by Jo Bannister
She was ready for that one. “Lost property.”
Sergeant Murchison relaxed, just a little. “I suppose.…”
“Yes?”
“I suppose you could try Martha.…”
* * *
Martha Harris wasn’t everyone’s idea of a private investigator. But then, she hadn’t been everyone’s idea of a detective sergeant either, certainly not twenty years before, when she first came to Norbold on promotion from Newcastle. She was a woman at a time when most detectives were male; even in her twenties she was somewhat stocky, at a time when women were still judged first by their looks and only then by their abilities; and finally, though a quick temper had got her into trouble on a number of occasions, she was plainly a kind woman. No one raised on cop shows expected that of an ambitious female detective.
Now she was twenty years older, significantly fatter, and curious to discover what Hazel wanted. While she waited, she pushed the second half of a box of chocolates across the desk in her visitor’s direction. “Help yourself, pet. Them ones in gold foil are good.”
Hazel put on her friendliest smile and took a strawberry cream instead. “Ms. Harris, do you know who I am?”
The other woman considered for a moment before nodding. “Aye, pet, I do.”
“Then you know I’m a police officer.”
Another thoughtful pause. “Who you are, what you do, what you did.”
Hazel’s smile never wavered. “Did you know that when you broke into my flat?”
This time the pause was much longer. Martha Harris reached out and took another chocolate. It was the last one in gold foil. “I didn’t break anything,” she said eventually.
“That’s how I know it was you.”
It’s a sad fact of policing that almost the only compliments you get are from other police officers. Those who go solo forfeit even that meager source of appreciation. Ms. Harris offered half a smile in acknowledgment. “Off the record?”
“For now,” conceded Hazel carefully.
“I didn’t know you were job when I took the man’s shilling. When I realized, I gave it back.”
“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to ask what man?”
The smile broadened. “No, pet.”
“What were you looking for? When you didn’t break into my flat.”
The investigator considered at length before answering that one. She decided that she could, in a general way, because she had not identified the client. “Photographs.”
Hazel wasn’t expecting that. “Photographs of what?”
Martha Harris shrugged. “Digital ones, on any sticks and discs I could find. But actually, it was the photos on your mantelpiece that told me who you were.”
Hazel frowned. “How?”
The older woman gave her an old-fashioned look. “The dog, pet. I’ve lived in this town for twenty years, but if I’d only lived here six months, I’d have recognized that dog. Gabriel Ash not so much, but his dog? Easy. And who was going to have pictures of Gabriel Ash’s dog? Gabriel Ash’s friend. Constable Best, who took on Norbold’s senior police officer and its last godfather, and won.”
“It didn’t feel much like winning,” said Hazel wryly.
“You’re alive, aren’t you? And they’re not. From where I’m sitting, that’s a big-time win.”
“So what did you give him?” asked Hazel. “This client you’re not going to identify.”
“Nothing,” said Martha immediately. “I told you. As soon as I realized you were job, I was out of there. I didn’t copy nothing. I didn’t even look at anything that you didn’t have framed and on show. I returned his retainer and told him to think again. I haven’t heard from him since. I’m not expecting to.”
“And that’s all he asked you for—digital photographs?”
“Aye. I had a bloody great EHD with me, so I could copy everything I found. But I never got it out the bag. I wasn’t in the flat five minutes.”
Hazel nodded slowly, taking it in. An explanation of a kind, but more questions raised than answered. And apart from the one thing she knew Martha Harris would never tell her, and Martha didn’t know that she already knew, she didn’t think the woman was holding anything back. “All right. We can leave it there, for now.
“Just one thing,” she added, turning in the doorway. Martha raised an interrogative eyebrow. “You’re a neat worker. But next time you break into someone’s flat—”
“I didn’t break anything,” interjected Martha firmly.
“Next time you break into someone’s flat, don’t leave it tidier than you found it.”
CHAPTER 8
CHARLES ARMITAGE HAD MISLAID HIS LAPTOP, Hazel had handed it in to the police, and within days the structural engineer had it back. But instead of sending flowers as a thank-you, he’d hired a private investigator to search her flat for photographs. The only possible conclusion was that he had pictures on that laptop that he really didn’t want people seeing.
Hazel had bought herself a box of chocolates on the way home. The ones in gold foil were indeed particularly good. The white dog was curled up at the other end of the sofa, not begging—which she clearly thought beneath her—just close at hand if anything happened to be going spare. Hazel knew chocolate is toxic to dogs. Every so often, as she mulled over what she knew and what she thought, she offered Patience one of the little pink wafers, and the dog graciously accepted.
The plans for Dirty Nellie’s might be commercially sensitive. But did structural engineers resort to burglary to protect commercially sensitive information from someone who wasn’t even a competitor? Burglary was a panic reaction that seemed less like a company defending its legitimate interests and more like an individual caught with his pants down.
Mr. Charles Armitage, successful professional and family man, had been doing something he shouldn’t with someone he shouldn’t, and had been unwise enough to keep the evidence as a file of photos on his laptop. And now he was afraid he was going to be blackmailed.
As simple as that? He had a bit on the side, he’d taken photographs of her—maybe he’d taken photographs of them together—and now he thought he’d lose everything if copies reached his wife? Hazel sniffed indignantly. Did Armitage really think she had nothing better to do than point out his shortcomings to a wife who was almost certainly aware of them already? With very little encouragement, Hazel would have called him up to tell him so.
But as she thought about it, and took a certain amount of satisfaction from the panic she would hear in his voice before he realized this was as bad as it was going to get, wiser counsels prevailed. It was one of those “Least said, soonest mended” occasions. If, like Patience pretending she’d never liked chocolate anyway, Hazel exhibited no interest in Charles Armitage’s affairs—in both senses of the word—she fully expected he would lose interest in her. And that would be best.
* * *
“They’re alive, Ash. Your wife is alive. Your sons are alive.”
“Yes.” He’d seen them. After four years, he’d seen them, alive and, as far as he could see, well. He wouldn’t have recognized the boys if he’d bumped into them in the park, but Cathy wouldn’t have lied. She’d stood them in front of the Webcam for a minute, then ushered them away into some other room. She hadn’t wanted them to hear what she had to say to him.
She’d been supplied with more of the cards. She sat down facing the computer and read them out one by one. Ash thought she already knew what was on them. Her voice was breaking before she got to the punch line.
“You don’t have to do what they want.” There was no emotion in Stephen Graves’s tone, only the careful emptiness of someone who has passed through shock and out the other end. “It’s asking too much. No one would blame you if you decided this … conversation … never happened.”
“You didn’t,” Ash reminded him. His voice was oddly flat, as if it was a straight choice between that and screaming. “You decided Cathy’s life was worth more than your business,
more than your honor, and she wasn’t even your wife.”
Graves was dismissive. “A business is only money. Honor is only a notion. I wouldn’t have given what they’re asking of you.”
“She’s my wife,” Ash said simply. “They’re my sons.”
Graves regarded him somberly. “You’re serious? You’re prepared to … pay their price?”
Ash didn’t have to think about it. “I have no choice.”
“You don’t even know…” Graves had to stop and clear his throat. “You don’t know that they’ll do what they say they’ll do. Even if you do everything they ask, how can you be sure they’ll send your family home?”
“They’ll have to convince me. Nothing will happen until I am sure.”
Graves had no idea how Ash intended to get guarantees he could believe in. But he had no doubt that Ash could structure the deal to his satisfaction. This was the security analyst he’d first met five years ago, not the pale imitation who’d occupied his skin for much of the intervening time.
“But how? I heard what they had Cathy say, too. That they’ll send her and your boys home as soon as … as soon as they feel safe. But for God’s sake, man, you can’t just take their word for it! What makes you think you can trust them?”
Ash regarded him with a fine scorn. The apologetic stoop was gone, leaving him a bigger man than Graves remembered. “I don’t trust them, Mr. Graves. But I can ensure that they don’t get what they want until I’ve got what I want.”
Graves shook his narrow head in appalled wonder. “But how?”
Ash gave him a chilly, remote smile. “It’s funny you should ask that.…”
* * *
Mrs. Poliakov regarded Patience gravely. Patience regarded Mrs. Poliakov in much the same way. Hazel held her counsel, and her breath.
Finally the landlady said firmly, “No dogs. It says in the tenancy agreement. No dogs.”
“Yes, it does,” Hazel had to agreed. “Which wasn’t a problem eight months ago, because I didn’t have a dog then.”
“You said this is not your dog now.” Mrs. Poliakov sounded suspicious.
“And that’s true,” Hazel said quickly. “She belongs to a friend of mine. He’s having a really difficult time, he needs me to look after her, but it’s only a temporary arrangement. He’ll take her back as soon as he can.”
“Your friend Mr. Ash.”
Slightly stung by the implication that she might have only the one, Hazel nodded nevertheless. “Yes. Mr. Ash.”
“The crazy man.”
“He’s not…” But there was no point. Hazel sighed. “It’s not Gabriel Ash I want to keep in my flat for a few days, it’s Patience. She’s very quiet, she’s very clean, and if she causes you any problems, I’ll think of something else to do with her. But I’d consider it a favor if you’d let me keep her here.”
Mrs. Poliakov bent in the middle to take a closer look. She was a middle-aged Polish woman who’d lived in England for so long that it had required a real effort of will to keep her accent. “What sort of a dog is it?”
It was the first chink in her armor. And Hazel wasn’t the only one to notice it: Patience waved her scimitar tail, just once, decorously.
“She’s a lurcher. Saturday says she’s a gentleman’s lurcher—a pointer cross.”
“Saturday?”
That was going to take too much explaining. And while Hazel thought her landlady just might soften to Patience in the end, she knew she’d chase the street kid down her steps with a broom. “Just someone I know. His granddad was a dog expert, apparently.”
“A gentleman’s lurcher, hmm.” There was a bit of Mrs. P. that was unreconstructed snob. It wasn’t a small bit. The magic word swung the balance. “One bark in the night, she goes,” she said sternly. “One unmentionable on the carpet, she goes. She chew my furniture, you both go.”
“It’s a deal,” said Hazel, relieved; and Patience waved her tail again, just the once.
* * *
Balfour Street, where Hazel shared the three-story Victorian villa with Mrs. P. and two other tenants, was on the far side of Norbold from Highfield Road, with its leafy gardens and nearby park. But the canal ran along the back, and since the Rivers Agency had restored the waterway and the council had tidied up the towpath it was a pleasant strip of open space, a rural finger tracing its route through the postindustrial town.
It was popular with narrow boat enthusiasts, with ramblers, and with dog walkers. Hazel lost no time introducing Patience to its charms.
Half a mile up the towpath, with the houses thinning as the eastern edge of town approached, Hazel was less surprised than she might have been to see the thin, always slightly shifty figure in its misleading rugby shirt strolling nonchalantly toward her, toes visible through a hole in one trainer.
“I didn’t know you knew about this place,” said Hazel by way of a greeting.
“’S public property,” said Saturday defensively, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.
“I didn’t mean that,” said Hazel, starting to apologize before she realized she had nothing to apologize for. “I thought the park was your preferred hangout.”
The boy shrugged. “The park’s good. The canal’s good.”
Hazel couldn’t think what he found it good for. Even after the Rivers Agency’s efforts, a hook dropped into the water was more likely to catch a shopping trolley than a fish; and anyone planning to mug the walkers had better be stronger and faster than the brisk, no-nonsense senior citizens who frequented the towpath, or he’d find himself tipped into the canal.
On the other hand, he knew where she lived. “Were you looking for me?”
“No,” Saturday said quickly. He looked around him rather than meet her eye. “Jeez, a guy can’t even get a bit of fresh air without being accused of something.”
“Okay,” she said mildly; but she knew she was right, and when he fell into step beside her, she knew it was only a matter of time before he told her what was on his mind.
Where a bridge took the Coventry road over the canal, someone had parked a chip van. The legend on the side read WINKWORTH’S MOBILE CATERING, but it was still a chip van. With lunchtime imminent, Hazel bought sausage and chips for two, then remembered there were three of them and asked for extra sausages. But she was damned if she was buying the dog a mug of tea as well.
Winkworth was doing a roaring trade in the sunshine, and all the nearby benches were taken. They wandered a little farther up the towpath and, on the far side of the bridge, sat down on the edge, dangling their legs over the water and defending their chips from a particularly determined swan.
Finally Saturday said, “You handed the laptop in, then.” Hazel nodded. “Anybody claim it?”
“The DI worked out who it belonged to and sent it to him.”
There was a longer than expected pause. Had Saturday been hoping to get it back? It wasn’t as if he had anywhere to charge it. “So he got into it?”
Hazel dipped her sausage in ketchup. “There wasn’t much of a password. There were plans on it, for a development here in town. It belonged to someone from the architect’s office.”
“And the coppers gave it back to him.”
“’Fraid so,” said Hazel, briskly unsympathetic. She could have gone on to tell him about her break-in, but there seemed no point. And Saturday would never be a reliable confidant. If she’d wanted any more doing about it, she’d have done it herself; and if she didn’t want anything doing, she certainly didn’t want anyone gossiping about it.
There was a long pause. So long that she began to think the conversation was over and the youth was simply hanging around in the hope of getting an ice cream to follow his sausage and chips. But no. Saturday wasn’t here because he was interested in narrow boats. He’d come looking for her, and he hadn’t yet got around to saying why.
Finally, with the air of someone being forced to play both sides of a chessboard because his opponent was too dim to do her sha
re, he said, “What about the pictures?”
Hazel hadn’t guessed he was interested in architecture, either. She shrugged. “I told you. They’re redeveloping Dirty Nellie’s. Offices, shops, flats. Why?” She grinned. “Thinking of putting your name down for one?”
As soon as it was out, Hazel wished it unsaid. It had only been a bit of banter. If she’d said it to Ash, or Ash had said it to her, it would have been obvious as such. But both of them had homes, and Saturday did not, and that meant it wasn’t a joking matter. You have to be a very close friend before you ask a man with no legs when he’s trying out for Manchester United.
Saturday gave her a long sideways look. But before she could marshal an apology he said, with a kind of heavy patience, as if he was going to make her understand if it killed him, “Not those pictures. The other pictures. The pictures he shouldn’t have had. The ones he had hidden behind the second password.”
CHAPTER 9
DISTRACTEDLY, HAZEL WENT TO GIVE THE REST of her chips to the swan. It was only the dog’s reproachful look that stopped her. So she gave them to Patience, but really she didn’t care who ate them as long as she could concentrate on Saturday’s bombshell.
She turned to face him, and waited until his shifting gaze settled somewhere near hers. “There was a second password?”
“Sure,” he said negligently. As if none of this really mattered. As if he hadn’t been walking up and down this towpath, possibly for hours, in order to have this conversation with her.
“How do you know?”
“I hacked it.”
This was the first she’d heard about the boy as computer wizard. But then, he was from the generation that had grown up with computers. Before he was a street kid, he was just a kid, going to school and doing IT classes and learning even more from his mates behind the bicycle sheds.
“How?”
He looked at her askance. “A guy who uses PASSWORD as his password, he’s not suddenly going to use a quadratic equation to lock his vault.”