by Jo Bannister
Contents
Cover
A Selection of recent titles by Jo Bannister
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
A Selection of recent titles by Jo Bannister
The Gabriel Ash and Hazel Best Mysteries
DEADLY VIRTUES
PERFECT SINS
DESPERATE MEASURES
OTHER COUNTRIES *
The Brodie Farrell Mysteries
REQUIEM FOR A DEALER
FLAWED
CLOSER STILL
LIARS ALL
* available from Severn House
OTHER COUNTRIES
Jo Bannister
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
Copyright © 2017 by Jo Bannister.
The right of Jo Bannister to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8702-3 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-801-9 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-864-3 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
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‘Thou hast committed—’
‘Fornication? But that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead.’
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
ONE
They won’t let you on an aeroplane with a flame-thrower. Rachid Iqbal didn’t know much about the world, but he knew that much.
He also knew that he needed papers that would pass serious examination. He was an Arab man travelling to Britain from Turkey, the front line between prosperous, self-protective Europe and the turmoil of the Middle East. The immigration officials who would happily nod through all the tourists and businessmen would hold their rubber stamps in abeyance until they’d taken a really good look at Rachid’s documentation. His passport would be subject to close scrutiny. He would be asked the reason for his visit, and you didn’t need to be a seasoned traveller to know that Murder wouldn’t be a good answer to give.
Most things, including top-class travel documents, can be bought by a man with bottomless pockets. Rachid Iqbal’s pockets were not bottomless, and he wasn’t even a legal citizen of Turkey. But he had friends, and his friends had friends, and between them they’d supplied him with a passport and visa, and with letters and receipts from a college in London which had enrolled him for a four-week course in the English language for business users. There were other things – the address where he would be staying, the money with which he would meet his expenses, the names and phone-numbers of people who would vouch for him – and all these had cost more than Rachid would ever be able to repay. Even if he’d had any expectation of coming back.
People he knew, people who had travelled by plane, told him what the officials at passport control would be watching for. First, they said, the dark skin; and after that, someone who was nervous. Someone who, though he was plainly accustomed to a warmer climate than England in September, was sweating, and fidgeting with his wristwatch, and looking uneasily about him.
Do a crossword, they’d said. All Englishmen do the crosswords in their newspapers when they have time to kill. (Time to kill! Rachid liked the sound of the words.) It followed that anyone doing a newspaper crossword was already halfway to acceptability. It wouldn’t matter that he didn’t know any of the answers, or even that he didn’t understand the clues. If he had a newspaper, and a pen, and looked thoughtful and occasionally made a mark in one of the little white boxes, no one watching for terrorists and illegal immigrants would give him a second glance. Rachid had spent almost the last of his money – his own money, not that provided for him – buying an exorbitantly expensive copy of The Times in the departure lounge at Istanbul.
The one thing he didn’t have was a flame-thrower. But that didn’t matter, because he knew how to make one.
TWO
Grace Maybourne picked at her breakfast, unable to ignore the fluttering of unease in her stomach. Her mother watched, covertly over the cornflakes, unsure whether sympathy or a pep-talk would be a better response.
‘It’s only first-day nerves,’ she said at last. ‘You won’t be the new girl for long.’
Grace made the effort to smile. She was, and had always been, a dutiful daughter. ‘I know.’ She pushed away the golden sludge that cornflakes, dowsed in milk but then untouched, invariably turn to. ‘I just wish …’
‘What? That today was over? It will be, before you know it.’
Grace considered. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’
Definitely not sympathy, thought Mrs Maybourne. No-nonsense briskness. ‘Of course it was. You’ll like it once you find your way around.’
‘Maybe.’ Grace thought some more. Finally her fears came spilling out. ‘What if I don’t? What if they all hate me?’
Mrs Maybourne laughed. ‘Gracie! Why on earth would they hate you?’
‘Because they all know one another, and I’m the outsider! Because they’ll all have their little enmities and allegiances, and I’ll say the wrong things to the wrong people because I don’t know what they are! Because they’ll think I’m intruding, and they’ll want to cut me down to size right away to save themselves the trouble of doing it later.
‘Because they’ll hate my smart new uniform, and the way I do my hair, and my stupid cut-glass accent that’s your fault for sending me to elocution lessons!
Oh Mum,’ she wailed, ‘I don’t want to go! Will you phone in and tell them I’m sick?’
Mrs Maybourne, half laughing still, half crying, reached out plump arms and gathered her daughter to her breast. ‘No, of course I won’t. You’ll be just fine. You’ll march in there as if you owned the place, and anything that needs dealing with, you’ll do it. This time tomorrow, all this will be forgotten.’
Grace hoped she was right. Still she gave it one last try. ‘I don’t have to go if I don’t want to.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Maybourne firmly, ‘you do.’
‘Why?’ Grace peered out rebelliously from under the freshly trimmed fringe.
Her mother sighed. ‘Because, dear, you’re the new superintendent of police in Norbold, and they can’t ask the last one to come back because somebody shot him.’
That was this morning. Now it was afternoon, and it hadn’t been as grim as Grace had feared. There were a couple of decent sergeants at Meadowvale Police Station, and the head of CID seemed to know what he was doing, and now it turned out she wasn’t even the only new girl starting today.
Superintendent Maybourne glanced at the note on her pad. Constable Hazel Best: not exactly new, but back from extended sick leave. Why did that ring a bell? Ah – yes. She was that one. The one they’d told her about. The reason Norbold had needed a new superintendent in the first place. She gave a pensive frown. Did that mean she owed her promotion to Constable Best? And if so, should she be grateful or not?
For now, all she needed to be was courteous and professional. She sent word to the front desk that Constable Best should report to her as soon as she was free. Three minutes later the girl was in her office.
In fact, Hazel Best wasn’t a girl. She was twenty-seven, which didn’t make her a grey-haired old granny but did make her a little long in the tooth for a probationary constable. This was her second career: she’d been a teacher before joining the thin blue line. She’d done well in college, done well in basic training, was doing well in her first posting … and then it had all gone pear-shaped.
Superintendent Maybourne smiled encouragingly. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
‘I’m happy to tell you what happened, ma’am,’ Hazel said carefully. She was still standing at attention, hands behind her back, a tall, well-built young woman with a mass of fair curls that she forced into a bun for work but allowed the freedom of a rough ponytail when she was off duty. ‘I’m equally happy for you to hear it from someone else. The facts are a matter of record. In fact …’ She heard herself straying onto dangerous ground and stopped.
‘In fact?’ echoed the superintendent, encouragingly. She was twenty years older than the constable, and infinitely more experienced, but her manner, though non-committal, was polite. When women first started reaching the upper echelons of the police service, it seemed that the best way to achieve advancement was to be like their male colleagues: if they weren’t hard, brash and abrasive, they pretended to be. By the time Grace Maybourne was making her presence felt, though, there was a recognition that good women officers brought different qualities to the table. There was nothing mannish about her. But no one ever looked into her cool blue eyes and thought she represented an easy option.
Hazel took a deep breath. She had known this interview was coming; she hadn’t expected it to be easy; but she was damned if she was going to apologise for things that weren’t her fault. ‘In fact,’ she went on determinedly, ‘I imagine you’ve already read the report. It exonerated me of any wrong-doing. Bad things happened in this police station, but I wasn’t responsible for any of them. And I didn’t shoot Superintendent Fountain. That was his old friend and co-conspirator, Mickey Argyle.’
‘But you did shoot him.’ It was a comment rather than an accusation.
‘Yes, I did. He had a gun, he’d already shot Mr Fountain, he was going to shoot others, including me. I had a gun too. I stopped him.’
And though the official report had been substantial enough to deforest a small area of Sweden, that, really, was all that needed to be said. Meadowvale’s senior officer had forgotten his duty. One of its newest recruits had remembered hers.
‘You’ve been on leave for, what, four months?’
‘A little over,’ said Hazel.
‘Long enough?’
‘Quite long enough.’
‘The medical board agrees, on the whole. With the proviso that you should work yourself in gently. No more shoot-ups and fisticuffs, at least for a while.’
‘I have no problem with that.’ It was true. Hazel didn’t go looking for trouble. Somehow, trouble seemed to come looking for her.
‘I don’t doubt we can find something useful for you to do while you’re getting back up to speed.’
This had been inevitable. Hazel was resigned to manning a desk for a while. ‘I’m good on a computer. I used to teach IT.’
Grace Maybourne smiled again. This time, Hazel noticed, it was a little impish round the edges. ‘That’s certainly a useful accomplishment. But actually, I had something else in mind …’
Hazel went home early. Another idea of the medical board’s: a week of short days. She changed, bailed her hair on its own recognisance, and went out again.
Gabriel Ash was doing housework. The big stone house in Highfield Road looked cleaner and brighter for his efforts, but not necessarily more cheerful. He lacked an eye for homeliness. Hazel made a mental note to take him shopping soon, and stock up on things that weren’t brown.
His dog Patience was staying out of the way. She rolled her toffee-coloured eyes in despair as Hazel passed her in the hall.
Ash stopped when he saw his visitor and put the vacuum away under the stairs. ‘How was your day?’
‘Could have been worse,’ Hazel said pensively. ‘Most of the guys seem to have forgiven me for being right. And I liked the new superintendent.’
‘Was this the first time you’d met him?’
‘Her,’ said Hazel deliberately. ‘Yes. She came down from Birmingham.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Refreshingly normal. A bit smaller than me; mid-forties, light brown hair, blue eyes …’ She heard herself describing a suspect and broke off with a wry chuckle. ‘Normal. Talks to you like a human being rather than a faintly disgusting sub-species.’
She moved the duster from where Ash had left it on the leather sofa – cushions, she thought, green and yellow, something to bring a bit of sunshine in – and sank into it. ‘What about you? Why the sudden interest in domestic science?’
He didn’t understand. When he was at school, the boys did woodwork while the girls were doing domestic science. He hadn’t understood the woodwork either.
Hazel waved an airy hand at the results of his labours. ‘The tidying-up. The dusting. Hell’s bells, I can even smell polish!’
And in that moment, with the words barely out of her mouth, she knew exactly what had prompted it. She should have realised before, and not joked about it. Ash would forgive her, because they were friends and he knew she would never deliberately hurt him; still Hazel wished the words unsaid. ‘Have you had the social workers round?’
‘Tomorrow.’ He took the broad-bosomed chair beside the stove. ‘I thought I’d try to make a good impression.’
‘Well, yes,’ Hazel agreed, ‘it can’t do any harm. But don’t let anyone suggest that a bit of dog-hair on the carpet means you’re not a good father. You are a good father. You’re a good man.’
Ash accepted the compliment with a rueful sniff. ‘I want to be a good father. I’m not sure I know how.’
‘I think most parents worry that they’re not up to the job.’ Hazel wasn’t speaking from personal experience. ‘The better the parent, the more they seem to worry. You’ve just got out of the way of it. You’ll do fine.’ She glanced round the kitchen and listened for a moment. ‘Where are the boys?’
‘After-school club. Their head teacher thought it would be a good idea: help them to make new friends. T
hey’re not actually that far behind their year-groups. Cathy had them in a little private school in Cambridge: a bit 1950s, but they’ve got the basics in place. What they’ve mostly missed is the social side: doing things with boys their own age. For obvious reasons, they weren’t encouraged to make friends.’
Well no, thought Hazel, since they were supposed to be under armed guard in Somalia, Ash’s wife wouldn’t want them making the kind of friends you trade confidences with. ‘Our name didn’t used to be Anderson. It was Ash, but Mummy said we had to change it. We’re not supposed to tell anybody!’
‘They’ll get the hang of it soon enough,’ she said.
Ash grinned. ‘Guy, of course, loves being part of a gang. He doesn’t care what they’re doing as long as there’s a bunch of them doing it. Gilbert is more reserved. But then, I was no good at that sort of thing when I was eight. His reticence may have more to do with genetics than social deprivation.’
Hazel sighed. ‘Gabriel – you’re still no good at that sort of thing.’
As if aware that the housework had been abandoned for now, the white lurcher came padding back into the kitchen, assessed the seating arrangements and headed for the sofa. Hazel shuffled up obligingly.
‘They’ve got me on restricted duties for a couple of weeks. Guess what they want me to do.’
Gabriel Ash was supremely good at logic. He could take a shedload of apparently unconnected facts, mentally weigh the probabilities and extrapolate to conclusions that would have seemed mere flights of fancy but for his track-record of being right. It was a skill he had learned in the insurance industry and honed as a government security analyst. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, he had no talent for guessing. ‘Er …’
Hazel shook her head. ‘You never will, so I’ll tell you. They want me to nurse-maid a visiting celebrity. Oliver Ford.’ Seeing his puzzlement, she explained, as she would have had to for almost no one else she knew. ‘The historian? Fronts a whole load of television programmes. Was short-listed for a BAFTA for his series on Richard the Lionheart last summer.’