by Anita Waller
Tessa picked up her radio. ‘I want a firearms unit to Eyam. Meet me in the village square. This is urgent.’
She stood. ‘I’ll be back later to finish this conversation. I’m leaving two officers here with you, and use the buttons if you need to.’
Marsden parked outside the supermarket and looked at the pharmacy, once a thriving village chemist’s shop. Its pharmacist was locked up for two years, the shortest of the sentences handed out to the members of Leon Rowe’s empire who were behind bars for many combined years. Brian King would never come out, and Marsden was beginning to think Leon Rowe would never go in. The man had a charmed life.
All the shops in the square were on lockdown, with police officers inside with the customers. It was a briefly ironic thought that she hoped Leon Rowe hadn’t decided to buy himself a loaf of bread as the doors were locked, keeping him on the inside.
She glanced across at Connection, pleased to have been kept informed of every stage of its development and equally pleased that it seemed to be growing in stature for the three women she had come to know and respect.
The view in her mirror changed as a car pulled up behind her. Dave Irwin held up a hand in acknowledgement, and she returned the gesture.
A minute later they were joined by the large firearms unit vehicle. She wound down her window and held out her warrant card.
The lead officer from the van used the cover of the two cars to approach her, and asked if there had been any sightings.
‘No. That pharmacy is the focus of this exercise. The entry door is down the alley at the side of the shop. It’s obviously the back door, where deliveries are taken in. It has been sealed and a padlocked bar is in place.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. Stay in your cars, please.’
He headed back to his vehicle, and silently his marksmen appeared on the pavement. She counted six, all heavily armed. She knew she would never get used to the sight of guns on British streets.
They crept along the front of the boarded up shop, and five of them disappeared down the alleyway. One was positioned outside the front of the shop, his gun at the ready.
She listened carefully. Silence. There should have been the noise involved with smashing open a heavy duty padlock, but there was nothing and instinctively she knew it meant that Leon Rowe had been inside the shop, possibly hiding there for some time.
She wasn’t aware of how long she waited; the men reappeared and one headed towards her.
‘Sergeant Franks would like you to go in, ma’am.’
‘Thank you.’ She turned and indicated to Dave Irwin to accompany her.
They walked to the shop together. ‘Looks like he’s not here now, but I’ll lay odds on that he was,’ Dave said.
‘I suspect you’re right, Dave. They certainly didn’t have to smash off that padlock.’
It was extremely dark inside, tiny chinks of light came through the boards, but she switched on her torch as they followed Sergeant Franks up the stairs.
‘This is the first floor,’ he said. ‘Still got some items stored in here, and some boxes of foodstuffs are opened, so I reckon he’s been using them to save having to go out for food. He’s definitely been staying here.’ He led them to a further set of steps, ones that had appeared from the loft hatch in the ceiling. ‘I’ll go up first, ma’am, it’s awkward getting out at the top.’
Once they had been helped through, Tessa and Dave moved further into the attic room. There was a sleeping bag with a blanket thrown over it, and a further blanket rolled up and used as a pillow. Several candles stood on saucers, all burnt down to some degree.
‘We’ve thoroughly checked everywhere, ma’am, and he’s gone. I don’t believe he came back here after the shooting, if it was him who shot your victim, because the loft ladder you’ve just climbed up was folded away. If he was running, he wouldn’t have taken the time to do that. It’s an awkward procedure; it doesn’t quite fit correctly, which is why it was difficult for you to get off it when we came up here.’
She nodded. ‘He would have taken his sleeping bag if he’d come back here. It’s going to be pretty cold at night without it.’ She stared around at the spartan conditions in the loft. It was a large space, and daylight showed through where a couple of slate pieces were missing. The small window in the roof looked directly onto the village square, and she realised it was perfectly positioned for him following the movements of the three women who had brought the wrath of the gods down on his head.
‘How are the mighty fallen,’ Tessa mused aloud, thinking of the beautiful home he had lost, and where his wife and daughter lived.
‘Thank you, Sergeant Franks, for your help. Stand your men down for now and return to base. I’m sure when we do find Leon Rowe, we’ll probably need you again. I’ll get forensics up here, let them prove it’s Leon Rowe’s hideaway, and then I’m going on television. I want this man found, and I don’t want him walking into one of the many camping and hiking shops we have in the Peak District, to replace his sleeping bag. I shall be asking all of them to look out for him buying any camping equipment at all; he’s got to sleep somewhere.’
Franks nodded. ‘Thank you, ma’am. I’ll leave it with you. Be careful going back down those stairs.’
Marsden watched as they emptied the loft space of everything that was in it, and she quietly asked for results as speedily as possible. She needed proof legally that Rowe had been the occupant; in her heart she needed no proof. She knew it was him.
Crime scene tape was once again wrapped around the building, the side door was re-padlocked, with promises of a sheet of metal covering the entire aperture being installed as soon as it was no longer going to be needed by forensics.
Ray Charlton was standing outside the front of the shop, and all three of them walked back to their respective cars.
‘You two go back to the station, write up your reports and get off home. Tell everybody it’s a seven o’clock briefing tomorrow. I want everybody there for half past six on pain of death. We have to find this man.’
‘You’re going home, boss?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m going to try to get a two-minute slot on the late news that’s local for the Peak District and the Sheffield area. I need to alert shops. He’s going to need equipment replaced. Not on my watch, Leon Rowe, not on my watch. I’ll head back up and fill Kat Rowe in on what’s happened, but first I have to go see Danny McLoughlin’s family.’
‘Mrs McLoughlin?’ Tessa showed her warrant card. ‘My name is Tessa Marsden, and this is PC Hannah Granger.’
Hannah had been with Kat, Mouse and Doris since they had arrived en masse at Kat’s house earlier, and would have preferred staying there to having to go to tell somebody their husband was dead. Kat, in her role as deacon of St Lawrence’s, wanted to accompany her, but Hannah had suggested it might be better to wait a day, let the news sink in with his family first.
She had no idea which was the best one, but Kat looked ill. A two-day-old baby, and she was feeling she had to go back to work – not a good plan, Hannah decided.
‘Oh! Yes? You want something?’ Bibi McLoughlin stared at the two women in front of her, a bewildered expression on her face.
‘May we come in, please, Mrs McLoughlin?’ Tessa’s voice was gentle.
‘Mais oui. Please, follow me. But what is this about?’ Her French accent was strong, although she spoke perfect English.
She led them into a small lounge with pale grey walls and bright yellow curtains and cushions, a welcoming room that impressed both police officers.
‘Please… take a seat. What is wrong?’
They waited until the three of them were sitting on the chairs indicated by Bibi, and then Tessa spoke.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs McLoughlin, but we have some bad news for you. Your husband, Danny, died this afternoon.’
Bibi looked at Marsden first, then Hannah. ‘What? He is working. At Kat’s house. Then he was going to do a quote in Bakewell. He can’t be dead.’ Her eye
s opened wide, and Hannah could see she was struggling to accept what they were saying.
‘Can I get you something, Mrs McLoughlin? Cup of tea? Glass of water?’
Bibi shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine. You must have the wrong person. My Danny is at work.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs McLoughlin, but we are sure it is your husband. He was at work at Mrs Rowe’s property. We believe he saw an intruder and gave chase. The intruder shot him.’
Bibi’s silence stretched on and on, until finally she spoke. ‘Maybe a glass of water…’
Hannah stood and went to find the kitchen. She returned to see Marsden holding Bibi’s hand, and the woman shaking uncontrollably.
‘How will I live without him?’ she whispered.
Nobody answered her. Nobody could.
Bibi let go of Tessa’s hand and took the glass of water.
‘Merci,’ she said, and sipped at it.
‘Do you have anyone we can contact? You shouldn’t be on your own.’ Platitudes, all platitudes, Tessa thought. This woman is struggling.
‘Our daughter, Petra Hunter. She lives in Grindleford. It will only take her ten minutes to get here. Please… be gentle when you tell her. She adores her father.’
Petra and Iain Hunter took over, comforting Bibi, promising they wouldn’t leave her, allowing Tessa and Hannah to head back to Kat’s house.
Two officers were stationed at the front, and two in the back garden. Photographs had been taken of the lawnmower, garden fork, and Danny’s flask and sandwich box; the tools had been fingerprinted and put away, and the flask and sandwich box bagged in evidence bags.
Marsden and Hannah went into the house through the garden door. Kat was feeding Martha, and the other two women were on their laptops. Both closed them as the police officers entered the room.
Kat lifted her head. ‘You didn’t find him?’
‘We confirmed he had been hiding in the loft of the pharmacy, but he’s gone now. He can’t have gone back there; his sleeping bag and blankets were still on the floor. I think he would have taken them, he has to sleep somewhere and it’s still damn cold at night.’
‘Was there a large brown suitcase?’
‘No.’ Marsden shook her head.
‘Then he has somewhere else set up. When he broke in here,’ Kat said, ‘he took a suitcase full of his stuff from the wardrobe. He has a back-up hiding place, DI Marsden. I know the way my husband thinks, particularly about me. He only stayed at the pharmacy once he realised I was pregnant.’
8
Marsden, back in her office, called in reinforcements. She led the briefing, filling everybody in on the events of the day, and added that nothing was more important than catching Leon Rowe.
Full protection had been afforded to Kat Rowe, Beth Walters and Doris Lester, and Marsden was confident that it would be sufficient to keep them safe.
‘Where do we start, boss?’ Tessa heard the question from three different places.
‘We start with every piece of available CCTV in that village, and every house on every road out of the village must have a visit. Ray, can I leave you to organise a map and allocate officers to the visits, please? Leon Rowe is very recognisable; his dark, dark skin is obvious, and I would imagine everyone in Eyam knows him, through the pharmacy. I want full reports of every visit you undertake by tomorrow, then go out again and carry on. Somebody must have a clue where this man is, he’s too well known to just disappear.’
Marsden left the briefing room, and sank into her own leather chair behind her own desk, in her own office. Exhausted. Her mind was full of Leon Rowe. Where had the bastard fled to this time? She briefly closed her eyes and tried to envisage him, running across the Derbyshire landscape, heading for sanctuary before anyone saw the black face and connected him with the missing man.
Five minutes later she was outside the station, a bank of cameras and microphones in front of her, talking to the people who were at considerable risk. ‘Do not approach this man; we believe he has already killed today and is in possession of a gun. If you see him, we need to know immediately. And now I have a special message for the owners and staff of camping and hiking gear shops in the entire region. He no longer has the survival gear he had, we have that. It may be that he tries to buy more. Please study his photograph. If he comes into your shop, don’t challenge him, he is dangerous. We need it reporting as soon as you can get to a phone.’
As she spoke the words she knew that every black male who walked into any sort of shop in Derbyshire would be reported. But there just may be that one…
She thanked the public and stepped away from the microphone.
Leon Rowe watched the broadcast on his mobile phone and smiled. Smart arse, he thought. He recognised the picture that had been displayed; Kat had taken it in the days when they were happy, loved each other, hated being apart.
Leon still hated being apart. Brian King’s greed had led to Leon’s present predicament; wanting more than he was prepared to offer from the business. Brian’s sentence had pleased Leon. He had proved not to be the loyal friend Leon had always thought he had, and the stupid man had talked.
Leon smiled to himself as he thought of the others that Brian had taken down with him, all equally incarcerated and gunning for the ginger-haired idiot. If Brian lasted another year, he would be lucky.
Leon’s phone was losing power so he stood and plugged it into the charger, His bolthole looked nothing from the outside and had served him well for a few months while he made his plans to leave the country, and recuperate from the loss of his left hand brought about by Doris, the gun-toting granny. Obviously her admiration for him had died a death that day.
The old petrol station was well set up for his everyday needs and had been bought for the specific reason it was now being used. The large front doors hadn’t been opened for years, and he needed to get them to open… just in case. The small back door – very small, he had to duck his head to enter – was his preferred method of accessing his property. Long before he met Kat he had recognised he might need an escape one day.
An efficient generator took care of his electrical needs and the building itself was perfectly positioned away from any other properties. He could take time to work out what to do next. Until he had seen the baby, he could make no decisions.
He spent the evening cleaning his gun, regretting that it had been Danny McLoughlin who had taken a bullet. He liked Danny, one of the good guys. He guessed Danny hadn’t thought the same about him.
Leon left a candle burning through the night. If anything happened he didn’t want to be fumbling around in the dark, he needed to be able to see. He sank down into his sleeping bag and grinned. It’s okay, Marsden, he thought, I don’t need a new one. Stand down your army of shop assistants.
Nobody really wanted breakfast, and yet all three knew they should have something. In the end they settled on cornflakes, so their stomachs knew they had eaten.
Doris tilted the teapot, poured out the tea and they all picked up their cups at the same time. Speech wasn’t coming easily.
Eventually Mouse took out her diary. ‘Okay, we can’t sit around here moping. If we do, bloody Rowe will have won.’
‘Don’t swear, dear.’
‘Sorry, Nan.’ The response was automatic. ‘I’m going to see Keeley Roy, see if I can get anything out of her. I can’t just say, “is Henry the love child of Tom Carpenter”, so I’ll cobble together an invoice that says it was a pro bono job, but I need her signature for our accountant.’
Doris held up her thumb. ‘When in doubt, blame the accountant.’
‘You three are staying here,’ she said. ‘Please don’t go out. This is the safest place for you at the moment.’
‘Martha promises she won’t walk out of that door, not for all the tea in China,’ Kat said solemnly.
‘Kat, I’m serious. Leon killed yesterday, outside here. Nan, I’m trusting you to control Kat. Make sure she rests.’
‘Don’t worry, she wi
ll.’
And Kat knew she would.
Keeley looked surprised to see Mouse. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, it’s all good. I need your signature on an invoice that basically says no charge, but we need it for our accounts.’
‘Okay, come in.’ Keeley held the door open. ‘Tea?’
‘That would be lovely.’
Mouse followed Keeley into the kitchen and sat at the table. ‘You’re okay after yesterday?’
Keeley smiled as she switched on the kettle. ‘I’m fine. I can’t believe I sat on the floor and cried. I’m such a wuss. I just felt… overwhelmed.’
‘Natural reaction. You’d had your money stolen. It can’t be easy bringing a child up on your own, and I presume you only work part time?’
‘I do. It’ll get easier as Henry gets older, but it’s a struggle at the moment. We get by, but it’s the extras in life that floor me.’
‘What happened to Henry’s father? Don’t answer if I’m being nosy. I don’t mean to be.’
‘He died last year. Cancer.’
‘I’m so sorry. That must have been hard for you both.’
‘It was more than hard for me, but Henry didn’t know he was his father. He thought he was simply our neighbour.’
The kettle clicked off and Keeley poured water into the mugs. There was silence while she made the drinks, and then she sat down at the table with Mouse.
‘He was older than me, by about ten years, but we got on so well. Three years after we met at our front gates, we had Henry, but Tom didn’t have the courage to leave her, his wife. She’s a bit of a psychopath. I know he was scared how she would react, he thought I would be in danger, and possibly Henry. I said it didn’t matter, I loved him anyway, and I was prepared to wait.’
Mouse sat quietly. This was more than she could have hoped for, and it seemed ridiculous that she had worried all the way over to Hope how she would approach the subject. She suspected Keeley didn’t have many people she could talk to about the tragedy that had hit her; Mouse was happy to listen.