China Roses

by Jo Bannister

  ‘He could have made the hole with a nail or something he found lying around in the shed,’ said the DCI. ‘But could he have made all those scratches through one small hole?’

  ‘One way to find out,’ said Hazel decisively. She tore a sheet off the pad by Gorman’s phone and – turning her back modestly on her colleagues – unfastened her waistband and worked the piece of paper down the leg of her trousers until it lay just above her right knee. With a sigh of regret – she’d liked those trousers – she used the DCI’s letter-opener to poke a small hole in the twill. Through it she inserted the tip of a biro.

  It was more fiddly than she’d expected. The constraints imposed by the fabric made it hard to manipulate the pen. If this was what Sperrin had done, it explained the rather random design he’d come up with, that looked a little like a Chinese character and a little like a bunch of flowers. Hazel followed the marks as best she could and then, again turning her back, extracted the sheet of paper.

  They studied it together. They compared the small hole in Hazel’s trousers with the one in Sperrin’s jeans. They compared the piece of paper with the photograph.

  ‘That’s a pretty good match,’ admitted Gorman. ‘All he needed was a nail about ten centimetres long, not an unlikely thing to find lying around on the floor of a shed, a couple of minutes where no one was watching him too closely, and the use of his right hand. Then he could have done exactly what you just did. He could even have done it with his hands tied, if they were tied in front of him.’

  ‘We still don’t know why.’ Hazel’s voice was querulous with distress. ‘What was he trying to tell us?’

  ‘We’ll figure it out,’ Gorman assured her. ‘But not tonight. It’s time you went home. Is Byrfield staying with you tonight?’

  She nodded. ‘I didn’t want him driving home alone in the dark, not today. We’ll all be a bit calmer in the morning.’

  ‘And calmer still by Monday,’ said Gorman pointedly. ‘Take the weekend off, Hazel, get your head in some sort of order. By Monday we’ll have a better idea where we’re going with this.’

  Hazel blew her nose. ‘So you’re going to have a quiet weekend too, are you, Chief?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said DCI Gorman severely.

  NINETEEN

  Hazel couldn’t remember the last time she was drunk. But she got drunk that evening. She and the 28th earl between them disposed of two bottles of wine, a half-bottle of vodka, and some brandy which they agreed didn’t count because it was medicinal.

  Halfway through the vodka, Byrfield asked where Ash was.

  Hazel gave an over-elaborate shrug. ‘I don’t know. Or care.’

  Byrfield stared at her, or at least at the median point between the two of her. He shut one eye to resolve the problem. ‘Since when?’

  She pulled a handkerchief from her trouser pocket. By the time she recognised the lace edging as the hem of her shirt, she’d blown her nose on it. ‘Since I asked him to help me look for David, and he said he was too busy.’

  Mention of his brother’s name sent Byrfield hunting for his own handkerchief. When he pulled it out, bits of straw and coarse calf mix fell onto Hazel’s living-room carpet. ‘He must have been very busy,’ he said judiciously.

  ‘He wasn’t busy at all,’ she snarled. ‘He’s got himself a girlfriend. Can’t bear to drag himself away from her.’

  ‘Gabriel?’ Byrfield considered. ‘Gabriel? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’ve seen them together.’

  ‘Really? What’s she like?’ He seemed to be struggling to get his head round the idea of Ash with a girlfriend. Which was a measure of how much he’d drunk, because when he’d proposed to Hazel – twelve months ago now, before he and Tracy rediscovered one another at an agricultural college reunion – he’d known perfectly well why she refused him.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t see her close up. Just a shape at the bedroom window.’

  There was a silence while he absorbed that. ‘And that’s why he wouldn’t help you look for David?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Byrfield gave a morose sniff. ‘The bastard.’

  ‘The bastard,’ agreed Hazel. With not much more than air in the vodka bottle, she fetched the brandy. They’d called at the off-licence on the way back to Railway Street. The knowledge that if she’d kept a well-stocked drinks cabinet David Sperrin would still be alive twisted her heart.

  ‘Would it have made a difference?’ Byrfield asked when she came back.

  ‘Well, no,’ she admitted. ‘According to the FME – forensic medical examiner,’ she explained, carefully, for the farmer’s benefit – ‘it was all over by then. He died during the night sometime. Still. Still.’ She tried to take the top off the brandy bottle by screwing it the wrong way. ‘Still. He could have helped. I’ve helped him often enough.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘Times when I could have stayed home getting some nooky, I didn’t. I went out and helped him.’

  ‘You did,’ said Byrfield. He upended the vodka bottle over his glass and tapped its bottom a few times, to be sure. ‘Nooky?’

  ‘You know. Fun and games. Afternoon delight. Having it off. Getting your end away. Getting laid.’

  ‘Oh – sex.’ Byrfield bent an almost paternal eye on her. ‘Hazel, nobody’s called it nooky for ten years.’

  ‘Which is about how long it is since I got any,’ said Hazel sadly.

  ‘Celibate by choice, I’m sure,’ said Byrfield with a boozy attempt at gallantry.

  ‘Oh yes. Just, not my choice.’

  Maybe Byrfield wasn’t quite as drunk as he seemed, because he was watching her with compassion. ‘Have you told him how you feel?’

  ‘Gabriel? Good God, no. He’d run a mile.’

  ‘Maybe he thinks you would.’

  She cast him a slightly unhinged smile. ‘Maybe I would, too. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s adacem – academ – it’s beside the point now. He’s made other arrangements.’

  ‘Maybe he has,’ conceded Byrfield. ‘And maybe he was just … you know … scratching an itch. He might just have fallen in with someone who was amiable and handy. You don’t know. You’re not going to know until you talk to him.’

  She stared mightily. ‘And say what?’

  The 28th earl shrugged. ‘What you said to me. That you know about her. That you saw them together. That you felt hurt he wouldn’t help when you needed him to.’ Something occurred to him. ‘Does he know that David’s dead?’

  Hazel considered. ‘He might not. Coventry issued a brief press release, but with no identifying details there was no reason Gabriel would have noticed it, or thought of David if he had.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should tell him?’

  Hazel did think they should. She didn’t want to. She knew that, if she called him, he’d be shocked and terribly upset, and she’d end up forgiving him, and she wasn’t ready to do that. She didn’t blame Ash for David Sperrin’s death. He’d been dead hours before she phoned Ash, and on the road to death hours before that. Hazel might have saved him if she’d thought to check that he’d gone to his bed when he should have, but nothing Ash could have done would have made any difference; except to her. An angry, small-minded part of her wanted him to stew in the knowledge that he’d let her down, and it mattered.

  She prevaricated. ‘It’s Friday night – they’ve probably gone out for the evening. Dancing.’ Even drunk, she knew this wasn’t very likely. ‘Maybe I’ll call him in the morning.’ But she didn’t, and Byrfield noticed that she didn’t, say that she would.

  His mind wandered on to the arrangements he had to make, decisions he had to reach. ‘I’ll bury him at Burford, of course. But Hazel, whatever am I going to put on his gravestone? He was no one’s cherished husband, no one’s devoted dad, and I can’t put Beloved son when his father never acknowledged him and his mother disliked him for most of his life.’

  ‘I suppose someone’s told Diana?’ ventured Hazel.

  Pete nodded. ‘I
should have gone, but I couldn’t bring myself to. The policemen who came to Byrfield went down to the village to see her afterwards. I’ve no idea how she reacted. Unconventionally, I imagine. But you have to feel sorry for the woman. To have both her sons shot dead, thirty years apart.’

  Hazel hadn’t had much sympathy for Diana Sperrin since she realised she’d rejected a five-year-old boy for playing with a gun he should never have had access to. ‘The way she behaved towards David, from when he was a small child, was nothing less than emotional abuse. A less robust individual might never have recovered from it. I’m not going to waste my pity on her.

  ‘And the answer to your question,’ she added, ‘is Beloved brother. His name, the years he was born and died, and Beloved brother and true friend.’

  Byrfield smiled slowly. ‘Yes. That’ll do.’

  Perhaps they were beginning to sober up. Hazel put the remains of the brandy, which was looking increasingly medicinal, in the kitchen cupboard, returned with a pot of coffee and mugs. Also on the tray was the design she’d drawn through a hole in her trouser leg. ‘I think I may have drunk too much. I can’t remember if I showed you this.’

  Byrfield looked at it and frowned. ‘I may have drunk too much too. I can’t remember if you showed it me or not. It looks vaguely familiar. What is it?’

  She explained how she’d come to do it, and why. ‘Those scratches on his knee? I think he made them himself.’

  ‘Why in heaven’s name would he do such a thing?’

  ‘That’s certainly the right question,’ said Hazel, pouring the coffee. ‘To send us a message, but what message? What does it look like to you?’

  Byrfield tried looking at it with his head on one side. ‘A Chinese character?’

  ‘Could David write Chinese?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘He was an archaeologist.’

  ‘His field was Iron Age Britain, not the Ming Dynasty.’

  Hazel thought some more. ‘Maybe he was copying it. Something he could see that he thought would lead us to the traffickers.’

  ‘You should show it to someone who reads Chinese. They might be able to identify it.’

  ‘We did that. She said it made no sense.’

  ‘Ah.’ Byrfield tried again, this time with his head tilted the other way. ‘It looks a bit like a bunch of flowers.’

  Hazel sighed, obscurely disappointed.

  ‘Well, it does,’ said Byrfield defensively. ‘There’s the vase, there are the stems, and the little circles are the flowers.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Roses again?’ said Hazel, giving way to exasperation. ‘It was the first thing he said after he came out of the coma. We thought it was her name – the girl who died. But it was the name of the brothel that was going to be her new employer. The argument that David witnessed before she was shot – the men were telling her she was going to be a China Rose. She shouted back that she wasn’t Chinese, she was from Vietnam. Then she saw David, and she took her chance and ran.’

  Byrfield was following, more or less. ‘That sounds … feasible.’

  ‘What makes no sense,’ frowned Hazel, ‘is that he’d draw a bunch of flowers on his knee if all he had to say to us was China Roses. That wasn’t new information. He knew I knew about the brothel, so why spend his last few minutes hurting himself to say the same thing again? It has to be something new – something we weren’t going to know unless he found a way of telling us.’

  ‘Could he have found out who was behind the trafficking?’ hazarded Byrfield. ‘Rose is a reasonably common surname; so is Flowers. And we once had a vet called Bunch.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ Hazel said doubtfully. ‘If they were stupid enough to use one another’s names where their victims could hear.’

  ‘That would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it?’ admitted Byrfield. ‘Though if David knew they were going to kill him, I imagine they did too. It might have made them careless.’

  ‘Anyone who’s ever seen a cop show on television knows that the one thing you must never, ever do is make a full confession to someone on the basis that you’re about to kill him. If you do, he always gets away.’

  ‘Well – almost always,’ said Pete Byrfield with infinite sadness.

  Ash was on his way to bed – though probably not to sleep – when his phone rang. It was on the hall table: he had almost reached it when the ringing stopped. He lifted it anyway and gave it a puzzled look. He was fairly sure there was a way of returning the call, but he hadn’t been paying attention when Hazel explained it. He was still pondering when the landline rang in the study.

  ‘Gabriel. Have you talked to Hazel?’

  ‘Dave?’ Ash was aware of an odd, terse note in Gorman’s voice. He hoped to God no one had told him about Cathy. ‘I talked to her yesterday morning. Why?’ A quiver of anxiety ran up his spine. ‘Is she all right?’

  If anything, Gorman’s manner grew shorter, more clipped. ‘Before you talk to her again, you need to know something. David Sperrin’s dead.’

  ‘What?’ His office chair was pushed into the well of his desk, close enough to touch. Ash was too shocked to pull it out and sit down. ‘When? I thought he was getting better.’

  ‘He was getting better,’ agreed Gorman grimly. ‘Until someone put a bullet in his head.’

  Ash’s groping hand found the edge of the big Victorian desk and he lowered himself onto it carefully, as if unsure it would take his weight. ‘Hazel said …’ He hesitated, trying to remember what it was that Hazel had said. ‘He’d got hold of a number that might have had something to do with the traffickers but just might have been a brothel?’

  ‘I think we can assume it wasn’t just a brothel, Gabriel,’ said Gorman.

  ‘I … I suppose you’re sure …?’ Ash heard himself clutching at the flimsiest of straws and winced.

  ‘Pretty sure. Live people bend more in the middle.’

  Ash took a moment to get his emotions under control. Then he said, ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘Empty workshop on an industrial estate outside Coventry. But actually, I didn’t phone to update you on my investigation. I didn’t want you calling Hazel before you knew what had happened. She’s had a rough enough time without you blundering in.’

  ‘How’s she taking it?’

  ‘How do you think? Her friend’s been murdered. She’s blaming herself for letting him see her laptop, and for not realising he was missing until nine hours later. If you can make time in your busy schedule, she could probably do with some company.’

  ‘Dave …’ Ash swallowed. ‘Do you know when he died?’

  DCI Gorman barked a mirthless little laugh. ‘What you mean is, was he still alive when she asked you to help look for him and you said no. And the answer, you’ll be glad to hear, is no. Wednesday night sometime. Nothing you could have done would have been any help to Sperrin. Only to Hazel, Gabriel. Only to Hazel.’

  It was far too late to go visiting, but this wouldn’t wait. Ash had already returned the rental car or he’d have driven to Railway Street. Instead he grabbed his coat and scarf, intending to walk through the dark winter streets.

  Patience said, I’m coming with you.

  It wasn’t a question, a suggestion, or even a proposal so much as a statement of fact. Ash nodded.

  He’d expected to see Hazel’s sapphire hot-hatch parked in front of her little house. He was taken aback by the big 4x4 with the Byrfield Estate badge on the door. Perhaps he should have guessed that Pete Byrfield would be there, but he hadn’t.

  In fact it was Byrfield who answered his knock. ‘Keep the noise down, Gabriel. I’ve finally got Hazel to go to bed.’

  ‘Pete. I’ve just heard. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’ There was an unaccustomed formality in both his words and his manner that suggested he knew of Ash’s fall from grace.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Do you know, Gabriel, I really don’t think you should. Hazel’s exhausted. I don’t w
ant to disturb her if she’s managed to get to sleep.’

  It was reasonable enough. But there was a coolness in Byrfield’s tone that wasn’t there last time they spoke.

  Ash could have insisted, and Byrfield would probably have yielded rather than make a scene on the doorstep. But Ash didn’t feel to be in any position to insist. It wasn’t his house, and though Hazel was his friend, she’d been Pete Byrfield’s friend for longer. If she’d made him her gatekeeper, Ash wasn’t going to force an entry.

  ‘All right,’ he said unhappily. ‘Then, will you give her a message? In the morning, if she’s asleep now.’

  ‘I’m not asleep.’

  Both men looked up the stairs, Byrfield turning where he stood in the doorway, Ash looking past him. Hazel in her pyjamas was halfway down. Ash had never seen her look so pale. But she was calm, and if she’d been crying it hadn’t been recently. There were few signs of the alcohol she’d drunk.

  Ash had come here to speak to her; and when he’d been denied, he’d been ready to leave a message. Now they were face to face he had no idea what to say. Any apology he could make was going to be offensively inadequate; any attempt to explain could only make things worse. Hazel showed no indication of wanting a shoulder to cry on and, if she had, Ash was fairly sure she wouldn’t have chosen his. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come.

  Finally he mumbled, ‘I just heard.’

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was clear, uninflected, non-committal.

  ‘Dave Gorman called.’

  ‘Shall I leave you alone?’ asked Pete Byrfield, standing back from the door.

  Ash flicked him a grateful half-smile, but Hazel said, ‘There’s no need. Gabriel won’t be staying long. Will you?’ Her glance scythed across his face like a whip.

  Ash’s eyes dropped to his shoes. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘What I want,’ she echoed, trying the words for size. ‘When did what I want start to matter?’