The Hard Detective (A Harriet Martens Thriller Book 1)

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but what about the really big boys? Before long won’t one of them think of leaving something worse than dog-shit in your letter-box? A bomb, even?’

  ‘Frankly, Rob, I wouldn’t be sorry if they did. It’d show that the real criminals hate me. And, as I hate them equally, that’d be satisfying rather than worrying.’

  Rob Roberts sighed.

  ‘An eye for an eye,’ he said. ‘Rather you than me.’

  ‘An eye for an eye? Something from the Bible, if I remember my Religious Studies at school. But, yes, I think I like it. An eye for an eye. Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s actually Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Exodus, twenty-one, verse twenty-three. Had that drummed into me in Sunday School. Bit different, I imagine, from what you used to be taught.’

  ‘So you know even more about me than my married name?’

  ‘I suppose I do. When you began getting into the news, I looked up your file. St Anne’s School. Cambridge University. High-flyers course at Bramshill …’

  ‘We’ll see about the high flying. If I make a mess of this investigation, it’ll be damn low flying for the rest of my career.’

  ‘You won’t make a mess of it, ma’am. If anyone can find the bloke who stabbed Titty Titmuss, it’ll be you.’

  *

  But, once again, Rob Roberts turned out not to be right. Before her busy day was over Harriet had a call in her office at Queen Street, B Division headquarters, from the Chief Constable’s staff officer and then from Sir Michael himself.

  ‘DCI Martens?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The Titmuss murder. I understand your investigation’s fully under way.’

  ‘I hope it is, sir. Incident Room set up, door-to-door reports beginning to come in. And everything, of course, logged into the HOLMES computer.’

  ‘No, DCI.’

  ‘No, sir?’

  ‘No, you will find now that you are no longer logged into HOLMES.’

  ‘But — But, sir’ —’

  ‘Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand this, Miss Martens. But the fact of the matter is that, after a good deal of consideration, I have given the inquiry to Detective Superintendent Froggott. No reflection on you. But the murder of a police officer must get absolutely one hundred per cent priority, nor do I want your Stop the Rot campaign to lose momentum. You know that has my full backing. My very fullest. All the press comment it’s attracted does nothing but good for the image of Greater Birchester Police. And Froggott’s a first-class detective, as you’ll know. As you’ll know. He left your B Division in a very healthy state. Fine clear-up rate.’

  For a moment some bitter thoughts ran through Harriet’s head. Yes, Froggy Froggott had achieved a high clear-up rate. But as much by cases Taken into Consideration as by cases brought to a proper result. Easy enough to be able to record impressive figures by persuading criminals already caught for one crime to admit to a string of others in the hope of leniency. But that was not putting untouched criminals where they should be. Behind bars. First-class detective Froggy Froggott may get called, but to anyone who’s served under him and has eyes in their head he’s a first-class blusterer.

  His favourite trick came into her mind, together with the evil yellow-toothed grin on his jowly red face as he produced it: the junior officer foolish enough to wish him good morning and his invariable reply I don’t want a weather report: I want action.

  Action Froggy loved. He was never happier than leading some major operation from the front. With the prospect of parading his hard image to the TV cameras, or in getting some banging quotes into the sensation-mongering Evening Star if he was less lucky. But, she told herself, that hard line was no more than an image, something for the cameras or the minds of the more easily impressed among the lower ranks of Greater Birchester Police. Froggy, damn him, was hard for the sake of being hard. Hard so as to gloss up the picture which he devoted himself to creating, the Hard Detective.

  And where does that leave me? Where does it leave the detective chief inspector the local media have been busy of late building up into another Hard Detective, and one with the extra frisson of being a woman?

  Well, blast them all, I don’t make myself hard for the image it creates. I make myself hard because it’s necessary. There are villains in the world, nasty men, hard men — and, yes, hard, nasty women, too — and they have to be met with an equal hardness. A more than equal hardness. All right, not every offender is a through-and-through hard man. But even the small fry do their daily best to cultivate the fuck-you side of themselves. And need putting down just as much as the bigger fish, if the world, or my part of Birchester at least, is to be made habitable.

  That’s what I’m here for. Whether at the beginning I liked it or not. Whether in the beginning I even knew that this was to be my lot, my place in the scheme of things.

  But now it is. And I am. And that’s all there is to it.

  She pulled herself back into paying the distant, tinny voice of the Chief Constable some attention.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said at last. ‘I quite understand your decision. And, yes, it will leave my hands free to do some proper policing in the Division.’

  Then, in case she had allowed herself to go a little far in hinting about the slack state Froggy Froggott had left behind him when he had been given the city’s prestigious A Division, she quickly added: ‘No one could be better than Mr Froggott, sir, at getting a result. And you can rest assured I’ll give him maximum cooperation.’

  She got her opportunity to fulfil that promise within an hour of the Chief Constable’s call. Her phone rang.

  ‘DCI Martens here.’

  ‘Scenes-of-Crime, ma’am. Sergeant Bolton. Thought you’d like to know direct what results we got at New Street. Nothing from the ground, no bootmarks, nothing like that. That heavy shower coming on so sudden washed the whole area clean before we could even get it covered over. Some bits of rubbish right at the far end, but nothing that looks as if it’ll be at all helpful. And of course the body’s gone to the pathologist. But there was one thing we did find …’

  Harriet knew she should have said at this first opportunity that the investigation was now Superintendent Froggott’s. But she could not resist putting in a quick ‘Well?’

  ‘Little thread of wool caught on an old piece of ironwork jutting out of the wall. Just where someone darting forward in that narrow space would have brushed against it. Can’t have been there long, the thread, still good and fluffy. It’s gone to Forensic, of course. But I bet my bottom dollar I know what it is.’

  And again ‘Well?’

  ‘From a royal-blue donkey jacket, ma’am. I ought to know. Used to have one just like it myself. It won’t exactly help find the fellow, but, when we do, if we get hold of that coat of his it’ll be absolutely good enough for the court. It’ll be bloodstained, almost for a cert.’

  ‘Good work, Sergeant. But I have to tell you something. The whole investigation has been handed to Detective Superintendent Froggott at A Division. So he’s the one you should be talking to.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Long pause.

  ‘But, ma’am … Well, I mean, why’s that, if I may ask? Body firmly in B Div’s territory.’

  ‘Comes from the top, Sergeant. The Chief’s decision.’

  ‘Well, yes, then. I suppose he knows best. But–– Well … ’

  ‘Yes?’

  Another silence. Then a burst of candour.

  ‘Ma’am, I suppose you couldn’t pass the info on to Mr Froggott yourself? Er — Well, look, the truth is I got on the wrong side of him once, and — And, well, he’s not inclined to pay much attention to anything I say.’

  Harriet smiled into the safe blankness of the phone.

  ‘It’s not exactly correct procedure, Sergeant,’ she said, her voice determinedly neutral. ‘But if, as you say, you’d find it difficult to give
this information to Mr Froggott in a way that makes sure he sees its importance, I could pass it on. Something like this shouldn’t be left tucked away in the computer until someone happens to notice it.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. It’s what you might call a weight off my mind.’

  Harriet got through to Detective Superintendent Froggott right away. What you don’t like doing should be done at once.

  ‘Yes, Miss Martens? How can I help a lady?’

  She saw at once his leering face, surmounting bristle of grey hair, big yellowy teeth bared in a self-delighted grin. But she had coped with his sort of heavy irony often enough in the past.

  ‘I have a message from Scenes-of-Crime about PC Titmuss, sir,’ she answered, dead-pan. ‘Sent to me in error. They apparently hadn’t realized the investigation is with you.’

  ‘Just like them. Lazy swines, always were. And none of their bits and bobs much good to anyone, ask me.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But, if this is what it seems to be, I think this time they may have done the investigation some good.’

  ‘For me to judge, Miss.’

  Call me Miss just once more, and …

  ‘Of course, sir. It’s just that they found a strand of cloth at the murder scene, and it looks very much as if it can’t have been there before last night.’

  ‘A strand of cloth? Well, thanks for telling me. Now I’ll have the killer locked up in no time at all.’

  ‘Well, no, sir. But Scenes-of-Crime seem pretty certain that the thread — it’s royal-blue wool — comes from a donkey jacket.’

  ‘A donkey jacket. And I suppose now you want me to arrest every man in however many millions there are in Birchester who’s ever owned a donkey jacket.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Play it strictly cool.

  ‘It’s just that Scenes-of-Crime are pretty well convinced that when you do get your man, if you can get hold of his jacket, there should be a hundred per cent match.’

  ‘First catch your bloody hare. Well, Mrs Beeton, thank you for your information. And tell Scenes-of-Crime that I have set up my Incident Room, that I do know how to run an investigation, and that, if they’ve found something they think is a vital clue, they know where to log it. Right?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Only … Well, I do think a donkey jacket does tell us something.’

  ‘Oh, yes. And what’s that, Shirley Holmes?’

  ‘Just that it is definitely a man we’re looking for, sir.’

  ‘A man? A man? Who else do you think I’m looking for? You’re not trying to make me think it could be a woman who upped and stuck a knife into one of my constables? Let me tell you, I remember young Titmuss from when I was running B Div, and he wasn’t the sort of lad that would let a woman stick a knife in him. If anything he’d be sticking something in a woman, and it wouldn’t be cold steel.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  She put the phone down before she said anything more. She had told him what she had been asked to — tough nut or no tough nut — and now her conscience could be clear. And, besides, unlikely though it was, a woman could conceivably have used that knife. Sharp enough by the look of the wound, and not a great deal of force needed. She could even have deliberately dressed in a sombre, concealing donkey jacket.

  Well, back to making B Division’s territory as unpleasant as possible for the enemy. Back to infusing every officer in the Division with the will to enforce Stop the Rot twenty-four hours a day, whether pulling up a youth who’s dropped his fish-and-chips paper or by putting observation on the next break-in merchant after Terry Dunne.

  However, it seemed she was not free of the murder of PC Titmuss yet. Before she had gone off-duty the woman detective sergeant in charge of the station Rape Centre came in. She had realised, she said, that the crime in the case she was dealing with at the moment had been committed in the very dead-end passageway off New Street where later that night PC Titmuss had been stabbed. Her victim, who had only now brought herself to report what had happened, had stated that the evening before at the pub she had suddenly found herself in a sort of trance and a boy who had been chatting her up had led her, under the pretence of seeing her to her bus, to the passageway where he had without much fuss raped her.

  ‘It could be, ma’am,’ Sergeant Grant said, ‘that traces of my victim’s ordeal will have affected the later Scenes-of-Crime search. But I don’t know if it’s really worth reporting. It wasn’t the sort of rape to leave many clues. I’m pretty sure the girl was slipped a Rohypnol tablet, a Roofie, in the rum-and-Coke that nasty little tyke kindly bought her. They’re tasteless, you know. And make a victim putty in anyone’s hands inside thirty minutes. God knows, using them’s a trick being played more and more these days. You can buy them under the table in a pub for as little as three quid.’

  Harriet, inwardly cursing, told her that, yes, she should report the circumstances to Superintendent Froggott. She was not going to let Froggy have the least excuse to berate any of her officers.

  But at last her day was over. Or so she thought.

  She had just got home and was beginning to get herself some supper when the phone rang. Never sure whether a call would be for DCI Martens or for Mrs John Piddock, mother of twin sons occasionally remembering to ring from university, she had developed the habit of answering simply with her number.

  ‘Chief Inspector Martens?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Duty sergeant here, ma’am. Some bad news, I’m afraid.’

  Terry Dunne escaped somehow? Raped girl refusing to give evidence after all? Yet another bad break-in?

  ‘Yes, Sergeant?’

  ‘It’s WPC Syed, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes. I know her. Well?’

  ‘She’s been killed, ma’am, I’m sorry to say.’

  For an instant, with the idea still near the surface of her mind of PC Titmuss and that knife in his neck, she thought that Rukshana Syed must have been killed in the same way. But then the implication of the sergeant’s I’m sorry to say struck home. He would hardly have added those words if the young Muslim probationer had been murdered. So … an accident of some sort.

  ‘What happened, Sergeant?’

  ‘It seems she was on her way home, ma’am — she lives with her boyfriend in a flat just off Victoria Road — and rides home by bike. Well, she’d just got to the other end of Queen Street, where the traffic flow’s heaviest with vehicles from Market Place joining in, when she swerved or fell for some reason and went right under a No 14 bus. Nothing the driver could do about it, so the constable who was there said.’

  ‘Jesus, poor kid. Only this morning I was giving her a bollocking for talking to a reporter down where PC Titmuss was killed, and now …’

  ‘You’re not saying there’s a connection with the Titmuss killing, ma’am?’

  ‘No, no. Of course not. There’s nothing to indicate this was anything but an accident, is there?’

  ‘Not so far as I know, ma’am. PC Wilkinson who attended is here now if you want to see him.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll come straight in.’

  *

  Wilkinson, a man in his early twenties, was sitting alone in the station canteen, his helmet on the table in front of him. It was plain that he had not had to deal with many road deaths before. His long gaunt face was still pale and he was clutching a cup of tea with both hands as if to stop them trembling. He stood up as Harriet approached but, when she told him to sit, did so with rapidity.

  ‘Did you know WPC Syed?’ she asked.

  ‘No, ma’am. Well, only by sight if you know what I mean.’

  ‘All right then. If she wasn’t a friend, you’d better make an effort to pull yourself together. This won’t be the last fatal you’ll have to attend.’

  Her brusque words brought a flare of resentment to his eyes.

  ‘I know it’s unpleasant,’ she said sharply. ‘But a police officer has to be ready for unpleasantness. The trick is: tell yourself you’re just going to get on with what you’ve got to do, a
nd then do it. If you ever get into CID you’ll need to learn that, when you attend a post-mortem and have to see a dead body’s guts being pulled out on to the dissecting table. But that has to be done, and some police officer has to watch.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Right then. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and tell me all you know about this accident. There’ll be an inquest, and you’ll have to give evidence as well as the traffic patrol. So you need to have every circumstance clear in your mind. Were you directly at the scene when it happened?’

  ‘No, ma’am, not quite. I’d just gone off-duty and was walking down Queen Street.’

  ‘All right. So you were close by?’

  ‘Well, yes, ma’am. I heard some woman scream, and I turned to look back. I saw that bus, a No 14, sort of slewed half across the roadway and I guessed what must have occurred.’

  ‘So, then … ?’

  ‘I made my way back there, ma’am, and I saw Ruk-what-do-they-call-her —’

  ‘You saw Syed, yes?’

  ‘Well, she was still half under the bus. And it was plain she was dead. She’d gone right under the nearside wheel, with her bike all mangled up beneath her.’

  PC Wilkinson showed signs of falling back into the state of shock he had been in when she had gone over to him.

  ‘You’re certain from your own observations that the bus driver couldn’t have avoided her?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And you’ve noted that in your pocket-book? Yes?’

  A slow dense blush came up on the long gaunt face in front of her.

  ‘Well, no. No, ma’am. I — I hadn’t got round to that yet.’

  ‘Then you better had, Constable. Now. Recollections long after the event are hardly worth having. So, out with your book here and now. What time was it when you attended the accident? Write it down.’

  ‘Er — I don’t know, ma’am. I mean, it must have been about … Well, we both of us had just gone off-duty. I saw her getting her bike as I came out. So … So I suppose it was, say, ten or fifteen minutes past six.’

  ‘When you next have to deal with an RTA, Constable, take a look at your watch first of all. Good evidence is always needed at any road accident.’