Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  Tom supposed if a uniform inspector’s job was made available by the restructuring he would have to apply for it. It would please Liz, and, he reluctantly admitted to himself, it would add valuable experience in other fields to his CV, if he sought further promotion in the future. Besides, it looked bad if you didn’t go after what was available, in or out of uniform. But Bob Sandwell said he’d heard CID jobs would be created within the new structure and Bob was always right, so Tom was very hopeful.

  “And as a result, Stansfield, as our largest divisional headquarters, bore the brunt, and has since then been policing all serious crime. This, of course, is far from ideal, as resources are considerably stretched. . . .”

  “Tell me about it,” muttered Lloyd. “Especially when you second half the bloody staff to work on projects that are a total waste of time and money.”

  Tom smiled. Judy was on the last few weeks of her maternity leave, but she was still on attachment to the LINKS project, which, despite her gloomy predictions, was running its course. They wouldn’t be told this morning whether or not the Local Information Networked Knowledge System would be adopted, but Judy and her colleagues had produced their final recommendations, which were favorable. The firm belief was that it would be too expensive and that the idea would be scrapped or, at best, adopted in a modified form. Bob Sandwell said he thought it would go ahead as originally envisaged, and on the strength of that Tom had invested ten pounds at ten to one when the inevitable book had been opened on the outcome.

  “The idea of setting up a serious-crime squad at this HQ was mooted and discussed at considerable length and in great depth.”

  Tom gave the ACC his full attention. This was his chance.

  “However . . .”

  Tom’s head dropped. The dreaded word. However, it wasn’t going to happen; the ACC didn’t need to use any more words after that first one, but he was, of course, using a great many. Tom could see a future full of settling disputes between colleagues and smoothing the ruffled feathers of the public stretching before him, interspersed with getting old ladies and injured dogs out of potentially hazardous situations while remembering not to call anyone mate. The serious-crime squad had been his one hope, and for once, Bob Sandwell had got it wrong.

  He could probably kiss his tenner good-bye, too.

  Judy had never got used to changing nappies. It wasn’t something she was put on this earth to do. But then, she had had to get used to a lot worse than dirty nappies in her time, and she had never let that put her off. Removing nappies full of pee and poo did have the edge over autopsies, but only just. The nappies smelled better.

  She smiled as Charlotte, now clean and fresh, lying on her tummy and wearing nothing, lifted her head, pushing herself up on sturdy little arms.

  “Your daddy would have had to do that if he hadn’t had to go to a silly old meeting.” Judy got out of nappy fatigues every time she could, and Lloyd was usually entirely willing to do his bit, she had to admit, despite her prenatal misgivings about his dedication to fatherhood. And the silly old meeting would, with luck, confirm when he would be able to leave work and swap places with her.

  “Ba-ba-ba,” said Charlotte.

  “Da-da,” said Judy. “Daddy. Da-da.”

  Part of her, a very tiny part, was almost enjoying this now, the part of her that knew so much had happened in the last five months that she would miss an awful lot by going back to work. She had seen Charlotte’s first smile—at least, the first one she had bestowed on her. Charlotte might have been secretly smiling to herself for days before that, for all Judy knew. She had heard her first laugh and was working on getting her to produce her first word, or at least coincidentally produce a couple of syllables that could be construed as a word. But a much larger part was longing to use her brain again for something other than conversing with Charlotte.

  “Ba-ba-ba-ba.”

  “Really?”

  “Ga-ga-ga.”

  “Who are you calling ga-ga?”

  Charlotte was varying the noises occasionally now, but usually it was just “ba-ba-ba.” Now she rolled over onto her back, a newly acquired skill, and Judy picked up a plastic ball, rolling it gently over Charlotte’s tummy, tickling her, laughing with her when she giggled her captivating baby giggle. Lloyd had said that things would change, and they had. Judy felt that there was some communication now, even if it was gobbledygook, though she did still feel a little as though someone would come and take Charlotte back to whomever she really belonged to.

  Charlotte’s plump little hands held the ball, and she sucked it reflectively for a few moments, then let it go. It rolled gently off her tummy and onto the bath towel on which she was lying. Judy picked it up, put it back on her tummy. Charlotte held it and let it go again. When they had done it for the third time, Judy knew it wasn’t coincidence—she and Charlotte were playing a game. A real game. She felt inordinately proud of both Charlotte and herself and wished Lloyd had been there.

  “According to my book, you shouldn’t be doing that for at least another month. You must be a very advanced baby. When your daddy comes home, we’ll show him this game, won’t we?”

  “Da-da-da.”

  Judy’s eyebrows rose. “Yes,” she said. “Da-da.”

  “Ba-ba-ba.”

  “OK, have it your way. When your ba-ba-ba comes home.” Judy tickled her again, and Charlotte squealed.

  “Ba-ba-ba-ba. Ba-ba.” Charlotte’s voice rose. “Ba-ba-ba! Ba-ba-ba-ba!”

  “What’s that about? What is a ba-ba-ba? Do you want your donkey?”

  The soft toy had a bell inside that Charlotte loved to hear, but she hadn’t worked out how to make the noise yet. In a way, that was even better than if she had, because it delighted her so; it wouldn’t be quite the same if she knew to expect it.

  Charlotte took the donkey in her hands and let it go, but it just sat there on her chest.

  “That won’t roll,” Judy advised her. “Donkeys don’t roll.”

  “Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.”

  “Well, that is one argument, but I think the facts speak for themselves. Donkeys don’t roll.” Judy picked up the donkey, shook it, made the bell ring. Made Charlotte laugh. “You,” she said, holding it out.

  Charlotte took the donkey, let it go, and it sat on her chest. “Ba-ba-ba,” she said.

  “Ball?” Judy picked up the donkey, gave Charlotte the ball, and the game began again. Over and over and over again. “I thought you were supposed to have a short attention span,” she complained. “I think we should get your nice new nappy on now, get you fed and dressed, and go for a walk in the sunshine. Do you fancy that?”

  “Ba-ba-ba.”

  “That’s what you always say.”

  The taxi swept left into St. Pancras, and Phil thrust a fiver into the driver’s hands, ran up the steps, found a free window in the booking hall, bought his ticket, rushed out to the platforms, and found the station devoid of trains. Had he missed it? It was supposed to be leaving at 8:35 and it must be almost that now, but he didn’t think it was later than that. He couldn’t see a clock—there must be a clock, for God’s sake. He had sold the Rolex watch that Lesley had given him to help finance his travels; the cheap replacement that he had bought had, ironically enough, been stolen, and he hadn’t bothered getting another one. Men with no responsibilities didn’t need watches, he’d told himself.

  Finally, he located the clock, high above his head. A huge old-fashioned clock set into the wall and designed to be seen only by passengers who were getting off trains, which seemed less than useful to Phil, but perhaps the Victorians knew why they had put it there. It wasn’t quite twenty-five to nine, so where was his train? The arrivals screen informed him that the train due in from Nottingham was running thirty-two minutes late, and he sank down onto one of the metal benches, resigned to a long wait, as other trains, going to other places, arrived and left.

  Tight-lipped and angry, he strained to hear the virtually incomprehensible announcements that e
choed in the Gothic arches of the building, competing with the din of starlings, then gave it up as a bad job. The screen would tell him what he needed to know.

  Australia. He had known that Lesley was trying to stop him from finding something out, but this was completely out of the blue. Thank God Theresa had rung him. She had said they weren’t going for another month, but he wasn’t going to waste any time. If he had a month to work on her, he would use every minute of it.

  It had been a very long time since he’d been on a train in Britain. He’d used a few foreign ones in his travels, but before he’d sold the car he had driven everywhere. The trains bound for other destinations were more or less as he remembered them; he hadn’t been expecting the little turbo train that finally arrived in from Nottingham, looking out of place in a station built for big, macho steam engines pulling endless carriages, and accustomed, in the more recent past, to long and lean Intercity express trains with diesel power cars at either end. The turbo looked as though it had escaped from someone’s train set. Even the bloody trains had been emasculated, Phil thought. Maybe Lesley was running the service.

  He stood impatiently at the barrier while the train was being serviced, as though getting onto it early would make it leave sooner. As soon as the gate opened, he practically sprinted down the platform and claimed one of the seats, which he found rather too small for his comfortable frame. At three minutes past nine, it pulled out of St. Pancras and Phil relaxed just a little, now that he was under way.

  He had no idea where he was going when he got there, but he knew it was the only house in a road called Brook Way and he would get a taxi.

  Lloyd stifled a yawn and sneaked a look at his watch. It was just after five past nine—was that all? He felt as though he’d been here for hours. He had been up until three in the morning—not because of Charlotte, who now was much more grown-up than he was and had slept all night for weeks now—but because he had wanted to finish the jigsaw that Judy had bought him as a joke birthday present and which he had started at midnight. He would blame Charlotte, however, if anyone remarked on his lack of alertness.

  Having given an exhaustive discourse on why a serious-crime squad was not thought to be viable, the ACC finally got around to telling them what they actually intended doing.

  “It has been decided that Bartonshire will be split into three divisions. The west of the county will constitute A Division, with its headquarters at Barton’s Highgrove Street station, and the east will be split once again into the two historic divisions of B Division at Stansfield and C Division at Malworth. Malworth will be extended from its traditional boundaries to cover roughly the same area as Stansfield, with a more-or-less equal distribution of urban and rural policing.”

  A murmur immediately rose from his audience. Malworth, the seat of the corruption, had lost its divisional headquarters status some time ago, having been deemed to cover too small an area, and the station itself had had no CID for over a year; everyone had assumed that it would be swallowed up by whatever setup the reorganization produced. And everyone had been wrong. Except Bob Sandwell, of course. Lloyd glanced over at him and smiled.

  “Each division, which will be run by a uniform superintendent, will have a CID headed up by a detective chief inspector, assisted by a detective inspector . . .”

  No need for “up,” Lloyd thought. You would get a lot more said in a lot less time if you didn’t use unnecessary buzzwords.

  “. . . and whatever the establishment agreed upon, it may not reflect actual staffing levels for some time, but it should spread the load more evenly.”

  Stansfield’s CID was currently headed by Detective Superintendent Case, who, unlike Lloyd, had already had his early retirement confirmed. Judy’s promotion and secondment, everyone had again assumed, had been with a view to retiring Lloyd and putting her in charge of the reorganized Stansfield CID, whatever form it took. But Malworth had to be staffed now, and it didn’t just mean that there was a CID opportunity for Tom, whose demeanor had changed from one of resignation to one of anticipation and whose eagerness to leave the meeting and put in an immediate application was practically tangible; it apparently meant that they would no longer have one DCI too many, because the ACC was now announcing that there would be no more staff cutting. And that meant that his early retirement had just been knocked on the head, as Tom would say.

  It was a blow. Judy would no longer be looking for someone who could take care of Charlotte on a temporary basis; she would now be having to consider long-term care. But, honest with himself as ever, Lloyd acknowledged that it was also something of a relief. He had begun to regret his offer as soon as it had been made, because though he did his best to disguise it, he was of the old school, and the idea of Judy working while he stayed at home had offended the male chauvinist sensibilities that he tried very hard to ignore.

  But, he thought, as the meeting broke up and he and Tom went out into the warm, breezy day, heading for Tom’s car, that was strictly between him and his heart. Truthfulness, in Lloyd’s opinion, was strictly for self-consumption.

  The bus labored up the hill toward the bus station, and Dean tensed up a little. He almost hadn’t got on it; he had walked up and down Marylebone Road, arguing with himself, as the small crowd of people waiting for the buses grew. It was, quite simply, the very last thing he should be doing. But he had to do it.

  He almost hadn’t phoned her, either. He had received a letter in prison that simply read: “Please, please, please phone me. Jennifer Archer,” and a mobile phone number. At first he’d simply crumpled it up and thrown it on the floor. Why would he want to phone someone who had screwed up his life? Then, after a few minutes’ contemplation, he had picked it up, smoothed it out, and just stared at it.

  She had used the alias she had denied ever using, so that no one would confiscate the letter, since he was supposed to have no contact with her. And just whom would he be speaking to, if he phoned her? The girl he’d made love to, fallen in love with, or the one who had lied about everything in the witness-box? If he didn’t ring her, he would never know, and he knew that would bother him.

  He had carried the note around with him for days, but when he had finally had enough money to buy a phone card and the chance to use the phone, he hadn’t taken it. He hadn’t thrown the note away, though, and every now and then he would take it out and read it and wonder why she wanted him to ring her.

  So the next time he did ring her, and what she had said had astounded him, made him think long and hard. Then he had got his release date and had requested a calendar so that he could indeed begin crossing off the days until the glorious day when he stepped through the gate, never so welcome.

  As promised, the bus pulled into Stansfield at exactly 9:15, according to the big clock in the bus station, and he was walking quickly through the pedestrianized center of the town, following Kayleigh’s directions, glad that his route was taking him away from the square, brick-built building that housed the police station, toward the other side of the town.

  The hotel that she had told him to look out for was on his left, on the corner of the wide walkway he was on and the dual carriageway of the main road, running at right angles to the walkway. Across that road was a bus stop used by the local buses, and, beyond the Stansfield Civic Centre behind it was the wood through which there was a path to his destination.

  He was just a mile away from risking the precious, fragile freedom that he had so recently regained. He could turn back. But he didn’t.

  Ian drove the van up the short driveway to the cottage and wondered whether it made more sense to park at the front door or in the garage.

  The garage, he decided. It would make unloading a little more awkward, but it did mean that the bulk of his load—destined, as it was, for the kitchen and the bedrooms—could be taken through the connecting door to the utility room, and that would be quicker than having to take the packing cases down the hallway to the kitchen and the stairs.

  He unlocke
d the garage and the adjoining door, then came back out to the van. He hadn’t expected the sudden lurch that his heart gave as he saw it sitting there, for all the world as though Theresa were still here and his life had not taken the rather unnerving turn that it had. Indeed, he hadn’t ever officially moved out of the cottage; he had removed his personal goods and chattels, such as they were, but Lesley’s itchy feet meant that he had never got to the stage of altering his address on the various pieces of paper that characterized one’s life; as far as officialdom was concerned this was still where he lived, and he sincerely wished that it were.

  He and Theresa hadn’t been unhappy; they had just become too used to each other. For the last two years they had been more like brother and sister than lovers. Not bored with each other, not really—he had always enjoyed Theresa’s company. She was quick and clever and fun to be with. The spark had gone, that was all; they had simply been marking time until one or the other of them called it a day, and it had happened to be him.

  But there was a part of him buried deep in his heart or his mind or his soul—wherever it was that a man kept his conscience—that wouldn’t be fooled into believing that and refused to stay silent any longer. You know, it said. You know that you wish Theresa was still here, that you had never met Lesley.

  No, he argued. He didn’t want to leave Lesley. She had shaken him out of his inertia, given him a new direction; life with her was exciting and different.

  But you liked the inertia. And your life would be much simpler if you hadn’t met her. It would be the life you used to live, the dull, uneventful life you want to live again. And you wouldn’t be on your way to Australia.

  He backed the van into the garage and then found that unloading wasn’t just awkward; it was impossible: the packing cases wouldn’t go through the narrow connecting door. He drove out again and backed up to the front of the cottage, got out, unlocked the front door, and opened it wide. Maybe, he thought as he opened the van’s rear doors and reached for the first packing case, maybe he could persuade Lesley that Stansfield was far enough away from Andrea and they could all just move into the cottage.