She stood there, steaming mugs in her hands, wondering what to do. The doctor had said there was no concussion but to keep an eye on him all the same. How was it possible to go from sitting upright watching TV to horizontal and asleep in less than two minutes? She placed his mug on the coffee table and shook his shoulder gently. ‘Stark.’
A minor grunt. Fists pulled the blanket in tight. It would probably take a bugle to rouse him.
Shrugging, she retreated to the kitchen area. The TV flickered silently in the corner.
The blanket worried her. Curious, she wandered into the bedroom. The bed was made, the room pristine. How long since he’d slept in it? she wondered. Since Kelly left? Surely not.
He’d been on a date tonight; disastrous, but nevertheless … Like most people, Fran saw advice as something to be passed on rather than embraced. Stark was seemingly impervious to it. More likely the date had been his perversely direct way of moving forward, putting Kelly behind him. How very male.
There was a stack of books on the nightstand. Fran sat on the bed and inspected the uppermost. War poetry? Vaguely revolted, she opened it at the ribbon bookmark and read the short poem there. Poppies and crosses. Death and duty. Very Stark.
Flipping through the pages, she sampled a few more, trying to piece together the wilful obscurities, to comprehend any purpose in this deliberate wallowing in horror, writing it or reading it. She gave up and picked up the next book, non-fiction, a journalist tracking down the surviving men who’d walked on the moon. More pointless endeavour. She sighed, thinking of the wine in the fridge, kicked off her shoes, sat back and read on.
The next thing she was aware of, was screaming.
Larks fled the sky, brave-song forgotten, before the mobbing crows, as the guns stuttered silent.
Mourners huddled around the grave, heart-lost and broken.
Stark ached to join them but shadows held him – too weak to break free or speak as the funeral party faded from sight.
Now he stood before the open grave alone, the bottomless darkness within … whispering.
And the stench … ever-present and all-pervading.
Night-black birds pecked at the nearest corpse, twitching off scraps and tossing them into their snapping maws like a party trick. Flies filled the air with their despotic buzz, sending shivers down the spine like nails on a blackboard. Dozens of dead. Countless. Littering the broken ground.
Blood sprang between them, blooming up through cracks and craters, blood-red poppies blowing between the crosses in the desert heat; white stone, row on row, unblemished, uncarved, unnamed; stretching beyond sight … to Flanders, Sebastopol, and beyond …
And one, empty grave … waiting.
Turning, he wandered among the dead, trying to place them, recognize them, kicking at the crows as they fluttered a few metres away and settled on another carcass. Kicking, then chasing, till he was running through the killing field like a man possessed, leaping over the dead, raving, screaming at the birds till he was hoarse, wailing until his heart burst.
His foot caught and he fell, but the hand grasped his ankle. Kicking out in horror, Stark looked into the lifeless eyes, staring from the blackened, burnt face. The Velcro name tape on the fatigues – LOVELACE. Hating, accusing eyes, Stark’s own eyes, the bleak, desolate eyes of the carrion crow.
Screaming, he kicked free and tumbled from the sofa, catching his temple on the corner of the coffee table, staring around in panic.
His living room. His flat. His reality.
Stark felt tears welling in his eyes.
‘No!’ he shouted, shoving the table away and scrambling to his feet in fury. Movement in the corner of his eye. On the balcony outside the window perched a big, black crow. Stark stared back, not daring to blink in case it wasn’t there afterwards. Was true life entering his dreams or the other way around?
The crow cocked its head and fixed him with one baleful, flint-black eye, then slowly, deliberately, unfolded huge dark wings and leapt into the sky.
Stark stared at where it had been, or hadn’t, until his knees buckled beneath him and he collapsed back on to the sofa, sheathed in cold sweat and shaking like a leaf.
‘Joe?’
He jumped at the sound, twitching round to face it, fight or flight, fists curled …
Fran stood in the door to his room, the same look on her face he’d seen so many times on Kelly’s – too many times – that confusion of fear and pity.
52
Fran saw little of the traffic as she drove home. She’d only seen Stark, normally so impassive, give in to fury once before the footage last night, but this was the first time she’d ever seen him frightened; literally terrified.
She knew he’d suffered from nightmares in the past, or she’d hoped it was in the past. He’d told her once, to get her off his back, to curtail her questions. It hadn’t worked, of course. But today she’d made her excuses and left as quickly as she dared, to escape their mutual discomfort. It was his weekend off, and she wouldn’t be calling him again.
Was this what it was like for him – sleeping on his sofa and waking in terror? And what was he eating? He normally ate like a horse, but now she thought about it, she couldn’t remember seeing that lately. Just like before. He was slipping away again.
Something had to be done.
She showered at home and grabbed coffee and Danish from the café around the corner on her way to work, trying to ignore the Times newspaper being read by the guy in the corner.
HE’S NOT HERE! – Mother denies contact with killer! Mad Miriam Kirsch’s face frozen in ugliness, beside an equally damning image of Simon. Fran ground her teeth.
It took her a while to find the number, scribbled on one of the full notepads she kept in her desk. For privacy she used Groombridge’s office to make the call. She refused to think of it as Harper’s. Her fingers tapped impatiently on the desk while it rang.
‘Hello?’
‘Doctor McDonald?’
‘This is my private mobile number,’ replied the woman, irritation in her voice. ‘Who else would it be?’
‘This is DS Millhaven.’
‘I’d guessed that, Sergeant,’ replied Hazel. ‘Though I don’t recall giving you this number.’
Fran remembered how much she disliked this woman for her curt, superior demeanour. She gave the impression of being constantly ahead of you in the conversation, waiting for you to catch up. How Stark could bear her was a mystery, although he often gave the exact same impression, if less consciously. ‘I’m calling about Stark.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m worried about him.’
‘Yes?’
‘There was an incident last night …’
‘Oh yes?’
Fran ground her teeth and explained, and about the morning.
The woman listened without interrupting. ‘Yes. I was informed that he’d been in A&E last night. Thank you for filling in the details.’
Fran waited. ‘Is that it?’
‘Is that what?’
‘Aren’t you going to say something?’
‘Such as?’
Fran knew she was being wound up but that just wound her up more. She was just about to say something quite rude when the shrink spoke first.
‘I’m sure you realize that I can’t discuss Joseph with you in any professional capacity. Thank you for sharing your concerns with me. I suspect that you don’t like me and that this can’t have been easy. I will, of course, not tell Joseph that you called.’
Fran blinked, trying desperately to summon the correctly insulting response when the door burst open. Harper stared at her with the amused look of a teacher catching a hated pupil red-handed. ‘Trying it on for size, Sergeant?’ he mocked. ‘Want me to find you a cushion to sit on?’
Fran hung up, stood and left with all the silent dignity she could muster. The alternative would have been ugly and detrimental to her career.
She couldn’t bear to be around Harper right now.
Making sure everyone had something to do, she scanned her own desk, noticed the forensic accounts report and reluctantly took it to the canteen to read.
Thank God for coffee, she thought a while later. They should send someone over to explain this crap, or include a cyanide pill. But Stark had been right to think something was off. Before Mary took over the finances, Chase Security had been a regular-looking company, ticking along. As far as Fran could make out, the Chases had been on the fiddle ever since.
To the taxman Chase Security presented as barely profitable. This was, the forensics surmised, because it had unusually high outgoings. Chief among these was a company called MCA Agency who provided Chase Security with event staff and agency workers. Its managing director was Mary Chase. Both companies were paying out for all sorts of advertising, mail drops and cold calling to another company, TCA Media, director, Thomas Chase. Another company under Mary’s name provided ‘Consultancy Services’. Another in Tom’s owned the property and leased it to Chase Security. Each was minimizing its tax liability by paying high overheads and outgoings to mystery suppliers and creditors, and running barely a pulse. Every company donated to the Chase Foundation, offsetting every charitable penny against tax. The final cumulative tax bill was minuscule compared to what would have been owed, and the account into which all these savings accumulated belonged to a blandly named shell company conveniently registered offshore in the Cayman Islands, where it turned out another Chase company was buying up holiday homes.
And the charity … Tom was chairman, Mary managing director, both drawing decent wages again. More invoices to the various ‘agencies’ and ‘consultancies’. Even their trips out there went through expenses. Money did make it through to the Maldives, a small football ground in their name, grass-roots coaching. But the charity HQ was a beach-front house.
So much for model citizens, thought Fran. The Chases had been rinsing cash for years.
Clive Tilly’s problems were just beginning. Fraud Squad would pick this house of cards apart.
There was one more anomaly. A single Chase Security invoice, filed among the rest, almost identical but with a different post-box address and bank details, another offshore account. A shadow company, designed to look like the original? Fran scribbled down the address and finished her coffee.
Groombridge nodded in genial greeting and pulled the curtain around the bed.
The patient looked at him from two black eyes, suspicious. ‘Who are you?’
Groombridge flashed his warrant card but didn’t give his name.
The man sneered. ‘Come to beg, have you?’ He held up the cast enclosing his arm from elbow to hand, splinted fingers protruding. ‘Save your breath, Soldier Boy’s going down for this.’
‘I have not come to beg, Mr Stratham.’ Groombridge pulled the visitor chair around to face the bed and sat down. ‘I’ve come to discern whether you really are as stupid as your actions would have you seem.’
‘You can’t talk to me like that. I’ll make a complaint against you too.’
‘That is your prerogative.’ Groombridge leant forward and picked up the copy of the Sun from the bed. ‘Treating you well, are they?’ he asked conversationally.
‘What do you want?’
‘Popular rag, this one.’
He could see Stratham’s confused reaction out of the corner of his eye. ‘So?’
Defensive. Good. Groombridge kept his eyes on the headline.
ULTIMATE SACRIFICE! The photo of a soldier smiling proudly in dress uniform with a smaller image inset of the same young man lounging in desert fatigues, grinning, gun propped against the earthen wall beside him. Private Nathan Lovelace, killed by an IED on patrol, a secondary device, going to help a comrade injured by the first.
‘Patriotic too,’ Groombridge mused aloud.
‘What is this?’
There was another picture inset – Stark, VC adorning his dress uniform. Had this snivelling little shit even noticed, or simply skipped straight to the tits and football? ‘Are you patriotic, Mr Stratham?’
Stratham looked predictably affronted. ‘Course I am!’ He probably had a Union Jack and three lions tattooed on his scrawny backside.
‘Funny you should be reading this. I brought one too,’ said Groombridge, pulling a copy of the Sun from his inside coat pocket. ‘From a year and a half ago but pertinent, in my humble opinion.’ He laid the two papers side by side on the bed, Lovelace on one, Stark receiving his VC on the other. ‘As a patriot, what do you think the readership of this paper will make of tomorrow’s edition? The story of an unemployed nineteen-year-old man drinking at the taxpayer’s expense, backed up by five mates, sneaking up behind one man, a war veteran, recipient of this nation’s highest decoration for valour, hitting him over the head with a glass bottle and then giving him a right old shoeing as he lay curled on the ground?’
He watched Stratham’s face as the question settled into what passed for a brain.
‘And on the very day that another British serviceman was reported to have lost his life fighting for the freedoms said nineteen-year-old abuses, and named as one of the men our decorated veteran earned that medal saving. Striking coincidence, that. Tell me, Mr Stratham, do you think your newspaper of choice will paint said youth in a favourable light?’ The truth was visibly sinking in. ‘It will be a popular story, given the extraordinarily high public opinion of said veteran. It’ll be on the front page of every newspaper in the land and the leading story on every television news programme too, I should imagine.’
‘He beat the shit out of us!’ protested Stratham.
‘Yes,’ chuckled Groombridge. ‘The perfect dénouement. The unpatriotic, cowardly scrounger gets his comeuppance at the hands of the national hero. And all caught on CCTV!’
Fran had confessed her temptation to wipe the file. She would have enjoyed this conversation, but some things were better done with the fewer people in the know the better.
‘I’ve asked my local newsagent to set aside a copy of every paper.’ Groombridge used a hand to punctuate the strapline, ‘ “Britain’s Most Hated Man!” Stories like that just run and run.’
Stratham had gone slack and pale.
‘There’s already a sweepstake going round my office on how long it will be between your most recent brawl and your next. I’ve got twenty says you’re back in this hospital in less than a day. One of my sergeants reckons you’ll be stabbed before the week is out. You may even need official police protection. Of course I might have trouble staffing that detail, at least staffing it with officers I’d trust not to tip the odds.’
Groombridge smiled at Stratham. A genuine smile. A smile of enjoyment. God knows enough boring, important things would fill his day; it was nice to fit in something worthwhile and fun. ‘If I were the nineteen-year-old in question I might think twice before I made my delusional grievance public. Particularly as it would land him and his five mates in the dock for aggravated assault. I can’t imagine they’d be best pleased.’ Indeed all five had spent the night in the cells and had listened most attentively to Groombridge before he let them go.
‘All right, all right!’ spat Stratham miserably. ‘I get the point!’
Groombridge smiled again. ‘Good. Not so stupid after all; not quite, at least.’ He stood and picked up the old copy of the Sun. It hadn’t been hard to find. Half the station had one secreted in a drawer. It was probably better that Stark didn’t know that. ‘You can keep this. You should read it. Perhaps you can get one of the nurses to help with the unfamiliar words … duty, honour, valour, et cetera. Get well soon, Mr Stratham, and …’ he poured ice into his voice and stare, ‘don’t ever give me cause to look your way again.’
53
Fran stared at the tatty steel doors. There was a tatty letter-box slot in them, the property number hand-painted above it. No reference to Chase Security, legitimate or shadow, but the post-office box was registered to this address.
The doors were large enough for a decent-sized v
ehicle to pass through, with a person-sized wicket door inset, the only opening along the short road that barely qualified as an alley, its ancient concrete so cracked and broken it was mostly mud and aggregate. The building opposite was the blank red-brick rear wall of an old single-storey factory unit, now subdivided into a warehouse selling carpet off-cuts, a car body-shop and other examples of grimy light industry, all facing the other way, leaving the address unobserved.
‘What do you think?’ asked Williams.
Fran glanced up. There was just one streetlight, right outside the lock-up. It was smashed, not simply out of order. Shards of its glass lay about the ground, but cleaner than the general crust, more recent.
There were no windows they could claim were broken, no back door with a damaged lock, no plaintive cries from within; nothing they could claim reasonable cause for suspicion to excuse them breaking in. Fran clicked her tongue in irritation and called Groombridge. Harper would be pissed that she’d bypassed him but it served him right for being a tit earlier. Groombridge sounded worryingly cheerful on the phone as he noted down the details for the warrant request.
‘Any news from above, Sarge?’ asked Williams over his plate of gammon and egg, as they waited in a nearby cafe.
Fran couldn’t bring herself to sample the delights of the greasy dive. Everyone thought she subsisted solely on coffee and pastries but the truth was she was a food snob. She loved to cook, and if food was fast she wasn’t in a hurry to eat it. Better to get through the day on caffeine and then cook up a storm in the evening, or whenever the day ended. ‘I wish I knew.’
An hour later they were watching two hefty lads from SOCO cutting the heavy padlock and drilling out the Yale lock. They had the doors open in under a minute. An inspector from SO6 Fraud Squad had rocked up, declaring both seniority and jurisdiction. Fran didn’t much care. If there was a body inside it was hers. If not, the rude bastard was welcome to chase boring numbers till his eyes bled.
Uniform gave the all-clear and SOCO went in.
The SO6 inspector and Fran did the mental equivalent of circling each other like cats, while Williams and the SO6 constable shared a joke.
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 24