Narrow is the Way

by Faith Martin

  Hillary, though, looked as if she’d just come across the whereabouts to Eldorado, and quickly opened the file and began to read.

  Frank parked behind a Reliant Robin car, and stared at it for a few seconds. Did losers still buy these three-wheeled trikes? Apparently so.

  The surrounding suburb, though, didn’t look like the kind that approved of Reliant Robins. Most of the houses were detached, with big, well-kept gardens, neat fences and hedges, well-maintained paintwork and no loose kerbstones. The residences themselves were that curious kind of mock-Tudor come country-cottage, so beloved of developers. Frank knew he’d never have been able to afford a mortgage on one of these babies if he lived and worked until he was ninety.

  Perhaps the Reliant Robin owner had a sense of humour. Or, more likely he was one of those sorts who simply went to pieces on a driving test.

  He glanced up at the house he wanted, speculating on Mr T.A. Orne. He must be doing fairly well in the world, or he wouldn’t be living here.

  So just why did the middle-classes hire PIs nowadays? With divorce so painless and commonplace he doubted it was a domestic issue. If you wanted to know if the missus was sleeping around, just assume that she was. Statistically, you were almost bound to be right.

  So what else. Missing kid?

  Frank could have used the radio and asked for a computer check, but he didn’t have time. Besides, it might alert Hillary to what he was up to, and he didn’t want to have his wings clipped just yet.

  He hiked up his trousers, which kept slipping past his bulging belly and threatening to drop, and set off up the pavement. He’d have to buy some jeans with a bigger waist, but Frank resented spending money on such fripperies as clothes. Beer, fags, women, betting. But clothes? He supposed he could trawl the charity shops though.

  At the neat, wrought-iron garden gate leading to the Orne residence, Frank stopped and considered his options. The straightforward approach never appealed to Frank much. He always assumed everyone was up to something, and for a copper, taking the sneaky approach was second nature anyway. So he pushed open the gate, ignored the front doorbell and trotted around the side. The pretty displays of Michaelmas daisies, late-flowering asters, chrysanthemums and dahlias went unnoticed. As did the man who was standing just inside the open door of a garden shed, listlessly scraping damp earth off a shovel.

  Terry Orne was the gardener of the family, although lately it had been more of a chore than a pleasure. Something to get him out of the house, a way to pass the time thinking of other things. Something apart from the fact that his son had died and there had been nothing he could do about it.

  After the funeral, taking care of the flowers had meant that Vivian, his wife, would have a steady supply of fresh blooms to take to Barry’s grave. His small, small grave.

  Terry had been scraping the shovel clean for nearly five minutes now. His wife was inside, maybe crying, maybe sleeping. The doctors had given her pills, but she’d stopped taking them about a week ago.

  He was staring sightlessly out the dirty shed window, only half his brain registering the fact that there was a stranger walking carefully alongside his house, looking over at the neighbouring gardens and then up at the neighbouring houses, as if checking nobody was watching.

  Burglar.

  Terry Orne blinked, suddenly coming back to the garden shed. Back to life and reality.

  The man was fat, with a full-moon face, shabby-looking suit, piggy eyes and a surprisingly benevolent look. No, he couldn’t be a burglar. Not in broad daylight, surely? But he was up to no good. Of that Terry was sure.

  Suddenly, Terry Orne felt a burning tide creep up his throat, making his face burn. Was this the bastard who had phoned yesterday?

  He’d come home early from his work at the garage. His right-hand man had assured him that there’d be no problem with the bloke from Walsall who was coming down to inspect their classic Humber. Terry hadn’t cared if there had been. What was the point? He no longer had a son to pass the business on to, and he doubted if his daughter would be interested. But from the moment he’d walked into the kitchen, and heard Vivian’s tense, fraught voice coming from the lounge, he knew something was up.

  Vivian had heard him by then though, and had quickly spoken something and hung up the phone. She had refused to discuss it ever since. He knew it had been a man on the other end of the line, because he’d heard as much before the conversation had been so abruptly terminated.

  He wasn’t stupid. He knew his wife, and never once suspected an affair. No, he suspected something far more dangerous.

  Vivian was one of those women who never let go. Never gave up. She’d been tireless all through Barry’s illness, ever since his leukaemia had been diagnosed two days after his sixth birthday. Whilst he had reeled and lurched from one crisis to another, it had been Vivian who’d dealt with the doctors, Vivian who’d done her own research on the internet when the doctors had begun to give up on their son, Vivian who’d lobbied charities, foreign doctors and hospitals, always badgering for a bone-marrow donor to be found, never giving up hope. It had been Vivian who’d all but arm-wrestled doctors into trying the latest medicines, and had even, on one occasion, raided their bank account to pay for illegally-obtained experimental drugs from America.

  And who knew what else she might have been up to since? Terry certainly didn’t. Though he guessed that she had become involved in something during those final few weeks of Barry’s life, something that now seemed to be coming back to haunt her. But what? Barry was dead, for no bone-marrow donor had been found.

  He supposed Vivian could have been talking to some shady character who’d promised her the world back when they still had a living son to try and save, but had then failed to deliver and was now – what? Threatening her? Was he demanding money? Threatening to go to the cops? As the episode with the illegal drugs had shown, Vivian would have gone to any lengths to try and save their son, and Terry was right there with her.

  But the world was full of bastards, and he only wished she’d confide in him. It was just that, since losing Barry, the stuffing seemed to have gone right out of her. She’d been too listless to care. It was only on the phone yesterday that the old angry spark had flared briefly back to life, only to die again when she’d spotted her husband watching and listening, and had quickly hung up the phone.

  Terry had wanted to kill somebody, there and then. Now he felt the same way again.

  Months of rage and frustration were coming to boiling point. Weeks of watching his 8-year-old boy fade to white and die. Nights of wondering when, when, when, would that final breath be taken? Visions of his boy’s eyes, watching him without blame, without hope, ran together in one stream of never-ending guilt. Barry had never once asked them to save him. It was as if, even at only eight years old, he’d known what it would do to them if he had.

  But how could you fight death? What was the point of railing against fate? Against the big question, ‘Why Me? Why Us?’ there was no come back.

  Now, though, here was flesh and blood to pound. Here, Terry Orne was suddenly sure, was the man on the other end of the telephone line. The leech who had somehow got his hooks into his wife.

  Terry lifted the clean spade further into the air, the knuckles of the hand that clutched the handle going white with tension. Come on, you bastard, just a bit further. Do a bit more snooping. Yeah, that’s right. Look through the lounge window.

  Was Vivian inside, or was she in the kitchen? Or upstairs?

  Soundlessly, Terry Orne stepped from the garden shed and began to make his way to the fat man who was peering into the window, his grubby, chubby hands cupped either side of his eyes, shutting out the light and to let him see in.

  There was no privacy in death, Terry Orne had learned. Doctors, prodding, poking, prying. Relatives supporting. Friends commiserating. Undertakers asking what casket you wanted. Now, here, in what should be a quiet time for them both, somebody else was snooping. Butting his ugly head into what sho
uld be private.

  He didn’t know what Vivian was keeping from him. He didn’t care. He just wanted it all to stop.

  Slowly, carefully, spade raised, Terry Orne got closer to the man violating his home, his wife, his life and his all-important grief.

  *

  Hillary passed on the last of the sheets to Tommy and slowly leaned back in her chair.

  It was all there.

  Vivian Orne had first contacted Gregory Innes six months ago. Her son, Barry, was dying from leukaemia, and was desperately in need of a bone-marrow donor. So far, it seemed, no match had been found. But a nurse at Barry’s hospital had inadvertently said something that had started the desperate mother wondering.

  Had a donor been found after all? A donor who had then proved unwilling to go through with the surgery needed to remove bone marrow? It seemed impossible. Who would refuse to save a little boy’s life? Yet the doubt must have been terrible, for she’d gone to Gregory Innes to check it out.

  Even Hillary had to admit, the PI had done a thorough job. Of course, the nurse, when approached, had denied hinting at any such thing, and the PI had been met with a stone wall at the hospital. But that hadn’t stopped him. Illegal wire taps, an unnamed source within the donor system, and the payment of a £1,000 ‘finder’s fee’ by Vivian Orne had led Gregory Innes to one Dr Lincoln Crowder, and a surgery near Oxford.

  Reading Innes’s report on their conversation, Hillary had at last understood what it was that had worried the health official so much. He had not exactly confirmed that a donor in the Oxford area had been found who would prove a suitable match for the desperately ill Barry Orne, but he hadn’t denied it either.

  Moreover, Innes had found out that Julia Reynolds had had her appendix out a year before. How had he known that that fact was significant unless the GP had intimated to Innes that it might be? How else had the PI got on to the surgeon, and thence to Julia Reynolds’ medical records?

  Hillary couldn’t find it in her heart to blame Dr. Crowder. As a GP, he’d know all about the heartbreak the Ornes must have been going through. His sympathies would have been with the boy – as were her own. Perhaps he thought that the boy’s mother would have more success in persuading Julia Reynolds to donate her bone-marrow. Obviously, the combined weight of the medical profession had failed.

  Yes, she could understand only too well why the doctor had taken such a risk, but no wonder he’d been so scared when the police had come calling.

  Innes’s files had been very careful to make no mention of how he’d got his hands on Julia Reynolds’ medical records. Certainly the copies in the folder were bad photocopies of yet other photocopies, but they were still clear enough to show that Julia Reynolds had indeed been thrown up by the medical register of donors as a high-ratio match to Barry Orne.

  And from there on in, it got really ugly.

  Doctors had at once contacted Julia Reynolds, told her of the match, and tried to schedule a time for her to go in for the necessary surgery. But Julia, with her phobia of hospitals, needles and illness, had flatly refused, and had continued to refuse, despite all entreaties, until the boy had died, just over two weeks ago.

  ‘Shit, guv,’ Tommy said miserably, as he read the last page and looked across at Hillary. ‘How could she just let a little kiddie die?’

  Hillary shook her head helplessly.

  She’d had a friend at college once, with a phobia of swans. Swans, of all things. Barbara had known in her head that the big white birds weren’t evil. That whenever she walked by a river, they weren’t going to come at her, hissing and breaking her bones with their big wings. She explained all this to Hillary once, and even admitted that she could see why others thought them beautiful. But she herself could never see one of the birds without breaking out into a cold sweat. Couldn’t walk past one unless it was well out on the water. Just the thought of them reduced her to trembling terror. She’d even thrown up once, when they’d been walking past Magdalen College, and a swan, flying low across the bridge, had suddenly startled her. Hillary had only been able to stand by helplessly while her friend was sick, then lead her, still shaking badly, to the nearest pub and a big, comforting brandy.

  So she knew something of the stranglehold phobias had on people; of the illogic of them; of their very real power. Even so. But then again, who was she to judge? If she had a paralysing fear of something, how did she know that she would have the strength to overcome it?

  No. She might not have reason to judge, Hillary thought grimly, but what of the boy’s parents? If Innes had gone back to them with the name of the donor, what judgement might they have felt entitled to bring down on her?

  She remembered the face powder in Julia’s hair, the size 8 shoe and shook her head in self-disgust. All along she’d got it wrong. Even with Vivian Orne’s car spotted outside the vic’s house, she’d still missed it. Right from the first, she’d assumed that they were after a jealous lover, a male, when all along it had been a grieving mother. She’d almost blown it, big time.

  ‘We’ve got to go and see Innes,’ she said, grimly.

  chapter fifteen

  They were at Gregory Innes’s office within five minutes, Tommy wondering nervously if the PI would try to make a break for it, or try any rough stuff, if cornered. He didn’t look like the type who’d put up a fight, but he could run like a rabbit, as Hillary already knew. So when they reached the top floor of the converted Victorian house, he went through the door first.

  Hillary let him.

  Gregory Innes’s office was surprisingly light and airy, due to the high ceiling and large windows. He’d kept the walls painted a clean white, had laid down hard-wearing neutral-coloured carpeting, and kept the furniture to a minimum. Grey filing cabinets glowered gloomily against nearly all four walls, and an old-looking computer took up space on what was obviously a desk that had been recovered from a skip. It certainly didn’t need ‘distressing’ at any rate.

  ‘Detective Inspector Greene,’ Gregory acknowledged unhappily, his eyes darting from the big constable to the woman he’d hoped never to see again. ‘I must say I never expected to see you here.’

  ‘Cut the crap, Innes,’ Hillary said, walking straight to his desk and pulling out one of the two facing chairs. ‘Tell me about the Ornes.’

  Gregory Innes sat back down, hard, and gave a somewhat cheesy grin. ‘They were clients of mine. Not that I see what business it is of yours.’

  Hillary slowly sat down, keeping her dark eyes fixed on the PI as she opened her briefcase and pulled out the Orne file. Innes paled as she put it on the desk before them. ‘And before you ask,’ she said softly, ‘this was retrieved from the safe deposit box you rented this morning, with a court order, all nice and legal.’

  Innes licked his lips and wondered how he’d missed the tail. It couldn’t have been that fat slob who’d trailed him the first time. They had to have put a second man – or woman, onto him. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

  He felt the sweat break out under his armpits and told himself not to panic. ‘I never thought otherwise, Inspector,’ he said with a smile. ‘Perish the thought that a copper would ever overstep the line.’

  ‘I told you before,’ Hillary Greene said curtly, in no mood for playing games, ‘cut the crap. Right now a search warrant is being sought for both this office, your house, your car and your bank records. I’m betting we’re going to find that you’ve been banking substantial sums of money just recently. Unless you’ve kept it as cash? And I wonder what the corresponding bank records of Mr Orne will show?’

  ‘Now just a minute,’ Gregory whined. ‘I told you, the Ornes were clients. If they’ve been paying me money, it’s only my fee.’

  Hillary smiled. ‘Really? So you’ve no objection if we question the Ornes then? Ask them what you were hired to do?’

  The greasy skin on Gregory Innes’s nose and upper lip shined obscenely in the afternoon light. He seemed to sense it, for he rubbed his mouth with his hand, trying to think of a
way to find out just how much they knew.

  ‘That would be rather cruel. They’ve recently lost a child,’ he mumbled eventually.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Hillary said, tapping the folder. ‘A little boy in need of a bone marrow donor. They came to you to track down a rumour that a donor had been found, but was refusing to go through with the surgery required.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Gregory said. ‘When the mother came to me, it broke my heart. I agreed to it right off, even though I knew the chances of success were low. Medical records, donor details, all that sort of stuff, is guarded like gold, you know.’

  Tommy Lynch shifted uncomfortably on his chair. During his short time in the police he’d seen many things that had disgusted him, outraged him, or moved him to pity. Pregnant mothers hooked on dope, killing the babies inside them or dooming them to be born with addictions too, whilst peddling their bodies for more money to feed more junk into their veins. Foreign women sold into sexual slavery. Paedophiles. Batterers of eighty and ninety-year-old women. Any manner of grubby, dirty, petty, vengeful episodes that made him wonder if the human race would ever survive. But Gregory Innes was making his flesh crawl in a way that was peculiarly new to him.

  ‘I’m sure you did it all out of the goodness of your heart, Mr Innes,’ Hillary said sardonically. ‘How much do you charge an hour? Or should I say, how much did you charge the Ornes? Desperate people pay well, I expect?’

  Innes flushed an ugly red.

  ‘So, you traced the donor, right. It was Julia Reynolds.’

  Innes stuck out his chin. ‘Whatever your opinion of me, Greene, I’m a good PI. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you. But I did it.’

  ‘Hmm. And reported back to Mr Orne?’

  Gregory Innes opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to keep it a secret from my client, was I?’

  Hillary nodded, wondering why he had just prevaricated. ‘And when you heard that Julia Reynolds had been killed, you were naturally curious? A little worried perhaps? A man with a conscience might feel as if he’d delivered up the woman for slaughter?’