Groombridge stared at his team: Williams solid, Dixon expectant, Stark … Stark. Fran avoiding his eyes, the yawning gulf between them unbridgeable for now. All of them tired. One notable absence.
Hammed’s mother was undergoing surgery and he couldn’t say when he’d be back. Further strain on the other DCs. They took the news stoically. It was his job to motivate them but he hardly knew where to start, other than to launch into the round-up. At least he was here for once. However briefly.
‘So,’ he tapped the suspect photos pinned to the board. ‘Clive Tilly – GPS alibi would seem to put him in the clear but he might’ve pulled a fast one somehow or, as Detective Sergeant Millhaven loves to point out, he may have orchestrated their deaths via a third party.’
‘I’ll be right one day,’ she muttered unsmilingly. Her breakfast of beating enemy’s heart washed down with coffee had clearly done little to improve her mood.
‘No doubt. But what have we really for motive?’
Williams spoke up. ‘The company’s solicitor tells us that Tilly takes over as managing director with responsibility for recruiting a new financial director to replace Mary Chase. But ownership of the company goes with the estate, split evenly between Tom and Mary’s families. No favouritism, no obvious motives for murder. The first Mrs Chase gets nothing, but she already has the house in Malaga and a generous divorce settlement. They all have reasonable alibis and we haven’t uncovered any hidden connections to Tilly.’
‘So,’ Groombridge concluded. ‘That leaves us with the jealous lover, thus far unidentified. Stark?’
‘Nothing on ex-employees so far, Guv,’ said Stark. ‘Biometrics taken on Tilly, plus five employees. One other refused.’
‘This one?’ Groombridge tapped the photo of Carlton Savage.
‘Juvenile record sealed,’ said Stark. ‘Mostly shoplifting according to uniform. No adult convictions. Uniform attended a call in May this year to A&E, girlfriend accusing Savage of beating her, but no charges brought.’
‘So why refuse bio?’ asked Dixon.
‘Exactly.’ Groombridge stared at the photo. DNA results on the semen, hair and foetus weren’t back yet. The lover might have known about all three. ‘Gut feeling?’
Stark shrugged. ‘Arrogant. Distrustful. Hard to like.’
Groombridge noticed Fran’s half-smile. The same description might apply to Stark, on first impressions at least. ‘So far all their alibis check out, Guv,’ she put in. ‘None of the others have form. Full forensics from the scene is due this morning.’
Groombridge bit his lip. Two persons of interest. But with the psychopathic home-breaker angle gaining uncomfortable traction with the media and DAC Stevens breathing down their necks, they needed a suspect. Much longer without one and Cox’s Plan B was going to bob to the surface again like a turd that just won’t flush. ‘Right, forward it on to me when it comes in. I’ll be up at the Yard for the rest of the day.’
They kept at the background checks, but something kept nagging at the back of Stark’s mind. Something someone had said. Hours later, it came to him. Jenny, Mary’s sister. She’d said Mary ‘had a plan’. The Chinese adoption agency had proved legit, as far as these things can be when they’d charged Tom an upfront fee of two thousand US dollars. But Mary had a plan …
It took a while to get her GP on the phone between patients. If anything, the news was worse than Stark’s guess. The doctor had confirmed the pregnancy to Mary a week earlier. Mary had appeared shocked. Not least because she’d been on the contraceptive pill for years.
‘But they were trying to adopt?’ said Dixon.
‘More his idea than hers, then …’ mused Williams.
Stark felt somehow deflated by the discovery. Mary had deceived her husband in more ways than one. Marriages had secrets, like relationships of all kinds. Only the magnitude varied. And the motive. The doctor had also confirmed Stark’s nagging theory. Mary had been unequivocal: she wanted an abortion.
16
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ demanded Fran, seeing Stark pulling on his coat at the end of the day.
He shrugged apologetically. ‘Shrink.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I can cancel,’ he offered, hoping she’d say yes.
‘No. You should go. Why the hell not?’ She threw up her hands despairingly and waved him away, turning her attention to a text on her mobile.
You should go.
As in, you should go.
The leaden skies matched his mood during the stop-start cab ride. London looked shabby, tired and muddled, its faceless denizens scurrying along beneath clutched hoods and wind-bent umbrellas. As he exited the cab a car swept wide to avoid a wayward moped, sending a wide arc of cold puddle over his shoes. Stark just shook his head. A day at his desk had added stiffness to soreness, and he limped into the hospital in pretty much the perfect frame of mind for the task ahead.
Doctor Hazel McDonald kept him waiting, as was customary. His appointments were monthly instead of weekly now, more top-up than oil change, yet still as uncomfortable as they were necessary. There had been a time when he was so assured of her obtuseness that he resented the waste of time, but he’d learned otherwise a long while ago. Now he disliked going because she cut through his crap in a way that was too incisive even for Stark, who liked forthright women. He was better for attending, but it was like sitting in a room without shadows.
Their conversation about Remembrance Sunday went much along the lines of the previous year, though perhaps less raw. They talked about why feeling old before his time might be a perfectly rational response to the events of his life. Similarly, his latest paranoid episodes of being watched or followed. She had no comment on Selena, and Stark’s consequently stiff muscles; perhaps letting the dust settle on that side of his life for the moment; this being only their second session since the split with Kelly. A pity he had to spoil it by mentioning the dream.
Hazel looked up from her notes. ‘Care to elaborate?’
He didn’t care to, but did.
She listened without expression, then retracted her pen nib with a snap – never a good sign. Hazel saw him tense, and smiled. ‘At ease, soldier; you’re not on a charge.’ She pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘A bad one, though.’
‘A bad one,’ he conceded flatly. They were rarer now, but common enough that falling asleep still felt like lying down on train tracks. Hazel said they may never go away, not completely.
‘Interesting,’ she commented, ‘the decay.’
‘Are we doing the Freud thing now?’ She rarely picked apart the symbolism, preferring to focus on triggers and feelings.
‘I do find the imagery interesting – time having passed.’
‘A sign I’m putting things behind me?’ he offered, more in humour than hope.
She shrugged. ‘Do you have thoughts of death when you’re awake?’
‘Suicidal thoughts?’
Hazel tilted her head. ‘That’s not actually what I asked.’
‘But it’s what you meant.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Nicely played.’
Hazel pursed her lips. ‘Even so; you used the S word.’
‘And you think that’s significant?’
‘Such thoughts aren’t uncommon around this stage in recovery.’
‘What stage is that?’
Hazel arched her eyebrows, unimpressed. He’d been drilled in the signs, symptoms and protocols since the early days recovering in Selly Oak. One tool, the Kübler-Ross model, postulated five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance; in that order or sometimes not. When he’d first come to her he’d been stuck between denial and anger. It had taken her patience and guile to demonstrate this to him. The bargaining urge, she suggested, was somehow missing from his character – like so many other things. Hazel obviously thought he was in the depression stage now. Stark couldn’t see much difference between that and acceptance, so maybe she was right.
‘The gun wouldn�
�t fire,’ he offered. ‘Surely that’s encouraging?’
‘And the dead, beckoning?’
‘They were pointing.’
‘Accusation rather than invitation, you think? And when they called to you?’
‘Kelly’s voice forcing its way in.’
‘That part was dream too, remember,’ she pointed out.
‘This time.’ That part was as much memory as dream, of a plethora of awakenings, Kelly’s hidden tears, forced smiles and hollow assurances.
‘Have you spoken with her?’
Hazel had steered the questions this way. ‘I’ve no intention of doing so.’
‘As you’ve said. And she hasn’t called you?’
‘I asked her not to.’
‘As you’ve said.’ Hazel looked thoughtful. ‘I still wonder if you gave her too little credit –’
‘I gave her every credit,’ interrupted Stark. ‘She would have stuck with it, accepting the little I could offer no matter how it hurt her, thinking, hoping she could heal me. She gave me too much credit.’
‘So you hurt her to spare her – I understand. But where does that leave you?’
‘You’re asking if I’ve given up?’
‘Exactly.’
Stark mulled this over. ‘On that aspect of life, for now, but not on life itself.’
They overran. That hadn’t happened in a while. Time flies when you’re facing excruciatingly personal questions about your emotional wellbeing. Worse, Hazel suggested he come back the following week to pick up where they left off.
Fran hustled towards the restaurant, late as ever. Never one to worry about keeping a man waiting, she couldn’t help smiling at her unseemly haste. More than one cautious date had been scuppered by his workload or hers, but only she was ever late.
Fishing out her phone, she reread the last text mocking her tardiness. She started a brusque response, but the damn thing rang in her hand. Groombridge.
She cursed aloud.
‘Guv,’ she answered, but could barely make out his voice as a bus passed. ‘Hang on, I’m outside.’ She turned her back on the street and covered her other ear. ‘Okay, go ahead.’
She listened with a falling heart. Damn. ‘Yeah, okay.’ She sighed. ‘We’ll announce tomorrow morning?’
Groombridge started to say something else but two people came out of a nearby pub to spark up in the frigid evening, letting noise spill out. ‘Sorry, Guv, say that again.’ She moved away as the smokers began chatting raucously.
Then she nearly dropped the phone.
‘You’re not serious?’ Groombridge carried on talking but she cut him off. ‘No, Guv. No! You’ve got to be fucking joking!’
17
It was quickly clear that something was wrong in the office this morning.
Fran had arrived, dumped her coat without looking anyone in the eye and gone straight up to Cox’s office without explanation.
Dixon looked anxiously between Williams and Stark. ‘Reorientation?’
Williams deferred to Stark. ‘She say anything to you?’
Stark shook his head. It was uncomfortable hearing them openly suggest that Fran might confide in him when they’d known her longer. But in this case, he was in the dark.
She reappeared half an hour later, but made no move to instigate the morning meeting. Minutes later Groombridge came out but passed through the office like a ghost.
Bad news, thought Stark. Someone had died, someone had screwed up so badly that neither Fran nor Groombridge were high enough to drop the requisite ton of bricks, or the axe had finally dropped on the team. Or something else completely, it was anyone’s guess.
Fran said nothing. Minutes later she took a call, simply thanked the caller and knocked on Groombridge’s door. ‘He’s finished with HR, Guv. On his way up now.’
He’s finished with Human Resources? Cox? The axe, then? Closure or merger? Stark could not decide on the worst scenario.
Groombridge appeared in the door to his office. ‘Okay. Listen up. I have some bad news. Detective Constable Hammed’s mother passed away yesterday afternoon. I have offered condolences and sent flowers on all our behalves. I leave you to make what contact you consider respectful.’
There were nods and shared looks, but little to be said. Stark thought of his father and the intangible, all-encircling loss Hammed must be feeling. The question was settled – this was the worst scenario.
Groombridge waited for the news to sink in. ‘DC Hammed has of course been granted compassionate leave, and this brings me to my second announcement …’ He nodded past them.
Standing, grinning inappropriately, in the door to the corridor, was the last person Stark had ever expected to see again, or wished to.
The detective constables stared at the smirking newcomer, agog. Fran stared with a face like winter.
Groombridge broke the silence. ‘All right, you all know each other. With our shortfall in personnel and other duties taking up so much of my time, Superintendent Cox has seconded Detective Inspector Harper to run the team for as long as required.’
Cox had raised the idea during a busy spell several weeks earlier but Groombridge had managed to park it, or so he thought. Then Hammed’s news, and another call from DAC Stevens, had forced the issue. Fait accompli. The answer to all their problems – a low-pay-band DI who knew the team and the beat.
Groombridge might have pleaded for anyone else. Owen Harper was a good man deep down, a solid copper with his heart in the right place. He’d been an effective Detective Sergeant. But his alpha-male over-confidence and sense of entitlement were frequently undermined by his own limitations. Fran’s arrival on the team three years ago exposed his weaknesses and sparked an unhealthy rivalry. Stark’s arrival a year later, with his obvious abilities and military notoriety, stoked smouldering insecurity. Combined with his wife’s resurgent drinking, it brought out the worst in Harper. Stark’s credit for wrapping up a major case proved too much. Harper had pushed himself forward for the inspectors’ exam, failed, and soon after taken a regional job ‘nearer to his wife’s family’.
He must have squeezed through his exam on the second try and seemed to have got his life back on track. Maybe he’d lost the chip off his shoulder with it, but Groombridge wasn’t hopeful. More likely they’d just been lumped with a recently enfranchised bully ready and happy to gloat over Fran and make Stark’s life a misery.
Stark’s head swivelled to look at Groombridge. Most of the time you had to read his emotions by minutiae. Less so today.
‘All right, numpties.’ Harper grinned. ‘Save the gushing welcome for later. I’ve read the headlines. Now show me the board so we can collar the killer and get down the pub.’
Fran got slowly to her feet and ran through the board in meticulous detail and with zero humour. Harper nodded sagely throughout. Groombridge left. Stark felt sick.
Harper hated him.
Stark had slept within bullet and mortar range of men intent on killing him, but to have someone actually hate you, personally, was a sleep stealer. Dislike from one’s boss was never good; outright enmity was a disaster. And how would Fran cope, with this arsehole lording it over her?
‘Okay,’ said Harper. ‘Looks like I got here just in time. Someone get me coffee. I’ll be in my office. Detective Sergeant Millhaven …’ He jerked his head and strode into Groombridge’s office. Fran followed him in and closed the door. The others exchanged looks. Stark just stared at his tiny desk.
When she emerged a while later Fran looked no happier. ‘Your turn,’ she said to Stark. As he stood to go in she caught his arm and whispered, ‘Bite your tongue.’
Stark entered the lion’s usurped den. There was a cardboard filing box on the floor in the corner. Groombridge’s family photos and personal items were gone. So was the legendary in-box. The desk was clear, aside from one file. A personnel file. Stark’s.
Groombridge’s careworn leather office chair creaked as Harper looked up. Stark was not invited to sit. Ha
rper opened the file and perused it. ‘Detective Constable,’ he mused aloud. ‘Made it through, then. Congratulations.’
‘Sir.’ Stark kept his tone civil, waiting for Harper to ladle on the sarcasm. He was well used to showing deference. If Harper wanted to get a rise out of him he was in for a long wait.
‘You can call me Detective Inspector, or Guv,’ said Harper levelly.
Stark swallowed that one.
Harper stared at him. ‘There’s no mention of insubordination on your file … Or assaulting a senior officer.’
Stark said nothing.
‘I’m glad now, that I didn’t report you,’ continued the big DI, nodding.
Unsure what Harper expected, Stark returned his gaze evenly. Harper had not reported the incident for two good reasons – because he’d started it, and because Stark had ended it without breaking sweat.
Harper closed the file. ‘Clearly we got off on the wrong foot.’ He smiled, a little self-consciously. ‘I take my share of the blame. I’d like to put all that behind us; start over. What do you say?’
Stark didn’t know what to say. He’d endured similar conversations with superiors in his other uniform. The pragmatic détente of two people who knew they needed to crack on more than get on. He doubted Harper’s sincerity, but they had to work together. Perhaps the promotion he’d lusted after had eased the man’s insecurities.
‘I’d like that too.’ He couldn’t quite bring himself to add Guv, and waited for a rebuke.
Instead, Harper stood smiling and held out a hand.
Stark shook it uncertainly.
‘Good.’ Harper looked pleased, possibly even relieved. ‘Good. Right then. I’ve got to prep for a press release. Go catch me a killer.’
18
The forensics report arrived. The pubic hair and semen were from the same Caucasian male, that male was father to the foetus, and it wasn’t Thomas Chase; perhaps one reason Mary had planned the termination.
Fresh fingerprints that didn’t match either victim, the cleaner or any of the relatives. But no hits for any of it on the offenders’ database, and none was a match for Clive Tilly or the shortlist of employees. None of them was Mary’s lover.
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 7