MURDER IN THE VILLAGE a gripping crime mystery full of twists

by Faith Martin

  ‘I see from my research that the superintendent never married,’ Hillary mused, again keeping her voice bland.

  Marilyn grinned. ‘A bachelor through and through. Well, who can blame him?’ Marilyn shrugged. ‘He’s good-looking and not too badly off, so he has no problem getting the ladies, but his job simply eats him alive. No time for a wife, that’s the impression I got. And after a brief matrimonial disaster in my early twenties, I never wanted to tie the knot again either.’ The PR executive shrugged again. ‘So, we both knew it wasn’t going to lead to orange blossom and vows.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Did he ever talk about his work with you? I mean, obviously not specific details. Or was he the kind of man who kept it all bottled up?’

  Marilyn was obviously flattered at being the recipient of an interview herself, rather than simply arranging them on behalf of clients, and again Hillary took copious notes as she talked. She remembered best the cases he’d been working on while still with her, naturally, and that had included the case of a man who’d battered his stepdaughter to death. From what Marilyn described, Hillary could tell that, even back then, Jerome Raleigh had been a dedicated investigator, the kind who never let go once he’d got his teeth into something. So, this thing he had about nailing Fletcher wasn’t particularly uncharacteristic. Perhaps he was just the type who took chances when he thought the pay-off was big enough to warrant it? Maybe she was just wasting her time.

  ‘He seemed to take it really personally,’ Marilyn carried on, as if in confirmation of her hypothesis, taking a last puff on her second cigarette and putting it out. ‘It was as if he really despised criminals. You know, it wasn’t just his job. He told me once, as a young copper on the beat, he was called to a house where an old lady had been beaten up for her pension money. He said it made him so angry he could feel himself burning up. I suppose something like that sticks with you.’

  Hillary nodded emphatically. Oh yes, things like that stuck with you all right. She herself could vividly remember her first battered wife case, and the overpowering sense of revulsion it had awoken in her. However, all she said mildly was, ‘His bosses must have liked that attitude.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ Marilyn said with a grin. ‘He was still a DI when I knew him. He was trying for promotion to DCI when we split up. I wasn’t surprised to hear a few years later that he’d got it.’

  ‘He did well at the Met,’ Hillary agreed, not making it a question. ‘I can’t seem to find the reason why he left to join Thames Valley. It puzzles me a bit.’

  Marilyn nodded seriously. ‘Sorry, can’t help you there,’ she said with a frown. ‘You know, it surprises me too, now that I think about it. Jerome was such a big city animal. He loved London — knew it inside and out.’

  Hillary sighed. Damn! ‘So you’ve no idea why he might have left? Nothing in your previous relationship with him gives you any insights?’ She knew an appeal to a woman’s intuition when it came to discussing men would never go unchallenged.

  ‘It can only be to do with his ambition,’ Marilyn said at last, after a long, thoughtful pause. ‘He was determined to be chief constable one day. Literally, I mean. We used to talk about it. I sometimes laughed, but he never did. If he left the Met, he must have got something really serious in return for it. He was the sort who could make sacrifices too, if he had to. You know, personal sacrifices. He had a lot of self-discipline.’ A certain amount of bitterness crept into her words just then, and as if sensing it, she shook her head and smiled. But her self-defences were being raised.

  Hillary, detecting the change in mood, swiftly changed tack and kept it innocuous. When she’d finished, about ten minutes later, she thought she probably knew a bit more about what made her boss tick than she had before, but still, she had nothing solid to go on. Nothing specific to the cock-up that surrounded the Fletcher bust.

  It wasn’t until Hillary was putting on her coat in preparation for leaving that she was given a final small nugget. ‘I’d be glad if you could let me know if you sell the piece,’ Marilyn said, reaching out to shake her hand goodbye. ‘Not for myself, naturally, but I’m sure Jerome’s mother would like a copy for her scrapbook. I still see her occasionally. Not that we were close or anything.’

  Hillary blinked. Mother. She hadn’t realised Mrs Raleigh was still alive. She must be in her late seventies, early eighties, at least. ‘Oh. She lives locally then?’ she asked casually, and without a thought, Marilyn waved a hand vaguely at the window.

  ‘The other side of Chepstow Gardens. Linacre Road, I think it is.’

  Hillary thanked her and left.

  * * *

  Linacre Road was depressingly long and lined with smart-looking but small terraced properties on either side. Paintwork gleamed, and black railings were the flavour of the moment, and someone had started a trend for planting terracotta pots with miniature daffodils. Early-flowering cherry trees, planted at intervals, were already displaying their first pink buds. It looked very prosperous and demure, and had one of those streets-that-time-forgot feelings about it that you sometimes stumbled upon in the capital.

  Hillary stood at one end of the road with a vague sense of frustration. There was no way she could talk to Jerome Raleigh’s mother, of course, not even in her current disguise as freelance journalist. What proud mother could resist the urge to phone her son and tell him all about the fame and interest he had garnered with his latest exploits? True, Raleigh might not think anything of it. No doubt, back at HQ he was having to fend off reporters all the time. Still, he might find someone digging around and asking questions back in London and pestering his mother a bit much. And if Mrs Raleigh should describe the so-called journo . . .

  No, Hillary thought with a shiver. She didn’t want her super knowing she was investigating him. He could make her life a misery. Just as she was about to turn around and try to seek out another of Raleigh’s past loves, she noticed an old woman get off a bus, which had stopped at the head of the road just behind her. She started to come towards Hillary, her shoulders stooped forward from the weight of the heavy shopping bags in each hand, white head bowed.

  Hillary quickly walked forward to meet her and smiled. ‘Hello, can I give you a hand with one of those?’ The old woman’s head shot up, instantly alert, and Hillary gave a big inner sigh. Sign of the times, she thought cynically, but she always felt defeated whenever something like this happened. She smiled again, and took a step back. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.’

  The old woman, relieved to see not a bag lady, or a member of a teenage gang, but a well-dressed woman in her forties, gave a tremulous smile. ‘Sorry, dear, but you hear of such awful things nowadays,’ she apologized.

  ‘I know,’ Hillary said flatly, and nodded to the bigger bag. ‘I promise not to run off with your shopping. At least let me take it as far as the end of the road for you.’

  The old woman nodded, and handed it over, still a shade reluctantly, Hillary thought. It weighed a fair bit, and Hillary felt her hip twinge as she took it in her left hand — the same side she’d been shot — and quickly transferred it to the right.

  Together they started to walk down the pavement. ‘I think I’m lost,’ Hillary said, as an opening gambit. ‘I was trying to find a Mrs Raleigh. Her son’s a policeman. Quite famous just now,’ she said. ‘I was hoping to do a piece on him.’

  ‘You mean Sylvia? I know Sylvia Raleigh,’ the old woman said at once. ‘She’s always going on about that son of hers too. Well, he’s an only child. Me, I had four. But I still think the world revolves around each and every one of them too, so I’m no better! I’m Geraldine Brewer, by the way.’

  Hillary quickly gave her false name in return and then looked worried. ‘I’m not really sure if I should bother her at the moment,’ she confessed. I’m trying to do a piece on Superintendent Raleigh’s latest arrest in Oxford. Maybe you’ve heard about it?’

  ‘Not seen Sylvia for a few days, dear,’ Geraldine Brewer said, and gave a short laugh. ‘And
I don’t read the papers nowadays. Too depressing. But I dare say I’ll hear about it from her soon enough, when I meet up with her in the supermarket or on the bus.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to bother her unnecessarily. There’s been just a little bit of trouble about it,’ Hillary said, deliberately lowering her voice. Taking somebody into your confidence was the surest way, she’d found, of learning their own secrets. ‘And I’m only a freelancer. I don’t believe in bullying people for interviews and such,’ she added. ‘Some of my colleagues in the press can be very unfair, I think,’ she added, just to reassure the old woman as to her own, more gentle bona fides.

  She felt her hopes rise as the old woman’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Bit of trouble, huh?’ Mrs Brewer repeated avidly.

  ‘Oh, nothing really bad,’ Hillary hastened to add. Although it was human nature to be interested in other people’s woes, she didn’t want to alarm Mrs Brewer. Just get her talking. ‘I wonder — did you know Jerome Raleigh at all?’

  ‘Oh yes! Well, sort of. I met him a couple of times, when he visited his mother. Look, this is me here,’ Geraldine Brewer said, indicating a house with a dark blue door and the ubiquitous terracotta tub full of daffodils. ‘Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’

  The policewoman in Hillary immediately wanted to lecture her about the dangers of inviting strangers into her house. Good grief, this garrulous and friendly old lady would have been a conman’s dream. Instead, she smiled brightly. ‘I’d love to. And if you can give me some good background stuff, then perhaps I won’t have to bother Mrs Raleigh at all.’

  * * *

  ‘So, I suppose you can see why Sylvia is so proud of him,’ Mrs Brewer said, ten minutes later. They were sitting in her tidy, sunshine-yellow living room, sipping tea and nibbling homemade fruit cake. Geraldine had just got through telling Hillary all about Sylvia, who had long since retired from dentistry, and now lived a quiet life of widowhood on an adequate pension, punctuated by visits to the local church. Which, according to Geraldine Brewer, she kept going almost single-handed. ‘But you can only do so many flower arrangements, and organize so many jumble sales, can’t you? That’s why she always makes a fuss when her boy comes to stay,’ she explained.

  Hillary nodded. ‘And what do you think of him, Geraldine?’ Hillary asked. ‘When you’re trying to write a piece about someone it’s so hard if you can’t get a clear idea of what they’re like. Talking to someone who knows them, and can give an unbiased opinion, is such a help.’

  ‘Oh, I can imagine. I couldn’t do it. Well, let’s see. He’s good-looking, of course — never has trouble with the ladies, I can tell you. Sylvia’s been quite driven to despair. She so wanted to be the mother of the groom, you see.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘She must be disappointed not to have grandchildren,’ she said vaguely. ‘You don’t think, then, that all those women might be . . . well, camouflage, so to speak?’

  ‘Oh no!’ Geraldine said at once. ‘Nothing like that. And of course, there was Elizabeth, so Sylvia didn’t miss out on grandchildren. No, he was just too fly to settle down, I reckon,’ Geraldine said with a sniff. ‘Mind you, he wasn’t the sort to shirk his responsibilities, I don’t think that was it. I know for a fact that he paid out regular for the little tot.’

  Hillary felt a jolt go through her. ‘Sorry, what was that about grandchildren? Who’s Elizabeth?’

  ‘Elizabeth. Oh, sorry, am I not making myself clear? Elizabeth is Sylvia’s granddaughter — Jerome’s daughter by one of his women. She was always over here as a little girl, but I haven’t seen her for ages now. Well, the mother moved away when she was only twelve or so, so I suppose that’s only to be expected. She must be quite grown up by now, but I don’t think she’s married or had kids of her own yet. If she’d become a great-grandmother, Sylvia would have said.’

  Hillary took a deep breath. ‘I see. I’m surprised they didn’t marry. Jerome and . . . what was her name? The mother’s, I mean?’

  ‘Ah, now you’ve asked me,’ Geraldine said, putting down her teacup and frowning. ‘Something beginning with A, I think. My word, it must be over ten years ago now since I saw her.’ Her old fingers tapped the edge of her chair arm, and Hillary felt herself tense, but even before the old woman started to shake her head, she sensed she’d just run out of luck. ‘No, it’s no good, I can’t think what it was,’ Geraldine sighed. ‘Audrey, maybe? No. Too old-fashioned. It was more modern than that, I think. Allison . . . No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Alice?’ Hillary proffered, trying not to sound impatient.

  ‘No, that was my mother’s name.’ Geraldine smiled. ‘I would have remembered if that had been it. Oh bother, it’s such a nuisance to get old. Your memory’s one of the first things to go, you know. I expect it’ll come to me in the middle of the night or something.’ Geraldine sighed. ‘That’s usually the way. I’ll be sleeping soundly, then I’ll wake up, and think, hah, that’s her name. Subconscious working and all that.’

  Hillary nodded, biting her lip. She wanted to leave her number with the old woman and ask her to call if she ever remembered it, but of course she couldn’t. She sometimes had to leave her mobile turned off for hours at a time, and even someone as trusting as Geraldine Brewer would wonder why ‘Ms Welles,’ freelance journalist, would have voicemail for someone called DI Greene.

  ‘You know, I have to come back to town in a few days,’ Hillary lied. ‘Perhaps I can call on you again?’

  ‘Love it, my dear — I don’t get many visitors nowadays. I’m in most days.’

  Hillary nodded and quickly turned the talk back to Jerome Raleigh. It turned out Jerome had been only a young man on the beat when he’d fathered his illegitimate daughter. Why they hadn’t married, Geraldine wasn’t sure, but she thought it was the mother who’d vetoed the idea. ‘Young girls nowadays,’ Geraldine said, sighing. ‘Like as not, they’re the ones that don’t want to be tied down. It was different in my day, of course.’

  Apparently, though, there had been no hard feelings, for the baby and her mother had been regular visitors at Sylvia Raleigh’s home for many years, with Jerome Raleigh paying maintenance without a fuss.

  ‘I remember, Elizabeth used to have these long fair pigtails,’ Geraldine mused. ‘She must have been — oh, ten, eleven then. Very smart at school she was too, I seem to recall. Sylvia showed me some of her reports once. Pleased as punch she was. Sure she was going to go on to university. Well, with Sylvia being a professional herself and all, she’d want her only granddaughter to do well, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘But you say they haven’t been around lately?’

  ‘No. I think Sylvia told me that they were moving up north. The mother had got a promotion in her job or something, but it meant they had to leave London. Oh, I wish I could remember her name.’

  ‘Presumably the little girl took her mother’s maiden name?’ Hillary prompted.

  ‘Quite right,’ Geraldine said. ‘Sylvia was a little put out by it — wanted the Raleigh name to be perpetuated, I expect. But it’s no good. I can’t remember the surname either. Not Smith or Jones exactly, but nothing really uncommon either. Nothing about it that stood out.’

  Hillary spent nearly an hour in the little house, and by the time she’d left, she had a notebook full of interesting data. And maybe the first inkling of why Jerome Raleigh had left the Met? Could he have moved to be closer to his family — albeit his unofficial one?

  Hillary was pretty sure that keeping his daughter under very tight wraps had been a deliberate ploy on Raleigh’s part, and that was understandable, for many reasons. It wouldn’t have done his promotion chances any great boost for his bosses to know that he’d fathered an illegitimate daughter while still on the beat for one thing, and privacy could become a habit. Then, too, he must have felt safer knowing that villains in particular had no idea that he had a child. Sometimes having dependants could be used against a high-ranking cop, and why take the risk if you didn’t have to? N
o, she could understand why Raleigh would want to keep his daughter a secret.

  But according to Geraldine, his ex-girlfriend and daughter had left the capital some years ago. So why would that make him leave London now? Could one of them be sick, perhaps?

  Hillary took the train back to Oxford, wondering if she was really any further forward, or if she was just kidding herself. Besides, what any of this had to do with Fletcher or why Raleigh had mucked up the raid so badly, she couldn’t begin to say.

  She might have been a lot more worried if she knew what Superintendent Jerome Raleigh was doing right at that moment.

  * * *

  Raleigh slowly lowered the telephone and leaned back in his chair. He jumped as a knock sounded on his door, and quickly wiped the scowl off his face.

  ‘Come in.’

  His secretary entered with a folder in her hand. ‘You wanted a copy of this the moment it came in, sir.’

  Jerome nodded and took it from her, feeling his heart pick up a beat as he saw what it was. The final pathologist findings on the Luke Fletcher autopsy.

  ‘Thank you, Sandra.’

  His secretary nodded and left, and Jerome quickly scanned it. It was all as he had known it would be. The bullet that had killed Luke Fletcher did not match the bullet that had been taken out of Hillary Greene. So by now the brass would know that their current working hypothesis — namely, that the dead man, Brian Conroy, had shot Fletcher then tried to escape, shooting Hillary Greene in the process — was wrong. Had to be. Unless he had two guns. And Jerome didn’t think that he could make that fly. So now they’d have to come up with another working theory. And when forensics finally put in their own report, and the brass learned that the gun that shot Fletcher hadn’t been recovered at the farm at all . . . what would they think then? Jerome sighed heavily and his eyes fell to the phone. First that phone call from Marilyn, now this. Things were definitely coming unravelled.