Detective Mike Croft Series Box Set

by Jane Adams

  ‘But I thought you said all funding had dried up.’

  Again, he could hear the smile in her voice. ‘I had a free hour or so. Enough private patients in between the national health ones to pay for the car, so . . .’

  ‘So Terry’s a charity case?’

  ‘The Americans would call it Pro Bono. I think that sounds so much nicer.’

  ‘I see.’ He laughed. ‘But I suppose the confidentiality clause still stands whether you’re getting paid or not.’

  ‘Got it in one. Look, talk to his social worker, she’ll be able to point you in the right direction at least.’

  Mike had to leave it at that. Clearly, he wasn’t going to get any cooperation from Judith and Maria couldn’t help him. Mike had met Mina Williams on several occasions. She’d been present in loco parentis when he’d been interviewing juveniles. He liked her, but she was a tough lady, client’s rights coming first in her book. What was she going to tell him that Maria would not? Until an hour or so ago he’d assumed he was just dealing with a sixteen-year-old Misper. Now he thought of the boy seen running away from Theo’s house and he was not so sure.

  * * *

  Judith stood beside the window, looking down at Mike Croft’s car and willing him to drive away. The big old estate car seemed to dominate the street, to mark her house out for special attention, and she wished fervently that he would go.

  She had played it all wrong. Lost it at the very moment when she should have been cool and calm, or even just upset by Terry’s going. He could have accepted that, she thought. Understood it.

  But she was so sick of all the prying and the fussing. Even now, when everything was going so well and she had begun to feel that she and Terry finally had the chance to lead a normal life, everything was going against them.

  ‘Oh, Terry,’ Judith whispered, suddenly angry with her son for jeopardizing it all. ‘What the hell did you have to run off for?’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  9.15 a.m.

  They had talked through the night. It had been hard, at first, seeing the shock on Sarah’s face, so hard that he’d wanted to run out into the storm and get far away from her. Then the shock had faded.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she had said. ‘I don’t believe they could think that about you. And besides,’ she’d added as though this made it impossible, ‘you were just a little kid.’

  ‘I don’t remember much,’ Terry said miserably. ‘If I did it, I don’t remember doing it. I know I was jealous of Nathan, but I mean, lots of kids are jealous, aren’t they?’ He didn’t look at Sarah, but felt her nod, he willed himself to carry on. ‘I remember I’d gone into Nathan’s room and I shouldn’t have been there. They’d given him my baby toys. Said I was too grown up for them and that I should give them to him. I didn’t want to. I cried. I remember that. It was my birthday. I was six and they’d given me all this new stuff to make up for taking my baby things away. They’d had a birthday party, all the family, that sort of thing. Then, when everyone had gone away Mum and Dad had started arguing about something. They were always fighting. I sat on the stairs for a long time listening to them. Then I went into Nathan’s room.’

  He clammed up again. Sarah hunted around for something that would keep the conversation going, wanting him to open up to hen

  ‘What were you looking for,’ she said, ‘in Nathan’s room, I mean?’

  Terry hesitated. ‘You’ll laugh,’ he said.

  ‘No I won’t.’

  He glanced sideways at her, then dug a hand into his pocket, pushing through a hole he’d made in the lining. ‘It was this.’

  Sarah took the proffered object with something close to reverence. ‘It’s a mouse,’ she said, then laughed. ‘Where’s its other ear?’

  Terry shrugged. ‘Lost it a long time ago,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how come they let me keep it really. I guess in the panic no one noticed.’ He hesitated, embarrassed. Sarah could see the back of his neck and his cheeks begin to redden. He said, ‘When I was really little, I didn’t want teddy bears or any of the usual stuff but Mouse always slept under my pillow. When they made me give it to Nathan, well I guess it must have really pissed me off.’

  He fell silent then, drawing into himself as the memory played itself out. His parents’ angry voices coming up the stairs and his father slamming the bedroom door. He’d hidden behind the big cupboard in Nathan’s room, afraid of his mother. She had come unsteadily into the room, leaning heavily against the bedroom door, pushing herself off from the doorframe as she lurched towards the baby’s cot. She’d been drinking again. Even at six years old, Terry had understood that.

  Terry had pressed himself closer to the wall, peering around the corner, watching.

  Nathan’s cot had also been his once. It was a white, drop-sided affair trimmed with white drapes and lace-edged bumper cushions all around the sides. From his place behind the cupboard, he lost sight of his mother behind the drapes as she bent towards the cot. Then she began to scream. A piercing, tremulous sound that had Terry cowering in the corner and his father dashing from the bedroom and bursting through the door.

  Nathan was dead, one of the bumper cushions from around the cot pressed across his face.

  ‘I was six,’ Terry told her. ‘It had been my birthday. But it does happen, you know.’ His voice rose with a nervous edge to it. ‘I mean, don’t you ever listen to the news? Being a kid doesn’t mean you can’t kill someone. Nathan’s dead, Sarah. And so’s Theo.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  9.15 a.m.

  Tom Andrews had received another letter and this one worried him far more than the last. Like the others it had been hand-delivered. It was printed on cheap paper and had been addressed to him directly. That last was no real surprise, Tom’s by-line appeared on a weekly column and regularly on articles and reports. He was well known locally. It was the content of this last letter that troubled him so deeply.

  He picked up the telephone and called Divisional. Inspector Croft was not there, he was told. On impulse, he called Maria, who was getting ready for her first patient. Mike wasn’t there, she said. Off to London.

  Tom knew better than to ask why; it was a concession to him that she told him that much.

  He tried to reach Price, then remembered that Price too had gone elsewhere, and there seemed little point attempting to reach Mike on his mobile. He could hardly turn around and come right back just because Tom Andrews would rather deal with him.

  Reluctantly, Andrews called divisional HQ again and asked to be put through to Superintendent Flint.

  He was brief and to the point. ‘I’ve received another letter’ he said. ‘He claims he’s killed someone. Name of Marion.’

  * * *

  Davy breathed deep. It was raining, but the air was cold and clean, and after a night cooped up listening to the town drunks the sound of rain and traffic was the most welcome sound in the world.

  Theo’s house would still be cordoned off. He had the few things with him he had collected for the night he had spent in the hotel, and his bank and Visa cards.

  The duty solicitor had seen him signed out then gone on to his next case. He’d been ushered out like a guest who’d overstayed his welcome and insulted his hosts.

  Davy began to walk, not knowing where to go or how to get there, his mind dwelling on the facts that seemed most important to him.

  Marion was dead. Theo was dead. Two women he’d been involved with, murdered within only a few days of one another.

  God, if he’d been the police, he’d have been suspicious of him, Davy thought bitterly.

  He quickened his pace, turning up the collar of his coat against the rain and moving with a sudden determination.

  Twice in the past year he had seen Marion. Something he’d failed to tell the police and really didn’t feel he wanted to tell them now. Reason told him that his disinformation would count against him should he ever be found out, but right now Davy really didn’t care.

  Th
e first time he’d seen Marion had been brief. He’d called into the bookshop where she was working, just to say hello. The second time, she had called him, had insisted they meet at Avebury, well away from anyone that might see them.

  They’d walked among the stones. It had been raining and the ground was soft beneath their feet and slippery with fallen leaves. Marion’s mood had seemed to match the weather, dull and miserable, but she had failed to tell him what the problem was. Seemed to regret her impulse to call him and, when he really pressed, told him it was only man trouble.

  At the time he’d accepted that. It was easy to accept Marion having trouble with the men in her life. Now, he wondered. Realized he was probably withholding material evidence or whatever they called it.

  He should go back really. Sort it out.

  Davy hesitated for a moment but couldn’t face returning to the police station and the hours of questioning that would follow. Not yet.

  They had had coffee, he remembered, in the barn cafe, and when he had paid the poem he had composed for Theo had fallen out of his wallet. Marion had picked it up, that poem that he had written especially for Theo, and she had smiled properly for the first time.

  ‘You wrote poetry for me once,’ she had said. ‘That one about the fire on Kennet Hill. You know, I really liked that.’ He had only realized much later that she had not given Theo’s poem back.

  Theo and Marion, such different women. They had known about each other. Davy was open that way, not liking secrets. The two women had even spoken once when Marion had called him about something.

  Different women, but he linked them. He had known them both and, surely, he must somehow have drawn the thread closed between them.

  There was only one link he could think of. The photographs. The magazine.

  He glanced around before crossing the road, wondering if he was being tailed. Then decided it didn’t matter if he was. They had nothing they could charge him with and there was no way they could keep him confined. Running across the busy road, Davy hopped on to a bus, the first that came along, looking back over his shoulder as it pulled away.

  9.30 a.m.

  The weather seemed to have broken at last. Grey skies had lightened and there was even a suggestion of sunlight about the day. Price was not destined to see much of it.

  ‘Arrived late last night,’ Morrow said over breakfast, producing a series of faxes from his pockets. ‘Thought it best you got a bit of sleep before immersing yourself in muck for the day.’

  Price took the papers from him and laid them on a spare bit of table.

  Mickey’s Cafe was Morrow’s regular watering-hole. It fell somewhere between an old-fashioned transport cafe and a continental bar. Formica-topped tables that could have survived the fifties and old cigarette ads framed on the walls, together with a selection of film posters and painted art deco mirrors.

  ‘This is the Howard woman,’ Price commented, surprised at the poses and Theo’s state of undress.

  ‘And that’s Marion O’Donnel,’ Morrow confirmed. ‘Interesting, don’t you think?’ He waved a greasy knife in Price’s general direction. ‘Starred in her own feature, by the look of things. July’s special. So I’ve arranged for a root around in our “lost and found”, see if the young lady was more than a one-hit wonder.’

  ‘Marianne,’ Price commented, reading the curvy lettering at the head of the page. ‘You think she was a pro, then?’

  Morrow took a large swallow of his tea. ‘Who can say? Your boss is paying a visit to the publishers, but I thought we’d see what we’ve already got in stock. I’ve cleared it with Vice.’

  Price folded the faxes and handed them back to Morrow. ‘So you and I are going to spend the day looking at mucky books?’

  ‘And the odd video.’ Morrow grinned. ‘Anyway, it won’t be just the two of us. I’ve got a couple of assistants lined up.’

  Morrow settled down to finishing his breakfast. Two little helpers, he thought happily. Beth Cooper was a trooper, she’d not turn a hair at anything she saw, but he was looking forward to seeing just how red Stein could get during the course of the day.

  * * *

  Beth Cooper did a lot to improve Price’s day. He put her in her middle twenties. Five five, somewhere about a hundred and twenty pounds and none of them wasted. Blonde curls, cut a bit too short for his liking — but then, she hadn’t asked his opinion. Blue-grey eyes.

  The young man who crept in with her was another matter. He was still a probationer, Morrow told Price. Seconded from uniform because Morrow needed bodies. ‘He’s all they could spare me,’ Morrow had complained.

  He sidled into the room, sandy-haired and pale-faced, looking far too uncertain even for a probationer, Price thought. But he remembered his own time as a police rookie far too well to pass judgement, yet. And the thought of a probationary year under a Charlie Morrow was enough to make anyone a little green about the gills.

  It was funny, Price thought, after the first ten minutes of flicking through skin mags, just how boring it got, how unsexy. The women in the pictures ceased to be women, just images to compare with the pictures he had of Theo and Marion. He’d thought it unlikely that Theo would be featured in any of them. After all, she might be in good shape, but she wasn’t exactly a spring chicken. He’d mentioned the thought to Morrow.

  ‘You ever work Vice?’ Morrow had asked him.

  ‘Only briefly and it was drugs rather than porn.’

  ‘Right. Well, I have, sonny boy, and I’ll tell you for nothing. I’ve seen skin flicks and magazines featuring anything with a body from six months to Methuselah.’

  Price tried hard to concentrate, realizing that images were just skipping by. From across the room he heard Beth Cooper laugh. Now if he was looking at her . . .

  He put the thought aside. Jesus Christ, and he didn’t think these things affected him . . . He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, trying not to think of Beth Cooper and convinced of Morrow’s piercing gaze upon him.

  ‘I see brush salesmen are still in vogue,’ Beth commented. ‘God, Charlie, you should take a read of some of this stuff.’

  Price found himself skimming through the pages of text. Sure, he’d read these things when he was younger. Not quite behind the bike sheds, but the equivalent. He was surprised to see how little they had changed.

  He’d had a friend at college who had supplemented his grant writing this stuff. He’d fallen lucky and placed quite a bit with one magazine or another. Price vividly recalled one of the rejections he had got too: ‘Sorry, but we’re steering clear of the pseudo-lesbian stuff this month.’

  It had paid better anyway than working in the student bar.

  Sighing, he realized that the last few pages had just passed him by. Either woman could have been there, everything exposed, and he would not have seen them.

  He went back for a second look.

  ‘See something you like?’ Charlie Morrow bellowed at him. Price’s thoughts drifted to Beth Cooper sitting across the room. ‘Oh yes, guv, plenty,’ he said.

  * * *

  The collator could not get hold of Mike. He knew that Mike generally dumped his mobile, switched off, in the glove compartment when he was driving and it was no use trying to get him that way. He paged him anyway and then went straight to Flint with the information.

  Phillip Myers had a record. An old one, for sure, but still a record.

  Flint read it through. ‘Two counts of possession,’ he said, ‘and one count of indecency.’ Satisfaction was written large on Flint’s face.

  ‘Bring him in,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  12.20 p.m.

  Terry and Sarah had finally fallen asleep and it had been late morning before they woke up. The rain had eased to a light drizzle, but the skies were still leaden and threatened more. At first they had tried to keep off the roads and walk parallel to them across the fields, but with the weight of mud dragging on their feet this had proved too much. And hedges crossing t
he path made the trek impossible.

  There was little traffic. They decided they would risk walking on the road and hope that no one took an interest.

  Sarah had taken hold of Terry’s hand as they left the house, surprising him. Most of the night had been spent talking and, despite the rain, Terry felt more hopeful than he could remember in a long, long time. Up until now, the only people that knew his story had been his grandparents and his mother and the various social workers and other professionals that had seemed to dog their lives.

  The village Terry had spoken of was just ahead of them. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it might be better if we don’t both go inside the shop just in case the police have put out a report or something. You wait round the corner. There’s a bus shelter, I think, and I’ll go inside.’

  Reluctantly, Sarah agreed, delving in her pocket for some of the damp money she had obtained with her mother’s card. ‘I think you watch too many spy films,’ she said. ‘They won’t be interested in looking for us. Too many crimes to solve.’

  ‘Please, Sarah,’ he said.

  She bit her lip. ‘OK, I’ll wait round the corner, but don’t you think of running out on me or anything.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  He left her at the bus-stop and crossed the road, disappearing inside the shop. Anxiously, Sarah watched.

  He took so long that Sarah was beginning to think he really had run into trouble. Then he came out, carrier bag in hand. He walked slowly, with exaggerated casualness, until he reached the bend, then he ran.

  ‘Come on,’ he hissed at her. ‘We’re in the papers, both of us.’