MURDER IN THE GARDEN

by Faith Martin

  Not that the man driving this particular vehicle looked anything like Myers, Janine noted dispiritedly. He had a thick patch of nearly black hair for a start, and a neatly trimmed black moustache to match. His face was much more rounded than Myers’s, too, and he wore gold-framed spectacles. As he drove past, Janine had a view of him for about one and a half seconds.

  And in those one and a half seconds she saw his earlobes.

  And was instantly transported back about two years, and was listening to her old boss, DI Hillary Greene, talking about disguises.

  Janine couldn’t quite remember how the conversation had started. But she remembered saying how unlikely it was that, given today’s modern policing methods and the quality of the criminal fraternity, the chances of any officer having to follow a ‘master of disguise’ was practically zero. Such characters, she’d maintained, belonged to the era of Sherlock Holmes.

  Hillary had agreed with her, but had then given her a brief lecture on how to spot disguised people — just in case.

  Forget the hair, she’d said — the rise in the popularity of modern amateur theatrical societies made access to good-quality wigs and facial hair a doddle. Forget even the shapes of noses or faces — prosthetics and simple cotton wool padding in the cheeks could radically alter an appearance.

  It was no good either, Hillary had maintained, thinking about eyes — with coloured contact lenses easily available you could have bright purple eyes if you wanted them, and the use of simple cosmetics could alter eyebrows and skin tones.

  No, Hillary had said, if you wanted to spot a disguise, look to the ears. Ears were something that very few people thought to disguise, and they were — largely — unalterable anyway.

  Janine sat up straighter in her car seat. The white van, travelling at a very modest twenty-five miles an hour, wasn’t yet at the end of the road.

  On impulse, she started her car engine and let a Vauxhall pass her before pulling out.

  Janine Mallow had spent many long hours studying the face of Clive Myers, the man she believed had murdered her husband. She’d seen pictures of him from his army days, snapshots of him on holiday with his wife and daughter. She’d even seen his wedding photos as well as photos of him taken by reporters who’d covered his daughter’s trial.

  And in all of those pictures she’d noticed something about him that reminded her of what Hillary Greene had said about ears. It wasn’t a widely known fact, but the vast majority of the population had hanging earlobes — that is, lobes that you could pinch between thumb and finger, and that hung loosely at the base of the ear.

  Only a very small percentage of people had ears that actually fixed into the side of their face.

  But Clive Myers was one of those.

  As had been the driver of that white van.

  OK, the chances weren’t great that the man driving had been Clive Myers. However, Janine had become bored, and she could always go back if it turned out the white van man was harmless.

  * * *

  Hillary Greene slogged her way to the end of the Murder Book, by which time Gemma had returned and Frank Ross had left early. Nobody tried to stop him from leaving.

  Only after she’d finished with the Murder Book did Hillary take up the Linda Quirke file again.

  Once more something nagged at her but, yet again, she couldn’t think what.

  With a sigh, she leaned back in her chair and stretched her cramped shoulders. Gemma watched her, wondering when her boss had last had a decent night’s sleep. She looked shattered.

  ‘Guv. Randy Cauldicott, the chap who heard Eddie Philpott talking about Tom Cleaves,’ she prompted.

  Hillary dragged her mind away from the nagging worry of the Linda Quirke file and forced herself to concentrate. ‘Right. You’ve just re-interviewed him?’

  ‘Yes, guv. He definitely had the impression that Eddie thought he had something on Tom. He said,’ she consulted the immaculate shorthand in her notebook, ‘that Eddie had been “pleased as punch” and Randy got the feeling that he either had approached or was going to approach Tom about it.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘Got the feeling that . . . Had the impression that . . . All phrases that a defence lawyer would have a field day with.’

  Gemma agreed miserably. ‘But it does make it more of a possibility that Eddie might have set Tom off,’ she insisted, reluctant to dismiss their only really solid lead. She knew that Keith Barrington liked Martha Hepton for it, but she had no idea what Hillary Greene was thinking.

  ‘If Tom got the impression that Eddie was trying to blackmail him,’ Hillary allowed drily. ‘If. Another word you never want to use at a criminal trial if you can help it.’

  Gemma sighed grimly. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Keep plugging away,’ Hillary answered briskly. What else could they do? They were stuck, and everyone on her team knew it.

  And talking about plugging away — Hillary reached for the Linda Quirke file again and began at the beginning. Gemma, puzzled by her boss’s fascination with the decades-old file, gave her a rather aggrieved look, and began to type up her notes.

  Hillary forced herself to breathe deeply and let her mind go blank. Then she began to read, starting with Linda Quirke’s details. Sometimes, if she let her conscious mind wander off, it gave her subconscious mind a chance to ring a bell, loud enough for her to hear it.

  Linda Mary Quirke. Her date of birth. Physical characteristics. School record.

  Nothing sprang out at her.

  Her mother’s details. Her father’s details. Her younger sister’s details.

  Still nothing.

  Went missing on . . . As she read the date that Linda Quirke went missing, she felt a tiny tug on the back of her mind.

  The date? Puzzled, Hillary stared at the date, but there was nothing about it that could possibly be significant.

  She moved on, and felt another restless tug. Obediently she went back to that August day in 1981. It couldn’t be the date, Hillary thought, frustrated enough to sigh out loud.

  Barrington looked across at her and saw her frowning savagely.

  Not the date. But every time Hillary tried to move on, her subconscious tugged her back to it.

  All right, Hillary thought angrily, if it’s not the date, what is it? Something to do with the date, without being the actual date itself. Oh, this is ridiculous, she thought, shifting angrily on her seat. A date was a date.

  What was there about a date that wasn’t necessarily a date?

  Timing?

  Timing.

  Hillary suddenly went very still. Timing. Of course it was the timing. Damn it! She all but launched herself off her chair and grabbed the Murder Book, riffling through it frantically.

  ‘I can’t have been that stupid,’ she thought, and then realised she’d spoken aloud when Gemma Fordham looked up at her, startled. ‘Where the hell is it,’ Hillary muttered, turning the pages so hard she almost ripped them.

  And then she found it. Nearly at the beginning of the book, nestled within Eddie Philpott’s biography.

  The timing.

  ‘I was right,’ she said, astounded. ‘It is all about the timing.’ How the hell, a sharp angry voice shouted in the back of her mind, could I have missed this?

  ‘Guv?’ Gemma said sharply.

  Hillary slumped back in her chair as it all came rushing up to her, like an eager puppy offering a bone. It was all so clear, so very damned obvious. In fact, it was so damned self-evident, she could have known on that very first day who’d killed Eddie Philpott.

  If only she’d been paying attention. If only she didn’t have her head up her arse worrying about other stuff.

  She would have known after her first round of interviews. The killer had practically told her in no uncertain words that they’d done it. Hell, even the forensic evidence had been blatant and there for anyone with half a brain to see.

  ‘I just can’t believe I didn’t see it,’ Hillary said, still speaking out loud.

&nb
sp; Gemma shot a quick, excited look at Barrington, for she knew what this meant. She’d seen this eureka moment once before, when her boss had solved her previous murder case.

  Then, on the heels of her elation, she felt a distinct shaft of unease. If Hillary Greene had figured it all out and, from the looks of things, she obviously had, then Gemma should have figured it out too. Hillary had been consulting the Murder Book, and had seen something in it. Well, Gemma too had had access to the Murder Book. More than that, Hillary Greene insisted on full disclosure in her team, with nobody holding anything back, or hugging facts to themselves. At the end of the day, it had become a habit with them to discuss what they’d done and learned during the day. So what Hillary knew, they all knew.

  So damn it, why hadn’t she seen it as well? Whatever it was. It was at times like this that Gemma felt incredibly inadequate.

  Hillary Greene shook her head helplessly. She’d gone very pale, and Keith Barrington moved nervously to the edge of his seat. He might not understand it, but he sensed that his boss was having a crisis of confidence.

  And he didn’t like it.

  For long, silent minutes, Hillary Greene continued to stare unseeingly in front of her, a growing look of horror on her face.

  * * *

  Janine Mallow frowned thoughtfully as the white van she was following turned left yet again, confirming what she’d only begun to suspect.

  The driver was going in one big square. Moreover, a square that had DI Peter Gregg’s house firmly in the middle of it.

  She felt her heart rate rise. Could this really be it? Was it just possible that Lady Luck had handed her a million-to-one shot? Her hands felt slippery on the wheel, and she let a second car get between her and the van.

  If it was Myers in that van, the last thing she wanted was for him to spot her.

  * * *

  In Thame, Ray Porter stared at the note on the door and swallowed hard.

  ‘What the hell do we do, Mervyn?’ he asked, his voice little more than a squeak.

  Mervyn Jones shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Nothing,’ he said simply.

  Ray blinked. ‘What do you mean, you great big lump? We’ve got to do something!’ he yelped.

  Mervyn Jones looked at the excitable cockney with interest. ‘Such as what? Want to use your mobile or radio to contact Evans, do you?’

  ‘Hell no. You read the note.’

  ‘Boom!’ Mervyn said, straight-faced.

  ‘Shut up!’ Ray pleaded.

  ‘So do you want to try and crawl out the window, or open the door?’ Mervyn persisted patiently.

  ‘Hell no!’

  ‘Well then. The only thing we can do is nothing, isn’t it?’ Mervyn pointed out with aggravating logic. And then, seeing that the youngster looked anxious enough to wet himself, he relented and added more kindly, ‘Look, lad, DCI Evans is going to get very impatient very quickly when we don’t report in, right?’

  Ray Porter agreed that he would.

  ‘So he’ll send someone round, or even come himself, to see why we don’t report in, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Ray said, then went as green as pond slime. ‘If he tries to come in the house, we’ll all be blown sky high!’

  ‘So we will,’ Mervyn agreed baldly. ‘So I suggest we get cracking on getting our notebooks out and making free with a pen. Then we can attract the attention of whoever comes, and get them to read our message through the front window.’

  ‘Message?’

  ‘Don’t come in or we all go BOOM!’ Mervyn Jones said, with nice resonance.

  Ray Porter gulped like a cartoon mouse.

  * * *

  Janine Mallow fell back another hundred yards. This meant that the white van was able to turn corners and set off down different roads for several long seconds before she could get to them. But the trouble was, the van was driving so slowly that unless she pulled back even further, the driver was bound to spot her.

  Already the two cars she’d let come between them had already overtaken, and there was very little traffic about to take their place. She reached the turning in the road that the van had taken and indicated left.

  She felt the tension cramping her stomach as she peered ahead, and sighed in relief when she saw the back right-hand side of the van disappear down another road.

  He’d turned left again. Heading back towards Gregg’s house.

  With a spurt of speed that made an old woman walking two terriers along the pavement jump in fright, Janine accelerated down the residential street and came to the junction.

  When she looked left, the van was nowhere in sight.

  Janine swore savagely and quickly turned left, her head swivelling left and right every time she spotted a turning into another road. She was almost bouncing up and down on her seat with tension.

  Damn it. Where had he gone?

  * * *

  ‘I can see him,’ Ray Porter said with an excited squeal. The two policemen were standing in the front window of the house and peering out on to the road.

  Climbing from a large black Astra, DCI Gawain Evans glanced around angrily. From their position at the window both men began to wave frantically.

  Evans spotted them almost at once. The expression on his face as he spotted his two officers waving at him like children spotting their daddy would, under other circumstances, have made Mervyn Jones laugh out loud.

  Ray Porter, though, was far beyond thoughts of humour. He quite simply had never been so scared in his life. The thought of Clive Myers, lying upstairs in his bed, his calloused thumb playing teasingly with a detonator switch, was wreaking havoc on his nervous system.

  He just wanted to get out of there, and it was taking all his self-control to stop himself from trying to jump out of the window — regardless of whether or not it was open.

  * * *

  Janine saw the brake lights of the white van just in time, and indicated right. This time the van was travelling faster, but still not doing the 40mph speed limit that was the restriction in the area.

  Janine allowed her own speedometer to creep up, determined not to lose sight of him again. She didn’t think her nerves could stand it.

  Of course, there was still a possibility that white van man was an innocent, maybe an out-of-towner, lost and looking for a delivery address.

  But Janine just didn’t think so.

  She could feel it in her bones.

  This was it.

  * * *

  Hillary Greene slowly became aware that Keith Barrington and Gemma Fordham were staring at her, with varying looks of concern on their faces.

  As well they might, Hillary thought bleakly. As SIO on this case, she’d totally botched it.

  She’d always felt, since her first day back, that she wasn’t operating at her best. But now, just when it was becoming clear to her how very much off her game she’d been, she had to admit that she’d been little short of incompetent.

  And she surely shouldn’t have been in charge of this case.

  ‘Guv,’ Gemma said softly.

  Hillary smiled. ‘I have to go and see Danvers,’ she said grimly.

  And she wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Barrington watched her walk across the office, noticing how stiff-legged and rigidly she held herself. Something about the sight of his boss made him want to cry.

  ‘Is she going to be all right?’ he heard himself ask. And when he looked across at his sergeant, he wasn’t reassured to see a tight look of apprehension cross her face.

  * * *

  Clive Myers parked his white van just across from a large plot of allotments. He looked up as a mid-range dark green saloon car drove quickly past him, a blonde woman at the wheel and talking on a mobile phone.

  He shook his head, wondering why drivers would do it.

  The saloon turned right at the end of the road and disappeared from view.

  In the car, Janine Mallow put the switched-off phone back into her bag. She’d only held it up to her face in o
rder to obscure her features from the van driver’s view. After all, she’d reasoned, if she knew Myers by sight, he would almost certainly recognise her. Now she pulled her car into the first available space and switched off the engine.

  Then she reached for the gun under the driver’s seat and shoved it into her voluminous bag. She got out of the car and, not even bothering to lock it, speed-walked to the end of the road.

  There she cautiously looked back in the direction she’d just come, and was just in time to see the van driver, carrying a large, long canvas bag, cross the road and disappear into the allotments.

  Puffing slightly, and feeling cramped and sick to her stomach, Janine Mallow walked quickly up the pavement towards the allotment gates.

  * * *

  In Thame, DCI Evans approached the Myers house cautiously, and saw the two clowns inside hold up a piece of paper to the window.

  Suddenly, all his irritability fled. When they’d failed to report back to him at HQ, he’d taken the snap decision to drive out here, very much on impulse. The fact that everything was quiet on the Gregg front had helped his decision along, of course.

  On spotting his two officers inside the house, his first reaction had been one of angry relief.

  Now, as he approached the window, he felt the first grim tingle of warning. His eyes squinted as he tried to make out the block capitals that had been written on the small rectangle page of a policeman’s notebook.

  Something here seemed very wrong.

  And when eventually he was close enough to read Mervyn Jones’s short message, he felt the skin on the nape of his neck contract as if someone had placed an ice cube there.

  He stepped back, and held both hands out in front of him, patting the air, indicating that the two men should stay put, stay calm and wait.

  The habitually unflappable Mervyn Jones nodded. And, after an agonized moment, Ray Porter reluctantly followed suit.

  DCI Gawain Evans ran back to his car. A DS sat behind the driver’s wheel, where Evans had told him to wait.

  Evans opened the passenger door and leaned in. ‘Get the bomb squad,’ he snapped grimly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Although Janine had been living in her husband’s house in Kidlington for nearly a year now, she still didn’t know all the town’s nooks and crannies that well. And as she peered cautiously over the allotment gates, she found it hard to get her bearings.