Double Fault

by Judith Cutler

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

  The Lina Townend Series

  DRAWING THE LINE

  SILVER GUILT *

  RING OF GUILT *

  GUILTY PLEASURES *

  GUILT TRIP *

  GUILT EDGED *

  The Josie Welford Series

  THE FOOD DETECTIVE

  THE CHINESE TAKEOUT

  The Frances Harman Series

  LIFE SENTENCE

  COLD PURSUIT

  STILL WATERS

  BURYING THE PAST *

  DOUBLE FAULT *

  * available from Severn House

  DOUBLE FAULT

  A Fran Harman Mystery

  Judith Cutler

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2013 by Judith Cutler.

  The right of Judith Cutler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Cutler, Judith author.

  Double Fault. – (A Fran Harman mystery; 5)

  1. Harman, Fran (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Policewomen–England–Kent–Fiction. 3. Missing

  children–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-72788-339-1 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-480-5 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To my friends at Cirencester Tennis Club – Adam Swann, a wonderful coach who makes me feel better than I am on the tennis court, Douglas Emmett, who makes me feel better about life in general, and the whole roll-up squad, who turn up to play in all weathers and are never less than cheerful and supportive.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I could never have written this novel without help from the following people, to whom I am very, very grateful:

  Paul Bethell, Senior Review Officer, South Wales Police. Although the novel changed radically in structure and content from our original conversations, it wouldn’t have started at all without his invaluable input.

  Keith Bassett, Food Standards Agency inspector extraordinaire and dear friend, who put his finger straight on to a horrible plot-hole and enabled me to darn it in time.

  John Webster, Corinium PC Clinic, who rescued me when my computer died midway through Chapter Five and then, when the new computer deleted every last word of the text, retrieved it at a time when other men would still have been sleeping off their Sunday lunch.

  Anna Chesson, who put me back on my feet after not one but two tennis injuries and kept smiling throughout.

  Ivor Higgins, who meticulously spots typos and corrects my MSS before anyone else in the world sets eyes on them.

  PROLOGUE

  She watches the black-jeaned figure trudge along the main road towards the industrial estate. He’s still on their side of the road. Any moment he’ll have to pick his way between the jam of cars and buses, his beige hoodie ducking and weaving as he slouches, resentful hands in low-slung pockets.

  His father grunts. ‘If those bloody jeans were any lower they’d fall off.’

  ‘It’s the fashion, isn’t it? And it isn’t as though he’ll look out of place there,’ she says.

  ‘What sort of place is it that lets its trainees turn up as if they’re off to a party?’ he retorts. ‘No, not a party. Whatever kids call them these days.’

  ‘It’s a youth project: of course they let them dress to express themselves. It’s not as if they need to be clean – refurbishing the place is going to be dirty work.’

  ‘And later on, when some do-gooder’s paid for all the expensive kit, then they’re all going to make hit records,’ he jeers. ‘Hang on, I’ve lost him.’

  ‘We shouldn’t be doing this anyway. Spying on him.’

  ‘We’re not spying on him. We’re making sure that for once he’s going to be where he says he is: not wagging off school, not missing job interviews, not skipping medical appointments. We’re going to see him into this last chance saloon. And I tell you straight, if he messes this up, he’s out.’

  She stiffens. ‘What do you mean, out?’

  ‘Out. Out of the house. I wash my hands of him.’

  ‘He’s our son! Our only son.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  She closes her ears, and concentrates on the little figure in the distance. He still hasn’t crossed the road. She flicks a glance at her watch.

  ‘Late for bloody work again, are we?’ he asks. ‘Dearie me. A meeting with the head? A problem pupil? Well, I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, if you’d stayed at home and looked after him, he’d have turned out better than this.’

  ‘And where would we have lived? And what would we have eaten?’ It’s the nearest she’ll get to reminding him that since year one of their marriage she’s out-earned him. She isn’t even a high-flyer – a fairly low-flyer, compared with all her friends, in fact. But he’s still very much earthbound.

  ‘You’d have been there. Look at him.’

  She blinks hard; her contact lenses are troubling her. All she sees is the morphed figure of a child becoming a man, but not quite making it. Her baby. Trying to cross the road. And her not there to hold his hand.

  ONE

  If this was retirement, why had he ever hesitated? What could be better than nipping out to the tennis club he’d joined a few months ago and
having a workout in the surprisingly warm Easter sunshine?

  Smiling to himself, Mark parked at right angles to the high mesh fence surrounding the courts and the clubhouse itself. He’d manoeuvred cars for years under the beady eyes of colleagues and couldn’t break the habit of perfection. He grabbed his bag and headed for the clubhouse, where people were already doing their stretches on the decking. Clubhouse! It was actually a one-room wooden pavilion, not much larger than a shed, though it did boast running water and electricity. The only sanitation was a Portaloo round the back. Apparently that had been a recent acquisition: until then members had had to retire discreetly to the woods the site backed on to.

  He greeted several people by name and got waves and smiles in reply. A friendly place. An ex-county badminton player, Fran would love playing here, once she was fully mobile again.

  Tennis clubs had an image problem, didn’t they? Or was that just when he was young? It was supposed to be awfully nice people with cut-glass accents and no brains consuming Pimms and cucumber sandwiches and deigning to hit the occasional ball so long as they didn’t break sweat. Jeunesse dorée, retired colonels and all that, not to mention Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

  If this club had been like that, he wouldn’t have become a member – firstly because he wouldn’t have applied, and secondly because he’d probably have been blackballed. Retired public servants would never make the social elite. But he rubbed happy shoulders with a retired plumber, a woman who had once been make-up artist to the stars, a couple of accountants, a nurse and an ex-teacher. There was also a taciturn man who he’d bet was – under a different name, of course – a career criminal. A lot of people simply turned up to play, asking no questions and volunteering nothing about their own pasts. And here they all were, in the grounds of a stately home, Hogben House. Not that the present owners, people called Livingstone, had anything to do with the club: they simply leased out the land and complained if the floodlights were used after ten o’clock.

  Apart from the Golden Oldies, seniors who had special sessions on Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons, there were some really good young, fit players who played for the club in the local league. And he wouldn’t talk down his fellow seniors, ponytailed Tony, for instance, who was just arriving on his menopausal man motorbike, his racquet sticking up out of one of the panniers like a stubby aerial. Many made up for their comparative lack of mobility with low cunning derived from sixty years of hard-won experience.

  Not him. He’d hardly played since his teens, and had only recently taken it up because everyone said it would be good for him after his breakdown. It was – even when it had been so cold that he’d had to play in two tracksuits, a woolly hat and a pair of gloves. Today it was a different matter – he’d already stripped down to shorts. Even his level of play exercised muscles his gardening didn’t, and got him talking to other people, not just to robins and blackbirds nagging him to unearth more worms. And yes, he loved it with a passion. Better than the gym any day of the week, especially in this idyllic setting. At his back were mature woodlands; in front of him were the eight courts – in two groups of four, separated of course by more fencing, making a big rectangle – and an expanse of cow- and horse-filled fields as far as the eye could see. On quiet days, with the wind in the right direction, if you had good ears it was possible to detect the A road that ran along the valley, but apart from an artistically placed church tower – not their own village’s St Anselm’s, but one he’d always intended to visit when he got round to it – there was no building to be seen. Even the Hall was tucked away behind banks of mature trees. Which begged the question of how the owner knew if the lights were on, but he let that pass.

  Shrill laughter came from the furthest courts, swarming with kids: Zac French, the young man they’d recently appointed as coach, entertaining a load of kids. Zac had once been a Wimbledon junior champion, and was now leading the men’s team in a charge up the league. The women members might pretend to swoon over his dark good looks, but more importantly everyone liked his friendly openness. He’d got a wonderful track record of teaching, not just the very youngest toddlers to the stroppiest adolescents, but even old-timers like Mark – his hour’s coaching every Friday morning was a revelation.

  Now, helped by some talented club teenagers, boys and girls, Zac was running what was officially called an Easter tennis camp for four- to eleven-year-olds. Why a camp, Mark wondered dourly. The kids stayed in the pampered luxury of their own homes, brought in and ferried home every day in the sort of vehicles he’d always loathed, huge 4x4’s, tinted windows and all.

  A swish new Audi unloaded a couple more of his fellow Golden Oldies, one, George, waving mockingly at Roland, just parking his bike.

  ‘Bloody hell, what a racket!’ George, a lanky left-hander with a killer serve, pulled a face as he realized he’d made a pun. ‘They’re worse than that Russian girl – you know, the one who can’t hit a ball without screaming. It’s time umpires awarded her opponents a point for each bellow, if you ask me. That’d soon shut her up. Sharapova! A screamometer, that’s what they need. And as for that other woman …’ He fished behind his ears, removing hearing aids. ‘It’s still too bloody loud to think.’ All the same, he replaced the aids.

  How soon would Mark need them himself? Wearing glasses – for reading, driving, whatever – was universal. But deafness carried a stigma, didn’t it? All the same, even when he jacked up the TV volume enough to make Fran squirm, there was a lot he missed, especially in US-made programmes. Perhaps Fran was right: perhaps he should at least ask his GP about having them syringed.

  Most of the dozen or so Golden Oldies now milling round the clubhouse were smiling tolerantly if not fondly at the seething kaleidoscope of colour – the kids were too young even to nod in the direction of whites or navies which the club technically preferred. The boys tended to sport expensive Premier League replica shirts, while the girls predictably opted for candy-pinks, even to the extent of little frills round the socks topping their sequin-trimmed trainers. And all of them, every last one, squealed or yelled whenever a ball came near them.

  The Golden Oldies’ unofficial leader was Dougie, short and wiry, a doughty Yorkshireman in his late seventies with an understandable tendency to believe all southerners soft. Stepping forward, he raised an apologetic eyebrow to a newcomer – probably in his late fifties, still with a full head of hair – hesitating on the fringe of the group, and reached to shake his hand. Stephen. No surname. But none of them bothered with surnames, which pleased Mark after his skirmish with the media a few months back. Like himself, Stephen was clearly at the younger end of the retired spectrum, and gave up any attempts to say much about himself as Zac started a deafening race to see who could collect the most tennis balls.

  ‘It’s kiddie-time today,’ Dougie bellowed. ‘Normally we can use all eight courts; today – as you can see – we only have four until Zac’s finished.’ He dodged a wayward ball. ‘It’ll all be quiet by three, when the parents roll up and take them home.’

  ‘A consummation devoutly to be wished,’ Mark put in, wincing at another salvo of noise.

  Dougie nodded. ‘Now, this is how it works. Mixed doubles only. We play five-game sets, rotating the serve.’

  ‘Five?’ Stephen repeated. ‘Surely a set is at least six?’

  ‘Not with us Golden Oldies,’ Dougie said. ‘Everyone gets to serve once, and one person twice. If we’ve got even numbers, with no one sitting out, we play seven-game sets.’

  ‘But—’ Stephen objected.

  ‘That’s just how it is,’ Mark murmured.

  Ignoring the interruption, Dougie continued, ‘We each take a playing card –’ he brandished a dog-eared pack – ‘to see who we’re partnered with and who we’re playing against. The two red aces against the two black aces and so on. Everything at random. Nothing fixed in advance.’

  Stephen’s smile lightened his otherwise melancholy face. ‘So it’s a matter of chance who gets landed with me –
it’s so long since I held a racquet I don’t even remember which end to use. I was hoping for some coaching …’ With a rueful grin he looked towards Zac, a lighthouse above a sea of bobbing heads. ‘When the schools start again, maybe …’ His face serious, he suddenly shot a question that clearly took Dougie aback. Mark too, actually. ‘All these kids – are we supposed to have Criminal Record checks?’

  ‘Oh, Zac’ll have had all the checks going,’ Dougie said easily. ‘In any case, his own kid’s here today. Libby. That pretty little lass there. In pink. Oh, not the wishy-washy pink the others are wearing. Petunia, isn’t that what they’d call it?’

  Or Gucci hot pink. Although she was hardly tall enough to wave even the smallest racquet, clearly Livvie – Dougie’s hearing wasn’t as acute as his brain – had her own ideas about colour.

  Mark risked a glance at Stephen: yes, he was just as aware as he was that Dougie had missed the point of the CRB question.

  Soon, having pulled out cards from those spread face-down in Dougie’s hand, they were settled into four groups of four, with three people sitting out: one was Jayne, a willowy ex-city lawyer who resented every day her father’s devotion to a busty Fifties star for the spelling of her first name. Younger than the others, she’d joined the club with her ex-husband, a man some twenty years her senior, who’d shocked all the members by leaving her for a woman of his own age and promptly succumbing to Alzheimer’s. While the players warmed up, she rather ostentatiously retreated into the world of whatever she’d put on her iPhone and, donning dark glasses, lay back in a deck chair on the clubhouse decking as if hoping for an early tan. George, who could be relied on for help with computers, folded himself on to a nearby bench to watch the players. Dan, with a face like a borzoi and a distinguished RAF career, released his dog from his car. He was presumably going to take it for a swift walk through the woodlands behind the clubhouse, safe in the knowledge that all wheeled transport was banned – even, or perhaps especially, the lowly rollerblade. Anachronistically, the estate manager liked to patrol on a particularly tall horse, though it was perfect, of course, for spotting miscreants.