by Jo Bannister
‘You’ve been talking to someone at the PNC.’
‘Unofficially! He was a friend …’
‘Nothing’s that unofficial when it involves matters the upper echelons thought were safely buried.’
Hazel was a realist. The young man she’d done police studies with at Liverpool wasn’t that good a friend. ‘I suppose. But then, why didn’t they put the frighteners on me? Why send a message via you?’
Ash gave an uncomfortable shrug. ‘I’m already in their pocket. I’m still on the pay-roll – at least, the “discharged disabled” bit of it. Even if I wasn’t taking their money, I’ve asked for their help too often to pretend they have no claim on me. They want you to leave this alone, and they think you’re more likely to co-operate if I ask than if they do. So I have to ask. If for no better reason than friendship.’
She didn’t storm out. She didn’t argue. She smiled, and leaned forward across the remains of their supper, and said, ‘There is no better reason.’
Ash blinked. He hadn’t expected this to be so easy. ‘You’ll let it go? You won’t ask any more questions about Elizabeth Lim and Jerome Harbinger and the men in the van?’
‘I won’t ask the PNC any more questions about anything, including the time of day, the weather forecast and who’s going to be the next manager of Manchester United.’
Ah. So it wasn’t going to be that easy. ‘This is serious, Hazel. You’re being watched. You can’t afford to play games with these people. They’re always going to win.’
‘You know what you’re asking?’ she said after a moment. ‘That I back off and let Harbinger go after Elizabeth Lim. That I leave Dave Gorman to stand up to the big guns at headquarters alone. Because he wants to get to the bottom of this as much as I do, and I don’t think he’ll stop if I tell him I’ve got cold feet.’
‘Then the people who leaned on me will lean on him.’
‘He may not be willing to bend. He may break first.’
Ash sighed wearily. ‘Hazel, I can’t keep the whole world safe. I can try to keep you safe. Please do as I ask. Talk to Dave, tell him to let this one go. Tell him the powers-that-be are aware of what’s happened. If Elizabeth Lim needs help, they’ll help her.’
Hazel regarded him levelly. ‘Do you actually believe that?’
‘Yes,’ Ash said firmly.
‘Jerome Harbinger probably murdered both her parents. While we’re talking, he may be closing in on her and her brother. And people high up in the police service are pretending to know nothing about it because they don’t want to see the bones of a seventeen-year-old disaster dug up and picked over again. Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘Of course it bothers me!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hazel, I’m not stupid. I know you want to help the Chos. Regardless of what their father did, they are innocent victims. For seventeen years they’ve lived with the threat that the man who murdered their parents would kill them too if he found them. Now it seems there’s a real possibility that he has. You’re right: someone should be helping them.
‘But why does it have to be you? Why does it always have to be you? Dave Gorman knows everything you know, and he’s in a better position to do something about it. Will you just for the love of God sit this one out?’
Her eyes were troubled. There was no mistaking Ash’s distress, and Hazel cared about him enough to regret being its cause. But she had other obligations. One was to protect innocent members of the public from violent madmen. Another was to hold her profession to account when the evidence of wrong-doing became inescapable. Gabriel Ash was a friend for whom she would have done almost anything. But not this.
‘I can’t,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry, Gabriel, but I can’t.’
The first thing Hazel did the next day was to arrange to take the leave she was owed. She would have been reluctant to ask at such short notice, except a colleague whose holiday plans had fallen through welcomed the chance to swap and get away later.
The second thing she did, as soon as her final shift of the week was over, was change out of uniform and go upstairs to knock on DI Gorman’s door. ‘I’m yours for a fortnight. How do we do this?’
He stared at her. ‘Do what?’
She wouldn’t dignify that with a response, just ducked her chin to look down her nose at him.
Gorman leaned back in his chair, perplexity writ large on his frankly ugly face. ‘I’m not involving you in this.’
‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘I’m involving myself.’
He sighed. ‘Hazel, be reasonable. You’re not even on my team.’
‘Right now I’m not on anyone’s team. I’m on holiday. And if you use your team for this, they’ll be back on traffic duty by Monday. You’ve only got two choices: do this alone, or let me help.’
‘I appreciate the offer,’ he said slowly. ‘But I’m about to disobey a direct order from my Assistant Chief Constable. If I can’t prove that he’d no business giving that order, I’m going to be directing traffic. Don’t hitch your star to me: it’s too likely to crash and burn.’
‘We can do this, Dave,’ Hazel promised. ‘Help the Chos and get justice for their parents. And when we do, you’ll be a detective superintendent. Damn sure I’m going to hitch my star to that!’
The flare of Gorman’s eyes showed what he thought of his chances. ‘There’s no way it’s going to end that well. If there’s an explanation that means headquarters aren’t playing Russian roulette with Elizabeth Lim’s life, they’ll never forgive us for coming up with this one. And if there isn’t – if that really is what’s going on – they’ll never, ever forgive us for finding out.’
‘Welcome to my world,’ Hazel said bleakly.
‘I can probably take the flak,’ growled Gorman. ‘They can’t actually sack me for being right, and if I spend the rest of my career as a DI, well, I was probably going to anyway. But you’re at the start of your career – it’ll be easier for them to get rid of you.’
Hazel disagreed. ‘If it was that easy, they’d have done it last time I embarrassed them. There seems to be a sort of critical mass with embarrassment. Once you reach it – once you’re a sufficiently well-known trouble-maker – the consequences of getting rid of you start looking worse than the cost of keeping you around. I suspect I’m pretty fireproof now.’
There might have been some truth in that. It didn’t matter. Nothing she said would alter the fact that she was a new constable on her first posting, that she’d already faced enough danger and taken enough knocks to see her through a twenty-year career, and that Gorman could not share the burden of responsibility with her and still sleep at nights.
‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘If I’m going down, I’m not taking you with me. It’s not just ACC-Crime – he can only shout at me. If we’re right about this, Jerome Harbinger is a dangerous man. I’m not having you dodging bullets again.’
‘But I’ve already swapped my holidays!’
‘Swap them back. I mean it, Hazel – I’m doing this alone. At least until I have enough evidence to make it official. When I have, I’ll ask Maybourne if I can borrow you. Until then, stay out of it. Go to visit your dad. Or help Gabriel in the shop. But stay away from the Harbingers. They’re mine.’
THIRTEEN
The large oak door of the stone-built farmhouse in the Warwickshire village of Spell was answered by an attractive woman in her late thirties, with auburn hair and – Gorman didn’t usually notice such things – eyes the colour of ice on emeralds. When he produced his warrant card, she identified herself as Jocelyn Harbinger.
‘May I ask what you want to see my father about, Detective Inspector?’
Gorman fell back on the answer policemen always give in these circumstances. ‘Just routine inquiries, miss. Would you tell him I’m here and ask for a few minutes of his time?’
She invited him in but didn’t immediately do as he requested. ‘Is this about my mother?’
There’s a stock wooden expression which comes with the stock answer. Go
rman levered it into place now. ‘I just need to speak to your father, miss. If he has no problems about you being present, I don’t either.’
‘All right.’ Jocelyn Harbinger led him up a stone stairway. ‘Perhaps I should warn you, my father isn’t well. You’ll need to be patient.’
As they reached the landing, one of the doors opened and an older woman stepped out. She looked enquiringly at Jocelyn Harbinger and critically at Gorman. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Harbinger, I didn’t hear the door.’
‘I was right there,’ smiled Jocelyn. ‘Detective Inspector Gorman, this is Mrs Fisher, our housekeeper. And my father’s favourite chess opponent. I play too, but I can’t give him much of a game. I’m not very patient.’
There had been a game in progress when Gorman arrived. The board was set up on a low table between two high-backed chairs. So far as Gorman could judge – like Jocelyn, he could play chess but not with any great skill – black was winning in terms of pieces but not necessarily of position.
Mrs Fisher leaned over the nearer of the chairs, the one with its back to the door. ‘A gentleman to see you, Mr Harbinger. A police gentleman.’
A voice, at once gruff and querulous, growled, ‘Send him away.’
‘You can’t just send them away, Father,’ Jocelyn said briskly, ‘they only come back when it’s even less convenient.’ She ushered Gorman forward.
Gorman knew that Jerome Harbinger was sixty-eight. If he hadn’t known, he’d have thought he was ten years older than that. His craggy face was savaged by deep lines that had nothing to do with laughter and everything to do with bitter unhappiness. His skin was pale and papery, as if he didn’t go outside any more. His hair, which had once been the same colour as his daughter’s, retained some of the red amid the grey, and it stood up spikily, reminding Gorman of a fox with its hackles raised.
‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Have you found my painting?’
Gorman said his name again, more slowly. ‘I’m from Norbold CID. There may have been developments in your case – we’re not sure yet. Tell me about your painting.’
Harbinger half-turned his head, giving Gorman his craggy profile. ‘Caravaggio,’ he snapped.
Dave Gorman had reached the age of thirty-eight without learning anything at all about art. He didn’t even know what he liked, except that he quite liked the matchstick-men and the cheerful fat ladies. He thought he’d heard of Caravaggio before, couldn’t remember the context. ‘Is that somewhere in Italy?’
The old man in the chair began to laugh. It had the strained, rusty sound of something he hadn’t done for a while, like the creaking of an ancient hinge when someone opens a forgotten door. ‘Could be,’ he agreed. The rusty laughter broke up in coughing. ‘Could be anywhere.’
Gorman looked to the daughter for an explanation.
‘Caravaggio was the artist,’ murmured Jocelyn Harbinger. ‘He’s … really quite famous. An Old Master. His works are worth millions.’
‘And this was one of the items stolen when your house was burgled?’
‘It was the only one not recovered. It’s called Anime Gemelle – Kindred Spirits. It’s a portrait of a girl with a songbird. Not one of his most famous works, but still irreplaceable.’
‘How come you don’t know all this?’ demanded Harbinger. ‘Read the file, why don’t you? Call yourself a detective!’
‘Art theft is a pretty specialised field,’ Gorman protested mildly.
‘Too bloody specialised for the British bloody police!’ snarled Harbinger. ‘As true today as it was seventeen years ago. I knew it, my insurers knew it, the goddamn thieves knew it. The only ones who didn’t know it were the bloody plods!’
‘A bit before my time, sir,’ said Gorman, expressionless.
‘Well – have you found it?’
‘The painting? Not yet.’
Harbinger gave a disgusted grunt and turned back to his chessboard. ‘Then why are you wasting my time?’
Gorman was accustomed to hostility. Every police officer is. He got it from victims and he got it from perpetrators. He even got it from witnesses occasionally. If it stopped short of violence, he barely noticed it. But Harbinger’s hostility was making it difficult to get the answers he’d come here for.
Jocelyn Harbinger caught his eye. ‘I do wonder, Detective Inspector, if it might be better to leave my father to his game now. I’ll try to answer any questions you still have.’
She took him into the garden. If Gorman had known any more about gardening than he did about art, he might have recognised that the knot design dated back to the same period as the house, that the roses peeking over the knee-high box hedges were only the latest in a family line going back to the time of Shakespeare. But he only recognised two kinds of flowers: one was daffodils, and the other wasn’t.
‘How mobile is your father?’ he asked.
If she thought it a curious question, Jocelyn Harbinger gave no indication. ‘Not very. He can walk short distances, but he uses a wheelchair even in the house if he’s going from one room to another.’
‘Arthritis?’
‘In part, the last few years. But mainly a broken heart. Losing my mother destroyed him. Before that he was like a lion.’ Her voice was full of admiration, which is possibly easier to sustain than love when people we once cared about stop being very lovable. ‘Nothing frightened him, nothing stood in his way. He was a superb businessman. People thought he was successful because he was willing to take risks, but that wasn’t it. He was incredibly good at calculating percentages. He knew how competitors, how customers, how the market, would react in any given circumstance.
‘He sent me to business school. They sent me back. I kept telling them, “That isn’t what my father would do.” Naturally enough, the tutors found this irritating. But when they put it to the test with a series of fantasy stock-market games, I beat them.’ She glanced at Gorman sharply. ‘I’m not boasting. I just want you to understand that my father was the best at what he did. But for what happened, he still would be. Locked away inside that broken man is a business titan.’
‘Does he still run Harbingers?’
‘Only on paper. He’s the majority shareholder and managing director, and if he chose to shut up shop tomorrow, or put a match to it, he could. But – like the art collection, and indeed life – he lost interest when my mother died. I take the day-to-day decisions. Actually, I take the big ones too.’
‘You must have been very young to take on that much responsibility,’ observed Gorman.
‘I was twenty. And you’re right’ – she cast him an impish smile – ‘I wasn’t ready for it. Fantasy stock market is one thing: keeping real lorries on the road earning real money, keeping real drivers in real work, is both harder and scarier. But you do what you have to do. My father helped with the transition of power. At first it was a distraction from the grief and the terrible anger. He taught me how to run his company although he wouldn’t have bothered keeping it running for himself. By degrees he handed over control. Now he plays chess with Mrs Fisher, and rails against the world, and wishes he’d died seventeen years ago.’
‘Mrs Fisher,’ echoed Gorman. ‘Was she your housekeeper when the house was raided? The one who was injured.’
Jocelyn nodded. ‘She had quite a bad concussion. She tried to keep them out. Three men armed with shotguns, and she tried to fight them off alone. Mrs Fisher and my father have – or at least had – a lot in common.’
Before Gorman could respond to that, Miss Harbinger raised her head and called across the knee-high hedges, ‘The roses are putting on a good show this year, John.’
The gardener looked round with a grin. Green twine, knives and secateurs overflowed every pocket of his waistcoat. ‘It’s that load of farmyard manure I dumped on them in the winter.’
‘As I keep telling people,’ said Jocelyn, ‘everything has its uses. Even bull-shit.’
They walked on. A piece of statuary marked the end of the path and they turned left, a
long the back of the house. Jocelyn gave Gorman a sideways look and said, ‘Are you going to tell me what this is about, Inspector? What it is you suspect my father of having done, except that now you’re not sure he’s physically fit enough to have done it?’
The DI debated with himself but not for long. He could try again to interview Harbinger, but he wasn’t sure how hard he could press him or how much weight he could put on anything he said. Or he could try to find out how much Jocelyn knew, and how much of that she was prepared to tell him. If he came back another time she would be ready for him, would have decided how much information she was willing to share. This was not a woman it would be easy to take off-guard, but his best chance was right now.
He said, ‘Are you aware that your father threatened the family of the man he blamed for your mother’s death? The insurance company’s negotiator?’
‘Edward Cho? Yes, Inspector, I was there when he did it.’ She stopped and turned to face him, her eyes unapologetic. ‘His wife had just been gunned down in a confrontation he’d been promised wouldn’t happen. Mr Cho made him that promise. Then car-loads of policemen came streaming round the corner like a Wild West show, and one of them shot her. Did you know that?’ She saw in his face that he hadn’t, and her voice softened a little. ‘No. It makes his anger a little more understandable, doesn’t it?’
‘I had no idea …’ stumbled Gorman. ‘Shit.’
Jocelyn raised one cool eyebrow. ‘I would have thought it was a matter of record.’
‘It will be,’ he managed; and managed not to add, Unless someone’s erased it. ‘I haven’t seen all the records yet. It’s an old case.’ He winced. That was less than tactful.
Jocelyn thought so too. Her tone grew frosty. ‘I know. My father could tell you how old, in years, months, weeks and days.’
And this, thought Gorman despairingly to himself, is what happens when you go into an investigation half-prepared. When you ask questions without knowing what the answers ought to be. When the interviewee knows more about your case than you do.
