by Oliver Tidy
*
Saturday night passed for Romney in a most agreeable way. He stayed off the booze and kept his phone close. He cooked, was attentive to his guest and ended the night entwined in a naked exhausted embrace. He slept heavily.
The following morning Julie Carpenter left to spend some of the day with her mother in Deal. On any other Sunday Romney would have been sorry to see her go, but it was with a barely concealed sense of relief that he waved her off after their breakfast together. He showered, dressed and drove out to the cliffs.
The gloom laden sky sagged beneath its burden of weather. Romney cast a wary eye upwards and hoped that whatever was about to be deposited on the town would hold off until he’d seen the officers on watch and regained his vehicle. He checked with the van monitoring Park’s flat to be assured that there had been no sign of him. It was as Romney expected; he didn’t know many of Park’s age who were out of bed before lunch time on a winter’s Sunday.
Superintendent Falkner had flexed a contact to enable CID to borrow space in the elevated coast guard facility which overlooked the English Channel. From there they had a commanding view across a wide expanse of the cliff top. Using powerful binoculars they were able to keep a comfortable watch over the site where the gun was buried. During the night they would watch for torch beams, but, unless word was passed that Park had left his home, they had instructions to stay out of sight in the towering glass and concrete edifice unless they suspected that the site under surveillance was being compromised. It suited those on watch being warm and sheltered and with limitless hot drinks.
Romney spent fifteen minutes speaking with his men and enjoying the outlook. Visibility was limited with the low cloud, but the regular coming and going of ferries and freight ships provided a therapeutic distraction from the otherwise dreary vista. Whatever weather the channel threw at the structure it wouldn’t be a concern for those inside.
The rest of the day passed quietly. Regular updates reported that neither Park nor his mother had stuck their faces outside the building. After his excursion to the cliffs, Romney went home and made himself busy with domesticity.
*
Monday, Tuesday and most of Wednesday came and went disappointingly. The CID squad room developed an air of an expectant father in a maternity ward waiting room about it. People went about their regular duties, new enquiries and investigations opened up, but a reserved and subdued atmosphere, a preoccupation with the bigger picture, overcast the working environment. All knew that time was running out and to an officer they appeared to share Romney’s growing anxiety and frustration at the lack of development. Romney was a man to be avoided if at all possible. His obvious anxiety regarding the ticking clock was permanently etched into his features.
Park had left his home on Monday afternoon once to visit a local supermarket; Tuesday late morning for a couple of hours and again on Wednesday afternoon. None of his outings had taken him further than the town centre. Each time he was sighted the phones rang, the adrenaline flowed, those on duty prepared themselves. But he seemed in no hurry to go anywhere in particular and, if the surveillance reports were accurate, he seemed equally unconcerned that he might be being watched.
It was a long time since the Dover CID had mounted such a surveillance operation. For some of those involved it was their first taste of the experience and if they harboured romantic notions about it they were soon disabused of them. The crushing boredom and monotony of it – doing nothing with nothing to do but watching and staying awake and more watching. For those taking their shift in the mobile outside Park’s it was worse. Freezing temperatures, condensation and cramped conditions compounded the tedium.
On Wednesday evening just before leaving for home Marsh called on the DI. She too had tried to stay out of his way as much as possible. The more of the week that elapsed and the closer they got to having to call time on the operation, the worse she felt for Romney.
‘I’m off, sir,’ she said, ‘if there’s nothing else?’ She instantly felt that it was a poor attempt at making conversation.
‘No, there’s nothing else, Sergeant, thank you.’
‘Sir,’ she began, awkwardly. Romney looked up, obviously tired, probably irritable. ‘Well, I just wanted to say that we’re all as disappointed as you that Park hasn’t gone for it. If there was a way to encourage him up there, someone would have come up with the idea.’
Romney smiled thinly, appreciating her intentions. ‘Thanks. They’re a good team. All we can do is wait out the next forty-eight hours, but to be honest the longer that it goes on the less likely I think it is that he’s going to give us the satisfaction. But we’ll have tried. You can’t do more than that in this job; do your best and then remember it’s just a job. Some you win, some you lose. Goodnight, Sergeant.’
‘Goodnight, sir,’ she said, closing the door behind her.
True to the philosophical thoughts he’d given voice to, Romney was beginning to reconcile himself that it wasn’t going to be. Best to see it out gracefully, chalk it up to experience and move on. Although it would hurt him, it was essentially out of his hands.
He was to meet Julie Carpenter in a little over an hour for a meal at a local pub before going to the small cinema that the town managed to keep open. He hadn’t seen her since the weekend citing pressure of work commitments. In truth he could have managed either of Monday or Tuesday night. His meeting with her that evening was part of his acceptance that he should begin to resign himself to an unsuccessful operation. Maybe, with more time they could have hoped for success eventually, but he knew that would be impossible – even legal justice had its financial limits.
At his desk he phoned the team outside Park’s flat to hear, for what must have been the hundredth time that short week, that Park was home.
Outside the confines of his glass walled office the CID squad room was quiet and in semi-darkness as most lights had been extinguished behind those who had left for home.
To distract himself he decided to clean out the detritus from his desk that had built up over the last few months. Out-of-date notes, crunched up paper, a newspaper, a glossy brochure for somewhere hot. He stared at the cover, an expanse of the bluest sea he had ever seen bordered by the smoothest, whitest beaches imaginable. He was due a good holiday this year. He tossed it into the wastepaper basket. The roof on his renovation project needed doing this summer. That’s where his time and money would go.
Beneath the brochure was a plain buff file. He removed it, laid it on his desk and opened it. His heart sank at the image of Claire Stamp stretched naked over the petrol station table. Another case unsatisfactorily closed. Another crime unsolved. Another black mark for him personally. Another victim. Another statistic. Another wasted life. A wave of melancholy washed over him. Alone, he didn’t feel the embarrassment and discomfort of gawping at her obscene nudity, at the still image from someone else’s nightmare, only the rankle of failure and the sadness of the passing of such a young life.
He slumped in his seat and exhaled deeply thinking that he could really do with a good drink. When the Park vigil was history, that’s what he’d do – organise the team and arrange a night out in a police-friendly pub.
His eyes fell on the glossy A4 image once again. As he reached to close the file and prevent its taunting of him further, his gaze, over the shock of the subject matter, slid off to take in the rest of the grotty, grubby scene: a plastic patio chair, a worktop with mugs on it, a wall cupboard with a slipped door, a sink and above the sink a picture. He sat up and looked closer. He yanked open his desk drawer and ferreted about for a magnifying glass. Sticking his finger with a drawing pin he swore, found the glass and held it to the photograph. His hand was shaking. When he brought himself under control and the image into focus he realised that it wasn’t a picture – it was a mirror and reflected in the mirror were two heads. One, the one with what looked like a balaclava mask under a hooded sweatshirt, had a mobile phone partially obscuring it. The other, despite mis
sing a narrow margin of its right side was undoubtedly the grinning face of Carl Park.
*
‘Good morning, Sergeant,’ said an unexpectedly cheery Romney, when Marsh arrived the following morning. She sensed strongly that he’d being lying in wait for her arrival. ‘Hang up your coat and step into my office would you?’
He left her standing in the middle of the squad room considering what could have put him in the exact opposite of the mood she was expecting as they neared the final hours of the Park surveillance operation. As she stowed her bag, shook the rain from her coat and hung it up she wondered if she should be concerned about something. It certainly wouldn’t have been a result in the Park case. He’d have called her. She made a face at Grimes.
He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe he saw his lady friend last night.’
‘Come in. Sit down,’ said Romney, waving her to a chair.
‘Everything all right, sir?’
Romney nodded impatiently and tapped a buff file that sat in the middle of his desk. ‘Possibly everything is going to be better than all right.’
‘Must be the Park case, then?’
Romney said, ‘Remember the photographs that were sent to Claire Stamp’s phone? The ones that you printed off in here?’
Marsh answered slowly, ‘Yes.’
‘We should have looked at them a little more closely.’ A realisation scudded across his thoughts, clouding his features. ‘If we had, we might have prevented the second rape. Anyway, the past is the past. It can’t be changed. I want you to take a close look at the image on top. Ignore the victim. Look around the room. Take your time. What do you see?’
He placed the magnifying glass on top of the folder and stood up giving her his chair. She came round, sat, opened the folder and Romney waited while she hovered the viewing aid across the page. He knew that she’d seen it by the way her breath was sharply drawn, her arm became rigid and she leaned into the image.
‘It’s him,’ she breathed. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘No doubt?’
‘None. We’ve got him.’
‘Good,’ said Romney. ‘That’s his three mistakes.’
They played musical chairs again.
‘Does the super know?’ said Marsh. Romney shook his head. ‘When did you see it?’
‘Last night, just before I left.’ Marsh blinked a couple of times and frowned. Romney smiled at her confusion. ‘Why haven’t I done something about it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I nearly did. I nearly had Park picked up immediately.’
‘But?’
‘But, I suppose a bird in the hand doesn’t satisfy me. I’m a greedy bugger.’
‘Sorry, sir, you’ve lost me.’
‘I still want him for Roper’s death. I want him to get out on those cliffs and recover that weapon.’
Marsh thought. ‘But this evidence,’ she pointed at the photograph, ‘gives you the same connection you were hoping to get if he went out looking for the gun.’
‘Partly, yes, but we would be more likely to get a conviction if we can get him out there with the smoking gun, as it were, in his hand. He’s been so calculating, so devious, so sociopathic up to now that if we can show his web of lies and deceit there would be a good chance that we could create the doubt of his innocence despite any protestations he might make. And you never know, with a mountain of evidence against him, he might even cough for a sentence reduction. If we can scare him enough.’
Marsh raised her eyebrows at Romney’s optimism. ‘I’m not convinced, sir. I think that we should nick him for this.’
‘Think about it,’ persisted Romney. ‘Let’s say that we do, we bring him in and confront him with it. He’s a slippery customer. We know that. What if he pleads that he was just aiding and abetting the rape? He could come up with some cock-and-bull that Roper had intimidated him, that he was terrified of him and what he would do to him if he didn’t do what he was told. He could get off lightly.’
‘So what are you saying? That we’re no further forward? I mean, sorry, but I don’t understand why you’re so cheerful in that case.’
‘Because now we have something, some bait, with which to lure him out there. We just have to get it on the hook right.’
‘Is this why you haven’t told the super?’
Romney ignored the question. ‘We’ve still got today and tomorrow with the surveillance. We’d be daft not to see that out, now that it’s been authorised. There’s still a slim chance he’ll make it easy for us. If not, we’ve got a twenty-four hour cushion to come up with something, a way to use the pictures to persuade Park that he needs his gun.’
***
15
Despite the development, Marsh left Romney’s office troubled. Romney was right, if they’d done their job properly, examined those distasteful images thoroughly instead of prudishly shying away from their responsibility and hiding them in a drawer they could have prevented the second rape. As a detective, she accepted this as a personal and professional failing in her duty to protect the public. But Romney was also right that there was nothing to be done about the past other than learn from it.
The reservations she harboured regarding what Romney proposed to do with them, however, were what concerned her the most. She understood his desire to prosecute Park for everything he was guilty of. That too was their responsibility, but the methods were just as important. The police had to remain within certain operational and legal boundaries and Romney’s secretiveness regarding his discovery and his suggestion of using the images to prompt Park into a particular course of action disturbed her when she explored the rules of engagement her DI might be tempted to bend or break.
Marsh had every wish to see the bad guys get what was coming to them, it was part of why she was where she was, but that was a professional inclination and it necessarily had its legal and ethical limits. She worried that Romney was blurring the demarcating border that separated professionalism from personal vendetta and that such failings could ultimately threaten to undermine the whole operation, if Park and his legal representation were able to claim unscrupulous practice.
Romney had asked her to go away and think about it. What he’d meant was come up with some ideas, not deliberate over the legalities. She found herself more hopeful that Park would give them an alternative, but by the time the early seasonal dusk fell it looked less and less likely that he would. Reports from the unit outside his home stated that he hadn’t been seen since returning from the paper shop mid-afternoon.
*
At a little after four o’clock, Superintendent Falkner appeared in the squad room. He nodded his way through the maze of office furniture and officers present and let himself into to Romney’s personal space, closing the door gently behind him. He didn’t stay long and Marsh could guess what he was doing there.
In the brief time since Romney had taken her into his confidence, Marsh had managed to manufacture a level of anxiety for herself based on what she was afraid Romney’s plane of desperation to incriminate Park further would drive him to. As a result of this, she found herself giving serious thought to how the new information could be tactfully and legally used to bring about the desired outcome. If it was going to be used in some way, she should use what influence she had to make it above-board and legal.
When Falkner departed, she approached Romney who was busying himself with paperwork. ‘Still nothing on Park,’ she said.
‘You saw Superintendent Falkner?’ She nodded. ‘Just came to gently remind me that we’ve got till dark tomorrow. That’ll be about four o’clock.’
‘You didn’t tell him about the development, I suppose?’
‘That’ll keep for twenty-four hours. Any ideas?’ She shook her head. ‘Want to hear mine?’
Marsh closed the door and slid onto the available chair opposite him, as bid, and listened to him outline his idea. She kept a respectful silence throughout, even though her conscience was voicing, ever louder, protestat
ions. He had been finished several long moments before she realised he was waiting for a response. She took a deep, steadying breath.
‘Sir, I’m sorry, I don’t like it. I don’t like what we’re talking about doing.’
Romney remained patiently persuasive. ‘What we’re talking about doing is giving the little scrota – someone who we both know is as guilty as hell – enough rope to hang himself, that’s all.’
‘I’m concerned about the legality of it, sir, if you don’t mind me being honest.’
Romney smiled at her. ‘That is exactly why I’m talking to you and not Grimes, or one of the other old-timers. I need someone with an objective, critical eye. Someone who still has the rule book – the updated, revised edition – fresh up here.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I don’t want to find our case in a position where some smart arsed lawyer can cry foul and have it thrown out. And between ourselves there are occasions when I can’t see the wood for the trees. This is too important to jeopardise on a technicality. Look, I trust your judgement. I want your professional, objective opinion. Let me go through it again in detail. Tell me where it’s crossing the line and we’ll do something about it. We can thrash out the details and, if your reservations are insurmountable, we’ll go with what we’ve got. I want you on board for this. We might have to gently bend a guideline or two, but I’m not going to ask anyone to break any rules.’
