Gary, seeing someone noseying around outside, suddenly remembered a more important job to do and decided to abandon the cuttings. ‘You finish these. I’d better go find some stuff to get that shed winder fixed afore old Arrer comes round. Been on about it for days, she has.’
‘And don’t forget to clear the glass up outside, neither. If you hadn’t put all them heavy pots on that shelf it wouldn’t have collapsed and they wouldn’t have gone through the window in the first place. Miss Arrow,’ Becky enunciated pointedly, ‘could’ve given you the sack over that.’
‘Who cares? I’m sick of this lark, any road. I could pull in a lot more down Tesco’s, like, shelf-stacking.’
‘But you won’t, will you?’ Becky said shrewdly. “Cos you like it here — even though she’s gone.’
‘Who said that?’ Gary demanded, his ears reddening for more reasons than one.
‘I said it. And you can’t dodge the police for ever, you know. They have to see everybody, stands to reason. Best get it over and done with — if you haven’t done anything wrong, you’ve nothing to worry about, have you?’
What did she know about it? She’d never even seen the inside of the Felsborough nick, much less done community service for twocking a car, when he’d been like, tanked up a bit. Never forgotten that, they hadn’t, the fuzz. Nor the time he’d nicked a cheapo video from Curry’s and later tried to sell it at the car-boot sale in Dawson’s field. Not even the ruckuses of a Saturday night after a few bevvies. They were ticking names off a list now and sooner or later, he’d be the only one left and he’d have to answer their questions.
‘What am I going to do, Beck?’ he moaned. He wasn’t above asking her advice, in an emergency. She was that sort who always knew the answers. She’d had her life planned out from when she was in Year Nine, and ever since he’d come to work here, she’d been on at him to do likewise. It had been a mistake to let her see he didn’t mind a bit of gardening. Well, it was all right, seeing things grow, like. But she thought he ought to go and get himself some GCSEs, then an A or two, and then go to college. What a laugh! Gaz going to college! His mates would piss themselves laughing if he did — not that he’d ever have a hope of getting in, never mind what old Beck said.
‘What are you feeling so sorry for yourself for?’ she asked suddenly. ‘You look like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. All you have to do is tell the police she asked you to deliver that note.’
Gary looked hunted. Becky followed his gaze and saw that the woman detective who’d been asking for Gary yesterday and had been looking purposefully around outside for the last ten minutes, had now come into the greenhouse and, dodging the hosepipes snaking along the floor, was making her way down the centre aisle between the staging to where they were working at the very end. He slipped out of the back door but he knew he’d left it too late.
Kate had left the uncommunicative Gary Brooker behind without regret. He’d obviously been ill at ease, but that wasn’t surprising. The likes of Gary and his mates were rarely at ease with the police, usually having something they wanted to hide. No doubt what it was would be revealed in the fullness of time: meanwhile, she had managed to get out of him the admission that he had indeed delivered the letter to The Watersplash, and had been asked to do so by Bibi herself. He’d blushed painfully at the admission — Gary Brooker, blushing? Thoughtfully, she drove on until she came to the house in the woods.
Fran looked up as the car stopped by the front door and out of it came Sergeant Colville without her suit jacket, wearing a white sleeveless blouse tucked into her grey skirt as a concession to the heat. ‘Hot, isn’t it?’ she greeted Fran.
‘It’s cooler inside. Come in and I’ll get you a drink. Cold, or would you prefer coffee?’ Her own coffee had cooled and grown a disgusting grey skin. She’d been sitting there for over an hour and a half without noticing the time passing. ‘Sorry I’m not dressed yet.’ Nor showered, and her hair not even combed. Dark circles round her eyes, too, no doubt. Enough to frighten the horses. ‘I’m afraid I had a bad night. I slept late.’
‘Not surprising, after yesterday. It was a rotten day for everybody. Yes, a cold drink would be lovely, thank you.’ Looking disgustingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the sergeant followed Fran into the kitchen and gazed round at the granite working surfaces and the stainless steel equipment, noticing everything with miss-nothing, detective’s eyes as Fran took ginger beer from the fridge, held it up and, receiving a nod, poured it into a tall glass. ‘Nice kitchen. Wouldn’t I just love one like it?’ She laughed. ‘In your dreams, Kate! Cheers.’ She perched on a chair and raised the glass. ‘I have some news for you, good and bad.’
Fran, sitting opposite with her elbows on the table, felt a roll of fear. ‘Jasie?’
‘Uh-huh. The good news first. We think there’s every chance he may be alive and with his father.’ And before the relief had time to flick in, she added, ‘The bad news is that we don’t know where his father is, and we can’t be sure what his intentions are.’
Fran had known, of course, that the person who had written those letters must have been Jasie’s father, though nowhere in them had this been openly stated. Now was the time to hand them over, yet somehow … well, they were Mark’s property, she reasoned, not hers to do with as she saw fit, or at any rate had been left in his keeping. Giving them to the police now, without telling him — well, there was the question of loyalty. On the other hand, telling him how she had found them might conceivably be worse. And yet, when she remembered the threats in them … No, she told herself, she’d no right to withhold them from the police, even though they seemed to have worked it out, anyway. And yet —
The telephone rang again. ‘Fran, it’s me. We were cut off, I’m sorry.’
‘Where are you ringing from, Mark? Tell me where I can ring you back, I can’t talk just now, I’ve got someone from the police with me.’
She immediately wished she hadn’t mentioned that when he said sharply, ‘What are they doing there? OK, don’t answer that, they’ll be all ears … I wish you weren’t having all this hassle.’
‘Me too, but I can’t do anything about it — and it’s OK, really. I can cope.’
He hesitated, but then gave her a number readily enough, which she carefully wrote down. ‘Sure you’re all right, Fran?’
‘Yes, sure. In about half an hour?’ she said hurriedly. That would put a time limit on her deliberations, force her to make a decision about those letters, and what she should do.
‘Bye till then. Love you, all the time.’
‘Love you, too, Mark.’
Sergeant Colville didn’t trouble to hide the fact that she’d been listening and understood the side of the conversation she’d heard. ‘Your husband?’ she asked as Fran turned from the telephone.
‘Yes. He’s in Brussels.’
‘For long?’
‘I don’t think he’ll be home just yet. He’s an architect and he has this commission there, you see, it’s important —’
‘Well, I don’t see anything would be gained by interfering with his work,’ she said reasonably. ‘Where were we?’
‘Jasie?’
‘Right, yes — well, we have to hope his father has no intention of harming him, and simply wants to gain custody. But there’s no knowing what he might do if we try to take him away, people don’t always act rationally in such situations, especially men like Graham Armstrong.’
Graham Armstrong. The name gave more substance, added another dimension to the dark shadow, the evil persona behind the spate of hatred poured out into those letters. ‘He surely can’t expect he’ll be allowed to keep Jasie, a man like that — and after murdering his mother!’
‘Hang on! We don’t have any proof yet that he did.’
‘But surely —’
‘I’ll admit it looks like that but — hear me out, Mrs Calvert — Fran, if I may?’ Fran nodded. ‘And I’m Kate. Let me put you in the picture.’
Fresh from the intervie
w with Chip, Kate had it all at her fingertips, and gave Fran the gist of it crisply, stopping just short of the point where Armstrong had set fire to Bibi’s house, watching Fran closely to see how the news was received. She’d a pretty shrewd idea, from the way Fran had reacted, that she’d been in the dark until then about Bibi’s previous life, but she still hoped that the half-hour she’d allocated to spend here might not turn out to be a complete waste of time. She was, however, beginning to have her doubts about it. Fran seemed vague and disorientated this morning, no doubt due to having slept badly, as she said she had, last night. At the same time, Kate was convinced that hidden behind that veiled, smoky-blue regard was something that she was keeping to herself.
Fran decided she needed more coffee before hearing what else Kate Colville had to say, and this time Kate agreed to join her. When it was made, Fran sipped and listened in silence to the remainder of the sorry story, as related by Chip. Her eyes widened in horror as she heard about the sick attempt by Armstrong on Bibi’s — and Jasie’s - life. There was so much in it that explained Bibi — what she was and how she’d acted. But even so it left a lot still unexplained. Why, for instance, had she refused to confide in anyone when she began to be threatened once more? Miserably, Fran felt this as a personal failure on her part — she really ought not to have taken so literally Chip’s request not to question Bibi about her life before she’d come to Membery. Surely, if she had approached it sensitively, Bibi might have felt she could help? Though in the end, perhaps she had begun to feel that she needed to unburden herself about those awful letters — yes, that was surely why she’d rung her at the office in such a state. But what had happened that day to force her to do that? If only she’d spoken sooner! The only explanation was that her fear of her ex-husband’s reprisals must have been overwhelming enough to keep her worries from everyone, even Chip, though in a way Fran thought she could understand this last. Chip wasn’t renowned for being the most sensitive of souls, and like most men, he would have taken an aggressive stance, which might only have made matters worse.
Yet she had confided in Mark.
‘So that’s it,’ Kate said, ‘that’s what we know so far.’
‘So this madman’s got Jasie? But that’s terrible!’
‘It looks possible. We can only hope he won’t do anything stupid. Everything will be done to make sure he doesn’t.’ Kate was cautious, mulling over in her careful way what they had learned, smothering her own doubts about this and other aspects of the case which she hadn’t yet felt able to come to terms with, and Fran looked anything but reassured. ‘We should know where he is pretty soon. He was released on licence, he’s under probationary supervision, which means he has to report regularly to his probation officer. And notify him of any change of address.’
‘And you believe he would do that? In the circumstances?’ Fran couldn’t hide her scepticism.
Kate drained her coffee but declined a refill. ‘Let’s cross bridges when we come to them. I’ll keep you informed as and when we hear anything. For now, I’d better be getting on, or I’ll have Dave Crouch on my tail.’
‘Rather you than me.’
A quizzical look, followed by an odd little smile. ‘He’s not all he appears on the surface. He’s a damn good detective, you know.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘Just not very good with people.’
The hard-nosed policeman with a heart of gold? Fran wasn’t going to fall for that one. Policemen were no different from anyone else. Some, just like other men in other jobs, were simply bastards.
‘How long have you been working with him?’
‘About five years.’ She smiled at Fran’s expression. ‘It’s better than the Domestic Violence Unit, where I was before.’
‘Five years? I’d be a nervous wreck in a tenth of that time.’ There were different kinds of violence, Fran thought, and being put down all the time wasn’t the least of them.
Kate didn’t pretend not to understand what she meant. ‘Don’t take any notice of his manner. It’s an essential requirement for some men in the force to react to women colleagues the way he does, they’re simply throwbacks to the old days. It’s not my problem, it’s his.’
‘Hmm.’ She had a point — perhaps it was all in the way you received it.
‘Anyway,’ Kate added cheerfully, ‘it’s all academic. I’m lumbered with the bloke, I’m afraid. Seeing as how I happen to be married to him.’
‘Oh, wow! Sorry, I’ve really put my foot in it, haven’t I?’
‘Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who looks on Dave like that, though if they had his problems … He was in the Met, see, doing a job he really liked and was good at and then — well, there was an incident, not his fault, but it was better he left. I could tell you the whole story, but I won’t bore you. Just that it’s made him a bit stroppy at times. It could have been one of those incidents with a commendation at the end of it, if it had turned out different. As it was, he got the mucky end of the stick. He doesn’t complain. Whatever else, he has guts.’
‘I’m sure he has.’ Those unfeeling, brutish men often were brave. No imagination to hamper them about what the consequences might be, Fran thought unfairly. ‘Isn’t it unusual? Husband and wife working together?’
‘Unusual, yes, but not unheard of. We’re a good team, believe it or not, that’s why we’re kept together.’
With a smile she dismissed the subject, finished her coffee and delved into a big shoulder-bag for something rectangular wrapped in polythene that she slid across the table. ‘Before I go, take a look at this.’
‘Oh, a photo of Bibi. I thought for a moment it was her book of days.’
‘You mean that one about myths and legends? Unicorns and virgins and all that?’
‘Unicorns?’ For a moment, Fran seemed fazed. She blinked rapidly. ‘No, no, I’ve never seen that. It was a sort of diary, I suppose, though not quite. She told me once she just wrote down anything she considered interesting, but she was paranoid about letting anyone see what she wrote. It was just like Bibi to give it such a name.’
Kate was alert. ‘No, we haven’t come across anything like that yet.’
‘You’ll know it when you do. It’s really lovely. Sort of old, with a red watered silk cover and gilt edges to the pages, and a fancy clasp. She said it was too nice to be called a plain old diary, a book of days suited it better, and I suppose it did, really. Oh, this is lovely — one I haven’t seen before.’
The framed photo had obviously been taken years ago — Bibi with a short, designer haircut, her soft, feathery curls blow dried and disciplined into a smooth cap that accentuated the fine modelling of her face.
‘A good likeness?’
‘Brilliant, but — she looks different, and I don’t mean just because she’s so much younger. Perhaps she just looks — happier, than I ever remember seeing her. Though that’s probably hindsight, wouldn’t you say, after what you’ve just told me?’
‘Mmm. Maybe. Are you saying she wasn’t happy, even before those letters started coming?’
Fran took a swig of her own coffee, looked down again at Bibi’s face staring up from the table and knew it wasn’t her own imagination that saw the shadow behind the transient impression of happiness. ‘I don’t think,’ she said slowly, ‘it was in her to be really happy.’
Chapter Twelve
In Chantry Street, not above a hundred yards away from where the historic old Saturday market was held in the Market Square in Felsborough, the aggressively modern brick police station sat like a complacent squatter, thumbing its nose at its ancient neighbours: the beautiful Abbey Church, a row of mellow stone cottages and the gracious buildings of the old chantry school, now the Edward the Sixth Grammar School, that had given the street its name. The nick was new, functional, and unlovely, standard design for the county, but inside it had certain definite advantages over the other buildings, especially today when it was refreshingly cool. The heating and the air-cond
itioning both worked like a dream, there was iced water available at the turn of a tap, coffee from a machine. Crouch couldn’t understand the moans of the old guard who said they missed the solid old Victorian building on the corner, before his time, spacious and sound-deadened as it was remembered to be, but where apparently you alternately froze or sweltered, depending on the outside temperature.
He took a mammoth bite out of a rare beef on soft white bread sandwich from the canteen, spread as ordered with more mustard than butter. It made his eyes water, but it went down a treat with his half-pint of bitter. He wolfed it down with all the enjoyment of a man who hadn’t eaten since a hurried breakfast at six that morning, after only a few hours’ sleep, and then went out into the corridor for coffee, brought it back and sat down to address the progress report he was compiling for Vincent.
He’d been chuffed at how much quicker the case was going down than he’d expected, how much simpler it was turning out. No blind alleys. No complications. From the moment when Armstrong’s name had first been mentioned, the reason and motivation for the murder had become clear to Crouch, and his original opinion that it was bound to be a Calvert family matter had undergone a swift reversal, his doubts about motives receded: Armstrong wanted his son; he also wanted his revenge for his incarceration in prison, ergo, he had killed his ex-wife and abducted his son. Simple. All wrapped up. The main thrust of the operation could now be concentrated on collecting supporting evidence, a task that should be made much easier now that they knew who the perpetrator was. Whether Jasie had seen his mother killed or not, it was obvious that it was his father who had done the deed, and then taken the boy.
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