‘Now? With Lloyd on his way there? No, let them get on with it, sweetheart. We shan’t starve.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
One of the Pact team was already on site when Fran and Mark arrived at the Rectory at eight on Thursday morning. When they’d called Paula to arrange the hastiest of visits they’d suggested the more civilised hour of eight-thirty, but Paula assured them that Caffy Tyler would be in the building well before that.
‘She may not necessarily be doing what you’d consider work, though. That doesn’t start officially till eight-thirty. One of us always unobtrusively checks what time the subcontractors arrive and leave,’ Paula explained. ‘If they don’t keep up to speed, we get held up and so do you.’
In fact, Caffy was in the old scullery, making coffee on a camping-gas stove. Her mug and a couple of paperbacks sat on the wooden draining board. Since alongside them lay a clipboard bearing a piece of paper headed Schedule for the Day neither protested, especially as she interrupted their conversation to log the arrival of some workmen who headed straight up onto the roof.
‘Excellent,’ Caffy said. ‘They’re ten minutes early again, all four of them. Paula had to Have a Word, and no one runs the risk of a second of Paula’s Words. Can I offer you coffee? It’s good Fair Trade stuff. I can’t start the day without my fix, can you? Go on, try it. Fresh milk here and sugar in that tin.’
They found themselves clutching mugs. Mark’s was Sons and Lovers, in the old Penguin livery, Fran’s the National Portrait Gallery Shakespeare.
‘Now, you wanted to talk about our security updates? First of all, did you notice the camera over the front door? Neat, isn’t it?’ Caffy said.
‘Very. Now,’ said Mark, who was clearly not in a mood to be charmed, ‘has there been a specific threat or are you just taking general precautions?’
She hesitated, only for a beat, but long enough for Fran to reckon she was lying. ‘So many places out in the back of beyond like this get robbed that we thought enhanced security was in order. Even if it’s going to cost more.’
‘So we noticed from the security firm’s quote,’ Mark confirmed, in his dourest morning voice.
Behind his shoulder, Fran pulled a conspiratorial face at the young woman – the silent message was that with another couple of sips of Caffy’s excellent brew he’d show signs of rejoining the human race.
‘Quite. But we thought – since you hear of so many security firms being bent – we’d go for belt and braces.’ Removing her hands from her dungaree pockets, Caffy twanged the shoulder straps. ‘Actually, hands in pockets too!’ She replaced them with an impish grin. ‘After all, one man and his dog can’t be here all the time. And thank God for that. I loathe dogs.’ Her shudder appeared genuine. ‘So we thought we’d get mugshots of everyone coming onto the site. After all, it’s not exactly as if there’s a passing trade down here in the back of beyond. You have to try pretty hard to find your way. So there’s one camera covering each entrance to the house. The others are better disguised than this.’
‘Trouble is, if anyone just parked by the gate without attempting to come in, you wouldn’t get photos of car number plates, would you?’ Mark demanded, coming gradually out of his torpor.
‘Oh, yes, we would! After all, what might seem to be someone pulling over to take a call on his mobile might be someone casing the joint – stealing architectural antiques to order’s a popular pastime these days, as I’m sure Paula told you. Not that you wouldn’t know anyway, would you? Anyway, there’s a pair of cameras in the hedge, disguised as trees. A mate of mine from back in Brum makes the pretend trees for the Home Office, would you believe, and he’s done some for us.’
‘I don’t think he’s supposed to talk about covert government surveillance equipment,’ Fran said dryly.
Caffy responded with a sunny smile. ‘I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but surely you’re both important enough to be in on the secret! No? Well, he’s never told me where these official cameras are sited, but I bet I could find out if you wanted.’
Fran shook her head. ‘Lead us not into temptation, Caffy. But these of ours sound a brilliant idea.’
‘Well, if you can’t nick an idea from the Home Office, I don’t see who you can nick one from.’
‘Quite,’ Mark said repressively.
Fran thought it better to change the subject. ‘In fact, we’re extra pleased to have the camera on the gates. Did Paula tell you we came the other night just to check the place was still here and saw a BMW driving away as we arrived? I gather it wasn’t you driving it.’
Caffy looked ostentatiously heavenwards. ‘Oink, oink! Oink, oink! Oh, it’s a flying pig.’ She became serious again. ‘A Beamer can mean trouble, as I’m sure you know better than I. For some reason, people I’d rather not mix with drive big, flashy cars with tinted windows and alloys and such, which they fancy make them anonymous.’
‘Or highly obvious,’ Fran countered. She feared Mark was about to ask Caffy what gave her the idea that the BMW they had disturbed had tinted windows – it hadn’t; she rather thought that the young woman was doing her utmost to help them protect a building they all seemed to love.
‘Now, this here car you saw “loitering with intent” – do you want his number to run through your clever computer?’ Caffy raised an engaging eyebrow as she used the old police cliché. ‘Because it’ll only take me a minute to check. We keep the gubbins out of sight in the cold pantry.’
Mark succumbed. ‘Why not?’
‘And I bet you both want to have another look at the inside of the house and give it a metaphorical hug. Hard hats, please. You’ll find spares just inside the front door. Oh, and yellow jackets. Our insurance won’t cover you otherwise. You ought to wear boots, but I won’t tell if you won’t.’
By the time they returned, Caffy was playing the video in an icy little room. ‘Won’t need a deep freeze, will you?’ she flashed. But then she was serious again. ‘I think we may need to adjust the angle of one of the cameras,’ she said, ‘to take in the driver’s face. You see, the same car already appears twice on the video – yes, you can tell from the number.’ She froze the frame.
‘Which happens to coincide with the part of the number I jotted down the other day,’ Mark said. ‘Thanks for this, Caffy. Forgive me if I give you the advice I always give in situations like this. However important the property, human life is far more valuable. Don’t take any risks, any of you. Promise me that.’
Caffy gave the sort of serious nod that told Fran she would carry on doing exactly what she thought fit.
‘What an extraordinary woman that Caffy is,’ Fran began as she started the car and drove away, waving as if to an old friend. ‘I’ve never heard a decorator talk about metaphorical hugs before.’
‘You told Paula you wanted to hug the place better,’ he objected.
‘But I certainly didn’t use the word metaphorical. And did you see the book beside her coffee? Hard Times. On top of The Canterbury Tales.’
‘Well, there are plenty of post-graduates turned plumbers. Perhaps she found the atmosphere in the British Library reading room too rarefied.’ Even the pleasure of seeing work in progress hadn’t completely eradicated Mark’s tendency to sound like Eeyore.
‘She isn’t old enough, surely, to have studied for a degree and then for all the technical qualifications Paula said she had. She can’t be more than – what? – twenty-eight?’ Fran countered.
‘She might well have done – and we might be underestimating her age, of course.’ He frowned. ‘She’s very edgy, isn’t she? Too bright and chatty.’
‘Perhaps she has a problem with mornings, too, and overcompensates.’
‘She certainly seems to be overcompensating for something.’
‘Paula wouldn’t think it was good PR if one of the team was miserable when punters were around.’
‘Hmm. I know you two entered into some women-versus-grumpy-old-men conspiracy, but there’s something knowing about her. Didn’t yo
u spot it?’
Fran shook her head. ‘I’d have said she was more vulnerable than knowing. But I see what you mean. Do you want me to ask Paula about her?’
He snorted. ‘Question Paula’s judgement? And have her march the entire team off the site in high dudgeon?’
‘She would, wouldn’t she? Maybe one day I’ll get a chance to talk to Caffy on her own.’
‘And find out what?’
‘I don’t know – just what makes her tick.’ She got no response so she asked eventually, ‘Are you going to see who owns that car?’
‘I suppose so. You know, it seems vaguely familiar. The car and the number.’
‘You always had difficulty with these new multi-letter ones.’
‘Almost as much as you do!’
‘Touché! If you’re busy, I could.’
‘No, it’s all right. I’ll try to make time.’
Pat greeted Fran with a pile of post and a broad smile. ‘I’m terribly sorry but Mr Gates won’t be in today. He’s unwell.’
‘Nothing too trivial, I hope,’ Fran joked, astonished and appalled to find that she meant what she said. Was illness the reason he was so edgy? Hell, more than that – so downright unpleasant?
‘And he’s cancelled today’s meeting.’
‘The bugger won’t trust me to chair it for him? Well, I’m blessed.’
She shared a smile with Pat. On a day like this it was good to make people smile.
And to make them jump a little. When had she last badgered Pete Webb down in Folkestone about the Minton case? He was getting all too adept at ignoring her demands for information, wasn’t he? Her first phone call of the day would be to him.
‘Hi, Pete. How’s tricks?’
‘Good morning, ma’am.’ He sounded as if he was standing to attention.
‘Guv. Unless you’ve no news for me.’
Now she could hear him stand at ease. ‘Some. Only not much. Look, guv, strictly off the record, could I pick your brains?’
‘I don’t think you’ll find much to pick, not these days. But they’re all yours if you want them.’
‘I feel such a fool, guv,’ he began. ‘This suicide business – there’s still absolutely no suspicion of anyone else being involved, by the way, and I’ve double-and triple-checked it myself – is getting to me. Why should he do it, that’s what I keep asking myself.’
‘Good! OK, I’m sorry. It’s my fault.’
‘Yes. No. Maybe. I’ve gone through Alec Minton’s things myself this time, and still can’t find anything except a few out-of-date receipts and bills. Surely, even in these days of emails and mobiles, a man doesn’t live entirely without paper.’
‘What about his mobile and his computer, then?’
‘There’s no record he ever had a mobile,’ he began bravely.
‘A prepaid one?’
‘Could have been.’ He sounded increasingly hangdog.
‘Come on, spit it out.’
‘The computer’s gone. I know, I know! I assumed it would be in that office-cupboard thing. I even told you it was in there. And the connections leading into the cupboard certainly were. But when we went to get it, the computer itself had gone.’
Well, well, well. ‘Not stolen, by any chance?’
‘Why should it have been?’
‘His phone because that’s what kids do. The computer because that’s what burglars do.’
‘But why didn’t he report them as missing?’
It was obviously time to be brisk and inspiring. ‘OK, let’s look at this another way. You’ve got the CCTV from the Mondiale’s reception area showing he went to his room alone. Have we any other CCTV from Hythe with him on?’
‘Would it still be in the system? It’s probably been recorded over by now.’
‘Is it worth a shot? Grab a rookie constable—’
‘Not a minion?’ He was clearly feeling better, wasn’t he?
‘Anyone you can spare, Pete, to go and see. If there is anything, we could look at it together.’
‘Would you really mind coming out all this way?’
‘I’d welcome the sea breeze.’
‘It’s blowing half-bricks at the moment, so you’ll get plenty of fresh air.’
Without needing Pat’s advice this time, she took an unmarked car from the pool. If Pete was embarrassed about asking for help, there was no need to humiliate him further by turning up in a vehicle everyone knew was registered to Mark.
Pete Webb met her as she parked, something that confirmed her suspicions. Whom did he not want to know about her visit?
Like him she hunched her shoulders against the wind and shoved her hands into her pockets.
‘As I feared,’ Pete confessed, ‘the CCTV footage from the relevant week was long gone, but young Tessa’s brought back all footage shot since then.’
‘Have you had time to run through it? OK, Pete, I’ve had enough fresh air. Let’s go inside and have a morning at the movies.’
They peered at the screen together. Community policing – or the average age of the Hythe citizens – had obviously kept the street crime rate remarkably low. There was even very little unofficial dumping in the skip outside the house opposite the flats, as if decent retired people knew they should find their own means of disposing of waste. There was good stuff in there too, the sort that would have vanished immediately in a less affluent, law-abiding area.
‘Is that a computer in there?’ Pete asked, freezing the frame.
‘My God, so it is.’
‘Now that should have gone to a proper recycling depot. All that toxic stuff going to landfill.’
‘The first minus point against Hythe,’ she agreed with a grin, letting the tape roll again. ‘And there’s someone coming to liberate it.’ She pointed and froze the frame.
Pete was entering the spirit of things. ‘Do we arrest him for theft or congratulate him for services to the environment?’
She rocked back in her chair. ‘Pete, you may want to call the men in white coats and the comfy van, but I’ve got a feeling about that computer. At the very least we should make sure that the hard disk’s been removed to prevent any identity theft,’ she said sanctimoniously. ‘And if we strike gold we may find it’s Alec Minton’s machine.’
‘It’s a long shot. Very long.’
‘And a complete waste of police resources. Unless we find some – er, minion – to do it, who’ll think it’s an honour to do our dirty work.’
He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Guv, you’re an education.’
‘A bad one,’ she said penitently. ‘I should be encouraging you to give the coroner the straightforward information that Minton topped himself because he was temporarily depressed and then close the file.’
‘Perhaps you should. But I’m glad you’re not.’
‘You may well regret that. Now, Pete, to the important things in life – is there any decent coffee anywhere?’
Before he could reply, her mobile told her a text had arrived. One from Mark.
Neither of them had mastered the shorthand of the young, so she wasn’t surprised to see what looked like a standard email. Phone ASAP re water. We’re involved. It took seconds to connect her to him.
‘Invitaqua have contacted us,’ he announced without preamble.
‘Us as in the police?’
‘In one. It seems they’ve just happened to notice something irregular in some water tests and they phoned to say, please can they borrow our divers? I just happened to overhear, you understand.’
Fran knew better than to ask for his source. ‘What on earth would they want divers for?’
‘A swim in some enclosed reservoir just down the road from us in Lenham. It seems they’ve found one of the reservoir covers unlocked – they have special keys, it seems – and they’re shitting themselves in case someone has put something nasty inside.’
‘And about time too.’
‘We’ve got a DCI supervising, but I thought you might just want t
o be there.’
His tone might be casual, but there was a wealth of meaning behind it. The fact that Mark, as ACC (Crime), wanted her to be part of the investigating team meant he was tacitly backing her against his superior, the assistant chief constable. How would the chief react? They both knew that Mark enjoyed his respect, as did Fran when she wasn’t being wilfully awkward.
‘I might just,’ she conceded, with a huge smile he’d certainly detect.
‘Do you want the map coordinates? I believe there’s a team already on its way.’ Without waiting for a reply, he dictated them.
What about Henson? Was he still off sick? She dialled his number.
His secretary answered. ‘I’m terribly sorry. DCS Henson’s going to be off all week, Ms Harman.’
‘With that cold he shouldn’t have been in last Friday, should he?’ Fran sympathised. More especially he shouldn’t have been standing around outside without a coat on, participating in that foolish mothers’ meeting. ‘Has he left any instructions, Daphne?’
‘Just to refer any problems to you.’
‘That’s his explicit instruction?’
Daphne laughed. ‘It isn’t like you to worry about that sort of detail, is it, Ms Harman?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ Fran declared.
It wasn’t often Fran resorted to blues and twos and called on the skills once honed driving IRA informers and MPs alike briskly round the country. But when she did, once the panic had subsided that she could no longer trust her reflexes and the sweat on her palms had dried, she let rip. As she cleaved a way through the motorway traffic, she laughed aloud. What would her staid colleagues at tedious meetings make of her now?
The reservoir was not the sort of beauty spot that drew people like the open air ones in Wales or Yorkshire. Indeed, the uninitiated might not even know it was there. Any sightseers were firmly discouraged by locked gates and high fencing with a decorative topping of razor wire. It was next to a few acres of allotments, similarly fenced; today the allotment gates were wide open, and Fran could see a cluster of cars near the main track spoiling an otherwise perfect rural idyll. Clearly you didn’t need to guard early vegetables as closely as drinking water, so no one could complain about the allotment tenants being relaxed about security. She’d guess, however, that any of the people digging away or tending little bonfires would have clocked a stranger from five hundred paces. And spades and forks would have made handy weapons. All the same, it was not impossible that whoever had tampered with the water supply gained access from the allotments by dint of wire cutters and a little brute force.
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