Buried - DC Jack Warr Series 01 (2020)

by LaPlante, Lynda

  ‘That funeral turned into the biggest embarrassment for the Met in living memory. And, from the second we knew that Rawlins couldn’t possibly be in that coffin, it became the biggest no-go area. We couldn’t have ID’d the body anyway, ’cos there wasn’t enough of it left – that was our excuse back then for not digging it up. And, over the years, people stopped caring who was down there.’

  ‘We can ID the body now, sir,’ Jack said, trying to sound casual. ‘We know all the players, except him. Or her. And what better place to hide the diamonds than in a grave that the police don’t want to admit even exists? I’ve read the reports on the diamond heist. Those gems couldn’t be fenced in London and there’s no evidence they were taken out of the country. They have to still be here.’

  Jack had been agonising for days about how he was going to suggest to Ridley that digging up a 35-year-old grave was a good idea; now, here he was, seconds away from Ridley suggesting it himself.

  Easy does it, he told himself. Don’t push him. Let him decide . . . God almighty – why does Ridley think so fucking slowly?

  At last Ridley spoke. ‘You decided what you’re doing about the sergeant’s position, Jack?’

  ‘I was going to mention that to you first thing, sir. I’m going to go for it,’ Jack replied earnestly. ‘This case . . . Something’s clicked into place and there’s no going back for me now. No more apathy, sir, I promise. I know what I want.’

  Ridley collected the two empty coffee cups and headed back to his office.

  ‘Leave this grave thing with me,’ he said.

  Through the window, Jack watched as Ridley picked up his phone and pressed the uppermost, right-hand, fast-dial button ‒ the button that connected him to Superintendent Raeburn. He sat and spun his chair away from the squad room.

  Jack’s grin spread from ear to ear.

  *

  Pathologist William Fox was in his lab when Jack burst in.

  ‘Foxy, you’ll be getting a bag of bones in the next few days, maybe weeks, I’ll give you the nod. But, when they arrive, I need you to do a DNA test for me.’

  Foxy and Jack had trained together for six months. They’d got on like a house on fire and had kept in touch when Jack went back to Devon. They were proper friends. The kind who, when asked for a favour, said ‘yes’ first and asked ‘what is it?’ second.

  ‘I can’t use stock from here, Jack,’ said Fox. ‘You’ll have to provide the DNA kit.’

  It was that simple.

  CHAPTER 20

  Angela’s children ran into the lounge. They were dressed in their pyjamas, their hair was wet at the bottom and crazy on top from where Rob had blasted it with the hairdryer, making no attempt to brush it during the process. Aggie was 7 and Riel was 9. Aggie was still young enough to leap into her parents’ arms, hugging and kissing them goodnight, whereas Riel had recently got into the habit of standing reluctantly in front of Angela and allowing her to drag him towards her body. He was still young enough to want a hug before bed, but too old to admit it.

  Tonight was a nightmare for Riel – because after he’d allowed his mum a snuggle, he was steered in the direction of Aunt Connie, who squeezed him into her ample breasts. Julia then grabbed Riel, threw him onto the carpet and showered his neck with rapid-fire kisses.

  ‘Stop it!’ he yelled, but his uncontrollable giggles told a different story.

  Julia threw him back on to his feet and shoved him away as though she was the one who didn’t like cuddling.

  ‘Now, get out of my sight,’ she said with a straight face.

  Both kids ran to Rob, who was waiting in the doorway, ready to take them away and give the three women privacy.

  For a few moments, the women quietly sipped their wine, enjoying being under the same roof once again.

  Connie broke the silence. ‘He’s a cutie, isn’t he?’ Angela and Julia giggled into their glasses. ‘I’m just saying. I thought Detective Constable Jack Warr was very nice indeed. They could have sent some old wrinkly. I mentioned Lennie early on, ’cos I knew that’d make me cry. Then I gave him my very best “Princess Diana” look, all wide-eyed and innocent through my fringe. He was putty in my hands. Then we just sat and enjoyed the view. I was sorry to see him leave, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Did he ask anything that we need to worry about?’ Angela asked.

  ‘He knew about John,’ Connie said.

  ‘Whatever you did or didn’t get up to with John Maynard doesn’t matter,’ Angela reassured her. ‘In fact it’s good. He’ll just have confirmed Dolly was converting The Grange into a children’s home.’

  ‘He didn’t ask me anything unexpected, either,’ said Julia. ‘Just mentioned he’d personal experience of the care system ‒ said it had made him understand more about life.’

  ‘There’s one thing, though.’ Angela sounded serious. ‘And it’s why I’ve called you together. Jack Warr asked me if I knew Mike back in ’95 when we were all at The Grange. He thought Mike and I were in some sort of a relationship. I denied it and I made him feel guilty for even asking.’

  ‘Fuck me, Angela!’ Julia breathed. ‘He’s not asking about Mike because you were shagging him two decades ago. He’s asking because he knows Mike’s the bloody body from the fire!’

  She caught Connie’s fearful look out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘I think we need to assume he knows everything. To do anything less would be suicide. We are where we are,’ she added calmly. ‘We carry on. And we stick to the plan.’

  *

  By eleven o’clock, Angela, Julia and Connie were well on their way. Getting drunk together was exactly what they needed as they came to terms with how far they’d come and what they were about to do next.

  ‘Here’s to Dolly Rawlins.’ Connie’s speech was slurred. ‘The only woman with balls big enough to hide twenty-seven million pounds underneath a copper’s house.’ She rolled backwards onto the floor, slapped her hands over her eyes and snorted muffled giggles into her palms. ‘All those police officers! Coming and going at all hours. Wishing Norma well, doing her shopping, tidying her garden . . . right above the money they were looking for! God, if only they knew!’

  *

  Blue lights flickered through the branches of the trees as Dolly, Julia, Connie and Gloria raced away on horseback towards The Grange. Gloria’s saddlebags had started to slip off one side of her horse, so she grabbed hold of them and held their weight, as best she could, away from the galloping legs. At some point, Gloria realised exactly what she was doing – she was riding a horse, for the first time in her life, one-handed, while holding on to her share of around £30 million! Gloria let out a scream of unadulterated joy. Dolly hoped to God that they were far enough away from the coppers for that not to be heard.

  At The Grange, Ester was on autopilot. She had absolutely no idea whether the other women would make it back. The last time she’d seen Dolly, she was surfing a train carriage down a river embankment with Connie inside. So, Ester was blindly sticking to the plan. She’d emptied her share of money into the skip and thrown the sacks into the lime pit, dug and filled three days ago by Gloria. As the money sacks slowly dissolved, Ester used an industrial vacuum to get the cash out of the skip and into black bin bags.

  By the time the other four women rode up from the back lane and into the grounds of The Grange, Ester was ready to explode. She swore, ranted, blamed Dolly for the rain that had made the train carriage slip down the embankment, cursed her for the danger she had put them all in. Dolly knew this rage came from fear and from relief; Ester had had to return to The Grange alone, not knowing if anyone else was alive or dead, free or arrested.

  Dolly ignored her. ‘Quick – get the money into the skip! Dissolve the sacks and all of your clothes ‒ nothing left! Nothing! Come on! We’re behind schedule!’

  They emptied their cash into the skip, so that Ester could keep vacuuming it up and into bin bags.

  ‘Not one single note can be left behind,’ Dolly urg
ed. ‘If they find one note – it’s over.’

  Once all of the money was re-bagged, and all of the sacks and overalls were melting in the lime pit, the skip was dragged over the top. All of the bin bags were thrown into the back of one of John Maynard’s work vans, and all except Ester drove the quarter of a mile to Rose Cottage.

  It had been Julia who had discovered the internal layout of Norma’s house. Norma fancied the pants off her and Dolly had told her to get into Norma’s home and, if required, her bed. The coal shaft under the cottage had a long-disused chute opening in the back garden, clearly marked with the construction date, 1841. The chute came out in Norma’s kitchen but had been bricked up decades ago; the only way of getting the cash back out of the chute once it was in was to take the kitchen wall down.

  Tonight, Rose Cottage was empty. Norma was away on a police training course for four days. In the garden, Connie passed the bin bags full of money to Julia from the back of John’s van, and Julia poured them down the coal chute. Ester gathered the empty bin bags, Angela checked that not one single note went astray, and Dolly kept lookout. Gloria was back at The Grange, letting the horses loose – they knew that these trail horses would head straight back to the stables just along the road where Julia had stolen them some hours earlier.

  Within forty minutes of the train robbery, the five women from The Grange had been in their nightdresses and in bed. As Dolly lay back in her crisp, clean white sheets, wet hair soaking into the pillow case, she allowed what they had just achieved to sink in. She pushed her head back, opened her mouth and let out the loudest cackle she could muster. It echoed down the hallway, seeping into every other bedroom and triggering a chain of celebratory screeching and laughing. No one could believe they’d actually done it – they’d robbed a mail train!

  *

  For as long as she could remember, Dolly’s life had been a series of events out of her control. It had all started when she made the mistake of leaving the diamonds with Audrey bloody Withey. Audrey had sold them for a fraction of their value, meaning that Dolly couldn’t afford to open the children’s home she’d dreamed of and had somehow ended up taking on responsibility for six other women. All of this had ultimately led her to the decision to rob a mail train.

  Some days Dolly would reason that committing this crime had been the only way for all of the women to have the lives they needed, but on others she would admit that the opportunity had been too good to pass up. Whatever the reason, nothing would ever be good enough for Ester. She was the one person who still doubted Dolly’s integrity. The one person who, after all of the risks Dolly had taken, couldn’t see a future where she didn’t screw them all over and leave them with nothing. Dolly didn’t blame Ester for her paranoia – prison damages some people beyond repair.

  *

  It was one o’clock in Angela’s flat and the women were on to their third bottle of Cava. Connie sat on the floor, propped against the sofa where Angela sat with her legs out straight. Julia was curled up into an armchair – for a tall woman, she folded up into the smallest of spaces.

  The lounge was quiet, except for the far-off sounds of Rob snoring gently from the bedroom at the other end of the corridor. The main lights were off; only a tall lamp in the corner of the room, by the balcony doors, provided any light. The bulb reflected in the glass through the cheap paper shade, highlighting the children’s little handprints. Out on the balcony itself, wrapped around the top railing, was a string of white lights. At Christmas they flashed on and off, but tonight they were permanently on.

  Again, Connie was the one to break the silence.

  ‘I’m glad Ester’s not here. Is that horrible of me?’ Julia and Angela made faces in agreement. ‘I think she must be very sad. She can’t have many friends, can she? Not with her being such a bitch, I mean.’ Julia spat out a laugh. ‘After all, she’s the reason we couldn’t go anywhere near the money for 20-odd bloody years! “You make a move without me and I’ll see the lot of you inside!” Cheeky cow! She gets herself locked up for murder and we have to wait for her to get out!’

  ‘It wasn’t just her, Con,’ Julia pointed out. ‘Even after Ester got out, we couldn’t get near because Norma was still alive. Who knew she had so many friends? Most nights in her house was like the Policeman’s bloody Ball ‒ coppers everywhere. I mean, we couldn’t have found a more stupid fucking place to hide the money if we’d tried.’

  ‘I think it was genius,’ Angela countered. ‘Dolly couldn’t have known Ester was going to lose her mind and shoot the place up.’

  ‘See!’ Connie added triumphantly. ‘Ester’s fault! Just like I said in the first place.’

  Angela moved on to a happier memory. ‘Do you remember that guided tour we went on, Julia?’

  ‘I was gutted not to be able to come on that!’ Connie screeched.

  Down the hall, Aggie stirred in her bed and mumbled, ‘Mummy.’ Connie slammed her hand over her mouth but Angela just smiled. Aggie could sleep through a hurricane.

  ‘I met you at the Dog and Gun, remember, for the “Murder and Mayhem Tour”?’ Angela continued. ‘That young barman took us up to The Grange and started . . .’ She couldn’t talk for laughing.

  Julia took over. ‘He described us as five “wicked women”, drawn together by a thirst for mayhem and murder. The outcome was inevitable, apparently – he even suggested that we got Dolly there specifically to kill her. He claimed our debauched orgies were eye-watering! Clearly he was getting the children’s home mixed up with Ester’s whorehouse. I was described as a drug-addled GP, Dolly was a murderess and I think everyone else was a prostitute. That right?’

  Connie was outraged. ‘I was an escort, not a prostitute!’

  ‘A classy, peroxide blonde escort in crotchless knickers, singing “boo boo be do” up against an alley wall?’ said Julia. ‘You were a prostitute, Connie, darling. And I was a drug-addled GP – but look at us now. Look at us now! Thousands of tourists traipsed through the grounds of The Grange listening to lies and exaggerations. We’re legends already ‒ imagine if they knew the truth!’

  ‘Twenty-four years,’ Angela reflected. ‘Twenty-four years of pandering to Ester in fear of our freedom ‒ of waiting for poor Norma to die. You’re right, Julia. Just look at us now!’ Then she whispered, ‘Do you want to see it?’

  The spare bedroom was locked from the outside. Inside, it was filled with all twenty-five of the seats from the coach Rob had bought from the auction two weeks earlier. The backs of the seats leant against one wall and the cushions leant against the opposite wall. In the far corner was a sheeted mound. Angela removed the sheet to reveal dozens and dozens of strong green garden waste bags.

  Angela carefully untied the nearest bag, unrolled the top and opened it to expose the contents – £20 notes and £50 notes, thrown together with all the care and attention of raked leaves. These notes were ‘used’ in the first place; now, they looked downright tatty. But to the women, they were breathtakingly beautiful.

  This garden waste bag, along with the other forty-odd others, held their long-awaited, carefully nurtured dreams. Dreams that could have begun twenty-four years ago, had Ester not shot Dolly Rawlins dead in front of four police officers.

  But now . . . Now it really was their time.

  CHAPTER 21

  The squad room was buzzing. Ridley wasn’t late – he was never late. He was with Superintendent Raeburn, waiting to find out if they had been given their ‘Consent to Exhume’ from the coroner.

  A low hum filled the room as DC Morgan took bets. An old fossil of a man, Morgan lived in the corner of the squad room, with his own mini fridge tucked away under his desk. He was allowed this because it contained his insulin; but it also contained cans of Coke and bars of chocolate. Morgan walked that fine line between hypo and hyper – and he didn’t give a shit. He was also the squad room bookie.

  Morgan had a book on who would get the sergeant’s job: Jack, Anik or an unknown quantity from outside. He had a book
on which senior officer would suffer the next heart attack. And he had a book on the exhumation. He was certain that Raeburn would be refused the exhumation for ‘financial reasons’, but then he was one of the few coppers still working who had been at the funeral back in August 1984. He remembered watching Dolly Rawlins bury some bloody stranger. And he knew Raeburn would be secretly praying for a refusal from the coroner, so they could all just let sleeping dogs lie.

  When Ridley finally arrived, he had good news for Morgan’s bet.

  ‘Currently, there’s not sufficient justification for the spend required to exhume the grave,’ Ridley said in a monotone. It was hard to tell whether he was pleased or frustrated by this. ‘On a different note,’ he went on, ‘Barry Cooper has been spotted in Essex. He’s disappeared from his digs, but the local force are tracking him down. Jack, a DS Mary Fleming is going to contact you with some details.’

  With a wave of his hand, he disappeared into his office to answer the phone.

  Jack fired up his computer and opened a message from DS Fleming of Essex Police. Laura stood behind him and, in a whisper, she read the screen out loud, which meant that Jack had to read at a slow pace as well. She leant her hand on the desk by the side of his keyboard and, as her breathy, whispered reading warmed the back of his neck, Jack thought about making love to Maggie in the spare bedroom. He started reviewing the number of rooms they’d made love in and realised that, since moving to London and since working such opposing shifts, they’d not been anywhere near as adventurous as they used to be. Kitchen? – no. Lounge? – yes. Bathroom? – no. Outdoors? – no. Car? – no. Work?

  He smiled as he recalled delivering a pizza to Maggie at the hospital during a night shift. It had been one o’clock; he’d had a particularly boring day at work and had nipped out for a pint or five on his way home. He’d ended up at a pizza place close to the hospital, and had popped in for the company. Maggie had had an arduous shift up until that point, so was lying down in the on-call room when Jack arrived. She’d asked him to hold her and he knew that she must have lost a patient. He held her as tightly as he could, nuzzled his cheek into hers and stroked her hair. Within seconds, they’d forgotten where they were and had made love in the creaky single bed.