Mike popped it into an evidence bag. ‘Quite a lot of people in London. Commuters. Not just Kent. Sussex is in TVInvicta’s catchment area too. And you said this woman went national? Northerners come to London too.’ Mike dropped the fact as if it were a leaden weight.
‘And so do Brummies. And that’s our only, very tiny, lead so far.’
‘Come on, Fran, what am I supposed to be looking for? It’s a big place!’
‘What do they make in the Midlands these days? Not cars any more.’
‘Chocolate. They still make chocolate. Yes, someone working for Cadbury’s would be nice and obvious.’
‘Wouldn’t it just? Just give it your bog standard going over, Mike – bearing in mind it was the Chief himself who dropped this on to me.’
‘I thought you were retiring? Funny, you spend forty years longing to do all the things you didn’t have time to do when you were crawling up the promotion ladder and when you know you’re going to have hours and hours to do just what you want it’s dead scary and you can’t think of anything you really want to do. They’re so short of experienced forensic scientists…’
‘I thought the universities were snowed under by applicants!’
‘You missed an essential adjective, Fran. Experienced. They want me to carry on working part-time. On the face of it that sounds brilliant. But I don’t know I could do the job if I didn’t put my heart and soul into it.’ He touched the evidence bag. ‘OK, then. If I can’t get anything from this, do you want me to pass it on to Guy the Graphologist, let him see if he can find any word patterns?’
‘That’ll come expensive. Just hunt for chocolate. Yes, and anything else the Black Country makes these days,’ she joked.
He lifted a minatory finger. ‘For a start, Cadbury’s is in Birmingham, not the Black Country. For seconds, half the Black Country industrial output has disappeared. Have you looked at the figures for our manufacturing base?’
Fran couldn’t say she had, but knowing Mike they were serious. He had the sort of flesh free face that would have made him the perfect extra in a Dickens TV adaptation and had once famously said he didn’t do joy. But he brought to his job an imagination that some of his colleagues declared was unscientific – his response being that all the great scientists had made leaps of the imagination that ordinary mortals couldn’t even guess at.
He’d picked up and was reading a random page from Fran’s sheaf. ‘Quite poetic, isn’t he? Biblical even. Are any of the others?’
Biblical! But, not wanting to give him any pointers that might be quite spurious, she said flatly, ‘Not as far as I know. What she hadn’t opened I left sealed. I thought my loss might be your gain.’
‘Well, at last I’ve got you trained,’ he observed with what in anyone else might have been a smile.
Strolling back to her office – these days she consciously tried to resist the fashion of clutching a file and striding, grim-faced, as if late for an appointment with her doom – Fran popped her head into the Incident Room, its walls now papered with notices, photos, diagrams and maps. With the arrival of the new acting Chief Superintendent, Jill had been moved, not altogether tactfully, as Fran had already told Cosmo, to a goldfish bowl at the far end of the room, leaving Henson’s office to Joe Farmer. The newcomer was a youthful forty-minus and shy-looking but no doubt fearsomely competent. Another white male middle-class face, of course: she kicked herself for having been so slipshod in helping select the short list. Positive discrimination wasn’t an option, but keeping an eye open and encouraging certainly was. At the interviews Fran had really wanted a Sikh – minus a turban, it had to be said – but the majority supported Farmer, and she had to acquiesce. His CV glowed in the dark; she just hoped his spiral up through the ranks hadn’t been at the expense of getting proper experience.
She flapped a casual hand; with a fleeting, possibly respectful smile, he responded in kind. Jill, on the other hand, did a fair imitation of a rabbit caught in her headlights. At last she overcame her paralysis to lurch from behind her desk, bumping her thigh hard on the corner as she did so.
Fran winced for her. The two women laughed, and Fran settled on a singularly uncomfortable visitor’s chair, Jill retreating to her own side of the desk.
‘I want to pick your brain,’ Fran said. ‘Girls’ talk sort of thing.’ She didn’t particularly want to discuss the Dilly Pound case with anyone, but hoped it would get Jill to open up a little. ‘The Chief’s got a pet stalking case.’
‘That’s not a job for you, Fran, and so you should have told him!’
‘Funnily enough, it probably is, you know – at the moment it’s manageable enough for one person and goodness knows you’ve got enough with all these assaults to keep twice as many people busy. How are things going, by the way?’
Jill gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I took your advice. I’ve got a team of bright young things who might talk the lingo dealing with the happy-slappers, and the rest of us are doing everything we can to trace the sex offender. Whoever it is – they are! – there’s no record on the sex offenders’ register. And as you know, there’s no DNA match. The bugger’s now heavily into sexual assaults. I’m afraid any day now we’ll have our first rape. Quite,’ she acknowledged Fran’s grim expression. ‘He’s like the damned Scarlet Pimpernel. We seek him here, we seek him there – we seek him bloody everywhere.’
‘Still no decent description to go on?’
‘Half the girls were so traumatised they didn’t – maybe couldn’t – recall any details. The others just said he was “ordinary” – and no two e-fits match! Some said he wore specs. Others were equally convinced that he didn’t. So we’re checking couriers, taxi-drivers, train drivers: if it’s male and it moves we’re on to it.’
‘And you’re managing it all without frightening the horses. Well done. CCTV installers?’ she added, as she stood up. She could have sworn she’d suggested them before, but – no, she couldn’t swear to it. Just to thinking about it? Senior moments…
‘Shit! I knew there was something… I wrote it down and put the note somewhere. I’ll get on to it.’ As Jill looked frantically for another piece of paper, the phone rang. She took the call, but promised to phone back. As she replaced the handset she said, ‘Guv? You wanted to talk to me about Pound?’
‘So I did!’ At least wrinkling her nose in irritation hardly hurt any more. ‘She really doesn’t want to give me the name of the only suspect. He’s a family man, very respectable.’
‘Just the sort of man you’d expect to be stalking,’ Jill said cheerfully but not entirely accurately. ‘Did they have a red hot affair or something?’
‘Pretty lukewarm from what I can gather. Which is what worries me. It’s too pat. But I’d like to eliminate him from the enquiry.’
‘Not like you to use cop-talk, guv.’
‘No, indeed. I think my subconscious has just given me my answer, don’t you? Thanks for the natter, Jill. It really cleared my brain. Look, don’t beat yourself up over these cases. If you need more resources, more personnel, you know I’ll always… be your advocate,’ she finished tamely. With the advent of Joe Farmer, she’d relinquished control of the purse strings. They exchanged rueful grins of acknowledgement. ‘And my door’s always open too, remember. Any time I need to make a decision, please drop in!’
‘You don’t suppose I’m going to march up the vicarage path and demand to speak to Steve in front of his wife and kids, do you? Or stand up while he’s giving Communion and denounce him as a sinner? For goodness’ sake, Dilly, do you think I came down in the last shower?’ Fran kept her voice low: she wanted them to seem like just another couple of women drinking coffee in a popular Canterbury teashop. Aunt and niece, maybe.
Pound shook her head. She was letting her hair grow, and one strand was the perfect length for her to chew, like a troubled teenager. ‘He may not be there any more!’
‘You mean he may have another curacy? Or have been promoted?’
‘May have bee
n. Though his wife—’
‘Yes?’
‘She worked full-time, as I recall.’ She blushed so deeply it must have hurt. ‘It would have been difficult for them to move unless she could get another job. A senior teacher. Earned about five times what he was getting. And, of course, she was never going to be there to help about the parish.’
Well no, not with a couple of kids to worry about on top of the hours teachers were supposed to work these days.
‘Would you remember their address? And the name of his church? Holy Trinity? Let me write it down. Right, now we’re getting somewhere.’
The younger woman’s jaw jutted. ‘I really do not want some plod kicking down his front door. I want to withdraw the charges.’
‘You haven’t made any yet. As for a plod, the investigator will be a woman in her fifties, one you trusted enough to ask to help you in the first place.’
Dilly looked up, eyes round. ‘You’ll do it yourself?’
‘Something as delicate as this we don’t send in police cadets with no GCSEs, Dilly. One thing you can do, however: tell me where I would find information on Church of England clergy. I want to make sure he’s still in the Black Country before I try my luck with the M25.’
‘Something called Crockford’s Directory. There should be one in the public library.’
Fran took a deep breath, regarding her steadily. ‘You’re telling me you’ve never been tempted to look him up? To see what he’s doing?’
Dilly’s voice was firm. ‘Tempted, Chief Superintendent? I’ve been tempted every moment of every day. But I’ve never, ever fallen.’
The interview with Dilly completed rather more quickly than Fran had dared to hope, she had time to kill before her next meeting with Joe Farmer. The obvious port of call was the city library. Externally it was a magnificent Victorian Gothic affair; inside it was cramped and dingy. A shiny new one in the Whitefriars development should have replaced it. However, the Powers-that-Be had claimed they couldn’t afford to improve the lot of readers, so the historical premises remained. Whether Fran was pleased or otherwise she couldn’t say. If Birmingham’s Central Library was an example of what librarians thought their clients preferred, she was glad to stay old and cosy. At least she knew where everything was, even if there wasn’t much of it. The volume of Crockford’s was only a couple of years old. By that time the Reverend Stephen Hardy was no longer a curate. He was now priest in charge at St Philip’s, Moat Road, Warley. So he was still in the Black Country. And his address? Another road in Warley, she’d no idea how far from the church. A quick call to one of her Midlands colleagues would confirm he hadn’t moved to a new parish recently.
She dawdled back to the Castle Street car park past another batch of estate agents’ windows and collected more handfuls of particulars and thus over-ran the time on her ticket. But she was there before the parking attendant, and hightailed it out before she could be humbled.
Should she take to the lanes again? Why not? She could keep an eye peeled for estate agents’ signs. She might fancy a home in Pluckley, especially as there was a station on the outskirts, but Smarden never. The very name suggested a down-turned mouth. Boughton Malherbe, now – would that give humans hay fever or cows bellyache? Further south was Cuckold’s Corner: it would take a man with a fine sense of humour to want to put that on application forms or letter headings. Boldshaves, on the other hand – would Mark like that? What about Hunger Hatch? One day maybe she’d take a course in local history and find the origin of some of these place names.
Meanwhile, she drove gently on, keeping parallel, she hoped, with the motorway. What would it be like to live in that gatehouse over there, guardian to what seemed to be some great estate? To her astonishment, a discreet for sale sign jostled the garden gate. She was certain she’d never seen the place during her Internet searches.
She pulled over – plenty of hard-standing opposite the front gate, but none within.
In the thin February sun, the place seemed perfection itself, pretty curtains flapping through the open diamond paned windows in the roof. Exactly what she and Mark had at the top of their wish list: an old cottage, on a road but not a main one, with no close neighbours to disturb them.
In a rosy mist of dreams, she stared on, repainting, replacing – who on earth had planted Leylandii quite so close? – and, wearing an apron because she’d been cooking Mark scones for his tea, standing on the front door step to welcome him home.
Someone was trying to get into the car!
Adrenaline a-pump, she nearly cried out. But the face at the driver’s door was canine, if no more attractive for that. At last someone pulled the baying brute away.
She switched the ignition back on and opened the window.
‘Are you interested in the house?’ a woman at the far end of the dog’s lead shouted. She wore a folded headscarf, just like the queen. ‘Sit, Toby. Sit!’
‘Yes, I suppose I might be.’
‘Want to look round?’
‘But I don’t have an appointment.’
‘That doesn’t matter. You can come in now if you want.’ There was such desperation in the woman’s voice and face that Fran almost agreed.
Eyeing the dog, she got out slowly. She was greeted by a roar. Not the dog, or any other resentful pet. Traffic. The M20.
She was torn. They couldn’t possibly live with such a constant din. Clutching at straws, she turned to the woman. ‘Is there always so much noise?’
‘What noise?’
‘The motorway?’
‘Never notice it,’ came the prompt reply. And maybe it was even truthful.
Perhaps she should just take the offered tour? But that would be to raise the woman’s hopes in vain. And now she thought about it, the place was more likely to be poky than bijou, the ceilings too low for two tall people. If only her phone would ring.
At last she spoke the honest truth. ‘I really don’t have time today. But I’ll phone your agent for particulars. Thanks.’
She slipped back into the car. But, as she noticed when she’d driven a further mile, the dog had had its silent and not very subtle revenge. She slung the mat and offending shoe into the boot and drove back in bare feet.
CHAPTER NINE
My love is as strong as death, but my jealousy is burning me, a great fire I couldn’t put out, even if I wanted to.
‘So while you two enjoy your jolly, I intend to do Selfridges and any other palaces of conspicuous consumption I can find,’ Fran blithely informed the two heavily braided men, as she nosed the unmarked police car through the centre of Birmingham. Mark and the Chief Constable were joining other senior officers from across the country in a discussion of matters of national security, a response to the Home Secretary’s latest diktat. Officially, of course, she was in the Midlands to interview the Reverend Stephen Hardy, whom she had phoned to arrange a meeting. Since she needed transport to reach him, car-sharing had been the obvious option.
Her declaration had a resonance only Mark picked up. The last time Fran had been to Birmingham on police business, she’d immediately been summoned down to Devon to her dying father’s bedside.
She was still speaking. ‘…the moment I’ve checked out that theological college.’ She pulled up outside Lloyd House, the administrative HQ of the West Midlands Police. Grabbing his briefcase, Mark came round to her window, his face furrowed with anxiety. ‘Are you sure you can fight your way back into the city? God knows why they don’t have a park and ride scheme or two.’
There were days when she wanted to point out that she had even more police driving qualifications than he did, but they both had enough stress in their lives not to want to add to it by petty arguments, and, truth be told, she enjoyed being worried about.
‘I shall be all right. I can always ask a policeman. One of which is looking at me very hard even as we speak. Let’s shock him to the core.’ She leaned out and, pulling Mark closer, kissed him on the lips, enjoying the poor constable’s patent emb
arrassment, and the Chief’s extreme amusement. He had done at least his share in bringing the two together, so she blew him a twiddle-finger kiss too. Or was that going too far? Whatever his reaction, she was too busy dealing with traffic and getting into the right lane to notice.
She’d worked out a plan of campaign. Should anyone ask, she wanted to discuss with Steve Hardy the situation of one of his ex-parishioners. With luck the question wouldn’t arise. She always preferred the straight truth to even a half lie.
The main Hagley Road, now an arterial link between Birmingham and the M5, must have been full of gracious houses once, she mused. Now it was a mixture of mega-pubs and budget hotels, plus offices of various ages.
Bearwood, in what must be a fringe of the Black Country, was on a smaller scale altogether. It took her several changes of lights to cross what was presumably the main street. Then she found herself driving past lots of Thirties houses; a promising-looking park; some pubs which might have been grand drinking-palaces when they were built in the Twenties or Thirties, but would have been dwarfed by the ones she’d passed earlier. What clientele would they attract? Kids getting bladdered on alcopops or, complete with their cloth-caps and whippets, thin-faced men favouring mild?
What she hadn’t bargained for was the hills. Not just the one she was halfway down, but those on the horizon. It must have been a fearsome place when poor old Queen Vic demanded the curtains on her train be drawn against the ugliness of the industrial landscape.
Moat Road at last. It was full of houses of all eras crammed together, none very big, some pretty small. What would they cost? Had London prices oozed this far north?
Ah. There on her right were school playing fields. And a school that might have had the words Thirties Grammar blazoned across it, though the name on its notice board was more prosaic. So that poor specimen next door must be the church. St Philip’s. Brick-built, it sat round-shouldered with hardly even a token tower to give it dignity. It couldn’t have been much fun being a pre-war Anglican church growing up alongside the historic non-conformist chapels for which she dimly recalled the area was famous.
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