by P. F. Ford
“No, I don’t think I am, Sir.” He slid a photograph across to Clinton. “Recognise her now?”
Clinton looked at the photograph. Slater could see Clinton’s eyes widen as he recognised her, but still he kept up his denial.
“What is this? Some sort of setup? I don’t care what anyone tells you. I’ve never seen this woman before. And I’ve certainly not had sex with any hooker.”
“You must have a double, then,” said Norman, who had crept up unnoticed by Clinton. “’Cos this sure looks like you having fun with her, don’t you think?”
He slid another photo across the table as he sat down next to Slater. This one clearly showed Ruby and Clinton having “fun”.
Clinton looked at the photo, horror etched across his face.
“You!” he said, looking up at the new arrival. “But I thought-”
“Yeah,” interrupted Norman, an evil grin on his face. “You thought you’d never see me again, huh?”
“Wait a minute.” Clinton turned to Slater. “I know who you are now. I thought the name was familiar. You’re another failure aren’t you? What’s Murray doing down there in Toytown? Creating a lame duck squad? By the time I’ve finished with him he’s going to be a lame duck himself.”
“That’s very good,” said Norman. “But do you really think you’re in a position to start using intimidation and threats? That’s not going to get you out of it this time.”
“I know people,” said Clinton. “One word from me and they’ll be more than happy to drum you out of the police force for trying to frame a senior officer with these trumped up charges.”
He glared at Norman and then at Slater, clearly expecting them to back down under his threats, but all he got in return were two smiling faces. Slater was enjoying Norman’s performance. He was happy to play second fiddle – he knew Norman had waited a long, long time for a chance like this.
“You’re full of shit, Clinton,” countered Norman. “Do you really think I give a toss what you do next? You’ve already ruined my life. What more could you possibly do to hurt me?”
“I’ll make sure you lose your pension,” said Clinton, not sounding quite so sure of himself now.
“Fine,” said Norman. “I’ve got no one to share it with now, thanks to you, so I really don’t care. You’re the one who’s finished. Not me, not Slater here, and not Bob Murray. We have a video.”
The news about the video was their nuclear option, and it worked. Those four little words had an amazing effect on Clinton. First, his face filled with disbelief, and then, once again, the colour drained from his face, only this time it stayed a ghostly white. He gulped, fish-like, as he tried to form the words of denial.
“You’re lying,” he finally managed to say.
Slater and Norman shook their heads. Norman produced some more photos.
“These are stills taken from it.” He smiled. “D’you still reckon we’re lying?”
“Where did you get this? How dare you video me?” Clinton sounded desperate now.
“You know damned well we didn’t make the video,” said Slater. “Ruby made it. We reckon she was going to use it to blackmail you.”
“Or perhaps she was already blackmailing you and that’s why you killed her,” added Norman.
Slater sat, watching Clinton closely. He could tell the man was wrestling with whether to tell the truth or not.
“Alright,” conceded Clinton eventually. “I did know her. But I didn’t pay her for sex, and you can’t prove I did. I certainly didn’t kill her, and I didn’t know she had videoed me. She may well have been intending to blackmail me, but I can assure you she hadn’t started. So if you think you’ve discovered a motive that makes me a suspect, you’re wrong. And anyway, how do you know she’s dead? Do you have a body? I thought she’d just disappeared.”
“So you know the findings of the investigation into her disappearance? That’s very interesting. After all, it was just a runaway, wasn’t it? That’s hardly a case for your Serious Crime Unit, is it?” asked Slater.
Clinton stared at him defiantly.
“What investigation? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Slater shrugged his shoulders.
“Whatever,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to admit that anyway.”
Then he turned to Norman.
“I think we’re done here, don’t you?”
“I reckon so,” agreed Norman. “It’ll do, for now.”
They climbed to their feet, making a point of ignoring Clinton. Then, just as they were about to leave, Slater bent his head down towards him.
“And for your information,” he said quietly, “we can prove you paid her for sex. She videoed the transaction. Very thorough, young Ruby, don’t you think?”
Clinton was staring right through him. Slater wondered what he must be thinking right now. Maybe in his mind’s eye he was seeing his career going down the toilet. He hoped so anyway.
As he straightened back up, and they began to walk away, Norman spoke.
“Did you tell him we’ve got the proof?”
“I did.”
“That should have been my line really.”
“But you had all the good lines in the first part.”
Norman seemed to consider this as they walked.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “It went alright, didn’t it?”
“It was great, Norm, just great,” Slater assured him. “So how d’you feel now?”
“Right now, I feel pretty good. Best I’ve felt in a long time.”
Slater clapped him on the back.
“That’s good, Norm. I’m happy for you.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” said Norman.
They carried on walking without looking back, all the way out through the shopping area. Slater stopped to buy two takeaway coffees, and then they made their way out to the car. Bright, warm, morning sunshine bathed the car, so Slater and Norman chose to sit on the bonnet to drink their coffee.
“What d’you think he’ll do now?” asked Slater.
“If he wants to shoot himself, I’ll happily supply the gun,” joked Norman. “In fact, I’d even pull the trigger, make sure he doesn’t miss.”
“But seriously,” insisted Slater. “What next for him?”
“If there was any decency about him, he’d resign,” said Norman. “But we both know that’s unlikely. My guess is he’ll be calling in all the favours he can to try and save his arse.”
“I guess it’s a case of ‘watch this space’, and see what happens,” agreed Slater.
They sipped in silence for few minutes, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Finally, they finished their coffees. Norman took the empty cups and ambled across to the nearest bin. Slater looked at his wristwatch. It was 9am.
“You know,” said Norman, as he climbed into the car to join the waiting Slater. “We make a pretty good team.”
“Yeah,” agreed Slater. “And we have a bit of fun, too.”
“Yeah, we do.” Norman reached for his seat belt. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
“For what?”
Norman was fumbling with his seat belt, trying to click it into place.
“Just thank you for being you, and for getting me to be more like the old me. I can’t remember the last time I was really like that, you know?” He continued fighting with his seat belt.
“Here”, said Slater finally. “For God’s sake let me do it. We can’t sit here all day while you fart around like this. If I’d known the ‘old you’ was incapable of doing up a simple seat belt I would have left you how you were.”
“I am not farting around,” said Norman indignantly. “The bloody thing’s too short.”
“I think maybe,” Slater pointed out, tugging on the seat belt, “it’s not a case of the seat belt being too short, but your waist being a little too large.”
“How dare you!” said Norman, his voice heavy with mock indignation.
There was a click and Sl
ater sat back.
“There,” he sighed. “Now can we get going? We have work to do.”
“Are you trying to pull rank on me now?” asked Norman, starting the car.
In a matter of a few days, they had forged the sort of easy friendship that meant they could keep this sort of banter going for hours.
Norman started to pull out of the parking space and then stopped and tutted, as Slater’s mobile began to trill.
“That awful ringtone,” he muttered. He really wished Slater would change it to something a bit more modern. He listened with interest to the conversation, although he could only hear Slater’s side of the discussion.
“Dave Slater.”
“Hi Steve, how are you?”
“Yeah, that’s right. You’ve read the notes?”
“Ok. What I need you to do right now, is find out all you can about Detective Chief Inspector Mark Clinton of the SCU. You got that?”
“Good lad. Meet us over at my place at 2pm.”
“Knocker Norman?” Slater looked sideways at Norman. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Yeah, he is a pain in the arse, but what can you do?”
Norman glanced at Slater and saw he was grinning.
“Yeah, totally useless. You’ll meet him later and you’ll see what I mean. Ok mate, see you later.”
Slater ended the call, still grinning broadly, but staring forward so Norman couldn’t see his face.
Now Norman was grinning too.
“I think that’s grossly unfair,” he complained.
“What?” asked Slater, trying to look innocent.
“Talking about me like that, while I’m sat here listening.”
“My Mum would have said that’s what you get for listening in on other people’s conversations,” said Slater.
Norman took three attempts before he finally crunched his way into reverse gear and manoeuvred them out of their parking spot. He responded to Slater’s jibe that “there must be a reverse gear in there somewhere” with a disdainful look.
“Well,” he said. “If I’m going to have to work with a guy who’s just been told I’m a ‘totally useless pain in the arse’, the least you could do is give me the low down on him. So, come on, in just a few words, what’s he like?”
Slater seemed to consider this for a few moments before he spoke.
“Young, good looking, honest, no, make that painfully honest, inexperienced, naive, keen to learn, keen to make a difference, brave, prepared to take responsibility for his own actions. Oh, and he’s fast, like a greyhound on steroids. Should I go on?”
“So basically he’s everything I’m not, right?”
“Yeah, more or less.” Slater nodded.
“Adding him to the team fills in all the gaps that I leave?”
“Most definitely,” agreed Slater.
“And you like him, right?”
“Yeah,” said Slater. “I do. And so will you.”
“Then he sounds perfect for the job. I look forward to meeting him,” said Norman, interested to meet the new officer on their case.
“But I should tell you,” warned Slater. “He can be even more of a stickler for following correct procedure than I am, and that can get seriously annoying at times, even for me, so I would imagine it will drive you mad.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Norman innocently. “I always follow procedure.”
“Yeah. Right,” said Slater. “You mean like Vinnie?”
“Ah. Yes. Well, you have to have exceptions to illustrate the need for rules,” explained Norman.
“Do you have a degree in bullshit?” laughed Slater. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“I have a degree in survival, my friend,” Norman assured him, with a knowing smile. “And let me assure you bullshit is one of the survivor’s greatest tools.”
Chapter Twenty
Slater knew that viewed on a map, it was a relatively simple journey from Heston services to Tinton. A short stretch of the M4, followed by a quick dash along the M25, and then slip onto the M3 down into Hampshire. That’s less than 40 miles on the motorways, plus a further 10 miles on a decent dual carriageway, so they should have been back in an hour.
But the M25 is notorious for hold-ups that often reduce traffic to a snail’s pace. This morning was no exception. In fact, Slater would have been happy if they had been crawling along at a snail’s pace. At least then they would have been moving.
Unfortunately, as they found out on the radio, just a mile ahead of them, a car travelling in the centre lane had suffered a burst tyre, causing the driver to lose control. A grain lorry, carrying 38 tons of oats, and a milk tanker, fully laden with fresh milk collected that very morning, had been following closely behind the car. Both swerved to avoid colliding with the out of control car, instead colliding with each other, causing both vehicles to overturn, and spilling their respective loads across the carriageway.
The resulting sea of congealing porridge had turned the entire anticlockwise carriageway into a sticky, slippery mess. The motorway had been closed for almost three hours, trapping all the traffic behind the accident where they had to stay until the mess was cleared.
As a result, it was close to one o’clock by the time they neared Tinton, so they decided to stop at a quiet pub outside town to grab some lunch. It was while they were enjoying their food, in the pub’s beer garden, that Slater’s phone began to ring. He would have preferred to leave the call until later, but the way things were developing, he didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
“Slater.”
“It’s Mark Clinton.”
Slater was so surprised he almost dropped the phone. Clinton was the last person he was expecting to hear from. He put his hand over the phone.
“It’s Clinton,” he hissed to Norman.
Norman’s mouth dropped open. Slater thought it wasn’t the prettiest sight he’d ever seen, especially as Norman had a mouthful of coleslaw.
“I won’t pretend I’m not surprised to hear from you, Sir,” he said down the phone. “But if you’ve just called to offer more threats, we’re not listening.”
“This isn’t easy for me, Sergeant. Don’t make it more difficult or I might change my mind.”
There was a steeliness about Clinton’s voice, but it was lacking the aggressive tone of earlier that morning.
“Fair enough,” said Slater. “If you have something to say, I’d like to hear it.”
There was a pause. He could hear Clinton breathing, almost as though he was struggling to find the right words to say.
“It’s about Ruby,” Clinton said. “I met her at a health spa I belong to. I’d been going through a rough time at home, and she took an interest in me, you know?”
Slater thought it was amazing how people always found a reason to justify their behaviour, no matter how much in the wrong they were, but he chose to keep quiet and let Clinton speak.
“I didn’t know she was a hooker, but she knew who I was. Like a fool, I told her I could protect her and keep her out of trouble and we ended up having sex. But it was just a one-night stand.”
“You mean you took advantage of your position to have sex with her,” sneered Slater.
“It wasn’t like that,” Clinton said. “You don’t understand. She came on to me. She was like a drug, and I was the addict.”
There was another silence. This time Slater did speak.
“I’m not sure I understand why you’re telling me this, sir. It’s not really helping us, or you, at the moment.”
“Just listen to me,” snapped Clinton. “I swear to you I did not kill that girl. I was worried when I found she’d gone missing. But she was a hooker, I couldn’t afford to show a lot of interest, could I? Believe me, if I could have done something without arousing a lot of curiosity I would have. And now you tell me she’s been murdered. I’ve done some things I regret, Sergeant, but I am not a killer.”
“Is that it?” said Slater, unimpres
sed by Clinton’s speech. “Only my lunch is getting cold here.”
“There was a letter,” blurted Clinton. “It was sent to me a couple of weeks before Ruby disappeared. It said that he knew about me and Ruth and that if I didn’t pay up he would make a lot of trouble for me.”
“A blackmail letter?” asked Slater.
“Yes. But it mentioned Ruth. I didn’t know anyone called Ruth.”
“Did it mention a video? Did he threaten to send the video to your wife?” asked Slater.
“There was no mention of any video, and no specific threat. I thought it was from some sort of religious nut. It used a lot of biblical phrases and kept on about some girl called Ruth. I thought she was from the Bible too. I didn’t make the connection between Ruth and Ruby because I didn’t know they were the same person. I swear, on my children’s life, this is the truth.”
“But surely you did know they were the same person. That’s why you were checking up on the investigation and making sure it concluded she was a simple runaway.”
“Why do you keep on about this investigation?” said Clinton angrily. “I don’t know anything about an investigation?”
“Missing person. Ruth Thornhill. Investigating officer DS Declan Donovan,” said Slater.
“Do you really thing a case like that would cross my desk?” asked Clinton. “Do you seriously think I have time to check out every case that’s going on in the Met? Come on, Sergeant. Get real! And if I started to ask questions, don’t you think people would want to know why? I don’t know where you’ve got that information from, but it’s all wrong. I repeat, I know nothing about any investigation into a missing person called Ruth Thornhill. And I’ve never heard of DS Declan Donovan.”
“Have you still got the letter?” asked Slater.
“I’m afraid not. I kept it for a couple of weeks, but when there was no follow up I just assumed it was a crank and I threw it away.”
“So what did he have to say?” asked Norman when Slater closed the call.
“He says he doesn’t know Declan Donovan, or an investigation into Ruth Thornhill.”
“Yeah, well. He would say that wouldn’t he?” said Norman cynically. “People like Clinton only have a passing acquaintance with the truth. What else?”
