by Faith Martin
Which left him with Hillary Greene.
Jake Barnes slowly sipped the last of his wine, contemplated having another drink, and then decided it wouldn’t be a good idea. He needed to keep a perfectly clear head. Like their murder victim, Felix Olliphant, Jake had never been a particularly avid drinker anyway.
The thought of his first murder case brought his mind once again to Hillary Greene. Who was, in Jake’s growing estimation, little short of a phenomenon.
It was hard to imagine that he’d only known her a few days.
Before joining CRT he’d spent many weeks researching her with a growing sense of hope and excitement, and thought he’d managed to get a good grasp of the sort of person she’d turn out to be. A bit of a maverick, he’d decided. She had the approval of the top brass but he’d sensed a certain reservation between her and them – on both sides. A bit of a hard nut, maybe – she couldn’t win medals for bravery and close as many murder cases as she had without having iron in her backbone. And that nearly-ex, fully dead, bent copper of a husband of hers, Ronnie Greene, had intrigued him most of all. Among other things, it had led to her being investigated for corruption as well. And yet, in spite of all that, he hadn’t been in the Big House for more than a couple of days before he understood that the rank and file really rated her, and regarded her as their own personal heroine. Rumours abounded about her standing by Janine Tyler when everyone else was willing to throw her to the wolves, for instance. And while nobody had truly understood the reasons behind her retirement, everyone had cheered when she’d come back.
And now that he’d finally met her, and was working with her…. Jake leaned back in his chair and stretched, linking his hands behind his head, elbows bent at acute right angles either side of his head as he regarded the ornate chandelier hanging from the library ceiling, and its pretty plaster rose.
Yes, now that he’d met her, he couldn’t help but be impressed.
She’d been all that he suspected she would be, and probably more. There was an inner core to her, a determination to succeed that he recognized only too well from looking in a mirror, and that caused him to feel equal measures of excitement and concern.
She clearly hated and had contempt for villains, which was a magnificent bonus. For all their quiet, seeming lack of progress so far, she was like a rat with a terrier regarding the Olliphant case. And although Zoe seemed to doubt that they were actually getting anywhere near to solving it, Jake would have bet money on Hillary Greene closing this case as well.
All of which made him very happy indeed.
Because Jake had no doubt that Hillary Greene knew all about the man whose photographs adorned his files. What copper in the area didn’t? And she would burn to take him down. Better still, she was qualified to do it. Jake had no doubt at all that the thought of taking him on wouldn’t make Hillary Greene so much as blink or think twice. What’s more, as a civilian, she wasn’t as shackled to the rule book as their mutual bosses. And she’d already proved her willingness to cross the line when it needed to be crossed.
Which meant all that Jake had to do was find a way to let her do it. To steer her in that direction and do all that he could to help her. After all, some of the cold cases languishing in the files must have that bastard’s MO written all over them, so it would be a legitimate exercise if he could think of a way to make sure that just one such file landed on her desk. She probably wouldn’t even care about him manipulating it all. Providing they got to put the bastard away.
Yes, Hillary Greene, Jake knew, was his best chance, because she wasn’t a young, vulnerable girl, or an old man. She was smart, and hard, and determined. And, if Jake could just figure out the best way to use her, she’d help him to get everything that he wanted.
Realizing that it was now fully dark, and that he’d been sitting alone for some time, Jake got up, carried his wine glass through to his sparkling, underused kitchen, then went upstairs for a shower.
After that, he went downtown, in search of dinner and a woman.
The next morning, Jake was in very early, only to find Jimmy Jessop already there ahead of him. He was a shade surprised and not a bit miffed, since he’d hoped to spend an hour in Hillary’s office on her computer. It not being a portable laptop, he had no other option but to use it in situ, and although he knew he could use her password anytime on another terminal, he preferred to use hers. That way, just in case there was any comeback, all links would lead back to Hillary’s machine.
So seeing the old man sitting at the large, communal desk (which was two big desks pushed together) made him grit his teeth.
Jimmy looked up at him and smiled.
Jake did a quick double-take. Was it his imagination or was there a knowing glint in the old man’s eye?
‘Hello, Robin, you’re up bright and early,’ Jimmy said. ‘After the worm, are you?’
‘Robin? Oh, right.’ Jake grinned. ‘There’s nothing special on, is there? Only… .’ He glanced pointedly at his watch, which showed it to be ten minutes before seven o’clock.
‘No, not for you. Me and Sam are hot on Knocker Clarke’s trail though,’ Jimmy said genially. ‘Hoping to nab his collar later today, all going well, so I thought I’d make sure I had all my ducks lined up in a row. The DI in Robbery is the sort who needs his hand holding. And you? It’s not like Hillary to demand that anyone gets in before she does.’
‘Oh no, just wanted to go through the murder book.’
Jimmy Jessop nodded and watched the young man take his seat and retrieve the folder. He also noticed the slight tense line to Jake’s jaw, and smiled widely, revealing straight, white, even dentures.
‘Very wise,’ Jimmy said mildly.
When Hillary rolled in at nine o’clock on the dot, with Zoe just behind her, Jake Barnes had managed to work his way into a marginally better mood.
‘OK. Jake, what can you tell me about Colin Harcourt?’ Hillary began, without preamble.
‘This is the witness to the car crash between our victim and William Brandt, right?’ Zoe piped up as she settled herself down at her own spot on the desk.
‘Right,’ Hillary confirmed. ‘Last time we spoke about him,’ she carried on, turning her attention back to the Boy Wonder, ‘you were a bit intrigued by the amount of income he seemed to have?’
Jake frowned slightly. ‘Sort of, guv. As you know, Harcourt owned a double glazing company at the time. Not a big outfit, just him and three employees. He worked more or less out of an office in his back garden, which was little more than a converted shed. Rented a space in an industrial complex nearby for the storage of the actual windows and doors and whatnot. A typical small business, in fact: simple, with low overheads.’
‘Right. So what tweaked your antenna exactly?’ Hillary asked, then added sharply, ‘You have been preparing the financial assessments I asked you for?’
‘Yes, guv. That’s when I ran across the discrepancy. Well, if it is a discrepancy.’
Zoe rose a theatrically black eyebrow, which had a gold ring piercing at one end of it. Today she was wearing a black leather biker’s jacket, studded with brass tacks that formed the shape of a skull on the back, with a contrasting exceedingly feminine white lacy top underneath. With it, she was wearing a pair of velveteen bloomers that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Venetian-themed party, with a pair of white sandals that were so wispy-looking they seemed to be made almost entirely out of spaghetti straps. Her face was made up with the usual lashings of mascara and black eyeshadow.
‘Sounds mysterious to me,’ she mocked.
Jake smiled thinly. ‘There’s no sign that Felix Olliphant paid him off, guv, like William Brandt claimed. That’s not what I’m saying. During the eighties and nineties, his firm did well and made steady profits. And after our victim was murdered, there wasn’t any wild spending either. But as you know, since the credit crunch, things have been tight. Harcourt was—’ He quickly checked a little palm-sized gizmo in his hand ‘—right, forty-eight at t
he time of the crash. And according to his tax returns, he’s only just retired now. Four months ago in fact. But before that, like everyone else, his company must have begun to feel the squeeze. When times are tight, people cut back on non-essential things first – like getting new double glazing, or fitting new doors or conservatories. But from what I’ve been able to tell, Harcourt’s company didn’t go to the wall. In fact, he sold it, for a very small profit.’
Hillary was nodding. ‘Right. So you’re wondering why a small, not particularly recession-proof company, was able to last so long?’
‘Right, guv. Plus the fact that Harcourt’s personal spending doesn’t seem to have decreased any. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
‘Why he hasn’t been tightening his belt like the rest of us?’ Hillary said, nodding. ‘Yes. It’s certainly interesting.’
‘What, you think Saint Felix really did bribe him to lie about the accident?’ Zoe asked, somewhat irreverently.
‘Nobody’s calling him a saint,’ Hillary said sharply. ‘And remember, the man’s dead and can’t defend himself. And no, I don’t really see how that would make sense either. From the accident report, the tyre marks, and everything else, it seems perfectly clear that Brandt was at fault. So why would he have needed to bribe Harcourt in the first place?’
Zoe, having flushed a little at the reprimand, rallied and shrugged one leather-clad shoulder. ‘You’ll just have to ask him, guv, won’t you?’
‘Yes, I suppose I will,’ Hillary agreed dryly. ‘Jake, where’s he living nowadays?’
‘Olney, guv. A town not far from Milton Keynes. Know it?’
‘Aren’t they famous for holding a pancake race every Shrove Tuesday?’ Hillary asked, but both Zoe and Jake looked at her blankly.
‘Philistines,’ she muttered darkly. ‘Don’t you know anything about your own folk history?’
Zoe grinned.
‘OK, Jake, we’ll go and talk to the not very skint Mr Harcourt. Zoe, track down our foxy bartender and make sure he’ll be in to see us. We’ll get around to him sometime after lunch – say between two and three. And don’t take no for an answer. I noticed in DI Varney’s notes that he mentioned that Peter Goodman seemed the nervous sort. That wasn’t surprising – he was only just eighteen at the time, and probably hadn’t been doing bartending for long. Suddenly finding himself in the middle of a police investigation probably spooked him. He’s probably older, tougher and far more cynical nowadays, but just in case he’s still of a nervous disposition, don’t let him wriggle out of the interview. Tell him we can square it with whoever his employer is if he’s going to be at work.’
‘Right, guv,’ Zoe promised. ‘And I hope he’s the sort who only got better looking with age. Like George Clooney, or David Tennant.’
Jake snorted and shook his head. Hillary was still smiling over the younger girl’s wishful thinking as they made their way upstairs towards the beautiful Jag. Every time she saw the classic lines of the sleek sports car, she felt a pang of disloyalty towards Puff.
But damn, that car was fine.
Olney was a pleasant enough market town but Colin Harcourt had retired to a small, rather featureless cul-de-sac of new-build detached houses, that were trying so hard to all look original and individual from one another, that they only succeeded in looking uniform.
The mix of stone, brick, different coloured tiles and choice of hard landscaping made Hillary feel vaguely depressed as they located the Harcourt residence. Even though the sun was shining with late summer warmth, and the air was filled with the drone of bees and floating seeds, Hillary felt herself surprised by the lack of atmosphere in the colourful flower beds and the newly planted cherry trees that lined the roads.
Colin Harcourt turned out to be a man of medium size, with hair that was not quite white, not quite grey, and eyes that were not quite green and not quite hazel. He was neither thin nor fat, nor dressed particularly well, or particularly poorly.
He seemed only mildly surprised to see them on his doorstep, and immediately invited them in when they explained who they were and why they were calling on him.
‘I hope you don’t mind but I was in my workshop out back. Well, I call it my workshop – it’s actually the double garage that came with this place. But the old motor has to stay outside and put up with the wind and the rain, I’m afraid,’ he told them, somewhat breathlessly. ‘Do you mind coming on through? Only I’ve got something burning and I don’t want to leave it.’
‘No, of course not,’ Hillary said, mildly intrigued. She followed the sixty-something man through a moderately spacious hall that smelled of furniture polish and chrysanthemums to the back door and out around to the side of the house.
In the garage, both she and Jake were immediately dazzled by a display of colour that made them blink, and the acrid, unmistakable smell of burning metal.
‘It’s the solder,’ Colin Harcourt said, as if they’d spoken out loud. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just waiting two minutes, only I’ve just got to do this…’ He pointed to a section of coloured glass on his work table and Hillary quickly nodded at him to continue.
As Colin Harcourt put on a visor that covered his eyes and picked up a soldering iron, Hillary and Jake retreated and did a quick tour of the ‘studio’.
‘I’ve always admired true artisans,’ Hillary said vaguely, as they looked around at the pieces on display. For although Colin Harcourt might have earned his daily bread by supplying double glazing to Britain’s shivering masses, his soul obviously lay in stained glass.
She paused beside a free-standing door, in which the centre glass panel was now adorned with a Tudor rose in lovely shades of pink and red. Green leaves entwined what looked like some kind of Ionic column in the centre. A simplified version of someone’s family crest of arms, perhaps?
Jake was regarding a much larger piece of work that depicted a seaside scene, with a beach hut at the centre of it. Another commissioned piece, Hillary mused. She knew that beach huts on the coast sold for ridiculous sums nowadays, but she hadn’t known that the owners were so proud of their tiny plots of real estate that they were willing to order bespoke stained glass windows for the tiny residences.
‘There, got it. Sorry, I didn’t want St Joseph’s head coming off because the lead wasn’t up to the job!’ Colin Harcourt’s voice bought them back to his side once more.
He’d turned off the solder iron and removed the protective visor, and now all three looked down at what was obviously an ecclesiastical piece.
‘My local chapel asked me to replace their old one. Some vandals had broken it beyond repair, can you believe it?’ Colin shook his head, then nodded outside to a wrought-iron bench set in the garden overlooking a small patch of lawn.
‘Shall we?’
Leaving the hot, stuffy workroom behind, the three of them made their way towards a dwarf weeping willow, Colin Harcourt bringing with him a white-painted garden chair from the workroom. As Hillary and Jake sat on the shaded bench, he moved the chair into the full sun and sat down.
‘So, you’re looking into Mr Olliphant’s murder again then?’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘It was a really bad thing, that. I was so surprised when I first read about it in the paper. It was his name I recognized first, of course. Seeing as I knew him – well, slightly. And it was an unusual name so it caught my eye right away. I couldn’t believe it when I read about him being stabbed like that. And at a costume party too. It seemed so bizarre. But then it was New Year’s Eve.’ Again he shook his head. ‘Some people just don’t seem to have much luck, do they? Have you noticed that? It makes you think, I can tell you. First that awful car crash, and that little boy dying. And then that.’
Hillary nodded. ‘The court case must have been difficult for you. Reliving it all – seeing the crash happen, and all that.’
‘Yes, it was,’ the older man agreed simply. ‘But worse for poor Mr Olliphant, of course.’
‘And Mr Brandt couldn’t have made things eas
ier. He made some rather wild allegations at the time, didn’t he?’ Hillary slipped in cunningly.
Colin Harcourt merely nodded. ‘Yes he did, poor chap. But then, it was his grandson who died, wasn’t it? And can you imagine how it must have been for him – to know that he was responsible? That it was his own fault? I felt so sorry for him, I can tell you.’
‘Even when he accused you of lying? He did make the allegation that Felix Olliphant had paid you money to lie about your testimony as to what happened on the day of the accident, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, yes, he did,’ Colin said with a sigh. ‘I can’t imagine why. I told the police at the time that I’d be more than happy for them to do a … whatchamacallit? A forensic audit, is it? You know, when they search your finances for something criminal. Of course, it didn’t come to that. There was no question of anything of the kind having happened.’
He stopped suddenly, and looked at them a shade more sharply. ‘You don’t think that Mr Olliphant’s death had anything to do with that, do you? I remember a detective inspector coming to call on me a little while after I’d read about his murder. But he never came back, and I never had to give a statement or anything. You’re not saying that William Brandt killed him, are you?’
‘No, sir,’ Hillary said smartly. ‘There’s no evidence to suppose that. And Mr Brandt himself is dead now – he passed away a number of years ago. No, it’s just that, sometimes, after a long time has passed, and you do a review of the evidence, new things can come to light.’
‘Oh. I see. Well, actually, no, I don’t,’ he instantly corrected himself, and then smiled, a shade uncertainly. ‘Just what do you think I can help you with, exactly?’
Hillary looked at the not quite green, not quite hazel eyes and the slightly baffled face they inhabited, and decided to simply be honest. Sometimes – not often – but sometimes, she’d found it really could be the best policy.
‘We were wondering, Mr Harcourt, why the recession didn’t seem to hit your company as badly as it did many others,’ Hillary said quietly.