by Faith Martin
It made her smile. She’d never understood why Hillary Greene had put up with Frank Ross for so long, and she could only imagine the joy and relief everyone must feel to finally get rid of the waste of space.
As she approached Hillary’s desk, however, her spirits abruptly fell. There was only one person seated behind a computer terminal, and Janine didn’t know her. As Janine approached, she checked the stranger out cautiously. The woman was in her late twenties, with a long, lean body that was currently wearing a smart charcoal trouser suit with a grey pinstripe, and a man’s white shirt. She had very pale blonde hair, cut short and tufted into attractive spikes all around her well-shaped head. Her face was fine-boned and almost striking enough to be called beautiful. When she spotted Janine and looked up, her eyes were like lasers.
So this was her replacement. Janine couldn’t make up her mind whether to be amused or irked.
‘Hello. Hillary not here?’ she asked, then could have kicked herself for saying something so inane.
‘No, she’s just gone out to follow up a witness statement with DC Barrington,’ Gemma Fordham said.
Janine smiled grimly. ‘So she’s still insisting on working in the field, is she? Used to drive me nuts, that. I mean, why couldn’t she just ride her desk like every other DI? I don’t suppose our office Adonis has got anywhere with her since I’ve been gone?’ she asked, tossing her head towards Paul Danvers’s office — which was currently empty.
Gemma Fordham shook her head. She knew who the pretty, pregnant blonde woman was, of course. She just didn’t know why DI Janine Mallow felt so compelled to stake her own claim by coming on so strong with all the nostalgia.
‘Do you know when the boss will be back?’
Gemma shrugged. ‘She shouldn’t be long. I don’t think the witness statement was that significant.’
Janine pulled out a chair. ‘Do you mind if I sit? My feet are killing me.’
Gemma shook her head and smiled briefly.
‘Sounds like the case is stalled,’ Janine said, obviously fishing.
Gemma shrugged again.
‘I remember how that could be,’ Janine carried on, glancing around. ‘There were many times I used to think we were going to fall flat on our faces this time, and then, hey presto, the boss pulled a rabbit out of the hat. It always annoyed the hell out of me, because I could never figure out how she did it.’
Gemma blinked. So she wasn’t the only one who’d been taken by surprise by the magic Hillary Greene seemed to be able to work.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Janine said, recognising the sudden shading in the other woman’s eye. ‘She casts a hell of a long shadow, does our Hill, but it’s worth putting up with the chill. I learned more about the job during the few years I was with her than I ever did before or have since.’
Gemma’s gaze flickered to a spot just over her left shoulder, and Janine tensed. When she turned, she found Hillary Greene and a ginger-haired lanky chap walking towards her.
‘Janine, don’t get up,’ Hillary greeted her, her face bland and vaguely welcoming. ‘Keith, get another chair,’ she said to the young man, whose seat Janine suddenly realised she must have taken.
‘I’ve found her,’ Janine said without preamble, the moment Hillary sat down. Hillary blinked, took just a moment to understand what she meant, then tossed her bag under the desk and looked at her thoughtfully.
‘You sure?’ she asked warily.
Janine nodded. ‘As sure as I can be. She acted squirrelly right from the moment she set eyes on me. I could tell she recognised me, and what’s more, her house has one of the best views of the car park of any of the residences out there.’
For Gemma and Keith following the conversation was all but impossible, but at the mention of the HQ parking lot, both of them stiffened.
Hillary’s mind was racing. She’d sent Janine off on what she’d been sure would be a wild goose chase. Was it possible that Mel’s widow had found a reluctant witness after all? Or was her ex-sergeant just reading more into things than were actually there? It had been known to happen before.
‘She might just have been feeling uneasy because you are who you are,’ Hillary pointed out, further baffling the two onlookers. ‘You know as well as I do, witnesses can act in the most bizarre way for no apparent reason.’
‘I know. That’s why I want you to talk to her. Everybody knows you have a way with witnesses,’ Janine pointed out. It was true. Hillary’s interview technique was something everyone commented on. She just seemed to have a way of getting on her mark’s level and using whichever method worked best to get them talking.
‘OK. Give me her name and address and I’ll check her out,’ Hillary promised reluctantly.
Janine reached into her bag and handed her a slip of paper, already prepared. ‘I know you’re up to your eyes on a case,’ she said apologetically, but Hillary waved her to a stop.
Janine, her eyes suddenly suspiciously bright, swallowed hard, then got abruptly to her feet. ‘Thanks. So you’ll call me?’ she said, her voice a little husky now.
‘Yes. As soon as I can,’ Hillary agreed.
Janine nodded to Gemma and Keith, then turned and walked carefully away.
‘Guv,’ Gemma said uneasily. She had a bloody good idea now that Janine Mallow had somehow persuaded Hillary to allow her to work covertly on Superintendent Mallow’s killing. That could blow up in Hillary’s face like a defective firework. And for some strange reason that she didn’t want to contemplate, Gemma didn’t want to see her boss humiliated.
‘You never heard that conversation,’ Hillary said sharply, looking first at Gemma, then at Keith, who averted his eyes and looked unhappy.
‘Guv,’ Keith muttered.
Hillary fixed Gemma with a steady stare. Eventually the other woman sighed reluctantly.
‘Guv.’
* * *
DC Trevor Fields rubbed a hand across his mouth and glanced across at his mate, Harry Hastings.
‘It’s been bloody hours. We should have seen some sign of him by now.’
Fields was a young man, not long out of uniform and anxious to make a good impression. He had the shaved head that a lot of youngsters seemed to go in for nowadays, and a tattoo of a spider on the back of his hand.
Harry Hastings, in contrast, was a sergeant with over twenty years’ experience behind him. Solidly built and mostly placid by nature, he sighed now as Field repeated himself for about the tenth time in the last hour. They were currently sitting in a nondescript Fiat Uno, parked a little way across from Clive Myers’s respectable semi in Thame. Two other officers were watching the back, and were in constant radio contact. None of them had spotted Myers moving around inside the house all day.
‘I’ve informed Evans, and we’ve been told to sit and watch,’ Harry said patiently. ‘You know that, you heard me make the call. Now just sit and watch, will you?’
Trevor Fields shifted on his seat. It was driving Harry insane the way the man couldn’t seem to sit still for ten minutes at a time. If he didn’t learn to cope with observation better than this, Harry could see him being bumped back down into uniform pretty damned quick. Perhaps the short sharp shock would do him good.
‘But he must have done a runner in the night, it’s obvious,’ Fields argued plaintively.
Harry shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. With this canny bugger, you never can tell. Chances are, he’s just holed up in there and is deliberately keeping out of sight just to wind us up. He’s done that before, you know. Once when I was on obbo, and twice more with other teams. It’s a game of attrition with him. He’s an old soldier, for Pete’s sake. He knows we’re watching him, and it’s his way of telling us that we don’t scare him.’
Trevor Fields sighed heavily. Restlessly, he reached for a stick of chewing gum from his trouser pocket, opened it and began to chew noisily.
Harry gritted his teeth and tried to think of football.
* * *
Clive Myers grunted a
s he hoisted the black bin-bagged weight into the hole. Inside it was the body of Gary Firth, the rapist of his daughter Evie.
It had taken him only one bullet to get the job done, as it had with Superintendent Philip Mallow.
As he’d surmised, Gary Firth had gone to ground in an out-of-the-way spot — to be precise, in a battered 1950s caravan at the bottom of a scraggy field, fit for nothing except grazing sheep. He imagined that the farmer who owned the field had either given up trying to evict the previous occupants, or had come to some sort of arrangement with them. Since the caravan’s nearest neighbour was a small stone cottage nearly three miles away, Clive supposed that nobody had cause to complain about the eyesore. And the sheep wouldn’t care. He’d observed Gary Firth for over an hour, watching him drink beer and smoke pot. And it was during one of his quiet periods, whilst he’d been sitting on the step of the caravan smoking a reefer, that Clive Myers had shot him.
Always a neat man, Clive had cleaned up the minimal amount of mess in the caravan doorway and steps, and locked the caravan carefully after him.
Now, job done, he began patiently to fill in the hole. It was a lot easier to fill it in than it had been to dig it out.
As the shovels of earth hit the black plastic with a scattering sound that reminded him of heavy rain, he remembered the last time he’d visited his daughter in the psychiatric institution that was now her home. It had been raining heavily then. Perhaps that was what had brought the thought to mind.
Evie hadn’t known who he was, and if he tried to touch her, she’d start up a high-pitched keening that would bring the nurses running.
So he’d learned not to try and touch her.
As he levelled off the ground where Gary Firth lay, he hunted around for small saplings and pieces of bracken, which he planted carefully in the earth. Within a month, the spot would be taken over by nature, and nobody would ever find it.
Sweating, dirty, numb and tired, Clive Myers began erasing all traces of his brief occupation of the woods. Afterwards he would need to drive back to Oxfordshire, timing his arrival just right. To get back into his home unseen, it needed to be fully dark. He never even contemplated getting caught. The back roads beckoned, and his anonymous van would attract no attention.
In fact, he rarely gave the police a thought. It had been their job to protect his family and they had failed. It had been their remit to catch the criminals and punish them. And they had failed.
Now it was his turn. And he would not fail.
The man in overall charge of his daughter’s case had paid. The lad who’d raped his daughter had just paid. Now there was one more who needed to pay, and after that — well Clive wasn’t sure.
Things were bound to hot up now that Firth had gone missing, and once he’d killed DI Gregg, the cops would almost certainly charge him — regardless of how little evidence they had. So once he’d got rid of Gregg, he’d need to go into hiding. Whether or not he’d be able to rid the world of the other two animals who’d stood by and cheered whilst his Evie was violated, he wasn’t sure. The cops would be bound to take them into hiding and protective custody. He might not be able to find them. Or get at them if he did.
But he’d have a damned good go at it. And if he died trying — well, so what?
He had nothing left to live for, after all.
* * *
DCI Gawain Evans sat at his desk, listening to the latest report from the teams watching the Myers house.
The man had still not been seen.
‘I agree, he’s probably playing silly buggers again,’ Evans said. He was a thickset man, with dark, coarse hair and dark brown eyes. He was missing his wife and kids, although he tried to get back to London every weekend. He was dogged and meticulous, but even he was beginning to wonder whether Superintendent Philip Mallow’s killer was ever going to make a mistake.
The man on the other end of the line, a Sergeant Harry Hastings, was a good solid man to have on the ground, and Evans listened to him closely. Since first heading up this investigation, he’d quickly come to learn the strengths and weaknesses of all those on his team. He worked best with the men and women he’d brought with him from the Met of course, because he knew them better than the Oxford contingent. But everyone on his team pulled their weight — and then some. This was, after all, personal. And working and all but living out of HQ at Thames Valley had impressed on them all just how much the dead super had been liked and was mourned.
In fact, although he’d never met the man, Gawain Evans had come to feel as if Mellow Mallow had been a personal friend too.
‘But then again, he’s clever enough to be doing this to set up a pattern. If he keeps playing hide-and-seek and then showing up, he might think he can lull us into a false sense of security,’ Evans said, not realising as he spoke that Myers had already achieved his aim. ‘I’ll put in a requisition order for some night-sensitive cameras and goggles, but whether we’ll get them at all, let alone any time soon, your guess is as good as mine.’
Evans didn’t need to tell the ground troops just how tight the budget was. It was enough to make even the most stalwart of officers feel despondent.
He listened to the man on the scene for a moment, then sighed. ‘No, better not go in. You know what happened last time.’
The last time Clive Myers had pulled this trick Evans had ordered the team to go to the house and physically reassure themselves of his presence on the premises. They had, but Myers had instantly called his solicitors, who’d filed a harassment charge. Although they could hardly serve the police officers with a restraining order, the message had come through loud and clear.
You didn’t ‘harass’ Clive Myers unless you had a clear and good reason to do so.
‘We’d better just watch and see,’ Evans sighed wearily. ‘Tell the teams relieving you tonight to keep extra alert. If he has gone AWOL he’ll probably try to slip in again unobserved.’ He listened to the rumbling voice on the other line, the voice of weary experience, and sighed in agreement. ‘I know, without night-vision equipment it’ll be hard. Yes, I know the man’s ex-army. Just tell everyone to keep out of the cars and stay on foot, as close to all the exits and entrances as they can. Keep in constant contact. If he does try and creep back in, and we can catch him at it, at least it’ll give us an excuse to have him back in for questioning. And his bloody solicitors can scream harassment as much as they like.’
He listened for a few more moments, grunted, then hung up. He rubbed his face wearily, and looked around the small office they’d assigned him. His team was still working flat out, and he dreaded telling them the news that he’d received just that morning.
Starting at the beginning of next week, the investigation into the murder of Detective Superintendent Philip Mallow was being officially scaled down. He knew just how demoralizing an effect that would have on everyone at Thames Valley, and especially on his own team.
Damn it. Myers just had to slip up sometime soon. The man wasn’t infallible. Was he?
CHAPTER NINE
Hillary Greene drove the now familiar route back to the hamlet of Steeple Knott. The weather was damp and grey without being too cold, and she wound down her window a bare inch as she made the turning off the dual carriageway on to the narrow country lane.
When she parked outside the Philpotts’ cottage she saw that Barrington was waiting for her just inside the open front door.
‘Guv.’ He closed the door after her and led the way up the narrow flight of stairs. ‘I found them in his wardrobe, in an old shoebox.’
Hillary sighed. ‘It’s a favourite hiding place for old folks,’ she acknowledged. ‘Don’t ask me why. But the next time you do a house search, remember it.’
‘Yes, guv.’ Barrington opened the door to a small bedroom with sloping eaves. Hillary supposed Eddie must have let his daughter have the biggest bedroom, whilst the two children must share one. Now if that didn’t make a recipe ripe for sibling ructions, she didn’t know what would.
‘Let’s have a look then,’ Hillary said, sitting down on the side of the late Edward Philpott’s bed, and Barrington proudly passed his find over to her.
‘Hope you don’t mind my calling you in, guv, but I thought you’d like to see them straight away.’
Hillary nodded absently, her eyes scanning the legal documents quickly. They were not, as might be expected, a copy of the victim’s will, or even his copy of his pre-paid funeral arrangements — which was a trend that Hillary had noticed had been growing during the last few years. Instead, they were a series of letters between Edward Philpott and a Mr Clarence Greengage, of Phipps, Brown & Greengage, Solicitors. Their office, she noted from the headed paper, was in Banbury.
She read the letters silently, then sighed. ‘So Philpott wasn’t going to renew Martha Hepton’s lease,’ she mused. ‘Funny, she never mentioned anything about it to me and Frank.’
‘Maybe she didn’t know, guv,’ Barrington said, half-heartedly playing devil’s advocate. As he spoke he glanced at his watch.
He’d intended to give Gavin Moreland a call soon, knowing that his father was due to finish giving his testimony around about now. He could only hope that his lover’s father had been able to put on a fair show and give a good account of himself, or Gavin would be beside himself with worry. But the thought of coping with his possible histrionics with Hillary around didn’t really appeal, and he uneasily decided to wait until he was at home this evening.
But no doubt that would be wrong too. He could almost hear Gavin’s opening sarcastic remarks right now. It had been nearly a month since he’d been up to London, and although their reunions were everything Keith could hope for, he was coming, slowly but inexorably, to the conclusion that things couldn’t go on like this for ever.
But, presumably, they wouldn’t have to. Once Gavin’s father, a prosperous but undeniably shady businessman, had either been exonerated or convicted, things would change anyway. But Keith didn’t like to think about how things would change should Gavin’s father be sent down. Apart from anything else, Keith would almost certainly come in for some major flak, just because of his job; a job that Gavin loathed and for which he vilified him whenever the opportunity arose. But, even more worrying than that, Keith had come away from the capital after his last visit with the distinct impression that Gavin might just decide to give up his own dreams of a professional life on the tennis circuit, and buckle down to the family business.
