do how thorough an internal investigation team is.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘Besides, you know better than most, that even if Ronnie had stashed it somewhere, I’d be the last person he’d want to see get their hands on it. He’d be damned sure to hide it where I couldn’t find it.’

  Graham nodded. That was true. He’d known Hillary and – perforce – Ronnie, for years. A true marriage made in perfidy.

  Hillary let out her breath very carefully. Graham was, in all respects, a very cultivated, charming, literate and gentle man, but he had all the instincts of a vulture. He could smell carrion from miles away.

  She wondered, briefly, what he’d do if she told him that she might, in fact, have figured out where Ronnie had hidden his ill-gotten gains. She had the name of the bank in the Cayman islands (or thought she did). She had a list of numbers she’d found concealed in a book belonging to her late husband. All she needed was to get on the internet, go through the bank security checks and then there’d be no doubts left.

  And there, she suspected, was the heart of the problem. Because once she knew for sure where Ronnie’s loot was, she would be forced to make a decision about it one way or another. To come down on the side of the angels – or the opposition.

  And she simply didn’t trust herself. Now how sad was that?

  ‘Here they are,’ Graham said, leaning forward to answer his secretary’s buzz. ‘Show them right in.’

  Abruptly, Hillary pushed all thoughts of her moral dilemma behind her and remained seated as two men were shown into the room.

  ‘Mr Pearce?’ Graham rose and shook hands with one of the two men. At only five feet six, most people seemed to tower over Graham, which often gave them a totally false sense of superiority. She quickly turned her attention to the other man th
ough, the local branch leader of ESAA, and found the animal rights activist was already looking straight at her. He was tall, fit, healthy and middle-aged. His grey gaze was steady. Hillary barely lifted her lips in a slight smile. He smiled back, just as slightly.

  ‘Please, take a seat. We all know why we’re here,’ Graham said. ‘Tea?’ He started to pour before either of them could decline or accept. ‘Now, do you have anything to add to your last letter to me, Mr Pearce?’ he asked, mildly.

  ‘Mike, please. And no – the position of my client is still as it was then.’

  ‘An extremely unreasonable one, if I may say so,’ Graham put in gently.

  ‘We don’t think so,’ Mike Pearce came back at once.

  ‘But I’m sure a judge will think so,’ Graham said persistently. ‘Let us review the facts.’

  Hillary listened as the two solicitors went over the old ground. She thought Graham had the better argument - but then she was biased. She sipped her tea and studied the ESAA man instead. Why not? He was making no secret of openly studying her.

  ‘Did you approve of your husband’s illegal activities, Detective Inspector Greene?’ Tom Palmer finally asked, making Graham stop mid-flow.

  ‘I hardly think that’s an appropriate question, Mr Palmer,’ Graham chided, as if telling a naughty boy not to pull the wings off a butterfly and Mike Pearce too laid a warning finger on the back of his client’s hand. Hillary saw that Graham had noticed the gesture, and hid a smile.

  ‘Do you approve of blackmail, Mr Palmer?’ Hillary asked sweetly.

  Graham coughed. ‘Hillary, please!’

  Hillary shrugged. Tom Palmer’s face hardened. ‘I was hoping you were going to be reasonable about this, DI Greene,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Did you?’ Hillary asked, sounding puzzled. ‘Why?’

  Graham quickly hid a smile behind his raised tea cup. He knew what was going on here all right. The opposition had called for this meeting to give them a chance to sound out their adversary. They were hoping to discover a nervous woman, wary of opening up the whole Ronnie Greene can of worms again, and were quickly and very neatly being handed their heads back on a platter.