‘I wouldn’t go that far. But I didn’t trust her. She was good for the business, and Tom adored her, but the Marys of this world never want for much. But now she’s dead, along with my best friend. Do you have to go muck-raking?’
‘Never for pleasure, Mr Tilly.’
‘I’ve got enough problems here without you bringing that lot to my door.’ He nodded past them to a figure that had just pulled up on a moped beyond the fence and held up a mobile to film them.
Fran clicked her tongue in irritation and stepped towards them, but the figure pocketed the mobile and drove off, engine buzzing like a gnat.
Tilly sighed. ‘Ask for Mark inside. He’ll help you herd the donkeys if you must. He doesn’t say much but he has a knack for logistics; helps out around the office when he isn’t on donkey-work. Ask him for anything you need, names, information, tea or coffee. I’ll be back later if you need more.’
On first impressions Mark White looked more security guard than logistician; fortyish with balding head shaved to stubble and a bushy brown beard, big-framed and paunchy. Tattoos showed where his company polo-T rode up his triceps. He kept his eyes low and spoke only when necessary. A gentle giant, perhaps just shy; though one of the tattoos was a tornado, Stark noted. He worked efficiently enough with them at organizing the interviews and personnel files, and kept them topped up with caffeine and biscuits, so he scored points.
Fran, Stark and DC Dixon divided the interviews between them and kept the questions simple.
When White’s turn came he answered Stark’s questions with slow, chosen words, clearly uncomfortable under scrutiny. He’d been with the company five years, didn’t know Thomas or Mary Chase personally, home alone Saturday all day and night. He looked uncomfortable, but answering police questions could do that.
‘You called in sick yesterday?’ asked Stark.
‘Tummy bug.’
‘Better now?’
‘Peachy.’
Stark thought he looked a little pale, but police questioning could do that too. He put him down as maybe but unlikely, and moved on.
Tilly might have been a bit harsh about the rest of the staff, but not by much. Most were sullen or wary, some openly hostile, some shy and awkward. Few had a good word to say about Thomas and Mary Chase, Tilly or indeed each other. Chase Security was not a happy workplace. Blazing rows between Tom Chase and Tilly were apparently commonplace. None confessed to fraternizing with Mary, some seemed appalled at the thought, some amused, others openly titillated, but none leapt out as a suspect, leaving the detectives with nothing more than boxes of personnel files and financial records to cart away for their troubles.
Stark knew whose desk they’d end up on. It had taken only the slightest proficiency to become the ‘office whizz’ on tedious tasks no one else wanted. He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d made this metamorphosis, but it was an improvement on ‘smartarse’.
Groombridge brought the team together again at the end of a long afternoon. ‘So, do we think the sister was right?’
‘No one seemed overly surprised, including Clive Tilly,’ replied Fran.
‘But no one put their hand up either.’ Groombridge nodded. ‘Unsurprising.’
Stark handed out copies of his notes. ‘The company appears to be in the black. They employ thirty-one full-time staff, eleven part-time, and have dozens on their books as agency resource for events. Of those directly employed, nine have written warnings on file for misconduct or underperformance, of which five have ongoing disciplinary procedures. I’ve drawn up a list of all whose age and appearance might put them on Mary Chase’s radar for an affair, of which three appear on both lists. Also listed are seven people sacked for misconduct or underperformance in the past five years, and eleven more made redundant since the 2008 crash.’
‘Any favourites?’
‘Not really,’ admitted Stark, knowing what that meant for his days ahead.
Groombridge rubbed his chin, in thought. ‘Okay, draw up a shortlist and follow up: fingerprints, DNA swabs and background checks. At least we’ve got an excuse to get the semen and hair tested now.’
‘And the foetus?’ asked Stark. Knowing it needed saying didn’t make it any easier. The team’s silence said it wasn’t easy hearing either. But paternity – unwilling paternity – was as lousy a reason for murder as any.
10
Stark stuck at it, but it wasn’t diligence that kept him at his desk long after the others drifted away. Distilling his paper mountain into salient foothills was easier than confronting his empty flat. Last night’s dream had rattled him. The worst in a while.
When he could put it off no longer he walked home via the kebab shop.
As he approached his building he felt a shiver. Every nerve ending was suddenly screaming at him to beware, take cover, raise the gun!
But scanning round, heart scudding, he saw no threat.
Not the first time his mind had played tricks.
Not the first time it had saved his life, it hissed back.
No. This was just more phantoms, night terrors reaching into waking hours again.
Gritting his teeth, he let himself in – but couldn’t stop himself leaving the lights off and stepping into the dark corner within.
Nothing came at him from inside. Nothing stirred in the street outside.
His heart slowed. His kebab cooled.
Cursing, he took the stairs up to his flat, collapsed on to the sofa and saluted the lands of the living and the dead with two fingers of whisky, a cold beer and congealing calories. Sleep tugged, and terrified. Pills were off the menu, so he poured another double and stepped out on to his tiny balcony.
Through misted breath and a gap in the buildings his ‘Thames View’ was a sliver of oil-black sparkling with reflected lights of the Dockland towers beyond. The number of lights reflecting the number of souls still selling themselves to the mighty dollar, or was it the rouble now? Or the yuan? The blinking lights atop the towers mirrored those of the passenger jets lining up forty seconds apart for their final approach over the city to Heathrow. Traffic throbbed through the choked arteries, trains clattered and sparked somewhere to the south, and somewhere to the east a siren wailed.
Light pollution, air pollution, noise pollution, soul pollution; London had it all.
He recalled Kelly saying, when he was still new here, that London was too big to describe, too complex. She preferred to compartmentalize. Most Londoners Stark had met thought likewise. They described, eulogized, decried and lamented their pocket of London, their village. But if you took them anywhere else in the country, the world, and asked where they were from they’d say London, not Greenwich, Lewisham or Tower Hamlets, not the East End or West nor even North or South of the river. They were Londoners, proud bubbles in the mighty melting pot.
Fran would say pressure cooker. Or cesspit.
Back then Stark had been the outsider. Slowly since, he’d come to realize he wasn’t alone. London was a crazed interlocution of layers, social strata, language, culture, age, purpose; crammed in, overlapping but separate. London was coexistence. Regardless of origin everyone was an outsider, outside the lives of those around them. And everyone was a Londoner, welcomed, despised or ignored. The only requirement was to come and to be. No one would notice your arrival or departure, but while you were there you were part, one among the huddled mass.
Cops were supposed to enjoy a love-hate relationship with their city, to know its mean streets like the back of their hand, to feel its pulse through the soles of their boots after years of pounding the beat. All Stark could feel was the overwhelming indifference of the place. It went on beyond sight without meaning, sentiment or constraint, the weaving river drunk on countless lost creeks and subsumed tributaries. There was nothing to hold on to and little reason to care. Better to forget the city altogether, forget the streets and focus on the meanness.
Mary Chase, dead on the carpet, a dead life within her. Loving husband, cuckolded or otherwise, sta
ring lifeless.
If only it stopped there.
Every time he closed his eyes, death, present and past, groped for him. Unless he could learn to disentwine the two, he would soon have to abandon this extended experiment; find some other way to live the life luck had gifted him; something that didn’t continually stoke the dark fires within. Whatever that might be.
Kelly’s light had helped hold the darkness at bay, for the most part. But Kelly was gone.
Life was for the living.
He shivered in the chill night air, and stared up at the stars glittering coldly against the ink-black void.
11
‘Right.’ Groombridge clapped his hands together. ‘Mary’s mystery man?’
‘Nothing yet, Guv,’ confirmed Stark. The previous evening’s background checks on Chase Security staff had not proved simple. Several had pasts one might call unclear and Fran would dub murky. Stark’s shortlist was still on the long side.
‘Follow-up interviews?’
‘This morning.’
‘Good. Test alibis and any other connections to the Chases. Personal lives and finances – sex and money.’
‘Tom and Clive started out together in business,’ said Stark. ‘Before 1994 Chase Security was known as T&C Security, owned jointly. Thomas bought Tilly out. Could be hard feelings. Staff at Chase Security say they rowed as much as they laughed, and that Tilly and Mary Chase didn’t get on at all.’
‘Who’s on Tilly?’
‘Guv.’ Dixon, youngest member of the team, raised his hand. ‘Same age as our vic, Thomas Chase, fifty-four – they went to school together. Divorced in 1994 from Sandra Tilly, née Wiggins. Thomas Chase was best man at their wedding. Tilly was best man at Thomas’s wedding to his first wife Karen but not for his wedding to Mary.’
‘Beach wedding,’ added Stark, remembering the smashed photo. ‘Maldives, probably.’
‘Any form?’
‘Nothing relevant,’ replied Dixon. ‘Tom and Clive were involved in a fatal car collision as teenagers. They were both cautioned for underage drinking. Their mate, Billy Forester, got four years for causing death by dangerous driving.’
‘Thirty years ago. What about Saturday night?’
‘CCTV covering their yard shows Tilly getting into van twelve at nine p.m.,’ said Dixon. ‘GPS tracker log shows him driving to Greenwich Peninsula and doing circuits of five customer premises until four a.m.’
‘No deviations?’
‘Just a petrol station.’
Groombridge nodded, looking around and frowning at the empty chair. Hammed hadn’t turned up for work today and wasn’t answering his phone, adding a little angle to Fran’s scowl. ‘Okay. Get to it.’
Leaving the others following up on those recently sacked or laid off, Stark went to find more coffee and a uniform car to take him to Chase Security, in that order. He’d sold his old car in Gosport after his injury and given the cash to his mum. He’d intended to replace it when he started back at work but never got around to it. He told himself it was cheaper and easier in London, that his flat didn’t have allocated parking and there were pool cars at work. But in truth he resented the fact that clutch pedals still hurt his hip and wasn’t ready to buy an automatic or accept a disabled parking badge. It also helped him visit home less often.
Sergeant Ptolemy willingly agreed to drive him and waved to PC Peters, who was deep in conversation with some colleagues. She extracted herself among laughter and greeted Stark with a smile. During his first days in this nick they’d given him guided tours so he could familiarize himself with the borough and Stark enjoyed their easy-going rapport.
‘Mind if our rookie tags along?’ asked Peters, beckoning to one of the crowd. ‘Joe, this is PC Pensol, two months into her probation and already showing precocious promise. Pensol, this is DC Stark, as I’m sure you know.’
Pensol smiled awkwardly. She had to be little older than eighteen, with fine blonde hair cut with a straight fringe and ponytail, wide almond eyes, dainty ski-jump nose, petite pointy chin and immaculate uniform – Met Police Barbie incarnate.
For some reason Peters looked amused. Pensol glanced over her shoulder at some of her peers, who were watching from a distance. Stark had the distinct impression they were watching him – an all too familiar sensation. Most of the station had tired of gawping, but every now and then he caught a surreptitious glance, usually from new faces. ‘Just so long as I don’t have to change my name to fit in,’ he joked.
Pensol sat beside him in the back of the car, listening to her experienced colleagues’ banter. A timid thing, she spoke only when spoken to and looked his way only in stolen glances, as if frightened of him. Stark sighed inwardly.
Clive Tilly looked like he’d passed through flustered into a state of resigned exhaustion, but vans came and went and fewer people milled about. He also looked increasingly displeased to see police at his door. He offered them the meeting room again and went first to show willing, or get them off his back; providing fingerprints and DNA swab, reiterating his alibi for the record, with nothing new.
‘Last question, Mr Tilly,’ said Stark, placing a printout on the desk. ‘Company House records show Chase Security Ltd started life as T&C Security Ltd, owned equally between you and Thomas Chase. How did he end up owning the business outright?’
‘I needed cash. My wife took the house in the divorce.’
‘Can’t have been easy.’
‘Tom bailed me out when I needed it. Had to dig deep, too.’
‘No hard feelings then?’
‘None,’ said Tilly flatly. ‘Now, if we’re done? I’ll have Mark help you with anything you need, I have clients to reassure.’
Stark had phoned ahead to make sure his shortlist were available. They followed one by one with varying degrees of enthusiasm, while Ptolemy and Peters witnessed and logged everything and Pensol kept herself out of the way.
Last came Carlton Savage, on Stark’s list because there was a written warning on his file and he was both young and handsome. It was immediately obvious why he had the first and that he knew the rest. Tall, lean but muscular, hair cropped to the same length as the designer-clipped facial hair with zig-zag patterns trimmed around the back of his scalp, diamond earrings too large to be real. He swaggered in, cocksure and insolent, looking them up and down as he listened. ‘You’re joking, right?’
‘Just to eliminate you from our enquiries, Mr Savage.’
‘I’m not a suspect?’
‘Not at this time.’
‘Then you can’t make me.’
‘No,’ said Stark patiently. ‘We can only ask for your help. And you will receive written confirmation that your DNA and fingerprints have been destroyed and deleted from the database when the case is resolved or closed.’
‘Says you …’ scoffed Savage, unconvinced.
White stiffened, staring crossly at Savage. ‘We’re supposed to assist them.’
Savage ignored him, looking Pensol up and down with a smile. ‘I’m sorry, but I haven’t done anything wrong and I know my rights, and I’ve got a van waiting.’
Stark nodded. Reluctance had become more common on this score. Well-publicized cases regarding failure to destroy innocent people’s biometrics had soured public trust. Savage was within his rights to refuse. Just as Stark was within his to run Savage’s name through the system for anything in his past to explain his reticence.
Savage left, and Stark began to pack the fingerprint scanner into its case.
‘What about me?’ asked White.
Stark looked up at the man, surprised. ‘You want to give prints and a swab?’
‘I want to be eliminated from your enquiries.’
Stark frowned. ‘We’ve no reason to think that’s necessary at this time, Mr White.’
The big man sat down all the same.
Shrugging, Stark took the prints and swab and Peters logged them. White inspected his digits, as if expecting to see ink. ‘I got the impression you don�
��t much like Carlton Savage,’ Stark commented.
White shrugged. ‘He’s an arrogant little prick.’
‘Seems like a fair assessment,’ agreed Ptolemy. ‘Rest assured, Mr White, the world has a way of taking such people down a peg or three.’
Stark’s phone bleeped cheery accord with that sentiment. Unfortunately the text from DC Williams wasn’t so cheery.
12
‘Thanks for letting me know,’ sighed Groombridge. ‘Keep me posted.’
Fran waited expectantly. Her first thought on receiving the news that Hammed’s mother was in intensive care with a heart attack, was for her DC. But close second was whether they could now shake a lukewarm or three out of DI Graham or another borough, and, more importantly, whether Groombridge would now have to commit to the investigation. ‘So you’ll talk to Cox?’
‘Of course. But don’t get your hopes up.’ Groombridge stood and began sorting files into his briefcase from the mountains littering his desk.
Fran frowned. ‘You’re heading out?’
‘Meetings at Division.’
She could hardly believe her ears. Didn’t he even want to talk to the team? Offer some encouragement? Or was there really no message to impart but You’re on your own and don’t hold your breath for reinforcements?
‘You’re hovering,’ he said, snapping his case shut.
Fran was almost lost for words. He’d promised to keep his head in the game and here he was, off to reinsert it up Cox’s arse! ‘We can’t carry on like this. Things will get missed.’
‘Will, or have?’
‘Have, for all I know. Will for certain. Half-staffed and …’ She hesitated, knowing she was in danger of letting her mouth get the better of her.
‘And what? Headless?’
‘Running a murder squad investigation is for inspectors, not sergeants.’
‘I have every faith in you, Fran.’
‘Fat lot of good that’ll do either of us when we’re explaining to the victims’ families and press that the killer walked free because we were “a bit stretched”. Does Cox even know how exposed we are?’
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 5