Desperate Measures: A Mystery

by Jo Bannister

  And maybe Saturday needed that as well. Some small triumph of hope over despair. That, too, had been in her mind when Hazel made her rash pronouncement. But all she could see now, a scant half hour later, was that she was also going to let Saturday down. There was no possible way she could do what she’d said she was going to do.

  But she wasn’t going to tell him. She thought this was one of those few occasions when chasing the unattainable was better than letting it go, because just going through the motions would give both of them something to focus on. Hazel would have to pretend they were doing some good; but she was willing to do that, for Saturday’s sake. The boy had been kicked in the face too often already.

  The developers working on the Dirty Nellie’s site were a Birmingham firm. Charles Armitage lived in the Clent Hills, less than an hour’s drive from Norbold. Hazel had two decisions to make before she did anything. Whether to approach Armitage at his home or his office, and whether or not to warn him she was coming. There were arguments for and against in both cases.

  She didn’t expect a closet pedophile to be honest with her wherever they met, but was he more likely to be flustered into betraying himself by the presence of family or colleagues? It would be easier to throw her out of his private home than a public office, but then he’d have to explain to his wife. Also, it was more likely that the man pursued his grubby little hobby in his study than in his place of work, which meant that any evidence was more likely to be found at his home. If he left her alone long enough to look for it. If he let her through the front door in the first place.

  The second decision also made itself. If she called him first, however quickly she drove he would have time to hide or destroy that evidence. If she turned up on his doorstep, she ran the risk that he wouldn’t be there—but if he was, she could snatch the initiative because she knew now what she was looking for.

  She could go this evening. She thought Monday night was probably as good a time as any to catch Armitage at home. If he’d been away for the long weekend that professional people take as their right, he would be back by tonight. Hazel still marveled at the way the moneyed classes got on a plane because there was nothing worth watching on the television.

  Saturday wanted to go with her. Hazel thought it was a bad idea. One reason was the same as Ash’s for not taking Patience on important and delicate visits. If knocking at someone’s door with your dog on a lead damaged your credibility, being accompanied by someone like Saturday would probably kill it off entirely.

  But she wasn’t a cruel person, so she gave him the other reason. “I don’t want him to see you. He knows enough about who found his laptop”—you see: that was kind—“to recognize you if he sees you. You don’t want him recognizing you.”

  The youth was full of a fine disdain. “Some ponce who wets himself over pictures of little girls? You think I can’t take him?”

  “Some ponce with money and connections,” Hazel reminded him. “Maybe you could take him.” Kindness again: privately she couldn’t think of anyone he could take. “But he wouldn’t come himself. What about the three heavies he’d send looking for you?”

  “Hmm—three,” murmured Saturday, as if he’d have expected to cope with one or two. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Afterward, Hazel realized the ease with which she’d won the argument should have made her suspicious. As it was, she was approaching Warwick when a rustle of movement in a corner of the rearview mirror made her purse her lips thoughtfully and look for a lay-by. Safely out of the traffic, she turned around and lifted her coat off the backseat. It was her warm winter coat, which had lain there undisturbed for months.

  Saturday sat up and gave her a sickly grin. So did Patience.

  * * *

  Plan B was where Saturday stayed in the car and kept out of sight. “Can you do that?” demanded Hazel.

  “Course I can,” growled the boy.

  “You didn’t do it very well just now.”

  “Well enough to fool you,” muttered Saturday.

  “Fooling me isn’t the point,” retorted Hazel tartly. “I’m not going to beat your head in if you get it wrong.”

  Charles Armitage lived in one of the many little rural churches converted into homes in the last thirty years, since congregations started to shrink and house hunters’ aspirations to grow. This one was set amid the rolling greenery of the Clent Hills.

  Hazel parked on the main road, staring at the quaint stone building in absolute horror. Somehow, until right now, she hadn’t believed—not really believed—that this moment would come. She’d known it was a wild-goose chase from the start, thought she was just driving around the countryside to give herself something to do and Saturday something to feel positive about. Somehow she’d forgotten that if she kept following the sat-nav instructions, she’d end up at Charles Armitage’s front door. Now she was here, she hadn’t the faintest notion what to do next. Drive away again? She could imagine what Saturday would say. Patience would look down her nose at her as well. Patience could say more with the angle of her long nose than you could put in a short essay.

  But the alternative was also pretty appalling. To leave her car and walk up this drive, alone, and knock on the door and confront Charles Armitage about the contents of his laptop’s photo file. Knowing that she could prove nothing. Knowing that he was a well-to-do, well-connected professional man who undoubtedly retained expensive lawyers. If he denied everything, what would she do then? She couldn’t produce Saturday—his credibility as a witness was too meager to justify the risk to him—and she’d never seen the pictures herself; and if DI Gorman had, it would have been him walking up the Armitages’ front drive, and Armitage would know that. Hazel hadn’t a single shot in her locker.

  Sometimes, they say, nothing is a real cool hand. But usually it’s not.

  She found herself wondering what Gabriel Ash would have done.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have got himself in this position in the first place. It was, she had to admit, pretty stupid, and Ash was never a stupid man.

  But nor had he been afraid of looking stupid if he thought he was doing the right thing. He’d confronted some grim situations himself—and to Ash, who’d found even casual conversation a trial, the prospect of a hostile reception must have been anathema—when he’d needed answers he could see no other way of getting. Gabriel Ash had always had the courage of his convictions. He was dead, and his wife and sons were alive, because of it.

  Hazel felt a slow flush traveling up into her cheeks, and the die was cast. She wouldn’t disappoint just Saturday if she turned around now. She would be letting Ash down, too, because he would have expected better of her. A serious crime had been committed by the man who lived in that church, and maybe there was nothing she could do to bring Charles Armitage to justice, but she could at least let him know that she knew. Mark his card. Make him aware that, whatever his social circle believed, however much they admired his talent and envied his success, there was a police officer (probably) in Norbold who knew exactly what he was. Maybe it would have an effect. Maybe the humiliation of having his secret discovered would be enough to make him concentrate such spare time and energies as he had on golf.

  Hazel took a deep breath, marched up the gravel drive, and rapped on the lancet-shaped front door before she had time to change her mind.

  Everyone knows what a pedophile looks like, don’t they? Pale, damp, limp-wristed, washed-out eyes that avoid your gaze, a tendency to dress much as he had when his mother was buying his clothes. Except for the jolly uncle ones, of course, who are red-faced and round and never stop laughing, and have pudgy hands and wear socks with their sandals. And then there’s the other kind, who …

  And therein lies the problem. As a trained police officer, Hazel knew exactly what a pedophile looks like. He looks like everyone else. Certainly there are those who match the stereotypes, but there are more who don’t. Who look like husbands and fathers, like teachers and clergymen and shopkeepers, like people y
ou know and trust. You can’t tell by looking at them. Hazel knew what he was, and still Charles Armitage didn’t look like a pedophile when he opened the door with a yellow duster and a spray can of furniture polish in his spare hand. When his rosy middle-aged face with its laughter lines on the cusp of turning into wrinkles split in an amiable, slightly rueful smile and he said, “Yes? Can I help you?”

  A uniform is a magical thing. It can turn a bunch of individuals into a cohesive group. It can make them fight for one another when, without it, they wouldn’t fight for themselves. It can make them stand when all their instincts are screaming at them to turn and run. One made of soft blue cloth can stiffen a spine better than whalebone.

  Hazel had been told this. Now she knew it was true. She’d had the protection of a uniform, and then she had lost it, and she knew what it was worth.

  On the other hand, it isn’t the uniform that does the job: it’s the person inside. Hazel Best was still who she’d always been, and arguably more so. She stiffened her own spine, and looked him in the eye, and did what she’d got good at doing recently: lying without saying an untruthful word.

  “I’m Hazel Best, from Meadowvale Police Station in Norbold. Your laptop was handed to me as lost property.”

  She paused there, watching to see the effect of this opening statement on Charles Armitage. It was reasonably gratifying. The smile died on his face and much of the color drained out of it. He took half a step backward and his eyes contracted around a little knot of worry at their cores. He knew what she was talking about all right, and she hadn’t said anything yet.

  Unsmiling, holding his eyes with her own, she continued slowly, picking her words with care. “It seems there may have been some … irregularity … in the way the hand-in was logged. You’ll understand, there are procedures that need to be followed when we take responsibility for somebody’s valuable property. There’s some question as to whether we recorded all the necessary particulars.”

  It was a classic police tactic, hiding the weakness of her position behind a wall of official-sounding words that might mean anything or nothing at all. And it was entirely alien to the way Hazel had done her job, which was with the same openness and honesty with which she lived her life. But all the weapons in an armory have a use, and she went on holding his gaze remorselessly, daring him to look away. And he wanted to, but couldn’t.

  “So would you mind providing me with some information about the item now? For the record? Is it your personal property or does it belong to your company?”

  “Er—it’s mine,” said Armitage. He was sure he’d covered this ground when the laptop was returned to him, but if covering it again was the price of getting rid of her, he was more than willing.

  “But you were using it for business.”

  “Yes.”

  “When you lost it.”

  “Yes.”

  “At a petrol station.”

  “Yes. Officer…”

  Hazel tilted her head imperiously, so that her nose came up like an admonitory finger. “One moment, sir. Let’s get what we need first. Does anyone else use the computer?”

  She saw his lips tighten. Oh yes, he knew what she was here for. “No, Officer.”

  “And do you use it for anything other than business?”

  He took a deep breath. “Occasionally. I really can’t see how relevant…”

  “So all the files stored on it would be yours. And they would mostly be connected to your work as a structural engineer, but there might be some personal data on there, too. Would that be a fair assessment?”

  Charles Armitage nodded once. “Yes.” He managed to look both ill and obstinate.

  “May I see the computer, sir?” asked Hazel, adding, from not much more than personal malice, “Again.”

  That, too, had the desired effect. Her meaning jolted through his expression. “You accessed it?”

  “Of course we did, Mr. Armitage. How else could we find the owner?”

  “But the password…”

  “Yes,” she reflected. “PASSWORD. Not the most secure I’ve ever come across. In fact, I read somewhere that it’s the commonest password used in the English-speaking world. You might want to change it to something a bit more original.” And then, having stretched the silence until it was ready to break like an elastic band, she added pointedly, “And DROWSSAP isn’t much better.”

  If she’d expected him to fall apart in front of her at the dreadful realization of how much she knew, to fall gibbering at her feet, blaming it all on his upbringing and the public school system and the fact that his wife didn’t understand him, Hazel had mistaken her man. He seemed to shrink in front of her; but things that get smaller without losing mass actually get denser, harder. Charles Armitage’s eyes hardened to little steel balls and his lips compressed so much that they almost disappeared.

  “Thank you for the advice, Officer,” he said, expressionless. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

  Hazel nodded slowly. “So … may I?”

  “May you what?”

  “See the laptop that was returned to you.”

  Of course, he’d had a week to work out what to do if this, or anything like it, came knocking at his door. He was on firmer ground here, and it showed. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Really?” said Hazel. She could hardly pretend to be surprised. “Surely you haven’t lost it again?”

  “In fact, I gave it away,” said Armitage, lying easily because actually it didn’t matter whether she believed him or not. “While it was missing, I treated myself to a new one. When it turned up again, I took all my data off it and passed it on to a charity. They send them to schoolchildren in Africa, I believe.”

  Hazel hadn’t seen that one coming. “What was the name of the charity?”

  Armitage pondered. “I don’t think I can remember. I saw a flyer, it seemed like a nice idea, I dialed the number, and someone picked it up.”

  “Do you still have the flyer?”

  It was a final sally from a position about to be overrun, and Armitage knew it. There was a tight smile in his voice. “I’m afraid not. I didn’t expect to be asked about it.”

  There was nothing more Hazel could do. There wouldn’t have been much more if she’d been here in an official capacity. She could make an accusation she now had no way of proving, or she could retreat with a small measure of dignity intact.

  But she couldn’t resist a parting shot. She knew what he’d been up to. Armitage knew she knew. If all she could do was give him a sleepless night, and maybe get him to stop surfing the Internet for a bit, it had to be better than nothing. “Not to worry,” she said, the words casual but the message in her eyes entirely serious. “There can’t be many people doing that in this area. I’m sure I can find them. Someone must remember collecting your laptop. From here, was it, or your office?”

  “Er…” The thing about lying is, you need to think fast and remember well. The thing about structural engineering is, you take all the time necessary to do all your thinking long before someone picks up a trowel, and you write everything down. Charles Armitage was not a natural liar. “Here,” he managed to say eventually.

  It was the right answer—if he’d said the office, a colleague would have witnessed the transaction—but the time it took him to produce it, and the uncertainty in his voice, left her a small but definite triumph to leave on. “Good enough, Mr. Armitage,” she said, turning from his door. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything else I need to ask you.” A faint spring in her step, she returned to her car.

  It was empty.

  CHAPTER 16

  IT DIDN’T TAKE HER TEN SECONDS TO LOCATE THEM, Saturday and Patience both, on a wide verge fifty meters away, playing a version of fetch in which the dog dropped a ball into the long grass and the boy beat around looking for it. But for those ten seconds she thought it had happened again. That she’d lost someone else for whose safety she’d assumed responsibility. That someone had seen Saturday waiting outside A
rmitage’s house, guessed who he was, and taken him where he couldn’t be a threat anymore.

  When she spotted them, relief surged in her throat like vomit; but faster and sourer still came a furious rage. She’d told him to stay in the car. He’d agreed to stay in the car. And she couldn’t pump the horn, let alone shout his name, without drawing attention to him. She got into the car, turned it around, and drove to where they were playing. “Get in,” she said quietly.

  They both looked at her innocently. “Finished, then?” said Saturday.

  “Just … get in.” Hazel was hanging on to her temper by the thinnest of threads.

  They were half a mile down the road before she trusted herself to speak again. “I told you to stay out of sight.”

  Saturday seemed genuinely surprised. “I was out of sight. Unless there was someone sitting on the roof, hanging on to the belfry, and I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if there was.”

  Hazel breathed heavily at him. “How can I get it into your thick skull that you could be in danger?”

  The boy delayed answering so long that she thought he wasn’t going to, that he’d accepted the reprimand to deny her the satisfaction of shouting at him. She concentrated on her driving.

  But Saturday wasn’t stumped for an answer. He was just trying to formulate it in a way that she might understand. “Hazel,” he said quietly after a minute or so, “I’m always in danger. Not just me, we all are—all the people I live around. Every night from October to May there’s the danger of a hard frost that means some of us won’t wake up. Every time we strike lucky and find someone’s unwanted lunch on a park bench, there’s the danger it’s been there longer than we thought and there’s enough bugs in it to bring a buffalo to its knees. Every time we ask someone for his change, there’s the chance he’s had a really bad day and this is the last straw and he’s going to turn nasty. A girl I knew was in hospital for three months after a pinstriped city type hit her with his umbrella and knocked her into the traffic.