A Narrow Victory

by Faith Martin

  ‘I understand that your husband blamed Mr Olliphant for the crash, even though it was clearly proved that he’d been drinking and had been on the wrong side of the road at the time of the collision?’ Hillary said, careful to keep her voice level and free of accusation. ‘Did you believe him, Mrs Brandt?’

  And here the widow surprised her, because, after taking yet another sip of her tea, Margaret sighed and said, ‘Of course I didn’t. It was as clear as day that he’d been drinking, and going too fast.’

  She sighed and took another bite of her biscuit, meeting Hillary’s gaze head on. ‘I’d been in the car with him many times, Mrs Greene. He was a good driver, very competent, like. You know, when someone’s been driving for years, they just get good at it. My Willy was like that. But I ain’t daft, nor blind, and I could tell he often drove too fast, and was sometimes too confident that nothing bad would happen to him.’

  She sighed, drained her cup and put it down firmly onto the saucer in her hand. ‘I often said to him that he should take more care. There were other folks on the road, I’d say, and plenty of bad drivers too. But he wouldn’t listen. He was a good man, my Willy, but he was a man, you know? Couldn’t be told nothing. Especially by me.’

  Hillary nodded. Yes, she knew that sort of man all right. ‘Did you know he’d been drinking that day?’

  ‘No. Not so’s I’d notice. But then Willy always could hold his drink. You don’t think I go over that day in my head all the time? Wishing I’d stopped them from going?’ she demanded, some animation finally coming into her voice.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Hillary said softly. ‘I can’t imagine how bad it must have been for you. And I’m sorry to have to drag it all up again. But we have a job to do, you know. And I don’t approve of murder.’

  Margaret Brandt blinked at her, then her rounded shoulders slumped a bit. ‘No. No, course not. Me either. Nobody deserves to be done to death, do they? And that man had a mum and dad too, didn’t he? So I know how they must have felt. Our Mattie blamed us, of course. His dad most of all, of course, but me as well. I could tell. At Billy’s funeral …’ Her voice trailed off, and she swallowed hard. Then her shoulders stiffened again and she leaned forward and put her cup, saucer and half-eaten biscuit on the table.

  ‘By the time Willy got out of jail, Mattie had stopped coming over to see me altogether. He said he didn’t want to see his dad at all. He never visited him in jail, not even when he got moved to an open prison. So when Willy died, I decided there was no point staying on in the old house, so I asked the council for a transfer. My girl, Betty, lives in Bath – she’s our youngest. She never blamed me, not like the others did. And, well, she was always Daddy’s little girl, so she was pleased to have me near. She’s got kids so I come in useful as a babysitter. Maybe even be the babysitter when they’ve got young ’uns of their own. Always provided I’m still alive then, touch wood.’

  She leaned over and patted two chubby fingers on top of the table, which was formica, but had been patterned to look like wood.

  Hillary found herself wondering, inanely, if that counted.

  ‘So, here we are. Mattie and his wife had another little boy, you know. Six, seven years ago. I haven’t seen him. I wasn’t invited to the christening.’

  The last simple statement, said without pity or surprise, hung in the air for a moment, and Hillary wasn’t surprised to see Jake Barnes shift uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘So you didn’t blame Felix Olliphant for the accident that killed your Billy?’ Hillary pressed gently.

  ‘Course I didn’t, love. Weren’t his fault, was it? He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it hadn’t been him coming in the opposite direction it would have been some other poor sod. I saw him during the court case, you know. Seemed like a nice enough lad. And it had cut him up rough, like, what happened to our little Billy. You could see it on his face.’

  ‘But your husband did blame him,’ Hillary said. ‘In fact, didn’t he accuse him of paying off the other witness to the accident, a Mr Colin Harcourt?’

  Margaret Brandt shrugged her well-padded shoulders helplessly. ‘That was just Willy’s way of trying to cope with it all. Inside, he knew it was his fault. We all did. But he couldn’t live with it, see? So he had to make it somebody else’s fault, and the only one he could blame was the other driver. See?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hillary said simply. ‘Mrs Brandt, are you sure your husband didn’t go out that evening?’

  Margaret Brandt turned sad, defeated brown eyes on Hillary Greene and said simply, ‘Course I am, love. He was as drunk as a skunk long before midnight. I had to practically drag him up the stairs myself. He was snoring and dead to the world before I’d even managed to get him undressed. So you see, he was in no fit state to even get out of bed, let alone find and kill that man.’

  ‘So that seems to be that,’ Jake Barnes said a few minutes later, as the early evening sun began to mellow and they drove back towards Oxford.

  ‘If you believe her,’ Hillary pointed out.

  Jake took his eyes off the road long enough to take a quick glance at her. ‘I thought she was telling the truth, guv. Not that I’m saying my instincts are always right, mind, but she didn’t strike me as the killing type.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘No, I’m not saying that she is. Or even the aiding and abetting type, come to that. And for what it’s worth, I believed her too. But it’s not about what we think, is it? Besides, for all we know, Margaret Brandt might be such a good actress, she could put Dame Judi Dench to shame.’

  Jake grinned. ‘Guv.’

  ‘It’s all about what we can prove.’ She carried on the lesson grimly. ‘And remember, always keep an open mind. So, although we put her and her now deceased husband to the bottom of the pile, we don’t rule them out altogether. Got it?’

  ‘Got it, guv.’

  As they drove back towards HQ, so that Hillary could pick up her ancient Volkswagen and head on home, Steven Crayle was just being shown into Commander Marcus Donleavy’s office.

  It didn’t take the two men long to conclude their business. Steven found himself agreeing to be interviewed by a selection panel by the end of the month. But they both knew that was a mere formality – barring any major snafus.

  ‘So how’s Hillary taking it?’ Donleavy asked, as the two men rose and shook hands on it.

  Steven looked at him sharply. Now what the hell sort of a question was that? ‘She’s all for it, sir. She’s happy for me, and wants me to get the promotion. As you’d expect.’

  Commander Donleavy nodded, not a flicker of expression crossing his urbane face. ‘Good, good. Well, I’ll let you get on.’

  Steven left his office stony-faced. If the commander had been angling to be let in on the state of their relationship, he could bloody well angle as much as he liked. It was none of his damned business how he and Hillary were coping.

  Or not.

  Besides, he had his own ideas on that.

  On the way to Thrupp, Steven pulled off to pop into Tesco and collect the makings of a nice dinner. When he arrived at the Mollern, he was a little surprised to see that he was the first to arrive. It was gone five, and he’d have expected Hillary to be back by now. But he wasn’t worried, and it would give him time to get the dinner under way.

  He put the pre-made coq-au-vin dishes in the oven and put it on, and washed the mange tout and baby carrots. He set the tiny table with the best china, and folded some paper napkins inside two wine glasses. He had a little trouble finding a vase to take the mixed bunch of flowers that he’d bought, but when he set them in the centre of the table they looked suitably romantic.

  He was just setting the coffee machine to percolate when he felt the narrowboat rock a little and heard her coming down the metal stairs in the stern.

  Hillary followed her nose, which had picked up the delicious scent of cooking chicken, and her eyes went at once to the table.

  Even as she did so, he was reaching out to light two
candles that he’d found in her emergency storage tin, in case the batteries on the boat ran down. She felt her mouth go dry.

  So this was it then, she thought fatalistically. The now almost legendary breaking-up dinner. Although she’d never had to sit through one personally, she knew how it went all right. First, the big romantic scene – hence the candlelight and flowers. A lovely meal to follow. Plenty of wine, get them nice and squiffy. And then the gentle let-down. That’s how it went, wasn’t it?

  She shrugged off her jacket and tossed her case under one of the armchairs. Her spine was stiffening and her face was forming itself into a bland smile when he said, ‘I thought we’d celebrate. I accepted the job offer. Donleavy’s set up the interview, but he all but promised me the job, and promotion in due course.’

  Hillary let out a long, slow breath. So, it was to be a stay of execution then. But that made sense. As he’d pointed out before, it would be two months at least before he left. Why risk pissing her off by dumping her before then, when they still had to work together for another eight weeks?

  ‘That’s great,’ she said, reaching out for a wine glass and unceremoniously dumping the napkin inside it onto the table. ‘Let’s drink to your success.’ She waggled the glass at him.

  Steven looked at the napkin lying haphazardly on the table, and then at her slightly tight, forced smile.

  ‘Red or white? I bought both,’ he said quietly.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jake Barnes was also drinking wine that night, but he was sitting behind a large, antique inlaid walnut desk as he did so. And his glass was full with the offering of a certain vineyard in Bordeaux that was rather famous for the quality of its product.

  After a few appreciative mouthfuls, he reached down to one of the drawers on his right, which had a much more sturdy and complicated lock than the original builder of the desk would have envisaged. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a gold Albert watch chain, and from a collection of keys on this chain he selected a small, ornately carved one, and unlocked the desk drawer.

  Putting his hand inside, he picked out a heavy and bulky folder and put in on top of the desk. He was not normally into hard copies of anything, like much of his generation, preferring cyberspace, but some things he simply didn’t want on computer files. Knowing first hand just how vulnerable they could be, he had to concede that paper and ink still had its uses in the 21st century.

  He took another sip of the expensive but exquisite wine and contemplated the idea of installing a proper safe. So far he hadn’t done so, but then so far there hadn’t really been a reason too. He didn’t keep real valuables in the house, and nobody knew about the contents of this particular folder, so nobody had any reason to be afraid of it, or steal it.

  But, in the months to come, that might all change. He thought about it for a moment, wondering if he was being melodramatic, and then gave a small smile and a shrug. Perhaps he was, but then again, perhaps he wasn’t. Besides, as his old gran had always said, it was better to have something and not need it than need it but not have it.

  Taking out a small Dictaphone from the unlocked drawer above the one already open, he made a note for his private secretary, a tall, very attractive Dane, who came in twice a week to see to his personal correspondence. And anything else they might mutually feel the need to take care of.

  ‘Trude, I want you to find me a capable security or locksmith company that can install, hide and monitor a safe for me. It can be in any room in the house, set in the floor or walls, or any other smart place of their choosing. It doesn’t have to be big, no more than say …’ Here he switched off the tape, thought about it for a second, then switched the button back on and gave his roughly calculated measurements. ‘There’s no great hurry but I do need it installed within a month. You can promise them a bonus if that’s too short notice for them. Naturally, I rely on you to be discreet about this.’ Here he grinned rather wolfishly. ‘As always. Ta, love.’

  He switched off the machine and left it on his desk where she’d be bound to see it and check it the next time she came in.

  Pushing the half-empty glass of wine aside, he pulled the folder to him and began to go through its contents. Nothing in it was new to him, of course. He’d been through it all before. Sometimes many, many times, and he knew that it wasn’t good to be this obsessive. Which didn’t stop him from looking through it again now.

  The bulk of the file was taken up with copies from newspaper articles. Some papers were the transcripts from court cases that were in the public domain and the rarest of all were the files he’d commissioned from three various firms of private inquiry agencies over the years.

  For a while, Jake Barnes sat and stared down at the photographs of a man, which the private eyes had taken with long-distance lenses. Not that he could blame them for taking the photographs from a long way away. The man depicted in them was dangerous. Very dangerous. And everyone knew it, including Jake. He’d had to pay the private agencies vast sums of money to do even the tentative amount of investigation that they had agreed to do. Even then, he was not sure just how diligent they’d been. After all, nobody in their right mind wanted to get on the bad side of this particular individual, and if he’d found out that somebody was snooping into his life, personal or professional, the consequences would no doubt be very dire indeed.

  Now he sighed as yet again he burned the image of the man into his retinas.

  ‘Soon, you bastard,’ Jake murmured, reaching for his expensive glass of wine and sipping it slowly. ‘Nobody’s untouchable. Not even you.’ This he truly believed, but he would have been less than honest if he hadn’t acknowledged that his heart thumped just a bit harder with suppressed fear.

  Not that he’d let his own cowardice stop him. And now that he was in at the CRT, and had access to Hillary Greene’s computer, things could finally start to move.

  But carefully. And slowly. And thoroughly.

  Jake Barnes was nobody’s mug, and he didn’t intend to get caught out, either by the police or by the thug in the photographs.

  He closed the folder with a sigh and put it back in his locked drawer. The night was drawing in and his study-cum-library was beginning to get gloomy, but he made no move to get up to turn on a light.

  Instead, he reviewed his progress so far.

  For the longest while, he’d felt utterly helpless and hopeless. Despair and rage and frustration had almost eaten him alive. Until he’d forced himself to think – which was something a lot of people had always said he did best.

  And after thinking long and hard, he’d had to concede that there was no way he could take on the likes of the enemy and his gang on his own. And a direct appeal to the police had already proved useless. Luckily, that appeal had been made by someone else, so his name had never been mentioned. Which was now just as well.

  So he’d started, as the saying went, to think outside the box. And outside the box, it turned out, had led to him joining the CRT.

  Jake Barnes contemplated Detective Superintendent Steven Crayle’s small team within a team, and weighed them up. Sam Pickles was negligible. Besides, Jake was almost sure that he’d be leaving them soon. Zoe Turnbull, likewise, was a non-starter. She was too green to be of use. And besides, there was no way Jake was going to let her stick her neck out and catch the attention of the likes of the man he was hunting. No, especially not Zoe, he mused grimly. Young, pretty, vulnerable girls were the very prey that his enemy was on the lookout for.

  Not that Zoe would consider herself vulnerable, Jake thought, with a sudden brief smile. After a moment that same smile quickly fled because of course, whether she believed it or not, she was vulnerable.

  And nobody knew that better than Jake.

  Jimmy Jessop was another matter altogether. The retired sergeant was a man of vast experience, whose quiet exterior, in Jake’s view, hid a vast depth of knowledge, hard-headed scepticism and cunning. There was something knowing and competent in that quiet, steady gaze of the old-ti
mer that both reassured and intrigued Jake.

  It was just a shame that he was too old. Like Zoe, Jake couldn’t risk putting him in the orbit of his target. Not that Jimmy Jessop would object, Jake was sure. In fact, even though he’d only known him a short time, Jake would have bet a sizeable amount of his fortune that if he confided in the old man just who it was that he had in his sights, then Jimmy would have been straining at the leash to help. Taking down the man whose photographs littered Jake’s files and nightmares would be a copper’s dream come true.

  But he was just too old. What if he got caught out by one of the thugs working for their quarry? There’s no way he could take a beating, not at his age. He’d probably end up having a heart attack or something, and that wasn’t something Jake wanted to have to live with.

  Which left Steven Crayle and Hillary Greene.

  Jake thought he understood Steven Crayle well enough. The instant he’d met him on the interview panel he’d picked him out as top dog. Behind the well-groomed exterior, there lurked a man with a mind like a diamond – cold, hard and probably at times quite brilliant. And a man like that had ambitions. Consequently, the CRT had to be a stepping stone for him, on his way to bigger and better things.

  Which, in itself, was no bad thing for Jake. A man like the superintendent would see Jake’s quarry as a glittering prize, simply because to be the man who took him down would mean instant and widespread kudos, not to mention an almost certain promotion.

  But therein, probably, also lay the snag. Steven Crayle was just too ambitious to go off-grid. If he found out what Jake was up to, he’d instantly take it higher up to the top brass. And they’d pull the plug on him faster than Jake could phone for his solicitors.

  No, much as he would have liked to have had Steven Crayle onside, he knew he had to work around the superintendent.