Harper’s face grew darker by the syllable, but Fran wasn’t about to let him get a word in. ‘I’ve stood by and kept my mouth shut too long. You’re fucking my team and you’re fucking these investigations, and if you don’t grow up and grow a pair I’ll make sure you come out of all this smelling of shit, and the last thing you ever see of this office will be the super throwing your bullshit belongings out the fucking window!’
She was half out the door before he got his first word out – ‘Sergeant …’ – and slammed the door on the rest, striding out of the office before he could emerge and order her back.
* * *
Hope you’re okay. Sorry I ran away. Call me. Selena x
Stark stared at the text. It had arrived hours earlier but he’d only just noticed it. There might still be time to salvage something there but he was no longer in any mood to think about that. Such things were best attended with one’s tanks full anyway, not at two in the morning, running on fumes and fury.
He filed Selena away with the rest: Kelly, Fran, Major Pierson and Gwen sodding Maddox; each wanting a different piece of him.
Nothing stayed filed away, of course.
Grimacing, he limped into the bathroom and opened the cabinet to stare at the pills.
His life was a daily form of rationing. Yes, he could walk to work, climb stairs, cycle, run if he had to, perhaps even chase villains over fences, but it all came at cumulative cost. The more he used his damaged body, the more it hurt. So he rationed the pain and, when he had to, mortgaged it with painkillers. Meagre over-the-counter crap these days.
Doc Hazel was always interested in this aspect of his ‘coping mechanisms’ because she believed he did the same emotionally – rationing heart to avoid hurt, and paying the overdraft with whisky. When he’d first re-entered the world, fighting on both fronts with prescription opiates and whisky had left him teetering on the brink of the abyss.
Next to the forbidden OxyContin sat the sleeping pills, to which he still sometimes turned in dire need, when the nightmares got their claws in. But too often death stalked his waking mind too. The irony of a man who was trying to leave death behind working in the murder investigation team of a central London borough was never far from his mind, but tonight felt worse. Tonight he knew that not only was the job affecting him, he was affecting the job. However blown out of proportion, Harper’s resentment of him had grounds. And now Stark’s very presence was diverting attention from what really mattered. Worst of all, it was putting Fran in an impossible position.
Stark actually pitied the man. Harper’s current domestic status hadn’t been mentioned since his return, but when Stark first joined the station all the gossip was of the wife’s drunken assaults, Harper’s sudden illnesses manifesting more often in cuts and bruises than sniffles and coughs. What no one ever discussed was Harper’s restraint. A big man, powerfully built and cocksure, the alpha male; yet there was never any hint of him returning the violence, even in self-defence. Harper needed a different outlet and Stark had turned up just in time. But deep down, he’d stuck by his wife.
It wasn’t just Harper, or the day-to-day grind of death – there would always be idiots to contend with or human depravity to confront – in the end it came down to him, Joseph Peter Stark.
He didn’t fit. Never had. Never would.
He slowly closed the cabinet door and stared at himself in its mirror, daring himself to give in, to open it again and leave the pain behind, for the next few hours at least. The problem with knowing you could push pain aside was that you started wanting to. A few hours might turn into a few days, and the coward’s way out might look more appealing from gutter level. This was the unspoken side of Hazel’s interest; watchful concern that a depressed war veteran and a lethal stockpile of opiates and sleeping pills was a risky combination.
He opened the door, popped two OxyContins into his hand and stared at them. Innocent-looking little pills, no different from those you’d take for a regular ache.
His hand shook.
He popped two more, tossed all four into his mouth and lifted the glass to his lips. The good stuff. Royal Lochnagar, Special Reserve. The pale amber glinted green in the harsh bathroom halogen, the golden aroma brutalized by the sickening tang of the pills on his tongue.
A life-long second passed.
Stark spat the pills into the sink with a vicious string of curses, running the tap and forcing them furiously down the plughole with his fingers.
He slammed the cabinet door, shattering the glass.
His fractured reflection glared back. Accusing. Mocking.
Pushing himself away, he retreated out to the balcony.
Cold, wet air reached into his lungs like cadaverous fingers. A thick fog had closed in, haloing lights and haunting sounds, shrouding the world beyond, even the hard ground below. If he were to jump, he might fall forever.
The crystal rattled against his teeth as he sipped. He rolled the whisky round the glass, relieved that its true colour and flavour hadn’t burned away for good.
Perhaps that was the answer, he thought, savouring with slow, deliberate appreciation. A week off wasn’t going to solve things, but Harper had unwittingly shown him what might. Perhaps it finally was time to sample a better life, a calmer life … a normal life.
64
Groombridge counted to ten in his head, hiding his dismay in the ever-expanding corner of his mind where he squeezed such things for later consideration. This probably wouldn’t go down as the worst Monday morning of his life, but it was building its case. The last thing he needed was a disintegrating team. He glanced around his home from home, reminding himself that the definite advantage of having no windows was that it obviated the temptation to throw yourself out of one.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
‘We worked together for years,’ said Harper. ‘You had my respect and support. Should I expect less from my sergeant?’
Respect works both ways, thought Groombridge. Harper had been a decent sergeant, but he’d accepted Groombridge as king because it granted him lordship over the constables in turn and placed him first in line to the throne. Fran’s appearance had divided both fiefdom and claim. But the Harper he knew back then was better than this. Deep down, he still must be. Groombridge had done some checking. Harper had stood by his wife through her drinking, turning the other cheek time after time. But then, he loved his wife … ‘Fran is hot-headed, I know, but a formal reprimand?’
‘Would you have let her speak to you like that?’
Groombridge noted Harper’s use of past tense. ‘I have, and expect to again. It was well after midnight. Tempers were frayed.’ And there were no witnesses, he didn’t add.
‘Will you take her side in this?’ said Harper curtly.
Groombridge disliked the inference. ‘I trust you’re not accusing me of favouritism?’
‘Will you issue a reprimand or not?’
Groombridge took a deep breath. Fran had offered her resignation on several occasions in the past but never with such conviction as when she’d confronted him first thing this morning. She would not, could not, work with Harper one more minute, she’d said flatly. It had taken patience and perseverance to talk her down, playing every loyalty card in his arsenal, all the while knowing that Harper would darken his door within the hour and undo all his efforts. ‘I will,’ he conceded.
Harper couldn’t conceal a faint smile of satisfaction.
‘But,’ continued Groombridge, ‘only after the current investigations are concluded.’
Harper’s face darkened with anger and Groombridge held up a hand. ‘I’m not fobbing you off, Owen. If, when the dust settles, you still insist, I will formally reprimand DS Millhaven and enter it on her file. But for now I cannot, will not let this spat undermine what we have to do. We have a duty, under oath.’ Not to mention how precariously they stood with HQ. ‘So in the meantime I know I can trust you to take the lead. Find a way to work together for all our sake
s.’
Harper could not mask his dissatisfaction, but he had little choice. ‘I have your word?’ he said coldly.
‘You have my word.’
Stark raised his hand to knock but the door swung away from his fist. Harper came up short in surprise, then displeasure. ‘I thought I made myself clear last night, Constable.’
‘I’m off the clock,’ Stark replied stiffly.
Harper glanced down at Stark’s casual attire, then brushed wordlessly past and stalked away down the corridor.
‘Is there something I can do for you?’ asked Groombridge.
Stark hesitated, but he’d made his decision. ‘Guv.’
‘Well …? Come in.’
Stark closed the door behind him, and noted the significance register on his boss’s face.
‘This an unofficial visit?’ asked the DCI, nodding to Stark’s clothing.
‘I’m not here, Guv.’
‘Too late to convince DI Harper of that, I fear,’ Groombridge observed. ‘Sit.’ Two years out of the military and Stark still needed to be told. ‘Well?’
Stark slid a sheet of paper across the desk.
‘Not your resignation, I hope,’ sighed Groombridge. ‘You’d have to get in line.’
Stark glanced back at the door. ‘DI Harper?’
Groombridge shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t pin your hopes on that.’ He scanned the page and frowned. ‘Is this correct?’
Stark had filled in the leave request form with great thought. ‘I have the time saved, Guv.’
‘Six weeks?’
‘DS Millhaven has been on my case to take the backlog.’
‘I doubt she meant now.’
‘She might, if she thought about it.’
‘But you didn’t risk asking her.’
Stark shrugged.
Groombridge smiled sadly. ‘DI Harper told me you’d “requested” one week, though that’s not the way DS Millhaven tells it.’
‘Guv.’
‘How the hell did you end up with so much un-taken leave, anyway?’
‘There never seemed to be a good time,’ said Stark. To begin with, he and Kelly hadn’t known each other well enough to plan holidays, and towards the end it was too late.
‘But now? Seriously?’
Groombridge looked like this was somehow the last straw. Stark wondered what Harper had been doing in here – nothing good, that much was certain. ‘I know it seems like bad timing, Guv, but there’s new bodies due today, DC Hammed will be back at some point and …’ He trailed off.
‘And what?’
Stark gave it his best I’d-rather-not-say face, but he could tell Groombridge was in no mood. ‘I’m tired, Guv. And my presence in the team at this time is … disruptive.’
‘Disruptive.’ Groombridge stared at him. He could fill in the blanks well enough. ‘Is this about that, or about you? You said you didn’t need any time.’
‘To be honest, Guv, I’m not sure what I need. But it’s not this. I’m … not contributing.’
‘Is that what you really think?’
‘Yes.’
Groombridge leant back in his chair, deep in thought. ‘Where would you go?’ He didn’t just mean for six weeks. He had always seen through Stark better than most. He knew they stood at a fork in the road.
‘I don’t know.’
Did he care? That was the question in Groombridge’s eyes. Had Stark already chosen a path?
All Stark knew was that he needed time to think, and somewhere else to do it. Some secluded beach bar where he could sink a few beers, eat what the locals ate, sleep under the stars, swim in the ocean and read all day; a place where his decisions would matter as little to others as to himself, and his day-to-day life wouldn’t be constrained by a constant fight not to scream.
And if he never came back, so be it.
The DCI’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if reading Stark’s thoughts. ‘What about our other problem?’
Which one? thought Stark bitterly. ‘A shortlist, nothing we’re confident in.’ He rattled off the names from Ptolemy’s list.
Groombridge stared at him. ‘You’ve left someone off.’ More statement than question. ‘DI Harper?’
It was shocking to hear it from Groombridge’s lips. ‘I never said that.’
‘Neither should you. Owen is a lot of things, but not that, I hope.’
‘Hope.’ Stark didn’t mean to say it so flatly.
A stern look from Groombridge was worth ten of Fran’s withering glances. ‘Owen Harper, I’ve learned, has mortgaged himself to the hilt to put his wife through rehab. But he would die before he took a penny in charity and he’d arrest any press hack waving a bribe. You may not like each other, but there are more similarities than either of you might care to admit.’
Stark strongly doubted that, but the rest …?
Groombridge drum-rolled his fingertips on his desk, twice. ‘It’ll be out of our hands soon anyway: HQ are getting pressure from the Home Affairs Select Committee. Hacking, leak or both; they’re sending specialists to investigate. I’ll arrange for you and Ptolemy to sit with them on the quiet.’
He slid the leave request slowly back across the desk. ‘Denied.’ He held up a hand to silence Stark’s protest. ‘I can’t spare you, Joe. Not right now. Get through this mess and we’ll talk. You need a break, I can see that, and lord knows I understand your other motivation all too well. But whatever you think, this team would be worse for your absence. I’ll let DI Harper know I refused your request for a week off until after Kirsch is caught. Was there anything else?’
Dismissed. ‘No, sir, thank you.’
‘Good. Close the door on your way out.’
‘And I’ll try to resist the temptation to wedge a chair under the sodding handle,’ muttered Groombridge after Stark had closed the door.
He pulled open his desk drawer and withdrew an envelope with no name on the front, and wandered up the corridor to Cox’s office. The superintendent’s PA waved him though.
Cox acknowledged his entry but kept his attention on the TV. The press were reporting the latest killing and the ongoing hunt for Simon Kirsch, but not yet the suspicion that he might be innocent of the first murders.
The item finished and Cox muted the idiot box. ‘Long night. Get any sleep?’
‘A few hours, sir.’
‘Alice giving you a hard time?’
‘Our wives are saints to our sins.’
Cox nodded. They were probably in a minority; coppers whose wives hadn’t divorced them. ‘Ballistics have confirmed?’
‘They pulled the old bullet from stores last night. Perfect match. The old thirty-eight Webley revolver found in the lock-up, used to kill the Chases two weeks ago, was also used on Billy Forester back in 1984.’
‘By Clive Tilly, to prevent Billy blabbing about the miscarriage of justice,’ said Cox, making sure he had it straight. ‘And decades later Tilly kills Mary Chase to get a hard drive he believed contained recordings that might lead us to reopen the Forester case. And maybe burglaries too.’
‘It’s the only theory we have that fits, sir.’
‘And Thomas Chase was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Mary had a back-up anyway. It all rather backfired on Tilly.’
‘And us.’
Cox eyed him warily. ‘But that’s not why you’re here.’
‘No. Things have come to a head.’
Cox sighed and turned the television off altogether. ‘How bad?’
Groombridge slid the envelope across the desk. ‘We need a decision, sir.’
Cox didn’t pick it up. He knew what it contained. ‘An ultimatum?’
‘An inducement.’
‘More stick than carrot, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Whatever works … I made my proposals weeks ago. Brass need to make up their minds.’
‘In the middle of an investigation?’
‘A wise man once told me that we don’t know where we are in an investigation until we
reach the end.’
Cox smiled at his mistake. ‘A wiser man would remember never to throw out aphorisms when he knows he’s not the smartest person in the room.’ He slid the envelope into his desk drawer and closed it. ‘I’m meeting the committee later this morning. I’ll see what I can do.’
65
Stark couldn’t face the office quite yet. The last thing he needed was another face-full of Harper’s petulant aggression. The more tired he got the harder it was to override the urge to plant his fist in it.
He sat in the canteen over coffee and full English, but neither stirred his spirits, or appetite.
It had seemed so obvious. He had expected Groombridge to see the merit of his proposal, the necessity, but until now he himself had not fully grasped how much he desperately wanted to go, to leave all this behind. Perhaps that unacknowledged desire had blinded him to the possibility that Groombridge might say no. Or Groombridge had seen it and that was why he’d said no.
‘Are you wearing some kind of ankle bracelet that electrocutes you if you leave the building?’ Fran stood over him looking even more tired than the night before.
‘I could ask you the same thing.’
‘I had an early meeting with the guv’nor.’
‘Me too. He denied my “request” for a week off.’
Fran sat down. ‘Our mutual admirer won’t be happy about that.’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever hear from your date?’
‘She texted.’
‘To apologize for running off?’
‘She’d every right to be scared.’
‘Seeing her again?’
Stark shrugged. ‘She may have seen too much.’
Fran didn’t contradict him. ‘There’s another of your admirers downstairs. Major Pierson. I said you were at home but she seemed to know better.’
Stark huffed. ‘Her bracelet’s on my other ankle.’
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 29