On Eden Street

by Peter Grainger

  Clive Betts said, ‘Alright. Maybe we’ve got a couple of nutters who target homeless veterans instead of just any old homeless.’

  Someone has to put these ideas out there during the process, but no one believed this to be the explanation, including Betts. It didn’t feel right; there had been too much planning, too much preparation, and it had been executed too clinically for that. What they had witnessed on screen had some of the hallmarks of a professional hit.

  Greene said to no one in particular, ‘They know they’re on camera, probably more than one camera. They take some precautions but it doesn’t bother them much. They’ve priced it into the job – if you know what I mean.’

  These words echoed so closely Waters’ own thoughts at that moment he couldn’t keep the surprise out of his face – Greene saw it and shrugged as if his remarks had been in some way offhand.

  Serena said, ‘Do you know what I think?’

  ‘No. Not yet. Do tell!’

  It was perhaps nothing more than a friendly dig from Denise Sterling, just a hint of sarcasm, but Waters saw Serena’s eyes simultaneously narrow and flash at the older woman – they’re too similar, he thought, and there might be occasions when that causes problems. After a pause long enough for all to feel, Serena said, ‘I think he was dead from the minute he showed the ID card. I think we’ve got grounds to go back to that Colonel Yates and ask to see Wortley’s operational record as well as his personnel file.’

  Greene said, ‘Maybe. But staying with the events of last weekend, why the wait until Sunday? Why the thirty-six hours? We know Saturday evening was too busy, we’ve watched it all, but they could have gone back and done that at two or three o’clock the following morning, when Eden Street was even more deserted than it was on the Sunday. Why the wait?’

  Serena said, eyes on Denise Sterling, ‘Maybe they had a prior engagement…’

  Greene said, ‘Maybe they did. Other thoughts?’

  It was plain the detective inspector was guiding the direction of the discussion more than one realised at first – he’d been over these points before. Waters took it up now.

  ‘We know the taller one was in town on Saturday. We don’t know that the other was. Perhaps he wasn’t.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Greene said. ‘And that makes me wonder whether he was sent for. Because there are plenty of thugs around who’ll give you a kicking for fifty quid, and sometimes they’ll kill you by accident. But that’s not what we’re looking at here, is it? If this was a targeted, premeditated murder, you’d need a special sort of thug, not your common or garden type. You might have to wait until he was available. It’s just a thought.’

  The door opened and Freeman was back in the room. She said, ‘They already hate me. To shut me up, they’ve promised a basic DNA profile this afternoon. It should be enough for us to run it through the system. We might have a name by the end of the day.’

  Then she looked around at them before saying to Detective Inspector Greene, ‘How are we doing? Who gets the blue Smartie this morning, Tom?’

  Waters parked in the same spot outside The Blue Note, took the same card out of his glove compartment and slotted it in behind the windscreen – at this rate, it would be easier to have his car repainted as a taxi. Then he turned to Murray and said, ‘John, are you sure you don’t want to give her a ring?’

  Something of Murray’s recent demeanour had been explained in the previous few minutes as they drove across from Central. Waters waited, looking at the man in the passenger seat.

  ‘No. I’m just following orders, as usual. We spent an hour arguing about this last night. But it wasn’t really an argument. You worked with Maggie long enough to know what I’m talking about. She said I’d get in the way and make everyone more nervous. She’ll ring me as soon as she knows anything.’

  William David was three years old now. There had been signs he might have trouble with his hearing. A visit to the GP had been followed by several weeks waiting for an appointment for tests and then another wait for the results. Maggie was at Kings Lake General this morning with their son. Murray had said, ‘We’ve talked a lot about it. It’s not the worst disability these days, there’s a lot they can do. I’d be more worried if it was his eyes. There’s nothing wrong with them – he doesn’t miss a trick.’

  Waters had been tempted to say, and even then, John, think about the girl in Eden Street, think what she manages to do despite being blind, but in the end he kept that thought to himself. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to worry about a child because he couldn’t imagine ever being a father. If this had got under John Murray’s skin to the extent that it had affected him at work, it must be awful.

  Murray said, ‘We saw DC last weekend. He said he doubted whether there was anything wrong with him. He said that now he’s a grandad he’s an authority on paediatrics.’

  ‘You went up to the cottage?’

  ‘Yes, on Sunday afternoon. Nice place, isn’t it? He told me you’d visited a few times. We took William out in that dinghy, just on the water in front of the cottage. He loved it.’

  ‘Who? William or DC?’

  John Murray gave a rare laugh as he remembered and said, ‘Both!’

  Waters pulled the keys out of the ignition and said, ‘Well, the oracle has spoken. But if you need to go, just go. Nothing’s more important than that.’

  ‘Not even a murder investigation?’

  The car door was half-open but Waters stopped and thought, looking across the market square and giving the question his full consideration – it was yet another one they don’t prepare you for in management training.

  ‘Not even a murder investigation.’

  Murray closed the door quietly but the two elderly women on the customers’ side of the counter turned to see who had entered the shop, and Patsy raised her eyebrows a fraction and sighed audibly. Miriam Josephs was seated on a stool at the far end of the counter with a laptop in front of her, fingers paused in the act of typing. She too had heard the door.

  Waters made a sign that meant carry on, we’ll wait, and Patsy turned her attention back to the women. They were placing an order, and it seemed to be a substantial one, for Michaelmas; their church or chapel was to be decorated later in the month and they seemed to have very clear ideas about how it was to look. Patsy simultaneously made suggestions and wrote down notes about what they wanted. Miriam began to type again but when the women had finally decided what they wanted, she said, ‘It’s going to look lovely, Mrs Webb. We’ll get Colin to deliver all that on the 26th, in the morning. That will give you three days. How does that sound?’

  A braille keyboard, presumably. But how do you know what you’ve typed? Waters made relatively few errors himself when typing, but what would a page of his work look like if he hadn’t corrected it as he went along? He knew there was software that would read aloud what was on the screen, but how would you place the cursor to make corrections? And how would you…

  The two flower-arrangers stared up at the two tall gentlemen and said good morning as they left the shop. Waters thought how out of place they must look – there cannot be many occasions when two grown men have a legitimate reason to be in a florist’s at ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning. Patsy folded her arms and said, ‘They’re back, Miss Josephs. One of us has to be under suspicion.’

  Miriam said, ‘It might be a complaint about the chrysanthemums. Is there a problem, Detective Sergeant?’

  Waters said that there wasn’t, not at all, aware that Murray was giving him a sideways glance, and he went straight on to explain that the first reason they had returned was to get access to the CCTV recording of the doorway. There had been a development, and it might have some value after all. He saw her fingers press a combination of keys and guessed she had just saved whatever she had been typing. Then Miriam said, ‘A development? How interesting! And you think we might have some evidence?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  She said, ‘Well, I’m not going to ask
any more questions and then you won’t have to avoid answering them. It isn’t a very sophisticated system. If I remember correctly, you have to unscrew something to take out a cartridge which holds the recordings. We’ve never done it but Patsy can show you where it is at the back of the shop.’

  Her assistant was already moving and John Murray followed her without waiting to be asked or invited. Waters went forward towards the counter – it seemed odd to be talking, just the two of them now, across the whole floor of the shop. She sensed his movement and swivelled in the chair to face him more directly.

  He said, ‘You were right about the chrysanthemums – they do make a difference.’

  ‘Where have you put them?’ and he told her.

  She said, ‘I love the scent of them. More than anything else, it’s the smell of autumn. The sound of autumn is walking through fallen leaves and the scent of autumn is chrysanthemums.’

  Waters could see the keyboard now. It was an Apple laptop but he would have had difficulty using it because the letters and symbol were obscured by small stickers which had been individually placed on each key. He said, ‘It was interesting to watch you typing. Did that take long to learn?’

  Interviewing teaches you to read expressions. Miriam’s altered slightly with that question – with it he had signalled a wish to go somewhere new, to step outside his professional role and talk to her as… As what, exactly? And so, as he saw her making her decision, he thought he’d made a mistake.

  She said, ‘When you are eight years old and all the lights have gone out, you can learn very quickly. It’s a matter of survival. Learning braille was one of the easier things I had to do. And I’ve written longer documents than orders for flowers!’

  Eight years old! What happened? But it was too soon to ask and so Waters said, ‘What sort of documents?’ and she answered, ‘My dissertation, twenty-five thousand words.’

  University. He asked what her subject had been, the subject of her dissertation, and Miriam said with a touch of mock grandeur, ‘“Johann Sebastian Bach – his influence on late twentieth century composition”.’

  He wanted to say, that must come in handy when you’re putting bouquets together, but he didn’t know her, didn’t know whether she had a sense of humour. She detected his surprise, though, and continued, ‘So, do you listen to music? And don’t worry – I’m not going to make you listen to me!’

  More than he used to, he said. A colleague – a former colleague – had got him listening to guitars and-

  ‘Classical, jazz or rock?’

  ‘Er, electric. Blues, that’s what my friend plays.’

  Miriam didn’t seem over-impressed but he soldiered on, looking for a connection – Murray had already been longer than one might have anticipated. ‘But I also like the piano. I can’t play anything but… There’s a jazz club on the market square. The Blue Note? I go there quite regularly, at least once a week.’

  He had that transparent feeling again, that she could see straight through him though she could see nothing of him, and he was surprised when she said, ‘The cross-over between classical and jazz is interesting. I wrote about that. Do you like Keith Jarrett?’

  He admitted that was a name he did not know, and guessed that was the end of it. Then her head turned away from him, listening. She stood up and he allowed himself a moment to take in her beauty before he did the decent thing and looked away a little.

  She said more quietly, ‘Look, one of these days you’re going to turn up making your inquiries and find us shut. Do you want a number to ring, just so you can check before you do?’

  ‘OK. Your business number?’

  He was opening his phone as she said, ‘No, this is my mobile. We only use that number, no landlines.’

  When Patsy walked in seconds later, she saw Waters, phone in hand, and he knew that at some point he was going to have to explain himself. But not now. He felt strangely elated.

  Murray said, ‘Right, these photos.’ He must have already mentioned them to Patsy when they were collecting the CCTV recordings. Murray opened the document wallet he’d been carrying and handed the first one over. Patsy held it up and said, ‘We’ve got a photo of two teenagers on their bikes, somewhere in the street. It’s not very clear. You can’t see their faces properly.’

  Miriam said, ‘We don’t get many teenagers in the shop. Sometimes one buying flowers for mum’s birthday.’

  Waters looked and sure enough she was smiling, enjoying a private joke with him.

  Patsy said, ‘Sorry. I can’t say I’ve seen these before.’

  Murray said it wasn’t a problem, took back the first photograph and handed her the second. She looked at this one for several seconds before she spoke. ‘Maybe… Is this the only picture you’ve got?’

  Murray said no but it was the best one. The woman had glanced to her right as she walked away from the CCTV camera – she might even have been looking across to the doorway where the body would later be found. The image had her blurred profile; it wasn’t good but it was conceivable that someone who knew her might recognise her from it.

  Patsy said, ‘She looks like someone who goes by. I mean, I’ve never spoke to her…’

  Miriam had caught something in her employee’s voice, and turned her head in that disconcerting way. Then she said, ‘Patsy?’

  The older woman glanced at both detectives before she answered.

  ‘Well… She could be one of the women from up Dilmun Lane. I’m not saying she definitely is, I don’t want to get no one in trouble. But I’d say she is. I’m sure I’ve seen her go by.’

  Miriam was smiling again as she said, ‘Your inquiries must take you to some fascinating places.’

  Waters said, ‘Dilmun Lane?’ He had the feeling he was the only person in the shop who didn’t already know. Murray explained with gentlemanly delicacy that this was a part of the town where a group of professionals offered a range of services not found elsewhere in Kings Lake, and Waters felt himself blush a little because he should have known that after serving there as a detective – for once he was glad that not everyone in the room could see him.

  Murray said, ‘Can I leave this copy here? If you do see her again, don’t approach her but perhaps you’d let us know. I think you’ve got a phone number.’

  So Murray hadn’t missed it either, but he’d assumed they had exchanged numbers. Waters explained that he had the number for the shop, and then Murray gave his own to Patsy, and a chance had been missed.

  Outside, Murray looked up and down Eden Street as if he thought they might get really lucky, and then he said, ‘She’s a stunner, isn’t she?’

  ‘Who, John?’

  ‘That Patsy.’

  Murray could give you a very old-fashioned look at times, but he didn’t have time to develop his point because his mobile began to ring. He looked at it and said to Waters, ‘It’s Maggie.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  In Norfolk, and probably in most other places, forensics don’t send you a nice print-out complete with a name, a photograph and a family tree. What you get is a data profile that is by no means easy to read, and from this you take key pieces of information and put those into the Police National Database. To do this, one must have acquired qualified status, and Detective Inspector Thomas Greene had done so – he was, as an Advanced User, able to conduct Person, Organisation, Object, Location and Event Searches on the PND without gaining further authorisation.

  Detective Chief Inspector Cara Freeman watched as Greene made his notes before pressing the enter key – he even wrote down the time on the email from the laboratory. Then he put his pad of lined A4 squarely in front of himself, a fresh page ready for what they were about to discover. She could foresee an occasion – possibly a number of them – in the future when Greene’s meticulous and potentially obsessive attention to detail would push her over the edge unless she had mentally prepared herself. Her mother’s consultant had recently suggested a new sort of mindfulness programme to help th
e families of dementia sufferers deal with the wider effects of the illness; maybe she should put her own name down after all, and it would offer a strategy for dealing with the temptation she now had to seize Tom Greene by the ears and scream ‘Today!’

  He looked up at her and Freeman managed to smile and nod very calmly. She’d done this herself and knew already from what the laboratory had sent that the search of the database was going to produce a name. The individual found in the doorway had a criminal record. She hoped it would be a long one with a recent offence – that would offer them another trail to follow.

  The PND isn’t open access to all officers, and so, quite properly, Greene had disconnected his laptop from the interactive whiteboard. This meant he would see the results first, and Freeman didn’t mind that. She looked beyond the detective inspector’s desk and watched Denise Sterling and Clive Betts at work, viewing yet more CCTV. They both seemed solid already, especially Sterling. Clive Betts had been office-bound since Monday and they needed to get him out into the town soon. Serena had taken Maya with her today as she completed her face-to-face contacts with the shelters and homeless support groups in Lake – an exercise which had so far produced nothing at all. No one would be able to say that she, Freeman, hadn’t done her best to keep Maya, but she was an odd one. Achieving the highest scores in your cohort means you attract attention, and so does saying you are planning to leave after less than three years’ service; something must be done, someone must have said to Detective Chief Superintendent Allen, and apparently he had decided that it was to be done by Freeman. Who, she thought, isn’t that busy, three days into running the county’s first murder squad…

  Greene was nodding to himself, and when she caught his eye he put up his right thumb. In the age of the super-computer it seemed a quaint, old-fashioned gesture, but she got out of her seat and went to see for herself. Now they had a picture, and it was their man, their dead man, no doubt about it. After James Wortley had left the mortuary, Freeman had returned and asked Olive Markham to show her the body again, as if she couldn’t quite believe they had just brought in the wrong next-of-kin, as if she wanted a private word with the corpse about this error. She had studied the remains carefully, even squatting and looking from the side to make sure she’d seen him in profile, and now she was seeing that profile again. The dead man’s jaw was slack of course, whereas the one in the mug-shot was not because he’d been standing up in a police station, having the regular set of pictures taken, but it was him.