Crooked Street

by Priscilla Masters

  Joanna looked around her. ‘If he was heading towards the exit I wonder where he was going.’

  The supermarket had been built in a dip off the main Macclesfield road. Turn left out of the car park and there was a mill which made sports clothes. Beyond that was Mill Street which had a row of shops: fish and chips, newsagents, hairdressers and a pet food outlet. Over these shops were pensioners’ flats. Straight ahead was the steep climb back into town. On the right-hand side of the road was a beauty salon, a restaurant, another huge derelict mill called Big Mill and behind that jumbled rows of terraced mill workers’ cottages. Leek had once been a flourishing mill town and evidence of this peppered the entire area. Some of the old mills had been converted into antiques warehouses, others into flats. A couple had been demolished but many of them, including the biggest of them all, Big Mill, remained derelict, loosely boarded up, a magnet for dossers and drug users or anyone who wanted to hide. Big Mill towered over the road. Six storeys high, with blackened bricks, it dominated the area, as sinister as a huge black crow. Joanna’s gaze looked up at it with misgiving. Leek police knew it well. Her mind moved beyond to the area behind the mill and further up the steep hill to the cramped, crooked streets of Victorian terraced houses. A brief walk and a couple of hours parked up here would give the missing man plenty of options. And, according to their observant trolley man, who was watching initially from a distance but soon came forward, he had seen this car here before.

  ‘Always on a Wednesday,’ he said. ‘Round about six till eight thirty.’

  ‘But you didn’t think it odd that it’s still here?’

  ‘Thought it must have broken down or something,’ the trolley man said, glancing enviously at the car. ‘He’s a nice guy, polite. You know. Wouldn’t want to get him into trouble. Hand out a fine. I knew he’d come and collect it.’

  Except he hadn’t.

  ‘Do you know where he went on a Wednesday?’

  The trolley man shook his head and scanned the enormous car park. ‘This here’s my patch,’ he said. ‘I don’t bother what folks is doing unless it comes on my patch. Outside isn’t none of my business.’ He gave her a hard look. ‘Understand?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She drew breath. ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Always alone?’

  The trolley man nodded. ‘Didn’t never see him with anyone,’ he said.

  She had a quick word with Mike who was standing at her shoulder, watching the trolley man’s antics with amusement. ‘So,’ she said, ‘this was a regular occurrence. Not his gym night. Anyway, Pecs is the other end of town. Eve Glover mentioned home visits as part of her husband’s work. For my money this is the answer so we need that list from his colleagues.’

  Korpanski nodded. ‘If he walked from here what the heck’s happened to him?’

  She wished he hadn’t finished the sentence with a glance over her shoulder at the big square building up the road.

  Joanna spoke to Spark, who was watching. ‘Can we get inside the car?’

  PC Spark’s grin stretched from one ear to the other. Another gold star in his book was imminent. ‘Got a bloke coming,’ he said. ‘Apparently it’s quite easy. You just got to …’

  Joanna peered in through heavily tinted windows. The driver’s seat was empty. He could be inside, in the back, but she could not make out a body. However, it was difficult to be certain because the tint was so deep. In fact, she was unsure whether it was darker than was legal. Well, it was hardly a priority. They could deal with that sometime in the future. But, with the tinted windows, the Shogun looked menacing.

  ‘A drug dealer’s car,’ Joanna muttered and Mike agreed with a jerky nod and a spluttering laugh. ‘Don’t say that too loud, Jo,’ he warned. ‘The manufacturers will sue you.’

  She gave him a look that was meant to be withering but had absolutely no impact on her sergeant. She allowed herself, for one second, to reflect on the pleasure of working alongside him. What a long way they had come, she from the prickly new inspector and he from the sergeant resentful at working beneath – as he saw it – a woman. Korpanski was the archetypal male chauvinist pig – or had been – then. They had both moved on.

  She regarded the car for a further minute. ‘So he’s been missing now for forty-eight hours. He parked up expecting to return probably within the usual two to two-and-a-half but he didn’t. I guess the car’s been here all that time.’

  Spark interrupted. ‘We’ve got some CCTV footage, ma’am. Soon check it out but it’s still wet underneath the car. Wednesday night was heavy rain. Since then it’s been dry.’

  She was still thinking. ‘What are these sorts of cars worth, Korpanski?’ He was the petrol head.

  ‘A little over thirty thousand,’ he said. ‘And that’s one of the basic models. This one’s all singing all dancing.’

  ‘So he’s pretty unlikely to have just left it here.’

  She addressed PC Ruthin who had just joined them. Any drama soon attracted backup. ‘So what do you think, Paul?’

  ‘Put it like this: I wouldn’t just abandon the love of my life in a supermarket car park. Not safe. And it’s not just in danger from the joyriders or organized crime who steal to order. No, the real threat comes from the bloody trolleys, their unpredictable wheels and rubbish drivers bashing into you.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t leave it here either. And the phrase love of my life could be applied to Mrs Glover too.’

  She was silent. Something had happened to Jadon Glover. The question was what, how, why, when, where and where was he now? Why was the easiest question to answer considering his occupation. His career was hardly the pathway to making friends. And when almost answered itself. Between 6.15 p.m. on Wednesday evening and 9.30 p.m. when he had failed to return home.

  The other questions posed more of a problem.

  A car pulled up. The scanner had arrived. Within minutes she had slipped a pair of gloves on and the door was opened.

  Inside stank of air freshener and was obsessively clean. The Shogun had been left in gear, the handbrake on. No keys in the ignition. Nothing suspicious. The seats were in order, in the right position for Jadon Glover to drive. There was no visible blood or hair or anything else that might suggest foul play. Nothing out of place.

  It did not look like a crime scene.

  She crossed to the passenger side and opened the glove compartment. Nothing there except the log book. But the car was fitted with a SatNav so they could retrace his travel history back to his last destinations, if he’d used it. DC Alan King could sit and play with that one. He was the tech king.

  She opened the boot. Just the usual: spare tyre, jack. Again, all in order. Jadon Glover, she was fast realizing, was a very tidy man. Methodical and careful. He’d left nothing personal behind, just the car. Like his home, it was anonymous; there was no clue as to his real character except that he was tidy. Tidy, she wondered, or careful? Obsessively careful usually meant something to hide. Leaving the car here simply to vanish was careless and out of character, and so it was at that precise point that Joanna knew Glover’s disappearance was sinister. She was glad now that she had pre-empted this discovery and discussed the case with CS Rush, quite apart from him pointing his finger in this direction. She could have the car on a low loader in half an hour and down to the forensics lab in Stoke. Then they would wait for developments.

  She authorized removal of the Shogun, gave the officers a few requests and requirements, asked PC Ruthin to remain with the vehicle, had the immediate area sealed off and she, Korpanski and Jason Spark entered the store to commandeer the CCTV tapes from the supermarket. A couple of Specials could watch them over Coke and crisps. It was a boring job but necessary.

  Their next unenviable task was to speak to Eve again. Korpanski had planned to visit anyway this evening but finding the car had changed the situation. They should both go. Joanna authorised a preliminary search of the surrounding area including th
e derelict mill. It wouldn’t do to find Jadon injured somewhere, awaiting their discovery and help. In the morning she would tackle the missing man’s business partners again, get that list of clients and look into Glover’s movements on Wednesday evenings.

  It was dusk by the time they arrived at 8 Disraeli Place. It looked deserted, as did the entire street. It seemed no one lived here or in any of the other houses. Had the field been swallowed up to form a street of houses where no one lived? What a waste.

  They knocked anyway.

  This time Eve was dressed more soberly in a short black skirt and cream mohair V-neck sweater that set off her blue eyes to perfection. Her blue eyes looked disturbed and, once or twice, as they spoke, filled with tears.

  She was very quiet when they told her they had found her husband’s car. Her face was pale and shocked. She looked frightened. Joanna looked at her closely and was convinced this was no act. The woman was genuinely heartbroken.

  ‘He loved that thing,’ she said, smiling through her tears. ‘I used to tease him about it. Used to say, “Love it more than me, you do”.’ And then the hollow, brittle show of bravado completely crumbled. Her shoulders shook. Even Mike looked moved by her distress, as though he would put his arm around her. Joanna shook her head.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ Joanna let that sink in before she spoke again. ‘Look, Eve,’ she said, ‘I’ll be quite honest with you. We don’t know where your husband is. We don’t know what’s happened, why he’s gone missing. We are looking around the area …’ Unbidden, Big Mill loomed in front of her eyes, black and forbidding, throwing its huge shadow over the entire area like a cloak, its rows of broken-blind windows staring out over the steep hill, watching the road that led out to Macclesfield. She knew the building was poorly secured. Anyone could get in with minimal effort – and they did with regularity. To date they had found one corpse, a drug overdose and three more comatosed would-be fun seekers. She recovered herself, hoped that Eve hadn’t picked up on her sudden silence and involuntary shudder. She picked up the conversation. ‘… The area around where his car was found. If we find anything you’ll be the first to know. In turn, if you learn anything you do the same. Let us know straight away.’ She tapped her mobile. ‘I’m on the end of this twenty-four seven. Or you can phone the station.’

  Eve nodded.

  ‘The car was found at Sainsbury’s car park,’ Joanna continued. ‘It appears that this was a regular slot for Jadon. Most Wednesdays he parked there and was gone for an hour or two. This time he did not return. That’s as much as we know at the moment. Do you know anything about the people he visited regularly on a Wednesday?’

  Eve shook her head. ‘He didn’t talk about his business.’

  Not surprising under the circumstances.

  ‘So you’d better ask the others,’ Eve said.

  ‘You mean Leroy, Scott and Jeff?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But you can’t add anything?’

  She shook her head.

  Mike and Joanna exchanged a swift glance. They’d worked out their strategy on the way there and that did not include telling Mrs Glover the anomalies they had already learned about her ‘perfect husband’.

  Joanna tried to steer the conversation. ‘How long did you say you’ve been married?’

  The innocent opener went down completely the wrong way. It tipped Eve Glover into defensive manner. She flushed. ‘Are you suggesting my Jadon’s having an affair? That he’s gone off with another woman?’

  Don’t tell me it hadn’t crossed your mind?

  Joanna tried to smooth the wrinkle out. Maybe she should have left this to Korpanski after all. ‘No. I’m not, Mrs Glover. I’m just collecting background information.’

  And don’t be so damned prickly.

  ‘Sorry. You can understand.’ A loud sniff. ‘Obviously I’m not myself.’ A brave smile now. ‘Two years.’ Another bright, toothy smile. Tombstone white. ‘We got married in Italy,’ she said brightly.

  Now why didn’t that surprise Joanna?

  ‘Have you got a wedding photograph?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah.’

  She crossed the sterile room to the enormous television set and handed Joanna a wedding photograph which had stood on a shelf behind it, unnoticed until now.

  Joanna gazed at it. There are some couples for whom glamour is the most important aspect. And Jadon and Eve certainly fitted into that category. Pukingly Glover was even wearing a white suit and had matched his skin tone to his wife’s exact shade of orange. And his wife’s dress was a froth of sparkling white chiffon topped by a tiara. Diamond or paste? The dress looked hugely expensive.

  To Joanna he didn’t look like an accountant but a flashy criminal. A clean frontman for a dirty little business. She peered closer at the picture and picked up something else – something she hadn’t expected, something a bit less predictable. Rather than looking cocky at his wedding, Jadon Glover looked uncertain. His smile didn’t quite ring true. She wondered about this. Was his uncertainty about his nuptials or something else? Was there a hint of defiant bravado about the tilt of his chin but a sense of panic behind the eyes? A challenge thrown out carelessly to his guests? She’d seen this look before. There was something in his expression which she recognized but could not identify.

  She continued looking. Ostentatiously on his third finger on his left hand he sported a gold ring with a large diamond. Unless it too was fake, the size of the diamond chilled her further. Diamonds that big cost big money. A few grand a carat. More money than any honest accountant would make. And even though the syndicate charged astronomic interest rates it represented a lot of people paying him and his mates back – for ever. A lot of lives damaged and hurt. To a detective, big diamonds mean one of two things. Legitimate fame and fortune or law breaking, cheating, drugs, thefts and lies. The murky world of the Big Diamond. They’d already discovered one little lie and, like weeds blown in on the breeze, little lies spread.

  And that was how big diamonds came to nestle on cheating fingers.

  Behind the big lies and cheating fingers could be a whole host of dangerous, cruel enemies.

  The case was beginning to intrigue and worry her in equal measure because she had the feeling that at some point not very far down the line she was going to be breaking some very bad news to the devoted Mrs Glover. She glanced across at Eve. Staring down at the picture seemed to be having a calming effect on her. She was smiling into it, only recalling the presence of the two detectives when she looked up and her face instantly hardened.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ She searched her mind. ‘Something about the car? Was it bumped – damaged in some way? Was there blood in it?’ She put her hand to her throat. ‘Dear God, is he hurt?’ It was a theatrical gesture but Joanna did not doubt it was genuine.

  So she answered bluntly but kindly. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Glover, but we really don’t know – yet.’ Then she took pity on her. ‘We didn’t see any blood in the car but we’ll get it checked out all the same.’

  Eve nodded and couldn’t resist tacking on, ‘Where do you think he is? Why do you think he’s not getting in touch?’

  Why do you bloody well think?

  Joanna sidestepped the question. Enough time had been spent on this. It was time to progress. Now how could she put this? ‘Do you remember a Mr Karl Robertson at your salon?’

  Eve searched her mind then shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Middle aged, balding.’

  The smile Eve gave was ever so cynical. ‘Loads of men who looked like that came in wanting a makeover. Why do you ask?’

  ‘He claims to know you.’

  ‘Oh.’ She tossed her head in the classic gesture of a beauty dismissing the beast. ‘Lots of men do that – pretend they’re my friend when really they’re just a client.’

  Just a client with a tenuous connection to both you and your missing husband.

  �
�Jadon was glad when I gave it up. Too much male attention, you know.’

  Eve gave a self-indulgent smile, the equivalent of a woman patting herself on the back for her flawless physical attributes. It was the smile of a woman spoilt and coddled by an adoring husband.

  An adoring husband who deceived the wife he adored? Or was the story behind Jadon’s lies something a little more complicated? A little more connected to the size of the diamond he wore on his muscular finger?

  Eve hadn’t quite completed her little soliloquy. ‘He likes me to be a stay-at-home wife.’

  ‘Right.’

  Joanna was getting sooo bored. She needed to move in, find some answers and get back to real policing, using police time and budget in a more constructive way.

  ‘You’re sure you’ve never rung your husband at work?’

  Eve gave a small shake of her head. ‘Why would I go through all his secretaries and stuff when I can just dial his mobile? He’s always got that switched on and he’s always got it with him.’

  All his secretaries and stuff? Joanna gave Mike a swift, I don’t think so glance. There had just been the three guys. No secretaries and stuff. What tales had Glover been spinning? ‘Have you ever visited him at work, met him for lunch, maybe?’

  ‘I don’t go to Hanley much,’ Eve said. ‘I’m not fond of the place. There’s not a lot of designer stuff there anyway. We tend to go shopping in Manchester or Birmingham, sometimes London. Take in a show, you know.’

  Joanna knew she was meant to look impressed. She tried and probably failed.

  Suddenly Eve Glover cottoned on. She looked from one to the other. ‘Why do you keep asking me all these questions about Jadon’s work? What’s that got to do with his disappearing? He didn’t vanish from work.’

  Mike stepped in. ‘Well, you said he was working late on Wednesday night so we wondered where he might be working late? Who he might be with?’