With a Narrow Blade

by Faith Martin

  Hillary paused in the act of reaching for her own glass, thought about it for a moment, and said at last, ‘No. Not really. Janine’s bright, ambitious and tough. But she’s also got her head screwed on right, and isn’t above twisting Mel around her finger to get ahead. But there’s no doubt in my mind she’ll be inspector one day, maybe even Super. With or without Mel.’

  Mitch nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ He himself had never wanted to achieve high rank. Working the streets, taking thieves, beating the crap out of wife beaters and kiddie predators. That was his forte. But he was wise enough to know that the force needed all sorts, and was never quick to judge. And Hillary Greene, of all people, coming to him for help, was distinctly flattering. ‘I followed all your murder cases by the way,’ Mitch said. ‘Well done, gal. I’m proud of you. Never lost one yet, right?’

  Hillary smiled, somewhat wryly. ‘Not so far. And thanks. About Janine. The trouble is, I’m not in much of a position to help her.’

  Mitch nodded, understanding her predicament at once. If it was a young, uniformed cop doing the stalking, a middle-aged, female CID officer asking questions and trying to snoop around would soon get given short shrift. Uniform knew how to look after its own. Even though Mitch knew Hillary’s rep at HQ was gold, especially after her bravery award, any goodwill she had garnered would soon disappear when it became known what she was after.

  ‘And Mel can’t help?’ Mitch mused. The same scenario applied.

  ‘I doubt she’s even told him,’ Hillary said. ‘She hasn’t even told me.’

  ‘Eh? How do you know about it then?’ Mitch said, then grinned savagely. ‘Sorry. Forget I asked. Must be getting old.’

  ‘You see her problem though?’ Hillary persisted. Mitch might not relish sorting out one of his own, but he did have an old-fashioned sense of honour when it came to standing behind someone in trouble, which was what she was counting on. Especially when they were getting right royally shafted. And Janine, female though she might be, and marrying a super though she was, was still getting shafted. ‘She can’t go the official complaint route, because it’ll go on her record,’ Hillary pointed out. ‘And you know how effective it would be anyway.’

  Mitch snorted. ‘Fart and colander comes to mind.’

  ‘Right,’ Hillary concurred drily. Official complaints, when investigated, tended to do only two things; firstly, make everyone clam up and, secondly, spread resentment and general malcontent throughout the force. Hardly surprising, then, that they more often than not failed to find conclusive evidence one way or another, and only made things worse.

  ‘She’s got too much pride to ask hubby-to-be for help,’ Hillary carried on, ‘and since we’re busy trying to find out who stuck a knife into a seventy-six year old woman, she hasn’t exactly got time to spare to try and track him down herself.’

  Mitch snorted. ‘She couldn’t if she tried. If it’s some inadequate wanker in uniform she’ll never ferret him out. His mates’ll cover for him for a start.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You want me and the lads to winkle him out for you?’ He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, and she could understand why.

  ‘I can’t have her distracted now, Mitch,’ Hillary said, her voice going hard. ‘Until the end of next week, I need all her attention focused on the case. Frank Ross isn’t exactly an SIO’s answer to a dream, plus they’ve just landed me with this kid from London who decked his old sergeant. He seems OK, and is certainly bright enough, but I need Janine Tyler on top form right now. And Flo Jenkins deserves to have the people investigating her murder giving their one hundred per cent effort.’

  Mitch’s face hardened, as she knew it would. Part of any successful copper’s repertoire was knowing which buttons to press – and Hillary was very good at it. ‘Damn right she does,’ Mitch muttered grimly. He finished his drink and sighed heavily. ‘OK, count me in. I’ll put out feelers right away.’ Apart from having three of his sons working out of Kidlington HQ, he no doubt had plenty of others he could call on as well, and obviously wasn’t expecting it to take long. ‘Blokes who like to stalk women always give off the vibes. Somebody’ll know who our chap is, and once they know I want to know, I’ll have him. Oh, and gal, I know you just played me.’

  Hillary smiled and reached for her juice. ‘What else are friends for?’ she asked, and Mitch Titchmarsh erupted into loud belly laughter, making several people in the pub look his way indulgently.

  Caroline Weekes nodded her head, squeezing the handkerchief in her hands compulsively. ‘Of course I’ll see to the funeral. I know what Flo wanted, she talked about it often enough.’

  They were sitting once more in her curiously elegant home, and Hillary had to fight the urge to check that her shoes hadn’t left any marks on the immaculate flooring.

  ‘She reserved a space with her husband in the church yard, so that won’t be a problem,’ Caroline went on, her dark, red-rimmed eyes staring down into her twisting hands. ‘She never believed in cremation. Her generation doesn’t, does it? I can have a little reception here afterwards.’

  ‘That sounds fine,’ Hillary said. She wasn’t surprised to find Caroline Weekes had taken the day off work. Her nerves looked shredded. No doubt she had an understanding boss. Outside the window, she saw Janine Tyler walk up the road and turn into a house a few doors down.

  ‘Your husband not at home?’ Hillary asked.

  ‘No. He has a rather high-powered job. Can’t take time off work, like I can.’

  ‘This is your second marriage, yes?’ Hillary asked, having read up the notes on their principal witness before coming over to Bicester.

  ‘That’s right. The first one was a bit of a disaster. John’s so different. So much more mature and dependable, even though he’s younger than me. We’re trying to have a baby,’ she added, for the first time some animation coming into her voice.

  Hillary smiled.

  ‘You have children?’ Caroline asked eagerly.

  ‘I have a stepson,’ Hillary said.

  ‘I think it’s really important to have kids, don’t you?’ Caroline Weekes rushed on, making Hillary wonder if she’d even heard what she said. ‘With my first husband, they just never came along. When I married John, though, he was really keen to become a father. Said he didn’t want to wait until he was in his fifties, like some of the executives at his firm. Said he’d be too old to play football with them.’

  Hillary watched, fascinated, as the handkerchief being twisted and turned in Caroline’s hand, threatened to actually tear.

  ‘But when, after a few months, we still didn’t fall pregnant, I had some tests done, and it seems there’s a bit of a problem. But we’ll be starting IVF treatment soon. It has a really good success rate,’ Caroline said brightly. ‘I thought Ruth, or maybe Hope, if it’s a girl. Something simple but pretty. And John of course, if it’s a boy. But we won’t call him junior.’ Her voice was too bright, too fast. Her smile too forced.

  Hillary nodded. She’s coming unravelled, she thought to herself. Any time now, her doctor’s going to put her on Prozac. She didn’t know what that would do for her prospects of IVF treatment, but it couldn’t be good.

  That was the thing about murder cases. It didn’t only ruin the lives of the victim and the immediate family. It could have all sorts of dire ramifications for anyone on the periphery as well. Like a disease, it spread ever outwards, causing misery and disruption to people’s lives.

  Hillary hated killers.

  ‘Have you thought of anything else that could help us, Mrs Weekes? Anything about Flo, or that morning you found her. Or the night before?’

  Caroline Weekes shook her head helplessly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said miserably. ‘I’ve thought about it, the Lord knows. I lay awake all last night thinking about it. But there’s nothing. Flo was a good woman. A nice woman. I miss her already.’

  Hillary nodded and put away her notebook. This wasn’t getting either of them anywhere.

  Outside, Ja
nine Tyler passed a young constable who was coming down the garden path of the house beside her, and nodded. Follow-up interviews were well under way, since witnesses sometimes came up with something new after they’d had a day or so to think about things. Normally this was a job for uniform, but it was one of Hillary Greene’s quirks that she liked her team, and sometimes even herself, to take part. Tiresome as this was, more often than not it had paid off and Janine couldn’t really object to doing her share.

  Janine saw the young lad meet up with another older man in uniform, and froze when she heard them laugh. She turned sharply, expecting them to be looking at her, but neither was.

  With her marriage to Mel only two days away, she was getting hypersensitive. There was no reason on earth to think that the two men were talking about her behind her back. Shit! This was getting ridiculous. The arsehole who’d slashed her tyres was really beginning to get to her.

  She shook her head and moved on to the next house, but when nobody answered, and she came away, she looked at the two chatting constables closely. One of them could be him. She had no way of knowing. The sooner she was restationed at Witney the better she’d like it. She didn’t let herself wonder what she’d do if the harassment continued even there.

  It simply didn’t bear thinking about.

  Back at HQ again, Hillary found the new boy up to his ears in polythene bags. ‘Those the contents of Flo’s house?’

  ‘Yes guv. At least, those that forensics and the evidence officer thought you might find interesting.’

  Hillary nodded. Barrington was going through them, checking the itemizing and making notes. ‘Give us a box, then,’ she said, making him almost fall off his chair in surprise. No doubt he’d never known an SIO so hands-on and willing to do scut work. ‘I like to get a feel for the victim,’ she explained, as he reached for a box hesitantly, as if still unsure he’d heard what she said correctly. ‘It helps,’ she added softly. ‘Something you might like to bear in mind.’

  ‘Yes guv,’ Barrington said, handing a large cardboard box over.

  ‘Especially in cases like this one, where the motive isn’t clear.’ She poured out the slither of envelopes onto her desk. ‘As you know, according to British law, a prosecution case doesn’t have to produce motive in a murder enquiry. But I’ve never seen one yet that didn’t. Juries need to know whydunnit, just as much as whodunnit.’

  Barrington nodded. ‘Right guv.’

  Hillary spent the next hour looking at old postcards from friends called May, Danny, Milly and Jean, who seemed to favour the Spanish costas. She read old letters from years ago, kept because of news about family now long since dead, or for their feel-good notes of thanks or cheerful optimism. She saw from the sheaf of knitting patterns that Flo had once knitted her grandson SuperTed jumpers, or V-necked pullovers with a tractor or mini on them. She had kept an old button tin, and a sewing box that had seen better years. All the usual, sad, personal, precious detritus of a life now gone.

  Hillary was leaning back, looking through an old photograph album when Frank Ross came in. ‘Nobody burgled our vic’s house, guv, I’ll stake my life on it,’ Ross said, pulling out his chair and sitting down heavily. ‘But I reckon somebody’s been selling a lot of gear this last day or two to our lad Hodge. Got a toerag who hangs out with a junkie runner for Benny Higgs to admit to snaffling some crack from Hodge last night.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Find Higgs and lean on him hard. Bring him in if you have to.’

  ‘Already got feelers out for him, guv,’ Ross said, and began, in a desultory way, to sift through his mail.

  She sighed, and turned back to the photo album. In some of the old, black and white ones, Flo Jenkins was almost unrecognizable as a young, svelte, rather pretty girl, with big brown curls and a cute, chipmunk-like face. Some of the people in the snapshots were repeated in different times, different places – a man and woman who were obviously her parents, a sister and brother-in-law maybe, growing older in years as the album progressed.

  She turned a page and spotted a photograph that had come loose from the old, yellowing Sellotape Flo had used to keep it in place. It wasn’t a face she’d seen before that belonged to a young man, looking self-conscious in a darkish suit and tie. A quiff of wayward dark hair, and a shy smile, spoke of a much younger, innocent age. She turned it over, and had to squint to make out the line of faded blue ink handwritten on the back: ‘R.G. 1945. Walking wounded?’ It was probably in Flo’s handwriting, although it was so faded it was hard to tell.

  Who was RG? An old boyfriend maybe. And 1945 was right at the end of the war. The young man had probably only been old enough to serve in the last one or two years of it at least, but that had probably been long enough for it to leave its mark – hence the walking wounded reference. But why put the question mark after it? Didn’t Florence know?

  Hillary frowned at the photograph thoughtfully. It was probably nothing. But Flo had kept it and written that cryptic remark on the back.

  ‘Frank, I want you to see if you can trace this man.’ She handed over the photograph, and grimaced as Frank snorted. ‘Yes, I know it’s a long shot. No name, and he might be long dead.’

  ‘Bloody waste of time, guv,’ Frank moaned. ‘I’m telling you, it’s gonna be Hodge. Junkie bastard ripped off his grandma for the cost of a fix.’

  ‘Keith, want to give it a go?’ Hillary said, and wasn’t surprised when Ross all but the threw the photograph his way. Normally Frank Ross wouldn’t have trusted a newcomer with making his coffee, but he obviously considered this assignment so pointless that the boy from the Smoke couldn’t possibly screw it up.

  Keith caught the photograph and studied it thoughtfully. ‘Looks like it was taken in front of a house. Maybe somebody would recognize it. Might be worth talking to the county council planning officer. They have records going back to then, I dare say.’

  Ross snorted. ‘If it was even taken in Bicester.’ He poured cold water over the suggestion gleefully.

  Hillary ignored Ross. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Give it some more thought – but chase it up only when you’ve got less urgent work to do. Think of it as an ongoing project.’ She doubted as much as Frank that it would come to anything, but the case so far wasn’t exactly swimming in clues that they could afford to overlook even a long shot. ‘By the way, any luck with searching the house for Flo’s pension money?’ she added.

  ‘No guv,’ Barrington said. ‘I’d swear there was nothing there. I found a hidey-hole in the airing cupboard, but it was for a small bottle of gin.’

  Hillary laughed. ‘I dare say, with all the pills she was on, her doctors had forbidden her any of the hard stuff. She probably kept it hidden so her grandson didn’t get his hot little hands on it. Speaking of the devil,’ Hillary said sharply, ‘how did you get on at the squat?’

  Barrington reached for his notebook, but didn’t really need it to refresh his memory. The details were all clear in his head. ‘When I got there, I found three people in residence. A woman, who gave her name as Phoebe Cole, someone called Rainman who refused to give a proper name, and another male known as Bas Q. Again refused to give a last name.’

  Ross laughed. ‘I’d have got it out of ’em. You’re too damned soft. You won’t last long on this squad, mate, if you can’t get the job done.’

  Hillary sighed very loudly. Ross shot her a sideways look and went back to reading his mail.

  ‘Phoebe admitted to being Dylan’s girlfriend. Claimed he was with her all that night “the old lady got it”, to quote her verbatim.’ Barrington went on as if Frank hadn’t spoken. ‘But since she didn’t seem to know which night that even was, I don’t think it means much, guv.’

  Hillary rubbed a hand across her forehead. Damn, she was getting a headache. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Bas Q is an old bloke, a real derelict. It was hard getting a coherent sentence out of him.’

  ‘And this Rainman character?’

  ‘Bit more fly, guv,’ Barrington said thoug
htfully. ‘According to him, he’s been at the squat the last three nights running. Bit under the weather. Says how Phoebe and Dylan have the front upstairs bedroom and heard them “scuttling about like rats” late at night, but not a peep from either of them in the earlier part of the evening.’

  ‘Out scoring, I expect,’ Ross snorted. ‘Or thieving, or mugging, or selling their arses to a discerning public. Gets dark quick this time of year. Gives them plenty of scope to get up to mischief.’

  ‘Right, let’s get Hodge back,’ Hillary said. ‘Really push him as to his whereabouts. The fact that he was in this morning, only to be pulled back so soon might catch him on the hop. Frank, I want you to do the pulling. Scare him a bit. Keith, I want a search warrant to search that squat. Ask Janine for details about the best way of going about it.’

  Suddenly galvanized, the two men left the room. Hillary glanced at her watch. Just gone two. She could nip up to the canteen for a late lunch.

  But better not.

  Now she had even more reason to try and keep the weight off. She wasn’t sure Mike Regis was the type who fancied love handles.

  chapter seven

  * * *

  Benny Higgs wasn’t hard to find, but he wasn’t happy to be paying a visit to Thames Valley HQ. He was a small, smartly dressed, nervous-looking individual, with a shock of pure white hair and very blue eyes. If you went by looks alone, he should have been a busy dentist, a successful school teacher or even one of those shoe salesmen who can take one look at a little old lady’s bunions and know exactly what pair would fit and be comfortable to wear to the shops.

  As she sat across the table from him, Hillary could imagine even the most streetwise and hardened of urchins accepting a Werther’s Original from him without a qualm. He simply didn’t look, act, or talk like a small-time drug dealer.

  Officially, of course, he ran a small office supplies warehouse located in Bicester’s small industrial estate off the Launton Road. He was still whining about being taken out of his office even as Janine went through the motions for the tape. The fact that this was a full-blown interview, under caution, took a little of the wind from Benny’s sails. But not much. After all, it wasn’t as if this was the first time he’d had his collar felt.