Prey to All

by Cooper, Natasha

‘Only that Mrs C got even more vicious after the girl she’d never seen before came to the house a few weeks back.’

  ‘Girl? What girl? And why didn’t you tell me that before?’

  ‘I was coming to it. Give me time.’ He was all injured innocence, the little rat.

  It crossed Caroline’s mind that he might be stacking up some private stores of information to feed to one of the other incident rooms, hoping to show up her and the boss. Well, if that was his nasty little plan, he’d find himself neck deep in shit before she’d let it happen.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘The secretary said she thought Kate, but she couldn’t hear much. She didn’t open the door, see; she was working in the little study by the front door – they call it the boot room – inputting some document into his laptop because the scanner was on the blink. She heard the bell ring. Laura Chaze yelled out, “I’m busy, Malcolm, answer that.” “Must I?” he yelled back.’

  ‘All this verbatim reporting, Constable, I’m impressed. But are you sure it’s accurate?’

  He pulled out his notebook and flipped it open with one hand, like a Georgette Heyer hero with his snuff-box. Yeah, yeah, she thought, clever clogs.

  Jess had introduced her to the books and she liked them because they made her laugh; touched her sometimes, too. But now she kept her face stern. She wasn’t going to give Owler any more encouragement.

  ‘It’s an accurate record of what I was told, Sarge. I can’t be sure it’s what my informant heard, but it’s what she told me.’

  ‘Good point.’ He wasn’t stupid. He might even turn into a useful officer one day, when he’d been a bit bruised by life and learned what hurts and why and what it’s worth taking on the chin.

  ‘Then she heard his steps, the door opening, his voice all cold saying, “Yes?”, then a breathless quite young girl’s voice, saying, “I’m Kate.” Then there was a long pause till he said, “You’d better come in.” They went into the drawing room, past the office, and Sally – the secretary – said she caught a glimpse of a tall, thin, dark-haired girl. Lots of hair, drawn back in a slide at the back of her head: old-fashioned, she said. About five minutes later, Chaze breezed in and told her she’d done enough and ought to go home, since it was a Saturday. She never saw the girl again.’

  Caroline was glad he’d seen fit to give her the full story, but she was angry all the same that he’d kept it so long. ‘And what construction did you put on all that?’ He just shrugged. ‘You didn’t have a shot at working out who she could be?’ Caroline did give him a smile this time, wanting to soften him up. ‘That’s unlike you, Steve.’

  ‘A constituent? A relation? I didn’t think it was that important. She’s hardly going to have been a major drug-dealer – or even a runner for one. They don’t come girl-shaped with well-spoken voices and old-fashioned hair. At least, not in my experience they don’t.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Caroline went on smiling blandly at him, pushing the irritation down well below anything Owler would be able to see. ‘Well done. I’m not sure how much further it’ll take us, but you’ve done good. Thanks. Now, more important, how are Incident Room One doing with the gun dealers?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ve—’

  ‘They’ve been sending through reports every day. Haven’t you bothered to read them?’

  ‘Not yet. The boss made me—’

  ‘Well, get on with it, then. That’s hard information we need out there. Right up your street.’

  ‘But the shooters and the snouts don’t come under our brief,’ he said, betraying his resentment. So maybe it wasn’t just Femur’s dwindling reputation that was whittling away at his loyalty, but envy of the other team’s more interesting work. If so, he wasn’t alone in that.

  ‘No, but the more we know, the more we can use as a lever when we do find a suspect. Which we might well do. Get on with it. Check the facts, find the gaps, make a few lists. Man’s work, Steve. Like trainspotting.’

  The look in his narrow dark eyes was poisonous, but at the door he turned back and gave her a bit of smile back. ‘You’re right, Sarge. Sorry.’

  She nodded. So maybe the boss was on to something after all when he claimed that Steve Owler was a good, honest, intelligent copper in the making. And maybe she was a jealous cow, too, not wanting to lose her status as Femur’s most cherished body on the team.

  When Owler had gone, Caroline checked the time and put in a call to Trish Maguire’s chambers. Her clerk said she was in a con but that he’d get her to call the incident room as soon as she was free.

  Caroline spent the intervening twenty minutes tooth-combing the lists of all known girlfriends and mistresses of Malcolm Chaze, from his schooldays until his death, for criminal records. She grinned privately. Jess always got cross when she used the expression, banging on about how it was a fine-toothed comb you were supposed to use to pick nits, and that no one combs their teeth, but Caroline used it like most of her colleagues. You had to talk in the language of your world, even if it wasn’t right. Otherwise you were just being a snotty cow and getting up people’s noses.

  Several of Chaze’s old squeezes had motoring offences recorded against them; a few, minor convictions for possession of soft drugs; one, with possession with intent to supply. But there was no one with any real drug habit that Caroline could find, at least not one who had come to the attention of the police. Her next set of checks would be against suicides and accidental deaths. That was going to take a lot longer.

  She was still on the B suicides when Trish Maguire phoned back.

  ‘What a surprise, Sergeant Lyalt,’ she said, in her deep, classy voice, which always made Caroline think of Jess. That was probably why she’d liked Maguire from the start, and why she trusted her. She’d better watch that: an officer like her couldn’t go round trusting a brief. And just because Maguire sounded like Jess, that didn’t make her the same kind of person at all.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘You knew Malcolm Chaze quite well,’ Caroline said. ‘Can you put a surname to a young, probably teenage, girl with long dark hair, who was visiting him a short while before the killing? He called her Kate.’

  ‘Why have you come to me? You must be talking to his wife and staff. They could tell you straight away.’

  Such suspicion, Caroline thought, as she said aloud, ‘The widow’s had enough to take right now, and the last time I talked to the secretary she howled so much I couldn’t get anything out of her. Do you know who this Kate is?’

  ‘May I ask how you’ve come across her?’

  ‘So you do know. Great.’

  ‘I have an idea, but that’s all it is. How does she fit in to your inquiries?’

  ‘She probably doesn’t, but we’ve heard that relations between the Chazes deteriorated after her visit. We have to find out why. If you won’t help, you won’t. We’ll go crashing about in our size tens and hope we don’t hurt too many innocent people.’

  There was silence down the phone. Caroline waited to be told that Maguire wasn’t susceptible to that sort of blackmail. But eventually she said, ‘The person who springs to mind is Deborah Gibbert’s eldest child, Kate. She fits the description.’

  Facts and inferences clicked into place in Caroline’s brain. She could almost hear the satisfying clunk.

  ‘And Chaze and Deborah Gibbert were once lovers. And you overheard Mrs Chaze saying she could put up with girlfriends but drew the line at “steps”, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could she have been talking about stepchildren?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Trish didn’t sound too happy about it. ‘Is that all, Sergeant Lyalt? I’m pretty busy here.’

  There was a sound of shuffling papers, as though Maguire was determined to prove her desk was covered with work.

  ‘That’s all for the moment. Thanks. I’ll be in touch.’

  Caroline put down the phone and looked up to see Femur standing in front of her desk.
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br />   ‘I need a drink, Cally.’

  ‘OK.’ Without a protest, she locked away her lists in the drawer of the borrowed desk. ‘There’s a nice little pub just round the corner. Shall we go?’

  ‘How do you know Pimlico so well, Sergeant?’

  He was smiling again in almost the old way; his eyes were still hurt, but the rest of him was looking better.

  ‘Jess has friends who live here. We sometimes go with them to this pub and drink The Macallan.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. I want … I need … Can I talk to you about Sue?’

  Caroline got up from the desk and put her hand on his shoulder. Odd how you could feel like the mother of a man old enough to be your dad. ‘Let’s wait till we’ve a Scotch in our hands, Guv. That’ll make it easier for us both.’

  She put out the lights, sent him off ahead and had a quick word with the officers who were still at work. She delivered the orders as though transmitting them from Femur, then said she’d be back in an hour. They showed no signs of resenting – or suspecting – the orders.

  Her only other pause on the way to the conversation she didn’t much want to have was at the most private of the available phones.

  ‘Jess?’ she said, as soon as they were connected. ‘Sorry about dinner, but I’ve got to work.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jess. ‘Nothing’ll spoil. It’s all cold. I’ll have mine when I get hungry and bung yours in the fridge for when you’re free. Don’t kill yourself, will you, Angel? Remember, I have a stake in you.’

  Caroline sometimes wished Jess wasn’t an actor. It was hard to tell whether she was hurt. Or angry.

  ‘Me, too. See you later,’ she said, and followed her guv’nor out into the sweaty dusk. The chosen pub had a garden, but it would probably be full to overflowing at this time of day.

  Trish put down the phone with added respect for the young sergeant. Almost at once it rang again.

  ‘Dave here. I’ve had Sprindler’s on the line. They’re in a state because one of their clients, Deborah Gibbert, needs help and is begging to see you. It’s legal aid, and not your area, but apparently you’ve already been down to see her in an informal way. Can that be true?’

  It was a loaded question. Trish knew how jealously Dave guarded his right to allocate his employers’ time. ‘It’s part of the TV work I’m doing for Anna Grayling,’ she said, quickly adding, ‘nothing to do with chambers. Why should she need a brief in prison?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Dave said, his voice leaking acid suspicion and disapproval like a corroded car battery, ‘her cell-mate has died of a drugs overdose.’

  ‘Oh, shit. Mandy. But she was getting better. What happened?

  ‘The girl took a huge dose of heroin, which caused her to fall into a coma. She came out of that, but mysteriously did not recover. Now she’s died of liver failure. The PM established that it had been caused by an overdose of paracetamol …’

  ‘Why didn’t they test for that at the beginning?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Dave sounded martyred as well as irritable.

  ‘They could have saved her if they had. But presumably one overdosed prostitute-junkie serving a life sentence doesn’t merit full toxicological testing. Bastards.’

  There was a heavy sigh from Dave.

  ‘Sorry,’ Trish said, sounding anything but apologetic. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘While it’s possible that the heroin could have been cut with paracetamol, they think Deborah Gibbert could have given paracetamol to the young woman when she was high and not noticing what anyone was doing to her.’

  ‘How would Deb have got that much?’

  ‘She’s been given a lot recently for headaches. They think she could have been hoarding instead of taking it. You know how they do that, those women in prison: hold the tablets in their mouths as long as someone’s looking, then spit them out into a container.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Trish sadly. ‘But where would she hoard them? Hadn’t they had any cell searches?’

  ‘Naturally. But nothing too rigorous until after the heroin-coma. She was something of a trusty, I gather. They’ve torn the place apart now, of course, but they’ve found nothing.’

  Trish’s heart sank. She knew what prison officers could do to a cell when they were frustrated in a search for drugs. She could understand their anger, but it tipped some of them over into the kind of vindictiveness that sickened her. There was no point in asking Dave what they’d done and how much Deb had lost in the way of torn photographs or broken possessions, so she concentrated on the facts of the cell-mate’s death.

  ‘But there’s no evidence of Deb’s involvement?’

  ‘No. But she has a record for doping and killing people after all.’

  Trish thought for a few moments. ‘Look, Dave, I can’t get involved now, if I’m to go on with this TV lark, and it’s not my field. She needs a solicitor after all, not counsel at this stage. Tell Sprindler’s to send someone down with a holding brief to make sure Deb doesn’t incriminate herself now and we’ll try to work out something better in the morning.’

  ‘You won’t, Ms Maguire. You’re due in court at ten.’

  ‘Yes, Dave,’ she said meekly. As soon as she’d got him off the line, she phoned Anna to warn her of the latest twist in Deb’s story, phoned George to say she’d be back late in Southwark, and phoned her father to make sure he was all right and didn’t need her that evening. Sure of them all, she got back to work for tomorrow’s case. Not since her first year at the Bar had she ever gone into court underprepared. The memory of one humiliating fiasco would live with her always.

  It wasn’t till she left chambers a couple of hours later that she realised how hot it still was. The dank, dark old buildings of the Temple didn’t overheat until much later in the summer. No direct sunlight reached her room, only a little grey light from a dingy brick-lined well. Outside, the sun had sunk behind the buildings, but there was still plenty of heat left to rise from the pavements and hover against her face. She contemplated walking home, then saw a taxi with its light on. It was weakness that tempted her to hail it, but she was tired enough to give in.

  George greeted her with a long, tall spritzer, almost pushed her into a recumbent position on her favourite sofa. She kicked off her shoes and wondered if she had the energy to wriggle out of her tights, too. But she didn’t. He said something about finishing off the dinner as Trish let her head slide back against the purple cushion and felt its softness cradling the ache at the back of her skull. His voice burbled on, telling her the news of his day and who he’d spoken to, and how his current cases were going.

  She was listening, probably she could even have reproduced some of his news if she’d been challenged, but it was wonderfully peaceful to let it flow over her without having to concentrate. Her eyes closed. George’s voice had much the same effect as the pumping machines in the intensive care unit: rhythmic, safe, strong, comforting. He was in charge; she could let go.

  She came to not much more than an hour later to see him grinning at her over the top of the Evening Standard.

  ‘Hi, there.’

  ‘Hi, yourself,’ she said, blinking but not moving anything else. Then she ran her tongue over her dry lips. ‘Ugh.’

  ‘I took your drink away when it looked as though you might soak your front. Are you hungry?’

  She thought about it, blinked, then nodded. ‘Um. Maybe.’

  ‘Good. Because there’s a nice pair of artichokes ready with a new sauce. And it’s quarter past ten. If you don’t eat now, you’ll never do it. And you haven’t any weight to spare.’

  Trish was on her feet by then, bending over him to kiss him in gratitude for the tolerance and the cookery and the fact that he was there.

  Caroline was so weary she was almost crawling by the time she reached her own sanctuary. Jess was in bed and asleep, but she’d left a pretty plate of cheese-and-asparagus quiche and salad in the fridge with a note on it, saying, ‘Eat me.’

  Caroline ripped
off the clingfilm and ate with her fingers, stuffing in the food to get it down fast enough to deal with her hunger. Then she had a quick shower and slid into bed, her gut already aching with indigestion.

  Jess half woke and stretched out a hand. When it met Caroline’s shoulder, Jess smiled in her sleep and moved a little closer. Caroline lay in the warm dark, with her legs stuck out at the side of the duvet and tried to calm down enough to sleep.

  All the figures in the case danced on the inside of her eyelids like a nursery frieze. But each one carried the weight of her need to help Bill Femur. He’d been mashed up by the powers-that-be over the last case; he’d been pulverised by Sue’s departure; and Caroline thought he could be on the edge of a major breakdown.

  Somehow she had to keep Steve Owler corralled; or at least out of the way so that he couldn’t see how near the edge the boss had got. And, of course, she had to find a lead to Malcolm Chaze’s killer – or at least the person who’d paid the killer. She didn’t like the idea of people supplying death by mail order, but it was the orderer who deserved the biggest punishment, not the supplier. Like it was the drug-dealers they ought to go after, not the consumers. And the punters, not the prostitutes. At least that’s what she thought.

  Forms filled her vision. She was trying to work out the answer to one of the questions, peering at the box that needed a tick. Or was it a cross? She couldn’t see properly.

  She flopped over, sticking her legs further out of the duvet. Catching sight of the clock, she realised she must have been asleep for hours.

  Deborah Gibbert woke again and wondered how many officers had flicked open the spyhole to watch her as she slept. She felt their gloating like a layer of grease all over her, and she hated them. The resentful dread she’d felt for her father was like a drift of chiffon compared to this all-covering goo. If she’d understood what it was like to hate when she’d been interrogated after his death, she’d have been able to convince the whole bloody world she wasn’t guilty.

  Her back was agony from the disgusting, pavement-like mattress underneath her. The cell stank in the unmoving air. Stress always went for her tummy and she’d been up and down with the runs as though she’d eaten a dodgy Egyptian meatball like the one that had ruined a long-awaited trip up the Nile with Adam the year before Millie was born.