by Oliver Tidy
She was wondering what to do as she listened to Romney’s malevolent tones drowning out Martin’s whining. Martin yelped again. She raised her hand to rap her knuckles on the door and it opened. Martin was on his feet and rubbing the top of his head with one hand and holding the cuff of his hoody sleeve to his bloody nose with the other.
Romney smiled. ‘Martin’s inviting us in for a chat, isn’t that right, Martin?’
Martin nodded, looking a mixture of afraid and furious.
Within a couple of minutes, the three of them were sitting in the small and crowded front room. There was an unpleasant smell hanging in the trapped air – peed on carpet that had been left to air dry. Acting like he owned the place, Romney had turned the telly off and thrown open the curtains. He cleared the sofa of oversized soft toys and threw them into a corner. He told everyone where to sit and when.
Martin was wearing matching sweatpants and top. He had nothing on his feet. Marsh was forced to consider that the outfit doubled as his pyjamas.
‘First things first, Martin,’ said Romney. ‘Just so we’re all clear, if you hadn’t tried to slam the door in my face it wouldn’t have hit my shoulder and bounced back into your face. Understood?’
Martin glared at him. Romney let him. At least the youth wasn’t arguing back. That was a good sign.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Romney, ‘you’ll be able to see more clearly on that when I’ve said my piece. Can you guess where we’ve just come from?’ Romney obviously wasn’t interested in really playing that game; after the briefest of pauses he said, ‘Medway Maritime Hospital. One of my best officers is lying in a bed there with severe head injuries, several broken bones, internal bleeding and missing some vital organs. He had to undergo emergency surgery. He could be brain damaged. He may never walk again. He could still die. And if any of those things comes to pass I won’t be able to help you. As it stands, I can. But only if you’re prepared to help me.’
‘I didn’t touch him. I wasn’t there.’
Romney exposed Martin to his patient, avuncular side. It may have been intended to put the youth at his ease but from the look on Martin’s face if that was the idea it was lost on him. ‘Martin, Martin, Martin. It doesn’t matter if you were back in bed with your cocoa when your mates got stuck into my officer – you set him up, you pointed him out to them.’ Romney jabbed his index finger in Martin’s direction. ‘And in the eyes of the law that makes you as guilty as whoever delivered that kick that fractured his skull or ruptured his spleen.’
Martin was shaking his head from side to side, as though suffering some kind of palsy. He opened his mouth to protest his innocence but Romney shut him up with a slow, deliberate shake of his head. His eyes never left the youth’s. ‘Not yet, Martin. I haven’t finished.’ Romney held up his thumb to begin his counting. ‘An independent witness has put you at the scene. If my officer ever regains consciousness and hasn’t lost his sight, I’m sure he will too.’ The thumb was joined by the index finger. ‘Yesterday you told me you knew nothing about Lance’s footballing chums. That was obviously a lie. I really don’t like people lying to me, Martin.’ The middle finger came up. ‘You went there to warn them that the police knew about Lance associating with them and that we might come looking for them with awkward questions.’ The ring finger came up. ‘If you went there to warn them then you know what they were up to and you know it’s illegal.’ And lastly, the little finger. ‘They beat up my officer so you must have identified him to them.’ Romney let the silence fill the room for a couple of long moments. ‘Were you there when they attacked him, Martin?’
‘No. I swear I wasn’t. I didn’t even mean to tell them. I just saw him and... it came out.’ Martin put his head in his hands.
‘I want to believe you, Martin. Not for your future’s sake, but for your child’s. I think that all children need their fathers around, even the shitty ones. You’d better be telling me the truth, Martin. If I find out that you’ve lied to me again you’ll be sorrier than you are now. A lot sorrier.’
There was another brief silence while Romney let Martin contemplate being sorrier than he was now.
‘I said I can help you, Martin, but only if you help me. This will be your one and only chance. Turn me down and you’re going to prison. I can guarantee you that. And for a long time. And because you’ll be there for being party to the grievous bodily harm of a police officer, maybe even his death, you will find yourself singled out for some awful, awful experiences at the hands of the people who work there. That’s just the way it is. On top of that, I will also make it clear to the scumbags who did the kicking when I catch up with them – and make no mistake they will be caught up with and prosecuted to the full extent of the law – that you, Martin, helped the police with their enquiries. I will make it a matter of record that it was you told us who we should be looking for. You named the names. So then, when you eventually get out of prison, damaged for life by the system and with an arsehole as loose as a clown’s pocket, the only thing you’ll have to look forward to will be your ‘mates’ catching up with you. I can only imagine what they’ll do to a grass if they can half kill a policeman. And if that isn’t all enough to make you want to help the police, think about how prison and your reputation is going to impact on your little girl and her mother.
‘The way I see it, Martin, you have only one real choice to make. You can cooperate with us fully, carry on with your life and avoid prison and the revenge of your peers or you can start praying. Before you make your mind up, let me tell you what I want from you. When I say cooperation all I want is details of what they are up to, what Lance was up to with them, and I want names. That’s all. I’m going to get them anyway. You’ll just be saving me some time and effort. You do that for me and I’ll forget all about you lying to my face yesterday at the factory. I’ll forget all about your involvement in things. There is no record of us visiting you here. We don’t have to take you into a police station to do all this again formally. We can keep it just between ourselves. No one else need ever know we were here. Give me what I want and we’ll get out of your home and out of your life.’ Romney looked at his watch. ‘I’ll give you one minute to make your mind up.’
Martin had started reeling off names that Marsh jotted down into her notebook before the minute was up. There were four.
Romney masked his satisfaction for them. ‘Good lad, Martin. Now what were they up to? What was Lance’s nice little earner with them?’
Martin swallowed and stalled. ‘Can’t you get it from them? Please. I’ve given you names.’
Romney said, ‘I’m waiting, Martin. My deal is for names and what they are up to.’
Martin slumped in his chair. ‘They thieve lead off church roofs.’
***
16
Marsh waited several minutes, enduring, suffering Romney’s intoxicating aura of smug self-satisfaction before she felt the time was right to start asking her questions, voicing her professional concerns. She’d even cracked the window to get some fresh air circulating in the hope that she could make the conceited atmosphere in the car less oppressive.
In the time she’d been waiting she’d wondered how much of the kind of policing she’d just witnessed – been made a party to – Romney and her nasty-piece-of-work-predecessor DS Wilkie had engaged in. To pass it off as just old-fashioned-blunt-effectiveness was like reasoning that hanging people did the trick – it stopped them reoffending. It might be factually true but it was so wrong on so many levels of a modern civilised society’s system of law and order, not to mention falling very foul of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act guidelines regarding the interviewing of suspects.
But what really concerned her was her personal reaction to it. She understood that she wasn’t as outraged by what she’d witnessed as she knew she should be. She hadn’t tried to stop anything, and it wasn’t because she was afraid of Romney. It was because she had tacitly approved of his methods. And both professionally and personally this wor
ried her.
Martin had done wrong and he’d received a short, sharp shock. The police had got some quick answers, which would allow them to go forward with their investigations. Time, inconvenience and money had been saved. The means had been unethical, violent and immoral but they’d been productive. She willed herself to be angry.
She started by tapping into her frustration that Martin, someone who was complicit in the serious assault of a fellow officer, a colleague she happened to like and respect, was going to get away with it. ‘Are we really going to let Martin off the hook?’
Romney snorted. ‘I’ll pretend you didn’t ask me that. That stupid young man is going to get everything that’s coming to him. Don’t concern yourself about that. After I’ve exhausted his usefulness, of course.’ Marsh noted that Romney had changed his tune regarding the validity and helpfulness of categorising someone as globally stupid. Maybe he was right to. Martin hadn’t seemed very bright.
Mollified slightly, she said, ‘What will we do now? Arrest warrants?’
Romney was slowly shaking his head again. This time it indicated he was deep in thought. ‘Not yet. We’ll get back to the shop and you can run their names.’
‘There’s an apparent connection with the Holloways now, isn’t there? Albeit a circumstantial one. A pity Martin couldn’t be more helpful on that score.’
‘Oh yes. A gang of thugs engaged in metal theft and one of their number meets his end on the doorstep of the Holloways’ scrap empire. I’m not a great believer in coincidence. Pity Martin couldn’t be certain of where they took the lead after the thefts.’
‘You really believe he doesn’t know?’
‘I believe him. For now.’
‘If they didn’t let the bit players go with them to where they got rid of the stuff, how did Lance end up in Aylesham, assuming his dead body turning up there is no coincidence and nothing to do with the Holloways?’
‘Good question. Maybe Lance wasn’t a bit player. We’ll find out soon enough.’
‘What about Foyle?’
‘What about him?’
‘Are we still interested in him?’
‘We haven’t found a connection between him and Lance, yet. This is much stronger. I think we can put him on the back burner for now. Deploy our resources in a more likely direction.’
Romney negotiated some traffic and Marsh had learned not to distract him in such potentially life-threatening situations. Her hand strayed to check her seat belt.
‘I wonder...’ said Romney, breaking the silence.
Marsh felt obliged to ask what.
‘I wonder if we could get them all in one fell swoop.’
‘You mean we’re not going to arrest the Chatham four for Fower’s assault?’ She did not sound happy about it.
‘It needs careful consideration. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that with what we have so far we would be far from guaranteed any result let alone a decent one. And then it would only be over Fower’s assault. One thing’s for sure – if we charged in now they’d be put on their guard over the metal thefts. Maybe even knock it on the head and then where would we be with that? Another unsolved bunch of crimes to add to Dover’s unsolved crime statistics.’ Realising a little belatedly that the serious assault of a brother officer should probably not be viewed as an ‘only’ type crime, Romney moved swiftly on, adding, ‘We’d have a much harder job pursuing our enquiries regarding Lance’s death and the metal thefts. We might be able to do so much better if we have a think about it. Stay our hand.’
‘Are you not concerned that Martin’s honour-amongst-thieves conscience will prompt him to throw himself on their mercy and tell them about our visit?’
‘If there’s one thing that I’m quite sure about in all this it is that Martin won’t say a word to anyone. It was in his eyes. That boy is all about looking after number one. Lucky for us.’
‘And what about Philip? I’m sure he’d like to think that his injuries in the line of duty are worth something to us.’
‘Of course they are, Joy. Don’t think I don’t take them very seriously indeed. I’ll speak to him. I’m confident he’ll see things my way.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, sir,’ said Marsh, with a suggestion of resigned sarcasm. She refrained from adding that Fower was so keen to get back into Romney’s fiefdom that he’d probably throw his granny off Dover cliffs if he thought it would meet with Romney’s approval and do his CID prospects some good into the bargain.
*
Further evidence that Romney was in a particularly good mood was provided by his suggestion of coffee and cake at a stop on the way home. His treat.
What Marsh could not know was that Martin’s revelations had lifted a huge weight of burden from Romney’s conscience. With Lance Leavey implicated in a gang of thieves that dealt in scrap metal and his body turning up on and in property owned by a scrap metal dealer it was a scrap-metal-cast-iron certainty that Lance’s death was nothing to do with anyone outside of that sphere of thievery.
By extension this meant that Romney’s grave professional misgivings over his bedding of Julie Carpenter, someone who up until that morning had to have been considered part of the investigation simply by dint of the fact that she worked at the school, could now be brushed aside.
The relief of that, coupled with the immediate following thought that it would then be all right for him to bed her again, should the opportunity present itself, brought something of a wolfish grin to his lips.
Marsh wondered what thoughts were behind his look as she sat across from him sipping the most expensive drink she could have ordered and watching him fiddle with his smoking apparatus to little apparent satisfaction. She didn’t think that his obvious good humour had anything to do with the pipe he wasn’t smoking.
*
As soon as they were back in CID, Romney called a meeting of his team and then headed towards his office to text Julie Carpenter something a little more encouraging after his lukewarm response to her earlier message. Now that he’d had his professional anxieties serendipitously reconciled he felt more inclined to give free rein to his inner monster. His personal feelings regarding the morality of screwing another man’s fiancée and the question of his own self-esteem he’d address later. In fact, he already had begun part of that process. If Julie Carpenter wanted a final fling before she settled down then he’d be more than happy to show her that there was plenty of life left in some old dogs. There was no law against that.
With these thoughts misting his outlook and his attention fixed to the screen of the mobile phone in his hand, Romney did not notice the dozen roses that were lying on Marsh’s desk as he hurried by. Both Grimes and Spicer, on the other hand, were very interested in her reaction to the unprecedented show of affection for a member of CID by a member of the public. Neither of them could ever remember flowers being delivered to CID, although they once had a dog turd in cake box. As Grimes lamented to Spicer, the most romantic thing Maureen had ever sent him at work was a text message asking him to pick the kids up from school.
As soon as Marsh noticed the flowers she looked up to see what her co-workers were doing. Both of them were looking in her direction and smiling. She frowned at them and said, ‘Where did these come from?’
‘Delivered while you were outch, Sharge,’ said Grimes. ‘There’sh a card that shaysh who they’re fwom.’
‘How do you know that?’
Grimes recovered well. ‘Shomeone had choo shign for them. I couldn’t help nochishing.’
Marsh still hadn’t gone for them. ‘So who sent them?’ she said.
‘Don’t know,’ said Grimes. ‘The envelope ish shealed. You could jush open it, I shupposhe.’
Marsh admired the bouquet then reached for the little white envelope. She slit it open with scissors. The card inside was printed with a generic message and signed in blue ink with a single capital ‘J’. Marsh instantly thought of Justin. But she and Justin had been seeing each other for months an
d he’d never sent her flowers. In fact he’d pointedly told her on more than one occasion that he’d never sent anyone flowers in his life and he didn’t intend to start now. He refused to pay what he called over-inflated florists’ prices just to conform to a commercially generated cultural expectation. Justin didn’t believe in saying it with flowers, like he didn’t see the need to ‘waste’ money on birthday cards, or Valentine’s Day meals. Apparently, it was the principle, not the money.
She thought about ringing him to see if he’d had a change of philosophy. Then she thought to check that she was the intended recipient.
‘Yesh, Sharge,’ said Grimes. ‘They are definichely meanch for you. Not Jushchin then?’ He was fishing.
‘Haven’t you got work to do?’ said Marsh.
Romney stepped out of his office and saw the flowers. ‘Someone’s got more money than sense,’ he said and made a noise in the back of his throat to indicate his thoughts on the gift.
At the mention of money Joy thought of James Meakins and the thought made her blush.
*
Romney started off sincerely and solemnly. ‘Just in case you two haven’t heard, young Fower was assaulted last night. Thankfully, most of his injuries seem to be superficial.’ Romney avoided making eye contact with Marsh. ‘I’ve been up to see him this morning, given him our best wishes for a speedy and full recovery. He was one of us, albeit briefly, and I don’t forget the people who work for me.’
Clearly Romney had forgotten all about how he had behaved towards ex-Detective Sergeant Wilkie when their paths and stars had crossed not that long ago. Marsh glanced at her fellow detectives, looking for some reaction to his unRomney-like sentiments, his bullshit. Both Grimes and Spicer’s features remained disappointingly impassive.
Shrugging off his fake sympathy for Fower, like slipping off an anorak, Romney brightened and said, ‘But, like The Lone Ranger’s horse, every cloud has a silver lining.’