by Jo Bannister
‘Heart attack at forty-five?’ Hazel had no idea where this was going.
‘No. It’s true to say he wasn’t the man at fifty-four that he had been at forty-four, but it wasn’t his health that broke him.’
Even if she didn’t yet know how, Hazel was willing to bet there was a point to this. ‘What then?’
But instead of answering, Martha took a metaphorical step back. ‘You mind I worked at Meadowvale for twelve years? I was there before Chief Superintendent Fountain. I know he went a bit rogue towards the end’ – she was too tactful to mention what had brought about his end – ‘but he didn’t have it easy. Norbold was a bit of a one-horse town in those days. And Meadowvale was a lot like the Hole in the Wall Gang.
‘Maybe that’s not entirely fair,’ she reflected. ‘It wasn’t corruption that was the problem, it was defeatism. Everybody thought it was impossible to do a proper job here so nobody tried. The general feeling was, once you’d issued a crime reference number so the victim could claim on his insurance, there wasn’t much more to be done.’
‘That must have been … discouraging.’
‘It was, pet. I was already in me mid-thirties: Norbold was me one chance to get into CID. I’d done the detectives’ course, but nobody seemed to have an opening for a fat, opinionated Geordie woman.’ She sipped her coffee thoughtfully. ‘Can’t imagine why not. Except at Meadowvale, where they were hiring anyone who was willing to come. I arrived all fired up with enthusiasm, a DC at last, and I thought I’d landed in some kind of black comedy cop-show. I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t want to cut and run, turn me back on me last chance. But if I stayed, I knew I’d end up like the rest of them: putting in time till me pension arrived. I’ll tell you this: when Johnny Fountain started knocking the place into shape, I thought the sun shone out of his left ear-’ole.’
‘What had gone wrong?’
Martha pushed the chocolates across her desk: Hazel took a Strawberry Surprise. ‘What had gone wrong was, anyone worth a damn at Meadowvale couldn’t wait to go off somewhere else. There were promotions. There were sideways promotions. There were early retirements. Nobody stayed longer than it took them to find something better. The upshot was that there was a bloody great vacuum where the leadership at Meadowvale Police Station should have been coming from.’
Hazel wasn’t sure why Martha thought this was something she ought to hear. But she didn’t think the PI had asked her in simply to reminisce. ‘Are we still talking about Elizabeth Lim? Or Jerome Harbinger?’
‘Both, pet. Maybe I’m not telling the story very well. Thing is, you’re used to working in a well-run police station. Superintendent Maybourne does a good job. Johnny Fountain, for all his faults, mostly did a good job. When I was first there, Meadowvale was a disaster waiting to happen. And it happened seventeen years ago.’
‘Seventeen years?’ Hazel stared at her. ‘Elizabeth Lim would have been a teenager then. I don’t see how …’
‘Don’t rush me,’ said Martha heavily, ‘I’m getting old. And me memory isn’t what it was, which is why I didn’t think of this sooner. Of course, a lot of Scotch-and-water passes under the bridgework in seventeen years. But I was thinking about it last night – about Elizabeth Lim, professional woman and pillar of the community, suddenly doing a runner – and damn me but I think I know who she might be.’
Finally. ‘Who? And why would someone want to kidnap her?’
Martha went for a nougat log next. ‘I’m not a police officer any more. I haven’t been one for eight years. And I’m not telling you anything that wasn’t common knowledge in the police canteen. All the same, don’t be telling anyone I’ve been running me mouth off. I’ll not only deny it, I’ll swear blind we’ve never met.’
‘All right.’ Hazel took another chocolate. In fact, she took several before the story was told.
Jerome Harbinger lived in the pretty Warwickshire village of Spell, in a five-hundred-year-old farmhouse with room round the back for a couple of lorries. He was in the business of road transport, and from modest beginnings had built up a fleet serving customers across Britain. He had amassed significant wealth, acquired an intelligent and sophisticated wife, and with her had begun an art collection, which had grown until it was regularly lending pieces for exhibition in London, Paris and Berlin.
Possibly the only drawback to that kind of success is that it attracts attention, not only from the European art establishment. One winter’s night in 2001, while the Harbingers were attending a Christmas ball in London and their daughter was appearing in a college revue, the house was broken into. Paintings insured for fifteen million pounds were stolen, and the thieves beat up the family’s housekeeper.
The drawback with art theft is that anything worth stealing is probably too identifiable to sell on. This doesn’t matter if the original owner, or their insurers, can be persuaded to buy it back. Underwriters facing a £15 million bill will happily sanction a substantial finder’s fee. It makes for a tricky negotiation, but the fact that all the parties want the same thing is helpful.
Jerome Harbinger’s insurers agreed to pay £1.5 million for information leading to the recovery of the stolen items, and privately considered they had got away lightly.
It was a condition of the deal that the police would not be involved; and again, this suited the insurers as well as it suited the thieves. It’s not illegal to pay for the return of one’s own goods but it is frowned upon by the authorities, who liken it to rewarding criminals for a job well done. If word of the agreement had reached them, the police would have wanted to arrest the thieves, and art works worth £15 million could have been lost or damaged beyond repair.
More concerned with the prospect of being caught, the thieves specified that the exchange be carried out by Mrs Jennifer Harbinger, driven to their chosen venue – a supermarket car park on the outskirts of Norbold, with immediate access to four major thoroughfares – at three o’clock in the morning by the family’s chauffeur. Neither her husband nor anyone else was to accompany them.
‘But where does Elizabeth Lim come in?’ demanded Hazel. ‘She’d still have been at school. You’re not telling me she masterminded a major art theft?’
‘Patience,’ said Martha equably, ‘is a virtue, even – or perhaps especially – among police officers. Let me finish the story. I’ll take questions, if you still have them, then.’
Martha couldn’t say exactly what went wrong. All sorts of rumours had abounded, many of them started by people trying to demonstrate that it wasn’t their fault. People had taken decisions above their pay scale. People hadn’t taken decisions when they needed to, and Division had had to step in. The whole debacle was caused by a beat copper trying to arrest someone he’d seen in a mug-shot.
The official line was that no one, either at Meadowvale or at Division, had done anything wrong. That what happened was the regrettable consequence of an insurance company conspiring with thieves to deceive the police.
Jennifer Harbinger arrived at the rendezvous with a suitcase full of unmarked banknotes. The insurers’ negotiator assured her husband that the police knew nothing, and there would be no attempt at a grand slam – recovering the paintings, retaining the money and rounding up the thieves in one fell swoop. Harbinger didn’t want to risk either his wife or his collection. This was, after all, the eventuality for which he had paid his insurance premiums.
Martha never heard where the tip-off came from. But at the moment of maximum exposure, with Mrs Harbinger and her chauffeur holding the art – two briefcases and a sports bag contained the lot: £15 million had never looked so unimpressive – and two of the thieves holding sawn-off shotguns while a third counted the money, suddenly squad cars were squealing round every corner, policemen in bullet-proof vests were tumbling out and firearms officers were taking up strategic positions covering every exit.
When the gunfire finally stopped, four people were dead: Mrs Harbinger, her chauffeur, one of the thieves and one member of t
he Armed Response Unit. Another of the thieves and two more officers were in ambulances ignoring speed limits; and the third thief had made good his escape, unscathed so far as anyone knew, with one of the briefcases tucked under his arm.
The next sound anyone heard was the shrill clamour of people trying to pass the buck.
TEN
It was gone five o’clock before DI Gorman got back to his office, and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He’d picked up a heart attack with all the trimmings from a local burger bar, and he’d been looking forward to pigging out in privacy. But when Hazel knocked on his door, he made himself do the decent thing and broke it in half.
‘Nice bit of minced withers?’ Then, seeing the barely repressed excitement in her eyes, he said, ‘What’s happened?’
‘I know who Elizabeth Lim is.’
He stared at her. ‘How? Who?’ He considered for a moment. ‘Both. Who is she, and how do you know?’
Martha had made it clear she wasn’t to be involved. ‘I know because I’ve talked to someone who was in Norbold seventeen years ago, when this all started. I can’t tell you who, but I can vouch for their reliability. There’s no suggestion of criminality on their part, and now I know all that they know.’
Dave Gorman’s eyebrows lowered threateningly, but then he nodded. He could go along with that, for the moment.
‘Most of what I’m going to tell you came from that source. Then I cross-checked it with newspaper archives of the period, and talked – off the record – to a guy I trained with, who now helps run the Police National Computer. As far as I can make out, this is the real deal.’
‘Tell me.’
She told him everything she had learned. There was nothing in the account to identify its source, so she gave him all the details she’d been given or managed to amass, starting with Martha’s story.
When she paused for breath, Gorman interjected. ‘I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with Elizabeth Lim.’
‘The Harbingers’ insurance company employed a security firm to handle the negotiations. The name of the negotiator,’ said Hazel, ‘was Edward Cho.’
She heard the cogs of Gorman’s brain engage and begin to turn. ‘And Edward Cho had a teenage daughter?’
‘He had a teenage daughter, and a wife, and a son.’
‘So Harbinger blamed Cho for Jennifer’s death,’ said Gorman slowly. ‘Because an ARU turned up when Cho had promised to keep the police out of the picture. Did he threaten Cho? Did he threaten Cho’s family?’
Hazel nodded. ‘He did. Oh, he was entitled to be angry. Cho hadn’t enough experience to handle such a tricky negotiation. He was an accountant. I don’t know why his employers thought this was a good case for him to cut his teeth on, but they dropped it in Cho’s lap and he called the play. Maybe he did the best he could, but still Jennifer Harbinger died. Cho promised she’d be safe, but she died in a shoot-out between the thieves and the police. Harbinger was beside himself with grief and fury. Cho had given his word the police wouldn’t be informed until the exchange was completed and his wife was safe. Harbinger swore he wouldn’t rest until there was nothing left bearing the name of Cho except gravestones.’
Gorman shook his head dismissively. ‘It was the grief talking. He’d just lost his wife. It’s not uncommon for the bereaved to threaten those they blame. Most of them calm down pretty quickly. And the ones who don’t mostly don’t have the means to carry out their threats.’
‘That’s what everyone assumed,’ agreed Hazel. ‘Mr Cho expressed his deepest regrets to Mr Harbinger, and undertook to co-operate fully with the police inquiry.’
Gorman sensed a but. ‘And did he?’
‘He didn’t get the chance. He met with an unfortunate accident on an icy country road a couple of weeks later. His car went into a reservoir while he was taking the scenic route home to Coventry. Cho drowned behind the wheel.’
Gorman was watching her closely. ‘Any signs of foul play?’
‘No. No damage to the car that falling into a reservoir wouldn’t account for. Ditto Mr Cho.’
‘The scenic road from where?’
‘That is a really good question,’ nodded Hazel. ‘And I’m not sure anybody knows the answer to it, possibly because nobody tried very hard to find out. But a glance at a road-map suggests he might have been somewhere near the Harbingers’ home in Spell.’
‘What did Harbinger say?’
‘He said he knew nothing about it. He said what you said: he’d been in a state of emotional turmoil when he made the threat, never had any intention of carrying it out. His housekeeper confirmed he had been at home the evening Cho died. Both of them said Cho hadn’t been to the house.’
The DI gave an ambivalent grunt. ‘But Mrs Cho still had her doubts? She thought she and the kids would be safer if they left Coventry and changed their name to Lim?’
‘In fact, no,’ said Hazel, expressionless. ‘Mary Cho was so overcome with grief that, a month after her husband died, she drowned herself in her bath.’
That offended Gorman’s professional instincts. ‘Nobody drowns themselves in their own bath! They drown themselves in rivers; or they cut their wrists and bleed to death in the bath. You can’t just decide to inhale your bath water. Your body won’t let you.’
‘The autopsy showed she’d taken a heavy dose of sleeping tablets. In the absence of any conflicting evidence, the investigating officer took the view that it was suicide, and the coroner agreed.’
‘Regardless of the fact that Harbinger had threatened the lives of both the deceased?’ When he scowled like that, Dave Gorman looked more simian than ever. ‘It doesn’t sound like a very thorough investigation.’
Hazel said carefully, ‘I’m not sure a thorough investigation was top of anyone’s wish-list just then. A certain amount of pressure may have been brought to bear on the SIO. If neither Meadowvale nor Division wanted their part in the tragedy to be scrutinised too closely, he may have welcomed a plausible explanation that didn’t involve the man whose wife was killed murdering the man who tipped us off and his wife. Everyone here, everyone at Division and everyone at headquarters would have been happy to go along with it.’
‘Keeping the top brass happy is not the function of a senior investigating officer!’ snarled Gorman. ‘I don’t care how embarrassing it was going to be. We are a public service. If we’ve cocked up, we admit it. We work out what went wrong and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘I’m not sure anyone at Meadowvale did cock up,’ ventured Hazel. ‘Once we found out about the exchange, weren’t we bound to try to apprehend the criminals?’
‘And that’s what they should have said. Dear God, what’s wrong with us? When did it stop being enough just to do the job we’re paid for to the best of our ability? We’re so scared of having to justify good decisions in public that we’d rather make bad ones in private. Like, turning a blind eye to two murders because we don’t want to be seen persecuting a man who wouldn’t be a widower if it wasn’t for us!
‘So who was the SIO?’ he demanded. ‘What shining example of police probity do we have to thank for the mess we’re having to deal with?’
Hazel shrugged awkwardly. She’d expected Gorman to be angry about what she’d found out: she hadn’t expected him to take it so personally. ‘I don’t know. It’ll be a matter of record, if you want to risk Sir’s wrath by pulling the file. Dave, I know it sounds bad, but it’s easy to have twenty-twenty vision with hindsight. On the information available to him at that time, it was entirely possible that neither of the Chos was murdered. That Edward Cho’s death really was an accident – a steep road, an icy evening – and his distraught wife didn’t want to go on without him.’
‘Of course it was. And a proper investigation would have established the facts, one way or the other. But if there was nothing to cover up, why is someone still trying to get at Edward Cho’s daughter? Maybe it’s Jerome Harbinger, maybe it isn’t. But right now I can’t th
ink of anyone with a better motive.’
Neither could Hazel. ‘Left on their own, the Chos’ kids sold the family home and changed their names. She became Elizabeth Lim, and no one she met after starting university knew she was ever anyone else. I don’t know what name the son took. They were smart enough not to use the same one. All I know is that they both disappear from the public record immediately after their mother’s funeral.’
Gorman was getting a grip on the anger that had made it hard for him to think clearly. ‘If they were safe for seventeen years, what’s changed?’
‘We don’t actually know that the brother is safe. He could have had an unfortunate accident too, for all we know. Maybe all that’s changed recently is that Harbinger finally discovered who Edward Cho’s daughter became.’
The DI sucked in a deep breath and let it rattle out. He looked years older. ‘OK. Well, I’ll have to talk to Harbinger. Today.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Well – maybe tomorrow.’
‘Will Sir let you?’
‘Sir will only be able to stop me,’ Gorman said fiercely, ‘with a direct order backed up by a flame-thrower. And I doubt he’ll go as far even as the direct order. Not now the can’s open and the worms are on the floor. Someone decided that lives were a price worth paying to avoid official embarrassment. I’m not having that. It’s time to shake the files marked Secret out of an upstairs window and let everyone see what’s in them. Once this goes public, I don’t think Sir or anyone else will dare obstruct a proper investigation.’
Hazel squinted at him. ‘Won’t that depend on who threw the Chos to the wolves and what he’s doing now? Seventeen years is long enough for a middle-ranking policeman to rise to a position of real power. Blocking your investigation may be his best chance of protecting his pension. And whether or not they approve of what he did, the rest of the top brass will close ranks. “There but for the grace of God” and all that. If that happens, you’ll be the one left out in the cold.’ Hazel knew what she was talking about.
