The Truth About Murder

by Chris Collett

  ‘You’ve handed on your cases, Fraser?’ Bowers asked, moving on.

  ‘Just about to,’ I lied. But now I’d said it, there could be no more delay.

  * * *

  As it was, Sharon Petrowlski sought me out just a few hours later.

  ‘The boss was asking me about a Stefan Greaves. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Some case that you were meant to be sending over to me?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No worries. I didn’t know what he was on about, so I felt a bit of a twat.’ She smiled. ‘But it’s hardly the first time and I don’t imagine it’ll be the last either.’

  True to form, she already knew the basic facts of the case. ‘I read about it on the weekly bulletin. Anyone in the frame?’ she asked.

  I wondered whether to tell her about what I’d found in Denny’s locker, but much as I liked Sharon, I couldn’t trust anyone else not to jump to conclusions about Denny. I reiterated what I’d told Bowers.

  ‘Bostwick, eh?’ she said. ‘He’s a real little charmer.’

  ‘But until we get any fresh evidence, there’s not much more to be done, so it’s probably a sleeper.’ I handed her the file.

  ‘OK, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open, but can’t promise to do much more than that. You know what it’s like at the mo.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to know Stefan Greaves a bit. Is it OK with you if I check in once in a while?’

  ‘Sure, but like I say — don’t expect too much. What’s the super got you doing instead, then?’ she asked.

  ‘Babysitting Matthew Westfield.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Lucky you,’ she mocked.

  I paused. ‘What do you think of the superintendent?’ I asked, knowing I’d get an honest response.

  ‘He’s all right,’ she said, looking surprised by her own assessment. ‘Worked out better than a lot of us thought he would.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah, Chief Inspector Jim Hunnington was up for the job, and common consensus was that he’d get it. The next we heard, Hunnington had been hand-picked for some new special crime unit for the Home Office and Bowers appeared out of nowhere.’

  ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘Let me think, must have been about four years ago.’

  * * *

  Since Keeley had asked, I’d realised it was a few days since I’d seen Greaves. I needed to fill him in about Petrowlski and it would be a good excuse to return his belongings to him. I knew that he’d cancelled his credit cards so I may as well remove them from his wallet, but what to do about the cash? If I left it in, he’d wonder what was going on. In the end, I decided that the wallet was too complicated and it would be better to hang on to it until I’d established what exactly it meant, but I could at least return his watch.

  On the way, I called in at Davey’s with a photo of Liam Archer. The shop owner recognised Archer at once.

  ‘He hung around,’ he said. ‘Mainly foraging in the bins.’

  ‘Did he buy his lottery tickets here?’ I asked.

  ‘No, the only times I remember him actually coming in, it was with used tickets — handfuls of them, sometimes — trying to convince me that he’d won big. He never bought anything.’

  ‘How would Archer finish up with so many old lottery tickets?’ I asked. I was wondering aloud, really.

  ‘Beats me,’ said Davey. ‘Scratch cards would be different. But people don’t throw away their lottery tickets until they’ve waited for the numbers to be announced.’

  And then they can find their way anywhere, I thought, like to a person’s front garden.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  The buzzer sounded. It was Mick Fraser. When I opened my door to him, he was holding up something. ‘Thought you might like this back.’

  It was my watch.

  ‘Wow! How did you . . ?’

  ‘It was handed in,’ he said. ‘Someone must have found it.’

  ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘They didn’t leave a name or anything. But I guess it must have been somewhere near where you were attacked.’

  I was baffled. ‘But why just dump it?’ It didn’t make sense. ‘Couldn’t it have been sold?’

  ‘It’s a good watch,’ he said. ‘And maybe, with the inscription, they thought it was too distinctive and could be traced back. Too much of a risk.’ He sounded a little irritated.

  I slipped the bracelet over my wrist. ‘Funny,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t appreciated how much I’d missed it, but didn’t expect to see it again either. Thanks.’

  ‘It looked as if it might be of sentimental value, too?’

  I looked at the watch. ‘Mm. You want to come in? I was just going to take a break for coffee.’

  ‘OK. Cheers.’ He followed me through to the kitchen. ‘I went to see your friend Keeley,’ he said. ‘There’s a chance we may get some DNA evidence from her shoes. She was asking after you.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said, realising how long it had been. ‘I should get in touch with her again. I might need to again soon, anyway.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good,’ he said. ‘Sorry, it’s just, I hadn’t understood . . . er, your relationship. I do now.’

  ‘Well, up until a couple of nights ago, I’d have said that things were on the up in that respect, and that Keeley might be consigned to the past. I’d met someone. Trouble is, now I don’t know if I can really trust her or not.’ I felt a pang of regret. ‘Serves me right for counting my chickens, I suppose.’ I told him what had happened with Cate. As I came to the end, a grin spread across his face.

  ‘Did no one ever tell you? It’s a woman’s mission in life to change her man. Sonia’s tried to change so many things about me, I’ve given up counting. Maybe Cate forgot herself and was speaking as a medic, or maybe she just miscalculated and went too far.’

  ‘Thing is, I’ve come close before, and then something tends to come along and spoil it. You asked me about my watch? It represents the closest I’ve ever come to settling down with someone.’

  A fellow student at university, Joanna had been a year ahead of me and was a high-flying mathematician. We’d met at the chess club of all things, though she was quite new to the game. We hit it off from the start — same interests, same sense of humour and she genuinely didn’t seem to notice the rest of the crap. Until life started to get serious. In her final year, she was offered an internship with a multinational professional services company and part of the interview was a weekend at the country pile belonging to one of the directors, partners invited too. All part of the vetting process. It crossed my mind that she should take someone else, but she had been appalled at this suggestion.

  ‘You’re my boyfriend,’ she’d said. ‘Why wouldn’t I take you?’

  I’d wondered afterwards if it would have been better had I been black or gay, but I’m not so sure that it would have. Either way, they didn’t quite know what to make of me. I couldn’t ride and I couldn’t shoot, though I would have loved to have been let loose with a twelve-bore with those particular boors. The conversation across the dinner table had been fast and furious, no time to let me have my say and after the first couple of contributions were greeted with an embarrassed and impatient silence, I’d given up. The final straw came when I’d overheard a conversation between Joanna and her prospective boss.

  ‘You need a partner who can hold his own,’ he had told her. I hadn’t needed to think too hard about what he meant.

  It had been a tough call. We’d lasted a little longer, long enough to go to the company’s Christmas ball, when I’d followed the git into the gents and contrived to piss all over his trouser leg, but shortly after that I suggested we should call it a day, and Joanna didn’t object.

  After university there followed a few barren years before I realised that there would have to be times when regular sex was going to have to be a commercial undertaking, and I contacted a couple of escort agencies.

  ‘And one of them sent me Keeley. S
he’s great, it’s simple and we both know where we stand. I don’t have to second-guess what she’s thinking. Now Cate has come along and complicated things again.’

  ‘Well, for what it’s worth, my experience is that any relationship with a woman is a guessing game. It’s part of the fun. And it sounds like you and Cate might have something.’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know. It was going pretty well, until she started talking about making me better.’

  Fraser laughed. ‘It’s nothing unusual, believe me.’

  ‘But maybe it depends on what it is they want to change. There you go.’ I slid a coffee mug along the counter to him and we went back into the lounge.

  Fraser took a long slug of coffee. ‘The other thing I need to tell you is that I’m going off the radar for a few days. I’ve been asked to hand the case over temporarily to another officer for a week or so.’

  I felt an irrational stab of disappointment. ‘Why?’

  ‘You know the ex-politician Matthew Westfield?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Wow. A lot of disapproval in those two words.’

  ‘If I’m honest, I don’t know that much about him. But let’s say I don’t share some of his more widely publicised views. And my boss, Jake, has never had anything good to say about him, and he must have a reason. I’d trust Jake’s assessment of character any day.’

  ‘Well, anyway, Westfield’s visiting Charnford for a couple of days, from tomorrow,’ said Fraser.

  ‘Why?’

  He snorted. ‘It’s funny, that’s what everyone asks. I don’t know. But Denny, my partner, was to act as liaison officer for the visit, and now that he’s . . .’ he tailed off. ‘Well, the gaffer has asked me to do it. I’ve had to hand over any live cases to concentrate on that.’

  ‘That sounds like a promotion.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, but it’ll get me noticed so I need to do a decent job. Meantime, I’ve handed your case over to DS Sharon Petrowlski.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t you have found someone called Smith?’

  ‘Ah, sorry,’ he cringed. ‘I didn’t think about that.’ He passed me a business card. ‘Anyway, this is her number if you’ve got any questions. I’ll pick things up again next week, but in case Sharon gets in touch, I wanted you to be up to speed with what’s going on.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Fraser leant forward. ‘What did you think of the inquest — Rita Todd?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose it was the right decision, based on the evidence,’ I said, grudgingly.

  ‘Take it from me,’ he said. ‘That’s your conscience trying to say you could have done more. You couldn’t.’

  If he was looking to reassure me, it didn’t really work.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  I got to Fulford Road bright and early and polished to a shine the next morning. Westfield’s train was due mid-morning and, unsure of how the superintendent was planning to play things, I went along to his office. The door was slightly ajar and, poised to knock, I hesitated, partly because of the expression on Bowers’ face, which was flushed and excited, as if he was up to something illicit, like watching porn. It was nothing onscreen that had gripped his attention, though. Instead, he was gazing at a document of some kind. I knocked lightly on the door. After some hesitation, he reacted with an abrupt ‘Come!’

  As I entered the room, he closed the document and placed it face down on his desk. I wasn’t quick enough to glimpse the title, only the logo, which looked like a drawing of an old-fashioned sailing ship. It was the same distinctive yet meaningless symbol I’d seen on the data report in the folder Denny had put together. I imagine that giving it a logo somehow elevated the importance of the enterprise and played to both Bowers’ and Westfield’s vanity.

  ‘Mr Westfield’s train is imminent, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s not keep him waiting then,’ he said, taking his hat from where it hung on the back of the door.

  * * *

  After some initial hesitation on Westfield’s part, he and Bowers greeted each other like the old pals they were. They spend a few minutes catching up before getting to me. The porcelain white smile turned on me seemed genuine, and reached Westfield’s impossibly blue eyes, but then I reminded myself that he was an expert in all this.

  ‘Constable Mick Fraser will be your body man for the trip,’ Bowers told him. ‘Anything you need, ask him.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Mick.’ We shook hands. Leaning in slightly, he lowered his voice. ‘I’m sorry, this is going to be an incredibly tedious couple of days for you, but being able to travel independently means I get a bit of thinking space between gigs, and I really do appreciate that.’ He turned back to Bowers. ‘Right then, where first?’

  The first appointment was a meet-and-greet lunch reception at the council house. I took him there and parked and then, since I wasn’t exactly invited, did a lot of hanging around in the hallways. After that I brought him back to Fulford Road, where he was given the guided tour that lingered on the smart new bits and glossed over the scruffy. So, there I was, redundant in the middle of the afternoon on my first day of the job. After all the build-up it was something of an anticlimax.

  With idle time on my hands, I called Natalie again to see if the DNA results had turned up.

  ‘I’m baffled,’ she admitted. ‘They seem to have completely evaporated.’

  ‘How does that work?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never known it to happen before. We’ve got the techies in now trying to sort it out.’

  ‘You think that’s what it is, a technical fault?’ I remembered the hate mail Keeley had received.

  ‘Sure, what else would it be?’ Natalie said.

  I dug around on the desk until I found the envelope. It was stuck down, though it was hard to tell if it was self-adhesive or one that had to be moistened.

  ‘Listen, it’s a long shot, but I’m going to courier over something else for you. This time, if you get anything, can you make sure that I get any results before they go on the system?’

  ‘It’s unorthodox, but for you, Constable Fraser, I think I could manage that.’

  ‘Thanks, Natalie, I’ll be forever in your debt.’

  ‘Hm, that’s worth remembering,’ she said, and there was that audible smile again.

  * * *

  After the police station visit, which went into the early evening, I was summoned to transport Westfield back to his hotel. For a few minutes we drove in silence, me allowing him his thinking time. But then it was Westfield who spoke first.

  ‘Do you live locally, Mick?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He laughed easily. ‘I’m not your boss, you don’t have to call me “sir”. Matt will do fine. With that accent, I know you weren’t born here. What made you come to live in this area?’

  ‘My wife,’ I said. ‘I mean, we followed her job. She’s a store manager.’ I told him the name, though I doubted he’d ever shop there. ‘My job was more flexible, so I put in for a transfer. In fairness, we had been told it would be a nice place to live.’ It wasn’t the whole story. Mostly, we’d moved to get away. I wondered again, as I often did, if it was possible to be the black sheep of a family if I was the one who operated on the right side of the law.

  ‘That’s what I’m hearing,’ said Westfield. ‘What is it that you like about it?’

  It was hard to quantify, and I had to think for a moment.

  ‘The atmosphere, I suppose,’ I said. ‘And the people. It’s a pretty friendly place most of the time.’

  ‘Hmm, that’s what I’m being told. So you would agree?’

  ‘Yes, sir . . . er, Matt.’

  ‘From what I’ve seen of the crime data, you certainly seem to be getting a grip on it around here.’

  I briefly wondered if I should enlighten him about the crimes that went uninvestigated, but decided not to spoil his day.

  ‘We haven’t lived here long, but I understand tha
t Councillor Curzon has done a lot to improve the area in the last couple of years. Gentrification, they call it, don’t they?’ It’s what had happened to me, in a sense, meeting Sonia and trying to make something of myself. My brothers would piss themselves and my dad would turn in his grave — if he was dead and not inside. Mum would be proud, though.

  ‘Ah yes, Councillor Curzon. He sounds like a useful man to have around.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I added, for the sake of balance. ‘The place is not without its problems and in my line of work, I get to see the seedier side of it.’

  He met my gaze in the rear-view mirror. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Chief Superintendent Bowers told me what happened to your partner — a tragic waste of a good officer. But you guys must be doing a good job. I’m getting the message that Charnford has fewer of the social issues than many towns of this size.’

  I thought about Liam Archer’s friends and their convenient deaths but kept it to myself.

  ‘Shame we can’t just bottle that magic and sprinkle it elsewhere,’ he went on. ‘Don’t know about you, but I love my country, Mick, and it grieves me to hear people running it down, politicians or others. I believe that we have the capacity to make Britain a major power again, we just have to look for the good.’ He laughed again. ‘Christ, listen to me. I’ll be fighting them on the fucking beaches next.’

  ‘So do you think you’ll take us on, sir?’ I asked, taking a punt.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Are you thinking of representing us in parliament?’

  He seemed genuinely amused by that. ‘Is that what you’ve been told?’

  ‘Well, not exactly—’

  ‘Had you heard of me before this week, Mick?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Then you must be familiar with my reputation. I’m not convinced that being an elected representative is entirely compatible with my nature. I’m too fond of saying what I think and somewhat averse to bowing and scraping to the public. I do have plans, though — you’re right about that. It’s just not yet clear if and where Charnford might fit into those. I only know that your local officials were keen for me to see for myself what goes on here.’