by Faith Martin
Hillary’s stomach clenched. She too had been aware of time remorselessly ticking away. But if the evidence wasn’t there to convict, it simply wasn’t there. Clive Myers was ex-army, intelligent and highly motivated. He’d been careful, clever and patient. Such people could be impossible to catch.
It was a galling fact to contemplate, but Hillary was beginning to suspect that they’d never get Mel’s killer. Her only hope was that Myers was not yet finished, and would go after his daughter’s rapists. At least then the team watching him would have a chance of getting him on something.
‘I tell you, Hillary,’ Janine said grimly, ‘if they don’t get a breakthrough soon . . .’ She left the sentence unfinished, and it hung, as ominous as the sword of Damocles between them.
Hillary took another swallow of her fruit juice and wished it were wine. Or better yet — Scotch.
* * *
The next day dawned cloudy but still mild, and before setting off for work, Hillary swallowed two aspirins with her morning cup of coffee, in a last-ditch attempt to get rid of the vague headache that had plagued her all night.
She had the feeling the drug wouldn’t work. She was sure that tension was the real culprit, and after her chat with Janine Mallow last night, the stress was only getting worse.
In her ex-sergeant Hillary could sense a ticking time bomb.
At her desk, she noticed Gemma had already arrived, and right on her own heels came Barrington. Of Ross, naturally, there was as yet no sign. She hoped that Danvers had hurried Ross’s resignation papers along, as he’d promised. With Vane at her back, just waiting for the opportunity to stick the knife in, she didn’t want to have to keep her usual close eye on Ross as well. One enemy at a time was more than enough to deal with.
Barrington waited until his boss had settled a bit and dealt with the most urgent of her e-mails before reporting in with his findings from yesterday.
‘Guv. Rachel Warner delivered her youngest to the primary school at eight thirty-five a.m., and her eldest to her secondary at eight forty-five a.m. A teacher at the secondary confirms she left immediately after the girl got out of the car.’
Hillary nodded. So the daughter’s story checked out. There was no reason why it shouldn’t, of course, and it meant that it was just one more thing ticked off her list.
‘And I’ve spoken to the victim’s solicitor. He’s agreed to courier over a copy of the old man’s last will and testament, but basically it all goes to the daughter, as you thought,’ the young redhead added.
Hillary nodded. She doubted Eddie Philpott had had a lot to leave by way of hard cash, but the house alone was worth a bit. Although she didn’t have the feeling that this one was going to come down to money, it wasn’t something she could entirely ignore.
‘Any sizeable bequests?’ she asked sharply.
‘No, guv. The old man had his pension and some savings but nothing out of the ordinary.’
Hillary grunted but said nothing.
‘House to house, guv,’ Gemma put in, seeing that Barrington had finished. ‘I’ve been getting repeated reports that the victim and a Mr Thomas Cleaves are at loggerheads, mostly over the village flower show.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Barrington agreed. ‘Apparently Cleaves put a rumour about that one of the judges had been biased in the victim’s favour.’ He flushed as Gemma gave him the evil eye, and smiled back an apology. Gemma Fordham didn’t like to be interrupted when she was speaking, especially by still-green DCs. It was something Barrington had quickly learned since Gemma had been temporarily heading the team.
Hillary sighed. ‘I suppose we’d better speak to Mr Cleaves then.’ She didn’t, somehow, think that Eddie Philpott had been killed over the length of his runner bean exhibit or what have you, but stranger things had happened in the past.
When she’d been new in uniform, there’d been a case at her first station house in which a man had killed his neighbour because she had, from time to time, been inclined to pinch the odd pint of milk from his doorstep.
‘Does this Cleaves character live in the same hamlet?’ she asked of Barrington, reaching down for her bag.
‘Next village down the lane, guv, Duns Tew,’ Barrington said, consulting his notebook.
‘Fine. You can drive. Janine . . . sorry, I mean Gemma, did you manage to catch every resident of The Knott at work?’
‘All but two, guv,’ Gemma said, noting the slip but not commenting on it. ‘One’s a travelling salesman, due back in the office today. The other was out showing a house to someone. I left a message at his office that he was to stay at his work once he got back there until I’d spoken to him.’
‘OK. Once you’ve taken their statements you can start with the background research of the victim.’
‘Guv,’ Gemma said briefly.
* * *
Duns Tew and its more famous sisters of Great Tew and Little Tew were firmly on the tourist map, situated as they were at easternmost approaches to the Cotswolds. But on a cloudy day in October there was little evidence of visitors as Barrington parked Puff the Tragic Wagon just off the village green, under the slightly yellowing leaves of a large horse chestnut tree.
‘He lives in Deer Park Lane, guv,’ Barrington said, glancing around, looking in vain for any street signs.
‘You head down there,’ Hillary said, pointing. ‘I’ll try up here.’
Eventually a man walking a pair of excitable Jack Russells told Hillary the way. She collected her constable and quickly found number 8.
Thomas Cleaves, who answered the door promptly at the first ring, was a sprightly-looking man, probably in his early seventies. He was carefully dressed in dark trousers with an argyle jumper in mint-green, white and sky-blue.
‘Police? My word yes,’ he said, as the two officers showed him their ID cards. ‘This must be about Mr Philpott. Please, come on in.’
He lived in one of those small but tidy bungalows that sat in a modest but carefully landscaped and sculptured garden. He showed them into a cream-coloured living room, and indicated two newish-looking cream leather armchairs that sat either side of a well-polished wooden table. Hillary and Barrington obligingly sat down where he indicated.
‘Were you in Steeple Knott yesterday morning, Mr Cleaves?’ Hillary asked, immediately getting to the point, as Barrington obligingly scribbled down notes in his very fast and accurate shorthand.
‘No, Inspector, I wasn’t. I had no call to be.’
Hillary looked at the old man thoughtfully. She remembered Mabel Mobbs describing this man as being rather prim and proper, and Hillary could see what she meant. Even his mannerisms of speech seemed somehow prissy. ‘You knew Mr Philpott well, sir?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly,’ Tom Cleaves demurred judiciously. ‘We knew each other, of course. From round and about, so to speak. But we were not friends, as such. We did not go out of the way to meet up socially.’
Hillary nodded. ‘You and he had a hobby in common, I think. Gardening, and the local villages’ flower show?’
Tom Cleaves stiffened. He had a round, rather flat face, with deep-set dark eyes and a whisper of a moustache. Now his whole countenance seemed to shut down.
‘Yes,’ he admitted, the monosyllable sounding diffident and yet impatient at the same time.
‘Did you like Mr Philpott, sir?’ Hillary asked bluntly, curious to hear what the man would say.
The man, in fact, said nothing for a considerable moment, obviously gathering his thoughts and arranging them to his satisfaction. ‘No. I can’t say that I did,’ Tom Cleaves eventually said. ‘But I did not kill him, Inspector.’
Well, that was plain enough, Hillary thought, hiding a wry smile. ‘We’ve no reason to suppose that you did, sir,’ she said blandly. ‘Do you know of anyone who might have had reason to kill him?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever heard him being threatened by anyone?’
‘No.’
Hillary deliberately paused, determ
ined not to let an exchange begin whereby the witness could indulge in his love of the monosyllabic. ‘What did you think of Mr Philpott, sir?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Tom Cleaves sounded mildly scandalized, as if she’d just told him a risqué joke.
‘I merely wanted to have your opinion of the man, Mr Cleaves,’ Hillary said mildly. ‘It helps us if we can build up a mental picture of the murder victim, you see.’
‘Oh.’ Something flickered in those deep-set eyes, but his thin shoulders shrugged with elaborate nonchalance. ‘He was, on the surface, a friendly, mild-mannered sort of man.’
‘But?’ Hillary pressed.
‘But nothing, Inspector. He was well liked by a lot of people.’
‘But not by you?’ Hillary persisted.
The old man shuffled on his chair, not liking the way she was backing him into a corner. ‘No, Inspector, not by me.’
‘Can you tell me why not? Surely rivalry over carrots and marrows wasn’t the sole reason for your antipathy?’
Tom Cleaves sighed, and his eyes went once more to the windows. ‘Let’s just say I found him rather sly. And now, Inspector, if there’s nothing else I can do for you . . .’ He rose to his feet, effectively bringing the interview to an end.
Hillary decided to let him get away with it. After all, she could always come back to him if she needed to. And something told her that she probably would need to, before the case was over.
‘Well, thank you, Mr Cleaves,’ she said pleasantly, as they parted on his doorstep.
The two police officers walked slowly and quietly back towards the car, before Barrington said carefully, ‘What do you think, guv?’
Hillary shrugged. ‘I think Mr Cleaves seemed very ill at ease and unhappy about something,’ she said thoughtfully.
Barrington sighed, wishing he didn’t find that statement quite as enigmatic as he did. He’d been working with Hillary Greene for nearly a year now, and he knew he’d learned a lot in that time. But he still knew that she’d seen and heard something in that short, apparently profitless interview that he’d missed. And it annoyed and worried him. Sometimes he wondered if he was really cut out for this job.
His lover would certainly be delighted if he quit. In fact, Gavin would be over the moon. His father was currently standing trial back in London, and their nightly phone calls had been becoming progressively chillier and chillier.
Keith could almost picture the look on his face if he should walk through Gavin’s Belgravia door and tell him he’d left Oxford, and the police force, for good.
Hastily, Keith pushed the fantasy to one side.
Barrington once again took the wheel and as she slipped into the car, Hillary said, ‘When you’ve got time, and working around your other priorities, I want you to do a full background check on Mr Cleaves.’
‘Yes, guv,’ Keith said firmly.
* * *
Gemma Fordham had been able to return to Kidlington relatively quickly. Neither of her two errant interviewees had been hard to track down and, predictably, neither of them had had anything of use to say, and had said it quickly.
Nowadays, country villages were hardly viable communities but a mere collection of wildly busy working types who used their houses as little more than sleeping places. The commute to work every weekday barely left them time to recognise, let alone get to know, their neighbours. And at weekends most of the younger element were too busy enjoying their leisure time to stop and chat to the man who lived next door or the woman across the street.
One of her interviewees, the travelling salesman, hadn’t even known who Eddie Philpott was — and he’d lived in the hamlet for nearly two years.
As she stepped through the station’s big main doors, she noticed that two uniformed constables, loitering at the sergeant’s reception desk, abruptly broke off their conversation when they saw her. Feigning indifference, she nodded briefly at the desk sergeant and headed for the stairs. Instead of climbing them, however, she walked only far enough to conceal herself from view, then waited.
Sure enough, the men started talking again. True to form, although they started off whispering, they soon returned to their normal speaking voices, and she was able to overhear the odd sentence or two. When she was eventually able to understand what the gist of their talk was about, she felt a jolt of surprise go through her. Apparently, it was doing the rounds throughout the whole station house that her boss, Hillary Greene, did not rate the new superintendent, Brian Vane.
This was news to Gemma. Apart from anything else, Hillary had barely been back at work a day. And as far as Gemma knew, she had only had the one brief meeting with the super anyway. Then one of the uniforms told the desk sergeant that a mate of his had a retired father who knew that Hillary and Vane had worked together before, back when Hillary was a new sergeant.
So obviously Inspector Greene had previous knowledge of the man. Gemma found that interesting.
It was hard to make out everything they were saying, for Gemma would often miss words or even short sentences. But it soon became clear that the desk sergeant was insisting that Hillary Greene was never wrong about people, and that there was bound to be trouble, just watch and see.
When the doors opened to let a small band of plainclothes officers in, the trio at the desk broke up, and Gemma continued up the stairs, her face thoughtful.
If there was going to be trouble between the new super and her boss, could she make that work to her own advantage? Since Hillary had taken leave, it had been impossible for her to get back on DI Greene’s boat to search for a certain paperback novel that she was just itching to get her hands on. But now that her boss was back at work, she should be able to get a new impression made of her padlock key, since Hillary had changed the locks.
And then, who knew?
She found the cluster of desks by the window deserted. If Frank Ross had been in, he’d quickly gone out again, typically leaving nothing of interest or worth behind him.
She sighed, and headed out to the loos, momentarily disconcerted to find the place empty except for her boss. Hillary Greene looked up from the sink where she was washing her hands and caught her sergeant’s eye.
‘Gemma,’ she said offhandedly. Gemma Fordham walked slowly to the sink beside her, and turned on the tap. She wasn’t sure why she was about to do what she was about to do, but some instinct told her that it was time to test the waters.
‘Guv, I’ve been meaning to speak to you for some time now,’ she began, her voice brisk and professional. ‘It’s about something personal,’ she said, her words in total contradiction to her manner.
Hillary grunted. ‘If it’s about you and my ex, don’t bother,’ Hillary said mildly. ‘I know you had a brief fling with him way back, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s ancient history.’
Gemma felt her body sway slightly against the cold porcelain of the sink, and took a long, slow, steady breath. So, all those cold, nasty moments she’d had in the past when she’d guessed that her boss knew more than she was letting on had been right on the button.
‘How long have you known?’ she asked quietly.
Hillary turned off the hot water tap, then the cold. ‘That you had history with my old man? Almost since the first moment you joined the team.’
This shook Gemma, no two ways about it. She’d expected Hillary to say that she’d only found out about it a short time ago. She licked lips that had suddenly gone dry and raised a slightly unsteady hand to her head. Watching her reflection studiously in the mirror, Gemma faffed about unnecessarily with her hair.
If Hillary Greene had been that quick off the mark, was it possible . . . Gemma felt a cold shiver go through her. Was it really possible that she knew about the rest as well?
‘I’m surprised you didn’t object to working with me, guv,’ she tried out cautiously. Her voice, always husky after a childhood accident, sounded gruffer than ever. She cleared her throat carefully.
‘Why? It’s not a problem as far as
I’m concerned,’ Hillary said casually. Then she added devastatingly, ‘Although the fact that you seem to be obsessed with finding Ronnie’s dirty money can be a bit of a pain in the arse at times.’
Gemma Fordham’s eyes widened and her gaze crashed into Hillary’s in the mirror, and she swallowed hard. Ronnie Greene had stashed a fortune somewhere from his illegal animal-parts smuggling ring, and it had never been recovered. And she wanted it.
For a moment, it seemed as if time hung suspended between them as each dealt with their own thoughts.
Gemma’s were mainly disjointed and slightly panic-stricken. It had never seriously occurred to her that Hillary Greene was on to her, and now that she knew that she was, Gemma had no idea what she should do next.
Hillary, for her part, was far more sanguine. This moment of reckoning had been coming for some time, and although the start of a new murder case was not a time she would have chosen to confront it, circumstances had seemed to make it inevitable.
‘Just so you know,’ Hillary said tonelessly, ‘the money’s all gone. A crooked officer found it and legged with it last year. So all your efforts have been wasted.’
Gemma opened her mouth, then closed it again.
‘You can believe me or not,’ Hillary continued in the same unemotional manner. ‘But I will say this. I intend to force Frank Ross to retire, which will give you more scope to stretch yourself and practise your talents. If you stay with me, I’ll see that you get the promotion you deserve, when you deserve it and can cope with it.
‘If, on the other hand, you feel you want to leave, I won’t stand in your way either.’
Gemma opened her mouth once more, then slowly closed it again. She felt humiliated, mortified, and frankly bewildered. And when she saw her reflection in the glass she was appalled to see the tell-tale colour of embarrassment staining her cheeks.
Hillary, also noticing it, sighed heavily. ‘Gemma, as far as I’m concerned, you’re smart, competent, very able and have a bright future in the force. I personally think you’d be mad to either quit or apply for a transfer at this particular time. The brass would be bound to look down on either action.’