by Val McDermid
Something like a body in a bog, perhaps.
Detective Inspector Donna Blair frowned at the forensic report. ‘Are you sure?’ she said.
‘I’m sure,’ the fingerprint technician said. ‘Your boys brought in the remains of a sawn-off shotgun from the scene. The stock was too badly charred for prints, but we got lucky with the barrel. Even though fire boils off the water content, if it’s not too intense, the fat deposits remain on the metal. We tried Sudan Black…’
‘Spare me the details,’ Donna said.
The technician shrugged. ‘It’s all in the report. We got a couple of prints. They don’t match anyone in the database, but they do match the elimination prints we took from Tenille Cole’s bedroom.’
Donna shook her head, depressed at the thought. ‘It fits. We’ve also got a witness who has her leaving the flat about five minutes before the fire was reported. OK, thanks.’
Chip off the old block, Donna thought as she ran downstairs to the interview room. The Hammer’s daughter seemed to be following in her old man’s footsteps. The media were going to love this. There would be a feeding frenzy the minute they twigged the prime suspect was a pretty teenager with the kind of lurid background that was a gift to journalistic spin. No matter that the Hammer had taken no part in her upbringing; the connection would be enough to transform Tenille Cole into the kind of cold-blooded killer that would chill the hearts of readers all too ready to demonise any section of the population that wasn’t identifiably them.
Donna took a detour into the ladies’ toilet where she locked herself into a cubicle. If their prime suspect was the killer, there weren’t too many likely motives floating around. The obvious one was the one most calculated to piss Sharon Cole right off. Donna wanted to be ready for the fall-out. Sitting down on the toilet, she closed her eyes, breathing deeply. She cleared her mind, picturing waves breaking on a winter beach, until she could feel her shoulders lowering.
Moments later, she was striding down the hall towards the interview room. Sharon Cole’s head snapped up as soon as Donna entered the room. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she held herself erect in her chair. ‘What’re you keeping me here for?’ she demanded. ‘I’m the victim here.’
Donna understood the emotions hiding behind Sharon’s bravado. She had a gift for empathy. But while most cops who shared that knack used it to get alongside their target, coaxing information from them, Donna had a different approach. She used her understanding to dive under their guard and go straight for their vulnerabilities. The more uncomfortable she felt, the more she knew she was unsettling her opponent. Come a certain point and they would crack open for her. Her forensic skill at dissecting witnesses and suspects made her colleagues regard her with wariness. She didn’t care. She got the results and that was what counted. Taking bastards off the streets, that’s what she was there for, not social work.
Donna waited till she was seated opposite Sharon before she opened her mouth. ‘Don’t give me that victim routine, Sharon. You’re guilty as hell and you know it.’
Confusion wriggled across Sharon’s face. This wasn’t how she expected to be treated, not after the solicitude she’d experienced at the hands of the officers who had brought her in. ‘I was at work all night. Ask anybody, they’ll tell you.’
‘You might not have blown Geno to kingdom come. You might not have fired your own flat. But you’re responsible for what went down there last night.’ Donna could feel Sharon’s anger. What she wanted was unease, but she wasn’t there yet.
‘That’s bullshit. You saying I hired some hitman? Why would I do a thing like that? I loved Geno.’
Donna rolled her eyes. ‘Oh please, spare me that. All you were to each other was a convenient shag. Though, come to think of it, some people in your shoes would have considered hiring a button man.’
‘What do you mean, “in my shoes”?’
Now the unease was there. Time for Donna to make her move. ‘A woman whose man is playing around on her with her thirteen-year-old niece,’ Donna said. ‘Some women–’
‘Wait a fucking minute,’ Sharon yelped, interrupting. ‘What the fuck are you saying? You saying Geno was messing with Tenille?’ She tried to look contemptuous, but the quiver in her curled lip told another story.
‘I can’t think of any other reason why Tenille would blow the bastard away, can you?’
Sharon’s eyes widened and she pulled her lips back, hissing through her teeth. ‘You’re crazy, bitch. Tenille wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
‘I don’t think I’m crazy,’ Donna said. ‘Tenille’s fingerprints are on the gun. Tenille was seen running away from the flat only minutes before the alarm was raised. And she’s not been seen since. Doesn’t look good for the kid, Sharon.’
Sharon twitched, her eyes cutting to Donna, fear showing through the cracks. ‘No way was Geno a paedo. It was me he wanted. You’re just trying to get me riled up. I don’t believe you.’
Donna shrugged. ‘Like I care. Right now, Tenille is my number one suspect. And you’re going to tell me where I can find her.’
‘Think again, bitch. Why would I help you fit her up for murder?’
The defiance was only skin deep, Donna knew. It wouldn’t take much to puncture it. She leaned forward and fixed her fierce blue eyes on Sharon’s watery brown ones. ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll start working on the assumption that you knew Geno was abusing Tenille and you put the kid up to killing him. To protect herself and to take revenge for your hurt pride. And I’ll make sure Tenille and her brief know that’s the way I’m thinking. It’ll take some of the heat off her and turn it right on you, Sharon.’
Sharon glowered. ‘Even if I knew where Tenille was, I wouldn’t tell you, bitch. No way Geno was messing with her, and if I’d have thought that, I wouldn’t have left it to Tenille to handle it.’
‘No? Who would you have gone to? Her father?’
Sharon looked away. ‘She hasn’t got a father.’
‘That’s not what they say on the Marshpool. They say the Hammer is her dad.’ Donna let the words hang for a moment. ‘In fact, that might be a better way to go. I could go to the Hammer and suggest that the best way to protect his daughter is to maintain that her Auntie Sharon put her up to it. I’m sure the Hammer wouldn’t have any problem finding some luckless sod to admit he supplied the gun to you, Sharon. I’m thinking the Hammer is going to care more about his kid than he is about you.’
Sharon pulled her cigarettes out of her pocket. Donna batted the pack from her fingers. ‘No smoking in here,’ she said. ‘Besides, you’ll need more than a nicotine hit to protect you from the Hammer. Where is she, Sharon?’
Sharon flashed her a glare of pure loathing then looked away. ‘I don’t know where she is, and that’s the truth.’
‘Friends. Homies. Who does she hang with?’
Sharon sighed. ‘She’s a loner. She doesn’t fit in. She hangs out at the library.’
Donna snorted. ‘Gimme a break. You expect me to believe the Hammer’s kid spends her free time in the reference room?’
‘We’re not all stupid scum, you know,’ Sharon flared up. ‘Tenille’s a bright girl. Wants to make something of herself.’
‘That’s not what the school says. Her attendance record sucks, and you know it.’
Sharon made a sharp sound of irritation. ‘Maybe so. But that girl could show her teachers a thing or two.’
‘And she learns all this at the library?’ Donna said, her tone dripping disbelief.
‘Some teachers got more sense than the ones at that school,’ Sharon said. ‘There’s a woman lives on the estate. She teaches at the university. Tenille goes round her flat sometimes.’
Donna’s interest quickened as she sensed truth. ‘Name and address,’ she demanded, reaching for pen and paper.
Sharon shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She lives in our block, I think. But I don’t know where.’
‘You’re telling me Tenille was spending all this time with a st
range woman in her flat and you don’t know where it is?’ Donna faked belligerent outrage. She knew there was nothing unusual in Sharon’s behaviour, not on the Marshpool where a depressing number of parents had no clue where their kids were at any given hour of the day or night.
‘It’s better than hanging around the estate smoking drugs and drinking cans,’ Sharon said combatively. ‘All I know about this woman is she’s called Jane and she’s a teacher at the university.’
‘Which one?’
Sharon looked baffled. ‘Just, the university.’
Donna pushed her chair back, the legs shrieking on the vinyl tiles. ‘I’m going to check this out. You better not be lying to me, Sharon. Far as I’m concerned, till I talk to Tenille you’re still in the frame.’
‘You can’t do this,’ Sharon protested, getting to her feet. ‘I want to go.’
Donna jumped up and rounded the table with breathtaking speed. Toe to toe with Sharon, so close she could smell the cooking fat in her hair, she held the other woman’s eyes. ‘Don’t make me arrest you, Sharon. I can have you banged up here on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder and arson so fast your eyes will water. Now, be a good girl and sit down.’
Sharon backed away from her. The chair caught the back of her knees and she fell clumsily on to the hard seat.
Donna smiled. ‘I’ll have someone bring you a cup of tea.’ She headed for the door. Gotcha, Tenille.
Our work, though tedious, was easy enough. Our mission was to collect eight hundred breadfruit plants, and this we had achieved in a mere two weeks. But to have set sail for home at that point would have been near suicidal. No captain with any regard for his ship or his cargo would attempt to cross the Pacific in the rainy season, nor would he have any prospect of clearing the Endeavour Straits in the teeth of the head-on prevailing winds. And so we were of necessity confined on Otaheite until the 4th day of April in the following year. This was in truth no hardship for officers nor men. The natives were hospitable, the women generous with their favours, the food good and plentiful, the climate most delightful. We learned to speak the native tongue and they called me Titreano, the nearest they could come to pronouncing my family name. I formed many friendships, among them Mauatua, who later became my wife and whom I christened Isabella, for my cousin Isabella Curwen. For my part, the separation from Bligh was only an added benefit to a life that was the most pleasurable I had ever known.
14
At first glance, it didn’t look like much. Half a dozen archive boxes, that was all. But Jane knew better. Inside each of those boxes would be a drift of brittle paper, some of it untouched for a generation or more. Letters in assorted hands, crabbed or copperplate; scrawled notes and fragments in faded ink; indecipherable drafts complete with crossings-out and revisions; it was all lying chaotic in wait to strain her eyes and the limits of her knowledge.
Anthony had promised her there was no other uncatalogued material in the Trust’s ownership. ‘Of course, there is a considerable amount of other Wordsworth material out there in the wild, but we have no way of knowing definitively what there is and who owns it,’ he said. Seeing Jane’s glum expression, he smiled. ‘Don’t be downhearted. We do have so much more than anybody else. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that it was here you found your first clue.’
Jane’s smile was bleak as a Fellhead winter. ‘I’ll hold that thought,’ she said, hefting the first box on to the table in the study cubicle Anthony had assigned to her. ‘Bloody family. You think they ever threw a bit of paper away?’
‘It’s a good strategy for hiding the things you don’t want people to know,’ Anthony said, shifting a stack of books on to the floor to make more work space for Jane. ‘You present the impression of candour by virtue of the sheer volume of what is available. And because there is so much of it, nobody thinks to question what might not be there. It’s only when skeletons like Annette Vallon come tumbling out of the cupboard that we realise how much we’ve bought the party line.’ He smiled. ‘But even the most efficient of systems is only as good as the humans applying it. And every now and again, something slips through the net. Like Mary’s letter. If that takes you where you think it might, you will go down in the annals of literary scholarship.’
Jane shrugged. ‘That’s not why I’m doing it.’
‘I know that.’ Anthony’s eyes twinkled as his smile broadened. ‘What you want is to read it, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. The mutiny on the Bounty, it’s an extraordinary story. And if I’m right, William came to it at the pinnacle of his powers. I want to see what he made of it.’ She spread her hands wide. ‘It’s right in the middle of my speciality. William’s personality and poetic gift brought to bear on a story that was still dynamite. And the hiddenness of it all, so typical of the man.’
‘It’s a thought, isn’t it? That imagination working on such powerful raw material. It’s possible it might have been the best thing he ever wrote.’
Jane shivered. ‘Don’t, Anthony. I can’t afford to let myself think like that. I might be wrong. I might be right and it might not exist any longer. I’ve got to try to keep my feet on the ground.’
‘I understand. Good luck, Jane. I’ll be around all day if you need me. Either in the office or in the museum.’
He slipped out of the cubicle, leaving Jane to her papers. She took the lid off the first box and looked inside. A stack of brown envelopes and cardboard folders filled it to the brim. Someone had at least taken the minimum steps to preserve this material even if they hadn’t actually catalogued it. With a sigh, Jane took the first envelope out of the box and began her tedious task.
DI Donna Blair glanced over her shoulder, checking that the patrol car with its complement of uniforms was parking behind her. She knew her male counterparts would be sneering at her behind her back for refusing to knock on doors on the Marshpool without back-up from the boys in blue, but she didn’t give a toss. Besides, none of them would be any happier than she was about venturing into the badlands anything less than mob-handed. The only difference was that the blokes would find some excuse to jack up the putative threat level. Like a totally made-up tip from one of their snouts that the villain they were looking for was tooled up. Donna couldn’t be arsed with that sort of bullshit game-playing. Maybe that was what pissed them off most, she thought as she got out of the car, pulling at the bottom of her tailored jacket so it sat properly.
Detective Sergeant Liam Chappel trailed in her wake as she walked over to the four uniformed constables, his hollow-cheeked face as cheerful as a wet weekend in Walthamstow. ‘Nothing dramatic, lads,’ Donna said, the sharpness in her voice betraying the tension they all felt. It had taken her several hours to get a name and address out of the council housing offices and the delay had done nothing to improve her frame of mind. A series of petty bureaucrats had tried to block her with bollocks about data protection, but she had pointed out that the electoral roll was in the public domain and would provide her with all the information she needed. ‘I’m just asking you to make my life a little bit easier by looking at your rent rolls,’ she’d growled. ‘We both get our wages out of the same pot, we’re supposed to be on the same side.’ Eventually she had prevailed, though not without expending more energy than some jumped-up town hall jobsworth merited.
Donna brandished the printout she’d finally extracted from the grumbling council official. ‘This is not your usual Marshpool takedown. Jane Gresham is not some chav scrubber. She’s a respectable citizen. She even has a job, which makes her about as common round here as a school prize for perfect attendance. So we are going to knock Ms Gresham’s door and have a reasonable conversation with her about the whereabouts of Tenille Cole, not kick her door in.’
‘And if she turns out to be one of them radical feminist lesbian civil libertarians who doesn’t want to invite us in for a polite chat?’ DS Chappel asked.
‘Then we’ll kick her door in,’ Donna said, turning away from him and gazing up at the monol
ithic concrete cliff looming above her. ‘OK, lads, bring the ram.’ She led the way. ‘Anyone want to offer odds on the lift working?’
It was odd, Tenille thought, that something that seemed so desirable when it was rationed lost its charm when it was the only thing on offer. Normally, she never tired of hanging out in chat rooms and talking to like-minded people about the things that interested her. But today, with unfettered access and nothing to distract her, the internet palled as never before. She quite fancied watching TV, if only for the local news. Except that the TV was in the living room and could probably be seen flickering through the nets Jane had up at the window that gave on to the walkway. That would be a dead giveaway that the flat was occupied if anybody came looking.
In the end, she’d taken the bean bag and the radio through to the study and kept the volume down low while she sprawled on the floor trying to hang on to enough concentration to read. But it was hard to settle. Anxiety gnawed at her and the more she tried to tell herself everything was chill, the harder it was to believe it.
