Not a Very Nice Woman

by John Eider

But Inspector Rase couldn’t switch off that easily. Grey followed Glass down to the mess room to where he was speaking to one of his men on the radio,

  ‘He’s home? He didn’t see you? Good good, then keep the cars at each end of the road and have one driving past every half hour. I’ll be down when I can.’

  Glass signed off and spoke to Grey,

  ‘We replaced the squadcars with our own and put the team in civvies. Mansard Lane’s a long road with a dogleg, no alleyways or turnoffs: it really couldn’t be better.’

  Knowing Mars was home, and knowing that to put it off would be fatal, Grey took the information sheet that the man had filled in at reception over to a desk in the corner and made his call.

  ‘How did it go?’ asked Cori as he replaced the receiver?

  ‘Fine, fine.’ He was shaking. ‘Noon it is.’

  ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘Calm; perhaps ever-so-slightly rattled, but then that might just have been me.’

  ‘Any sense we were on to him?’

  Grey didn’t know, ‘He might just be worried about his wife.’

  ‘Or worried for what she could tell us.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, don’t start underestimating him, will you, sir. Remember how confident he was this morning, and remember what we think he might have done.’

  “Might have done” – his Sergeant’s lingering faith in the presumption of innocence was heartening. Instructing her point-blank to go home, he himself refused her offer of a lift choosing instead to walk to his own residence, or at least into the town centre. He thought of a visit to the Young Prince Hal, but alcohol wouldn’t have helped and he sensed he needed his own thoughts clear just now. Once on the High Street though, he knew where he wanted to go.

  Spotting him through the evening’s gloom before he got there, his colleagues opened the car window just enough to instruct him to get in the back. In the front seats were the female Constable he had spoken to at the station earlier, and beside her not the officer he guessed was her partner off duty also but rather the guard at the Cedars last night, the one helping the Carstairs as Charlie Prove got away unseen,

  ‘You were up all last night too,’ Grey asked him. ‘Have you slept?’

  ‘I got a few hours this afternoon, sir.’

  ‘And you were on shift at the station today,’ he said, turning to his colleague.

  ‘I’m only here till ten, sir,’ she answered. ‘Anyway, it’s all hands to the pump for those of us not away for the Conference.’

  Ah yes, the Conference, Grey remembered. One of the major political parties was holding its Spring Conference in a nearby city that week, which these days meant as many police were needed as politicians, and so causing a drain on manpower on all surrounding forces.

  He thought of her and her boyfriend: when did they find time to be together with their shift patterns? It was probably for that reason that Glass posted them apart tonight.

  ‘It’s been all quiet, sir,’ said the young man. ‘Apart from a couple of fellows off to the pub we’ve hardly seen a soul since sundown.’

  Grey wondered if they were men he knew, who another night he might be drinking with? Much though he loved his job and lived for the drama of such evenings, there was a part of him that hated how a case like this made him solitary, took him out of civic life, made the only people he spoke to other policemen.

  ‘Here’s the car just come past the house,’ said the female officer. ‘Anything?’ she asked the radio as the vehicle sailed past unacknowledgingly.

  ‘Negative,’ the answer came. ‘Downstairs lights are still on, no movement.’ The radio went back to silence as the other car’s lights faded to nothing in the rear-view mirror, leaving the three of them once more alone.

  ‘So what will you do now?’ asked Grey.

  ‘Just wait here, sir. Keep our eyes open. Do you want coffee?’

  Under no obligation to be alert himself he refused the drink,

  ‘You don’t mind if I rest my bones back here awhile?’ he asked, knowing they were hardly going to refuse.

  A gentle knocking woke him, ‘Have I been asleep?’

  ‘You didn’t miss much,’ his juniors replied as an older Constable, proof that not everyone was in this for a career, again rapped a knuckle against the window,

  ‘You’re off, Tash,’ he said as she opened the driver’s door to him, she stretching as she lifted herself out of her set position. ‘The Sarge’s parked back around the corner, he’ll run you home.’

  The man replaced her and shut the door, ‘Evening, sir, didn’t see you back there.’

  ‘Evening. Don’t mind me, I’m only an observer.’

  ‘Waiting for something to happen, eh sir?’

  ‘Yep, just the same as the rest of us.’

  ‘Any left in that flask, Pete? The wife’s packed a new one and some sandwiches.’

  ‘Lovely, what you got? Any ham?’

  As the conversation between the men in the front seats returned to more pressing matters, the Inspector’s phone rang.

  ‘Best answer it in here, sir,’ said the older man as he poured. ‘You’d be amazed how a voice can carry at night.’

  But it was only the station anyway,

  ‘Hope I’m not keeping you up, sir,’ said a voice from the reception desk.

  ‘No, not at all. What is it?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Mars, sir. She’s called from the hotel we put her in: she says she doesn’t feel safe there; and we can’t really spare an officer to go on guard duty there all night. Apart from the cells we don’t have much else to offer her.’

  ‘Okay, she’s at the Havahostel?’

  ‘No, the Royal in town.’

  Well, the Inspector wouldn’t have minded a night at the Royal Hotel himself. He’d been a member of their dining club once, though he hadn’t felt he’d been looked at quite the same there since having to investigate a fellow member.

  ‘Tell her there’ll be a car outside for her in five minutes.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  He rang off and spoke to the men in front of him, ‘Radio the Sergeant, would you, and have him wait for me around the corner.’

  The car was another plain one, it’s engine revving at the curb almost inaudibly, little more than a low resonance.

  ‘We were just going to run down Mansard Lane first, sir,’ said the Sergeant as Grey got in. ‘If you’ve time?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He realised he hadn’t visited the Mars home yet, but felt he knew it from Ludmila’s description. Turning back on themselves and passing the Constables eating ham sandwiches in their car, they drove onto Mansard Lane and along that strip of large villas, spaced out and atmospheric in the streetlight and set back behind trees. The road to Grey reeked of mystery, and despite himself he could only think of the affairs that could be carried out behind these low-lit windows, the clinches snatched beneath the trees’ long shadows.

  It was with a jolt that the Sergeant said, ‘Here’s Mars’s house.’

  They slowed and barely revved as the modern car glided between the parked cars and along the smooth tarmac. All eyes were to the left though, to the house no different from the others, its downstairs bay lit up, the porch and all other windows put out. Yet there was movement as they came near – a figure at the window looking out and following the car as it didn’t stop but instead carried on along the Lane.

  ‘D’you think he saw us?’ asked Natasha, tiredness kept from her voice still, though her shift was nearly over.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ answered Grey from his better viewpoint through the rear window. ‘It’s getting late now. He’s waiting for his wife. If she came home now she’d get a taxi.’

  ‘Target seen in house,’ said the Sergeant into the radio. ‘Repeat, target seen in house.’

  They found the end of the Lane, and past the junction saw a car Grey thought might have been that end’s guard. Grey liked the night, liked how things looked in i
t: the inky blacks and silver highlights of a vintage photograph. As they moved along the almost empty roads past shaded buildings and neon-lit shopfronts, Grey found he was thinking of Patrick Mars alone at his front window, waiting for… what? His wife? For justice to catch up with him? For the people he might already have guessed were watching him to show themselves? These thoughts brought with them a feeling, one deep and mournful and untamed by good sense, and as they reached Natasha’s flats Grey realised it was pity.

  Thankfully Natasha lived not far from the centre, and they were soon again nearing the town.

  ‘How long you on duty for?’ asked the Sergeant for conversation.

  ‘I’m not sure that I still am,’ answered the Inspector.

  ‘I know that feeling.’

  Chapter 20 – Kicking Over the Traces