I toyed with Buddhism, enthralled by the idea of being reincarnated as something better in the next life. At the time I couldn’t imagine how any life could be better than the one I already had. Two loving parents, albeit divorced, a caring mentor, Zelda, about to introduce me to the successful producer, Barry Marcos, with every chance of securing my first professional contract.
But there was no divine force for good. If He had existed, He would have intervened and stopped what happened next. Everything that happened was my own doing, not God’s. I joined the police and vowed to control my destiny. Religion has played no part in my life for three years. But I’m going to church today.
Chapter 31
Danny is sitting in a pool car with the engine running when I arrive in the car park. He leans across to open the passenger door. “Jump in, girl,” he says with a smile.
“Thank you, sergeant.” I clamber in, glad I’ve chosen a long cotton skirt that hides my ungainly entry.
“Call me, Danny.”
“Thank you, Danny.” The dialogue’s going exactly as I composed it. I fumble with the seatbelt but have to let it slip back inside its reel as Danny accelerates out of the car park. When his speed finally becomes constant, I stretch the strap across and stab the metal prong in the vicinity of the socket until it clicks into place.
Danny overtakes an elderly driver, giving a cursory wave to the oncoming car, which has to slow down to let him complete the manoeuvre.
“I think this is a complete waste of time. This guy, Hedges, is probably where his wife says he is – halfway up a ladder, slapping on the magnolia in South Wales. But I’d rather be doing this than the Annual.”
“The Annual?” I ask.
“The Annual Report. That’s what Matthews has got lumbered with. Hendersen fingered him for it last year as well. I told Matthews he shouldn’t have done such a good job. He’s going to start looking like an accountant soon. He already acts like one.” He flashes a cheeky grin and the corners of my mouth turn up in response.
“I was worried Hendersen might ask me to do it this year,” Danny says. “That’s why I volunteered for this. No offence to you, but I can’t stand babysitting probationers. I’d rather that than the Annual though.” He casts another twinkling glance my way. I beam back, ignoring how far he’s deviated from my imagined script. I’m not a probationer, just a new transfer to CID. But I only notice his dancing eyes and the fact that I don’t have to brace myself for every sentence to end with a scornful “Agatha”.
I’ve driven past the Church of Divine and Eternal Freedom lots of times. One of the landmarks on my route to the motorway. It always puts me in mind of an Alpine cottage. My grandfather once bought a novelty barometer in Germany – a miniature wooden house with two front doors. In warm weather a freckly cowgirl would appear out of one of them. When the pressure dropped, a shepherd in lederhosen would come out of the other. The church has the same long wooden roof sloping down to the ground and two small glass doors. Whenever I travel past, one or both of them seem to be open, as they are today.
Danny drives beyond the half-empty car park by a parade of shops and pulls up on double yellow lines in front of the church. He slaps a Police On Duty sticker on the dashboard.
We head for one of the open doors. Taking a deep breath, I prepare for reverence and gloom. But to my surprise, the atmosphere inside is light and busy. A radio plays gentle pop music while groups of people, all elegantly dressed, engage in various tasks – flower arranging, polishing the altar rail, dusting the pews, replacing candles. A young black woman kneels inside the entrance with her back to us, tidying a shelf of hymn books. Close by, a toddler in a smart blue and white shirt and matching shorts pushes a toy train along the tiles. Danny, on his way towards three grey-haired white men in the back pew, says “Hello, mate” to the child. The boy lets out a howl and the young woman turns round to comfort him. I kneel beside her, apologize for the disturbance and ask whether she knows Bartholomew Hedges.
“He always here. Never misses his turn on the rota,” she says and pops a dummy into the child’s mouth.
“Where is he?”
“Haven’t seen him today. Not yet.”
I thank her and reach Danny in time to hear him say to one of the men, “I can get a warrant if I have to. Is Hedges here or not?”
I suggest we check the vestry and give the three stony faces a conciliatory smile.
“Never know where you stand with God-botherers. Give me an honest scrote any day,” Danny mutters as we walk down the central aisle. Perhaps he’s joking. Just his way. I look around anxiously, but apart from a couple of impassive glances, most people concentrate harder on their work, pretending not to notice us.
Danny strides towards a heavy humming sound coming from an open door to the right of the altar. The vestry beyond is a small room. A rail of ceremonial robes fills one wall and there’s a writing bureau lined with prayer books along another. The source of the noise is a vacuum cleaner being dragged over the thin carpet by a heavy black woman in a headscarf and floral overall. She wears white trainers and trousers showing below the overall. Although she’s the only person suitably dressed for cleaning work, her scruffiness sets her apart from the elegance of the other workers.
The second cleaner in the room is a thin white woman wearing rubber gloves and a plastic apron over a neat beige dress. She’s cleaning a small washbasin. When she sees us approaching, she puts down her cloth. Danny’s about to shout to her above the noise of the vacuum but changes his mind. He draws his hand across his neck and points at the machine, mouthing, “Cut”. For a moment she looks as if she’s going to pretend not to understand but seeing the determined expression on Danny’s face, taps the other woman on the arm. The woman kills the noise, picks up a feather duster from the bureau and flicks it over the books.
“Thank you,” I say. “We’re looking for Bartholomew Hedges. We were told he’d be here.”
“We are the only ones cleaning the vestry today,” the small woman says in clear, clipped tones. “Isn’t that right, Vi?”
The woman nods and continues dusting.
“What’s through there?” Danny points at a door beyond the washbasin.
“Those are the lavatories. We’ve already cleaned them today,” the small woman replies proudly.
“What about outside? Is anyone doing gardening?”
“We don’t have a garden yet. We’re still fundraising.” She points to a plastic charity box on the bureau. “Perhaps you’d like to contribute?”
I reach into my bag but, before I find my loose change, Danny orders me to check the female toilet while he inspects the gents. Afterwards, he bundles me back into the main church, thwarting my attempts to say goodbye to the two cleaners.
“It’s a waste of time.” He heads for the door.
Something’s not right, but Danny’s moving too fast for me to ponder what. I resent being bulldozed and make a point of locating some coins at the bottom of my bag. I tell Danny I’m popping back to the vestry. The heavy woman is vacuuming under the bureau and she doesn’t hear me approach. As I drop the coins into the tin, I briefly meet her startled eyes. She snaps her head back towards the carpet and presses the vacuum hose into the skirting board. I make my way out of the church as a cloudy picture tugs at my memory but refuses to clear.
“Did you see that cleaning woman again?” Danny asks when I return to the car.
“Yes, did you recognize her?” My recent doubts about Danny’s professionalism vanish. His tough cop routine was an act and he’s now going to enlighten me.
“The girls I know don’t look that rough,” he laughs and runs his hand through his hair. “Talking of which, Bagley wants us back. She’s got some new information.”
I don’t try to make conversation on the way and mentally shred my script. Suddenly, working with DS Matthews who calls me Agatha doesn’t seem so bad.
Mike Matthews surveys the motley pile of papers which DCI Hendersen thrust into hi
s arms. If he stares at it until his retirement, he won’t make himself believe it resembles in any way a near-completed Annual Report. He can picture how it came into being. The report deadline looming, Hendersen would have gone on a hasty memo cull and thrown together a folder. It’s now landed on Mike from a great height, as it did at the same time last year. He tried to burrow his way out of the rubble this time by suggesting Johnson for the task, but Danny Johnson dug faster. And that rankles more than being lumbered with the paperwork. Admin he can handle, arrogant arseholes are another matter. If Johnson were any cooler, he’d freeze his cobblers off. Some hope. He’d better keep his tricks to himself while he’s supervising Agatha.
Agatha. There he is again, thinking about her. Why should he need to protect her? She must have come across her fair share of Danny Johnsons. She’s been a copper for three years. And she’s blonde. Her sort always lands on their neat little feet, inside their neat little Gucci sandals.
He switches on his computer terminal. He had the good sense to save a copy of the Annual Report he wrote last year. Providing Hendersen has salvaged the budget and crime figures from the heap in his office, all Mike has to do is input the new numbers into the old report. If Hendersen had given him the job in April, when it was first due, he could have updated the text too, but now there isn’t time.
Agatha. Did he really just think about her hair? Shame on him. His mother told him he shouldn’t go on about blondes. Some people know what it’s like to be judged by the colour of their hair. Did Mum mean herself? A Jamaican woman arriving in 1970s Penbury? Mike’s grateful for the changing times. Prejudice is now a shrinking cancer, but still capable of deadly resurgences, especially since the Brexit vote.
Are blondes at risk from his own prejudice? He hasn’t always felt that way. He once welcomed a blonde, Kate – with open arms – and an open wallet. She soon emptied that and more besides. He’s steered clear of the type ever since. But now he’s supervising a walking, talking (definitely talking), blue-eyed, peaches-and-cream blonde.
He flicks through the DCI’s scrapbook and finds the staff returns. Kate was a slick chick who would never have worn any of Agatha’s dodgy T-shirts – unless they had a designer label inside. And he can’t see Agatha teetering about on Kate’s strappy sandals. Agatha’s more of a jolly hockey pumps kind of a girl. Mike suspects a posher accent lurking below her evenly modulated tones. He’s good at accents. He’s played a few in his time.
He hunts through the papers for the crime statistics, but can’t find the sheet for October to December. He knocks aside his computer mouse in frustration. The report will take longer than expected, and he’s anxious to get back on the Brock case. The only lead has been provided by Joe Walker, a fifteen-year-old joy rider. Everyone else claims Carl Brock was God’s gift to teaching. It just takes one snivelling no-mark pupil to bad-mouth him, even after death, and his reputation could be shot to pieces. Who’d be a teacher? Mike has asked his mother the same question often enough. Rewarding, she says.
But some things about Brock don’t add up. Why was there soil on his trainers when he left them in the car before he was murdered? Had he been to Martle Top another time? Was it a regular meeting place? Why? Dodgy deals and blackmail seem unlikely given the conservative state of Brock’s bank account. A lover perhaps? His mind wanders to Swan school and the heavily pregnant Mrs Ferris. Possible. They wouldn’t be the first work colleagues to play away, and to get caught out.
Or perhaps the child was planned. The wife, Gaby, lost a baby. Maybe she couldn’t have any more. Were Carl Brock and La Ferris planning on playing happy families? It would have given Gaby Brock the perfect motive. The theory has legs, except for the part about Mrs Ferris. Mike chatted to her in school. She seemed like any expectant mum, looking forward to the new arrival, not a mistress mourning her murdered lover. She had nothing more on her mind than swollen ankles.
So was it drugs then? He hopes not. He’d like nothing better than to charge Joe Walker with wasting police time. And yet Samuel McKenzie, Penbury’s own happy pill pharmacist, has been in Brock’s car. A coincidence? Only when it snows in July. The car belongs to a corpse, which is starting to smell high – McKenzie’s kind of high. Hopefully the search into the car’s previous owners will turn up a major player in McKenzie’s drug league.
Suddenly he remembers his intention to find out what Brock was driving before he bought the Mondeo. He picks up the phone. “DVLA? Can you put me through to archives, please?”
Chapter 32
“Hope you’re wearing your flak jacket, Danny boy,” Darren Holtom says as we enter the main office to join the other detectives. “The DI’s taking no prisoners today.”
“I thought she’d had a breakthrough she wanted to tell us about,” Danny says.
“She does, but she’s seething after her appraisal, isn’t she? Imagine that: savaged by a librarian.”
There’s a salvo of chuckles before Kevin Bradshaw enlightens me.
“Superintendent Naomi Chattan has a dark secret. Before she joined the police and got fast-tracked to the top, she used to be a librarian. But she prefers the term ‘knowledge manager’. Apparently they don’t use the ‘l’ world anymore.”
“Twin set or not, I reckon she hung Bagley out to dry,” Darren says, rubbing his hand through his red hair.
“I wouldn’t have minded being a fly on that particular executive wall. It would have been good to see Shagley squirm,” Danny says.
“I thought you already had,” Martin Connors leers.
The men, including Danny, laugh crudely but I hardly notice. As I take my seat with the others, I’m absorbed in trying to fit together a crazy jigsaw I’ve created in my mind.
“Listen up, everyone. We’ve got some new evidence.” Bagley enters, holding a small buff file above her head. Beneath her heavy make-up her face looks like thunder.
“We’ve finally got Carl Brock’s medical records. Shame we couldn’t have been given them sooner. But that’s the level of incompetence I have to work with.”
The men look at each other nervously, no doubt wondering if she intends to attribute the blame to one of them as well as the National Health Service.
“Six years ago Brock was treated for a cocaine addiction.”
A wave of excitement sweeps through the room.
“So Joe Walker at Swan Academy was telling us the truth. Brock was into drugs,” I say, unable to keep quiet.
“Hold on a minute, DC Adams.” Bagley flashes a dark look. “There is no mention of drugs in his medical records since that time.” Sensing the new despondency in the ranks, she adds, “However, there isn’t a mention of anything else either. He hasn’t been to see a doctor since then. His medical history prior to his addiction problem was the usual.” She opened the file. “Ingrown toenail, backache and laryngitis. But for the last six years he’s been completely ailment free.”
“Where was he treated for the addiction?” Danny asks.
When Bagley’s voice softens, I wonder whether it’s down to the questioner as much as to the question. “Well, Danny, it appears that the GP treated Brock himself. Over a six-month period, Brock had consultations every week. Then he stopped visiting the doctor altogether,” she says.
“It sounds to me like he never kicked the habit,” Danny says. “He stays away from the doctor’s when he’s fed up of trying treatment.”
“You might be right, Danny.” She’s almost smiling. “I’ve told Dr Spicer to speed up his tests on the body and check for evidence of drug abuse.” Her face hardens again. “He’s getting as bad as Tarnovski. It’s a pity he didn’t suspect drug abuse when he noted the nerve damage. Simple hair analysis would have revealed any drug use. It’s situations like this when my department gets blasted for other people’s mistakes.”
I wonder whether she’s talking about a specific “blast”. Her appraisal? It would explain her apparent wish to boil us alive. But Bagley’s conveniently overlooked the fact that at a previous briefi
ng, she dismissed the nerve damage as irrelevant.
“This puts McKenzie right back in centre frame.” Bagley’s barking again. “McKenzie’s had a finger in the drugs pie for years. Whether Brock was clean for the last five years or not, they must have crossed paths before that. And we’ve already got his prints in Brock’s car. It’s time you lot got digging on this one. We’ve let McKenzie make idiots of us for long enough.”
“Do you have Gaby Brock’s medical records?” My question is out before I’ve time to consider the likelihood of Bagley’s fiery response, which duly comes.
“Why the hell would I have the medical records of the living, breathing wife of a murder victim?”
“I thought that if she were an addict, too, she might know more than she is letting on.”
“No court in the land would give me an order to see her records, nor would I want it to. Gaby Brock is no more an addict than you are. Don’t waste time. Reading up on her chicken pox is a wild goose chase.”
The corners of her mouth turn up to acknowledge her own pun, but her jaw sets again when Danny says, “There’s a problem with the prints in the car. I checked with the DVLA. Brock bought that car three weeks ago. There were four previous owners, all local.”
“Well do what DCI Hendersen told you to. Dig the dirt on the previous owners. There’s more than one way to skin a dog like McKenzie.”
“I did, ma’am.” Danny pauses. He shoves his hands in his pockets and won’t meet Bagley’s eye. Eventually he continues: “Brock bought the car from a second-hand dealer in Danescott.” He hesitates again before adding, “It was Morgan McKenzie Motors.”
Danny has lit the touch paper and we feel the full force of Bagley’s explosion. “You’re telling me Brock bought his Ford Mondeo from our prime suspect’s brother? Well that’s the end of that then. It doesn’t matter that Samuel McKenzie is a blackmailer, a drug dealer, a pimp and that an assault victim has picked out his mugshot, he’ll walk for murder. His oily solicitor will argue that McKenzie’s prints got there when the car belonged to his car dealer brother, Morgan.” She hurls the file at one of the desks. As it lands, it sends several other sheets of paper skidding to the floor. “I might as well pack up now. Spend what’s left of the weekend topping up my tan. Can anyone give me some good news? Bradshaw, make my day.”
The Good Teacher Page 17