Cold Revenge

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “So what do I do when I find out when he’s working?”

  “Ring me back on my mobile. I should be home in about twenty minutes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On my way home.”

  “Fine. Keep your little secret. I’ll expect some sort of payment for all this trouble.”

  “Two beers, then.”

  “Throw in a steak dinner and it’s a deal.”

  “You like it medium rare, if I remember right.”

  “I’ll call you back shortly.”

  McLaren rang off, feeling as though he was about to get one up on Detective-Inspector Charlie Harvester.

  Jamie rang back in fifteen minutes, just as McLaren was walking into his house. McLaren tossed his keys onto the kitchen worktop and grinned at Jamie’s news. “I don’t know what gods you pray to, Mike…”

  “Whoever will get my job done.”

  “Well, your prayers are answered. Harvester is working tonight. He’s still with Derbyshire B Division, but B Division loaned him to D Division. Some sort of big case, evidently. D Division has a runner murder on. They’ve been at it for weeks and aren’t making much headway.”

  Those prolonged investigations into undetected murders were always McLaren’s bane, but tonight… He grinned. “So Harvester is loaned out to help the lads. Wonder if it’s help as much as it is B Division wanting to get rid of him, even if it’s for just a week or so.”

  “He’s working out of Derby station. He should be there until two a.m. or so.”

  Lovely. All the way down in Derby. A nice, long drive back home to Buxton. “Did you talk to him?”

  “No. He was out. But the bloke I chatted to says Harvester told his underlings he’d be back in the office in Derby for about two hours. I guess he wants everyone to know how late and hard he’s working.”

  Nothing like scoring points with the Superintendent. “I hope he doesn’t decide to go home early.”

  “The constable thought I could catch him until that time, so it seems he’ll be out of your hair for a bit.” He paused and swallowed. “Do you want some help, Mike? I don’t know what you’re about to do, but if you need help”

  “You just go home, Jamie. Prop your feet up and watch ‘New Tricks’ on the telly, and leave me to do my work.”

  “‘New Tricks’ isn’t on tonight.”

  “A figure of speech. I’ll be fine.”

  “Sure. You sound fine. This whole thing sounds fine. Only, it stinks like three-day-old fish.”

  “Thanks, mate. We’ll have our dinner this weekend if it goes well tonight.”

  “If not, I’ll order you a takeaway delivered to your jail cell.”

  “They’ll never catch me.”

  McLaren hung up on Jamie’s reply. He made himself a cup of tea, heated some leftover peas and Brimstone Chicken he’d made several days previously, threw together a simple green salad, and sat at the kitchen table. Over supper, he wondered if he was about to land in jail, as Jamie had joked. He tried to remember back to when he and Harvester had worked together, tried to recall the man’s method of working. He sat back in his chair, holding his mug, and shut his eyes. Hadn’t Harvester kept case notes at his house? Besides the official documents at the station. There had been rumors about it, how Harvesterthe eager, steamrolling detective who let nothing stand in the way of his advancement goalsfilled manila folders with personal notes on suspects and victims. How he spent his nights ruminating over motive and opportunity and suspect. McLaren stared out the window, barely noticing the gray clouds rolling in from the west. With any sort of good luck, he’d find out if the rumors were true, if Harvester kept case notesor personal noteslovingly boxed at his home.

  Harvester hadn’t moved his residence since the altercation with McLaren. His house was at the end of a cul-de-sac in Buxton, a sleepy road thick with trees lying off Carlisle Road. That road, in turn, was clogged with two-story brick houses and dog-legged onto the busy A515. A straight-shot in to Ashbourne, in the southern part of Derbyshire, which housed the police station where Harvester normally worked. But the quiet cul-de-sac was nicely removed from the rush of the A515, backing up to a golf course and a woodland of conifers and deciduous trees. The wood sheltered the cul-de-sac from Buxton’s noise; it also provided a great deal of privacy, for the street was dark, despite the effort of the streetlamps.

  McLaren sat in his car, staring at the large two-story of red brick. It seemed a lifetime since he’d last been here. And, if he were honest, it was a lifetimesomeone else’s life. His life, when he had been an enthusiastic constable with no objective in life but catching bad guys. Now he was staring at the house that belonged to a bad guya bad guy in McLaren’s book. The images of the department Christmas party welled before him briefly, then dissolved into the blackness of the road as he shifted his gaze. Breaking and entering was always risky, and it wouldn’t do to be caught. Especially with his and Harvester’s history. But he had checked with some of his mates at the police station, making certain Harvester had no burglar alarm. No security cameras had been installed, either. He didn’t know about motion detectors on outdoor lights, but he had to chance that. So he parked several houses down from Harvester’s residence and watched, noting cars and lights and escape routes, feeling rather safe. Both houses neighboring Harvester’s were dark, as was most of the road. The occasional car passed on the Manchester Road to the north and on the A53 to the south, but on the cul-de-sac, nothing stirred but a prowling tomcat, the tree boughs and some black clouds.

  Quarter to one. Good enough. Not many people out on a work night. He pulled on black gloves and black knit stocking cap, got out, eased the door shut, and crept to the house.

  A storm blackened the night sky, for beyond the pale orange glow of the streetlamps McLaren could make out an inky mass as a fork of lightning split the air. A gust of wind, cool and laden with dust and leaves rushed down the road pushing more debris before it. A metal wind chime rattled anxiously and the cat ran for cover. Another spear of lightning streaked across the sky and a crack of thunder seemed to split open the heavens. A handful of rain pelted the road as McLaren edged toward the house.

  He kept to the darker patches of the lane, where a streetlamp was burnt out or he could fade into the massive, nondescript shapes. A tree bough shivered overhead, creaking ominously as the wind hit it. McLaren slipped over the low brick wall fronting the garden and slid quietly onto the ground at the wall’s base. He crouched where he landed, listening for a dog barking, waiting for a house light to flick on. He counted slowly to three hundred before he moved.

  The land between the narrow strip of front garden hugging the wall and the house was a stretch of short-clipped grass. McLaren remained bent over—running as best he could, keeping to the blacker smear of boxwood hedges that separated Harvester’s property from his neighbor. He bypassed the front door, needing the relative obscurity of the back entrance. The hedge jabbed and scratched his forearm as he squeezed between it and the side of the house. The cracking of small twigs boomed louder than the thunder in his ears and he hugged the house to avoid the hedge. As he rounded the back corner, the sky opened up. McLaren gained the shelter of the canopy as the rain drilled the ground.

  He stood against the back door for several minutes, listening to the storm and to the house. He heard nothing but the wind in the trees, the rain as it drummed roof tiles and cars and terrace flagstones, and thunder. The house remained quiet and dark, as though it had curled up for the night to avoid a wetting. His hand rested against the door as he steadied his nerves. Planning the burglary had seemed nearly a game and he’d told himself that he needed the information to help Marta Hughes. But now that he was here, at the house of his most bitter enemy, he felt his courage dissolving. Harvester had become a hazy memory these last months, a pain that had dulled, a face that had softened as in a mist. Being at his house renewed the pain, sharpened the face into features, gave voice to his threats. Do I have the resolve
to go through with this? Do I want to enter my enemy’s domain and feel his presence? He closed his eyes and tried to calm his labored breathing. He had come this far; Marta needed justice.

  McLaren took several deep, slow breaths and opened his eyes. The door still loomed before him, heavy, black and barred. Still there was no sound from the bowels of the house. After several minutes had passed, McLaren faced the door and flicked on his small torch. Shielding the light with his body, he opened the door with the near expertise of a professional burglar and slipped into the house. As he did, the wound split open and he felt the same terror and rage as if it were last June.

  He stood in the kitchen, simultaneously fighting the impulse to run from the house and smash everything he could lay his hands on. But there was no time for personal agendas. Nor was he a vigilante. He would get even with Harvester some other way.

  But his feet would not move. He remained as firmly stuck to the spot as if his shoes had been nailed to the floor. The linoleum was shiny with a recent waxing, throwing the light from a bedroom fixture into his face. Odors of coffee, fried eggs, and pipe tobacco lingered, bringing Harvester’s face out of the darkness with amazing vividness. McLaren felt his heart leap; for one insane moment he could have sworn the man was standing next to him, his lit pipe in his hand, talking. McLaren stared into the shadowy corner near the fridge. Nothing moved; nothing spoke. Still, the room seemed to hug him, smother him with scents and memories. He lurched forward, like a sleepwalker, leaving the ghosts hovering in the dark.

  A small light had been left on in the kitchen and deep within the house. One good thing he’s done, McLaren thought, snorting. He snapped off his torch and bent down as he crossed in front of the curtained windows.

  The light from the front room and a bedroom streamed into the hallway, and McLaren walked slowly along the corridor, still listening for a dog or Harvester. He reached the bedroom and paused in the open doorway. If Harvester did keep personal notes of his cases, where would they be? In a wardrobe, in a filing cabinet in a spare bedroom? He entered the room as the thunder broke again and walked slowly to the dresser. Linnet’s photo sat to one side, angled toward him. He flicked on the torch and stared in disbelief. Above the sprawling signature Linnet had signed ‘This will have to do until I’m with you.’ He clicked off the torch, dazed. Were Linnet and Harvester lovers? Had they planned this entire thing, hiring him for some reason, perhaps as some sort of revenge for last June? McLaren resisted the urge to throw the photo against the wall, and turned instead to the bed.

  It was made, the top sheet taut and neat with its hospital-style corners. A lightweight quilt was folded at the bed’s foot. McLaren gingerly lifted the pillows and quilt, then replaced them and lifted the edge of the mattress. He bent over, peering underneath. No manila envelope or file folder stared back at him. He pushed the mattress back into place and tried again a few feet farther on. Again nothing was revealed. He repeated the procedure until he had checked the entire mattress, then got on his hands and knees and peered beneath the bed. The only things the light from his torch revealed were a pair of slippers sitting side by side and a magazine on gardening. He snapped off his torch, stood up, and rummaged through the wardrobe and the drawer in the bedside cabinet. Nothing.

  The same was true of his search of the rest of the house until he came to a room obviously used as a library and home office. He found years’ worth of case notes in Harvester’s filing cabinet, all neatly and accurately labeled, standing like cops lined up at attention on dress parade, the folder dates covering the whole of Harvester’s detective career. McLaren opened one folder and scanned the pages. Harvester’s notes were typed neatly and filed by date. Some points were cross-referenced but mainly it was a straightforward account. There were, however, a few handwritten notes on smaller pieces of paper, as though he had thought of things at his desk or while in his car and had jotted them down hurriedly so he wouldn’t forget. Nothing seemed irregular. Harvester had evidently proceeded according to correct departmental policy.

  Several pages were allocated to suspects. They were as uncooperative on the night of Marta’s disappearance as some had been now. Several people had been home, with varying degrees of alibis. Herb Millington had been up and the lights on in house. He also had been dressed, so that could be read any way you wished. Danny Mercer’s mother had been asleep but opened the door quickly enough. Danny had stumbled into the front room, his hair tousled, wearing an oversized tee-shirt and boxer shorts, and blinking at the light. Harvester concluded he had been asleep. Noah Ark’s coworker Verity Dwyer had been mending hymnals at church, her presence verified by the minister and others. Same for boss Neal Clark, who had been at home when questioned. ‘We therefore cannot confirm that they weren’t there, as there being no neighbors or witnesses to place them elsewhere,’ Harvester’s handwritten note concluded.

  McLaren closed the folder but kept his thumb inserted as a bookmark. That’s why the case had boiled down to forensics. No witnesses to the slaying and her body found ten days later. He read the information about the bulleta .38 caliber. He leafed through the pages to read Harvester’s conclusions on who owned any weapons. There was nothing.

  He moved a small lamp off the desk, set it on the floor, and pulled his small digital camera from his pocket. He switched on the lamp and positioned the pertinent pages so that the lamplight fell onto the paper. He took two photos of each page in case his hand shook. When he had finished, he shoved the camera back into his jeans pocket, returned the report to the file folder and replaced it in the filing cabinet. He turned off the lamp and set it back on the desk.

  A car door slammed somewhere in the street. Flicking off his torch he ran to the front window. Cautiously, he parted the heavy brocade curtain slightly. The car’s lights blinked a few times as the driver evidently clicked his remote control lock device, then the man dashed to a house across the street, dodging and leaping over the puddles that had formed in the earthen and tarmac depressions. McLaren exhaled slowly, let the curtain fall back into place, then sprinted through the house and eased outside. He closed the door quietly and slipped back the way he had come.

  The drive home seemed inordinately long, the road stretching to a distant point that appeared unobtainable. Lightning streaked across the blackness as the tree branches scrambled to catch it. The windscreen wipers continued their mesmerizing sweeps in front of his eyes, pushing aside the rain that slid down the glass. His headlights caught a fox running along the side of the road, his tail sodden and mud splattered. He turned into his lane and felt the soggy earth beneath the car tires, heard the splash of water as he slowly drove through the puddles. When he finally sat in his front room with a cup of tea and the photographed pages printed out from his computer, he stretched his legs out on the sofa and reread Harvester’s notes.

  Nothing glared at him, new and important, on this more thorough read. But Harvester’s personal life had sneaked into the pile of Police Officialdom. Scrawled on the edge of a page was a note: ‘Linnet, 7:00, dinner, The Barking Dog.’

  McLaren sat up, nearly spilling his tea. He set the cup on the saucer and stared at the page. The date at the top indicated that they had known each other at the beginning of the case; known each other so well that Harvester was calling Linnet for a dinner date. McLaren threw the papers at the far wall, his animosity building. Harvester had violated one of the primary rules of police investigation: do not become involved with a witness or suspect. Just how far had Harvester become involved with Linnet? Had it destroyed his case? Had he overlooked certain things she had done? McLaren rose, picked up the spilled papers, and returned to the couch. He leafed through the pages, noticing that there were other similar notes jotted in page margins. All were suppers and all were a discreet distance from the police station in Ashbourne. After all, McLaren thought, still fuming, it wouldn’t do to be caught in public with a witness or suspect.

  He laid the sheets of paper on the coffee table, walked into his bed
room, and undressed. As he got into bed, he listened to the thunder rolling across the sky. It seemed to be echoing his own grumblings. Harvester had left the Staffordshire Constabulary the same time McLaren had. But, unlike McLaren, who had quit, Harvester had transferred to the Derbyshire Constabulary. And on that fateful day when Marta’s body had been found, officers from B Division had been thin on the ground. Harvester, in A Division, had been called in to help. And the rest, as they say, was history. McLaren closed his eyes, cursing the past year, cursing Fate. He fell asleep to the sound of the rain against the windows, still cursing, but now it was at Harvester.

  A mental nudge so quiet, yet persistent, muscled into his dream. He’d been wrestling Harvester, had him around the neck and was about to plunge with him into a river when the obstinate whisper woke him. He blinked, staring into the night, trying to determine where he was. As the room grew recognizable, he sat up, the sheet falling from his chest. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the alarm clock on his bedside cabinet. 4:17. He groaned and sank back onto the mattress. His hands grabbed the sheet but he made no other move. Frowning, he looked at the ceiling. What was the problem? What had bothered him so much that he’d woken?

  He closed his eyes, trying to remember his dream. Was it something about Harvester or Linnet? He propped himself on his left elbow and stared out his window at the night sky. He’d been fighting Harvester. They were about to plunge into a river…He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to loosen his tight muscles. But there had been something else. A voice calling to him. There had been no other people in his dreamjust him and Harvester locked in a death-like grip. Where had the voice come from? A spectator on the shore?

  He sat up, his body tensing as the voice sounded in his ear. It was feminine and sounded vaguely familiar. Dena? No. He concentrated. The woman was short and thin and seemed to know him. Her voice was soft, barely audible, yet persisted, calling his name.