Fault Lines

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Will you send me a copy of anything you write? We like to photostat any useful pieces and circulate them to all the interested groups.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. If I manage to place it.’ Trish congratulated herself on remembering a journalist friend talking about placing articles rather than selling them. She hoped it would add a hint of verisimilitude and soothe Roger’s suspicions. ‘Look, while I’ve got you, can you tell me anything about a colourful Kingsford character I’ve been hearing about? A man called Ducksmount or something like that. Something to do with dumping ancient cars and maybe CFC pollution.’

  ‘You mean Drakeshill,’ Roger said, sounding cheerful again. ‘Martin Drakeshill. I doubt if there’s any bother with CFCs unless he’s fly-tipped his own fridge somewhere. No, he’s a straightforwardly bent second-hand car dealer.’

  ‘Really bent?’

  ‘I’d have said so.’ Roger laughed. ‘But perhaps not quite as bent as he likes to pretend. He’s been flogging cars in Station Drive for as long as I can remember, and he’s a bit of a joke round here, what with the huge red and gold flags he flies all round his forecourt, and his gold bracelet and air of “what a bad boy I am”.’

  ‘Would you buy a car from him?’

  ‘I wouldn’t buy a car from anywhere, Sarah. Would you?’

  Silly question. Of course not. He’d use a bike.

  ‘But I’ve known people who have bought from him,’ Roger went on, in a fair-minded way, ‘and, as far as I know, they were no worse than anyone else’s.’

  ‘I see. Look, you’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘It’s what the KGB is here for. Let us know if you need anything else.’

  Trish put down the phone and thought about calling George’s office. It would be so easy. ‘Kingsford,’ she said aloud, to stop the rot before it could eat into her determination to hold on until he said he understood why she had been so angry.

  The phone began to ring. Absentmindedly she picked it up and said her name.

  ‘Ah, Trish, it’s you now, is it?’ said her father. ‘Trish, are you there? All I want to do is talk. Trish? Trish?’

  ‘I can’t talk now. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK. Tell me a time that would be better. I know you’re very busy. I rang your chambers and they said you’d be working at home.’

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t have.’ She gritted her teeth as she realised how childish that must have sounded. ‘I’m sorry to be churlish, but I really am very busy. I can’t talk now.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll try again later another day.’

  ‘No, I …’ But Trish was talking to the air. Her father had gone. Bloody man. Why couldn’t he leave her alone? She dialled the number of the doctors’surgery where her mother worked.

  ‘Hi, Meg?’ she said, when they were connected.

  ‘Trish, love. Has something happened?’ Her mother’s voice, usually so calm and matter-of-fact, had an edge of anxiety.

  ‘No. No, I’m sorry to have worried you. No, it’s just that my case has settled and I wondered whether you were busy tonight or might like some dinner?’

  ‘No. no, I’m not busy.’ Meg’s voice was back to normal, apart from a residue of surprise. ‘I’d love to see you, but I don’t get off till eight tonight, and it would take me another forty, fifty minutes to get up to town, so …’

  ‘I’ve got time for once. Why don’t I come and pick you up at the surgery at eight and take you to the Black Bear?’

  ‘Well, that would be lovely, if it won’t make you too late back. I can’t stop to talk now, but if it’s really all right I’ll see you here at eight. ’Bye.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ Trish said aloud, as she put down the phone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Where’s Owler?’ called Bill Femur into the clatter and blather of the incident room.

  ‘Checking out someone called Bob Smith, who had a drink with Huggate when she first came to Kingsford,’ said Caroline Lyalt, turning round to smile at him.

  In spite of the smile, she looked dispirited and rather grubby from spending too long indoors and eating too many sandwiches and takeaways. They all did. In a way she’d had the worst job of all, forcing the five known survivors of the Kingsford Rapist to go back into their old traumas in case there was any useful information that had been missed in the original interviews.

  Some of the survivors had worked through what had happened to them, she reported, and been able to talk relatively freely, but one was driven to anguished, unstoppable tears as Caroline had probed too far into what had happened when she was pinned down on the floor by a masked man who drove a screwdriver up inside her.

  No wonder Caroline looked so unhappy. Femur hoped her actress was giving her enough support and not whingeing about the long hours that kept her away from home. That had happened once or twice before. If he’d been one to interfere, he’d have gone round to their flat and read the Riot Act. But he wasn’t. You never knew what you might upset if you started poking your nose into other people’s relationships. And he’d have been outraged if anyone had talked to Sue on his behalf.

  The cork board was much fuller than it had been. There were photographs of all the different types of chisel and screwdriver that could have been used on Kara; there were huge blow-ups of the bruises on her body beside the slightly bigger marks left on the earlier victims. And there were more close-up photographs of Kara’s internal injuries.

  Femur had a few new prints put up every day to keep the team’s anger hot. He looked further along the wall to the whiteboard in case anyone had contributed anything new. It was still covered with red and blue scrawls, mostly his and Tony Blacker’s. There were rows of dates, times, and names, half of them crossed out, and lists of questions with ever bigger question marks. But there was nothing new except that some joker had been playing noughts and crosses in one corner. Femur couldn’t believe any of the local officers were still farting around when they had a vicious sex criminal on the loose.

  ‘Can I help, Guv?’

  ‘Not really, Cally. When you see Owler, will you tell him I want him?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, with all the simple acceptance that made her so easy to work with. She had none of Blacker’s resentment at the thought of the boss keeping from her things he was discussing with someone else.

  ‘Any joy from anything your victims gave you?’ he asked, thinking, What a stupid phrase! Joy is the last thing Caroline’s had anywhere in this investigation.

  ‘Not yet.’ She stood up, holding both hands to the small of her back and stretching. Femur knew the ache she was feeling. He had once thought it was caused by working too long at a desk; now he knew that it came from holding the anger too tight inside you.

  ‘Like I said, Guv, they all swear that they said nothing to anyone about the sock or the chisel. But, you know, I’m not sure how reliable that is. They’re all still …’ she paused, then said temperately ‘… troubled by what happened, and each of them has blocked bits out in her own way. Any one of them could’ve talked at the time and got no idea now what she actually said.’

  ‘Right. Well, tell me if anything comes up. And by the way, Cally, you might find out who’s buggering about with the whiteboard and get them to grow up.’

  She looked over to the messy board, frowning. Then her face cleared as she focused on the noughts and crosses. ‘I’ll handle it, Guv.’

  Femur went back to his desk and the confidential files of all the officers who had worked on the original rape cases. The one that interested him most was Barry Spinel’s. None of the other officers had any connection whatsoever with Kara, but Spinel had met her at least three times, and maybe many more.

  It was only a week or two between the last certain meeting they’d had and the first time she’d drawn hearts and flowers around the letter S in her diary.

  And that wasn’t all. Femur had disliked Spinel from the moment they’d first spoken on the phone, and when they met the dislike had grown. Femur
had never admired the kind of cocky air of half-suppressed violence that Spinel exuded, or the lack of conscience.

  He also had a very odd record with a lot of questions in it. His file was the kind Femur had seen often enough to make him go cold as he read it.

  There were no disciplinary offences recorded against Spinel, but there was a whole string of complaints: from the public; from fellow officers; and from the CPS. There had been accusations of brutality, of sexism, of prisoners’property going missing, and files and evidence as well.

  None of the complaints had ever been substantiated, but Spinel had changed jobs and forces rather too often for Femur’s liking.

  He tried to be fair and reminded himself that making complaints against arresting officers had always been some villains’favourite way of delaying proceedings and discrediting prosecution evidence; and there were some officers whose spectacular success made lazier colleagues resentful enough to invent internal difficulties. A mass of complaints against one man could be no more than coincidence, but it could also flag a bent officer more clearly than anything else except too smart a car, long-haul holidays and too many designer clothes.

  Some of the senior officers’ names recorded in the file were familiar to Femur from his own past, and he decided to ring up a few of them informally to get an off-the-record flavour of Spinel before he tried the Complaints Investigation Bureau. Once you let them in on an investigation they tended to take it over. Femur wanted to nail Kara’s killer himself. He reached for the phone and rang the first on the list.

  The exercise was as frustrating as everything else about the damn case. No one Femur wanted was in. He left messages all over the country and sat drumming his fingers on the desk waiting for someone to ring back or for Steve Owler to reappear. Eventually he cracked and sent a fax to the private house of an old mate who was now with the anti-corruption squad, asking for a confidential note of any information they might have on Spinel. At the foot of the fax, he scrawled in black felt-tip: ‘Don’t worry too much about slander, but keep the inquiry to yourself, will you, and phone me at home with the results? Bill.’

  ‘You wanted me, Guv.’

  Femur turned back from the fax machine, keeping his face blank. Bugger it! He felt like a PC on his first day who’d been caught with his finger up his nose.

  Owler, who was chewing something as usual, seemed to notice nothing wrong.

  ‘Yes. Steve. Right. We’ll go into my office.’

  ‘D’you want a cup of tea first, Guv? If you don’t mind me saying so, you look as though you could do with one. And a sarnie?’

  ‘A cup of tea would be great. But hold the sandwiches, unless you’re going to faint from hunger.’

  Owler laughed as he slouched over to the kettle and waved the half-eaten roll he’d been carrying in his left hand. Femur shook his head. Talk about hollow legs! The boy must be hollow right down to his little toes.

  Femur went back to his office. A minute or two on his own would give him a chance to get rid of the original of the fax. If there were anything in the Spinel theory, everyone would get to hear of it in the end, but he didn’t want any word of his suspicions reaching Spinel until he had something more solid to go on.

  Three minutes later, he was stirring sugar into the depressing caramel-coloured liquid Steve Owler had brought him in a bendy white plastic cup and listening to an account of what a good copper Barry Spinel was.

  ‘Always gets a result, Guv. The drugs squad have done much better since he went over there. He goes after every suspect, whoever they are, unlike some who think if you’re rich enough you can do what you want. Spinel’s clobbered a lot of nasty little public-school boys who’ve been dealing on the side, and he’s put up with a good bit of flak from the great and the good trying to defend their little darlings. He’s not one to mind making enemies, however many friends they’ve got on the Police Committee. And he’s got good informants, too. There’s been a steady stream of mules and minor dealers arrested.’

  ‘But no big importers,’ Femur said. ‘Is this what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Well, yeah, maybe. But no one else has got them either, and at least Spinel gets the mules and the runners. Everyone thinks he’s great. Except the DI that is, and that’s only because Spinel shows him up.’

  ‘Right.’ This wasn’t the moment to lecture Owler on the proper respect due to a senior officer. ‘But Spinel didn’t do much good when he was working on the Kingsford Rapist, did he?’

  ‘No one did,’ said Owler quickly, adding after a moment, ‘S for Spinel? No, Guv. Honestly. I told you before. You’re barking up the wrong tree there. It couldn’t be him. I know he’s in Huggate’s diary, but he’d never have been the kind of man to make her draw hearts and flowers. And, anyway, why would he want to knock her off?’

  Femur laughed. He’d never been much of a one for amateur dramatics, but he thought he’d done it quite well. Owler’s tight jaw muscles relaxed visibly, so it must have been fairly convincing.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said, keeping a jolly smile on his face and thinking he deserved an Oscar nomination for that, too. ‘No, I’ve just been wondering how far to trust his judgement. He seems to have known Kara better than anyone else here, even though he didn’t like her. You were right about that. And he’s come up with some interesting ideas about her and who her attacker could’ve been.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I don’t know, Guv. I wouldn’t have put him down as the sensitive type who sits down and listens to women much, or cares what they’re thinking.’ He frowned, thinking hard. Then he shrugged. ‘On the other hand, he has got a rich wife, and so …

  ‘Rich wife?’ The best possible disguise for a bent copper with more money than he should have from payoffs and kick-backs. ‘Has he? Have you met her?’

  ‘No. She’s not the type to mix with the Job. She’s a headhunter in the City. Bit of a success story, they say. Earns a fortune. I can’t see why she’d stay with him if he didn’t have something other than, well …’

  Femur, whose mind was beginning to work faster as he thought of the implications of the rich-wife story, looked up as the boy paused and was amused to see him looking self-conscious. Caroline must have been regaling the incident room with Femur’s unparalleled dislike of smut. There was very little that bonded a disparate team as well as sharing surprise – and contempt – at the guv’nor’s shibboleths.

  ‘A good big lunch-box,’ he supplied, smiling. Owler smiled back in relief. ‘OK, Steve. Take that as read. A rich wife could do a lot to stop you worrying about making enemies on the Police Committee. Has anyone ever suggested that his mind’s not totally on the Job?’

  ‘Spinel? Fuck, no. Sorry, Guv. If anything, the opposite. He’s got more people banged up than anyone else. He gives it everything he’s got, whatever you’ve heard. He may bend the odd rule about dealing with suspects – I dare say he’s even laid a finger on one or two in the past. But it’s all been in a good cause.’

  ‘Great. Thanks, Steve. Just what I wanted to know. Now, how’re you doing?’

  ‘Not so bad. Although Bob Smith isn’t any good to us either. Hasn’t seen Huggate in three and a half months and, anyway, he’s got an unbreakable alibi.’

  Femur raised his eyebrows. ‘How unbreakable?’

  ‘Totally. He was in hospital, Guv. Having an operation on his knee. Cartilage. According to the nurse, he couldn’t stand.’

  ‘That’s him out, then. How many more on your list?’

  ‘Another six.’ Owler sounded bored.

  ‘Still, it’s got to be done. Stick to it.’

  ‘Cool, Guv.’

  Femur watched him go, thinking, If Spinel is involved in Kara’s death, then the connection must be drugs. Nothing I’ve heard about her suggests she’d have liked him unless he was pretending to be someone else – decent, even gentle. He’d only have bothered with that if it was worth his while. And the only thing Femur could think of that would make it worth Spinel’s while was dru
gs. After all, they only met in the first place because an underage client of hers was having trouble with a drug-dealer.

  The idea seemed to be slipping out of his grasp, like a wet tumbler in the sink, but he held on, trying to work through the few facts he had, checking the logic of his suspicions as he went.

  ‘Caroline!’ he yelled through the open door a few minutes later.

  ‘Guv?’ She had her hand over the telephone receiver, and was obviously busy.

  ‘How about a change from interviewing rape victims?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no.’

  ‘Right. When you’ve finished your call, then.’

  There was a faint smile on her face as she came into his office and closed the door. She sat in the chair opposite his desk and sighed as she took the weight off her feet.

  ‘We’ll get there in the end, Cally,’ he said.

  ‘We nearly always do. But it’s a tough case.’

  ‘Sure it isn’t more than that?’ It was worth taking a moment out to make sure she wasn’t unhappy. Her well-being was essential to the team – and to him. ‘Trouble at home, maybe?’

  ‘Jess is having a tough time right now,’ she admitted, rubbing the space between her eyes. ‘And she needs more than I’ve got to offer at the moment. Her agent’s giving her the runaround and her confidence is a bit iffy. I do what I can. But this is my job and she needs to under– Sorry, Guv. You don’t need to hear this. We’ve been here before. We’ll sort it. Now, what d’you want me to do?’

  ‘A while ago Kara was after a schoolboy crack dealer,’ Femur said, respecting Caroline’s decision to keep her life private. ‘A Sergeant Spinel from the drugs squad told me that they were well aware of the dealer’s activities over there and have been watching him, presumably to get enough evidence for a successful trial. I want you to find out – discreetly, mind, and not from Spinel himself – whether they know where the boy got his supplies.’