The operations room was awash with the news that several students were seriously ill, and that it was believed to be from another incident of poisoning. Although his squad was not currently involved in the investigation, Harold Tweedy had called a briefing to update his officers.
‘Firstly,’ he began, ‘the latest case involves five students at Liverpool University, all seriously ill and presently being treated at the Royal Hospital.’
Already Tara’s mind rushed to all manner of scenarios as to how these young people had succumbed to this latest poisoning event, and Tweedy soon confirmed one of her thoughts.
‘This time,’ he continued, ‘we have a direct connection between the victims. It appears, with the exception of one girl, that all of them share the same student house. Most crucially, all five students spent yesterday evening together in that house. We have forensics and specialist hazard teams down there now looking for the source of the contamination.’
‘A bad batch of drugs, sir?’ Wilson called out.
‘Very easy to jump to conclusions, John,’ Tweedy replied. ‘But that doesn’t stack up with the other victims in this emergency.’
‘Then it has to be food or drink,’ said Murray.
‘That seems the most likely, Alan, but let’s wait and see what forensics turn up.’
‘Has the poison been identified yet from the earlier incidents?’ Tara asked.
‘It seems to be more a case of they know what it isn’t,’ said Tweedy. There were a few scoffs from around the room. Tweedy was not put off. He referred to a file that he was holding. ‘The use of a nerve agent such as that used in Salisbury has been ruled out. Items removed from the homes of David Leigh, Emma Whitehouse and Norman Forbes suggest that all three victims had consumed similar meals before falling ill. As for Marsha Ross and Kaley Watson, no such connection has been made although we cannot rule out the possibility that similar food was consumed away from home. This latest incident may shed light on the suspicion that food has been contaminated.’
‘What type of contamination?’ Murray called out, sounding frustrated. ‘Is it like E. coli or horsemeat, or is some crazy-head going around deliberately adding poison to food?’
‘We still cannot say, Alan. So far the lab has not been able to identify any substance.’
‘Surely,’ said Tara, ‘that must rule out something like E. coli? The lab would have picked it up already. It has to be something peculiar that isn’t easy to detect.’
‘Let’s wait and see, folks,’ said Tweedy.
The meeting broke up, leaving Tara wondering when she was going to have an opportunity to work on this case. The investigation was already floundering, while more victims were appearing. Until the lab could identify the substance or source of the poisoning, the investigation was going nowhere.
CHAPTER 24
On her way home, Tara decided that a visit to her friend Kate was long overdue.
Tara parked her car close to the house on Canning Street where Kate occupied a ground floor flat. She was looking forward also to seeing her god-daughter. It had been nearly two months since they had been together. So much can change for a baby in that time.
‘Hiya,’ said Kate cheerfully when she opened the door. She hugged Tara, but it felt awkward for both women. ‘What’s new?’ she asked.
‘Nothing much,’ Tara replied. ‘I thought it was high time I called to see you.’
Tara examined her friend. Kate was the same age and of similar build to her. She worked as a cardiac nurse on a heart ward at the Royal Hospital. This evening, she looked tired and drawn, no worse than Tara was feeling, of course. She was so used to seeing Kate displaying her latest outrageous hair colour, but in recent months she had reverted to her natural shade, a dirty fair. It was much longer, too, falling below her shoulders, and in need of styling. It seemed that their frivolous days were over. Tara had lost her baby and Kate was now a mother.
Kate asked how she had been lately, and Tara recited a brief tale of the latest emergency for Merseyside Police. She could see that Kate looked disinterested in that aspect of her life. But what else could she talk about? Since Tara had miscarried, she had done little of interest. She told her about meeting Jez and even ventured to ask her thoughts on Jez having kissed her.
‘You’re not gay, Tara. You know you’re not. Why would you even consider having a relationship with this woman? It’s ridiculous.’
‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just that after she kissed me I felt so confused about everything. And I’m feeling so alone these days.’
‘Well, that is not going to solve your problem. It will only cause you more trouble, and heaven knows you’ve had enough of that in your life. You do still have me, you know?’
‘Do I?’
‘Of course, why do you even ask?’
‘I know you must find it difficult, awkward because you have Adele and I…’
Kate hugged her again.
‘You and me, next weekend,’ said Kate, ‘let’s go out and have a blast. We’re not getting any younger. Now go into the bathroom, clean yourself up and I’ll put the kettle on.’
* * *
She left Kate an hour later but did not drive home. She couldn’t wrestle thoughts of Jez from her mind. Kate was right; she wasn’t gay and she was not going to have a romantic relationship with this woman. But she felt that she needed to see her; she felt something stir inside when she was with Jez.
Tara parked on the roadside outside the grounds of Jez’s lavish home. There was another car on the drive next to Jez’s Peugeot SUV. It was dark in colour, green perhaps, a Jaguar, and as she wondered who the visitor might be, the front door of the house opened and a man stepped out. She recognised him immediately. It had only been a few days since they had first met. It was the geriatric hippie.
‘Hello, Inspector Grogan, isn’t it? Just dropping off a few files to Jez.’
‘Good evening, Mr McIntyre,’ Tara replied.
She noted that McIntyre was quick to explain his presence at Jez’s home. Jez then appeared at the doorway.
‘Hi, Tara,’ she said, cheerfully. ‘Go on in, Skip was just leaving.’
Tara’s mind raced to all manner of scenarios regarding the company director. Why was he here at this time of night? Was there something between Jez and him?
‘Enjoy your evening,’ said McIntyre with a cynical smile as he beeped his car open.
‘So, what’s Mr McIntyre like to work with?’ Tara asked Jez, once she had seen her visitor off. The two women sat on well-worn armchairs in a smaller lounge that Jez used while watching TV. It was warm and cosy, well lived-in, with newspapers, books and magazines scattered on the sofa and an oak coffee table. Two empty coffee cups sat among the papers.
‘Skip? He’s all right. Mind you, he loves himself.’
‘Has he been with the company for long?’
‘Yes, I think so, he and Jimmy Ewing joined when Edward Harbinson took over from his father a long time ago.’
‘Were Maggie and Richard close friends?’
This time there was a prolonged pause before the reply.
‘Maggie was close to everyone. She treated Richard and Toby like a pair of kid brothers.’
Tara was suddenly conscious of sounding like a police officer again, and that was not the reason for her visit. She had decided to set matters straight with this woman. She was not looking for a relationship, but she wanted to remain friends.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t come to interview you. I didn’t mean to sound like a police detective.’
Jez’s eyes widened and she smiled. ‘So, why have you come?’ she asked.
‘To apologise for hurrying off the other night. It’s just that…’
‘I know. I’m sorry for pushing you into something that you don’t want to do.’
‘I would like us to be friends. I enjoy your company, Jez.’
Jez smiled warmly like she understood exactly what Tara was saying.
‘Then
that is exactly what we will be, Tara – good friends.’
Tara felt elated on the drive home. She and Kate had cleared the air and Jez now understood that she was not in search of a romantic relationship with her. The woman, though, remained a puzzle to her. What had her affair with Richard Andrews been about if she could so easily revert to seeking love from a woman? The sight of Skip McIntyre leaving Jez’s house as she arrived also left her with a feeling of unease.
CHAPTER 25
The station was bustling with news and developments on the poisoning incidents in the city. Whilst no obvious connections had been identified between the first victims, the poisoning of the students had given the investigators an obvious link in the case. Of the seven students who had been in the house on the evening before the outbreak of illness, five of them were taken ill, while two had not shown any symptoms.
Tara and Murray listened as Tweedy gave an update on the situation. Both officers had maintained a keen interest in the case but remained frustrated by their lack of involvement in the investigation.
‘Interviews have been conducted with the two males who were unaffected,’ said Tweedy. ‘Neither student noticed anything untoward on that evening. All those present had been drinking either bottled beer, and gin or vodka mixed with a variety of soft drinks. The seven students had eaten crisps and other snacks, however, the five who subsequently became ill had also, prior to the arrival of the other two males, consumed hot foods, namely chicken curry, chilli con carne and garlic bread. Samples of these foods have been retrieved from waste bins and sent for analysis.’
Tara relaxed slightly as her mind adjusted to the facts. It seemed now that the entire outbreak of illness and deaths was down to severe food poisoning and nothing more sinister such as a terrorist attack. Still, she would have preferred to be at the centre of the investigation.
‘Any results from the lab?’ Murray asked.
‘Preliminary tests indicate a very potent toxin was present in the chicken curry. The exact nature of the toxin has yet to be elucidated,’ said Tweedy.
‘I assume, sir,’ said Tara, ‘that the contaminated food product is being removed from shops and all items already in circulation are being recalled?’
‘That’s correct, Tara.’
But it was the murder of Maggie Hull that required the attention of Tara and Murray. The case of poisoning, whether deliberate or accidental, was not for them to dwell upon. DC John Wilson had one development to report in the Hull case when Tara returned to her desk.
‘Ma’am, we have a possible murder weapon. Uniform found an adjustable spanner inside a plastic bag. It was picked up on some waste ground a quarter of a mile from Bartlett Street.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘It went directly for analysis. Seems there was some blood on it. Also, it was not an ordinary spanner.’
‘How so?’
‘Part of a set, a toolkit. An expensive kit like those that used to come with an expensive car.’
‘Good. Maybe we’ll get some prints as well.’
Contrary to Tara’s thinking, most of the evidence suggested that Maggie Hull had died at the hands of rogue moneylenders. The story from Jez seemed to back up such a theory, and Tara knew that she had not yet finished with Tommy Gracey or with Big Beryl.
* * *
It continued to niggle with Tara that the relationship between Jez and Harbinson Fine Foods was a little bizarre. She and Andrews had an affair which resulted in the collapse of his marriage to the daughter of the company chairman. Any right-thinking individual in the chairman’s shoes, surely, would have found it difficult to maintain a working relationship with Jez the moment Andrews was dismissed and subsequently committed suicide. Edward Harbinson, on the contrary, had retained her as his secretary. It seemed as though the man had cornered the biblical market on forgiveness. Tara realised that so far Jez was her solitary link to the brutal slaying of Maggie Hull. Jez had known Maggie well enough to rescue her from unscrupulous moneylenders, well enough to give advice and to assist in sea changes within Maggie’s lonely existence. Jez had been a rare friend to Maggie and yet that friendship had, at some point, turned sour.
Tara picked up her phone, checked the number in her notebook and dialled. From the receptionist at Harbinson Fine Foods, she was put through to Mr Harbinson’s secretary.
‘Hi, Jez.’
‘Hello, Tara,’ said Jez in a telephone voice. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve managed to get hold of tickets for the Foo Fighters already?’
‘I’m afraid not. This is more of a professional call.’
‘I see. How can I help you?’ Tara noted her change in tone.
‘I wonder if you could answer a few more questions in connection with Maggie Hull.’
‘I’ll try,’ she replied.
‘Firstly, do you know the name of the loan shark that you paid off on Maggie’s behalf?’
For a moment there was silence.
‘I’m afraid I don’t. I was at her house the night they came to collect the money but they were only a pair of young lads. It seemed to me that they were the messenger boys who had either come to collect the payment or to dish out punishment for not paying.’
‘How well did Maggie seem to know them?’
‘Not well. She was very frightened of them. On that occasion, I told her to hide upstairs while I paid them off. They looked disappointed when I handed over the cash; I got the impression they were hoping to give her a beating.’
‘In the time that you and Maggie were friends, did you ever meet anyone else that she knew well?’
‘No one except for the others who work here. She was a very lonely person, Tara.’
‘I realise that.’
‘Not having much luck then?’
Tara sensed Jez’s return to a lightened mood.
‘We haven’t got far, no,’ she replied. There followed a brief pause in the conversation before Tara thought of another question.
‘Did you give Maggie any of your paintings?’
‘Give, no, but she did insist on buying one.’
‘From your environmental collection?’
Jez laughed heartily at the phrase. ‘Yes, that’s right, my environmental period.’
‘Two kids peeing a waterfall?’
‘That’s the one. Did you like it? Maggie thought it was hilarious, the idea of two young boys piddling in the forest, so natural and yet quite cheeky. She wanted to pay my normal asking price, but I’d spent months encouraging her to be more careful with her finances. I wasn’t about to accept any money off her for one of my old paintings. I told her that if she kept herself out of debt that would be payment enough.’
‘And did she?’
‘Of that, I can’t be certain. As I told you before we seemed to drift apart shortly after I paid off the loan shark.’
‘Why was that exactly?’
‘We never discussed it, but I suppose it had something to do with my affair with Richard. She was very fond of him and his wife, too. She was also very old-fashioned. In her view, men and women married for life and straying from that path was a mortal sin.’
‘Was she religious?’
‘Not particularly so. She never mentioned going to church. I think she simply had a strict upbringing and retained an old-fashioned outlook.’
As she set down her phone Tara noticed the clock on her wall showing five to five. She’d had enough and breathed a deep sigh, relieved also that her call to Jez had been successful.
In the furthest recesses of her mind, however, was an embryonic notion that if Richard Andrews were still alive then so too would Maggie Hull.
CHAPTER 26
Incessant rain and a bracing wind were the perfect foil for a cemetery set in the south-east of the city. Nature’s cold storage – Tara didn’t believe there could be a more weather-beaten place to be laid to rest. She was too late in leaving the office to make it to the funeral service in what had been Maggie Hull’s local parish church at Wavertree.
Instead, she arrived at Allerton Cemetery just as the hearse drove through the gates, continued out to the right and halted at a quiet corner bordered by low hedges. One funeral limousine and six other cars, including her Focus, had followed behind. Murray had offered to accompany her, but she asked him instead to go over the notes gathered so far on the case, particularly concerning the lead they had on loan sharks.
The men from the funeral home bore the coffin to the open grave. A man and woman stepped from the black limousine and walked, arm in arm, behind the pallbearers. The vicar from the Holy Trinity Church in Wavertree, frail and elderly, climbed from his Vauxhall, already dressed in his vestments, the wind taking its toll as he struggled against it.
Tara, reluctantly, stepped into the elements but remained a little way off, out of earshot of the proceedings but close enough to get a look at some of the mourners. Most of them were familiar faces, recently encountered in connection with Harbinson Fine Foods. Edward Harbinson was accompanied by his daughter, Nicole Andrews who looked pale and delicate, although most of her petite frame was well wrapped in a heavy coat and scarf. The funeral of her husband, Richard, had taken place only two days earlier. The company chairman appeared very withdrawn and reacted only to instructions from his daughter. Close beside them, a man battled to hold his umbrella against the wind, his face for a time obscured from Tara’s view. Within a few seconds, the umbrella succumbed as spokes bent in the wrong direction. Only then did Tara recognise Skip McIntyre, wearing a dark suit and his long hair tied into a ponytail.
Several others had more luck with their umbrellas but it was difficult to make out other faces from the food company workers. Tara assumed that among the huddle of six people standing by the grave, opposite the principal mourners, one of them was likely to be Jez. She recognised also, one of two men standing with their backs to her, as Toby Ewing. The other man appeared much older and rather stooped.
THE DARING NIGHT Page 10
