The Work of a Narrow Mind

by Faith Martin

  Hillary’s smile twisted a little on her lips. ‘I can see you really thought a lot of her.’

  Robbie Grant shrugged.

  ‘On the day she died, you told DI Jarvis, the senior investigating officer, that you were home all day, alone. Not much of an alibi, was it?’

  Robbie again shrugged, and again smirked. He was lounging so far back in the chair now that he looked almost in danger of sliding off it and under the table. ‘She couldn’t prove otherwise, could she? Your DI Jarvis. How is she, anyway? She was a bit long in the tooth, but not a bad-looking bird. Do tell her I said hello. I think she quite fancied me, you know.’ He picked between his front teeth with a fingernail. ‘I could tell. She was so hot to pin it on me, see? Got real mad when she couldn’t have me up for it. That’s how I could tell she wanted me bad, see. Sexual frustration.’

  He nodded solemnly, and Hillary wondered where he’d picked up the poppsychology terminology. From a packet of cornflakes, most likely, she mused.

  ‘I felt almost sorry for her,’ Grant continued with his little fantasy, still industriously picking the breakfast out of his teeth. ‘I told her, I wouldn’t mind giving her one, anyway. Like I said, she was an older bird, but still fit. I told her I wouldn’t tell on her, see, if she wanted to slip around to my place one night.’ He winked lasciviously.

  ‘I’m sure she was flattered,’ Hillary said drily.

  Grant smirked again. He was almost as good-looking as he thought he was, Hillary thought, but his looks would be much improved with a broken nose.

  ‘Yeah, well, you lot couldn’t pin it on me ‘coz I wasn’t there,’ Grant taunted. ‘Nobody saw me, did they? And believe me, in that dead-end hole where Nan lived, someone would have, if I’d been there. ‘Sides, why would I want the old girl dead? Like I said, she was my nan.’

  ‘You were her sole beneficiary,’ Hillary pointed out flatly, and when he looked at her blankly, said, ‘You got all her money.’

  ‘Oh yeah! Good old Nan.’ The smirk was now so wide it was in danger of splitting his face. Beside her, she saw Wendy Turnbull’s hands clench into fists and knew she was probably fighting a similar desire to punch him.

  ‘You spent it all, of course,’ Hillary went on. ‘All that old lady’s lifetime savings.’

  ‘Too right!’ he admitted with unrepentant glee. ‘Had a holiday to Benidorm. Got a new motor. Spent it on the birds. Even went to a casino in London. First time ever in one of them places.’ Grant’s voice grew dreamy now. ‘You ever been to one of them? I felt like I was in a James Bond film. Carpet up to your ankles, and the birds…. Talk about glamorous.’

  ‘Did your grandmother ever speak to you about any of her neighbours? People she didn’t like, or who had a grudge of some sort against her?’ Hillary interrupted his day-dream ruthlessly.

  ‘Nah. And if she did, I sort of tuned her out, you know. She’d start to go on about something and I’d just’ – here he mimed flicking a switch against his temple – ‘tune her out. Old people are dead boring.’

  He looked around, careful not to catch the eye of any of the guards, and then looked back at Wendy. ‘You got a boyfriend, darlin’?’

  ‘A girlfriend actually,’ Wendy said sweetly.

  Robbie Grant looked momentarily surprised, then disgruntled. ‘Oh great. Just my luck. Two female cops come visiting and one of ’em’s a dyke.’ Then his gaze turned to Hillary. ‘Now you, I wouldn’t kick you out of bed. Like good ol’ DI Jarvis, you’re a bit long in the tooth, but I wouldn’t hold that against you.’

  ‘You’re not going to get the opportunity to hold anything else against me either, Mr Grant,’ Hillary assured him. ‘Do you have any idea who might have killed your nan? Don’t you want to see the bastard inside for it?’

  ‘Course I do,’ Robbie Grant said. ‘Bugger deserves it. If I have to be in here, so should he.’ Since Hillary wasn’t quite sure that she could follow the logic of that argument, she let it pass.

  ‘But you have no idea who might have done it?’

  ‘Nah. I’d’a said if I did. Like I said, she were me nan, weren’t she?’

  And with that, Hillary knew she had to be content.

  Like DI Jarvis before her, she was inclined to keep Robbie Grant high on her list of possibles, but if he had murdered the old lady for his inheritance, there seemed little chance of proving it now. Especially all these years later.

  Hillary sighed.

  Wendy sighed.

  And, after another token smirk, Robbie Grant sighed as well.

  Which at least made it unanimous.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hillary dropped Wendy back at HQ with orders to write up their report on the Robbie Grant interview for the murder book, and then beckoned Jake to follow her out.

  ‘You have Wendy’s list of Sylvia’s neighbours and the times that they stated that they’re likely to be available for interview?’

  For reply, Jake patted the little electronic tablet that he kept with him at all times. Hillary sometimes wondered if anyone with a pacemaker inserted in their chest could actually keep it closer to his heart than Jake kept that electronic gizmo. She wouldn’t have been surprised if, when the time came for an to upgrade, it would have to be somehow surgically removed from his person.

  Not being a particularly avid fan of technology herself, she couldn’t see the attraction of being constantly hooked up to the Internet, or of being perpetually electronically linked to a swarming mass of faceless humanity via Facebook or Twitter. Emails were as much as she could cope with, the majority of which, according to the rare times when she bothered to dive into her spam, were either trying to sell her penile erectile systems, or a time share in Barbados.

  She sat back in the passenger seat as Jake revved the engine lovingly, and offered up a passing mental apology to Puff as they passed her old Volkswagen, since she knew she was becoming used to being chauffeured around in such a spectacular beast as this.

  Jake headed out into the sticks with barely a glance at his sat nav, and let his mind wander instead to the details of his second planned encounter with Darren Chivnor.

  If Hillary noticed his abstraction, she didn’t let on. Not surprising, since her own thoughts nowadays seemed invariably to lead her into the should she/shouldn’t she funk that surrounded the conundrum of what to do about Steven’s marriage proposal.

  Damn it, what had possessed the man to ask her?

  Once Jake turned down the remote country lane leading to the small hamlet of Caulcott, however, both of them brought their minds firmly back to the business at hand.

  The first on Wendy’s list of Sylvia’s contemporaries lived three doors down on the left from where she’d once lived, in a charming stone and thatch cottage that was probably the devil to keep warm in winter.

  The cottage’s owner, Phyllis Drew, turned out to be almost a caricature of a cartoonist’s version of a little old lady, possessing as she did, a riotous mop of snow-white hair, twinkling blue eyes set in a deeply lined and seamed face, and rosy pink cheeks. She even had the slightly stooped, hump-back walk that needed the aid of a walking stick, and came complete with a little Jack Russell terrier that danced in excitement around her feet. She was wearing a flowered apron over a warm dark-blue track suit, and incongruously hefty, modern-looking white and pink trainers on her tiny feet.

  Myopically she studied Hillary’s ID card, and then smiled and shrugged, as if giving up on it, and invited them inside cheerfully.

  ‘Call me Phil, my lovey, everyone else does,’ she informed Hillary breezily. ‘And come into the kitchen – it’s the only warm room in the place. Don’t mind Charlie – he’ll be asleep by the range, but we won’t disturb him. He does snore a bit, I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to ignore him.’

  Jake Barnes, expecting to see another, much more elderly Jack Russell curled up asleep on a chair, gave a little start of surprise to see an old man asleep there instead. He too possessed a lot of white hair and pink cheeks, but in his case
, his wrinkled face was dwarfed by his gaping mouth, through which, every now and then, came a sudden, snuffling snore, which made his dentures rattle. There was no regular pattern to his snoring, though, Jake soon realized, as long moments of silence stretched between a variety of snorts, whistles and assorted lip-smacking.

  Hillary gratefully accepted the use of one of the battered, faded chintz armchairs that were grouped around an old-fashioned Aga, and noticed Jake pull out a straight-backed kitchen chair which he placed out of the way in the corner, where he could take notes without being obvious about it.

  ‘This is about Sylvie, I expect?’ Phil Drew began. ‘An extraordinary looking young girl came around…. Was it yesterday or the day before? I forget’ – her husband gave a sudden thunderous snore and shuffled about on the chair, but didn’t wake – ‘my memory isn’t what it used to be I’m afraid. Anyway, she said we’d be getting a visit from the police about Sylvie. Cup of tea, lovey?’

  Hillary accepted for both herself and Jake, and smiled down as the Jack Russell sniffed her ankles suspiciously and then, canine curiosity apparently satisfied, settled down by her feet and rested his head on her shoes with a heartfelt sigh.

  ‘What can you tell me about the day she died, Mrs Drew?’ Hillary asked, as the old lady set about making the hot drinks.

  ‘Phil, lovey. Call me Phil. And I’m not sure that I remember anything in particular. Time goes by so fast, doesn’t it? I can’t believe it’s been five years since she went.’

  ‘Yes, time’s a funny thing,’ Hillary said patiently. ‘And I wouldn’t ask you to try and remember specific things that happened on specific days. But when you look back, what do you remember most about Sylvia around the time that she died?’

  ‘Oh well, there was that bit of a to-do about that man she was seeing at the old folks’ club. They say she got into an argument with some other woman, but I can’t see it amounting to much myself. Sylvie had too much sense, if you ask me, to go making a fool of herself over a man at her age. I reckon the gossips blew it up out of all proportion. Some people have nothing better to do than make their own entertainment at other people’s expense.’

  The cups of tea dispensed, the old woman settled herself down beside her husband’s chair with a bit of a creak and a groan. Beside Hillary’s feet, the Jack Russell gave a corresponding groan, as if in sympathy with his mistress, and rolled over onto his side with another sigh.

  ‘Then there was Maureen Coles making that fuss over her cat, and Sylvia had—’

  ‘What cat?’ The voice that interrupted was male and totally unexpected, and Hillary suddenly realized that she hadn’t heard any snores for a little while. She glanced across to look at Charlie Drew, who wasn’t looking at her, but at his wife, one shaggy white eyebrow raised in query.

  ‘Old Maureen Coles’s cat. You know, the last one she had before she had to go into that home; the one that was poisoned. What was his name now? Maureen always did give her ginger toms such funny names. She said they deserved something unusual. A funny woman, you know, she always was a bit dotty, but especially towards the end, but harmless enough, the poor old soul.’

  ‘Sputnik,’ Charlie Drew said.

  Hillary blinked. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The name of her cat. The one that got poisoned,’ the old man said, looking at her with some puzzlement, and clearly wondering who she was.

  ‘Oh,’ Hillary said. And although she just knew that she was going to regret asking, she couldn’t resist. ‘Why did she call it Sputnik?’

  ‘Cause it shot off like a rocket whenever you looked at it,’ Phil provided the punch line without a modicum of humour, and nodded emphatically. ‘That moggy had a touch of the feral about it, if you ask me.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Charlie Drew said, looking at Hillary with mild curiosity.

  ‘I work for the police, sir,’ Hillary said.

  ‘Oh,’ the old man said. ‘Then you won’t mind if I go back to sleep?’

  Hillary could sense Jake grinning over in his corner, and fought to keep her own face straight. ‘No, sir. Please don’t let us interrupt your nap.’

  Charlie nodded and closed his eyes.

  ‘Course, there was her grandson,’ Phil went on. ‘Foul-mouthed layabout if ever there was one. Never liked him. I told Sylvie so, too, never kept it a secret from her or spoke about her behind her back,’ Phil said. ‘I like to be up front with people. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t behind it all.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Yes, we’ve spoken to Robert Grant,’ she said. ‘You told the original lady who investigated Sylvia’s murder that you didn’t see any strangers hanging around that day?’ she prompted gently.

  ‘Then I didn’t,’ Phil said uncompromisingly. ‘Nothing wrong with my memory back then. If that’s what I said, then that’s what I meant.’

  ‘But did you see someone whom you might have expected to see perhaps, going past the window that day, visiting Sylvia?’ she put in casually. ‘Say Vanessa Gibson or her husband? Or someone else who lived in the village?’

  ‘Well, I might have done,’ Phil agreed cautiously, taking a slurping gulp of her tea. ‘I wouldn’t have paid no particular mind about it, if I had.’

  Over in his chair, her husband gave a muffled snort. Then a distinct snore. Then silence. Jake found himself fascinated by the very random nature of the man’s performance actively waiting and anticipating what the next noise might comprise, and consequently almost missed what Phil was saying.

  ‘You always see the farmers and their workers coming and going, either in the tractors, or moving the sheep about.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t have paid particular notice if any one of them turned in at Sylvia’s gate?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so, as I already said, lovey. You get used to seeing the same old faces, don’t you? Oh, I get it.’ The old lady suddenly sat up a bit straighter in her chair. ‘You think Randy Gibson might have got fed up with Sylvie’s snarky ways and bashed her with the poker?’ Phil cocked her perky little head to one side, looking momentarily like a curious cockatoo, and evidently thought about it for a moment, before shaking her head. ‘Nah, I can’t see it myself, lovey. Want a biscuit?’

  ‘Love one,’ Charlie said from his chair.

  Beside her feet, the Jake Russell, obviously responding the word ‘biscuit’ perked up and whined hopefully.

  Hillary reminded herself that patience was a virtue, and accepted a Garibaldi.

  Over on his chair, Jake chewed his bottom lip and industriously scribbled in his notebook.

  If Jake Barnes was manfully fighting the urge to laugh, Steven Crayle, had no such problem. Sitting in his office, he’d spent the morning going over the CRT’s operational procedures with Rollo Sale. But now that his fellow superintendent had left to chair a meeting with the computer techcicians, thus getting the chance to become better acquainted with the majority of his staff, he had time to check out the dossiers that Superintendent Ryan Inkpen had given him during his St Aldates’ visit.

  And he was currently studying Dale Medcalfe’s list of known associates, and contemplating just how many of them he would be crossing swords with, once the new unit was up and running.

  Like Commander Donleavy he was looking forward to putting many of them away, with Medcalfe himself being the main prize. But there were several of his lieutenants who needed bringing down almost as much as their boss: Darren Chivnor being chief among them.

  Unusually, Chivnor had no official police record, but there was a long list of his suspected victims in their files. Mostly members of rival gangs, who, for obvious reasons, had refused to name the person who’d given them knife scars and other brutal warnings in equal measure. But there were also, on the list, a number of female victims, no doubt prostitutes in Medcalfe’s stables who had somehow incurred the big man’s wrath, and had needed bringing into line. Perhaps they’d been holding back more of their punters’ money than Medcalfe had thought reasonable. Or maybe some of them had even contemplat
ed going to work for a rival outfit. Whatever the problem, it was clearly part of Chivnor’s job to see to that end of things. And although he’d been very careful not to mark the merchandise where it showed or mattered – i.e. their faces or breasts – a number of girls had been taken into A&E by Chivnor with injuries that ranged from fractured ribs to wrenched arms, elbows and shoulders.

  As Steven stared down at the photograph of the tattooed skinhead, he felt his skin begin to crawl. Once he’d got the new unit up and running, he was going to look forward to meeting Mr Chivnor in a formal interview room, and then, arising from that, in a court of law. His days of running around without a police record needed to come to an end. Which, Steven acknow-ledged grimly, would probably require some sort of a sting operation, and those were always notoriously chancy. After the spectacular and very public failures of several other such operations in the past, he knew that the top brass wouldn’t exactly be keen to authorize many more.

  So he’d have to be careful. This new job held out the offer of big rewards indeed, but he wasn’t unaware that with the big rewards came big risks. Just one mistake could see his career in tatters.

  Steven shifted uncomfortably on his chair as he realized that, in future, he might have to send in undercover operatives, and mostly female undercover operatives, at that, to infiltrate Medcalfe’s world. He could feel the thought of that responsibility weighing him down like a ton of bricks.

  He sighed and shuffled the folders around, selecting one on Medcalfe which had come in from one of their financial experts. In the past, they’d tried to get Medcalfe on tax evasion or fraudulent accounting, but it hadn’t panned out. He’d been far too wily for that. Steven couldn’t help but think that that approach had always been too tame. In his experience, someone who liked to keep men like Chivnor close to him, had to have a personal taste for violence as well. In the past, his predecessors seemed to have assumed that Medcalfe liked to keep his hands clean, but what if, in fact, he had a taste for brutality?