Double Fault

by Judith Cutler

  ‘You were right, Mark. It would have been completely OTT for me to pop up on his doorstep – given altogether the wrong impression. Ah, here they go.’

  A man in T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms stood framed in the doorway, backlit, so they couldn’t see more than his silhouette, which was neat enough to suggest he used the gym or the rural equivalent of long walks and chopping wood. He shrugged and gestured – they could go in. Jules soon emerged, and waved a casual arm: he was quickly joined by what must have looked to Thwaite like a couple of bored cops anxious for their Friday night down-time, Ray mucking in to the rear.

  ‘It’s no good, is it?’ Mark groaned. ‘Livvie’s not in that cottage or Thwaite wouldn’t be so insouciant. I’ve wasted everyone’s time.’

  ‘Let them check the stable first,’ she murmured, tempted though she might have been to agree with him.

  It only took a few minutes for Ray and Jules to emerge, accompanied by Thwaite, shrugging on a body-warmer. He led the way to the stables; all three went inside.

  All three emerged. Thwaite shook hands with the officers, who headed for the gate, again closing it conscientiously.

  ‘We checked everything bar the horse’s hooves,’ Jules sighed. ‘Sorry, guv,’ he added, to both of them equally. ‘Horse called Snowdrop, by the way, on account of a white blaze here.’ He touched his forehead. ‘Rather sweet, for a grown man’s mount.’

  ‘Lots of other horses, lots of other stables,’ Fran said briskly. ‘Rather you than me getting up close and personal to the gee-gee,’ she added. ‘Nasty big things, with metal corners and sharp teeth.’

  ‘That one was OK,’ Jules said mildly. ‘My kid sister could ride it and no worries.’

  Fran said, aware she sounded tetchy, ‘So do you want to go public about searching stables, Ray, or get folk to grass up their neighbours? Shit. Sorry about that. Horses … grass,’ she added, noting the complete absence of so much as a groan.

  ‘Both. I’ll draft something and let you see it, shall I?’

  ‘Just draft it and put it out. I’m going to take some of my own advice and go and put my head down. And since we’re only a couple of miles from it, it might just as well be on my own pillow.’

  NINE

  Fran groaned as Mark, too weary to do more than swathe her in a towel, heaved her out of the hot bath he’d insisted on running for her. Before the water could fully drain, however, he put the plug in again. ‘Save water, save time.’ He stripped off and got in after her, wincing from the heat but refusing to add cold water. ‘I just hope the smell of lavender will have faded by tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll smell truly glamorous. It’s not just lavender but sandalwood and rose,’ she added, with a pale grin. The towel was big enough to double as a bathrobe, so she huddled into it and pulled the elegant little Victorian chair towards him. Then she changed her mind. Hanging up the towel, she grabbed her robe and slipped out of the room. He might have been drifting into sleep when she returned with two tots of his favourite malt, though he wasn’t sure if he could even have spelt its name at the moment.

  She handed him his glass then settled on the Victorian chair. ‘I’ve got to implement the Child Rescue Alert system, haven’t I?’ she said quietly.

  ‘What? You haven’t done that already? Why on earth not? You’re short of officers, and yet you – good God! You’ve got a national network at your disposal!’ Before she could reply, he said, ‘You’ve been sparing me, haven’t you? You saw how much I enjoyed playing cops and robbers again and didn’t want to spoil my fun. Bloody hell, Fran, I was one of the people who helped establish the system, helped staff it! For just such an occasion as this!’

  She blinked. ‘I thought it was doable in-house.’

  So he was right. She had been trying not to hurt his feelings. But she looked so weary and – yes – in so much pain that he bit back his fury and let her carry on, which she did with more confidence. ‘More importantly, Wren’s brought morale down to such a low level, a bit of in-house success would have done us all good – might have saved a few jobs, too. More cuts, that’s all he ever says. More like a parrot than a wren. But the thought of round-the-clock coverage from forty-odd trained call handlers on duty nationwide, not just volunteers like you who could do a daily double shift at most – it sounds like heaven. And all those extra resources from CEOP’s Missing, Abducted and Trafficked Children Unit dropping like manna from heaven. I’ll go and text Ray to tell him what I’m doing and then call the night team.’ She put her glass down on the windowsill and was limping out when he remembered another issue.

  ‘How are you going to break it to Wren? He’s not the sort of guy to like a fait accompli.’

  ‘You’re right. If only I had enough time to sell it to him as his own brilliant idea.’ Her smile was malicious. ‘I could phone him now. No? OK, a text to him too.’ Off she went.

  Whoever had called the organization the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre might have thought of something that made a better acronym. But it was a brilliant agency, with every officer hand-picked and totally dedicated to preventing children falling victim to everyone from real-life rapists to anonymous muck grooming kids online. Pity he couldn’t be part of the investigation any more, though. A great pity.

  ‘Done,’ she said, waking him up again. She sat down, but didn’t pick up her glass again.

  ‘Did you see Zac’s appeal on the news?’ he made himself ask. ‘Zac and his poor wife?’

  ‘Nope. It’ll have been recorded for me – you’ll be able to see it tomorrow too. You could save Dizzy Aziz a job and run me into work – hell, where’s your car?’

  ‘In your spot in the car park. It parks itself there automatically.’

  ‘As it should – all that training. Dizzy it must be. Hey, did I tell you about his heroics with Don …’

  He didn’t care a toss about Don or anyone else, for that matter. But they needed to plaster over what could have been an awkward moment. More than awkward. How dare she put an enquiry at risk because she was worried about hurting his feelings? And then he remembered that it hadn’t even been her enquiry till less than eight hours ago. He looked at her face, drawn and grey above the rosiness of her bath-warmed body. How was she going to survive at this pace? Last time she’d been so overworked, she lost the plot a couple of times and he’d come close to having to discipline her.

  And not like that either. Of its own accord, a small smile twitched the corner of his mouth, though he suspected there’d be no bedtime games tonight: it would be all either of them could do to stay awake long enough to get into bed. But he ought to make some response to her little anecdote: ‘A hundred? Bloody hell! That probably means nearer a hundred and twenty – maybe even a hundred and forty – if I know him.’

  She put her fingers in her ears, managing a comical grimace. ‘He admitted to a hundred. At least they got there in one piece. But I’ve not even phoned the hospital. Hell, Mark, what this job does to us …’

  ‘Put it on the list for tomorrow. You might even snatch a few minutes to visit him. If you need to justify taking time off to Wren, Don was running the case you had to take over, and you need to pick his brain.’

  It was her turn to heave him out of the bath, and to produce another of the huge, fluffy towels that had been one of her real extravagances: heaven knew how much energy washing and drying them consumed. At least, since he’d been house-husband, they’d rarely used the tumble dryer. He’d sited their whirligig washing line to catch every last gust of wind, and was more assiduous than he cared to admit in checking the online weather forecast for the area. Not just to see if he’d be able to play tennis, either.

  Neither the bath nor the whisky had done its job. Despite having drifted into a doze in the bath, he was now as wide awake as it was possible to be, and furious. Furious with himself; furious with Fran. In whichever order.

  Now what?

  His therapist had given him a range of relaxation and visualization exercises, and hi
s GP had offered tempting sleeping pills. He knew exactly where they were, imagined the delight of sloughing off his worries – and then reflected on the inevitability of waking Fran when he went to get them, no matter how quietly he padded to the bathroom. More to the point, she’d have to be at her desk by seven at the latest the next morning, and someone needed to make sure she didn’t sleep through the alarm and that she went off with more than black coffee inside her.

  So the relaxation exercises it had better be.

  Feet, knees, hips, back, shoulders, arms, fingertips. All as floppy as he could get them. Except it was supposed to be let not get. And the brain was supposed to sink into all this floppiness, not dart between theories about what had happened to poor Livvie. What if it had been a woman, not a man who’d taken her? But surely all leads, regardless of gender, had been followed up.

  Why hadn’t the locals come together to form giant search parties, as they had with other missing children? Look at the response to the Machynlleth abduction and murder, where everyone and their dogs had turned out to help. In this case there’d been a real lack of community involvement. Had Ray approached community leaders?

  He snorted, enough to make Fran stir. What was a community in commuter-belt Kent? A herd of women in big cars? No, herd wasn’t right. What might the collective noun be? A chatter? A text? A pamper! He must remember that one and see what Fran thought.

  And who would be this pampered community’s leaders? The nail experts? The yoga gurus?

  He would suggest that he and Ray go through all the tennis club members’ details tomorrow – something might click.

  Such as Stephen driving a maroon Audi. Where had that come from?

  And what on earth was lurking at the back of his mind? Something someone had said that had struck the most distant of chords. Only one thing to do – what he’d made himself do times beyond number when he’d been an operational officer: go to sleep knowing it would come to him in the morning.

  If only. Then he’d counted lamp-posts on a motorway. Now, how about the leaves on the greening branches of the beech at the end of their lawn …

  If ever there’d been a morning for dawdling over warm croissants with fresh butter and apricot conserve, this was it. The sun had already warmed the little patio by the kitchen, and when he stood at the edge he could see skeins of mist down in the valley, separating the tops of the trees from their roots with a ghostly swirl.

  He filled the bird feeder: how long would their winter lodgers stay with them? He thought he could count on the self-interested robin, but what about the goldfinches? At least he knew the collective noun for them: a charm. He smiled at them as they swooped between niger seeds and sunflower hearts, jostling with each other as he withdrew to what they considered a safe distance. He imagined them congratulating each other on having trained him so well, producing food before they even needed it, and moving the feeders to a spot with plenty of leafy cover. They’d liked the sunnier spot better, he fancied – but they’d been exposed to the sparrow hawk, which had come in with terrifying killing power and taken three or four in succession. The goldfinches might not have noticed the depletion in their ranks but he had. Now the feeders hung just a wing-beat away from the trellis up which he’d been trying to coax a Clematis Armandii until the frost had killed it as swiftly as a pair of secateurs, though it was supposed to be hardy, evergreen indeed. At least the honeysuckle and wisteria had clung on, and while it had been just the skeletal stalks – there must be a proper name for them, but he couldn’t recall it – that had provided a refuge, now buds promised thick foliage for later.

  Perhaps the finches would stay, and bring their young broods. Perhaps the next generation would do the same. He liked the idea of perpetuity.

  The seed put away and his hands thoroughly washed, he loaded the toaster. He hadn’t got his home-made wholemeal loaves, with lots of extra seed, to produce the best toast yet – it was inclined to be chewy – but at least Fran consented to eat a couple of rounds as she was ferried about the countryside. He knew she mustn’t take her painkillers on an empty stomach. Today he’d join her as she edged into the car driven by Dizzy. And surely something would trigger the memory of something important that was said last night that still, maddeningly, eluded him. But he’d better not hunt for it; far better to talk to Dizzy about the prospects for the forthcoming cricket season.

  Or was it? The conversation, meant to be a casual enquiry from a front-seat passenger whiling away the time – the real guv’nor sitting in the back, working – took a more serious turn than he’d been expecting.

  ‘Thing is, Mr Turner – OK, Mark – I’ve got this chance of turning professional. Cricket,’ he added, as he checked his mirror, signalled and manoeuvred as if Mark was a driving examiner. ‘Warwickshire.’

  ‘I thought you were keen on training as an elite driver, driving royalty and so on,’ Mark said. ‘Fran was saying you’d come out top on all the courses you’d been on.’

  ‘I was. And I did. But how long before they privatize protection driving? Get G4S or someone to ferry them. OK,’ Dizzy admitted, ‘they might lose a few passengers or turn up late for a royal visit, but that’s privatization for you. There’s a lot of us thinking of jumping before we’re pushed,’ he added glumly. ‘At least I’ve got my bowling to fall back on. If I make it big time, it’s a good career. If I don’t, then at least I’ve tried, haven’t I?’

  ‘Of course you have,’ Mark agreed brightly. With a change of voice, he added, ‘Is morale really that bad?’

  ‘You want to talk to the Police Federation rep,’ Dizzy said. ‘Sir. Mark. Not just my level. Higher ranks, too. After all,’ he added reasonably, ‘you left.’

  ‘But I’d served my time and I wasn’t well.’

  ‘And you get a pension, don’t you? They’re saying we’ll have to work years longer and get much less when we go. And a good cricketer – a really good one – can think of hundreds of thousands a year. Only for a few years, I know, but even so.’

  He ought to counsel him against giving up a safe career for a job with such a short shelf-life. He ought to remind him about the training he’d had so far, all the opportunities ahead of him. What about the respect of the community, the knowledge that you were making a difference? Weakly, he remarked, ‘The Bears are a really good team, aren’t they? And all those changes at Edgbaston … I’ve only seen them on TV, of course. It looks a truly wonderful ground.’

  ‘Actually Sussex have started sniffing round too.’

  ‘Have they? Great. Which would you prefer?’

  ‘Whichever offers me the best terms,’ the kid said soberly. He must have had all the talk of respectable careers up to his ears. And then some.

  ‘You’ve got to want to work with the people there, too. Check the set-up. Talk to people.’

  ‘Already doing that, guv.’

  ‘Excellent. Now, your first game at Lord’s, I want tickets – right?’

  ‘Right. First game or first test match?’

  Careers counselling over, how would he spend his day? Drifting up to the incident room where, thanks to the influx of CEOP’s MATC unit staff, he would be nothing but an unemployed loser, didn’t feel like a good option. But neither did returning to the rectory to garden till he dropped, and then retiring to channel-surf the Saturday afternoon sports options. The idea of turning up at the tennis club in hopes of finding another spare player was repugnant, although Zac had used the club website to thank people for their support and encourage them to return to the court.

  Perhaps, perhaps, he might just do that. Just in case any of his friends might react to a familiar face by recalling something that an official questioning had scared away – like whatever he needed to remember had completely gone.

  But Dizzy had slowed the car to an impeccable stop, and Fran had finished texting and emailing and was ready to be eased out of the car. On the plus side, she leant much less of her weight on him than she had been – she was definitely getting bette
r.

  ‘It’s a good job the media can’t see you as agile as this,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘I must keep the crutch handy, just in case you need to go into the woods again. You look as knackered as I feel. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get some sleep. Take the car and go back home for a bit.’

  ‘While you run round in circles doing something meaningful,’ he snapped.

  ‘While I’m closeted with Wren, who didn’t like my bringing in CEOP, any more than you disliked my not bringing them in.’ Fran could still manage an ironic smile. ‘Hell, Mark, there’s nothing I’d like more than your input in every single meeting going today. And I know Ray relies on you utterly. So don’t take out your retirement blues on me, please.’ She linked arms with him. ‘Come and have a coffee.’

  ‘Don’t bloody patronize me. You’re not ACC yet,’ he said, probably loud enough to be heard by Dizzy and any other passing officers. He flung her arm away and fished the car keys from his jacket. ‘Any errands you need running? Any shopping? I’m supposed to be doing the Sainsbury’s run today, aren’t I?’

  TEN

  ‘You look as if you’ve lost a fiver and found a rusty button,’ a voice greeted him, as he stood among plants he didn’t recognize, which was, he supposed, his fault for going to a nursery specializing in recherché flora at sky-high prices. But since one of the owners had landscaped much of their garden, he felt he couldn’t betray him by nipping off to a garden centre chain and buying boxes of bright petunias. In any case, it was too early to risk planting petunias, or any of the other bedding plants he’d find at places where he’d found tomato seedlings in January. If their plants wouldn’t have grown, their profits certainly would.

  He picked up an attractive shrub but registered how much his impulse might cost and put it back again as he turned to the speaker.