With a Narrow Blade

by Faith Martin

  ‘OK, let’s go and talk to him,’ Hillary said. They might as well – they had nothing else to do. Ominous thought for a murder case that was nearing the end of its first week. ‘Janine, when Frank gets in, if he ever does, tell him I want a full report on the Hodge case to date.’

  Janine rolled her eyes. ‘You know he’ll be stringing it out from here to eternity, right boss?’

  Hillary did. It wasn’t often she left him in charge of anything, much less gave him so much carte blanche to spend time away from the office. Still, it kept him out of her hair. ‘Just do it. If you need to take a long lunch break, you go ahead.’ With the ceremony at two, she might appreciate it.

  ‘Thanks boss.’

  Keith was staring at his screensaver when Hillary turned back. ‘Ready, constable?’ she asked sharply, and Keith leaped to his feet.

  Janine grinned and hid her face in a forensics file.

  Driving back to Northbrook brought back only a few memories of her first case as SIO in what turned out to be a murder case. But then it had been high summer, with wheat gleaming under bright sunlight, and the sounds and sights and smells of the canal at the height of the boating season. Now, as they turned off onto the single lane that led down into the valley, the fields were ploughed brown, heavy-looking and waterlogged. Trees were bare, raising blackened, stick-like forms against a buffeting grey sky, and the only sound was that quintessential sound of winter in England – that of arguing crows. Or was it rooks? The hamlet of Northbrook looked utterly deserted, with not even a dog or cat trotting in the lane.

  ‘Canal cottage, guv,’ Barrington said, peering through his car window, trying to make out the name on the building opposite him. He couldn’t imagine living in such a tiny settlement, nestled in such a remote valley. What on earth possessed a man to move from a city to a place like this?

  ‘Up on the left,’ Hillary said, suddenly spotting it.

  Canal cottage had a low, grey-tiled roof, and was built of Cotswold stone. A large porch, also with a grey-tiled roof, guarded a pale lemon-coloured front door. Newly installed double-glazed windows gave the old house an incongruously modern look. A neat, well-tended garden added to the air of modest affluence.

  Hillary, who knew the cost of house prices after recently selling her own marital home, whistled softly. ‘Not bad for a working-class boy from Bicester,’ she said to Barrington, who looked at the cottage and shuddered. He might only have a bedsit over a laundromat, but he still preferred his place. At least it had a touch of life. In the mornings, he could hear Lal, the owner of the shop, opening up and cheerily greeting his customers who were dropping things off for dry-cleaning before heading off to work. In the evenings came the loud and sometimes humorous catcalls of those just turfed out of the pub up the road. But what did anyone get to see around here? Unless it was those noisy black birds, kicking up a racket in a large, dead-looking tree?

  ‘Engineer, guv,’ Barrington said. ‘Must be money in oil.’

  Probably not for much longer though, Hillary thought gloomily, and sighed. She shut the car door behind her, mindful that Puff the Tragic Wagon couldn’t always be relied upon to be totally waterproof in bad weather – and definitely not if the wind was in a certain direction.

  Barrington led the way to the front door, and rang the bell. The Westminster chimes could be heard clearly inside, and the sound brought on a sudden and savage pang of homesickness, which made Barrington half shake his head. He knew why he was feeling so unsettled of course. His visitor had brought more than potential trouble and strife. Now nostalgia bit him like a hungry dog. But there was no going back to London. No matter what.

  ‘Something wrong, constable?’ Hillary asked mildly, and Keith jerked a half-panicked glance in her direction. Shit, she was quick on the uptake.

  ‘No guv,’ he lied brightly.

  Just then the door opened, revealing a man who couldn’t have stood at more than five feet five. He was dressed in slippers, which didn’t help, and wore a chunky-knit, Arran sweater and beige slacks. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Paul Glennister?’

  ‘Yes?’ he answered a shade more sharply.

  Hillary displayed her ID card. ‘DI Greene, Thames Valley Police. DC Barrington. Nothing to be alarmed about, sir, we’re just making routine inquiries. Mind if we step inside? It’s a bit damp out here.’

  Paul Glennister nodded wordlessly and stepped aside to allow them access. Once they were in the tiny foyer, however, he firmly barred the way. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d just like to ring Kidlington myself and confirm your identity. There’s been a spate of robberies locally, people talking their way into people’s homes and then robbing them and so forth. I’m sure you won’t object to that.’

  Hillary smiled. ‘Not at all, sir. I wish more people were like you.’ She waited patiently, listening in as Paul Glennister called HQ, using the landline phone resting on the hall table. She showed him her card again so he could quote the serial number then hid a smile as the home owner demanded a physical description of both DI Hillary Greene and DC Keith Barrington.

  Once he was satisfied that they had the necessary bona fides he hung up and, without apology, led them through into a small but pleasant lounge. He made no offer of coffee though.

  Hillary took a seat near the grate, where a real fire crackled a welcome, and nodded to Barrington to sit in a harder, wooden-backed chair by the wall and take notes.

  ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ Paul Glennister asked, sitting on the sofa opposite the fireplace. He had thinning sandy-coloured hair and rather dark circles under pale blue eyes. His hands, she noticed, were very gnarled, and she wondered if arthritis was the problem.

  ‘It’s to do with your brother, sir,’ Hillary said.

  ‘Roger? Good grief, he’s been dead for over fifty years!’

  ‘Yes sir. Can you tell me when he died exactly?’

  ‘March fifth, 1951.’

  So he had survived the war then, after all, Hillary mused. ‘And how did he die, sir?’

  Paul Glennister glanced down at his hands. ‘Can I ask what all this is about?’ he demanded shortly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t say. I can only tell you that his name has come up in an ongoing inquiry. I’m sorry if this is dragging up bad memories, but I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’

  Paul Glennister regarded her silently for a few moments, then sighed heavily. ‘Very well, I must accept that, I suppose,’ he replied grudgingly. ‘My brother killed himself.’ He answered her question flatly.

  Hillary blinked. ‘I see. That must have upset your parents very much.’

  ‘Of course it did,’ Paul said with some asperity. ‘Mother never really got over it.’

  ‘May I ask … how?’

  ‘Hung himself in the garden shed.’

  ‘This would be at the family home in Bicester?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must have been very shocked as well?’

  ‘Yes.’ Then, as if aware that his monosyllabic answers weren’t going down too well, sighed. ‘He was my elder brother, I looked up to him. Things had been difficult for some time. Roger was a conscientious objector in the war. Oh, he wasn’t interned, and he worked for the medical corps, with some distinction, on the battlefields. But he wasn’t really cut out for that kind of thing. He’d always been a shy, sensitive boy. He felt things more than most. He was never what you might call all that stable. He was shy, a loner. Never one for joining in things.’

  ‘Yet he played football for Fritwell?’

  ‘How the blazes did you know that?’ Paul asked, amazed, then nodded. ‘Yes, that was Dad’s idea. Thought it would toughen him up. Dad was born and bred in Fritwell you see, before his family moved to Bicester. I don’t think it really worked. He wasn’t a very good football player.’

  ‘Does the name Florence Jenkins mean anything to you, Mr Glennister? Or Florence Miller.’ Miller was their vic’s maiden name.

  The older man finally smiled, a g
enuine smile with real warmth. ‘My word, you are bringing back old times. Florrie. Yes, she was my brother’s girlfriend for a short time. I think Mum had despaired of Roger ever having a girlfriend, so she almost fell on Florrie’s neck when Roger brought her home. I was only a boy at the time, of course, but I remember Florrie all right. She was a pretty thing. Laughing, full of life. Even made old sober-sides – that’s what I used to call Roger – even made him see the funny side of things every now and then. When they got engaged, Mum was over the moon.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, it never happened. Just sort of petered out. Well, I think it was only to be expected really. Roger never had any pep, any sort of get up and go. He used to have the night sweats, remembering the war. Couldn’t hold down a job from one month to the next. I think Florrie eventually wised up and dumped him. Some time later, Roger killed himself.’

  Hillary glanced at Barrington, who was scribbling furiously in his notebook. ‘I see. Did you blame Florrie for what happened? Did your parents?’ She hoped her voice didn’t sound as tense as she suddenly felt. Because, right now, this was the only sniff of a motive they had.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Paul said, after some thought. ‘Roger, like I said, had been having problems all his life. He just didn’t fit in. He wasn’t all that bright, to be honest. He was the sort of man other people looked at and just wanted to kick. Defeatist through and through. Nobody was really surprised when Florrie dumped him. It was almost inevitable. She was only eighteen herself, and probably only felt sorry for him. But a young girl’s got to look out for herself, hasn’t she?’ Paul, who was now leaning back against the sofa, his face looking thoughtful, and softer somehow with reminiscence, sighed and shook his head. ‘We heard she married someone else soon after. Obviously some man called Jenkins.’ He looked questioningly at Hillary, who nodded.

  ‘Did your brother leave a suicide note, Mr Glennister?’ Hillary asked softly.

  Paul shrugged. ‘Probably. But nothing I was allowed to read or hear about. I was packed off to an aunt up North for a couple of weeks, right after it happened. In that day and age, it was instinctive for people of my parents’ generation to protect the young. Nowadays, of course, they’d have sent me to a counsellor and urged me to “talk about it”.’

  ‘So you don’t know if your brother laid the blame for his actions on anyone or anything in particular?’

  ‘No. But I can assure you, Mum and Dad never blamed Florrie. I’d have known about it if they had. You can’t live in a house with someone until you’re eighteen and not know what they’re thinking and feeling. Has something happened to Florrie?’ he asked abruptly, then frowned. ‘Wait a minute. Jenkins. Didn’t I read in the paper earlier this week that some old woman had been murdered in her home in Bicester? Was that Florrie?’

  Hillary didn’t deny or confirm it. ‘Could you please tell me your whereabouts last Tuesday night, Mr Glennister? Say, from six o’clock to midnight. Strictly routine,’ she added, before he could object.

  But Glennister, strangely enough, showed no signs of objecting. For someone who was obviously officious, he’d become almost suspiciously compliant. ‘As it happens I can. Tuesday night is Finds Night.’

  Hillary, having no idea what he was talking about, repeated gently, ‘Finds Night?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m one of those people who go about the countryside with a metal detector, inspector. Caulcott, just up the road, has a Roman road, and I’ve found quite a few coins since I returned to Oxfordshire. Our club meets at our chairman’s house in Kirtlington, every first Tuesday of the month. We compare notes and findings, make sure every find is meticulously logged, trade areas of expertise, give advice on treasure troves and all that sort of thing. Fascinating. We meet at seven, and break up about ten. Or thereabouts. I can give you the chairman’s name and number. Before and after those times, I was here. Alone.’

  Hillary accepted the piece of paper he wrote on and thanked him. Outside in the car she passed it over to Barrington, telling him to check it out. Not that she seriously suspected the alibi would prove to be false. The old photograph of a past lover had only led to yet another dead end. She was going to have to go back to HQ and start right from the beginning again. Like it or not, it was starting to look as if the dead grandson was now the only contender in the running.

  Frank Ross would be pleased.

  *

  Hillary pulled the pile of paperwork generated by the Jenkins case so far into several stacks around her, and reached for the first file.

  Her stomach was rumbling, having long since dealt with two meagre slices of toast, but lunch was still more than an hour away. She refilled her coffee mug, grabbed a fresh pad and, trying to push all petty worries and niggling doubts to one side, took a deep breath and started from the top.

  She’d done this before on cases that seemed to have stalled. Sometimes it shook something free, sometimes she got nothing more out of it than wasted hours and a raging headache. The thing was, until you did it, you could never be sure which it was that you’d get.

  Janine, recognizing the signs, kept her head down and cast a surreptitious glance at her watch. Barrington, on the phone to the Kirtlington chairman of Gold Diggers Anonymous diligently confirmed Paul Glennister’s alibi.

  Hillary opened the file and stared at the picture of the dead woman. Flo Jenkins still looked as if she was asleep in that chair – only the protruding handle of the narrow-bladed paperknife showing that she wasn’t.

  Right, Hill, she admonished herself grimly, start at the beginning.

  On her pad she wrote: ‘Florence Mavis Jenkins, née Miller. Date of birth 9/12/30.’ Beside it she wrote the date of her death. Then the date of her marriage: ‘14/2/49’, and the name of her husband. She probably didn’t need to bother with the name of her school and …

  Abruptly, Hillary stopped writing and stared down at her pad. A funny feeling gripped her stomach, making her swallow hard. She blinked.

  The numbers. There was something about the numbers. What the hell? She’d seen them before somewhere. Somewhere recently. She shook her head, telling herself not to be a mope. Of course she’d seen them before. If she’d read Florence Jenkins’ file once, she’d probably been through it a hundred times.

  But there was something about the numbers, written like this … What the hell was it? Her palms felt sweaty and she took a deep breath, knowing that she was on the verge of a breakthrough. She’d felt like this once before, when investigating the murder of a young French student. The sense of scales about to tip over. Of revelation hovering just on the edge of her vision.

  She reached for the pen and wrote the sequence of numbers again: 9,12,30,14,2,49. Not quite right. She tried writing them backwards, then randomly, then without the commas. Still not quite right.

  Think damn it, think. Six sets of numbers. Not a telephone number, not a National Insurance number. Damn it, she could feel her body almost buzzing. Where had she seen those numbers before? When?

  And then, in a flash, she remembered. Tuesday morning, before she’d even got the call-out to Florence Jenkins’ house.

  And then she knew.

  She knew who had killed Florence, and almost more importantly, why.

  ‘I’ll be a son of a bitch!’ Hillary snarled.

  Barrington’s head shot up from his desk, and Janine swivelled her chair around.

  ‘You stupid, barmy, brainless dunderhead!’ Hillary chastised herself. ‘It was right there all along, staring you in the face. An idiot with the IQ of a gnat would have seen it.’

  ‘Boss?’ Janine said sharply.

  Hillary glanced at her, self-disgust written all over her face. ‘Janine, I want you to get a warrant for a murder charge.’ She stood up and then abruptly sat down again. Wait a minute, they’d need a second warrant. Not such an easy one to get, because this time they’d be up against a big and powerful corporation. And judges always thought twice when that happened.
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br />   ‘What name?’ Janine asked. Beside her, she felt Barrington get slowly to his feet. ‘Boss, who should I make the warrant for?’ Janine repeated loudly, seeing that Hillary was thinking furiously and hadn’t heard her.

  Hillary glanced at her. ‘What? Oh, for Caroline Weekes.’ Then she got up and moved quickly towards Paul Danvers’ office.

  Janine let her breath out in a whoosh. ‘Weekes?’ She hadn’t even seriously considered Weekes as a suspect. And she was damned sure Hillary hadn’t really rated her either. So what had changed?

  ‘The guv OK?’ Barrington asked nervously.

  Janine glanced at him, saw the worry and guessed the reason behind it, and laughed out loud. ‘Don’t worry, she hasn’t gone doolally. She’s just had a brainstorm, that’s all. It happens that way sometimes with the boss. You’ll get used to it.’ She reached for the phone. ‘And don’t fret about Weekes either. I’ve never known the boss get it wrong yet.’

  Paul Danvers glanced up as Hillary Greene knocked on his door and, without waiting for a reply or gesture to come in, entered.

  Paul had had a bad night. He’d lain awake for many hours, wondering just how serious it was between Hillary and that git from Vice, Mike Regis. And just when had Regis moved in on her? Why had Hillary been so coy about it? Surely she couldn’t really rate the man. And how was he going to split them up?

  Now, seeing her coming through his door, he wondered how he should play it. Then all such personal considerations took second place, as Hillary said crisply, ‘The Jenkins case. I’ve cracked it. But I’m going to need a warrant for disclosure, and I don’t think they’re going to be pleased about it. We might need to gear up the legal eagles.’

  Danvers, who wasn’t aware of anybody, even on the fringes of the Jenkins case who might have such serious juice, sat up straighter. ‘Who are we taking on?’ he asked sharply.

  Hillary, taking a seat in front of his desk, smiled grimly. ‘Camelot.’