Jack Be Nimble (Knight & Culverhouse Book 3)

by Adam Croft

  ‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Oh yes. You get to hear about all sorts of people’s problems in my job. I think that’s why a lot of people get their hair cut so often. It’s not the hairdo they want, it’s the shoulder to lean on. You get some right sorts come through our shop. All sorts of life stories. It’d amaze you, it really would. One woman, right, called Amanda, she comes in probably about once a month or so. Lives down on the Hampton Road. Now she used to be a bloke called Derek. Get that! None so queer as folk.’

  It struck Wendy that Queenie’s loose tongue might perhaps have done more damage than she realised.

  52

  20th October

  ‘What the fuck, Luke? Seriously, what the fuck?’ Wendy yelled as she slammed the car door and glared at her colleague.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Baxter replied, starting the ignition on the car.

  ‘What the hell did you think you were doing? Telling her that Emma Roche and Marla Collingwood were dead? That’s not public knowledge! We were told to keep that under wraps!’

  ‘No, we were told not to leak it to the press. Queenie Kinsella is a potential witness, if not a suspect, so we needed to tell her so that we could see how she reacted.’

  ‘Are you sure the DCI’s going to see it that way?’ Wendy asked, turning her head to stare out through the raindrops which were skidding down the window.

  ‘I don’t see why not. He quite often tends to see things from my point of view.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Ah-ha. Is that your problem? The fact that the guv actually likes me and respects the way I do things? You had a bug up your arse ever since he told you to come and speak to the old woman with me. You wanted to go on your own, and when you found out you were going with me you weren’t interested.’

  ‘Shut up, Luke. You know that’s not the case. I just know what you’re like. You don’t play by the rules. You’re incapable of it. That’s why Culverhouse likes you. Not because you’re a good police officer, but because you’re a younger version of him. And he’s a fucking dinosaur of a bygone age as it is.’

  ‘I’ll let him know that,’ Baxter replied. ‘I’m sure he’ll be delighted.’

  ‘It’s nothing I’ve not told him before. What if Queenie Kinsella now goes blabbing around the salon about the fact that two more women have died and we’re looking for a serial killer? What good do you think that’s going to do?’

  Baxter snorted. ‘Probably a lot more good than has been done so far, sitting around doing nothing. At the very least it’ll flush him out. Bring him above the surface of the water.’

  ‘Either that or we’ll end up with mobs of vigilantes on the streets.’

  ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing. If you ask me, we could do with all the help we can get right now.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? Luke, we don’t even know who the killer is. What’s to say a group of mob-handed louts are going to get the right person? Any poor bugger walking along the street on his own is going to get picked on and put in huge danger.’

  ‘Unlikely. Do you want results or not?’

  Wendy had nothing else to say to him. She shook her head in disgust and went back to watching raindrops chase each other down the window.

  53

  23rd October

  Helen’s heels clip-clopped across the polished surface of the airport terminal’s floor, her small case trundling along behind her, the wheels skipping over every chip in the tiles. She passed shop after shop: fashion accessories, books, electronics. It had always struck her as bizarre how airports were like small town centres with no permanent residents. Everyone was just passing through. A nice metaphor for life, she thought.

  She thumbed the passport in her jacket pocket, thankful — not for the first time — that she’d managed to secure her new identity before passport and identity restrictions in her new home country had been tightened. She was sure it wouldn’t be foolproof; Jack would find a way if he wanted to. The fact that it was a genuine passport meant there’d be a paper trail, but she’d made sure there was no link between her old identity and her new one.

  She’d kept her forename — that was important to her. Getting used to an entirely new name would’ve been too risky, especially if she’d not responded to it or — worse — had spun round whenever someone said the word ‘Helen’.

  She backtracked slightly and wandered into the bookshop, stopping to look at that week’s top ten fiction bestsellers. It was the usual depressing mix of chick-lit and fantasy, with the odd promising title thrown in. She picked up one called The Stones of Petreus, a novel about a man who fakes his own death and ends up roaming the world, becoming embroiled in a criminal conspiracy. It wasn’t her usual style of book, but looked well-written, so she took it to the counter and bought it, before heading back into the main departures lounge and sitting on a cold metal bench.

  People-watching had always been a hobby of hers. She liked to try and guess who people were, what they did for a living, where they were going. The holidaymakers were always pretty clear: the t-shirts, shorts and sandals in October gave it away. So too were the business passengers, suited and booted with laptops out, or mumbling into their mobile phones. But it was the others who interested her. The people who were flying out for funerals, to visit sick relatives, to research books, to build a school in Ghana. She was one of those too, she supposed. This was certainly no holiday for her.

  She looked up at the departures board and scanned down to find her flight number. It was still showing nothing, but the flight four slots before hers had started to board, so it wouldn’t be long. She shuffled to get comfortable and opened the first page of the book.

  54

  31st October

  Jack Culverhouse sidled into Chief Constable Hawes’s office knowing damn well what the topic of conversation was going to be. The pressure had been growing for weeks, months, and he could sense that things were about to come to a head.

  ‘I’m in a very tricky situation, Jack,’ the Chief Constable said as he handed a glass of water across the desk to Culverhouse. ‘You and I both know your style is... unconventional. But it’s always got results. And while the operational decisions of the force have been down to me, that’s been fine. But I’m being leant on from above.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is the PCC doesn’t like me?’ Culverhouse asked, knowing the answer to the question before he’d even asked it.

  Hawes chuckled and looked down into his glass. ‘The PCC doesn’t like anybody. You know how much this job has become focused around targets and numbers in recent years. Well that’s nothing compared to the PCC’s job. That’s all about numbers and targets. He has nothing else. And as far as he’s concerned, he’s authorised a huge amount of spending on this investigation and he’s got nothing except four dead bodies. And I don’t think I need to go into the whole thing about being the most underfunded—’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Culverhouse interrupted. ‘What does he actually think goes through our minds exactly? That we’re just sat around eating doughnuts and not really caring if we catch the guy at all? That it really doesn’t matter to us, as long as he provides the budget?’

  Hawes steepled his hands and leant back in his chair. ‘I really don’t know what he thinks. That’s the problem. All I know is that he’s seriously pushing for this “streamlining” initiative as he calls it. Bringing all of CID under one roof.’

  ‘Tell me one thing, sir. Why won’t he come down here and do this himself? Why’s he using you as his messenger? We never see hide nor hair of him. If you ask me, it sounds pretty cowardly.’

  The Chief Constable raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m not exactly happy about it either.’

  ‘So he can’t even have the balls to come down here and tell me he’s shuffling me into a backroom to suck Malcolm Pope’s cock?’

  Hawes raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not entirely sure that’s on his list, but yo
u never know. The PCC has his favourites, Jack. You and I aren’t two of them. And we’re certainly not doing ourselves any favours on this investigation. Between you and me, if we don’t get results — fast — then I don’t think you can count on being made SIO on any major cases in the future.’

  For once, Culverhouse was speechless. As the most senior and experienced CID detective at Mildenheath, he’d been used to being the Senior Investigating Officer on any major cases in and around the town. He knew he was a big fish in a small pond and that the only reason he held the position he did was because of that. In a larger CID unit, he’d be shipped off as part of the old guard in no time at all. Modern policing didn’t treat men like Jack Culverhouse well, and it was his saving grace that Mildenheath was far from being at the forefront of modern policing.

  Their unconventional setup and style hadn’t come at the expense of results, though. Mildenheath always got results and Jack Culverhouse always got results. That had kept Hawes happy. But since the PCC had come in, things were different. He’d been looking for a reason to replace Culverhouse and Hawes ever since day one, and this would provide him with the perfect opportunity.

  ‘And what happens to you if this all goes ahead?’ he asked the Chief Constable.

  ‘Who knows? Early retirement, probably. You don’t just preside as Chief Constable over a failed serial killer investigation and get away with it. It wouldn’t be my choice, either, really. The PCC can call on me to resign if he feels it’s in the best interests of the police force. And, let’s face it, I’d only need to put the wrong type of milk in his tea to fill that criteria.’

  ‘And me? I’ll be filing paperwork in an office somewhere, I presume.’

  ‘I doubt that, Jack. You wouldn’t stand for that. In most cases, he’d probably do that because that’d be his only option. So many officers these days are mercenaries who’d take that as a punishment of sorts. If the CID departments are merged, though, we’d have too many DCIs. At least one would have to be made redundant. Cost-cutting, they’d call it. And he knows that’d be the ultimate humiliation for you. Plenty would take the money and run, but he knows you don’t give a toss about money.’

  ‘I don’t give a toss about lots of things,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘But my job’s not one of them.’

  The Chief Constable leant forward and nodded his head slowly. ‘Then you know what you have to do, Jack.’

  55

  2nd November

  It had all gone quiet on the Western Front. He wasn’t surprised; he didn’t have much faith in the police these days.

  The Victorian police had an excuse: they were living and working in a time in which recent advances in forensic science and criminal profiling hadn’t been made. They had that against them. The police of today didn’t have that excuse. They had all the tools at their disposal, all the evidence and clues they needed and they still weren’t capable.

  He wasn’t upset. He was quite pleased, actually. He’d predicted this might be the case. As a citizen, of course, he was dismayed, but that didn’t matter too much. He wouldn’t be a citizen for long.

  He’d read all of the newspapers that day as a matter of course, like he did every day. He’d browsed through all of the major online news sources, too. Things had gone quiet. It was a sad situation when even a modern day version of the most famous and ruthless serial killer of all time was loose on the streets and it was still being knocked off the front pages by the latest celebrity relationship break-ups and shock-horror news stories about immigration.

  He had very little faith in anyone or anything these days. That had all gone long ago. When everyone else had finished caring about the important stuff, he’d decided to join them.

  He wasn’t panicked or anxious, but his sense of awareness had been heightened dramatically. He was now acutely aware of the passing of time. He knew exactly what time of day it was at any given moment, and he certainly knew what the date was.

  He was counting down.

  56

  7th November

  Stress levels had been building steadily at Mildenheath CID. By now, the whole team was aware of what was at stake. Up until now they’d been able to operate more or less as an autonomous CID department with the Chief Constable leaving them to their own devices as long as they got results. Now, though, they had less than forty-eight hours before they knew the Ripper would strike again and they’d be faced with closure, mergers and redundancies.

  For Wendy, it was all about little pleasures. She’d had enough stress to deal with in recent months and years, what with her first serial murder case resulting in the killer being found a little too close to home, her partner being murdered and then the trauma of the miscarriage she’d suffered. Work had been a saving grace for her, allowing her to throw herself into something and have something into which to channel her energy.

  She knew that she’d probably personally be safe should Mildenheath CID be merged into county HQ, but that wasn’t the point. She had friends and colleagues who wouldn’t be quite so safe, plus she had a certain affinity for this place. It was where her dad had worked all those years before. It was where she’d worked, where she’d built her career. It was her home. She didn’t want to move to some faceless glass building any more than the others did.

  One such little pleasure was being able to at least look forward to her lunchtime snack each day. A new deli-cum-café had opened around the corner from the station, offering something a little bit different from the usual Mildenheath fare. Their gourmet sandwiches were to die for; huge slabs of granary bread filled to bursting with your choice of filling. She’d been slowly working her way through the menu and had even been tempted towards some of the more chic foods, including a chickpea and quinoa salad a couple of days before which had been surprisingly alright. Today, it was the turn of the tuna melt.

  Or at least it would have been, if she hadn’t opened the fridge in the kitchen and found that it had gone missing. She’d heard stories from friends up at Milton House about things going missing from fridges (another reason to oppose the merger), but to date there’d been nothing of the sort at Mildenheath. The joys of working with a small team meant that everyone knew — and respected — everyone. Well, nearly everyone.

  Just as she was racking her brains trying to remember if she’d actually put it in there or not, in walked Luke Baxter, complete with one tuna melt hanging out of his mouth.

  ‘Alright, Wend?’ he said as he swallowed another mouthful. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

  It wasn’t the fact that he’d stolen her lunch that upset her most. It was the fact that he’d shortened her name. Only one person had ever been allowed to do that, and that was her brother, Michael.

  ‘Is that my lunch you’re eating?’ she asked as calmly as she could.

  ‘Well, no, it’s my lunch technically,’ he replied, flicking the switch on the kettle.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘The fridge. Didn’t have a name on it. Presumed it was up for grabs.’

  ‘Since when has anything in that fridge been “up for grabs”?’ she shrieked, her voice raising a good two octaves.

  ‘Er, since we all contribute to it?’ he replied, almost as a question. ‘The milk, chocolates, orange juice...’

  ‘But not my bloody lunch!’ Wendy yelled, snatching the tuna melt from his hand and throwing it in the bin. ‘You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?’ she said, putting her face so close to his that she could smell the tuna and mayonnaise. ‘You’re just doing this to be a dickhead.’

  ‘Oh get over yourself, Wend.’

  ‘Do not call me that!’

  ‘Jesus, who put sandpaper in your knickers? Chill out. You won’t last five minutes at Milton House with an attitude like that.’ He turned to walk off.

  ‘And what would you know?’ she yelled, grabbing his arm. ‘You don’t have a clue how to treat people. You just walk all over them, trying to get what you want. That’s not how things are done here. That’s
not how you earn respect.’

  ‘Well it certainly worked in earning me my Sergeant’s stripes, didn’t it? I seem to recall it taking you a lot longer than that.’

  ‘Yeah, because I didn’t act like an arse-licking little shit to my superior officers!’ By now, Wendy’s voice had risen to a level which had attracted the attention of the other officers in the adjoining incident room.

  ‘I think you need to take some time away, Wend. Maybe get to grips with your anger issues. It’s clearly causing you a problem,’ Baxter said, smirking like a Cheshire cat.

  ‘How fucking dare you—’ Wendy was cut off mid-flow by the imposing figure of DCI Culverhouse wading into the room, his voice flattening the atmosphere immediately.

  ‘Enough! What’s this all about?’

  DS Baxter laughed. ‘I picked up her sandwich by mistake and she flipped out. I think she needs some time away, guv.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Wendy was incredulous. ‘He stole my lunch on purpose and then deliberately tried winding me up about it! I’ve had enough of his attitude and the way he treats people.’

  ‘Stop!’ Culverhouse barked. ‘In case you two fucking numpties hadn’t realised, we’ve got a pretty bloody big case on our hands. The last thing we need is two of our officers at each other’s throats. What good do you think that’s going to do?’

  Luke and Wendy looked at each other, not saying a word.