by M. J. Ford
‘The Xan Do murder hasn’t made things any easier,’ Heidi continued. ‘Chances of closing it look remote.’
‘Thank God it’s on George’s plate,’ said Jo.
‘You should probably go easy on Dimi.’
‘About the ’tache? No chance.’
‘About the case,’ said Heidi. ‘He’s feeling the heat a bit.’
Jo glanced across at her colleague to see if she was being serious. Tan’s face showed no sign of irony. ‘I think he can cope – he’s a big boy.’
‘Andy probably hasn’t told you yet,’ said Heidi. ‘Dimi’s being investigated over a complaint from Xan Do’s parents.’
‘How come?’
‘Let’s just say he didn’t give them a lot of space to grieve. He went in hard on the search of their warehouse while Do was still on the slab. No warrant. Told them he’d get the place shut down. They allowed it, but it turns out they’ve got a good solicitor who’s told them they have a case. They’re pursuing a formal reprimand.’
‘Dimi’s methods were always going to catch up with him eventually,’ said Jo. ‘You’re asking me to feel sorry for him?’ She was still smarting from his earlier insinuations about Harry and the propriety of his relationship with his mystery house-guest.
‘Maybe not,’ said Heidi, ‘but we all bend the rules from time to time, right?’ She gave Jo a meaningful look.
It was true, in times gone by, that Jo hadn’t exactly followed orders to the letter.
‘Fair point,’ said Jo. ‘Alice looks like she’ll keep him on the straight and narrow. What’s her story?’
‘She was on the beat in Cardiff before, scored top one per cent in her investigative exams. Her fiancé’s a bit older – a doctor of some sort with a private practice in West London.’
‘That explains the clobber,’ said Jo.
‘Miaow,’ said Heidi.
Jo smiled. ‘Sorry, I’m only just out of elasticated waists. The young offend me.’
‘Don’t be silly. You look great. You’re doing great to be back at work.’
‘My pelvic floor disagrees. Seriously, if I even sneeze hard—’
‘Stop!’ said Heidi, laughing. She pointed ahead, more serious. ‘Take a left here – there’s a short cut.’
As they closed in on the supermarket, the mood in the car grew perceptibly more tense. Even if the suspect who’d used Harry’s card was long gone, in a matter of minutes they’d have a face. With the amount of resources that would be brought to focus on putting the case to bed, it wouldn’t be long before they had someone in custody. She could look the person in the eye and tell them she’d do everything in her power to see them behind bars for a long time.
Jo tried to quell her anticipation. As her mind tracked forward, so came a gnawing sense of inevitable disappointment. If the motive for Harry’s murder was simple greed – and often extreme violence was caused by nothing less banal – no conviction could bring satisfaction.
The supermarket was a small outlet attached to a petrol garage, with a twenty-four-hour gym beside and the beginnings of new housing estate behind a planted hedge opposite. It was at least two miles from Harry’s house, right on the edge of town. It seemed unlikely their suspect had walked this far.
They found the manager quickly, and were taken through to the back office to review the footage with a security guard. With the exact time-stamp provided by Harry’s bank, in a matter of minutes they were looking at colour images from the shop’s CCTV. It was a busy time of day, morning rush-hour, with several people flowing through the self-service checkouts. But Jo knew at once when their girl came into shot. She was petite, wearing a padded jacket that looked a couple of sizes too big for her, and her legs were bare with clumpy boots on her feet. A few spirals of pale hair escaped from under a woolly hat. She moved with her head lowered, furtively, carrying a basket that was almost full. Jo made out bread, and what looked like a four-pack of beer, but the other items were harder to discern. The girl scanned them through, and a male clerk came over. There was a brief discussion, in which the young woman had evidently been asked to show some identification to prove her age. She appeared not to have any, and so after the clerk shook his head, she put it to one side without a fight. Then she paid with a flash of card, and left.
Jo rewound the footage, and turned to the manager. ‘Who’s the member of staff who ID’d her?’ she asked.
The manager squinted at the screen. ‘Anwar,’ he said. ‘He’ll still be here if you want to talk to him?’
‘We will,’ said Jo. ‘Do you have any other cameras?’
‘Sure,’ said the manager. He asked the security guard to help them, and went off to find Anwar.
It took a good forty-five minutes to sort through the various images taken of the young woman on the supermarket’s cameras positioned in the other parts of the store. She had spent only three minutes or so inside the shop, moving up and down the aisles quickly. But on these, the resolution wasn’t great. Jo had a sense of wide set eyes, and a wide jaw narrowing to a pointed chin. A small, button nose.
Anwar arrived as they were working, looking somewhat timid. Yes, he remembered the girl, he told them. She was pretty and nervous. She had a bandage on her hand – he couldn’t remember which one but from scrutinising the footage it seemed to be her right. She had looked too young to purchase alcohol. She seemed in a hurry, and hadn’t argued about the beer. Jo asked if he recalled anything else – any particular features or salient points. After struggling for a moment, Anwar said he could not, other than that the make of the beer was a super-strength lager. He’d thought it was an odd choice for a young girl like that. Normally they bought vodka, or maybe rum.
The most promising visual came from one of the supermarket’s external cameras. It showed the young woman approaching across the small car park, and actually looking right into the lens. A baby face, almost – and surely under eighteen, given the lack of ID. That seemed to rule out her being the product of Ferman’s affair with Annie. On her retreat, she headed the same way, but the frame lost her on the edge of the car park.
‘We should check to the garage forecourt next door,’ said Heidi. ‘She might have got into a vehicle there.’
Jo worked with the security guard to send the necessary footage back to the station, then called Carrick to let him know they had a decent visual, and to ask Alice to cross-ref with faces seen near the betting shop at the end of Canterbury Road. They found the manager, and Jo asked if he could find out the exact items the woman had purchased. He pulled a face. ‘We can,’ he said, then paused, ‘but it will take a while. I’ll have to authorise it with head office. Privacy, you know?’
‘Of course,’ said Jo, though she didn’t really understand the problem. She left her details, before she and Heidi headed over to the petrol station.
Sadly, the footage recovered was of even worse quality than that of the supermarket. It wasn’t of no use at all though, as it showed the girl walking past the forecourt to an area behind, out of shot. When Jo and Heidi exited afterwards, to inspect the lie of the land in person, they saw it was waste ground with a derelict car wash.
‘She must have had a vehicle here,’ said Heidi as they stood beside a cracked concrete platform. ‘You think she’s with someone else? Someone who knew how to avoid the cameras?’
Jo turned to look in the opposite direction, away from the petrol station. Beyond, over a barrier, was dense scrubland, a copse of trees, and then, after around fifty metres or so, the dual carriageway. She could hear the arrhythmic thrum of passing traffic.
‘Maybe,’ said Jo. She headed towards the barrier and stepped over. Gorse bushes blocked the way, tendrils armed with thorns. ‘Can’t see her hiking through all this anyway.’ Any lead was tenuous, and she felt deflated by the whole trip. If only we’d got here a bit sooner …
‘I thought we had an alert with the bank,’ she said, climbing back over. ‘They should have called us straight away.’ When Heidi didn’t reply, Jo sa
w she looked uncomfortable. ‘What’s up?’
Heidi gave a thin smile. ‘They said they had called your number and left a message – I didn’t want to say anything in front of Andy before I’d spoken to you first.’
Jo felt herself colour again. ‘I didn’t get a call.’ Her work-phone was in her bag. She’d had it with her every second of the day. Except when she’d dipped into Little Steps. She did the maths – just over three hours ago.
Fuck.
She felt a heavy lump in the pit of her stomach. If she’d taken the call when it came in, she could have been making this journey just a few minutes behind their suspect.
Heidi must have sensed her discomfort. ‘Hey, it’s okay.’
But it really wasn’t. They’d lost so much time. And all because she hadn’t had her work head on. She’d just been thinking about Theo, lingering at the nursery door while the crucial call came in. It was an amateur mistake; one of the first things they taught you about tactical investigations. Keep communications channels open.
‘It’s all right,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll let Andy know it was my responsibility.’
* * *
On the way back to the station, Jo struggled to shake the girl’s image from her mind. And ‘girl’ was the right word. She couldn’t have been much over five-two, and if she really was under eighteen, that only confused Jo more. Harry was old, but still a large man, and it looked like a single blow had felled him. Was the girl in those pictures really capable of such a feat? And it still begged the question – what had happened between them to precipitate such an act of extreme violence? She’d almost certainly been his guest for several days before the incident occurred.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ she said aloud.
Heidi took a while to answer but appeared to be on the same wavelength. ‘Sometimes these things don’t,’ she said. ‘Or sometimes the answer is just too obvious. She’s probably a user. She wanted his money.’
‘There was no drug paraphernalia in the house,’ said Jo. ‘I think she might even have been doing his housework.’
‘Let’s just focus on finding her,’ said Heidi. ‘The whys can wait. Anyway, what about the theory she’s his daughter?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ said Jo. ‘But Harry’s ex said the affair happened twenty-four years ago.’
‘Might not be connected to Annie at all,’ said Heidi. ‘Another relationship?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Jo. ‘Harry didn’t seem the type to have an illegitimate child.’
Heidi looked at her like she’d just committed some cardinal sin of policing – assuming the best of someone. ‘It’s probably not the sort of thing he’d share.’
Granted, thought Jo.
Separating the Harry she knew from Harry the victim was no simple task, and it was a valid reason why Andy might question the wisdom of allocating her as SIO. She wondered how well she really did know him. They’d only met about two years ago, when he was drafted in from retirement to consult on a cold case, but since then they’d spent a good deal of time in each other’s company. True, most was in the Three Crowns, mildly inebriated (not that Harry ever showed the effects of alcohol a great deal), but before and after Theo’s birth she’d visited him at home several times, and he’d even come out to hers on the bus one time. She could acknowledge that it was a strange relationship from the outside – the gruff old pensioner and the single mum – but most of the time they talked shop, anecdotes of cases they’d worked on, the foibles of colleagues past and present. She’d probably shared a good deal more about herself and her family than he had, and she’d never pushed for more, though occasionally he’d mentioned Lindsay, and in those moments he’d come alive. He’d struck her as a private man, sad and stoic. But, above all, good. Decent, honest, and kind.
Despite her best efforts to keep a professional distance, she couldn’t help comparing him with Xan Do, the other body on the books, a kid whose poor choices had caught up with him as inevitably as if he’d given the Grim Reaper a key to his front door. But Harry had just wanted to live his life out quietly, and the world, or fate, hadn’t let that happen. The choices he’d made should never have led to this.
‘Anyway, how’s little Theo?’ asked Heidi. She wants to change the subject. And that’s fine by me.
‘Still immobile, thank God,’ said Jo. ‘It looks like he wants to crawl, but he just flops.’
‘Won’t be long!’ said Heidi, smiling warmly. ‘He’ll be climbing the bookshelves next. I found Spencer on top of our fishtank when he was fourteen months, I kid you not.’
Jo experienced a moment of shock when she realised Heidi had never mentioned the name of her child before, even though he must have been almost getting on for two. And, more telling, I never even asked. She concealed the surprise with laughter. ‘At least you didn’t have child services checking up on you.’ She told Heidi about the visit of the previous morning.
‘Oh God – because of the prang?’ Heidi said.
‘Yup,’ said Jo.
Now, removed from the moment, it seemed a lot less disconcerting, and she was even able to inject some humour into her description of Annabelle Pritchard. ‘I swear she was measuring Theo up for a cage.’
Heidi shook her head. ‘You’d think they’d have better things to do.’
Jo was grateful for the solidarity, but already felt she’d over-shared. Work was work, and family was family. There was no need to complicate things.
Chapter 7
Dimitriou was in Carrick’s office, where they were both staring at a computer screen. The girl’s face, blown up from the security footage, was already pinned to the board. Alice Reeves greeted Heidi and Jo, then said, ‘You want the good news or the bad news?’
‘Go with the good,’ said Heidi.
‘I found Annie Connelly,’ said Reeves, reading from a file. ‘Constable on secondment here for training between February and November 1995. Logs show she worked closely with Harold Ferman. However’ – she flipped around an image of a redhead in uniform – ‘she’s also deceased, in distinctly unsuspicious circumstances. Ovarian cancer. You want the sister’s details?’
‘Why not?’ said Jo. ‘Looks like a dead end though. Anything from the Three Crowns?’
‘Nope,’ said Reeves. ‘Place was like God’s waiting room.’
‘That’s my regular you’re talking about,’ said Jo.
‘Sorry, ma’am’ said Reeves quickly, her pale skin reddening. ‘But none of them had seen Harry with a young woman, or at all over the last few days. They thought he might have been ill. You said he used to go in most days?’
‘Religiously,’ said Jo. She recalled the missing booze at the house. Had Harry actually quit the drink for some reason? She couldn’t see him following a doctor’s advice on that score.
‘However,’ said Reeves. ‘We got a call from a window cleaner who was working on a house across the street. He called to say a girl entered number 21 with her own key. He thought she might have been a cleaner, because she was carrying a mop and a plastic bag.’
Jo glanced at the image on the board again. Who the hell are you? The same person who vacuumed the place?
Dimitriou emerged from Carrick’s office, on the phone. ‘Yes, I need the image circulated to staff at the prison in case he’s stupid enough to make contract in person. I’ll be along within a couple of hours to speak to both of them.’
He hung up. ‘We’re closing in on the little bastard,’ he said.
‘Matthis?’ said Jo.
Dimitriou sat at his desk and began typing as he spoke. ‘Triangulation puts his phone in the vicinity of the old telephone exchange in the half-hour before Xan Do’s shooting, then back at home an hour after. First call was to Xan himself, and the second one corresponds to HMP Long Lartin. Can you guess who’s a resident?’
‘Matthis Senior?’
‘Full marks to the head girl,’ said Dimi.
‘So where’d he get a firearm?’ asked Jo, ignoring the jib
e.
‘Not my problem,’ said Dimitriou. ‘You’re the one who said he might be responsible in the first place, remember?’
‘I thought the family might be involved,’ said Jo, ‘but it sounds like he knew Xan. Maybe they were friends.’
‘Friends fall out.’ Dimitriou shrugged. ‘You sound like you’re on Blake’s defence team.’
Jo held up her hands. ‘I dunno. When I saw him, I thought he looked sort of scared. He was pissing in a bucket. Hiding in that lock-up.’
‘Yeah, from us,’ said Dimitriou. ‘Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth. This is open and shut.’
‘Got to catch him first. Any other clues in the phone?’
Dimitriou was typing without looking at her. ‘Calls mostly from his home, or the estate. One stood out though – right in the middle of Stanton St John.’
Jo felt her eyebrows drift up. She knew the village. Well, a hamlet really. It was a collection of thatched cottages and country houses a few miles from the city. Distinctly wealthy, and literally the last place she’d expect to find a kid from Blake Matthis’ side of the tracks.
‘You think he was dealing to someone out there?’ asked Heidi.
‘Unlikely,’ said Dimitriou. ‘But I’m going to swing by. One way or another, we’re going to track him down.’
* * *
Once Dimitriou and Alice had gone, Jo returned to her own case. She consulted the forensic pathologist’s notes on Ferman’s body. Here were the essentials of her friend’s life, boiled down to bare figures and scientific terminology, and signed off by pathologist Vera Coyne. Male. Caucasian. Age seventy-three. Five feet eleven inches in height. Grey hair. Dentures. A tattoo of a heart she’d never known about on his left biceps, and an appendectomy scar on his abdomen. A full autopsy had been carried out, as the death was clearly suspicious in nature. They revealed severely clogged aortic arteries and stage three cirrhosis of the liver.
