Cold Pursuit

by Judith Cutler

  Abruptly, he stopped twiddling Dilly’s ring and dropped her hand. ‘I don’t know why she should be. I’m a deputy head, Dr Harman, not a detective.’

  She ignored the bitching and grinned. ‘You’re a senior manager of a school of some thousand pupils. Don’t tell me you haven’t acquired a few detective skills yourself!’

  He didn’t know whether to be flattered or irritated, did he? Poor Dilly, she’d have been much better off with the parson. What a pity they were unlikely ever to be reunited.

  ‘If Dilly had been one of those tarty presenters who dress as if they’re off to a disco I might have understood. But she’s always very professionally turned out.’ For the first time he smiled. ‘I’m so proud when I see her on TV.’ To Fran’s amazement, he patted Dilly’s left hand, in the sort of proprietorial gesture Mark sometimes made.

  She would have turned her hand to complete the clasp; Dilly’s lay passive.

  What could be making this couple click? A brilliant sex life sometimes united the most unlikely pairs. But she’d seen not so much as a spark of electricity between these two: it was as if Dilly had opted for another older man, in the hope that he’d replace Stephen in her affections, while he – had he simply wanted the smartly dressed trophy of a TV reporter wife?

  ‘I’m sure you’re proud of Dilly,’ Fran said, smiling at them both in turn. ‘But seeing her on TV is giving someone else less laudable emotions, emotions he’s expressing with anonymous notes.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ Daniel asked not Dilly but Fran, who responded by looking at Dilly, eyebrow raised.

  ‘A few weeks. That’s all,’ the young woman managed.

  ‘But you’ve not said anything to me – about a matter that now has a very senior policewoman working on it?’ he asked sternly, as if he’d caught her out failing to hand in coursework.

  ‘I…no, I—’

  Fran jumped in. ‘Many victims feel it’s such a trivial thing they don’t care to report it. But Dilly and I happened to be talking about another matter and it came up.’

  ‘What other matter?’

  Fran looked suitably, if spuriously, demure. ‘Apparently TVInvicta are thinking of making a programme to celebrate my retirement,’ she said smoothly. ‘The Chief Constable is considering the proposal.’

  ‘Whose idea?’

  Fran looked straight at Dilly, who admitted, when she should have boasted, ‘Mine, actually.’

  ‘You didn’t invent this programme just so you could talk to Dr Harman about your stalker, I presume?’

  The bastard. Why the hell didn’t Dilly tell him where to go? At least she didn’t hang her head. ‘Chief Superintendent Harman has such a distinguished record,’ she said, but without force, as if she’d prepared a response for just such an eventuality, ‘that the BBC have also thrown their hat into the ring. Diggory Venn wants us to get in first. Huw Venn,’ she corrected herself. ‘But you can imagine with a surname like that we’d have to give him the Hardy nickname.’ There was the tiniest brush of hesitation when she said ‘Hardy’. Was she putting a tongue against a damaged tooth to see if the filling held? Or did she still love the very sound of his name? If Fran had had a fiver for every time she’d dragged Mark’s name into conversations at the start of their relationship – even now she had to stop herself – she’d have been able to make a cracking donation to the Police Benevolent Fund.

  McDine nodded, looking at Fran quizzically. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you had such a reputation. What’s your speciality?’

  ‘Solving crime, Mr McDine. Which is why I wanted Dilly to tell you about her stalker. And why I want to talk to you about possible suspects. When would it be convenient for you to come across to my office at Police Headquarters in Maidstone?’

  Dilly’s eyes widened as if in terror. McDine’s narrowed. ‘I don’t see any reason why we can’t talk here.’

  Neither could Fran. Occasionally, however, it felt good to control a control-freak. She fished out her diary. ‘Tomorrow? After work again? About five-thirty?’ She knew what the response would be even as she goaded him.

  ‘You may finish work at five, Dr Harman, but I assure you our school day doesn’t. I’d have thought you’d know better to swallow the old cliché about teachers’ long holidays and short working hours. Let me tell you I’m usually the last to leave, rarely before seven.’

  ‘You’ll just have to make an exception for one day, won’t you? Unless it would be more convenient at seven-thirty in the morning? My meetings don’t start till eight.’

  ‘Just because you happen to be a morning woman, Fran, doesn’t mean everyone else is. What if the poor guy’s eyes don’t open till nine?’

  ‘It would be even more fun, then wouldn’t it? Yes, please, just there!’

  Mark applied a vicious thumb: the pain in her shoulder became exquisite. ‘What’s stressed you out?’ he grunted. ‘Keep talking. Let the pain happen. Don’t fight it!’

  ‘I’m stressed because I’m worried about Jill Tanner.’ She explained the problem through gritted teeth. ‘And furthermore I don’t like this Daniel McDine character.’

  ‘Why don’t you get one of our less mentionable lifer acquaintances to do a contract killing? Him or the vicar’s wife? Or even both?’

  She felt his laughter through his probing digits, but replied, as meditatively as if they were both serious. ‘Actually, if we got rid of the wife, Dilly would ditch Daniel herself… No, you mustn’t tempt me! But,’ she added gleefully, ‘since I have the power to inconvenience McDine, I shall use it.’

  He rested his hands. ‘That’s not like you.’ Then he applied them with renewed vigour.

  ‘Argh! Oh, yes it is. I might be sweetness and light with you, my loved one, but I still have it in me to be a bitter old cow. And he was very nasty to his poor little fiancée, who doesn’t have the nous to be nasty back. You can come and sit in on the interview if you like. Oh, yes, not my cosy office, but a proper interview room. It’d add credibility to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Who was it that said that first? Wow, that’s better.’

  ‘It occurs to me,’ he said slowly, finishing off the hard work with the most gentle of strokes, ‘that for once you’ve missed a trick. Wouldn’t you learn more by seeing him in his home? And such a concession might make him more forthcoming, especially if you made it at eight over there.’

  ‘Shit. You’re absolutely right. What about that other eight o’clock meeting I told him about?’

  ‘You invented it! Invent a reason to cancel it. Chief Constable suddenly called away, that sort of thing?’

  She nodded. ‘You’re right, of course. But you could still sit in if you wanted.’

  ‘I might just, you know. Hey, where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To get some supper. I thought you’d finished.’

  ‘When God gave us shoulders, he tended to give us a pair. And I reckon this one hurts just here.’

  It did.

  But he had ways of making her feel much better.

  As they showered afterwards, her thoughts strayed to Dilly and Daniel. No, try how she might, she couldn’t image them generating the passion that bound Mark and her – with or without marriage.

  ‘This is Assistant Chief Constable Mark Turner,’ Fran told Daniel, as he stepped aside to let her into his home.

  Mark flashed his ID.

  Daniel’s face tightened visibly, but he was swiftly into bluster mode, glaring at first one then the other, with meaningful glances at his watch – a very chic Dunhill – to get his own back.

  It wasn’t just the watch that was chic. His house, south of Canterbury and remarkably inconvenient for a daily commute to Ramsgate, was a barn conversion. It shared a private courtyard with other conversions such as, presumably, the former byre. Each had an expensive-looking security system, with enough lights to be seen from outer space.

  Inside, it was decorated with a minimalism that was clearly very expensive. The sitting room w
as a cube. What effect this would have on the acoustics she didn’t know, but nothing too detrimental – he had one of the more expensive Bang and Olufsen systems. His CDs must be in that built-in unit. The height certainly gobbled up heat: she was too chilly to surrender her coat.

  As he made coffee, she let her eyes roam, Mark padding after him to talk boys’ talk about the previous evening’s footie. The fact that Mark had been otherwise engaged and had simply seen highlight snippets didn’t seem to matter. Yes, he was a good cop.

  No books. How could you be a man in such a position and have no books? She got up to prowl. As she reached the hall, she heard chairs scrape. Mark had got him to sit down, as he’d promised he would, so she could check out the study he must have. A sample of his computer printer’s work would be useful. Just in case. There was a discarded sheet of paper in the bin. Pocketing it, she looked around. Floor to ceiling bookshelves, the expensive sort that were custom made to fit unusual spaces, were occupied with a collection of books ranging from what looked like textbooks from his youth, surely something best given to a charity, to thick tomes dealing with the latest educational trends. No fiction, light or otherwise, apart from a uniform edition of the classics tucked away by the window. Next to them – yes, now she was getting to the man – was a set of highly explicit erotica. Well, well, well.

  She was back in the living room by the time the men drifted back, still into some offside decision.

  ‘How long have you known Dilly?’ she asked, with a social smile as they sat down.

  ‘About a year. We met at an Alpha course in Canterbury.’

  ‘That’s—?’

  ‘A course to introduce people to Christianity and confirm practising Christians in their belief.’

  ‘And you’ve been engaged how long?’

  ‘About six months.’

  ‘Have you set the date yet?’ she asked, with a girly coyness.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You don’t live together?’

  ‘You know that.’

  ‘Any reason why?’ She looked about her, wide-eyed. ‘There’s more than enough room for two, surely.’

  ‘If there is a reason it’s none of your business, Dr Harman. Upstairs on your right,’ he added irritably to Mark, who’d made a silent enquiry for the loo.

  Why not a downstairs cloakroom? There must be one, surely, in a house as spacious and expensive as this.

  ‘Of course not. It’s just that so many people live together these days before they marry.’ Talk about stating the obvious.

  ‘That’s one of the problems with today’s society, if I may say so. And I have to pick up the pieces, Dr Harman. Two-thirds of my pupils come from single-parent homes. Maybe more. Seventy-five per cent are entitled to free school lunches, they’re so poor. I’m trying to bring down the rates of pregnancy amongst our girls, without, I may add, having the school nurse dish out morning after pills like so many Smarties.’ For the first time he sounded passionate. ‘I work twelve-hour days. At weekends I supervise games. Now do you understand why I don’t get married? And until I move to another school, I don’t see how I can.’

  ‘How does Dilly feel about this?’

  ‘She’s very understanding. At one point she suggested simply nipping into a register office, just the two of us, but I don’t see why the girl should be denied her big meringue day, do you?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Fran agreed, with more emphasis than was necessary as she suppressed fleeting, wistful thoughts of her own, non-existent, one. ‘But I was wondering – until you told me about your working week – if it might not be sensible for her to move in with you for protection from her stalker.’

  ‘I can’t see how being in an empty house is going to offer more protection than her own. Can you?’

  ‘Chummie is more likely to find her address than yours – especially if she’s been a good citizen and put herself on the electoral roll. Tell me, Daniel,’ she continued, leaning forward confidentially, ‘have you any idea who it might be? I know you wouldn’t say anything in front of Dilly lest you alarm her, but I’m sure you must have a theory. Have you met her colleagues, for instance? Might any of them be besotted? Enough to send anonymous notes?’

  He shook his head. He clearly hadn’t much time for any of them, and Fran suspected only a rigorous application of the equal opportunity laws prevented him making a scathing remark about their sexuality.

  ‘What about other friends and acquaintances? Yours, for instance. Sometimes church groups attract one or two people who are socially inadequate. Would there have been anyone on this Alpha course who might have developed a crush on her?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘No, don’t dismiss this out of hand. Give it some active thought. And some inactive! I reckon I get most of my best insights when I’m at the gym.’

  He sighed. ‘Your best bet would be the course leader, I suppose. The Vicar of St Jude’s.’

  St Jude. According to Hardy, if she remembered her A level days aright, the patron saint of lost causes. Much more appropriate a parish for poor Stephen Hardy, come to think of it. She smiled to herself, saying aloud, ‘Thanks. That’s a big help.’

  He didn’t respond. ‘I still don’t know why you made me take time off work to discuss Dilly’s problems. She’s a grown woman, for goodness’ sake. Getting het up over some quite nice notes.’

  She pounced. ‘Quite nice? You’ve seen them then?’

  ‘No. But she tells me they’re romantic. Nothing threatening.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she conceded. ‘Tell me, have you ever been aware of being followed, when you’re together?’

  ‘Followed?’

  ‘Followed.’

  ‘She did come to me a few weeks back with a story about hearing footsteps behind her, but never seeing anyone when she turned round.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘You’d have to ask her.’

  ‘Anything else? However trivial?’

  ‘She had a couple of nightmares – she’d fallen asleep on the sofa and woken to imagine men looking through the window, that sort of thing. But it turned out she thought she’d seen President Bush, who was, as I was able to demonstrate, engaged elsewhere at the time. And she promised not to be so silly.’

  And now too scared of him to contradict him.

  But he hadn’t finished yet. ‘What I still can’t understand is police involvement at any level, especially the highest.’

  She suppressed an irritated sigh. ‘What happens if a pupil starts tormenting another? If you don’t stop it quickly? You see? Only when someone escalates violence against a woman, we don’t call it bullying. We call it sexual assault. The next escalation is rape. And you don’t need a degree in criminology to work out what the stalker might do next.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I will come now, and find you, wherever you are, whichever town, whichever street, whichever house, whichever room. I will find you whom I love with all my heart and all my soul.

  ‘Of course, I haven’t seen it,’ Mark said, as he started the car, ‘not officially, but there was a Bible beside his bed. With the marker ribbon at the Song of Songs. Have you ever read it? It’s remarkably erotic stuff. It’s supposed to be about God’s relationship with the Church, isn’t it? But it looked remarkably like human love to me.’

  She scratched her head. ‘The Bible! Mike the Miserable said the language of those notes was very biblical.’

  ‘Mike Dalton! Is he still working? He’s as old as Methuselah!’

  ‘Retiring shortly – may go part-time. Anyway, he said the language reminded him of the Bible.’

  ‘Did he now? And all I was interested in was McDine’s reading matter… I wonder…’

  ‘Deskbound you might be most of the time, but there are still glimmers of the detective in you,’ she said, patting the hand on the gearleaver.

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘You don’t want to turn back and challenge him?’

  ‘And stand there like a
rookie cadet as he explained it away?’ he snorted. ‘No, thanks. In any case, I don’t see how it helps us. So much of our more poetic language is derived either from the Bible or from Shakespeare, isn’t it? Anyone might use it subconsciously.’

  She giggled. ‘I’d like it to be McDine!’

  ‘I’d never have guessed. But I don’t see how we can possibly pin anything on him with such a tenuous connection.’

  ‘Unless we can prove he bunks off school every day to go to a London pillar-box. Or gets a colleague to do it for him.’

  ‘But I can’t imagine anyone taking that sort of risk: “Here, just pop this in the post, will you? I don’t want my fiancée to know who’s sending Biblical erotica to her”.’

  She pulled a face. ‘And I can’t exactly get on to every innocent churchgoer in London, can I? Then every Christian who doesn’t go to church but studies at home? The whole Bible thing may be taking us off on quite the wrong tangent. But if Stephen Hardy was in London longer than he admitted to, then I need to talk to him again. Especially if we could place him in Ashford recently. I don’t want another trip to the Midlands, not at the moment, and I can’t see how I could get him down here. And the last thing I want is some Brummie plod stamping in there in his size twelves.’

  ‘You know they don’t all wear woad, my love. What about that nice young woman who was so useful in the stolen identity case? DS Afrizi or something?’

  ‘Farat Hafeez? Yes! You’re brilliant. I’ll get on to her as soon as we get back. Then all I need worry about is protecting Dilly while we find out. Not that I think Stephen has anything to do with it at all. His is genuine love, not some sick fantasy – I’ll stake my retirement lump sum on it.’

  ‘So what will you do? About Dilly?’