by Faith Martin
Leaving Puff in his favourite place, parked close up against a large, sheltering, overhanging hawthorn hedge, she stepped onto the Oxford canal towpath and headed towards her boat.
Since it was still early spring the approaching evening felt distinctly chilly, but she didn’t bother doing up her coat for such a short walk. Soon the bare hedges lining the farmer’s field on one side would begin to bud, making them look like a lacy green ribbon. Already the noisy mallard ducks were mating with their usual violence, and before too long the violets would come out, and ducklings would begin to hatch, and winter would become nothing more than a distant memory.
She climbed onto the back of her boat, and using a small key to open the padlock that held the hasps on the two metal doors covering the hatchway together, walked down the steep, short wooden stairs and into her home, automatically ducking her head as did so.
She tossed her coat and bag into the tiny bedroom that was the first of the Mollern’s limited rooms, then walked on down through the corridor, no wider than those on a bus, into the small galley at the front of the boat.
She tried not to think of her partner, Steven, who had died a while ago. Missing him still hurt. She went instead to the radio and turned it onto a station that played cheerful 1960s pop, and to the accompaniment of the Tremeloes sang along about how even bad times are good as she opened a can of meatballs and set them to warm on the stove. Cooking had always been more of a chore than a pleasure for her, and leaving the saucepan heating up, she went back to the bedroom to change.
Sitting at the tiny fold-down table ten minutes later and eating her nominal supper, her mind kept straying stubbornly back to Gareth Proctor.
She liked him and admired him, but not long after he’d first started working on her team, she’d discovered him carefully teasing information out of some officers about the murder of a former soldier in Reading — a man called Clyde-Brough.
And it had rung immediate alarm bells with her, not least because Gareth’s predecessor had joined the group with a hidden agenda of his own. Luckily, that had all worked out well, but it left her understandably wary.
And as much as she’d tried to convince herself that lightning didn’t strike twice, she’d nevertheless called in a favour from someone working the case, and got him to nose around. Specifically, to see if anyone answering Gareth’s distinctive description had crossed their radar during their investigations.
She’d been relieved to learn that he hadn’t, and that there was no apparent connection between her new boy and the dead soldier, and that had been that.
Or so she’d thought at the time.
But now Hillary couldn’t help but wonder if she should have dug a little bit deeper, and not ignored that niggle of instinct that warned her that there was more to the still-unsolved murder of Clyde-Brough — and her latest team member — that needed her attention.
After all, you were only paranoid if somebody wasn’t out to get you!
Although she had no proof that the phone call to Gareth today had been from one of his former army mates — as opposed to a family member or someone else from civvy street — she would have bet a fair amount of her yearly salary that it had been. There had been something about the way his face had tightened on hearing the identity of the speaker — something that spoke of wariness along with concern.
On the other hand, so what if he had been speaking to someone from his former life in the army? Why was she assuming that it meant trouble of some sort? For her, or for him?
She finished her uninspiring supper with a sigh and carried the tomato sauce-smeared plate to the tiny sink. There, she stared out of the small window at the khaki-coloured water of the canal so close and all around her, and ran the hot water tap, using the bare minimum of water needed to do the job. She did so purely out of habit — the same way that she turned off lights as she moved from room to room, to conserve the battery.
Living on a narrowboat taught you to be frugal, if nothing else.
A sooty-coloured moorhen chose that moment to swim past her boat, its distinctive v-shaped white rump cutting a course along the canal, but she barely noticed it.
Was she seeing problems with Gareth Proctor that simply weren’t there? Or was she just reluctant to dig deeper because she was worried about what she might find? She not only had high hopes that the former soldier would make a good long-term fit for her team, but she knew that Gareth needed a steady job. One that gave him a feeling of accomplishment and self-worth was vital if he was to make a life for himself outside the army.
The last thing she wanted to do was scupper it for him. And yet the murder of Clyde-Brough was still unsolved. And it just wasn’t in her DNA to let something like that lie, if there was even the slightest chance that she could help her colleagues solve it.
‘Oh damn and bloody blast it,’ she suddenly yelled, angry at herself for prevaricating like an uncertain novice.
The moorhen, rather sensibly, took to its long-toed feet at this unwarranted outburst and, wings flapping, headed for the reed bed on the opposite side of the bank, calling in alarm as it did so.
Hillary watched it and apologized ruefully.
CHAPTER SIX
The next day dawned frosty but bright. Hillary had been going to ask Gareth to do the driving to Headington, where Kevin Philpott still lived, though not any longer with his parents. But after getting to the office and dealing with her emails, she’d noticed that Gareth’s limp was particularly bad that day, and changed her mind.
Although he had a fully adapted car and liked to use it, when they crossed the car park at shortly after ten o’clock that morning, she walked determinedly towards Puff, but not quite at her usual speed. Gareth, using his tubular metal walking stick with grim-faced competence, appeared not to notice that she was matching her speed to his, and for this she was grateful.
She unlocked the car doors, and then pretended to fiddle with something in her bag, giving him plenty of time to stow his stick alongside the passenger seat and get settled. Since he had to use both hands to lift and swing his leg up from the ground this took a little longer than usual, but she waited until he was doing up his seatbelt before settling behind the wheel herself.
She’d noticed in the few months that he’d been working with her that some days were better than others for him when it came to his physical problems. The limited strength and movement in his withered left hand and arm didn’t seem to vary much, but his walking was a different matter. She wondered if it depended on whether or not he’d slept well — or perhaps slept awkwardly?
She knew from personal experience what it was like when you woke up with a numb arm or cramp in your leg because you’d spent hours in the same position, and could only suppose that you’d have to multiply that feeling by ten if you’d suffered the injuries he had.
‘You have his address?’ Hillary asked briskly, nothing of her sympathetic thoughts showing in her tone as she turned the ignition. Puff, it seemed, was not in a particularly tragic mood that morning since he started first time.
‘Yes, ma’am. Flat 1a, 106 Brighton Terrace Gardens — not far from the Nuffield Hospital, according to the map. He’s lived there since 2013.’
‘Does he own it?’
‘No, ma’am, rented. His family aren’t anywhere near as well off as the Becks,’ Gareth informed her. ‘His father worked for the council in the parks department, and his mother still helps out at a local newsagents part-time.’
Hillary was glad she’d asked him to bone up on all they knew about the witness before arranging to talk to him today, and she planned to take full advantage of it as she drove.
‘He married?’
‘No, no marriage.’
Hillary nodded. ‘You say his family is working class? The boys first met at secondary school, right?’
‘Yes, ma’am. They were put in the same form at the age of eleven. A large but well-regarded former comprehensive, now renamed as a college apparently.’
Hillary nodded th
oughtfully. ‘Which means the Becks didn’t send their son to a private school. Interesting. Perhaps they aren’t as well off as we’d assumed. The house in Woodeaton could have been inherited from one or the other’s own parents. And maybe William’s business wasn’t as lucrative as all that.’
‘Or maybe they have socialist views,’ Gareth pointed out, pleasing Hillary that he now felt confident enough to speak freely. When he’d first joined the team, he’d been practically silent until he’d begun to learn that she, Claire and he needed to bounce ideas off each other, and that he was expected to air his thoughts and opinions.
‘Yes, that’s certainly a possibility,’ she agreed. ‘I certainly didn’t get the feeling when talking to them that they were social snobs. And maybe that liberal attitude wore off on their son too. It didn’t stop him from making friends with Kevin, did it?’
It was another fact she added to her mental list of what she knew about the dead man, and the more she learned about him, the more she liked him. On the other hand, what she was learning was bringing her no closer to finding out why someone might have wanted him dead.
Michael Beck seemed, on the face of it, to have been a normal, well-adjusted young man, maybe a little on the quiet side, who’d been doing nothing more controversial with his life than trying to find a job, while indulging his favourite hobby.
As that thought flashed through her mind, Hillary jerked a little in her seat and felt a wave of self-recrimination hit her. ‘Damn it,’ she muttered.
‘Ma’am?’
Hillary shook her head, annoyed at herself. ‘I’m slipping. When we talked to his parents, they mentioned Michael had been a keen photographer — and especially keen on wildlife and rural landscapes. And we know that one of the possibilities is that he may have been killed somewhere close to where he was found.’
‘So he might have been out in the fields taking pictures?’ Gareth said, nodding, following her reasoning. ‘The river would have been a favourite spot, ma’am, if he was into wildlife. Kingfishers and things.’
‘Yes. But there were no reports in the original investigation about his camera equipment, was there?’ she said tersely. ‘The fields all around the area were searched — they never found his camera, right?’
While she was sure she’d have remembered reading about it in the files if they had, she still had a moment of doubt. She’d already missed an obvious line of enquiry once — who was to say she wasn’t slipping again?
‘No, ma’am, there was no mention of his camera being found. He might not have even taken it with him that day,’ Gareth pointed out.
‘No, it’s pure speculation,’ Hillary agreed grimly. But it was something that should have occurred to her the moment Martina Beck pointed out her son’s photographs with such pride. ‘When we get back to HQ, I want you to phone the Becks and ask them if they noticed whether any of his cameras were missing, will you? A keen photographer must have had more than one.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Turn left here,’ Gareth said, pointing ahead and giving her plenty of time to make the turn. ‘I think the place we’re looking for must be somewhere up here . . .’
Hillary forced her anger at her lapse to one side, and concentrated on finding the right address. ‘I’ve only got odd numbers my side of the street,’ she said, craning her neck for a better view.
‘Yes — we’re up to number 84 . . .’ Gareth informed her.
Once they’d found the right number, there was no parking nearby, naturally, and Hillary had to tour around for a while, turning down various pleasant little cul-de-sacs and other narrow but attractive streets, until she eventually found somewhere not too far away.
Again, she climbed out of the car and took her time looking around to give her companion ample time to get himself out of the car and standing.
‘It’s up that way, right?’ she said, pointing back up the road.
‘Yes, ma’am. First right, then second left.’
Hillary’s lips twitched. ‘Better than a compass, aren’t you?’ she said dryly.
Gareth Proctor flashed her first an astonished glance, then grinned, then wiped it smartly off his face, and quietly agreed. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
* * *
Kevin Philpott’s flat turned out to be the ground floor of a large converted Victorian terraced house, built out of yellow brick with fussy white brick trim. Not Hillary’s favourite architectural style, but in this area, anything at all was considered valuable property.
A set of steps led down, presumably to the basement flat, while two more floors (the uppermost crammed in under the eaves) provided room for several more residences. Cramped by most people’s estimates, in Oxford it was almost the height of luxury.
‘Do you think you could afford to rent here?’ Hillary asked Gareth, genuinely curious.
‘Not quite, ma’am,’ he said promptly. He lived above a fish-and-chip shop in Kidlington, and more often than not didn’t have much money left over at the end of the month to afford even the comestibles on offer being fried below him.
‘Looks as if Michael’s friend, while not exactly flying high, is doing more or less all right for himself then,’ she mused. ‘Let’s go and see what he has to tell us.’
Kevin Philpott was expecting them, since Hillary had phoned him before leaving the office last night to make the appointment. She was not surprised when he answered the door within moments of their ringing the bell for Flat 1a.
‘Hello — Mrs Greene is it?’
Hillary knew that Philpott had been the same age as their victim ten years ago, so he must now be around thirty-two or so. The man standing in the doorway, however, looked much younger, probably because he was quite fleshy, and had the baby-faced look that went with weight. Not tall, around five feet nine or so, she was looking almost directly into his deep-set brown eyes. He had the colour of hair that was not quite blond, but not quite brown either, and was dressed in faded jeans that did little to disguise his pleasantly rounded pot belly, and a plain white shirt.
Like his dead friend, he was neither handsome nor plain, but when he smiled tentatively at her, it made her want to smile back at him.
‘Yes, this is my colleague Gareth Proctor,’ Hillary informed him.
Kevin’s eyes went over her shoulder and he nodded and stepped back, allowing them to pass into the small communal hall, his gaze skittering a little nervously over Gareth’s walking stick. He stalwartly pretended not to notice the other man’s awkward, lurching gait as he pointed them to the only door showing. The staircase, right in front of them, was uncarpeted and not very clean, but at least it had a handrail.
‘Just push on the door, I left it open,’ he called. The space was too small for him to try and push past them, so Hillary, in the lead, obligingly pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The flat wasn’t huge, but it impressed Hillary in a way that she hadn’t expected it to, and that made her feel slightly discomfited. She must have subconsciously been expecting the overweight man to live in a sloppy or less-than-impressive home, and that was bias, pure and simple. She gave herself a mental ticking off, and looked around with pleasure.
The walls had been painted a silvery mint green, and one two-seater sofa and a matching armchair in black leather didn’t crowd or overwhelm the small space. A black-leaded Victorian fireplace — either original to the building, or bought to add ambience — provided a pleasant focal point. Above it, Hillary instantly recognized Michael Beck’s work — a large photograph of a spider’s web, hanging with dewdrops against a misty autumn background of rust-coloured dock stems gone to seed.
Everywhere was spotlessly clean.
Through the open door in one wall, she could see a small area of the kitchen, which was decorated in tones of primrose lemon and apple green, with sparkling white tops and painted cupboards. Even the chrome taps shone.
On the floor beneath her, an old Turkish carpet covered bare, pale floorboards, which had been lovingly sanded back and varnished. A sideboard
from the 1930s, which had been painted and then sanded back to give it that distressed vintage look that was now so fashionable, stood beside the sole bay window. In the window, a plant of some kind thrived in a large, colourful ceramic pot.
A massive and impressive television had been fixed to one wall, the only incongruous note, but she saw Gareth look at it with envy as they both took a seat on the sofa.
Kevin sat on the armchair, leaning forward, looking both nervous but eager to help. ‘I was so glad when you phoned last night, saying you were taking another look at Michael’s case,’ he began, his voice slightly raspy. If he was a smoker, Hillary mused, there was no sign of it in his home — no telltale smell, or slightly yellowed ceiling. Perhaps he was just getting over a cold?
‘It’s never really sat right with me that nobody was ever caught,’ he continued, then immediately flushed. His eyes rounded a little comically and he gulped audibly. ‘I didn’t mean that to sound as if . . . I wasn’t trying to imply that you weren’t doing a good job . . .’
‘That’s all right, Mr Philpott,’ Hillary rushed to assure him. The last thing she wanted was for this man to feel defensive or embarrassed. She needed him to feel relaxed and chatty. ‘Neither one of us worked on the original case. As I explained on the telephone, I’m a former DI, and I work for the Thames Valley Police Service as a consultant on unsolved cases. And I can assure you, we’re going to do everything we can to get justice for your friend.’
Kevin smiled in relief and let out his breath in a slow puff. She was relieved to see him ease back in his chair and nod. ‘Sorry,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘Mike always said I could put my foot in my mouth easier than anyone he’d ever known.’
Hillary grinned. ‘Me too,’ she lied, and noted the shortened use of Michael Beck’s name. It was a timely reminder that this witness probably knew the murder victim as well as anyone. ‘So, you were, what, eleven when you first met Mike?’
‘That’s right. Me, I was no good at school.’ Kevin shrugged. ‘Too much of a dreamer my dad and teachers always said. Couldn’t concentrate for long enough to get anything done! But Mike was different. A real natural at all that learning stuff. He sailed through his exams — well, as you know, he went on to get a degree. I could never understand why he took up with a bit of a dunce like me, to be honest.’