Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  She turned her attention then to the question of the identity of Marshall’s killer. It just had to be someone who had suffered because of the crimes they all believed he had committed. It would stretch credibility even to consider any other motive.

  Top of the list, Karen was well aware, had to be Sean MacDonald. Karen knew that. And she didn’t like the idea one little bit. Sean MacDonald, of whom she had become so fond. Sean MacDonald, who had made it quite clear that he’d had enough of British justice, and had virtually threatened to take the law into his own hands.

  She reminded herself again that Sean MacDonald was eighty-three years old. Nonetheless he was a fit man and a volatile one. And a man who felt deeply aggrieved on behalf of a daughter whose killer had never paid the price for his crime. Until now, perhaps.

  She picked up the phone again and called Inverness. Mac’s answerphone clicked in. She tried twice more and on the third attempt left a brief message. Then she called Inverness police and asked them to go around to Sean MacDonald’s address. After that she gathered her troops around her.

  By the time she walked into the incident room it was obvious that the whole of CID and quite probably the whole of the nick knew that Richard Marshall had been murdered. Tompkins and Smiley were giving each other five in one corner. Everybody in the room seemed to be on their feet, laughing and talking. A bottle of whisky was hastily stowed in a drawer as she entered. She pretended not to notice that, but the rest of it had to be attended to.

  “Right, that’s enough,” she called. “We’re going to a funeral here, not a bloody wedding.”

  “Yeah, but it couldn’t be a better funeral, could it, boss?” responded Tompkins, to a general muttering of approval. He was looking almost cheerful, which was actually quite difficult for him.

  “You think not, Chris?” Karen enquired icily. “Between us and Dorset we have to find out who murdered Richard Marshall. And that’s where this all goes pear-shaped.”

  There was more muttering, of a different kind.

  “I’ve got Inverness checking out Sean MacDonald,” she went on.

  “Oh, fuck,” interrupted Tompkins, no longer appearing at all cheery.

  Karen smiled grimly. “Oh, fuck, is dead bloody right, Chris,” she said. “Mac has to be our number-one suspect and I don’t like it any more than I know any of you will.”

  She paused, aware that they were all quietening down now, growing thoughtful, which was exactly what she wanted. She was after as much thinking as she could get. She wanted to jerk their brains into action every bit as much as her own.

  “Right,” she said. “We need to get to Poole and check out for ourselves what’s happened. Chris, I want you and Ron with me on that.” She nodded towards Smiley. “You came before, you know the set-up, and you, too, Phil.” She waved one hand at Cooper who had been resolutely keeping an extremely low profile. “And we’ll take two cars.”

  As she said that she was aware of somebody giggling but she wasn’t able to identify who it was. In any case, she was in no position to do anything about it. Instead she headed for the door, but she didn’t shut it before overhearing a whispered: “And no guesses who’s riding with who,” again from someone unidentifiable, followed by a louder: “Fuck off, wanker,” from Cooper.

  Outside in the corridor she leaned briefly against the wall. “Damn,” she muttered to herself. She’d already had quite enough to worry about even before the discovery of Richard Marshall’s body. Her affair with Cooper was now an open secret. And she didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t give him up. She just couldn’t. And yet she feared that she was courting disaster by continuing with such a potentially dangerous relationship.

  She travelled with Cooper in his car, which was exactly what everybody expected her to do. But she couldn’t help herself.

  “No point in disappointing the troops,” said Phil with a grin as he opened the passenger door for her. She grinned back. Just the prospect of being alone with him in his car for the best part of three hours made her feel warm inside. At least he seemed not quite as troubled by the part he had played in Marshall’s conviction being overturned as he had a while ago. She suspected that knowing that Marshall was dead had made him feel better, even if he was concerned, like her, about who had killed the man.

  He drove with one hand on the wheel, and the other, for most of the time, on her knee. It was companionable. It was easy. That was how it was between them. As if they were joined at the hip. She glanced at him as they made their way out of Torquay and headed towards Exeter. He seemed to feel her eyes on him and turned and smiled. She loved him. She really loved him. And she knew he felt the same. How could she walk away from him?

  She was indulging herself, just enjoying the feel of being with him, relishing his company, when their brief few minutes of peace were shattered by the insistent ring of her mobile phone. She answered promptly. This was not a time when she could expect peace.

  “Sergeant Craig Brown, Inverness,” said a distinctly Scottish voice. “I have some information for you concerning Mr. Sean MacDonald.”

  “Yes?” Karen could not stop an anxious note creeping into her voice. She really was fond of MacDonald, and there was something about the Scots policeman’s words which made her think she wasn’t going to like what he was about to tell her.

  “We have so far been unable to contact Mr. MacDonald,” continued Sergeant Brown. “But we have talked to neighbours who said that they last saw him three days ago loading a suitcase into his car and nobody seems to have seen or heard from him since.”

  “I see.” Karen had been right. This was not what she wanted to hear.

  “There’s more,” said Sergeant Brown. “On the grounds that he is being sought in connection with a murder enquiry we gained a warrant to enter Mr. MacDonald’s home. It seems that he must somehow or other have managed to acquire a gun. We found empty ammunition packets in the dustbin, of the type that would contain bullets for a 45-calibre handgun. We are still searching the house but so far have not found the gun itself. I’m afraid, Detective Superintendent Meadows, that it seems reasonable to assume that Sean MacDonald took the gun with him wherever he may have gone to.”

  “I see,” said Karen again. She wasn’t surprised. Mac was an old military man. She had suspected he might still have contacts who could supply him with hardware if necessary.

  She ended the call and briefly told Cooper the news, then she called back to Torquay Police Station.

  “Get on to Dorset and tell them MacDonald is now definitely the number-one suspect,” she instructed. “And put out an alert nationwide. I want him found, and I want him found fast.”

  As she ended the call she turned to Cooper.

  “Oh, shit,” she said. “I really don’t want to put Sean MacDonald in jail.”

  The crime scene had been more or less dealt with by the time they got to Poole. Richard Marshall’s body was on its way to the morgue in the nearby hospital for a post-mortem. The scenes-of-crime officers had already done their stuff.

  The officer in charge, Detective Inspector Gordon Crawley, reported fully to Karen.

  “Marshall was shot point-blank in the forehead,” he said. “Classic entry-and-exit scenario. Small hole in the front of his head and the back of it damned near blown off. We found the bullet lodged in the plaster of the wall just behind the spot where Marshall would have been standing.” Crawley gestured with one hand to an indentation in the cream-painted wall. “One of our guys is a bit of a weapons expert. Was able to tell right away that the bullet was from a 45-calibre handgun, a Browning or something like that.”

  Karen looked around the hallway of the small neat apartment and through open doors to the bedroom, living room and kitchen beyond. Nothing seemed out of place. But then Marshall had been a very organized man, you had to be organized to get away with what he had got away with for so long.

  “There’s no sign of a struggle at all,” Crawley continued, as if reading her mind. “It loo
ks as if chummy opened his front door and got it straight in the head, of which there is not a lot left, as you will see if you stay on for the post-mortem tomorrow.”

  Karen winced. Partly at the news that it was a 45-calibre handgun that had been used, the same specification as the ammunition found in Sean MacDonald’s house, and partly at the thought of attending an autopsy on a body with most of its head blown off. She had done it before. She had learned long ago to toughen up and deal with such gory situations. That did not mean, though, that she liked it.

  At the same time the thought occurred to her that she would be able to stay overnight with Cooper, and they didn’t get many opportunities to spend the whole night together.

  Then she promptly gave herself a mental telling-off. This was too serious a matter to allow herself to start thinking about her sex life. And she suddenly remembered that nobody had mentioned Jennifer Roth at any stage.

  “She’s not here anymore,” explained Crawley. “She and Marshall lost their jobs at the marina when he was first arrested, but of course he owned this flat. And he would have made enough money from that newspaper article to keep everything going, I imagine.”

  He glanced towards Karen as if looking for confirmation. She nodded briefly.

  “We understand Jennifer—or Janine, I suppose I should say—recently took off to London looking for work,” Crawley continued. “She may even have lined up a job to go to. Certainly she’s not been seen around here for weeks, not since quite soon after the appeal, in fact. But we’re on the case, ma’am, I can assure you.”

  Karen then gave Tompkins and Smiley instructions to cooperate with the Dorset police in their search for Jennifer and anything else that they could help with which might speed up the investigation.

  “I don’t want any cock-ups caused by lack of communication,” she told them. “DI Crawley is willing to let you have the run of his incident room, and before you head off back home I expect you to know the Dorset operation inside-out. No more mistakes, got it?”

  Together with Cooper she left the flat then. They stood for a while looking out over Poole Harbour. It was a very different kind of day from the one the previous August when they had come to the marina to arrest Marshall. Different in every way. A light drizzle was falling. The sky was leaden and grey. It wasn’t cold but Karen found that she was shivering a bit.

  Abruptly she turned to Cooper. “Got your toothbrush?” she asked.

  “Always keep one in the car,” he responded.

  “Good, ’cause I haven’t got mine,” she said. “I’ll need to borrow yours.”

  “I can think of nothing I’d like more, Detective Superintendent,” he replied.

  Using Cooper’s name they booked into the Hilton in nearby Bournemouth, a hotel Karen had rather liked when she had stayed there once before while on an antique-hunting weekend, with a former boyfriend and fellow enthusiast, around the many antique shops of nearby Boscombe.

  She and Cooper treated themselves to a double room with a big balcony overlooking the sea. And as usual there were things they did because of the illicit nature of their relationship which Karen didn’t like to think about much and which they avoided discussing. Using Cooper’s name was one of these. She knew all too well that he needed to tell his wife where he was staying. He needed an address, even for one night away from home. She didn’t need to tell anyone anything. All Karen had to do in order to free herself for the night was to call her neighbour, Ethel, and ask her to feed Sophie the cat. Everyone she worked with had her mobile number and that was the only method of contact necessary.

  Cooper did briefly express anxiety about the cost of the room, which was considerably more than he was likely to be able to reclaim on expenses. Karen would have none of it. She knew he spent very little on himself, and had no wish to increase his guilt by insisting that he spend money he would normally spend on his family—which was something else she didn’t want to discuss with him, not when they could be together all night in what turned out to be a rather good hotel with twenty-four-hour room service.

  “It’s on me,” she told him shortly.

  He didn’t argue. Instead, as soon as they had shut their bedroom door he took her by the hand and led her to the bed where they lay together, fully clothed, for almost an hour, just savouring their closeness.

  “I can’t get over how good this feels,” she murmured.

  “I know.” And he kissed her hair and her eyes and her nose in that unique way he had which almost turned her from lover into child.

  They ordered steak and champagne on room service. The earlier drizzle had cleared completely and, although it was now mid-June, it turned out to be an unusually warm night for England in early summer, so they took the opportunity to eat outside, sitting on the big balcony watching the stars and the lights of Bournemouth. The town’s two theatres, the Pavilion and the Pier Theatre beyond, blinked at them. The Isle of Wight ferry, which looked a bit like another theatre floating in the sea, was moving slowly across the horizon. It was a magical view.

  Karen had had an idea in the back of her head that, with so much more time than usual to be together, this might be their opportunity to talk about their relationship, about where it was going, if indeed it could ever go anywhere. But, as she and Cooper sat together hand in hand, looking out over the seaside town to the ocean, she found that all she wanted to do was enjoy the moment and preserve its memory intact. She didn’t want to talk about their problems or what the future might hold for them. She wanted to concentrate on the present. She wanted to be an ostrich. She was head-over-heels in love. She wanted to pretend that everything was perfect, as, just for one night, in this seaside hotel, it was. Absolutely perfect.

  After they had eaten their meal and drunk their champagne they went back to bed and this time they undressed and made love. Their lovemaking was at the stage where it seemed to get better every time. As far as Karen was concerned, she believed that it was simply because she had never cared so much about anybody.

  “It’s the same,” he said suddenly. “It’s the same for me.”

  She hadn’t even spoken. She knew he was right, though. That’s how it was between them. They thought and felt the same things at the same time. Often they didn’t need to speak at all. She considered it to be quite remarkable.

  She reached out for him and drew him to her. He felt so good. He smelt so good. He tasted so good. She realized she was becoming aroused again. Naturally he was, too. At the same time, at the same pace. And they were just beginning again, in a very leisurely fashion, when there was a loud knock on the door.

  Automatically they pulled apart.

  “Who the hell’s that?” Cooper asked.

  Karen checked her watch. It was almost midnight.

  “Could be room service wanting our tray,” she suggested. “The waiter did ask us to put it outside.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Just stay here, they’ll go away.”

  She pulled him close again, and as she did so there was another equally loud and rather more insistent knock.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said. “I don’t think we double-locked the door. I’d better have a look.”

  He climbed out of bed, ambled over to the door, still naked, and peered through the security peephole. At once he recoiled, almost as if he had been attacked.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Karen sat upright in bed, sensing his alarm.

  He turned to her.

  “It’s…It’s…”

  He was interrupted by another insistent hammering. Then a voice called out.

  “Phil, Phil, I know you’re in there with that bloody cow. Open this door, Phil.”

  “Oh, my God,” repeated Cooper.

  Karen realized at once that it must be Cooper’s wife who was out there in the Hilton’s fifth-floor corridor. She had no doubt at all, even though Cooper seemed incapable of putting a coherent sentence together. S
he jumped out of bed, reaching to pick up her clothes which she had unceremoniously dropped on the floor.

  “Phil, Phil, open the door!” came another shout from outside. “Now!”

  It was a command. And to Karen’s horror Phil appeared to be about to obey. He reached for the door handle.

  “Don’t!” Karen shouted. “Don’t open it. Tell her you’ll meet her downstairs. Tell her anything. Just don’t open it!”

  It was too late. Meekly, Phil Cooper, the husband who had never cheated before, opened the door. His wife pushed past him into the room. Karen watched it all happen as if it were a movie being screened in slow motion. Automatically, she tried to cover herself with the bundle of clothes she now had in her arms. Her shirt and trousers were both in a tangle. She couldn’t sort them out. She felt both pathetic and vulnerable and was quite sure she looked it, too.

  Phil Cooper just stood there, still holding the door open, also still stark naked. He seemed to be completely in shock. So was Karen—they were, after all almost always in sync. Sarah Cooper walked towards her. Karen had only seen photographs of Cooper’s wife before. She had never met her. She was as pretty as she looked in the pictures Cooper had shown her, before they had begun what now seemed to be their ill-fated affair. But her red hair was dishevelled and you could see from her eyes that she had been crying. Her face was contorted with hatred as she approached Karen.

  “You bitch!” she screamed. “You bitch! I know exactly who you are and I’ll get you for this. I’ll ruin you. You’ll see.”