Hidden Power

by Judith Cutler

  ‘You what? I’d thought it was drugs! Jesus!’ Her surprise was genuine. ‘Money-laundering’s a bit heavy for a holiday complex, isn’t it? OK, lots of holiday complexes. Any idea who for?’

  Knowles sighed. ‘We always suspect terrorists these days, don’t we, Kate?’

  ‘So that’s why Sue leapt at the chance of my taking a freebie holiday! And wanting it to be down here. Any hard evidence? Apart from what Craig and I have failed to come up with so far?’

  ‘Not yet. That’s why we’re depending so much on you.’

  She nodded soberly. ‘Anything else? Blackmail, drugs, the sort of thing I expected?’

  ‘Why drugs?’ It was his turn to look puzzled.

  ‘Because of those rumours about Dartmoor being the drug-making capital of England.’

  ‘Hmm. And why do you ask about blackmail?’ Knowles demanded.

  ‘Because of what I put in my report about the Hythe complex: at least two of the guest rooms were fitted with what looked like tiny surveillance cameras.’

  What the hell had gone wrong with police communication? ‘And there’s the one in Vernon’s office, as I told—Ma.’

  ‘What was your take on them?’

  ‘Not just mine—one of the residents there had the same idea, though she didn’t know—about any cameras. Pressurising older inhabitants to sell, so their apartments could be refurbished and sold at a vastly improved price. If they didn’t respond to the general lack of maintenance which was characteristic of the ‘Hythe complex at least, then I’d guess any more interesting nocturnal activity would be used to blackmail them into selling. Except older people…’ She tailed off.

  ‘You’d have to talk about considerable profits to make that sort of thing worthwhile,’ Knowles reflected. ‘Are there any cameras in the Cockwood bedrooms?’

  ‘She hasn’t even been inside one yet!’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Because it’s no business of mine to go in. I’m pushing as hard as I can, Gaffer—’

  ‘Gaffer? Oh, you Brummies!’ Knowles laughed. ‘Nothing wrong with Guv down here, Kate.’

  ‘Except I should call you Pa, shouldn’t I? Craig’s right. I do find it so hard to stay in role. But I seem to be convincing my boss: he and his wife offered me a Devonshire cream tea this afternoon. We met on Berry Head.’

  ‘Berry Head? What the fuck were you doing on Berry Head?’

  ‘Improving my local knowledge, Craig. Whenever I’ve got any time free I hop on the Honda and explore a bit more of the locality,’ she added, for Knowles’s benefit. ‘I’ve been round the foothills of Dartmoor, that sort of thing.’

  Knowles laughed. ‘Not much fun on that little fart-and-bang machine. Tell you what, Kate, I’ll get some of the lads to soup it up for you.’ He chewed his lip.

  ‘Trouble is, I need it to get to work. I suppose I could always take Craig’s Escort.’

  ‘No, you fucking couldn’t. How would I get to work?’

  ‘Get a lift from a mate?’ Knowles suggested. ‘Maybe it wouldn’t take too long, Pa. I could take it in somewhere after my morning’s stint and collect it again at the end of the day.’

  ‘Somewhere like Headquarters!’ Craig jeered. ‘Cracking idea, Kate.’

  ‘I’m sure there are other places where they work on police vehicles,’ she said. ‘Or maybe the mechanics could come round here—you know, those service-your-car-at-home people. That’d be the sort of people Kate and Craig would use: much cheaper. And dodgier.’

  ‘Good girl. OK, I’ll get that sorted. I’ll phone and tell you when, so you won’t be off gallivanting round a bit more of the National Park.’ Knowles looked from one to the other. ‘Make sure she gets the message this time, Craig. Or I shall want to know the reason why.’ He put down his coffee mug and got to his feet. ‘I’d best be off. Now, er—your mother was saying she thought you were taking this role-playing too far. Perhaps it’s time you were a bit nicer to each other. Can you manage that?’

  ‘I’m sure we can, Pa. How much nicer?’

  ‘Nice enough to get me working on site!’

  Kate shook her head. ‘Let’s take it slowly, Craig. Vernon’s sufficiently fond of me not to trust any instant changes on your part—’

  ‘Just what the fuck have you been saying?’ Craig was on his feet, standing over her.

  ‘You don’t say—you hint, you use body-language.’

  ‘You’ve been saying I’m violent?’

  Knowles pushed between them. ‘This is what Earnshaw was worried about. And we both saw what you did to Kate in the pub, there. Let’s see that arm, Kate.’ He fished for his reading glasses to inspect it more closely. ‘Hmm. No more Of that. Or you’ll be off the case and on a charge of assault. Do you hear me?’ His voice was rising in crescendo: he remembered just in time and bit back whatever he’d meant to say next. ‘D’you hear me?’ Now he sounded much more like an angry father.

  ‘OK. But she asks for it!’

  Kate couldn’t contain herself. ‘Now where did I hear those words before? In the Rape Suite?’

  ‘And you remember, young lady,’ Knowles interrupted, ‘that you two are a team. You just button your lip. And you, young man, keep your fists to yourself. No violence—physical or verbal. Do you both understand? Right. Any more trouble and you’ll both be up for disciplinaries.’ Rather too late he dropped his voice. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

  Chapter 15

  ‘The dutiful young couple were just waving off their wise old father when the phone rang. Kate beat Craig to it by a short head.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Earnshaw announced, ‘about this needle between you and Craig. If you can’t settle it, one of you will have to move out. Not necessarily off the case. Just out of each other’s hair. What do you think?’

  ‘So long as it was part of our ongoing scenario, I don’t suppose either of us would object. We could have touching reconciliations from time to time, with you and Pa to referee. But I must discuss it with Craig—or, better still, why don’t you ask him how he feels?’ She passed the handset to Craig, but didn’t withdraw from the kitchen: no reason to, since he hadn’t.

  ‘So long as it gets the stuck-up bitch out of my hair,’ Craig was snarling. ‘And so long as you get me into that complex too. She’s obviously getting nowhere fast.’ He listened a few moments before continuing truculently, ‘That’s what she tells you, of course. It’s not how I see it. We’re supposed to be partners in this and… Yes, but… Yes, Ma’am. Yes, Ma’am.’ He cut the connection.

  What had Earnshaw been saying to get him so angry? All those clichés about blood vessels pulsing in the neck and forehead, about fingers gripping so hard the knuckles went white—Craig showed they were true. Kate braced herself: she would have liked a good old-fashioned rolling pin. Because Craig was going to get violent. Any moment now. But he simply turned on his heel and left in silence. She’d stay where she was. No need to make a bad situation worse. And perhaps that was how he saw it. She heard him moving round upstairs. He came back down again. He slammed the front door hard enough to set china in the kitchen a-rattle, and probably to damage the hinges on the door itself. God knew how he’d drive—yes, that was the roar of the Escort. Good job she’d left the little Honda chained up on the drive out of his way. She dialled 1471. If Craig wasn’t going to tell her what Earnshaw had said, she’d better check for herself. Number denied! Shit and shit! What the hell were her bosses playing at? Why should they communicate with only Craig? Why should she have to wait on their whim, and not him? Now whose pulses were pounding, whose knuckles white?

  Except, of course, Earnshaw had called her. What was it that was making her so paranoid? For goodness’ sake, she wasn’t alone. She had Rod’s number, after all, and even Sue’s. Either would offer advice, and even support within the system. The phone lines would be red-hot tomorrow. But she didn’t want to bring in reinforcements to fight her corner. Chewing her lip, she drifted upstairs: yes, she wanted to check Craig’s room, to see if there w
as any evidence of how long he might be gone. The state he’d left his room was so dire it wasn’t possible to say: Cassie would have gathered the underwear strewn across the floor and shoved it all into the washing machine. Or on to a bonfire, more likely: Cassie had a temper when roused. Kate wouldn’t demean herself by doing either. Neither would she check so much as one drawer. But she’d pop her nose round the bathroom door. Filthy bugger hadn’t flushed the loo, of course. But he’d taken his shaving things. And a towel.

  She froze. What about her own room? No, she really was losing it. A colleague, a man on the side of right against wrong, wouldn’t inflict vindictive damage on her things? A spurt of doubt speeded her steps. No. Everything seemed as she’d left it. Seemed. She sensed something wrong. She tore back the duvet: no, nothing there. But he’d been in the room: she knew it. Her clothes? The wardrobe seemed much as she’d left it. But she was sure things had been touched. She pounced on the carrier bag she’d left the vase wrapped in. Thank God, it was still in one piece. But it was vulnerable—all the more because it was evidence of how far she’d slipped from role If only she’d put it obviously on display. Yes, she’d marked it out as special. And it was. Bought for Rod, just as the skirt was to wear for Rod. Well, there was only one place that—as far as she knew—Craig wouldn’t think of looking. Gathering it to her chest and wrapping it in a couple of towels, she tiptoed downstairs, as if he were still in the house, and stowed it in the Honda’s pannier. As she did so, a car drew up at the end of the drive. Shit, was he back already? So much for the vase, then. But the person walking towards her was no other than Earnshaw. ‘I thought you’d better come and have supper with me tonight, Power. Kate. We’ll have to have a full-scale review of the case this week. And until we have, I’d rather we didn’t provoke that young man any further. Go and pack some overnight things and hop on that bike of yours and follow me.’

  Never had a week’s washing up looked so attractive. At least Earnshaw had turned the water heater on this time: the first time Kate had stayed overnight with her, she’d found herself boiling kettle after kettle. But apart from that it was business as usual: a supper of hard but tasty wholemeal bread with some cheese dismissed by Earnshaw as mousetrap but actually surprisingly good, and some pears which might be ready for eating in a couple of months’ time. The bed would be just as hard, the bedroom lighting as poor—and, with a bit of luck, the following morning’s porridge just as creamy.

  This time, however, Earnshaw came into the kitchen and held a spare tea towel while Kate wielded the dishcloth. True, she didn’t use it to wipe up, but the thought was obviously there, and Kate was duly grateful. Kate didn’t try to talk: Earnshaw was clearly finding the whole evening very difficult. Good on admin and organisation, weak on emotion—that was Earnshaw. Perhaps you’d had to be to scrabble up the promotion ladder in her day.

  ‘Maybe,’ the older woman began at last ‘we could have done better at the briefing stage. But we assumed that as you were billeted together, he’d update you on everything. After all, he was a local lad with all the knowledge you needed. And he’d worked undercover before. He was so convincing the arresting officer broke his nose for him. He says he likes the work: better than Traffic, he says. Doesn’t like routine.’

  ‘I’d say,’ Kate said, surprising herself, ‘that he’s bored. After all, all he’s doing at the moment is digging gardens and hobnobbing with his mates.’

  ‘With his mates? He bloody well shouldn’t be!’

  ‘New friends, he says. That’s one of the problems, Ma’am, with being undercover. You miss people you like being with.’ She’d nearly slipped up and used the word ‘love’. Not the best word to use to Earnshaw. ‘Rod apart, and now I’m getting closer to the Vernons it’d be foolhardy for us to meet up again, I really miss my mates. Even my great aunt. I used to think visiting her was a pain, but I even miss that! It must be even worse for Craig, knowing his friends are only half an hour down the road and not being able to get to them.’

  ‘No excuses for the violence, Kate.’

  ‘There may be reasons, though. The scenario always was that the relationship was dodgy. Perhaps violence is the only way he can show that. And there’s no doubt he’s feeling resentful that I managed to get into the complex and have stopped him doing the gardening there. Maybe I was wrong…’

  ‘If he turns up there now it’ll look as suspicious as it would have done when he first mooted it. I don’t know, Kate: this is turning out to be a right pig’s breakfast.’

  ‘Who’s idea was it all?.’

  ‘Oh, them up there!’ Earnshaw pointed ceilingwards. ‘They want instant results, as usual. They don’t understand how long it takes to do things properly—more interested in targets and budgets: you wait till you’re a fully-fledged inspector—then you’ll see.’ Kate recognised a red herring when it slapped her in the—face. ‘Sue was definite from the outset that she wanted us down here.’ Earnshaw gave the nearest she could probably manage to a squirm. ‘Well, there may well be…’

  ‘I assumed’—no need to say it was Rod who had assumed—‘that we were investigating drugs distribution. We’re close to Dartmoor; there’s a tiny harbour on the spot and a big port at Teignmouth; there’s the memos about pot plants. But Knowles was talking about money-laundering. And terrorism links.’

  ‘If he believes that one he’s been watching too much TV. No, between ourselves, I’d go for drugs distribution. But I don’t like this surveillance camera business.’ Meditatively she picked up a saucepan and polished it inside and out.

  At last Kate prompted her, ‘So why the short notice? The lack of preparation?’

  ‘I told you, pressure from above. They’re hassling us for results already.’

  ‘So we’re talking politicians, not cops,here, are we?’

  ‘Hole in one. These people never understand…’

  ‘But surely we must be investigating from other angles too! If it’s that important?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we are. But they’re too busy brown-nosing the bloody Home Secretary and his merry men to bother to tell us.’

  ‘Could we get another woman in, as a weekend cleaner? Using Mrs Mole’s good offices?’ Putting down the saucepan with the tea towel inside it, Earnshaw leant across and tapped her lightly on the forehead. ‘Anyone at home in there? We’ve got a perfectly good man dying to get his secateurs on their roses and we pull him and ask for another woman? Think how much it’s cost to have Craig off his usual unit and pratting round here. God, I’m supposed to be his mother!’

  ‘What sort of gardener was he?’

  ‘I don’t know a dandelion from a dahlia: no idea if he did. It always looked tidier when he’d been. I’ll say that. Wasn’t there some idea of him knocking your patch into shape?’

  Kate tipped away another bowl of dirty washing-up water and ran fresh. Why didn’t the woman wash up every other day, at least, rather than leave the whole lot for her cleaner?

  ‘His idea was that I should do the garden, on the basis that plumbers never change their own washers. Trouble is, if it’s a choice between tootling round the tourist traps and doing solitary in a sea of mud, I know which I prefer. And my excuse was I needed local knowledge.’ She plunged a pile of plates under the suds, and took a tea towel, the twin of the one Earnshaw was still holding like a talisman, to the ranks of cups and saucers on the draining board. What a paradox: a tough old bird like Earnshaw and she used china so delicate it was almost translucent. And not a mug in sight, either.

  ‘Not so much an excuse as plain common sense. Have you come across anything interesting in your travels? Coffee?’ Earnshaw shook the kettle.

  ‘Not this late, thanks. I’ve got to be up with the seagulls tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s no such bird. Herring gulls; black-headed gulls; black-backed gulls. And a lot of other gulls. But no seagulls. Right: I’ll lock up and go on up. I’ll give you a shout when I’m clear of the bathroom. No need to tiptoe around tomorrow: always sleep like the
dead.’

  Which didn’t augur well for creamy porridge, did it? Well, a slice of that loaf would keep an army on the march for a week. But she might give the pears a miss.

  She’d just plunged her hands for a last assault, this time on saucepans, when Earnshaw reappeared, sternly covered in a velour dressing gown. ‘By the way, Craig’ll be here at seven thirty tomorrow to lay a new path. I’ll make sure he doesn’t knock off at midday. But you may need to be out in the evening so he can collect his gear.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Goodnight, then.’ Earnshaw nodded, and then dug in a capacious pocket for a mobile phone. ‘Better use this if you want to phone that young man of yours.’

  • • •

  Kate lay, staring at the ceiling, telling herself that she should be the happiest woman on earth. She and Rod had become good friends; they were the sexiest of lovers, but until this evening the L word had never been mentioned Not by either of them And suddenly, while they were talking about plans for a fundraising barbecue on Guv Fawkes Night, of all things, Rod came straight out with it.

  ‘I love you, Kate: you know that, don’t you? Love you. And—oh, God!—the line’s breaking up!’

  It was, and they had wasted all those precious minutes talking trivia. She shouted back—what did it matter if Earnshaw heard? ‘I love you, Rod. Can you hear that?’ But the line was dead. She tried ten, a dozen times to reconnect, but failed. Dead battery, no doubt. That was the logical explanation.

  Logic? Logic didn’t operate very strongly at three in the morning. She’d lain awake for what seemed like hours. At some point she must have slept, because she registered that she was dreaming about her great aunt, Cassie, bickering with her, that was it, over swimming. At which point she’d woken, heart pounding, because she’d forgotten to pack her swimmies, and part of her ploy for getting into those apartments was to swim with the owners. And a pretty daft ploy it now seemed. How did she expect—as an employee—to be invited back into an apartment By a stranger However liberal Gary Vernon might be, she was sure he wouldn’t like it. He’d rather she asked him point blank if she could see what the places looked like inside. After all, he’d suggested it himself.