MURDER ON THE OXFORD CANAL

by Faith Martin

  ‘Better not come in,’ Janine said firmly. ‘We share — three of us. The other two are both in.’

  Of course they were, Mel thought grimly. Flatmates. He was out with a girl who had flatmates. Worse still, she was a member, albeit an extended one, of his own team. Was he going to let his dick rule his brains forever?

  ‘Well, goodnight, sir,’ Janine said, then shut her mouth with an audible “click.” Startled, Mel looked down at her. She looked so miserable at the absurdity of what she’d just said that he just couldn’t help bursting out in laughter.

  “Sir.” On the doorstep, the kiss looming in the background, like an ominous thundercloud.

  After a second or two, Janine stopped wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole, and began to giggle too.

  ‘Sorry,’ she burbled. ‘I’m nervous.’

  Mel sighed. ‘Yeah. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.’

  Then Janine stood up on tip-toe and kissed him.

  Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. But it had been a while since he’d played this game. The second divorce, not to mention the stark reality check of double alimony payments, had, for a while at least, inured him to celibacy. Now, with her small hands on the back of his shoulders, her young and firm body pressed into his, he felt the old familiar stirring.

  Janine quickly moved back. She was breathing fast. ‘I have to go in.’ At least this time she didn’t add the hilarious “sir.”

  Mel nodded gloomily and watched her open up. The light from the hall illuminated her fair hair, and her expression, when she turned to shut the door behind her, was vaguely apologetic.

  * * *

  Hillary trudged back to the Mollern and carefully hung up her clothes in the tiny wardrobe. She used only a few mouthfuls of water to brush and rinse her teeth, since her water supply was dangerously low. She’d have to fill the water tank tomorrow. She’d been putting it off for days now.

  Her stomach rumbled. She’d restricted herself to a salad at the pub, when what she’d really wanted was the steak and kidney pie. With sauté potatoes.

  She heaved a sigh and dived under the duvet.

  * * *

  Mel stared up at the ceiling and noticed, for the first time, a long crack in the artex. He rolled over, wishing Janine Tyler were next to him. He missed having a woman in his bed. And not just for the sex, either, but for what came afterwards. The smell of warmed-up perfume. The soft, tickling strands of hair on his cheek. The warmth of another body.

  He rolled onto his side.

  His career had survived two divorces, but a third would make him a joke. And going out with a bimbette of a sergeant would make him what? Envied? Admired? By his juniors, perhaps. But what would Marcus Donleavy and others like him make of it?

  He shook his head and closed his eyes. He’d have to be careful at the office tomorrow.

  * * *

  Tommy was on a high. He and Janine had been at this job almost all day yesterday and all this morning, and finally things were clicking.

  Hillary and Mel, talking together over her desk, looked about to break it up. Tommy caught Janine’s eye and got up, meeting her a few yards short of Hillary’s desk. For some reason, she seemed to want him to do the talking for once. Normally, she’d already be launching into speech, careful to point out — not brag about, you understand — her own cleverness in coming up with the goods. Now she simply stood and waited.

  ‘Guv, we think we’ve got something,’ Tommy finally said, realising she wasn’t about to speak. ‘About Fletcher’s boats.’

  ‘He actually owns some?’ It was Mel who spoke. He turned sharply and fixed his eyes on Tommy.

  ‘Well, not Fletcher himself, no, sir,’ Tommy said calmly. ‘But then we didn’t really expect to find his name on any paperwork, sir. Here.’ He laid out the paper trail on Hillary’s desk, and started going over the complicated process by which he and Janine had put it all together.

  Hillary was impressed. Holding companies leading back to other holding companies. Boards of directors made up of either fictitious or dead characters, or those, from domestic cleaners to schoolteachers, who simply signed on dotted lines for a nice little annuity. It all left her cold, but by the time Tommy had finished she found herself agreeing with him that Archer’s Boat Hire and Luke Fletcher were one and the same.

  ‘It was the name that made me start back-tracking in such detail,’ Tommy said, and looked at Janine, who still wasn’t taking her fair share of the glory. ‘Fletcher? Archer? Get it?’

  ‘Huh?’ Mel was evidently puzzled.

  ‘In the old days a fletcher was a craftsman who made arrows,’ Hillary said helpfully. ‘You know, like Coopers made barrels and Cartwrights made wheels. Usually villains like Fletcher have egos the size of Everest. Even if they’re trying to find a way of hiding behind corporate legalese, they simply have to make some kind of a stamp on something they own or consider to be theirs.’ Tommy was nodding. ‘Right. Anyway—’

  ‘Hold on.’ Mel held up a hand. ‘Let’s get our pals from Vice in on this.’ Both Regis and Tanner responded promptly to the call, and Tommy was soon patiently going over the paper trail again. ‘Now, Archer’s Boats has only five narrowboats that we’ve been able to track down so far. If they have more, it’ll have to be under a second company name.’

  Tommy selected a rather crumpled print-out and tapped a dark finger against it. ‘Of the five, three are in dry dock.’

  He paused significantly, but it didn’t really need spelling out. Fletcher was obviously having the boats outfitted to take concealed cargo. ‘One boat was taken out nine days ago from a boatyard in north London, supposedly to carry on north, towards Oxford way.’ He looked up and waited, but Janine still wasn’t catching his eye. ‘Sergeant Tyler’s enquiries located it just south of Oxford right now. By tomorrow it will probably be moored up in the city itself — if it sticks to the speed limit.’

  ‘Which it will,’ Mike Regis said, before Hillary could make the same comment.

  ‘Fletcher will have drummed it into his boys to keep a low, law-abiding profile,’ she agreed dryly.

  ‘Right. But it’s the last boat that really interests us,’ Tommy said. ‘According to this, the last boat has disappeared. That is, we can’t find mention of it anywhere. We think,’ Tommy said, with an uneasy glance at Janine since this was pure speculation now, ‘that they’ve renamed the boat and neglected to mention the new name on any forms. It’ll have the same registration number, of course, but if we’re going to locate it, what we really need is the name.’

  ‘That’s odd in itself,’ Hillary said quietly. ‘Real boaties don’t like changing the names of boats. It’s a tradition, or superstition, or whatever. My uncle would never think of buying a second-hand boat and changing its name.’

  ‘Then we need to find it,’ Regis barked. ‘Shake up the buggers at British Waterways. Don’t they have some sort of system for coping with this sort of thing? I can’t see them letting anybody get away with coughing up the dough for licences or what have you, just because they’ve changed the name on the boat.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘They have boat wardens. Volunteers, citizens whose job it is to see that boaties behave themselves, deal with any problems, that sort of thing. They might be the best people to ask. If a boat calling itself “The Jolly Roger” suddenly becomes “Rumpelstiltskin,” ten to one a warden will have noticed it.’

  ‘Right.’ Regis looked almost impressed.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Mel said, evidently not wanting to be outdone, ‘Janine, get cracking with our friendly judge. We’ll be needing a search warrant for the boat at Oxford, right? The. . . what’s it called. . . ?’ He craned his head to read the upside down listing. ‘Kraken? We are going to raid it?’ He glanced at Regis for confirmation.

  ‘Oh I think so,’ Mike Regis said, smiling wolfishly. ‘Don’t you?’

  Suddenly the atmosphere became electric. Tommy could hardly believe it. All this time he�
��d been going cross-eyed, getting telephone finger, and generally checking and rechecking minute bits of information, without realising what it would mean.

  Now, suddenly, it was real. Very real. The boat might actually be full of drugs and drugs smugglers. And he — and the others, of course — were going to raid it. It was the kind of stuff that made the newspapers. Hell, if the haul was big enough, it would even make the telly. It was what he’d laboured in uniform for — a chance to make the big time. And when it came, it came so suddenly he almost missed it.

  The room was buzzing. Even those officers not working the case seemed to have sensed the excitement. Most of them were looking at them from their desks.

  He heard Janine catch her breath.

  Hillary was merely apprehensive. Raids were all well and good, all glory and high-profile soundbites on the local radio, but what if those on the Kraken were tooled up? The Pits had ended up dead and mangled in a lock. One of their chief suspects was known to be a very handy slice-and-dice merchant with a knife. What if Fletcher’s jolly band of boaties came armed with automatics? Or even plain and simple knuckledusters for that matter.

  Hillary had once seen a WPC’s jaw smashed to smithereens with a knuckleduster. She’d been on the beat for twelve days when she’d seen it happen. The constable concerned had taken the insurance money and run for it, probably to a nice safe job in a library. And who the hell could blame her? She’d had to eat through a wired-up jaw for months.

  But Hillary’s fear, as even she was well aware, was a calculated thing. She wasn’t terrified, for instance. She knew that, as a senior officer, and a woman, she’d be well at the back when it came to the rough stuff. Besides, she’d been knocked about a bit in her time. She knew what pain was. What police officer didn’t? Nobody got to forty after an adult lifetime spent on the force, and not know how to look after number one.

  But Hillary was worried about Janine. Her sergeant was still young and relatively green. Moreover, she was the kind who, through sheer ignorance and gung-hoism, could get herself seriously hurt. She knew what it was like to be a woman copper. You had to keep proving to yourself, and your male colleagues, that you weren’t yellow. That you could hold your own, and more. And Hillary knew just where that attitude could get you.

  But worried as she was about Janine, she was even more worried about Tommy. As a mere DC, and big to boot, he’d be on the front line. It was expected of him, and no doubt he himself wouldn’t even question it. But all it needed was for one of Fletcher’s thugs to be a racist prat as well, and Tommy Lynch could well become instant enemy number one.

  Still, it was no use fretting. It had to be done. And if they did find a good-sized drugs haul and it could be traced back to Fletcher . . .

  Mel was beaming like a cat anticipating a canary cocktail followed by cream hors d’oeuvres.

  Regis and his sergeant were conferring quietly. As if sensing Hillary’s eyes on him, he glanced up and caught her gaze. For a second, Hillary had the absurd idea that they were the only two coppers in the room who really understood what was going on. He seemed to hesitate, as if surprised, and then, slowly, nodded.

  For some reason, it made Hillary’s day.

  * * *

  The go-ahead came just as Tommy was knocking off. The judge had been reluctant to agree to a search warrant since, in his opinion, probable cause was extremely shaky. But either Marcus Donleavy or the super over at Vice were owed a favour and the paperwork got signed.

  It was going to be a dawn raid.

  Tanner and one of Vice’s plain clothes were even now checking out the whereabouts of the Kraken, and would report back with its exact location at five the next morning.

  All those officers concerned were to be at the Big House by three-thirty. It was hardly worth going home, and he knew he’d be too keyed up to sleep, but Tommy also knew Jean was expecting him.

  She was going to cook him and Mercy a new recipe tonight. Something Jamaican.

  Sometimes Tommy wished that his mother could marry Jean. It would make everybody happy.

  * * *

  Janine didn’t bother going to bed either. Instead, she curled up in her favourite armchair next to a big floppy-shaded standard lamp with her favourite author, James Burke. He was an American who wrote about tough American cops. As a girl, Janine had wanted to live in America. Come to think of it, she still did.

  Still, tomorrow would make up for living in staid old Oxford. Forget Inspector Morse and all those dreaming spires. Tomorrow, she and her mates were going to bring off a major drugs bust. She just knew it.

  She imagined phoning her mum, sounding cool and offhand, casually describing her part in the drama her mother had been watching on telly that lunch hour. Or teatime. It depended on whether Mel wanted to crow to the media right away or keep a lid on it.

  Mel.

  He’d been avoiding her today. She knew it. Not surprising, really, since she’d been doing the same thing. But why shouldn’t they get together? It was the twenty-first century, and sex was just sex.

  She smiled over her novel. Had she been a cat, she would have purred.

  * * *

  Hillary set her alarm and cursed herself for not making the bed that morning. Within moments she was asleep. Unlike the others, Hillary knew the importance of getting plenty of rest before a raid. Excitement took it out of you far more than toil.

  She just knew that Mike Regis, if he wasn’t conferring with that curiously silent sergeant of his, would be asleep too. Mel, for all that he was so likeable, simply wasn’t as competent as Regis.

  * * *

  Tommy ate the spicy chicken and complimented Jean fulsomely. She was looking good tonight, in a simple, sleeveless white dress with a square neckline that set off her ebony skin to perfection. While she and his mother did the washing up, laughingly consigning him to the living room, he wondered what his mother would do if he brought Hillary home for a meal.

  He couldn’t help but smile. She’d have three thousand fits, all at once.

  She was white. She was a cop, his superior officer, no less. She was old enough to be Mercy’s own sister. She was so unsuitable, so unthinkable that his mother would probably, for once in her life, be speechless.

  Tommy’s smile faded. What was he thinking? Of course he’d never bring Hillary home. He wouldn’t want to hurt Jean. And besides, why would DI Greene want to have dinner with a mere detective constable — and his mother — anyway?

  He leant back and stared at the muted television screen. A game show was on. He hadn’t told Mercy or Jean about the raid tomorrow, only that his shifts had altered and that he had to be back on duty by three. He knew they’d worry.

  He wasn’t scared, not really. But he wasn’t a fool either. He knew there were plenty of cops out there who didn’t like working with black or other ethnic minority officers. And in a raid, things got confused. If the suspects were armed, things could get really nasty, really fast. Especially in a small and cramped space like a narrowboat. There wouldn’t be much room for manoeuvre if things went pear-shaped.

  He’d been in a street riot once, during his early days in London, so he knew just how much you had to rely on your fellow officers to watch your back. He himself had saved another black officer from getting a broken milk bottle buried in the nape of his neck.

  Tommy shook himself. He couldn’t let thoughts like these worry him now. In all probability tomorrow’s raid would go like clockwork. It might turn out to be a damp squib and they’d find nothing on the Kraken more sinister than herbal teabags.

  * * *

  Mel needed this bust to be a good one. Even though Vice would be collecting most of the glory, those that mattered would know it had been a joint affair. When Marcus moved up, as rumour had it he was about to, it would do his chances of becoming superintendent no harm at all if he was known to be the man who’d taken down Luke Fletcher.

  OK. Helped to take down. Was at least in on it when the first nail was hammered into his coffi
n.

  He frowned.

  He just hoped Janine kept her head down tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 8

  From the top of Headington Hill, the city of Oxford would have looked spectacular. It was just getting light, and the treetops and pampered lawns of the college quads were tinted in a flush of soft peach. Some of the lawns, centuries old, rolled, trimmed, fed and almost venerated, were playing host to the early birds of legend. Blackbirds mostly, out to catch the worms that had been lured to the surface by the mist and morning dew that dampened the ground.

  The same low-lying mist that was the worms’ undoing blanketed the city, leaving the skyline clear. Through this dreamlike, peach-tinted miasma poked every one of the spires, pergolas, arches and domes that the city was so famous for. Any photographer who happened to be awake at that hour would have been snapping away like crazy, happily thinking of all those commissions from postcard manufacturers, calendar makers and the tourist board.

  For working cops, however, the mist was a bit of a sod. Frank didn’t mind it so much. In his opinion, if you couldn’t get a clear view of the bastards, then it meant the bastards couldn’t get a clear view of you either.

  Frank rather liked it when they couldn’t see you coming.

  Nothing on the canal was moving. Not even a cat. The bottom end of Walton Street, all the way up to Canal Street, was devoid of students, Japanese tourists or even milkmen. It was unusual, even at this hour, not to hear the sound of a car, but here, on the canal, the city might have been a million miles away.

  There wasn’t even the sound of lapping water, for the canal wasn’t tidal, and the water just sat there in its narrow confines, a dull, greenish-brown ribbon. In the muffling mist even the church bells rang out the half hour as if from some distant land.

  Hillary checked her watch. It wasn’t even four twenty-five yet. That was the thing about Oxford — it had hundreds of damned church clocks, college clocks, bell towers and chiming gongs, and not one of them seemed to keep the right time.

  She glanced across at Mel.

  The raiding party had met up in Walton Street. It was being coordinated by Regis, who undoubtedly had more experience of this kind of thing. It reminded Hillary of her days in training college. There were cops in protective gear everywhere, but none of them, as far as she was aware, were actually armed. She wondered uneasily if not calling in the armed response unit had been a mistake.