by David Hodges
He shrugged and bent over the office printer, turning his back on her – probably to hide his embarrassment. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘I’m only a bloody civvy.’ He hesitated and cast her another sidelong glance. ‘If I were you though, I’d watch my back,’ he added and shuffled from the room again, leaving her staring after him with even greater unease.
Detective Superintendent Steve Davey was one of the new breed of senior police officers and a far cry from the rough, chain-smoking, heavy drinking ‘guv’nors’ of the past. Unlike most of the old guard who had cut their teeth on service in the military, he had not so much as sniffed an army barrack block – only private school and university. As a result, instead of a campaign medal, he had gained a first-class honours degree in psychology, enabling him to join the force on the fast-track graduate entry scheme and make superintendent in just ten years.
An attractive, immaculately groomed 36-year-old, with a shock of strikingly unusual white hair, lazy blue eyes and a designer tan to go with his designer smile, he might easily have stepped out of the pages of a romantic Mills & Boon novel; exuding the confidence and charisma that would ultimately guarantee him a ticket to the top echelons of the service. This outward charm, however, concealed a shrewd analytical mind and a ruthless sense of purpose that had earned him the nickname ‘Jaws’, and Kate was instinctively wary of him when he breezed into the room an hour later, inviting her to join him and Roz Callow in the DCI’s office ‘for a debrief’.
Her caution proved well-founded too. Following the opening formalities, including just the right amount of arm-patting concern over all that she had been through, he cut to the chase with the aplomb of the true professional. His questions followed much the same line as those of Roz Callow – who sat on the edge of the windowsill behind Kate throughout the whole of the so-called debrief, studying her with undisguised hostility – but they were put in a much more subtle way and probed a lot deeper into the incident and Kate’s involvement in it. For all his smiles and empathetic nods, there was a hard glint at the back of Davey’s lazy blue eyes and Kate was left feeling drained and for some reason laden with guilt at the end of it all.
When she pointed out that the Land Rover she had seen at the crime scene did not match the vehicle Duval was known to drive and suggested that the killer might therefore not be Duval after all, Davey’s benevolent mask slipped even more. It was apparent that he had already made up his mind about the identity of the culprit and didn’t want anything to interfere with his preconceptions or prolong what he saw as an open and shut inquiry. As a result, he immediately cut her short, dismissing her suspicions out of hand and leaving Callow to reduce her to shocked silence by blatantly questioning the motives behind her defence of a ‘wanted criminal’.
Davey’s parting words, as he stood up to go did not help her dismembered spirits either. ‘You seem to have been through an awful lot, Kate,’ he said, treating her to another of his patronizing smiles, ‘so I think it would be a good idea if you took a few days off now to recover.’
She swallowed hard and shook her head. ‘I’m fine, thank you, sir,’ she said, ‘and I want to see this inquiry through.’
He shook his head firmly. ‘Sorry, that’s out of the question.’
‘But – but I’m a key witness.’
‘That’s exactly why you should not be part of the inquiry.’
She clenched her hands in her lap, her body tense. ‘Are you suspending me, sir?’
He frowned. ‘Don’t be silly, Kate. Why would I want to do that?’
She threw a swift accusing glance at Callow, noting with a sense of rising frustration the satisfied smirk on the hard, sallow face. ‘Sir, I have to stay with this inquiry,’ she persisted, doing her best to keep her emotions in check, but unable to prevent the tears welling in her eyes and creating tiny rivulets down her cheeks. ‘I need to do my bit.’
There was a tic of irritation at the corner of Davey’s mouth now. ‘I think I’ve made the position clear enough, Kate,’ he admonished. ‘The answer is no. You’ll just have to accept that.’
Callow brushed against Kate as she followed her boss out the door. ‘Try your hand at knitting,’ she murmured close to her ear. ‘Very therapeutic, I’m told.’
Kate sat there for several minutes after Davey and Callow had left, staring unseeing into the building’s rear yard where both uniformed and plainclothes officers constantly moved to and fro between the back door and the jumble of untidily parked vehicles. The set-up of the incident room would be in full swing by now – with desks hauled into place, banks of computers and photocopying machines plugged in and tested, cork and whiteboards erected for the eventual accommodation of briefing notes and SOCO photographs, and the ubiquitous coffee machines positioned in convenient corners. All the trappings of a major police inquiry, which she should have been part of, but from which she had been coldly and calculatingly excluded. Bastards!
Just twenty-six years old, she had thought her career in the force was on a roll until now. Selected under the police graduate entry scheme after leaving university with a first-class honours degree in modern languages, she had established an excellent reputation for herself and had been ‘starred’ by the hierarchy at HQ Personnel for future high rank. Even before finishing her two years’ obligatory police probation, she had been attached to CID and within months appointed a temporary detective constable. She had been made substantive in the post a year later, managing to gain a top grade on the junior detective training course, and it had been intimated that she was likely to achieve detective sergeant rank within a further year if she kept her nose clean.
Not bad for a comprehensive schoolgirl from Ilford, whose dysfunctional family and brutal stepfather had provided the impetus for self-improvement as a means of escape. Now, however, everything seemed to be falling apart and, despite all her hard work, she felt that she was in no better position than poor Linda, who had taken the much easier self-indulgent path to destruction.
She had nearly died back there on the Levels – only a weak bladder had saved her – and yet despite all that, she was being treated like some kind of pariah; almost as if she were being held directly responsible for her colleagues’ deaths. It just didn’t make sense – or did it? Her eyes widened and she moistened her lips with her tongue. Maybe they were right and she was responsible? If she had actually done something instead of just crouching there in the bushes watching the Land Rover approach the Transit, she could have prevented the murders. Maybe Andy and Alf would still be alive now if she had acted sooner.
‘Scared, were you?’ Roz Callow’s hateful voice was in her head again and she shuddered. Was that it? Is that why she had done nothing – because she was scared? She shook her head violently as if defending herself before an invisible jury. No, that wasn’t it at all! She’d had no reason to be scared before the explosion. She couldn’t have known what was going to happen – and anyway, Andy had told her to stay down. As for running from the scene afterwards, yes, she fully accepted she had been scared then – who wouldn’t have been when faced with a killer twice their size, with no possibility of backup and no means of defending themselves?
She ran her fingers through her hair, trembling fitfully. Why the hell was she seeking to justify her conduct to herself? It was all nonsense, a suggestion the DCI had implanted in her brain when she had interviewed her at the scene. Good grief, she was almost starting to believe it herself. What was wrong with her? She had to get away from this place before she flipped completely.
Dumping her radio on to the desk (she couldn’t hang on to that if she was no longer working) she stumbled through the back door of the building, blinking in the fragile strands of sunlight probing the walled yard where she had parked her MX5. She was so wrapped up in her misery that she failed to notice the stocky man in the pork pie hat and rumpled grey overcoat who had just clambered out from behind the wheel of his old Honda Civic. But she soon became aware of him when he shouted after her, ‘Oi
! And where do you think you’re off to, Hamblin?’
She half-turned, meeting the gaze of hard brown eyes. Detective Inspector Ted Roscoe was DCI Callow’s number two. A bruiser of a man, who rarely smiled, but tended to glare at people from under his thick, bushy brows, the balding ex-boxer with the fearsome Stalin moustache always reminded Kate of a bad-tempered bulldog and, while he was highly respected by his team for his years of experience and straight-talkíng no-nonsense approach to everything, he had earned a bad reputation for himself as a womanizer. Furthermore, as one of the old guard, he had shown himself to be totally out of sync with the ethos of the modern police service. His contempt for fast-track university entrants, whom he often referred to as ‘educated pricks’, was legendary and although Kate had always got on reasonably well with him (probably because she was young and female), she could not forget that he had taken an instant dislike to Andy Seldon, making his life a misery when Seldon refused to back him up following the DI’s assault on a local drug-pusher. She wondered how he felt now that Andy had paid the ultimate price – probably relieved that the DS was out of the picture as far as his forthcoming crown court case was concerned.
‘You’d better ask the guv’nor,’ she threw back over her shoulder and, continuing to her car, hitched up her short skirt to slip behind the wheel As she did so, she couldn’t help giving way to a burst of shaky incredulous laughter when she glimpsed his eyes appraising her long legs. Bloody hell, it was unbelievable. Two dead officers, a major manhunt underway and all Roscoe could think about was checking out her thighs. Now sobbing hysterically, she slammed the gear into first, burning rubber as she skated across the yard and out through the entrance – ignoring the ‘No Exit’ sign and narrowly missing a police traffic motor cyclist turning in.
She could see the traffic man in her rear-view mirror staring after her and half-expected him to gun his powerful machine in pursuit – almost disappointed, in her semi-surreal state, that he didn’t – but, as things turned out, it might have saved her further trauma if he had.
chapter 6
ALF CROSS HAD lived in one of Highbridge’s red-brick terraced houses just off the Bridgwater Road ever since finishing his two years’ police probation and Kate found herself pulling up outside his place just five minutes later. Unlike Andy Seldon, who had no family as far as anyone knew (apart from a girlfriend living somewhere in Leeds), Alf had left a wife behind and despite the trauma she herself had suffered, Kate felt duty bound to call and see her. She and Pauline had become close friends when Kate had joined CID and she could not even begin to imagine how the poor woman must be feeling now. She was dreading facing her so soon after her tragic loss, but it had to be done and she made an effort to hold her own emotions in check as she stepped up to the front door.
‘And what do you want?’
The gaunt, blonde-haired woman who answered the door glared at her with open hostility and her belligerent greeting took Kate completely by surprise.
‘Pauline?’ she queried hesitantly as if the other’s uncharacteristic demeanour raised some doubts about that. ‘I – I wanted to make sure you were OK and to tell you how sorry I am about Alf.’
‘Did you?’ The woman stepped aside and motioned her past. ‘Then you’d better come inside, hadn’t you?’
The curtains were drawn across the bay window in the front room where Kate had spent so many afternoons sharing gossip over a cup of tea and the atmosphere was unusually stale and heavy. She turned as Pauline followed her through, but her natural instinct to embrace her friend in a sympathetic hug was put on hold by the hard expression in the other’s blue eyes and the grim set of her jaw. There was no evidence of tears, but shock was clearly etched into her face and a strong sour smell accompanied her into the room, suggesting that she had been drinking.
‘Well,’ Pauline snapped, almost as a demand, ‘exactly what is it you wanted to say?’
Kate felt as if she had been physically slapped in the face and for a moment was stuck for words. ‘Just - just to let you know that if there’s anything I can do—’
‘Do?’ Pauline’s face twisted into a bitter sneer. ‘Haven’t you done enough already?’
‘Done enough? I don’t know what you mean?’
Pauline stared at her with obvious contempt. ‘Managed to save your own skin, didn’t you, love? Left poor old Alf and Andy to fry.’
Kate felt the room start to close in on her and she grabbed the edge of the door to stop herself pitching sideways. ‘That’s just not true,’ she whispered, and the tears came back again in a flood. ‘I couldn’t do anything. It all happened too quickly.’
‘Yeah, while you were hiding in the bushes.’
‘Hiding? I wasn’t hiding. I was—’
‘Having a pee, I’ve been told. Lucky old you.’
Kate shook her head brokenly and reached towards her with her free hand. ‘Pauline, why are you treating me like this? We’ve always been friends.’
Pauline ignored her hand and stepped back into the hall with a curt, ‘You’d better go.’
For a moment Kate continued to stare at her. ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘Who have you been talking to?’
Pauline reached for the handle of the front door and threw it open, admitting a shaft of welcome sunlight into the gloomy hallway. ‘Get out. And don’t ever come back here again.’
There was a barely suppressed violence in her tone that frightened Kate and she edged past her warily, eager to be out in the beckoning sunlight among the reassuring sounds of the street. The front door slammed shut behind her even before she got to the gate.
She dropped her ignition keys as she approached her MX5 and, picking them up, she leaned against the driver’s door for a moment, shaking and hyperventilating.
‘You all right, love?’ The skinny youngster in the hooded fleece had stopped and was peering at her curiously. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but there was a concerned frown on his acne-pitted face.
She treated him to the ghost of a smile. ‘Yes, thanks, just had a bit of a shock, that’s all.’
He nodded with the sagacity of an old man. ‘Coffee, that’s what you needs,’ he diagnosed. ‘Hot ’n sweet. Good for shock that is.’
Then he was on his way again with the cocky springy gait so often adopted by the streetwise hoodies of his generation, cigarette smoke trailing from between the fingers of one hand.
She watched him go with another weak smile, heartened by the concern of a kid who, a few hours ago, she would have written off as nothing more than a complete waste of a skin. His advice was sound too. After her shock encounter with Pauline – on top of everything else that had happened in the past twelve hours – she felt shaky and light-headed and she knew she was in no fit state to get behind the wheel of her car until she had managed to pull herself together. Coffee sounded like the ideal solution.
Leaving the car where she had parked it, she went in search of a café – and she found one within a couple of hundred yards.
The so-called ‘tea-room’ had faded red and white checked curtains tied back from the grubby window and the doorway, with its half-open scabby blue door, was about as inviting as the entrance to a run-down charity shop. But she was in no mood to be picky and she took a seat in the corner with her back to the counter, heedless of the dirty crockery piled up on the table in front of her.
The place was half-empty, with only three of the dozen or so tables occupied – one in the opposite corner by a rough looking couple who seemed to be arguing over the bill, another by a pair of labourers tucking into a serious fry-up and a third by a quartet of greasers exchanging expletives in a smoky haze of illegally lit cigarettes.
Certainly not the most inspiring company and the waitress in the stained blue apron did little to improve the situation. But at least the coffee and buttered scone arrived very soon after the order had gone in and the girl’s surly manner meant Kate did not have to engage her in polite conversation, which suit
ed her fine.
She needed to be left alone – to be given time to think and quell the discordant clamouring of the demons inside her head – and she was trying to do just that when she noticed the sealed yellow envelope on the plate under her scone. Frowning, she tore the flap open and extracted the single sheet of paper from inside. It was a grubby note, written in bold block capitals, as if by someone used to carving their initials on a tree.
I DIDN’T DO IT. MEET ME 2 AM PAVILION PIER BURNHAM SEAFRONT. DON’T TELL YOUR MATES OR I WON’T SHOW…. TERRY DUVAL
Almost knocking over her cup of coffee, she jerked round in the seat, staring over the counter. The waitress eyeballed her from the doorway of the kitchen and she was behind the counter and in her face within seconds.
‘Did you leave this on my plate?’ she rapped, waving the envelope at her.
The girl paled and stumbled backwards, gulping. ‘Feller said it was a joke,’ she blurted. ‘Give me a fiver.’
Kate stared past her into the kitchen. A little man in a dirty white tunic and black trousers stared back at her in obvious astonishment.
‘What feller?’ she demanded, producing her warrant card and holding it up in front of the other’s bulging eyes. ‘What did he look like?’
‘J–just a feller. Wore a long coat an’ a woollen hat. Came up to me out back an’ said you was a mate of his.’
The girl’s eyes strayed to her left and Kate caught sight of the ‘Toilets’ sign.
‘Sod it,’ she breathed and lunged for the entrance to a narrow passageway alongside the kitchen.
She checked the single toilet cubicle, but it was empty. Another door opened on to a paved yard with an open gate at the far end and even before she got to it, she knew she would be too late. There was an alleyway beyond, snaking away in both directions between the walls of other premises, and she could see immediately that it was deserted.
‘Blast! Missed him,’ she said aloud. ‘Now what do I do?’
