Prey to All

by Cooper, Natasha

  Her opponent rolled up his gown and stuffed it in his red-brocade bag.

  ‘What about a drink in El Vino?’ he said, slinging the bag over his shoulder with a jauntiness that seemed unlike him. But he didn’t win nearly as often as she. Trish explained that she had to get back to chambers to collect an urgent message and hoped he wasn’t going to tell the assembled barristers in the wine bar that she was a bad loser.

  It wasn’t long before she was back at her desk, phoning the Pimlico police. When she asked for the number of the incident room dealing with the Chaze murder, she was put through to a constable, who said he was collecting all information offered by the public. Trish said politely that she wanted to talk to someone actually involved in the investigation.

  The young-sounding officer told her patiently that there were three separate incident rooms and that his job was to sift the information that came in and funnel it through to the right people.

  ‘Who are the officers in charge?’ she asked, hoping that she would know at least one. She’d met quite a few senior members of the Met and it wouldn’t be too much of a coincidence if one of these was known to her.

  The constable was determined not to give her any names, but she was persistent and experienced. Eventually he surrendered and told her who they were. Two were superintendents, whose names meant nothing to her, but one was a DCI she knew. He was in command of the smallest of the three incident rooms, and his name was William Femur.

  Trish almost cheered when she heard that. He was the man who’d put her attacker behind bars for life. She owed him rather than the other way round, but she had enough faith in him to believe he would listen to her. The constable didn’t agree but reluctantly took her name and asked her to hold on.

  ‘Trish Maguire? Is it really you?’ asked Femur’s familiar gravelly voice, two minutes later.

  ‘You remember me, then?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ There was a sharp edge as well as a smile in his voice, which pretty much summed up their relationship.

  ‘Good. I want to come and talk to you about Malcolm Chaze.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, he was a client of yours and you’ve some secret information no one else could possibly know, which will prove he’s been—’

  ‘No,’ Trish said quickly, picking up Femur’s real annoyance, in spite of the coating of humour. ‘Nothing like that. But I saw him last night. Well, yesterday evening.’

  ‘So I shouldn’t have been frivolous. OK. I can accept that. I’ll get the relevant incident room to send someone round to chambers to take your statement.’

  ‘Couldn’t I maybe drop in on my way home and talk to you? Presumably you’re working fairly near his house.’

  There was a sigh. Then came Femur’s voice, harsh now without the amusement. ‘Is this really necessary?’

  ‘If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have bothered to ring you. We’re both busy.’

  ‘All right.’ He gave her the address. ‘I should be able to give you a few minutes in about half an hour’s time, but I can’t take long.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Femur was much as Trish remembered him: an ordinary-looking bloke in his fifties, untidy in his plain dark-grey suit, with a chewed-up tie knotted askew under his collar. Only when he saw her and his hard-grey eyes turned diamond-shaped as his cheeks pressed upwards in a smile of recognition did he show any individuality.

  ‘Trish Maguire. You haven’t changed.’

  ‘Good. I won’t take much of your time,’ she said, very fast, ‘but you need to know—’

  ‘It’s OK, provided you’re not going to fly any stupid kites. I could do with a short break. Cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thank you. Look, I went to see Chaze yesterday because we’ve been working together on the background to a campaigning TV programme of Anna Grayling’s about Deborah Gibbert. D’you remember the case?’

  The diamond-shaped eyes were shut now. ‘Don’t. This is a standard-issue contract-killing, almost certainly drug-related. Don’t try to complicate it for me.’

  ‘I’m not here to cause trouble,’ she said at once. ‘Last time you were angry because I withheld information. Now I want to give you all I’ve got, but you don’t want it. Surely you must need to know what had been preoccupying Chaze in the weeks before his death, and who he might have pissed off. Mayn’t I tell you about it?’

  ‘If you must.’ Weariness showing in every gesture, Femur pulled forward a thick pad of lined paper and pulled off the top of a felt-tip pen. ‘Fire away.’

  Trish described the way Anna had embroiled her in the case, the little she had found out, and everything she could remember that Chaze had said about Deb and his campaign for justice. Femur’s expression lightened a little as she talked. ‘You do make a good witness, I’ll give you that,’ he said, when she stopped. ‘But even if your Deborah Gibbert is innocent you can’t expect me to believe that the real killer of her father would put out a contract like this one.’

  ‘Put like that, it does sound a little unlikely.’ She thought of George and how well the two men would get on. ‘Are you sure it was a contract killing?’

  ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. We gave a press conference this morning and it’ll be all over the news tonight. The neighbours saw a motorbike messenger call at Chaze’s house last night at around nine thirty. We have several independent sightings as well as CCTV footage. No one paid any attention. All MPs have deliveries at all times of the day and night. Chaze clearly let the man in and was then shot, in the privacy of the hall, with a silenced gun. The messenger shut the door behind him, retreated to his bike, clipboard in hand – again we have several witnesses – and rode off.’

  ‘Did anyone get the number?’

  Femur frowned. ‘Only the CCTV. But the plates were false. He was wearing a helmet and leathers. There’s nothing to pick him out from a thousand others of his type.’

  ‘So you haven’t a hope of catching him.’ To Trish’s surprise, the words came out quite steadily.

  ‘Probably not.’ Femur pushed his hands over his creased face. ‘Christ knows why I’m telling you all this. Except that there’s nothing secret about it.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to take advantage of it anyway,’ Trish said, fighting to keep the professional mask in place. It was stupid to be afraid, she told herself. She’d been unlucky enough to be assaulted once. That didn’t mean it would ever happen again. ‘But there is one other thing I came to tell you. Chaze and his wife were having the most terrific row when I arrived at the house last night.’

  Femur’s eyelids sank again. His mouth looked different, tight. Trish wished she could see his eyes. She didn’t know whether he was bored, irritated or concerned. He picked up his felt-tip and nodded. At dictation speed, Trish repeated everything she could remember of Mrs Chaze’s diatribe and the fury she’d been showing at the thought of her husband’s campaign to free Deb Gibbert.

  ‘So, this time you’re suggesting Laura Chaze was so angry with her husband that on her way to a performance by Fascinating Aida she stopped to phone a handy contract killer to get rid of the husband who’d been bugging her. Have I got that right?’

  ‘Doesn’t it help you build up a picture of his last hours?’ said Trish, despising herself for her need to hear again that the gunman roaring around London disguised as a motorbike messenger couldn’t be interested in anything she might be doing.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Femur was saying.

  Trish stopped thinking about the past and the possibly dangerous future and concentrated on the moment.

  ‘But that’s not what I need right now. If you’d heard the contract being put out, or even threats to Chaze’s life, I’d be interested. But this kind of speculation is wasting my time.’

  Trish hadn’t taken up more than fifteen minutes, and she’d done no more than any good citizen should. ‘Is Constable Lyalt still on your team?’

  ‘Sergeant Lyalt now. Yes, she is. But I don’t want you bothering
her either. She’s busy.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘But I do want you to give your statement to the constable, who’s waiting outside. His name’s Owler.’

  ‘Fine,’ Trish said again, surprised by Femur’s hostility.

  He looked up from his notes. There was a bleak smile around his mouth. ‘And I’m grateful you took the trouble to come in.’

  ‘Good.’ Trish left him to whatever was bugging him.

  Chapter 13

  Femur was having another bad night. He couldn’t stop thinking about Trish Maguire’s thin face and brilliant eyes, or her link with Malcolm Chaze. The coincidence made him edgy. And he didn’t know how to take it. He didn’t really believe she was part of a set-up to tempt him to make a public fool of himself, but could it really be coincidence that had brought her of all people back into his working life?

  He had exposed a corrupt officer last year, and even though everyone wanted the bad apples chucked out of the barrel, no one loved the chucker. It had been during that particular case when he’d met Trish Maguire for the first time. Could it just be coincidence?

  That time she had had access to information that she’d withheld for so long that a man who should have lived had died. He still hadn’t forgiven her for that. But she had paid for it in the assault she’d suffered.

  Thinking about that, Femur realised it was enough to explain her anxiety over her tenuous link to Malcolm Chaze. Femur had seen enough beaten women to know what the experience of being attacked in their own home did to them. It took some of them years to get over it, and a lot looked over their shoulders for the rest of their lives. Maguire’s sufferings at the hands of the psychopathic thug Femur had eventually managed to get put away for life must still be affecting her judgement.

  He had no such excuse, and he had to decide what to do with the information she’d brought him. He didn’t have an unlimited budget and he couldn’t go chasing wild geese. It was tempting to file and forget the Deborah Gibbert connection. But officers who’d done that sort of thing in the past had come a cropper when the loony suggestion they’d dismissed out of hand turned out to be true. He couldn’t afford that sort of mistake at this stage in his career.

  Shit, he hadn’t worried like this since his early years in CID. He must be losing it. Or maybe it was the drink. There’d been too much of that recently. He hadn’t been counting the whiskies last night, but his head and his gut, as well as his mouth, told him there’d been too many. Maybe that was all these worries were, fallout from the drink. His liver had probably woken him as it tried to mash up the alcohol and now it was sending mad thoughts through his brain. When the hangover had gone in the morning, he’d be able to think sensibly again and decide what to do about Maguire.

  He tried to wrestle his bedclothes into shapes that didn’t dig into him the moment he tried to relax. One thing he didn’t have to worry about, thank God, was waking Sue with his restlessness. She’d gone to stay with some friend in Spain a week ago.

  He wasn’t sure she was coming back, and he wasn’t altogether sure he minded as much as he ought. Life at home might be messier without her, but it was a damn sight easier. More peaceful. It did piss him off, though, that she’d lied about the friend. Yes, it was the lies, not her absence, he minded.

  Stephanie Watson, Sue had called the friend. Femur wasn’t sure why he’d bothered to check up, but a quick call to the airline had told him there were no Stephanies on Sue’s flight at all, although there was a Stephen Watson. A few covert enquiries among the neighbours and Sue’s sister produced the further information that the art teacher at the adult education classes Sue had been taking was called Stephen.

  The two of them had run out of affection and things to talk about long ago, so what did it matter? Thank God for work. He lay on his back and stared up at the dark ceiling.

  But it was work that had brought sodding Trish Maguire back into his life, threatening to disturb the calm, orderly investigation he’d planned. He and his team had to probe Chaze’s personal life for any clues to the motive for his death and the identity of his killer, and the person who’d taken out the contract.

  Femur had decided that the widow would be interviewed first, then Chaze’s immediate staff and close friends, including any current girlfriends they might turn up and any cuckolded husbands. The team would then go on to more distant relations and less intimate friends. If nothing came out of those interviews they’d go back and back through all his contacts, all his lovers, and all the ramifications of an apparently colourful past. They’d spread their inquiries in ever-widening ripples from the centre of the victim’s life until they’d found their answers or exhausted every possible lead.

  It was the latter possibility that he expected. Most murders in Britain might be domestic, but not the ones where the victim was shot in the head by a man on a motorbike. That sounded like a contract, and a contract nearly always meant drugs, or maybe terrorism.

  Unfortunately Femur and his team would not be looking into either. While the team in Incident Room I were tackling the physical evidence found at the scene and the house-to-house inquiries, Incident Room II would be digging into the victim’s political background. Lucky buggers.

  Chaze had been in the House of Commons for years and, even though he’d never been a minister, he’d served on various ‘sensitive’ select committees. Everything he’d said then, everything he’d heard, and every secret document he’d seen would have to be checked for possible links to the killing. He’d had some input in the Balkans, apparently, some with the new MI5 organised-crime department, and some with counter-terrorism. Any of them could have led to his death.

  But that investigation was the plum assignment and Femur didn’t get those any more. He couldn’t blame Maguire for that. She was OK, really. It wasn’t her fault he’d been sidelined, even if she had been involved in the case that had caused all the problems.

  He looked at the clock. It was already five. There didn’t seem any point lying in bed any more. In his present state of mind, tossing and turning wasn’t going to do him much good. Specially not tossing, he told himself, with an attempt at gallows humour. So he got up and cooked himself some eggy bread and a large mug of tea.

  It was so hot, even though it was still early, that he took his breakfast out into the garden and stared glumly at the unmown grass and the roses that needed dead-heading. If Sue were here, she’d have had him out with the mower and the secateurs long ago.

  Uncomfortable, irritable, more depressed than he should’ve been, he locked up the house and headed back to the incident room determined to talk to the officers who’d investigated Deborah Gibbert’s case. With luck they’d be able to knock this wild goose on the head, then he’d be free to grill Chaze’s widow, who, according to the officers who’d seen her yesterday, wasn’t grieving half as much as she should. Bloody women.

  ‘If you ask me,’ DCI Ben Hatchett from Norfolk said, almost spitting down the phone a couple of hours later, ‘this TV programme about the Gibbert case is so much horse-shit. We’ve already heard about it and we’re not worried. Not at all.’

  Femur sat more comfortably in his chair.

  ‘Your MP’s death can’t have anything to do with it.’

  ‘Right. Though, as I see it,’ Femur said, determined to banish the ghost of Trish Maguire’s suspicion completely, ‘you didn’t have any incontrovertible evidence against Gibbert, did you? Means? Maybe. Opportunity? Certainly. But no evidence.’

  ‘Except the bag she’d used – in other words, a lot more than other forces have had in cases they’ve won. For Christ’s sake, Femur! There were Gibbert’s prints on the outside and no one else’s, her father’s saliva inside. It’s as near incontrovertible as you’re likely to get in this kind of killing.’

  ‘But what about this story of the daughter picking up his teeth with the bag?’

  ‘Bollocks to that. She’s been watching too many cop shows on telly.’

  ‘Although, if she’d bee
n thinking like that, wouldn’t she have got rid of the bag altogether? It wouldn’t have been that difficult in the middle of the country. There were probably goats or pigs in the farm next door. They eat anything, don’t they?’

  ‘Whose side are you on, Femur?’ asked the Norfolk officer indignantly.

  ‘Yours,’ Femur answered at once. ‘Ours, I mean. But I have to get it clear. You’re sure, are you, that he couldn’t have done it himself?’

  ‘And taken the bag off once he was dead, you mean?’ Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

  ‘Right. Of course. Then why didn’t she leave it there?’

  ‘Because, according to all reports, she’s not over-bright. You should have heard her sister on the subject! I’ll send you copies of the SOCO reports and the pathologist’s if that’ll stop this nonsense,’ Hatchett offered.

  ‘That would be good. Thanks.’

  Femur put down the phone, rubbing his chin. Odd how satisfying that could be, feeling the odd bristle where his shaving hadn’t been up to scratch against the softness of the inside of his hand. Up and down; up and down; soft then rasping. Satisfying.

  ‘You OK, Guv?’

  He stopped feeling his bristles and focused on Caroline Lyalt’s bright face. His scowl softened. ‘At least I wasn’t looking for hairs on the palms of my hands,’ he said, making her blink. ‘You look bright and breezy this morning.’

  ‘I am. Even though I’m not hopeful that we’ll crack this one.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘But I have been reading Trish Maguire’s statement. Guv, you don’t think …’

  He shook his head. ‘No. But I think we will have to follow it up; both the Gibbert connection and the row Maguire overheard Chaze having with his wife. I could have done without her intervention, you know, Cally.’

  ‘There’s a secretary, Sally Hatfield,’ she said casually. ‘DC Pepper saw her yesterday. I’ve been reading the statement she gave him, and she lists Maguire as the last visitor she admitted to the house before she went home on the night Chaze died. We’d have had to talk to Trish Maguire anyway, Guv.’