Detective Mike Croft Series Box Set

by Jane Adams

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Max told her. ‘Why else would he take Alastair away?’

  ‘It’s your story, you tell me.’

  ‘No, if Jake’s got him, then it’s a dead story now. It doesn’t matter any more.’

  ‘What does matter?’ Maria asked him. ‘What would matter now?’

  Max thought about it for a while, then said, ‘Perfection. Getting things the best they possibly could be. Nothing else was good enough for Jake. Pushing the envelope, was how he put it. Always pushing the envelope.’

  He glanced over at Mike, then, turning his attention back to Maria, said, ‘Jake, now, he never went for that family thing. He’d seen his own lot, where that got them. Jake wanted more than that. He wanted a place of his own, away from the back streets, somewhere he could breathe. And a studio. Somewhere bright and airy he could work. He wanted to retire at forty-five and live in luxury the rest of his days. Somewhere warm, with open skies and blue seas. And he wanted to be famous. To be admired for his work. For what he had achieved.’

  Maria held her breath. The mention of a house seemed almost too perfect. ‘Did he get all of those things?’ she asked him. ‘We know about the flat in London of course, you told us that, but does that fit with Jake’s dreams?’

  ‘Oh, that. That was just convenient. That wasn’t what Jake wanted, only somewhere to send post and for people to stay. Jake had his own place and his own life quite apart from that.’

  ‘Did you ever go there? To Jake’s other place?’

  Max awarded her a pitying look. ‘Do you think I’d tell you even if I had?’ he asked. ‘Honestly, you really think I’m thick or what?’

  She was losing it, Maria realized. She’d tried to push him far too fast. In an attempt to salvage things, she asked, ‘And you, Max, did you ever dream of a place like that? A place in the sun with blue seas all around?’ But Max just laughed at her. ‘You think you’re oh so clever, don’t you, love? But you’re not. None of you are. You just go on your blinkered way, hoping for the best, and Jake runs rings around you all.’

  He would say nothing after that. Maria tried once more to draw him out but he just sat in silence, listening to her with a slight half-smile hovering around his mouth. Maria wanted to claw it off his face, to rant and scream and demand that he helped them, but she knew that it would do no good. Finally she stood up and Mike did the same. ‘We’re going now,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Max.’

  She gave him a moment when she reached the door, time to change his mind, but Max didn’t so much as move.

  When they got out to Mike’s car she sat in the front seat and cried, tears of anger and of pain for Essie.

  ‘Do you think he really knows?’ Mike asked her when she’d calmed a little.

  Maria shook her head. ‘We were stupid even to imagine he would,’ she said. ‘Think about it, Mike. If you wanted to keep something hidden, would you tell a blabbermouth like Max? Someone who worshipped your shadow? No, he’d know Max would only want to boast about it — Jake having got his dream. Max Harriman doesn’t know where Jake is. He doesn’t know a damn thing.’

  * * *

  Back at Honiton, Mike found his desk piled high with house agents’ details and back issues of property pages covering the relevant years. Two officers were already working their way through the stack, marking with highlighter anything that looked as though it matched their brief.

  Most of the notices in the London flat were for the south coast, in the main not much further west than Dorset and to the east as far as Kent. There were a few for the Yorkshire coast and Moors, but as Jake’s most recent activity was all more southerly-based, they were giving priority to these and leaving the northern cottages aside.

  Peterson was not in sight. Mike knew that he had to come clean about their trip to see Max. Maria was a civilian, personally involved, and the whole trip an impulse that had come to nothing. Peterson was not likely to be impressed.

  But the Chief Superintendent had other things on his mind. ‘I’ve got the pathology reports on Alastair,’ he said. ‘It’s definitely him, dental records are a match. He died of the gunshot wounds, no sign of drugs or other injury. And he’d eaten a meal three or four hours before he died. Last meal for the condemned man? Or was Jake planning on keeping him alive and then changed his mind?’

  Mike shrugged, not really caring either way any more. ‘We’re not likely to find out,’ he said, ‘unless we find Jake.’

  They went back into the incident room. Several dozen people, sorting information, inputting data, generating more and more facts and figures and suppositions. Maria was sitting at Mike’s desk, leafing through the London faxes once again. ‘He’s got to be close to the sea,’ she said. ‘Just from the way Alastair was found.’

  ‘Or he might easily have taken the body and dumped it over a cliff. We’ve got the coastguard trying to estimate a point of entry, looking at the currents and tides,’ Mike commented.

  ‘But about a third of the house details are for coastal properties. Lots of them have “ocean view” or “sea view” or “clifftop location” as part of their selling blurb.’

  ‘But it leaves about two-thirds of them that did not,’ Peterson pointed out. ‘Look, I admit it would be nice to narrow it down, but right now I’m not sure we can risk doing that.’

  Maria was not going to be put off. ‘Max talked about Jake loving the ocean,’ she said. ‘About his dreams of an open view and a clear sky.’

  ‘He was talking about a retirement place,’ Mike argued. ‘Somewhere warm, he said.’

  ‘There’s something we haven’t taken account of yet,’ Peterson noted.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A private sale. Jake might have seen the house in the small ads. My daughter bought hers that way. In fact, I’m not even sure they even advertised it. The previous owner just put a board up outside the house with a phone number on it. She spotted it when she was out one day and the whole thing was done without an agent.’

  ‘Well, we can pull in all the small ads that appeared in the local papers,’ Mike said. ‘Though it just adds to the mountain of stuff to plough through. And we’ll just have to hope that Jake wasn’t as observant as your daughter.’

  * * *

  The late afternoon sun turned the sea to fire on the horizon. Mike and Peterson had called a briefing — ‘assembling the troops’, as Peterson called it — to see what the day had achieved. Maria left them to it, needing to get away from the hothouse atmosphere of the incident room. She drove down to the coast road, in places not much more than a narrow trackway, and finally pulled her car to the side of the road on the top of a grassy cliff.

  It was another magnificent day. She loved weather like this, bright days at the beginning of summer, when the land was still green and the dustiness of August seemed a long way off.

  She sat on the grass beside her car, gazing far out to sea, the lazy crash of waves sounding below her as she tried to imagine Jake Bowen and where he was. How different was his view from hers? Did he see the same ships far out on the horizon, the same waves, the same sunlight burning on the water?

  Peterson had been talking to the coastguard. An aerial survey had been proposed using a police helicopter and the coastguard flight. In the course of the afternoon, he had come round to Maria’s way of thinking about Jake. That he must be right on the coast in view of the sea. Somewhere he could have pitched Alastair’s body into the ocean without the risk of being overlooked.

  ‘Do you know how many miles of coast that is?’ Peterson had asked Maria.

  She didn’t, and for that matter neither did he. She worried now that she might be wrong; that Peterson would put the time and effort into this and waste it all when he could be looking somewhere else.

  But it was no good feeling guilty, Maria told herself.

  They had to begin somewhere and, deep down, her instincts told her she was right.

  * * *

  A few miles along the coast, Jake stepped through the gate with
Essie in his arms. She was half awake and crying, confused and frightened by this strange man who, for most of the time, seemed to be part of her bad dreams.

  Jake carried the child easily. She weighed little and was still too doped to struggle very much, though she blinked in the sudden light and tried to turn her face away.

  It was a wonderful day, Jake thought. The bright blue sky and silver-painted sea below, almost too bright to look at, like a mirror reflecting the sunlight. He laid the child upon the soft grass at the edge of the cliff and looked down at her, fascinated by the way the sunlight was absorbed by the darkness of her skin: the odd lights and colours, and a tonal quality white skin did not have. He turned his head this way and that, an artist assessing his subject, and what treatment he should use to give it life.

  Then he bent abruptly, seizing the child by one arm and one small ankle, and lifted her high into the air, swinging her out over the surging water.

  Essie was aware enough to scream, her body twisting in his hands as she reached frantically, grabbing at the empty air.

  Chapter Thirty

  It was close to midnight. The sky an inky blue, flecked with silver stars. Mike stood, gazing out of the window as behind him Maria put the telephone receiver down. She had been talking to Jo in spite of the late hour. Jo never slept anyway these days.

  Two hours north, Max Harriman lay dozing on his bed, his thoughts and dreams filled with Jake and the high places he had loved even as a child. His dreams remembered Jake standing at the very edge of a barren granite cliff: grey clouds, grey sea, grey headland beneath Jake’s feet; his arms spread wide as though he could lay himself upon the wind and fly.

  Macey and Liz sat by his office desk, neither of them inclined to go home, the whisky bottle set between them slowly diminishing as the night passed.

  ‘You ever been married, Macey?’ Liz had asked.

  ‘No, never have.’

  ‘You ever wanted to?’

  ‘You offering?’

  Liz giggled. ‘I don’t think I’m right for you,’ she said.

  * * *

  Sitting on the edge of his bed in a darkened room, Charlie Morrow tried to think of ways to sleep without the pills he was holding in his hand. He had just poured water into the glass and tipped out the little white pills when the telephone rang.

  ‘We should talk, Charlie,’ Jake Bowen said, and in the background Charlie heard a small child crying.

  * * *

  Macey stared accusingly at the telephone on his desk when it began to ring. ‘Who the hell at this time of night?’

  It was Charlie, excited and confused, as close to panic as Macey could imagine he would ever get.

  ‘He’s called again, Macey.’

  ‘Then phone the bloody police.’ He reached and switched on the speaker phone so Liz could hear.

  ‘I can’t. He says he’ll kill Essie if I do and I believe him.’

  ‘The kid’s already dead, Charlie, we both know that.’

  ‘No. No, she’s not. Listen, he had her talk to me. Poor little bugger sobbing for her mum. He says he’ll trade, me for the child, and I’ve got to go along with it. You must see that.’

  ‘Charlie, Charlie, you’re not thinking straight. Hold on to yourself. It’s a recording he’s got. The kid’s dead and that’s how you’ll end up if you chase this.’

  ‘I’ve got to take that chance.’ The sound of Essie’s crying had affected him as nothing else could.

  ‘Think, Charlie,’ Macey demanded again. ‘You’re a bloody copper, for fuck’s sake. This isn’t the way to go.’

  He paused, waiting for Charlie’s response, sensing that his initial panic was now starting to subside. ‘Look, I can be with you in less than an hour. Don’t do anything till I get there. Promise me that.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can. He said he’d be back in touch and I can’t predict what he’s going to do.’

  ‘Just hold on. I’ll be there.’

  Macey put the phone down before Charlie could say another word. He turned to Liz.

  ‘Get hold of Mike Croft, his mobile number’s in the book. If you can’t reach them that way, call the pub and keep it ringing till someone answers. I’m going to Charlie.’

  ‘Are you legal?’ Liz asked him, pointing at the whisky bottle.

  ‘God knows,’ Macey told her, then he was gone.

  * * *

  Charlie Morrow waited in his room staring at the telephone until he could no longer bear the sight of it. He switched on the computer and began to write a note addressed to Macey and to Mike, recording everything he could remember from Jake’s telephone call. All that had been said or that he had heard in the background or gained an impression of.

  There was a tapping on his bedroom window, French doors opening onto the garden. Charlie opened the door. Jake stood outside.

  ‘Coming, Charlie?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll get my coat.’

  ‘Be quick then.’

  Jake watched him as he crossed the room and took his raincoat from the wardrobe. Charlie took a second while his hands were out of sight to remove his watch and press the button to set the timer, then he dropped it on the desk as he passed by. Macey would at least know how long he’d been gone. Some kind of lifeline for a drowning man.

  * * *

  By the time Macey arrived, Liz had done her job and the local police were already there expecting him.

  ‘DI Croft said you might show up,’ the sergeant in charge told him. ‘You’d better come and look at this, but don’t touch anything.’

  Macey thought he was well beyond the need to be told that, but he let it pass and followed the officer down the hall.

  ‘He went out through the French windows,’ the sergeant told him, ‘and someone heard a car engine start up about the time we think he left.’

  ‘Charlie couldn’t drive,’ Macey said, ‘he could barely close his hands to pick up a cup.’

  ‘He could use the keyboard on the computer.’

  ‘Well, yes, he could pick away at it with two fingers if that’s what you mean, but that’s a lot less control than it would take to drive a car. Jake came for him, that’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  Macey crossed to the computer and read the brief message Charlie had typed on screen. It was full of spelling mistakes and typos and had obviously been done at speed. It recounted what Macey already knew. Jake’s phone call, and the crying child and then Charlie’s guess that Jake’s next contact might be in person and too soon for anyone to help.

  ‘I’ll set the timer on my watch,’ the message said. ‘You can draw some conclusion from how long I have been gone and work out how long it took for him to get here since he called me. I listened as closely as I could and there was no car engine, no sound at all in fact, except I think I heard a clock chiming in the background. The line was clear, no breaking up, and you know what mobiles can be like around here, so he must have called from somewhere the reception was good. I think for certain he must have called from home. I know it isn’t much, but anything might help.’

  ‘The watch?’ Macey asked, then saw it on the desk. Macey compared it to his own.

  ‘I took his call at ten to midnight,’ Macey said, and he looked expectantly at the officer.

  ‘It was twenty past by the time it had been relayed to us. Another ten before we made it here.’

  ‘Which gives a forty-minute window for Jake to get here and take Charlie away.’

  He looked at the message on the screen, remembering that he’d watched Charlie type. His hands were becoming more useful all the time but even so it was a slow process. He held his hands above the keyboard and pretended to input the words, Charlie-style, two fingers at a time and having to look to see each letter. It would have taken quite some time, Macey calculated. Just how long?

  ‘The car, you say, was heard, it left here around twenty past the hour?’

  The sergeant nodded, somewhat reluctantly, Macey thought.

  ‘Looks like you ju
st bloody missed him,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  6 July

  Jake had bound Charlie’s wrists with ducting tape and used more tape to wrap around both Charlie and the seat to keep him from moving.

  Essie lay in the rear of the car, dressed only in the pink T-shirt she had been wearing for the past two weeks. Her hands and ankles were tied and a piece of tape covered her mouth. Charlie had seen her face as he’d been pushed into the car, frightened brown eyes begging him to help.

  ‘What are you going to do with her?’ he asked Jake. ‘You said you’d let her go. Gave me your word.’

  ‘And you trusted me. Now that is touching.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie told him. ‘I did.’

  Jake drove in silence for a few minutes more, clearing the side road that led from the nursing home and turning back onto the main dual carriageway. At this time of the morning it was all but empty. Charlie waited, not certain what was safe to say. Jake drove another mile before pulling the car to an abrupt halt at the side of the road.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Charlie asked him, his mouth suddenly dry.

  ‘Letting her go,’ Jake replied. ‘Here looks as good a place as any.’

  He was out of the car before Charlie could say a word and had lifted the child from the back seat.

  ‘I’ll untie her hands and feet,’ he told Charlie, ‘wouldn’t want her to roll into a ditch and not get out.’

  ‘You can’t just leave her there. She’s only a child.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you wanted me to let her go?’

  ‘Of course I do, but not here. It’s a major road.’

  ‘Well, she’s more likely to be seen then, isn’t she?’ Jake said. ‘Or I could change my mind?’

  Charlie dared say nothing more. At least, he thought, the child was free. He had to hope she’d have the sense to stay off the road.

  He could see her in the wing mirror as Jake moved off, sitting by the roadside, the tape still across her mouth and the look of terror in her eyes.