The Hard Detective (A Harriet Martens Thriller Book 1)

by H. R. F. Keating

  She began now with a bare statement repeating the details of what the report on the fire had said.

  Am I right in understanding, Superintendent, that the order by which police officers in uniform did not go on to the streets alone was countermanded on your express instructions less than twenty-four hours before this new tragedy?’

  ‘Not on my instructions, Mr Patterson, but certainly on my direct advice to the Chief Constable. Otherwise your information, however obtained, is accurate.’

  ‘Wholly accurate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So do you accept any blame for having advised the Chief Constable it was safe to rescind the original order?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘And has the order that officers in uniform should go about in pairs been reinstated?’

  ‘It has, with certain changes to the original. We regard the situation as exceptionally serious.’

  ‘What changes would those be? Were they again made on your advice?’

  ‘Naturally they were. It’s my duty to keep the Chief Constable in touch with day-to-day policing as it affects the presence in Birchester of a woman dedicated to attacking his officers.’

  ‘You haven’t said what the changes are? Are policewomen, for example, to be withdrawn from the streets altogether?’

  ‘Certainly not. They are officers of Greater Birchester Police just like any other officers.’

  ‘Well, then what changes have you made? Or advised, as you like to put it.’

  ‘A few simple adjustments to ensure the city is policed to the best possible extent. Officers on traffic point-duty, for instance, at times when they are fully in the public view may be allowed to operate without a fellow officer beside them. That and a few similar relaxations are all.’

  One of the nationals jumped in.

  ‘Am I right in thinking, Superintendent, that you’re actively expecting as of now a murder of a police officer that fits the biblical exhortation wound for wound?’

  ‘I am glad to find a member of the press has studied his Bible.’

  Another national reporter, licking lips.

  And stripe for stripe, Superintendent? Are you taking measures to prevent one of Birchester Police’s officers being flogged to death?’

  ‘We are taking every precaution against every possible eventuality.’

  ‘Are you going to order women police officers to stay off the streets, then? Or are you prepared to see one of them whipped, stripe for stripe?’

  ‘Do you really expect me to have it announced in the media what precise steps we are taking to ensure that the woman we suspect of murdering six police officers will not murder any more?’

  About turn, and leave the room.

  But not to return to the sanctuary of her office.

  *

  The quickest way to go from Greater Birchester Police A Division headquarters in Wellington Gardens to the offices of the Evening Star in King Street, Harriet knew, was through the dull, calm spaces of the gardens themselves, past their symmetrical flower-beds, now bright with tulips and polyanthus planted in circles of municipal regularity, on down a broad flight of shallow stone steps and at last round a large, railings-surrounded pond, its April waters black and chill.

  As Tim Patterson, striding along bare-headed, lank dark hair flattened on his overlarge skull, big spectacles flashingly reflecting any rare glimpse of sunshine, light-coloured trench-coat flapping open, approached the pond, he came to an abrupt halt at the sight of Harriet, standing apparently looking at three ducks aimlessly swimming.

  Harriet, who seemed only to be looking in the direction of the ducks, permitted herself a tiny smile.

  ‘Miss Martens, I’m surprised to find you here.’

  She wheeled round.

  ‘Mr Patterson.’

  ‘Oh, call me Tim, for heaven’s sake. It’s not as if we don’t know each other.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose we do, though I’m surprised in my turn to find you wanting, as they say, to pursue the acquaintance.’

  ‘Because of the put-downs you dish out to me all the time? Your stony-faced answers at your conferences? And the odd little jibe? Or your having me ordered out of Batley Street when all I was doing was reporting on that blaze? And even sending me about my business when PC Titmuss was stabbed and I was first on the scene? Well, you know, a reporter has to learn to ignore that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve seen that ignoring’s a lesson you’ve learnt, if only from the way you come up for more at each new conference.’

  ‘Ah, but you never know, you see, when patience will get you what you want. I mean, like now. Mightn’t there have been something this morning you could have said, but didn’t? Perhaps because the nationals were gunning for you? But now that we’re here, just the two of us with no one else about, can’t you give me a hint? If only because we’re both Birchester people.’

  ‘You expect me to feed you titbits?’ Harriet flared out.

  And then bit her lip.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘there are things I could tell you. And I would, if I was a different sort of police officer.’

  ‘Well, yes, I grant you that. You are different from most police officers I’ve had to deal with. Almost all of them are only too happy to give me a quote — old Froggott always was — whether in the middle of an investigation or whether it was outside the court when they’d managed to secure a conviction.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get any of that sort of crap from me. Telling the world that they’ve just put away a truly evil man, a monster, someone bestial. In my book, a police officer is there to enforce the law, not to tell the world that someone’s better or worse than somebody else. You reporters ought to be ashamed to milk that sort of self-righteous quote out of them.’

  ‘Makes good headlines, though.’

  ‘And they shouldn’t.’

  ‘Now who’s being self-righteous? You know what they called you in our office when you were running your Stop the Rot campaign? Miss Eyemright.’

  ‘I am right, however. I’m right about that. And I certainly was about Stop the Rot.’

  ‘Okay. You could’ve been about Stop the Rot. I’m not denying it. Even though you never made as much use of the Star as you might have done. You know, the media could have been very helpful to you. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean just puffing you up into some sort of personality.’

  ‘Oh, but I haven’t misunderstood you. Papers like yours like to make a big thing of how they help bring criminals to justice. But I know the truth of it. You’re into that because leaks from the police are what sell. So you won’t get anything from me, not about why Dr Scholl’s left the team, about his opposition to me issuing a challenge to—’ She stopped herself. Or seemed to. ‘Not about any damn thing, unless it’s my considered judgement that the public need to know it.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Tim Patterson said, with obvious haste, ‘if that’s your view of us, I can see there’s no point in saying anything more.’

  He scuttled away in the direction of King Street and the Evening Star office.

  Harriet smiled again.

  *

  Once more toothy Marjorie came bursting into her room with the Evening Star flapping between her outspread hands like a demented cook’s apron.

  ‘Have you seen this? Have you seen this?’

  Harriet looked up.

  ‘If you’re referring to that copy of the Evening Star, which you seem yet again to have reduced to an utter mess, you can hardly expect me to have seen it, since the early edition’s presumably only just out and I’ve been here in my room this last hour and more.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. But, I mean, is it true? They’ve put your picture in again.’

  ‘Until I see the wretched paper I can hardly tell you whether it’s true or not. Or even what it is.’

  ‘But look.’ She managed to get the paper down on the desk, and with the front page uppermost. ‘Look.’

  Harriet looked
down at the big black headline, with her photograph in uniform under it, covering almost a quarter of the page.

  TOP COP’S CHALLENGE TO COP KILLER

  She had hardly flicked through the short, adjective-spangled story under Tim Patterson’s by-line — he had, she conceded, in the minimal time she had allowed him made all that could be made of her single half-hint — before her direct line phone buzzed. Like an angry wasp.

  She picked it up.

  ‘Sir Michael? I think I can guess what you’re calling about.’

  ‘Well, is there any truth in what that infernal young man says?’

  ‘No, sir. I know issuing a challenge to Grace Brown was an idea I proposed to you some time ago, when I think Dr Scholl more or less gave it his backing or at least said it might be an answer. But you rejected it, and on second thoughts I agreed that there was more of the stunt about the idea than of the justified manoeuvre. So I did, and said, no more about it.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. But then how did that young man get hold of the notion? It wasn’t Scholl, surely.’

  ‘No, sir. I think one can discount that altogether. As I said, his backing for the idea was at best half-hearted. There were too many incalculables about it, he said. And he has a reputation to maintain. He wouldn’t go gossiping to the press.’

  ‘Which leaves it all a mystery. And one I’d like to see cleared up.’

  ‘Well, sir, I’ve just been thinking. And I can guess perhaps what may have happened. It could have been that the young man, Patterson, simply misunderstood some passing reference.’

  She hurried on.

  ‘But the main point is, sir, what the next step should be. I mean, once something like this has been put into the public domain, it’s going to be very difficult to withdraw it without it looking like weakness on our part. A sudden attack of cowardice even …’

  There was a silence at the other end of the line.

  A thought tickled Harriet’s mind: the sound of a Chief Constable thinking.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I see what you mean. But we can’t let ourselves be led by the nose by a tuppeny-ha’penny rag like the Evening Star. Surely we can simply deny the story.’

  ‘Well, I’ve a feeling the general public would hardly believe us. You know how the average person thinks what they see in print is the truth, and thousands of people in the city will have read in the Evening Star that a challenge has been issued. They won’t take into account the lack of detail. All those screaming adjectives will have blotted that out, as our Mr Patterson intended. And then, sir, there’s another factor. Tomorrow morning the whole of the national press will be repeating the story. Which will have been on TV, and certainly on the Birchester radios, all evening.’

  ‘But can’t we issue a notice of some sort … A request to editors? They’ve co-operated in that way in the past.’

  ‘Well, yes, sir. But that’s only been in things like kidnapping cases where it was important not to let the kidnappers know the police had been informed.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so. So what you’re saying, Miss Martens, is what’s done is done. That it?’

  ‘Yes, sir I think really it is.’

  ‘So there now comes the question of how we’re going to let this situation develop.’

  ‘Or rather, how we’re going to make it develop, sir.’

  ‘Make it develop? You see some advantages in it all, then?’

  ‘Well, I do, sir. We’ve been reacting, so far, to whatever that madwoman’s seen fit to try. Really we’ve just only been taking precautions. Quite rightly, of course. I’d quit the Service if I thought anything I’d omitted to do had brought about the death of a fellow officer. But beyond searching for Grace Brown — and, with so little to go on, that was always going to be a needle-in-a-haystack business — we’ve been unable to make the running ourselves. And it’s only when you’re doing that you force the enemy into making wrong moves. Stop the Rot proved that, I think. Or was proving it.’

  ‘Yes. You certainly made your point there. And your idea is that we should adopt the same tactics here?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it is. If at tomorrow’s press conference I confirm the reports in the papers — and there’ll be plenty to confirm, I’m sure — then I can use plain words to get at that woman. I’d be almost willing to bet that’s what’ll bring her out into our sights. And if what I say then doesn’t do it, I’ll use plainer and plainer words until it does.’

  ‘Well, it’s a hard course to take, Miss Martens. Damn hard.’

  ‘Let’s say I’m a hard detective, sir.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  In Harriet’s call from Sir Michael — not ended until she had agreed that Dr Scholl should be asked urgently to return — she had forecast altogether correctly the effect of that hastily pieced together story in the Evening Star, short of hard facts though it was.

  That evening the television news programmes put out guarded versions of it, going little further than hinting at revelations to come, the BBC draining any too vivid impact in a froth of abstract words, ITN putting over the story with its implications all too plain but just out of sight, Sky TV blatant. But it was in the morning that the national press, led by the populars in full inventive cry, made what had under Tim Patterson’s by-line been only a cleverly plumped-up piece of gossip into something that readers up and down the land would take for gospel.

  The power of the press. In Harriet’s head a dose of sharp contempt mingled with a tiny jet of pleasure in a scheme well executed.

  It now remained only to underline for the busily scribbling reporters at her press conference, and to show the little red eyes of the TV cameras, that what had until now been so much guesswork was the reality. Top Cop was challenging Cop Killer.

  Nicely convenient that the first frantically raised hand at the conference should be one she recognized as coming from a popular paper with some pretensions to seriousness.

  ‘It’s the Herald, isn’t it?’

  ‘Superintendent, there have been reports that you have issued a personal challenge to the woman the police believe has killed five police officers. Are they correct?’

  ‘Yes, I can give you a straight answer to that. I am challenging Grace Brown, the woman who’s been labelled Cop Killer. I’m challenging her to meet me head to head.’

  A gratifying intake of breath distinctly audible from among the crammed media hounds. Microphones thrust even more eagerly forward, notebook pages flipped over and over as if that mere action somehow ratified what had been said.

  ‘When you say head to head what exactly is it you have in mind, Superintendent?’

  ‘Just this. If Grace Brown is intent on killing yet another police officer, let her come out and find me. I won’t be hiding away. I promise you that.’

  God knows what Sir Michael’s going to make of this. But he gave the go-ahead, and if he hasn’t had the nous to work out the implications, too bad for him. Bringing Dr Smellyfeet back is hardly going to make everything safe and comfortable.

  ‘Does that mean, Superintendent, you’ll be walking the streets of Birchester, letting her get at you?’

  And, before she had time to answer, another question shouted up.

  ‘Superintendent, am I right in thinking that if Cop Killer’s following that list in — whatsit, the Book of Ecstas— Book of Exodus — she’ll be intending to inflict a wound for wound?’

  ‘I imagine she will.’

  ‘But, Superintendent, will that be just a wound? Or will she, as she has up to now, be aiming to kill whoever she’s wounding?’

  ‘I imagine she will.’

  ‘And, Superintendent, you’ll be out on the street waiting for her to try and inflict some fatal wound on you?’

  ‘I’ve said as much, yes.’

  ‘Will you have protection, Superintendent?’

  ‘What would you feel if I’d answered that question fully and, thanks to what you’d printed, Grace Brown was able to commit a seventh murder on some other unsuspecting po
lice officer and get away with it?’

  *

  Dr Smellyfeet, looming, pinker of face than ever, was waiting for her in her office when, at last, the hounds at the conference had ceased going round and round repeating versions of questions already answered.

  ‘Harriet, what the hell have you done?’

  ‘Taken your advice perhaps, Peter?’

  ‘No.’

  The little pink patch of baldness nestling among his abundant dark curls — Harriet could see it as he leant forward and in his fury slapped her desk, double-handed — went even pinker.

  ‘No, no, I never advised you to do anything as absolutely crazy as this.’

  ‘I think you did. If not without a good ration of face-saving get-outs. You did, you know, actually say to me — it was just before I first read your Profile — that a direct challenge to Grace might bring her to the light of day. You see I’ve said might. It was the word you actually used. So you won’t have too much on your conscience.’

  ‘Very sharp. But, I seem to remember, when we had that conversation I told you Sir Michael would never agree to such a— Was stunt the word I used?’

  ‘It was. I used it myself to him when he agreed that we could do nothing other than go ahead after the Evening Star had produced their story.’

  ‘And it was you told them? Before you’d got any agreement from your Chief Constable?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right to sound surprised. I’d be surprised myself, I’d have been astonished, if that had been the way it happened.’

  Dr Scholl gave her a quick look.

  ‘Then, Harriet, how did it happen? How did that fellow Peterson, Parkinson, Patterson, get hold of even a glimmer of an idea of this sort?’

  ‘That would be telling.’

  ‘And you’re not going to tell?’