A Narrow Victory

by Faith Martin

  ‘No, never met him,’ Tommy said.

  ‘But he was a dish,’ her twin added.

  ‘Bobby!’

  ‘Well, he was. We’d both clocked him at the party. Old Ma Querida had introduced him to us as the divine man who’d fengshuied her house, whatever the hell that meant, and we both fancied him rotten.’

  ‘True,’ her twin conceded.

  ‘But you never approached him?’ Hillary put in, trying to corral the two women into giving at least the beginnings of a coherent statement.

  ‘Oh no. He was old. Well, to us he was old. Bit out of our league. Besides, his girlfriend was there,’ Bobby said, ‘and she gave us the evil eye whenever we went near him.’ She giggled helplessly.

  ‘Or any other woman for that matter. Old gorgon eyes we called her,’ Tommy agreed, with a giggle that utterly matched that of her twin.

  Zoe blinked. They were having her on, right? This had to be a wind-up. She looked at her boss, who sat blank faced beside her.

  Hillary no longer wondered why neither of the Gregory girls had married, and resigned herself to this odd two-way conversation.

  ‘Did you see him drinking much?’ she asked Tommy.

  Both girls shrugged. ‘Only Mr Olliphant had a high level of alcohol in his bloodstream,’ Hillary persisted doggedly.

  Bobby giggled. ‘Didn’t we all? The foxy bartender was kept busy all right.’

  ‘Oh yes. The foxy bartender!’ Tommy put her hand on her twin’s arm and the women burst out laughing again.

  ‘So he must have been drinking at some point.’ Hillary kept them firmly on track. ‘Did you see anyone maybe spiking his orange juice?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did you notice Felix arguing with anyone at the party?’ Hillary gamely soldiered on.

  ‘Oh no,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Oh no,’ Bobby said.

  ‘OK.’ Hillary bit back a sigh. ‘When you went to the bedroom for your coats, did you see anyone hanging around outside?’

  ‘Nope, it was just us. We had to leave early; we promised Mummy and Daddy we’d be back by one,’ Bobby said. ‘Well, half past anyway.’

  ‘That’s the only reason they let us go to the party in the first place. That, and because old Ma Querida was, like, Mummy’s oldest friend ever, and we were eighteen by then,’ her twin added.

  ‘OK. Well, thank you for your time, Miss Gregory.’ She nodded at the woman in lime green, ‘And, er, Miss Gregory,’ Hillary added to the other woman in buttercup yellow.

  Both of them smiled brightly back at her.

  ‘I hope we helped,’ Tommy said brightly.

  Or was it Bobby?

  Once they were back outside, Zoe burst out laughing. And after a moment or two, Hillary simply had to join her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  That evening, Zoe Turnbull drove to the nearby village of Bregbroke where she was currently renting a small flat. Well, she liked to call it a flat but in reality it was a converted two-car garage with a clever mezzanine level with just about enough room for a double bed.

  As she pulled her Mini off the busy dual carriageway that bisected the little community, she glanced at her watch: 5.30, not a bad time to be rolling home, she thought, pleased both with her working hours and how the day had gone. It had been nice to finally see some proper police action instead of being assigned boring office work again.

  She parked the car under a rather inadequate carport and let herself into the small combined living area/cooking/dining room. ‘Hello, gorgeous, you home yet or am I the first?’

  As she called out, a small face, almost hidden by a river of straight, jet black hair, appeared over the top of the mezzanine railing, confirming her suspicions that Lui had been skiving off her lectures again.

  ‘Hello, Miss PC Plod, I wasn’t expecting you back yet.’ Lui raced down the spiral stairs towards Zoe, her arms already out in welcome. The Chinese student was barely five foot two, slim as a reed, and was currently dressed in ragged denim cut-off shorts and a white T-shirt.

  The two women kissed warmly.

  ‘Not so much of the sarcasm, if you please,’ Zoe said with a grin, glancing towards the kitchen area – which was, not surprisingly, devoid of any culinary activity. ‘What, no dinner on the go for the triumphant, returning breadwinner?’ Zoe said, a shade sarcastically.

  Lui’s pretty face flushed. ‘I’ve only just got back from college myself. That Professor Carter is a slavedriver. I have to do the essay on Donne all over again, he says.’

  Zoe sighed. Lui was a looker all right, and had that oriental mystery vibe thing going for her in spades, but ever since she’d moved in with her, Zoe had come to realize that she was also a chronically lazy little madam.

  ‘I’ll start a stir fry going,’ she said, with exaggerated long-suffering patience, earning a smile from her lover. ‘At least you don’t giggle,’ Zoe said, then found herself giggling instead.

  Lui looked a little put out, not to mention puzzled. ‘I never giggle.’

  ‘No, gorgeous, I know,’ Zoe said, and found herself talking about the Gregory twins. As she did so, she had the vaguely uneasy feeling that Hillary Greene wouldn’t have approved. She’d been read the standard lecture by Sexy Steven on her first day, of course, that you never discussed work, especially an ongoing investigation, with anyone outside of the office – and that included your nearest and dearest. But surely it didn’t matter in this instance? She was sure – well, almost sure – that Hillary didn’t seriously suspect the twee twins of bumping off their murder victim.

  Besides, Lui loved hearing all about Zoe’s adventures which, since she’d started working for the Thames Valley Police, always seemed to be so much more interesting than doing a boring BA in English lit.

  As the two girls helped and hindered each other in their tiny kitchen, Zoe was careful not to mention any other details of the case. Which wasn’t easy, since Lui was fascinated, and quite clearly jealous, to hear that Zoe’s very first case with her ‘proper’ boss had turned out to be a matter of murder.

  As Zoe teased her lover by withholding information, Hillary Green was busy updating her lover on every detail of the case so far.

  They were at Steven’s house on the outskirts of Kidlington, also in the kitchen and preparing a meal. In her case, however, she had a view of the willow trees at the back of his garden that lined the Oxford canal as it meandered south towards the city. And her shop talk was not only permissible, but essential.

  ‘So, nothing striking you so far then?’ Steven concluded for her as he chopped the carrots and watched her sprinkling something herb-like over the stewing steak she’d bought on her way home.

  ‘Not really. The whole is-he-or-isn’t-he-gay thing is a bit of a curiosity, but not necessarily relevant.’ She poured stock into the casserole dish and shoved it in the oven. ‘I mean, if he is gay, why would he be in the closet? It would hardly have affected his job prospects and his father didn’t seem the kind to be shell-shocked about something like that. From the way he talked, I don’t think his mother would have cared overmuch either.’

  ‘No one suspect standing out?’

  ‘Give me a chance, we’ve barely started,’ Hillary said with a grin. She reached out for the carrots he’d finished chopping and tumbled them into a saucepan of salted water, asking casually, ‘So, what did the great silver shark want?’

  Steven grinned. ‘As opposed to the great white, huh? I take it you’re referring to our beloved commander and leader?’

  Hillary grinned. ‘That’s him all right.’

  Steven took the small glass of wine that he’d been sipping at meagrely all night, watching her carefully over the rim. ‘It’s like we thought. He wanted to offer me promotion. Well, not outright promotion, not yet anyway. I’ll stay superintendent. But Oxford’s setting up a new task force targeting rings that are grooming young girls, mostly from care homes, into enforced prostitution, and they want experienced officers to head it
up.’

  Hillary let out a long slow breath. ‘I thought it might be something like that.’ Ever since high-profile cases throughout the country in the past couple of years had highlighted the plight of young girls being abused in this way, the public demand that something be done about it had made it almost inevitable that such task forces would be created.

  And people like Steven would be needed to oversee them.

  ‘You’d be top banana, I take it?’ Hillary probed gently.

  Steven took another careful sip. ‘I would. And, in due course, providing the new team gets good results, a promotion within a year, two at the tops, is almost certain to follow.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Something that’s not going to happen at CRT,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  ‘No. Donleavy congratulated me on setting it up and getting it running and starting to produce good results. But now all it really needs is someone to run with the ball for a few years to really establish it.’

  ‘And Donleavy thinks somebody else can do that.’

  ‘He does. Someone who needs to put in a few years and learn what running a small team is all about, before moving on. He thinks I’m wasted staying on there now and that it’s high time I let the brass see what I’m really capable of. His words, not mine.’

  ‘But you agree?’

  Steven sighed and rubbed his forehead. ‘Six months ago, I’d have agreed like a shot. It’s a bit of a no-brainer, isn’t it? Stay in CRT and stagnate. Or move onward and upwards to an exciting new job where promotion, provided I don’t royally screw it up, is almost guaranteed.’

  Hillary turned down the saucepan under the now-boiling carrots and looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Six months ago you’d have thought that? What, but not now?’ she asked sceptically, one eyebrow rising.

  Steven smiled. ‘Now, all I’m saying is, there are other things to be considered,’ he corrected her quietly. He was no mug – he could see that she wasn’t taking this as calmly as she appeared to be. And the last thing he wanted to do was get on her bad side.

  Hillary leaned back against one of the worktops and slowly folded her arms across her chest, unaware that her body language was now screaming caution and wariness to the man who was watching her so intently over his wine glass.

  ‘Such as?’ she asked calmly. ‘If it were me in your position, I wouldn’t hesitate. You’re clearly up for a new challenge and Donleavy just as clearly rates you. You’d be mad to turn it down.’

  Steven sighed gently. She obviously wasn’t in the mood to make it easy for him. ‘If I leave CRT, I won’t be your boss anymore.’ He stated the obvious boldly, getting the big fat elephant in the room out there in the open where they could both take a good, long hard look at it.

  Hillary shrugged one shoulder casually. ‘No doubt that’s one of the reasons why Donleavy offered you the job in the first place,’ she said flatly. ‘Like most of the top brass, he doesn’t feel comfortable having two senior officers on the same squad also sharing a personal relationship. And yes, I know, technically, I’m a civilian now, so it shouldn’t count. But we both know that it does.’

  Steven nodded wordlessly.

  ‘So, what does it matter if you stop being my boss?’ Hillary went on calmly, reaching for a glass and pouring out some wine of her own. Unlike Steven, however, she took a hefty swig. ‘Does it really matter?’

  Steven Crayle heard the aggression behind the words, and sighed again. ‘Not to me,’ he said levelly. ‘There’s no reason why it should affect us at all. Right?’

  Hillary Greene smiled. ‘Well, then, problem solved. Take the new job and get the promotion. It’s what you want, and what you deserve. Now, do you want rice with the beef, or a baked potato?’

  As Hillary Greene pretended that nothing was wrong, in his north Oxford mansion Jake Barnes was about to order a take-out. The telephone rang just as he approached it.

  He picked it up, moving with the cordless handset towards a large Chesterfield sofa that sat squarely in front of an original Adams fireplace. He sat down and smiled gently at the familiar feminine voice coming over the line. As he listened, he stretched his long legs out in front of him and rubbed the back of his neck wearily.

  ‘I’m fine, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going more or less as I thought it would.’

  He listened to the worried voice, a small frown creasing his dark brows. ‘No, I told you, you’re worrying about nothing. Yes, I’ve met her now, she’s back off holiday.’ He paused, listened, and sighed again. ‘Like I said, she’s smart, very smart. Which is actually good. For us, I mean. We want her to be smart. If I can get her on side, she’s going to be very useful to us.’

  He glanced out of the window to where a small green garden backed on to Five Mile Drive, a leafy, cherry-tree-lined avenue on Oxford’s exclusive northern edge.

  ‘Well, she’s more wary than I had hoped,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘I don’t know if I’ve done something to make her particularly suspicious or whether she’s just got a good nose for trouble. But she’s certainly giving me the impression that she’s keeping an eye on me. It’s not going to be easy getting her to trust me.’

  He listened to the somewhat indignant tone of the woman on the other end of the line, and laughed gently. ‘Now, that’s hardly fair, is it? As far as she’s concerned, I’m the new boy with everything to prove. And it makes sense that she doesn’t trust me yet. Let’s face it, it’s her job to be cautious. And having a rich kid forced on her isn’t going to make her feel exactly happily predisposed towards me, is it? I think she’s just expecting me to be a know-it-all smart-arse, and I’ll just have to be patient and show her my good points, that’s all.’

  He took a long slow breath, and for a few minutes let the caller give free rein to her feelings. Finally, though, he interrupted her.

  ‘Look, it’s like I told you at the start. Nothing is going to happen quickly – we always knew that. And now that I’ve met Inspector Greene for myself, I can tell you that’s definitely true,’ he added ruefully. ‘And while she’s keeping an eye on me, and trying to find out what my angle is, I’m going to have to be even more careful than we thought. You know, keep my head down, do the work, take my time and pick my moment. But that’s OK too, because the more I learn about the job, the better. That’ll only help us in the long run. What?’ He listened, and shook his head, although he knew his caller couldn’t see him. ‘No, even that’s to our advantage really. Hillary Greene was a really successful copper, and after only working with her for a day or so, I can see why. And that’s what we need too, right? Someone really good being on our side. Besides, I’m going to learn a lot from her, and the more she teaches me, the better my chances are of finding something out that we can use. And the better I get at police work, and the more she sees that she can rely on me, the less wary she’s going to be about things. And then, when she’s not constantly watching me, I can start making my move.’

  He reached forward and lifted up the TV remote, pressing the mute button and then selecting the BBC1 news programme. As he watched the silent images, he listened intently to the woman on the other end of the line.

  ‘You let me worry about that,’ he said sharply. ‘She’s smart but she’s hardly a mind-reader. She won’t find out what I’m really there for because I won’t let her. I’m smart too, remember?’ He laughed softly at something she said, then nodded.

  ‘Exactly. Besides, don’t forget, she’ll want to be on our side anyway when she knows the truth. So even if she does figure it out eventually, by then, with a bit of luck, she’ll be willing to actually help. And if not … well—’ Jake Barnes shrugged graphically. ‘I’ve still got a lot of money and a lot of clout. And Hillary Greene isn’t a serving officer anymore, which makes her vulnerable.’

  Jake’s eyes narrowed on the television screen.

  ‘Which means that, if I have to, I can either work around her or get her taken out of my way. So stop worrying, OK? Yes, I’ll talk to you soon. Love
you too.’

  He disconnected the phone and for a moment or two tapped it thoughtfully against his lips. Then he shrugged and turned up the volume on the television.

  The next morning, Hillary woke up rather late on her boat after a long and disturbed night’s sleep. Consequently, she felt heavy-eyed and vaguely depressed as she got dressed and headed in to work.

  Her mind, which should have been on thoughts of Felix Olliphant, and how to go about finding out who’d killed him and why, kept straying instead to Steven Crayle, and it was annoying her. Mightily.

  In spite of what she’d said to him, asserting that things wouldn’t change between them, how would it really feel to drive to work knowing that he wouldn’t be there at the office waiting for her? And once he was working from Oxford, how often, realistically, would they see each other? Especially if he was working hard for a promotion, which meant long hours, as she well knew.

  For all their talk that the new job wouldn’t change things between them, they both knew that it would. So where did that leave them?

  Her sense of vague depression thickened suddenly, and she found her throat starting to ache as she swallowed back something hard that had settled just below her sternum.

  So when she stalked into the HQ lobby entrance, the desk sergeant took one look at her closed, pale face, and bit back the cheerful insult that had been hovering on his lips.

  So the rumours that Superintendent Crayle was on his way up and out of Kidlington HQ looked like they might be true, he mused. He’d have to call his mate in records and see what he knew.

  Hillary, unaware of the speculation and gossip that was already beginning to trickle its way through the Big House, made her way to her office, where she forced herself to read the murder book for any updates. Although both her new recruits had diligently kept it concurrent, there was nothing in it yet to attract her attention.

  Which needed to change. Get your mind off your precarious love life, my girl, and concentrate on the victim, she snarled grimly at herself. And in that frame of mind she marched towards the communal office. There, she looked around the small room, her eyes hesitating over Jake Barnes, before turning to Zoe.