Ray put his bag down on the hob and waited as Cal picked at the lock, his eyes screwed up in concentration. There was a click when he gave the door handle a wrench and it responded. He straightened up with a grin. ‘Come on, let’s see what we can find.’ Their exit secure, they were ready to explore the house. Ray reached for his bag. Cal crossed the kitchen. He opened the door to the dining room.
And heard footsteps.
He closed the door.
In the light of his torch, Ray saw Cal’s eyes, white and angry. ‘What now?’ Ray whispered hoarsely.
‘Go!’
Ray grabbed his bag from the hob. There was nothing in it, but Ray wasn’t going to leave his bag behind again. He grabbed at the strap. It had caught on something. He jerked it free. There was a soft click and a faint hissing. Cal had disappeared. Ray ran after him, closing the back door behind him as he escaped into the night. They sped down the side passage, careless of the security lights. Cal forced his way through the hedge on to the next door drive and sprinted down on to the road. Ray raced across the front of the house and made for the safety of the street down the drive of the property they had just broken into. A car shot out of the driveway behind him just before he reached the pavement. He spun round, startled. For a second its lights shone straight at him before he slipped round the hedge and away.
‘Bugger!’ Cal snarled as the van started up. ‘Bloody waste of time.’
‘At least we got away,’ Ray mumbled. He was still shaking. ‘We’re safe and no harm done. And I got the bag, Cal.’ He held it up. The strap was broken. Cal scowled. He slammed his foot on the accelerator and they roared away into the night.
8
Night
The telephone shook Sophie awake. It was nearly two thirty in the morning. For a second, she was confused. She had been running along an empty beach, searching for Tom. Through a slit in the bedroom curtains a splinter of moonlight shone into the room. Beside her, Tom rolled over on to his side and groaned in his sleep. She reached for the handset.
‘Yes?’ She listened. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’ Some technical problems could be resolved remotely from her laptop at home. On this occasion she knew she would have to go in. She hung up and wriggled round to look at Tom. He was still asleep, peaceful as a child. Sophie smiled. After two years of marriage, she still couldn’t believe her luck.
‘Are you sure he’s not just after your money?’ her mother had asked with a quizzical smile when Sophie had announced she was getting married. ‘You’re a relatively wealthy woman, Sophie, and you’ve only known him for a few months.’
Sophie hadn’t admitted that she had no idea how much Tom earned. It wasn’t something she could explain to her mother. Her parents were dutiful but distant. Until she met Tom all her passion had been channelled into her studies and her work. Tom had transformed life into something miraculous. She had never realised how lonely she was until she met him.
Sophie would have liked to speak openly to Tom about her feelings, but was afraid he would laugh at her for being sentimental. In any case, she wouldn’t be able to find the right words. She settled for an inadequate ‘I love you,’ which she whispered repeatedly to him as he slept beside her. Sometimes the intensity of her feelings brought tears to her eyes when she watched him as he slept. All the love she was capable of feeling had been stored up for this man sleeping beside her. He stirred. She slipped out of bed, careful not to wake him. She could have lain awake watching him all night, but she had to go to work.
Sophie felt for her clothes in the dark and crept downstairs. She hesitated in the hall but decided not to stop for coffee. The sooner she reached the office, the sooner she could get started. She was keen to get the system up and running again, to minimise the backlog. It wasn’t ideal, driving when she felt groggy, but the roads would be empty at that time of night. She could have plenty of strong coffee when she reached the office. She thought of her husband, sleeping soundly upstairs and her face softened into a smile. He wouldn’t need to get up for another five hours. She blew a kiss at the stairs before she set off, closing the front door softly behind her.
The freezing air shocked her fully awake. Overhead, stars shone brightly in a clear sky. Sophie felt a dreamlike alertness as she hurried over to her car. The revving of her engine broke the silence. As she accelerated out of the drive, a figure suddenly darted in front of her. Sophie slammed her foot on the brake and swerved. Her car door came to rest against the hedge. Leaves and twigs scratched at the window. In the orange glow of a street lamp bulging eyes stared wildly at her before the figure dashed away into the darkness. Sophie reversed away from the hedge and drove off, shaken by the near miss.
It was gone half past six by the time she left work. Pumped up with caffeine, she knew her restlessness masked an underlying exhaustion and her reactions might be sluggish so she drove slowly back through the centre of town, past closed up shops and out towards Harchester Hill. The streets were deserted at that time of morning. Soon, houses would light up as people dragged themselves out of bed. Two hours later, the centre of town would be crammed with cars idling in queues. She passed a police car cruising the streets. Apart from that, all was quiet. At this rate, she would easily be home before Tom left for work. She accelerated involuntarily at the prospect of seeing him. The engine whined.
Sophie was on her way to Harchester Hill when she heard a muffled boom. For an instant the air in front of her windscreen quivered. As she approached the bottom of the hill, a siren pierced the hum of her engine. In her rear mirror she saw a fire engine race towards her, police cars on its tail. She pulled over to allow the emergency vehicles to pass before pulling out to accelerate behind them up the hill. Ahead of the flashing lights a column of black smoke hovered above the rooftops like a medieval angel of death. The emergency vehicles swung off the main road, leading her in the direction of her home. She followed. Turning the final corner of her journey, she found her way blocked by a police car. Fear struck her like a punch in the guts. She scrambled out of the car. Leaving the engine running and the door open she ran along the street. Her legs felt weak. She battled for breath. It was an effort to keep moving. Her heart was thumping painfully as she pushed through the watching crowd. Some of them recognised her and fell back.
A man shouted crossly. ‘We’re all trying to see here –’ His voice stopped abruptly when he caught sight of Sophie, as though someone had switched off the radio.
‘Keep back there please,’ a police constable called out.
‘Tom!’ Sophie gasped. None of the uniformed figures took any notice of her. She seized a fireman, clung to the coarse fabric of his sleeve. ‘My husband! Tom!’ Her voice rose to a shriek. A tall man in a helmet advanced towards her.
‘Mrs Cliff? I’m very sorry.’ He shook his head.
Sophie stared at his blackened face. ‘No!’ She gazed around, stupefied. Over the fireman’s shoulder she could see her smouldering house. Men in uniform were moving around, silhouetted against the red glow. The line of onlookers behind her was being pushed back. A man with a megaphone was shouting at them.
‘We’re evacuating the neighbouring houses,’ a voice called out.
‘We need to move all those cars, now,’ another voice barked.
A movement nearby caught Sophie’s attention. Two men were carrying a stretcher, its small load covered. Sophie stumbled over to it. The stretcher bearers paused. She raised the blanket. Tom was sleeping, his face smudgy and grey. Soon he would open his eyes and scold her for leaving home without waking him to say goodbye. She reached out. Gently she stroked his cheek, ran her finger along his bottom lip, round his chin. Her eyes filled with tears and her head sank forward on to his body. She would have stayed there forever – she had nowhere else to go – but someone pulled her away. A hand pulled the blanket over Tom’s face as he was carried into the van.
‘Where are they taking him?’ she asked. Her voice juddered as though she was sobbing but her eyes were dry. No one
answered her. A siren rang out. Sophie watched the mortuary van disappear in the smoke-filled air.
9
Summons
Geraldine was up early on Saturday morning. Over a breakfast of coffee and wholemeal toast, she studied a well thumbed cookery book. Craig was visiting his sister at the weekend but would be back home by Sunday evening. It was going to be the first time she cooked for him. Before their holiday in Dubrovnik, he had always insisted on taking her out to eat.
‘You work hard enough,’ he would say. Geraldine had smiled, conscious that his refusal to stay at her flat gave their relationship a temporary feel. Now she was determined to impress him. She considered just about every recipe in the book before finally settling on an old favourite. Best to play it safe. She was queuing in the supermarket when her mobile rang.
‘How soon do you want me there?’ she asked, eyeing the stationary queue in front of her. The girl at the till was chatting to a woman at the front of the line.
‘I need a price’ the cashier called out.
‘I’m on my way,’ Geraldine sighed into the phone. Abandoning her trolley, she hurried home, changed into a work suit, and set off.
Her destination was the nearby historic town of Harchester. Originally a popular stopping place for pilgrims travelling to Canterbury, it had grown into a thriving market town on the main route from a busy sea port to the city of London. It was said that Geoffrey Chaucer himself had spent the night at the Hawtree Inn in Harchester. The inn had long since disappeared but Geraldine had read somewhere that Chaucer’s visit was commemorated by a plaque in the shopping mall, ironically placed between WH Smith’s and Starbucks.
Geraldine pulled into the police station car park with less than an hour to spare, tugged a comb through her hair, pinned it back off her face, and went into the station. Her day took an unexpected turn for the better when she caught sight of a familiar face on her way to the Incident Room. She had worked with Detective Sergeant Ian Peterson on an earlier case when his quick thinking had saved her life.
‘Gov!’ Peterson’s handsome features relaxed into an infectious grin which quickly faded. ‘I heard about your mother…’ He paused, struggling for the right words, an awkward giant of a man. He ran one large hand through neatly combed hair which leapt into spikey disarray.
‘We deal with it all the time, but it’s different when it happens to you.’ Geraldine gave a rueful grin. It wasn’t easy to talk in the corridor. They were constantly interrupted. Several uniformed officers overtook them, they had to stand aside for people carrying computers, and a few women marched past wielding files. The corridor grew more congested as they neared the Incident Room.
‘At least we know which direction to go in,’ Peterson said with a cheery smile as he stepped aside for two men manoeuvring their way along the corridor with a desk. He was on his way to the canteen but Geraldine wanted to get her bearings before the briefing began so she went directly to the Incident Room. Her spirits lifted at the familiar bustle.
‘DI Steel?’ the duty sergeant repeated, checking her list. ‘Yours is the second door along.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your office, ma’am. Second door along.’ She pointed to a series of doors leading off the Incident Room.
‘Thank you.’
Geraldine was pleased to discover she had her own tiny office, partitioned off from the main Incident Room by a flimsy internal wall. She tapped her keyboard and was relieved to find her computer had been set up. After checking her emails she scanned through several reports. A man had died in a gas explosion possibly under suspicious circumstances. Geraldine finished her reading and went back into the Incident Room.
The atmosphere was brisk. Officers were scurrying around, greeting one another, dodging people carrying computers and files, and questioning the harassed duty sergeant. Geraldine couldn’t see Peterson and didn’t recognise anyone else. She returned to her office and sat for a moment, wedged behind her desk, listening to the bustle on the other side of the partition wall. She was pleased to be back in the only environment where she felt at home. Deferring her paperwork, she manoeuvred her way back across the Incident Room. There was still time for a quiet coffee before the briefing. She needed to clear her head.
Glancing around the canteen, she spotted Peterson and was pleased when the detective sergeant’s face lit up on seeing her. Even in rest he exuded energy. Geraldine paused to return his grin before joining the short queue for coffee, their mutual pleasure at working together again expressed only in an exchange of smiles and a quick nod. It was enough.
As Geraldine sat down at Peterson’s table an older man came over to introduce himself as a local detective inspector, nearing retirement. He was investigating a spate of robberies in the area.
‘DI Steel?’ He looked down at her with a slow smile and Geraldine gestured for him to join them. Thin and leathery, he looked as though his life had been spent working outdoors.
As they sipped canteen coffee, Bennett told her about his case. ‘We’ve been on the trail of a gang of thieves for a few months and now we’ve had what looks like a case of aggravated burglary.’
‘Any leads?’ Peterson asked, his enthusiasm a stark contrast to the older officer’s indifference.
Bennett shook his head. ‘It’s been a case of one step forwards, two steps back, I’m afraid.’ Geraldine liked him, but couldn’t help wondering how effective he would be. Born out of his time, she imagined him content to pound the beat in a village, a friend to the local residents. ‘Until now, it’s been a few stolen antiques, watches, cash, fifty quid and such, small change really. Things they could pocket easily and fence without suspicion, all of which has made them difficult to trace. They’ve not been exactly a priority. You know how it is, so much time given over to drunken brawls. I’ve hardly had any uniform support at all. The death of the old woman changes things.’ He sighed wistfully. ‘I’m due for retirement soon. I could do without all this. A string of break-ins is trouble enough.’ Geraldine nodded sympathetically, hoping she would never lose her sense of excitement at the start of a new investigation. ‘I hear you’ve got Kathryn Gordon on the fire case,’ Bennett added.
‘Do you know her?’ Geraldine asked. Peterson smiled. Gordon was a sharp senior officer. Geraldine was in two minds about working with her again. Professionally, she would be the first to admit Gordon was first rate. On a personal level, Geraldine was anxious. She’d had a few run-ins with the detective chief inspector on their previous case.
‘If her reputation’s anything to go by, she’s a force to be reckoned with. You haven’t come across her?’ Bennett was asking. ‘Has the DIs quaking in their boots, I’ve heard,’ he added, with a rapid glance over his shoulder. Geraldine sipped her coffee. ‘But it’s only hearsay. I haven’t worked with her before.’
‘She’s the dog’s bollocks,’ Peterson said fervently.
Geraldine grunted and rose to her feet. ‘Best get there before the briefing begins,’ she said.
‘Plenty of time,’ Bennett replied, looking at his watch. Geraldine didn’t want to be late so Bennett obligingly led the way back to the Incident Room. Built like a runner, he was wiry rather than thin, his movements fluid.
They reached the Incident Room just as the briefing was about to begin. Geraldine studied the Incident Board. The faces of the victim and his widow looked back at her: a fair haired man with pinched features and a woman who stared intensely at the camera through thick lenses. Some DCIs preferred not to display pictures of murder victims after they had been killed. Such images were considered bad for morale. But Geraldine was more disturbed by photos of the victims before they died. ‘Look at me,’ the dead man’s face seemed to say. ‘You can see how contented I am with my life.’ A life that had come to an abrupt end. And it was Geraldine’s job to find out how that had happened.
10
DCI
The detective chief inspector rapped on the board for silence. She was wearing a pale green jacket
that seemed to drain her face of colour, heightening the clown-like effect of her flushed cheeks, but any impression of frailty was eclipsed by her blazing eyes. She wore no make up and her greying hair was cut in a practical bob along her jaw line.
‘Good morning, everyone,’ she said. The room was instantly silent. A female police constable dropped her pen and retrieved it, red-faced. ‘I’m your Senior Investigating Officer DCI Kathryn Gordon. Thomas Cliff died early this morning in an explosion at his home, 17 Harchester Close. A gas ring had been left on in the kitchen. Gas was leaking overnight. Mr Cliff entered the kitchen at approximately seven. The gas air mix had reached a critical level when it seems he lit a cigarette, causing an explosion.’ Gordon moved her arm further along. Her fingers trembled, almost imperceptibly, as they touched the board. ‘This is his widow, Sophie Cliff. She wasn’t home when the explosion occurred. She was called away at two twenty in the morning – this wasn’t unusual – but it was just about the time the Fire Investigation Team suspect the gas was turned on. She returned home shortly after the emergency vehicles arrived on the scene.’
Geraldine stared at Sophie Cliff’s photo as the DCI ran through details that confirmed Mrs Cliff had been called to work in the early hours of the morning.
‘Would she have known in advance when she might be called out in the night?’ someone asked.
The DCI nodded at a sergeant who had been on the phone to Sophie Cliff’s line manager.
‘She’d have known in advance which nights she’d be on call,’ the sergeant explained, ‘but not if she was going to be called out. If she was needed, she didn’t always have to go into work. Sometimes she could work on the system remotely from home. Some nights she wasn’t called on at all, so she couldn’t possibly have known beforehand if she was going to be called out of the house on any particular night.’
Road Closed Page 4