Fran tried not to wince at the term she loathed. ‘How serious was the domestic?’
‘She died. We think it was accidental – I mean, if you really enjoy knocking a woman about, why spoil your hobby by killing the punch ball?’
Fran wasn’t entirely happy with Pearce’s cynical tone, but said nothing. Everyone dealt with their anger in their own way, and if that was Pearce’s so be it. So she asked, ‘Do we have any other unsolved murders on our books? Going back however long your man – did you tell me his name, by the way? – has been in the district?’
‘Dale Drury. Aged thirty-seven. Lives in Stanhope.’
‘Part of Ashford.’
‘Right. And not the loveliest. It’ll be better without him, anyway. He’s been this close to an ASBO a couple of times, and he’s only been there four years.’
‘Lovely man. OK. Do all that’s needful, Joanne, and call on me if there are problems. And do talk to him about any other crimes he might want to come clean about, won’t you?’
‘Any in particular, guv?’
However decent Pearce might be, Fran drew the line at confessing an illogical desire to find Drury had killed Janine Roper. ‘Any unsolved murders, crimes of violence, whatever. Our clear-up rates could do with a bit of a boost. Or even any another force might still have on their books. Let’s be Good Samaritans, shall we?’
Her jacket now on, and her bag in her hand, the last thing Fran wanted was another call. She had half a mind to pretend the office was empty, and let it ring on, but knew she would have to meet Pat’s eye if she did. So with strong reluctance she did her duty, bracing herself for a last-minute summons from Gates.
‘Harman,’ she declared, in her flattest, do-not-interrupt-my-thought-processes voice.
‘Fran?’ It was a woman’s voice at the other end.
‘Paula?’ Fran sat down, hard. Pact were going to give up on the Rectory, weren’t they?
‘Yes. Paula Farmer. We’ve got a tiny problem, Fran. No, nothing to panic about. It’s just that we – look, this may be fanciful, but we’ve an idea someone’s watching the house.’
‘Watching the Rectory? But it’s miles from anywhere! Why on earth?’
‘Oh, lots of good reasons. Stealing to order for one. You’ve still got wonderful original fireplaces and other features in situ. And our equipment’s worth a bit too. Would you mind if we took a few security precautions?’
‘Do whatever it takes, Paula.’
‘It’ll cost a bit to do it properly. We have our contacts, of course. But if you’ve people in mind you’d rather call on…’
‘How soon could you mobilise your people?’
‘As soon as we end this call.’
‘Please – just get on to it.’ Before she’d reached the end of the sentence the phone was dead.
‘It simply could have been Paula being ultra efficient, of course,’ Mark said, five minutes later. ‘And no cause to panic at all.’
‘All the same,’ Fran said stubbornly.
‘All the same, to please you – all right, to please me too – we’ll drive past, just to make sure. Though of what, I don’t know.’
‘Nor me. But it’d be nice to see the place again, wouldn’t it?’
The last of the rush hour traffic having had time to clear, they had an easy journey, following minor rather than major roads. As they approached, the lowering clouds thinned, and there was a suspicion of spring sunshine. Mark kept up a flow of low-grade gossip, and she responded in turn.
He slowed as he always did at the top of the lane so they could look down on it. Except they couldn’t see the roof for scaffolding and huge polythene sheets.
‘It looks more like some work of art by that pair who wrap buildings, doesn’t it?’ he asked, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘I wonder how many square metres of sheeting are up there.’
‘Intensive care for buildings! It ought to be wired up to a giant heart monitor to let us know how it’s progressing.’
‘I wouldn’t mind betting that Paula and her mates have got the buildings equivalent somewhere. You know, monitoring damp and movement and stuff.’
‘You sound really professional. Shall we go and see? You know, I never expected them to move this quickly.’
‘It’s double-overtime for weekend work, that’s the trouble,’ he grumbled.
She shot a glance at him. Was there something else about Sammie and her debts he hadn’t told her? ‘Look, they’re still there! No, we’ve just missed them.’ A car pulled away from the entrance, heading briskly down the lane away from them. ‘Brownie points for them working so late, anyway.’
‘If it was them. I wouldn’t have thought a BMW would be their preferred mode of transport. I only got half of the registration,’ he said, jotting it down nonetheless. ‘Well,’ he added defensively, ‘if they’re worried enough to fix extra security, I’m worried enough to do my bit.’
‘Let’s hope it was someone just coveting our house. Anyway, they’d have to deal with that padlock. It’d keep Fort Knox safe, that.’
‘Unless an intruder did this.’ He scaled the five-barred gate with ease.
She did the same. With less ease. The house looked impregnable enough, with steel plates protecting lower-level windows and doors. Round the doors that were obviously in use mesh barricades were padlocked together. Paula was certainly doing her best. But was it good enough? On impulse, as they turned to leave, she blew their new home a kiss.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tuesday saw Fran trying to enter a house as strongly fortified as the Rectory, but much less beautiful. This was the semi in Ashford previously occupied by the Ropers, and now secured until Ken had completed his sentence – or, of course, until his appeal was successful. It was in Singleton, once a fairly self-contained Nineties development, now a giant suburb of the sprawling town of Ashford.
‘I’d no idea you could cram so many properties onto one hillside,’ Fran said sadly, putting down her torch to fiddle the key into the lock.
‘Without adequate infrastructure, too,’ Sue Hall agreed with what sounded like genuine bitterness. ‘I hope John Prescott’s pleased with himself, that’s all I can say. Concreting and bricking over everywhere down here. Have you seen that new development on the floodplain by the superstores? How long before the buyers get their breakfasts wearing welly boots, eh?’
Fran gave one final twist to the key and at last the front door opened. ‘If only we could open a window or two!’
‘The whole lot for preference. Doesn’t it smell horrible?’
Stale and airless, yes, but not as bad as if a body had rotted in it – but perhaps Sue had been spared that experience so far.
Sue flicked a light switch in vain.
‘They’ve turned off all the utilities, I’m afraid.’ Fran switched on the torch. ‘Where shall we start?’
There was very little to suggest any passions, least of all those leading to death, in the living room. The furnishing and decor were bland, with no pictures or trinkets about the place. Had some sympathetic officer or friend packed everything away, just in case vandals got in? She hoped so. The kitchen was so small it seemed as if it had been designed simply to heat TV dinners, not cook meals from scratch, but there were some good saucepans and utensils. Mercifully someone had cleared out the fridge and food cupboards.
Upstairs the beds were stripped in the two main bedrooms; the box room was too tiny for so much as a folding bed, and was almost fully occupied by an exercise bike. Fran homed in on the larger bedroom, which had obviously had a make-over, if not an expensive one, with fitted furniture. Roper’s side of the wardrobe contained mostly casual clothes, Janine’s the sensible outfits you’d somehow expect of a classroom assistant. The dressing table and chest of drawers showed both wore standard Marks and Spencer undies.
‘Do you suppose they ever went out at weekends and enjoyed themselves?’ Sue asked sadly.
‘The funny thing is that they did,’ Fran replied. ‘The case n
otes say that she read huge numbers of books, and he enjoyed sea-sailing. Not a lot of evidence of either, is there?’
‘Well, maybe he kept his sailing gear at a yacht club or something.’
‘He’s supposed to have sailed from Whitstable, so you could check up there. But where are her books? You don’t just borrow books from libraries: you buy them too, surely. You don’t have to have shelves full of hardbacks, I admit, but you’d pick up the odd paperback with the week’s shopping, that sort of thing. Tell you what, Sue, could you have another trawl through the file, to see if there’s any mention of things being stored elsewhere? Or maybe I’ve remembered something that wasn’t there… Look, we must lock up now – I’ve got a meeting to go to.’
Somehow the air in the meeting room seemed just as stale as that in the Ropers’ house, perhaps because the main thrust of the agenda was penny-pinching, thinly disguised as restructuring. Gates carefully dodged the eyes of the older and most senior officers present as one would avoid watching turkeys discussing Christmas dinner. Cosmo Dix was sitting in, casting an occasional quizzical glance at the chairman but remaining remarkably silent. Dale Drury and Ken Roper were the official business in the forefront of Fran’s mind, but occasionally she would have a niggle of anxiety about the Minton case. She was sure the Folkestone team just wanted the poor man buried and his case closed, and she was equally determined that the secret he intended to take to his grave should be revealed. But she must concentrate on the matter in hand. She had a nasty suspicion that Gates was about to streamline her and her colleagues – and possibly Mark and the other ACCs – out of existence.
Head down, she was walking back to her office after a very late lunch with Mark when Gates broke into her reverie.
‘A moment of your time, please, Chief Superintendent,’ Gates said, his voice as cold as his eyes. He ushered her into his office, retreating to the far side of his executive desk. ‘And perhaps you would be so kind as to close the door.’
Fran found herself standing in silence before him. This time she waited for an invitation to sit, but suspected it would not come. From the way he tipped back in his chair clutching a pen between both sets of manicured fingertips, he looked as if he was prepared to bollock someone and since she could see no one else in the room she presumed it must be her.
It would be a new experience. Oh, she’d had many rebukes from her superiors – what officer with her length of service hadn’t? – but never from one who had once been very much her junior. How should she react? As if it had been any other person in the role of deputy chief constable administering it? The more she thought about it, it seemed that was the only professional way to behave.
What puzzled her was what she might have done wrong. She’d missed no meetings, had recently contributed at least three good suggestions to each one, and had got herself involved with at least one sub-committee. She’d criticised Gates to no one except Mark, who would have died rather than grass her up. Perhaps she had been a tad absent-minded at this morning’s gathering, but then she had a lot to think about.
But he was speaking, with a shallow smile. ‘I understand that several times in the recent past you’ve offered to resign but that for some reason the chief – or the ACC – has persuaded you to stay. May I ask why?’
What the hell? ‘Why I’ve offered to retire? Or why the chief – Mark’s never been involved – tore up my letter of resignation?’ She smiled as duplicitously as he. ‘You’d have to ask the chief that. But he’s away at that anti-terrorist conference in Portugal, I understand. I’m surprised you’re not there too, actually. Your experience of active policing is much more recent than his, after all.’
‘I thought I could do more good here,’ he said, clearly wrong-footed.
‘The ACCs have always held the fort before,’ she said. ‘Heavens, Simon, you played a major part in sorting out that awful business in London. And you liaised with the Malaysian anti-terrorist branch at one time, didn’t you? Your input would have been invaluable.’
‘Well, I—’
‘And such a conference would have held you in good stead, too – all those contacts, for goodness’ sake! You’ve done well to become a DCC in this force, but surely your sights are set higher than that. Head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, I’d have thought.’ It was as if she was sergeant to his rookie again, her enthusiasm for his career driving her headlong.
For a moment his face lit up in response, but it soon closed again. ‘It was more about your career I wanted to talk.’
‘Mine’s pretty well over, Simon,’ she said frankly. ‘OK, I do some special one-off jobs for the chief, and even without those I’m certainly not unemployed at the moment.’ It wouldn’t hurt to tell him about her current caseload. ‘You know Henson’s off sick at the moment with bronchitis so I’ve picked up—’
‘It’s a very expensive way of filling gaps. And surely the Superintendents’ Association would have something to say about the practice. After all, you’re blocking temporary promotions that would look good on someone’s CV.’
So that was what drove him. His CV. Why hadn’t she realised before? She would bet that Mark had.
‘Nope.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘If you check the personnel files – sorry, Human Resources files – you’ll find I’ve always recorded the need for precisely that sort of upgrading when it was clear that an absence was going to be protracted. I’ve always made sure someone else got the experience – and the salary! – they needed. Sometimes, though, an inexperienced super who’s been moved up finds it useful to have an old-stager like me to turn to.’ Let him chew on that. And let him invite the old-stager to sit down.
‘And are you doing any special little jobs for the chief at the moment?’
If only he’d get that edge of sarcasm out of his voice. She said sweetly, ‘You know I’m working on the Roper and Barnes case. Unless you want to overload Henson I’d like to continue with it, even when he returns. It seems to me we handled it very badly at the time, and if we’re not bloody careful we could open ourselves to charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.’
‘Surely there are junior officers who—’
‘Exactly. Junior officers. Inexperienced officers. They’re not all as talented as you were, Simon. They need guidance.’ She hoped he remembered all the hours she’d spent helping him write cogent reports. ‘And as it happens I like helping to catch criminals and solve crimes.’
‘Not sitting on committees and sharing your wisdom and experience that way.’
She didn’t like the way his tongue had curled on the two nouns. He might well have been quoting the chief, come to think of it.
‘I’d rather pass on anything I’ve learnt one to one, I must say,’ she said with a smile. It wasn’t meant as a confession but he leapt on it as if it were.
‘So you don’t think committees are productive.’
She raised her hands in exasperation. ‘Committees are committees, Simon, and no organisation the size of ours, answering both to the public and to politicians, can survive without them.’
‘They’d survive without you on them.’ His tone was just short of offensive.
Actually, it wasn’t. It was bloody offensive. But she had a feeling it was better not to respond. So she shook her head in a puzzlement that was only partly feigned. ‘Meaning?’
‘Frankly, you’re a waste of space. You come in at the last minute, dash off first like a school kid hearing the bell. You barely say anything and you sit and doodle as if you’re bored out of your skull. I think it’s time you resigned again. While the chief isn’t here to change your mind.’
She hoped she wasn’t blushing as the truth of his criticisms hit home. There had been times when she had behaved like a resentful schoolgirl, which was both disloyal and stupid. But she wasn’t prepared to go at his behest. Not by a long chalk. ‘It’d certainly save the force some money,’ she said, folding her arms and rocking back on one hip, as if actively considering his point.
>
‘Indeed it would.’
‘And delivering best value is one of your remits, isn’t it?’
Her affability clearly startled him.
‘Yes.’ He produced something suspiciously like a smirk.
‘So you want to do – in the chief’s absence – what the chief wouldn’t do.’ She felt better on the offensive.
His eyes narrowed. ‘I’ve told you what I’d like you to do. Falling on your sword would be better than being forcibly retired.’
And, despite what he’d said about his job description, where on earth would he get the mandate to sack her? Despite the fizzing anger, she smiled gently. ‘Simon, I couldn’t possibly do anything like that behind his back. And he’d know, all right. Cosmo Dix would be on the phone to him before you could say pension.’
‘He’s another of your mates, is he? How convenient to have the head of Human Resources in your pocket. I bet he advises you on your suits, too.’
She blazed. ‘If that’s what I suspect it is, a homophobic remark, I suggest you withdraw it now, Simon. And take care never to utter another one in my hearing. Over the hill I may be, but I helped draw up the present UK guidelines and I will not tolerate their violation, from a DCC or anyone else.’
‘How dare you!’ He was white to the lips with anger, breathing unevenly through flared nostrils.
She dared say no more.
Suddenly, disconcertingly, his rage subsided. He even laughed, if grimly. ‘If only you were like that in the committee.’
‘I was – believe me, I was. When we were drafting the guidelines. And drawing up other vital policies. I suppose I find it easier to care about protecting people than saving money,’ she said seriously, shifting her weight to the other hip. ‘And spending weeks drafting documents that the Home Office will tell us are redundant the day we submit them.’
A glimmer of the old Simon showed. ‘Is that why you never went for ACC or DCC yourself?’ He sounded genuinely interested, with an underlying disbelief that someone he’d once possibly liked and respected didn’t share what seemed to him an obvious ambition. What would he make of officers who were still constables when they retired, simply because they preferred their regular contact with the public and thought they could make a difference?
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