Walk a Narrow Mile

by Faith Martin

  Again Deakin gave a brief laugh. ‘No. Why should I?’

  Another lie. But why was he going out of his way to protect Ruth?

  ‘All right, Mr Deakin. If you can think of anything that can help, please contact us.’ She handed him one of her cards, and rose.

  Christopher looked pathetically grateful to see the back of them and leapt off the chair eagerly to escort them to the door. Hillary said nothing until they were out of the building and heading across the car-park.

  ‘That guy made a cat on a hot tin roof look like positively laid back, guv,’ Jimmy snorted, the moment the electronic doors swooshed shut behind them.

  ‘He was all over the place, wasn’t he?’ Hillary agreed.

  ‘And he was lying nearly fifty per cent of the time,’ Jimmy added darkly.

  ‘Yes. But didn’t you find the lies far more interesting than the truth?’

  Jimmy grunted. ‘He knew about the stalker.’

  ‘But why deny it? Surely if your girlfriend goes missing, and you’re a married man and the police come a-calling, you would want to emphasize the fact that there were other suspects out there,’ Hillary said. ‘So either he’s got no sense of self-preservation – or something else scares him more than we do.’

  ‘That’d be Mrs Deakin, guv. If they divorce, she’d have the kids and take her dough with her.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe. But that still doesn’t explain why he kept quiet about the stalker.’

  ‘I reckon he just wants the investigation to go away. I mean, the more we dig into Judy’s life the more likely it is something will come to the ears of his missus.’

  ‘Yes, it could be that. He struck me as the kind of man who’d do anything to avoid something unpleasant, rather than tackle it head on and get it over with. And he does seem to be the ostrich type anyway.’

  ‘Huh? Oh, burying his head in the sand, you mean? Yeah. He doesn’t have a lot of backbone does he?’ Jimmy said with a touch of contempt.

  ‘That might also explain why he wanted us to think that everything was hunky-dory between him and Ruth Coombs,’ Hillary mused out loud. ‘But he has to have known that Ruth suspected him in Judy’s disappearance. And a man would have to be blind and deaf not to pick up on the vibes she was giving out. He has to know Ruth’s got some serious hang-ups about him. What’s more, it wouldn’t surprise me if she hadn’t kept in touch all this time. Maybe even did a bit of stalking of her own.’

  For a moment, as Jimmy searched his pockets for his car keys the two of them thought about that little scenario.

  ‘But he wouldn’t want to rock the boat, would he? If he complained about Ruth to us,’ Jimmy pointed out, ‘we’d be obliged to do something about it and again, the missus might get to hear about it, and wonder. And then there’s the chance that Ruth could go postal in which case the whole Judy/Christopher lovey-dovey connection comes to light and lover boy’s out on his ear.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘You know, there’s something about Mr Deakin that makes my whiskers twitch. If it wasn’t for the fact that we know it’s the stalker we’re after, I’d set the kids on to delving into our Mr Deakin’s activities like a flash.’

  ‘He was twitchy all right,’ Jimmy agreed thoughtfully. Then he sighed. ‘Bloody hell, guv, you’ve got me doing it now.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Thinking that this case is going all screwy on us.’

  He unlocked the doors and they slipped inside Jimmy’s car. Hillary felt her hand wandering up to caress the fading scars on her neck and abruptly snatched her hand back down and into her lap.

  ‘Back to HQ, Jimmy,’ she said flatly. ‘I need to re-read the notes and try to get an overview on this case before it runs away from me completely.’

  Jimmy grinned. ‘It wouldn’t dare, guv,’ he said confidently.

  Hillary only wished that she could feel the same amount of confidence.

  It was nearly four o’clock, and Hillary was starting to see double. She’d read and reread all the case files until she was sure she could quote the damn things from memory.

  But nothing was gelling. The stalker was still a phantom figure about as real as a handful of smoke. All three girls seemed so different in their personalities and background. Even the circumstances of their disappearances didn’t really seem to hang together. Gilly Tinkerton, a scatter-brained, hippy type who’s own loving mother wasn’t that particularly worried about her. Meg Vickary, ambitious, maybe a man-teaser with an eye to the main chance. And Judy, who’d grown up in a frigid family unit and had turned to a man of straw for comfort. As a group, they just made no sense. What was it about them that attracted the same stalker? Weren’t they supposed to go for a certain type – a look, or a commonly shared pathology?

  Although she didn’t set much store by profilers and shrinks in general, she supposed gloomily that at some point she was going to have to go to the man Geoff Rhumer was using and ask for his input. But that was for another day. Knowing shrinks, he’d take one look at her scars and start trying to get her to ‘emote’ about that day in the car park. And she wanted to do that about as much as she wanted to watch her toenails atrophy.

  She sighed, and reached for Judy Yelland’s file again, reading the initial reports. The WPC who’d called on the Yellands had had her head screwed on right, and had nailed the atmosphere of the place perfectly. WPC Mandy Dern. Hillary stared down approvingly at her neatly written notes and suddenly realized that she’d seen that writing before. She quickly checked the other files. Not Meg Vickary – yes. She’d been the one to investigate the original Gillian Tinkerton case.

  She re-read the WPC’s notes on Mrs Tinkerton and nodded in vindication. Once again, WPC Dern had hit the nail on the head. It might be a good idea to catch up with WPC Dern and see what she could remember about the two cases.

  Reading between the lines, it was clear to Hillary that although WPC Dern hadn’t been surprised at Judy Yelland walking away from her old life, she’d been a little more worried over Gillian’s defection, although she’d been reassured by Mrs Tinkerton’s belief that she’d just gone ‘gad about’ as Deirdre Tinkerton had put it.

  Hillary was just about to call it a day, and was actually bending down to retrieve her handbag from the bottom drawer of her desk, when something tugged so hard in the back of her mind, that it had the physical result of shooting her upright on her chair again.

  What was it?

  WPC Dern. And something Deirdre Tinkerton had said. Hillary sat very still and ran her mind back over her time at the Tinkerton household. What? What had she said…? Something about Sam Pickles being handsome. No, that didn’t make sense.

  Yes. Yes it did.

  Instantly she was back in the kitchen with Deirdre Tinkerton making her rhubarb pies. And Deirdre saying something about that nice young man who had come the first time to ask about Gilly.

  Quickly, Hillary snatched the Tinkerton file and rifled through it. No, she was right – WPC Mandy Dern had been the only officer assigned to do the rounds of people who knew Gillian Tinkerton. Which made sense: WPC Dern had worked MisPer for nearly eight years now. So even back then, she’d have been an experienced hand for her sergeant to employ and on low-priority cases like missing adults, they wouldn’t have assigned more than one person anyway.

  So who was the ‘nice young man’ who’d gone calling on Mrs Tinkerton?

  Her heart pounding, Hillary got through to MisPer, and spoke to the case officer. He had to call up the details on his computer of course, but he quickly confirmed what she already knew. No male PC had been sent out to interview Mrs Tinkerton. Hillary thanked him and hung up.

  Her eyes shining brightly for the first time in weeks, she grabbed the case files and hot-footed to Steven’s office.

  Was it possible that they’d caught a break? Had Lol finally made the mistake of coming out of the woodwork far enough for them to catch a real glimpse of him at last?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Steven looked up as Hillary kno
cked and came into his office. His spirits did that little ‘lifting’ thing that they did whenever he saw her. And he had to admit, it was slightly alarming. Since he and Maureen had divorced, there’d been other women of course, and, like all men, who’d once been married and then found himself unexpectedly free, he’d enjoyed a few years when it seemed that his youth had been returned to him.

  But the novelty had long since worn off. With a 19-year-old son at university, and a 17-year-old daughter still living with her mother, he now considered himself to be both experienced and battle-hardened when it came to managing his love life. In recent years, his encounters with women had been few and far between, and not particularly successful.

  And then Hillary Greene had been forced upon him professionally, and the next thing he knew he found himself feeling just a little bit giddy whenever she was near.

  Just what the hell was all that about?

  He tensed, and all personal worries were subsumed as he noticed the tight, expressionless look on her face. It was a look that he had learned from sometimes bitter experience that she used as a mask to cover some strong emotion. One quick look at her glittering eyes told him that this time it was either fury or excitement.

  ‘I think the bastard might have shown his hand,’ she said, in response to his questioning look.

  Instantly he sat up straighter. ‘How?’

  She placed two files down in front of him, pointing out the reports from WPC Dern. Quickly, she went through the salient points with him.

  ‘So if WPC Dern was the only one from MisPer to talk to both Judy Yelland and Gillian Tinkerton’s family, who is this “handsome nice young man” Deirdre Tinkerton was talking about?’

  ‘You think it might be her stalker?’ Steven said. ‘Taking a bit of a risk, isn’t he?’ he asked, knowing that one of his key roles in their professional life was playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘We know he likes to take a certain amount of those,’ she pointed out bitterly. ‘Maybe he’s the kind who just can’t help but play games,’ she concluded. ‘I need to get back to Deirdre Tinkerton and get more details.’

  ‘Whoa!’ Steven said, knowing that she was not going to like what he said next but determined to say it nevertheless. ‘You mean we need to fill Geoff Rhumer in on this, and he needs to get over there and see if Mrs Tinkerton can come up with a photo-fit. Better yet, he can gather together photos of his top twenty list of suspects and see if she can pick him out. Tracking down the stalker is his priority, remember. Getting leads on his victims is your job.’

  Hillary opened her mouth to argue, caught his eye, and quickly snapped her mouth shut again. She hated it when he pulled rank on her, but, at the same time, she found it as sexy as hell.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she snapped.

  Steven’s dark-brown eyes flared. Damn it, he hated it when she ‘sirred’ him, but it made him go hot all over.

  ‘Glad we got that sorted then,’ he said, with a sweet smile.

  Hillary smiled back just as sweetly. ‘I’ll get on with interviewing Gillian’s sister then, sir,’ she said smartly, and before he could issue her with any more smart-arse orders, she turned on her heel and left. Her back was ramrod stiff.

  Steven, robbed of the last word, watched her go. Then he had to smile. Tonight was certainly going to be interesting.

  Tom Warrington drove his car down a deserted and ever-decreasing farm track until it ended in the traditional wooden five-barred gate. There he parked and walked across the field to his copse. He’d known the landowner since he was a small boy, when he’d first discovered the small area of slightly boggy land in the dip of a field where some scrubby bushes had helped to make a wonderful den.

  Since then, he’d made the place his own in a far more interesting way. The farmer, fed up with having his farming equipment stolen, and even some of his sheep rustled, had no objection to a uniformed copper being seen every so often walking across his land, and he had no objection to Tom planting some silver birches in the copse. The land was too boggy to plough, and he’d taken Tom at his word when he said he liked to go there to bird-watch and chill out.

  Now, as Tom walked across the field, a portable battery-powered laptop in one hand, he felt his mood change.

  It always did when he came to visit his girls.

  He pushed his way into the green, cool space, listening to the birds twitter in agitation in the elder bushes. He ignored them and sat on the driest part of the small copse, on a mossy bank.

  He patted the ground under one of the weeping willows. ‘Hello, ladies. I’m back. You know I never forget to come and visit.’

  He imagined them all as if they were lying around him, sleeping. Or maybe sunbathing. All smiling at him.

  He sighed, and opened up his laptop.

  He stared at the blank screen and took several deep breaths. He knew Hillary was under constant observation now. Both that old-timer she went around with, Jimmy Jessop, and that lanky sandy-haired boy Sam Pickles were taking it in turns watching her boat, as were a handful of other old men and some of DI Geoff Rhumer’s team.

  It was frustrating, but understandable, and he tried not to let it get to him.

  Tom had taken special note of Rhumer, he had done so ever since Vivienne had told him about the new mysterious DI who had so many conferences with Hillary and that waste of space Crayle, and he had to admit to feeling rather insulted at the quality of the man they’d put on his trail.

  He’d done some careful digging into his background. Once again, volunteering to work Records and Admin had paid off, and he’d been able to research quite a bit about Rhumer on the QT. The man was strictly a second-rater. He’d made no big mistakes in his career, but then again, he’d busted no big cases either. He was a plodder. A reliable pair of hands.

  Tom had, at first, been inclined to take it personally.

  Then, after thinking about it for a while, he’d understood what had happened, and he began to feel much more cheerful about it. It was Hillary’s doing, of course – what else could it be? Since she was so tight with Marcus Donleavy, the commander was bound to have let her pick whoever she wanted to be on her team, which meant she’d chosen Rhumer on purpose. After only a few seconds Tom could see her reasoning.

  Rhumer was a nothing and a nobody, which is just what she wanted – someone who’d never be able to keep up or give them any bother. A high-flier might spoil their fun and get in their way. But the likes of Geoff Rhumer she could handle with one hand tied behind her back.

  It was just like her to be one step ahead of everybody else. But he mustn’t let her think she could do the same with him. As delicious as it was to play the game with her, he had to make sure she never gained the upper hand.

  Now he smiled as he began to type.

  ‘My wonderful darling Hillary

  When are you going to get rid of all your bodyguards? Don’t you know I long to guard your body myself? But don’t worry – we’ll meet again soon.

  I know you’re busy right now (and I hope you’re having fun playing with the presents I gave you) but don’t forget about me, will you?

  All my love, forever.

  Lol.’

  He smiled and saved the missive. Later he would print it out then take it to the centre of Oxford and post it. It wouldn’t do to send it electronically – she worked for the CRT, where modern technology ruled. They’d be on to him like a shot, no matter how clever he was. Besides, he rather liked courting her the old-fashioned way and he was sure she’d appreciate it.

  He sighed and stretched, then got up and looked around at the young silver birches he’d planted. ‘Don’t worry ladies, I’ll be back to see you soon,’ he promised them.

  He left the copse and drove back towards HQ reluctantly. The dragon in the office would notice if he was late, and she was an annoyance who was beginning to irritate him almost as much as that silly little twit, Vivienne Tyrell.

  Perhaps, one day, he’d remove the officious clerk from the world as well,
just so that he could have the relief of not having to see her pinched, middle-aged face looking disapprovingly at her watch whenever he came into the office. Or maybe not. Perhaps that would just be petty, and spoil it all. He had, after all, his standards to maintain. And he didn’t think Hillary would approve of him indulging himself by simply knocking off annoying, pointless people.

  She had more class than that.

  And she would be right: it was a little tacky, after all.

  Hillary made an appointment to call on Gillian Tinkerton’s sister later that day. Sitting in her office, feeling restless and mentally calling Steven Crayle all the nasty names she could think of, she couldn’t help but wonder how Geoff Rhumer was getting on.

  He’d be with Mrs Tinkerton by now surely? What was she saying? Did she remember her caller clearly? It had been years ago now and she knew from experience just how unobservant most people were unless they were the sort who were good with faces. Just how visual was her memory? The thought that she might soon have a face to put to her enemy was making her itch.

  She had Rhumer’s mobile phone number so she could easily call him. She had the phone almost in her hand when she realized what she was doing and stopped herself. She knew how annoyed she’d be if some other officer kept looking over her shoulder all the time she was trying to do her job, and demanding to be kept up to date. Rhumer would quite likely tell her to sod off and let him get on with it. And who could blame him?

  She put the phone away and sighed, rubbing her hand over her neck. The scars were healing, weren’t they? Catching herself obsessing about those marks on her neck yet again, she snatched her hands away and gave herself a firm mental head-slap and grabbed the first folder on her desk.

  It happened to be Meg Vickary’s.

  Right. Time to talk to Meg’s boss, the much married Marcus Kane. It would be interesting to see what his take on their affair was, and if it matched the account Georgia Biggs had given them. Somehow she rather doubted it. Cheating husbands, in her experience, tended to be good at justifying their actions and sugar-coating even the most unpalatable pill.