‘Don’t you start. That crap’s bad enough from the Guv’nor.’
Which one? thought Stark despondently. Harper had always been wont to mimic Groombridge, though from his lips it usually sounded as pompous as it was hollow.
‘Morning, troops,’ sang the man in question, walking in and clapping his hands together with vulgar cheer. ‘Right, let’s bust some alibis!’
The meeting eventually broke up with tasks allotted. You had to hand it to Harper, he had energy. This was his big chance. A juicy double homicide to put a shine on his freshly minted DI pips, and perhaps seal his occupation of Groombridge’s office with the stamp of permanence.
On that gloomy note, Stark opened the GPS log from Carlton Savage’s night-time vehicular vigil of the Abbey Wood commercial park. Dixon had been through them all but Harper wanted everything rechecked.
CCTV showed Savage arriving at work, getting into van seven shortly after. Stark traced the route on the map, noting the short cuts Savage used to bypass traffic. At no point did he stop for more than a minute. He then settled into laps of the business park, stopping every now and then, once for over an hour, but well after the time of the killings. Shortly before six in the morning the van returned to Chase Security, Savage went inside, then left minutes later. So that was that. The Guv’nor was building a case for a generic mobile phone data map in a radius around the Chases’ home, to pick up all the numbers used in the location within the window, but it was a laborious long shot – it only triangulated a handset in use, and only a fool would keep his phone switched on when he was off to commit murder.
The hour-long stoppage niggled, though. The night-shift lunch break, he assumed. He opened some of the other logs and saw that it was almost universal, a stationary period or diversion to the nearest drive-thru fast food. Even Clive Tilly had taken a break. Stark stared at the time. And then the location. ‘Shit.’
‘What is?’ asked Fran from the doorway.
Stark glanced about for Dixon but everyone else was out and about. ‘Sarge?’
Fran shook her head. ‘Don’t give me the innocent look. Spill.’ She peered at his screen to see what he was reading. ‘GPS logs. Savage?’ She looked closer. ‘Tilly? What did you spot?’
‘Just something I wanted to ask Dixon about, Sarge.’
‘What?’ she asked firmly. She wouldn’t be fobbed off.
He glanced again at Dixon’s empty chair and cursed his timing. ‘I noticed Savage was stationary for a while so I checked to see if that was normal. They all take breaks of an hour or so some time during their shifts. Even Tilly. Van twelve was stationary at the petrol station for over an hour.’ Dixon had identified the deviation but failed to flag the duration. Stark pointed at the time on the screen. And then the location.
It took a moment to sink in. ‘But that’s …’
‘Barely half a mile from the crime scene.’ Stark nodded. ‘Smack in the middle of the time-of-death window.’
Fran straightened up, a thoughtful expression on her face. ‘I’m going to kill Dixon.’
‘It was easy to miss.’
‘You spotted it.’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ Stark said quickly. ‘Let me check it out before you go off on one.’
‘I do not “go off on one”!’ Fran bristled indignantly.
‘Please. If it turns out to be nothing I’ll have a quiet word with John myself, let him bring it to you.’
‘Bollocks to that,’ Fran scoffed. ‘If you’re getting out of this hellhole, I’m driving!’
It wasn’t far but the journey passed in uncomfortable silence. Where Fran would once have used the time to pester and pry, silence had gradually crept in and squatted. She’d been under a lot of stress recently, but the rest was down to him. Yesterday’s bombshell wasn’t going to help.
The petrol station had CCTV cameras up under the high flat canopy over the pumps, one angled to the entry, one towards the exit, with a third over the out-of-hours security window used at night when it wasn’t safe to let customers inside the shop. There were more inside. The manager was friendly and helpful, allowing them free rein of the back office to replay the footage from six nights earlier.
At 23.27, Chase Security van twelve pulled up on the forecourt. Clive Tilly got out, filled up and went into the shop. The camera inside showed him buying a sandwich, drink and tabloid, paying by card and leaving. But instead of driving out on to the road he reversed away from the pumps to a small parking area at the rear corner of the forecourt. The lights went out. Then … Nothing.
The only camera that could see the van was the one above the out-of-hours window. The driver’s side faced away and it was impossible to see Tilly sitting inside. Over an hour later the interior light came on as Tilly climbed out and walked back into the petrol station. He spoke to the cashier, used the toilet, bought a coffee and went on his way. The times on the screen matched with the GPS tracker. Van twelve continued its rounds until four in the morning before parking up outside Tilly’s house until eight. It was back at Chase Security before nine, where their camera had shown Tilly climb out yawning and walk inside, to all outward appearances oblivious to the fate of his bosses and the 999 call soon to be placed by the Chases’ cleaner.
Stark left Fran to pester the manager for a copy of the footage and wandered out to where the van had been parked. Vent pipes poked out of the ground by some kind of storage tank; low greenery filled the space before a standard wooden fence with concrete posts and a buff brick wall. The wall was seven feet high but the timber fence only five, simple enough to scale. Just the other side was a driveway and en-bloc garages behind some houses.
In the footage the bright lights of the forecourt threw the planted area into dark contrast. All Tilly had to do was switch off the van’s interior light so it didn’t operate when he opened the door, slip out and hop over the back fence, then sneak back the same way and turn the interior light back on. Simple, but unlikely. More likely he’d just been eating his poor-man’s dinner, reading his paper, taking a well-earned break. Only he hadn’t read the paper; the interior light had never come on.
Back inside Fran was hovering and the manager’s accommodating smile had wilted into anxious haste to comply. He was just taking the DVD out of the drive when Stark noticed what had been staring him in the face all along. The computer and monitor each had a sticky label, matching the branding on the cameras outside and the signs on the pumps and shop window – the security firm’s name.
Twenty minutes later they were standing in Clive Tilly’s office. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, frowning.
‘What were you doing, for over an hour?’ Fran asked again.
‘Eating a limp sandwich and admiring the tits on page three.’
‘But the interior light was off,’ said Stark.
Tilly waved a hand. ‘She was too skinny, so I was checking my eyelids for holes.’
‘You were asleep?’ asked Fran doubtfully.
‘Our drivers get an hour break, health and safety. They all stop off somewhere; check the logs. I’ve stopped there before; at my age it’s useful to know places with a toilet. What’s this about?’
‘You knew it had a toilet and more,’ Fran said. ‘Chase Security provides and maintains their security systems.’
‘That’s how I knew they had a toilet. I supervised the system installation.’
‘Meaning you knew exactly where to park the van so you could get out unseen, climb over the back fence and go kill your oldest friend and his wife.’
‘What?’ Tilly looked panicked. ‘You’re not serious? Why would I do that?’
‘Sex, money or both,’ replied Fran. ‘I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. You booked the hotel for Tom that night.’
‘So?’
‘We spoke with the client Tom met for dinner. He told us you set up the meeting, and called him twice that day to check it was still on.’
‘He has a habit of cancelling last minute.’
�
�You texted Tom to make sure he’d shown up. Checking that the coast was clear. Must’ve been a shock when Tom came home after all.’
‘This is rubbish!’ Tilly insisted.
‘What were the grounds for your divorce?’
‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’
‘Time will tell.’
Tilly looked exasperated. ‘Irreconcilable differences.’
‘Lousy timing for you, though. Must’ve been hard for a proud man,’ said Fran, ‘going from partner to minion.’
‘That was nearly twenty years ago … Would I have stuck around working for Tom if I harboured a grudge? We were mates, we grew up together. Tom, me and Billy, we were family!’
‘Families fall out,’ said Fran.
They put Tilly in the back of the car, white as a sheet and silent, though they could see the pleading taking place behind his darting eyes.
They left him in interview room one to wait for Harper.
‘I’m not convinced,’ said Stark.
‘Oh? Okay … We’d best let him go then,’ said Fran dryly.
‘I’m not convinced,’ said Groombridge.
Fran rolled her eyes but said nothing. Harper’s frustration looked more convincing this time.
She and Harper had grilled Tilly for an hour, going over and over the same ground, the same questions, the same anxious responses, exasperated pleading, the same interruptions from the lawyer friend he’d called. ‘He doesn’t strike me as the cold-blooded type,’ added Groombridge, ‘but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong.’
‘We’ll find out, sir,’ said Harper. ‘Leave it to us.’
Was that a slight dig? She’d noted Harper’s flicker of displeasure to find Groombridge hovering outside the interview room again.
Groombridge glanced at his watch. ‘All right, spring him on police bail. I’ll request a warrant for his bank and mobile phone records. See if you can speak with his ex-wife.’
Harper nodded and left, but his face betrayed some impatience at still being subject to orders.
Groombridge stood staring in at Tilly, so Fran hovered. She was still awaiting some quiet reprimand for her recent behaviour. Groombridge could be cutting when pressed and she had pressed hard. But he didn’t look at her. She bit her lip, determined to keep her temper. She wanted to scream – I told you so! But it was way too late. ‘What about Dixon?’ she asked, trying to provoke the conversation.
‘What about him?’
‘Will you want to speak with him?’
‘I’ll leave that to you. Go easy. They’d all worked late and it won’t be the last time we ask them to.’ He sighed. ‘Well then …’
Fran watched in disbelief as the door closed behind him. Nothing about their cross words, nothing about the seriousness of Dixon’s oversight or the implications, or how to stop it happening again. Surely he hadn’t stooped so low that he would brush this under the carpet, just to cover his arse, or Cox’s? No. He wouldn’t. She was less certain about Cox. For all his bumbling bluster he was a copper, started from the beat unlike so many of the recent influx of brass, but he’d been on the pay grade between police and politics a long time. Hearing could get selective up there in the thin hot air.
Barking at the custody sergeant to bail Tilly, she took the lift back up to the MIT and beckoned Dixon aside for a private bollocking. Having set the team’s plates spinning, she swept off to the canteen to stew over a coffee.
21
Friday night at Rosie’s.
Station custom. No midweek excuses. But a bigger crowd to avoid Harper in.
Stark bought Dixon a drink. No hard feelings. Dixon didn’t blame him. The youngest DC had more metal than people thought. But things like this only ever highlighted the disconnect between Stark and his peers, and that was his fault. It was a shame, but it was what it was. He got on with them all, shared a drink and a laugh, but they were colleagues, not mates.
The same had been true in his old nick in Gosport, his home town worn with memories and landmarks that merged and faded more with each return and old school friends that grew more alien by the year, living lives so different from his that he hardly knew how to speak to them any longer. In the TA he’d had comrades rather than mates, and he’d deliberately dropped out of touch with them all since his injury – analgesic necessity. In London the only friends he’d made were Kelly’s, and friendly no longer.
It wasn’t something to dwell upon but he didn’t make friends, not close ones. Doc Hazel thought it stemmed from the loss of his father, but it went back further. He’d always been aware of his otherness. But it wasn’t until he was wounded that he really faced the truth of it, the hesitancy in their eyes and how little it hurt him.
Perhaps he shared something with his adopted city after all … Indifference. He cared about very few people specifically, beyond immediate family; as few as possible. Beyond that he cared about concepts, freedoms, rights, law and justice and people; all the people. What a hollow-sounding conceit.
Hazel was his only confidante – his confessor. Pierson was his conscience. Bizarrely, worryingly, Fran was the closest thing to a friend he had in the world and she would howl with horrified laughter to hear it.
He ordered himself a double, cheap blend, no ice and a lager chaser. Harvey the landlord shrugged and put the good stuff back on the high shelf without comment. Bringing Fran’s traditional large Chardonnay and two packets of crisps, Stark deposited the lot on the table stained from decades of slops and cigarette burns – the Compass Rose wasn’t about to rush into anything as tasteless as refurbishment – necked his scotch in one and took a slug of lager.
‘What’s with you?’ demanded Fran.
‘Just washing the dust of despair from my throat, Sarge,’ replied Stark flatly.
‘If you’re still moping after that girl you can piss off and sit somewhere else.’
That girl. Fran and Kelly had in fact got on just fine. When they weren’t pissed off with him, the women in his life took pleasure in ganging up on him. But since the break-up, Kelly had been reduced to that girl, and Fran seemed determined to interpret any anomaly in his mood as latent pining.
He stayed put anyway. Better than propping up the bar with Harper. The new-minted DI was still acting friendly. But Stark had spent time in enough bars with bombastic braggarts to know that nothing spoiled the former quicker than the latter.
Fran glanced at Stark as they drank.
If Hammed had been there Dixon and Williams might have invited him to make up doubles at pool, but they asked less often these days. It wasn’t just Groombridge who’d noticed the change in Stark. Whatever he said, Kelly had to be the problem. Men were such twits, and good-looking boys the worst. They never knew a good thing when they had it, sulked when they’d lost it, then clammed up and let it gnaw at them from the inside.
Mind you, girls weren’t much better – deluding themselves that ice cream, a good blub and a night out with gal-pals would make everything right. Fran favoured the first item on that list, disdained the second and was woefully short of the third. Maybe it was growing up with older brothers, but she’d never really understood the girl-power thing. She had mates, not BFFs, and a good blub just gave her a headache, puffy eyes and snot.
Stark looked like he could use a mate about now, but Fran prodded more out of habit than hope these days, and that was getting boring.
Perhaps he was saving it all up for that insufferable shrink, as he sat there sipping his lager with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. At least that was the face he might have had if he were anyone else, anyone normal. Instead he was like a bulldog stoically holding an angry wasp in his mouth while it stung him repeatedly. Where was his bite?
Groombridge was right, and her conscience on that score gave way to temper. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she blurted out. ‘I’m not sitting here with you like this. Either pick up the phone to Kelly or go out and get laid!’
Stark winced and shook his head. �
�You’re barking up the wrong tree.’
That was it. Ever the impenetrable sod. She shook her head, drained her white wine and plonked the glass in front of him with a clunk. ‘Oh, get them in, then. If neither of us is going to cheer up, let’s at least get plastered.’
He trudged off to the bar.
Some people vied for service by bobbing on tiptoe, displaying a crisp note, leaning forward or even calling out. Stark simply waited, with eye-watering stillness, a fixed point in the peripheral vision, un-ignorable. Harvey quickly turned his way.
A similar effect could be observed around him. The regular uniforms loitered, shadowed by the latest intake of timid rookies; the government’s ‘new bobbies-on-the-beat’ – low-pay-grade replacements for all the experienced officers squeezed out through carefully applied ‘efficiencies’. Fewer each year, though, whatever the politicos claimed. The latest batch included a gaggle of girls, and the old lags circled like vultures, Harper included. But more than one pair of their prey’s eyes flitted towards Stark.
Nice looks, visible scars and notoriety made him an object of constant speculation on the lower floors. The fool had no idea how easily he could take her advice tonight, if he only chose. He shared a nod and words with a few, Ptolemy and Peters and others. Those that were used to him found it easier.
A peal of laughter erupted around the girls and one, a petite blonde with beautiful eyes, blushed deeply and glanced anxiously across at Stark as he carried the drinks back through the crowd with no outward awareness of the turbulence in his wake.
Oh dear, sighed Fran.
There was another girl at the bar following Stark with her eyes. A pretty redhead, alone, un-circled by vultures, so not a copper. Fran frowned, realizing she had no idea whether Stark liked redheads or blondes. Kelly’s hair had been the kind of glossy brunette that was just plain unfair outside a shampoo ad.
Red was holding her phone in an odd way, not texting or surfing … It looked for all the world as if the brazen floozy was taking Stark’s picture, probably to post online for her BFFs! If only his ‘reputation’ was restricted to the station. One of the old lags turned to her with a drink. Chancing his luck. Wasting his time. And Stark … sat down to drink, oblivious.
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 9