Power Games

by Judith Cutler

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Judith Cutler

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

  The Lina Townend Series

  DRAWING THE LINE

  SILVER GUILT *

  RING OF GUILT *

  GUILTY PLEASURES *

  GUILT TRIP *

  GUILT EDGED *

  The Frances Harman Series

  LIFE SENTENCE

  COLD PURSUIT

  STILL WATERS

  BURYING THE PAST *

  DOUBLE FAULT *

  The Jodie Welsh Series

  DEATH IN ELYSIUM *

  The Sophie Rivers Series

  DYING FALL

  DYING TO WRITE

  DYING ON PRINCIPLE

  DYING FOR MILLIONS

  The Katie Powers Series

  POWER ON HER OWN

  STAYING POWER

  POWER GAMES

  WILL POWER

  * available from Severn House

  POWER GAMES

  Judith Cutler

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This title first published in Great Britain in 2000 by

  Hodder & Stoughton

  A division of Hodder Headline

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2000 by Judith Cutler.

  The right of Judith Cutler to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0144-7 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To a man with hwyl

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This novel could not have been written without the assistance of Andrew Howell, Graham Townshend, Nick Keane, Peter Leather, Ursula Pearce, Ann Levitt, Anna Meredith and David Symons who kindly shared with me their various areas of expertise.

  I’d like to give especial thanks to Stephen Hayward, a wonderful coach who has been endlessly patient and encouraging on the courts of Billesley Indoor Tennis Centre, Birmingham. Apart from his hard work and commitment, he bears no resemblance to his fictional opposite number at Brayfield. Neither do any of the Billesley Centre staff.

  Thank you all for your contributions, great or small.

  Chapter One

  ‘Backhand: start low, end high. Backhand: start low, end high.’ Kate’s new mantra – if she were ever to get that ball over that net. More often than at present, at least. She continued to mutter it as she unlocked the car, slinging her kit on to the back seat. ‘Backhand: start low, end high.’ The tennis centre’s car park was virtually empty. Well, it would be at eight in the morning.

  Kate had started to play tennis again with two new police friends from her nick. Play again? Where were the skills she’d had at school? So here she was, just finishing her weekly seven o’clock session with a coach. And then straight to work.

  If her car resented a sweaty driver, that was its problem, she told it as she tried to pull into the main road. Shower in a horribly communal area? With water as cold as it often was this early? No, she’d wait till she got to work, where serious trainers and a tracksuit that meant business wouldn’t exactly lose brownie points.

  By now her usual route into the centre of Birmingham would already be clogged up. So she took to the side roads – sorry, she didn’t approve of rat-runs but there you are – tacking from one to another like a small boat against the wind. If it was slow going, at least she was moving. Next left up that steep hill. Then she came to a dead stop. A traffic jam here? And what were those people doing in the road? Abandoning the Fiesta with two wheels on the pavement, she hauled herself out. Hell, the joints were stiffening already! Grabbing her waterproof and bag from the back of the car, she ran to the source of the problem.

  Not the predictable car-to-car clip. No, this was a big bang. A very big one. A lorry stuck cab-deep in a small cottage. No sign of fire service or ambulance yet. Kate radioed. And for good measure phoned to tell the boss she’d be late. Just in case.

  A couple of men were already trying to reach the driver. An old couple in night clothes wrung their hands as they looked at the remains of their home. Not hurt by the look of it, but certainly shocked. And hanging round on a cold March morning would do them no good at all.

  Kate grabbed a gawping neighbour, flashed her ID. ‘Get them indoors if you can. Blankets, hot sweet tea.’

  ‘Their budgie’s still in there. They won’t come in till it’s all right.’

  Jesus! ‘Tell them it’ll be the first thing I get, soon as I know the building’s safe.’

  The neighbour nodded. ‘I’m at number fifty-three. We always knew something like this would happen. Letting big lorries loose on quiet residential roads like these …’

  ‘Quite—’

  ‘They’re from that big development up the road – they come tearing down the hill. We’ve always said there’d be an accident like this.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it in a minute. Meanwhile, please – just get them inside, Mrs—?’

  ‘Hurst. Linda Hurst. Number fifty-three.’

  ‘Thanks. See you later.’

  Meanwhile back to the driver. Out of the tail of her eye, Kate saw the old couple being steered gently across the road. Good. And the familiar sirens were getting nearer.

  The lorry driver was now on terra firma. ‘It was the other side took it,’ he was saying. ‘The on-side, see. Or I’d be cold meat. Cold meat.’

  He might have jumped down himself, but he couldn’t shift from the spot. He stood pointing. ‘Cold meat. Just cold meat.’

  ‘Come on, sir,’ Kate said. ‘Let’s get you away from here. The brickwork’s a bit dodgy. Come on. Over here.’ She took his elbow, and drew him towards the ambulance now slewing to a halt. Right. All she had to worry about now was the budgie. First she’d bette
r talk to Uniform. Who were here, two car-loads of them, hot on the tail of a fire appliance.

  The first man out of the car was Guljar, a sergeant she’d met and liked her first week in the city.

  ‘What are you stirring up this time, Kate?’ he shouted. Then, as he took in the extent of the damage, he whistled. ‘Bloody hell, what if there’d been a car in the way? Anyone in there?’

  ‘Just a budgie. Which,’ she added dryly, ‘I’ve promised to get out.’

  ‘Not yet you won’t,’ said a fire officer. ‘No one goes in there till we know it’s safe. You know: structure. Gas. Whatever.’

  ‘I’ll get someone to talk to the driver – soon as the paramedics say we can,’ Guljar said.

  ‘He doesn’t seem badly hurt – he got himself out, at least,’ Kate said. ‘As did the old couple who live here – they’re at number fifty-three. With a Mrs Linda Hurst. And no budgie.’

  ‘We’ll go take a look round the back,’ Guljar said. ‘I take it some of your lads are round there already?’

  The fireman nodded. But then looked up sharply. ‘No one goes into the building. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Guljar agreed, taking Kate by the arm and leading her down the side path. ‘Wow, how about this for a garden! How long d’you reckon it is?’

  ‘Fifty yards at least,’ Kate said. ‘It’s perfect, isn’t it?’ That little greenhouse, all those fruit trees – they’d even got some espaliered on the end wall. ‘God, what I’d give for something like this.’

  ‘That lot there must drive them wild,’ Guljar said, pointing at a patch of waste land next to their fence, big enough for three or four cottages. ‘All those weeds coming through. I wonder why no one’s ever built on it?’

  One of the fire fighters overheard. ‘Bomb damage, according to my dad. Took out two or three houses this size. And no one’s ever done anything about it all these years.’ He wandered over and pressed a boot into the earth. ‘The ground’s very wet, of course – maybe there are springs or something that would make it expensive to build on. Ted Roberts,’ he added, addressing himself to Guljar and the stripes on Guljar’s sleeve.

  ‘Guljar Singh Grewal. And this is Kate Power – a DS, for all she looks like a refugee from a health farm.’

  Roberts looked her up and down without obvious enthusiasm.

  ‘Been playing tennis,’ she said by way of an explanation. ‘What do you reckon about this lot?’

  They made their way to the back door. It was still ajar. On the gas stove, a kettle steamed beside a jet still going at full blast; on another jet porridge was burning. Kate could hear the budgie chuntering to itself, though there was no sign of it in the kitchen. No chance of a quick dash, then.

  ‘Seems as if the gas main’s OK,’ she said.

  ‘Pity we can’t say the same for the structure,’ Ted said, pointing.

  The rectangle of the door-frame was now a parallelogram.

  ‘When that lorry comes out – rumble, rumble, splat,’ he added.

  ‘What about hydraulic lifts? Come on, it’s someone’s home,’ Kate said.

  ‘Rebuilding would cost an absolute bomb. And is it insured? You know what old people are like, thinking they can’t afford insurance.’

  ‘The lorry driver must be insured. His firm, at least,’ Guljar said. ‘And I shall want to have a word about the amount of rubble in the truck. A little trip to a weighbridge, I should think. And I’d like a look at his brakes. He must have come down the hill like an aries.’ He gave it three syllables.

  ‘Eh?’ Kate and Ted gaped.

  ‘Sorry. My A level Latin will keep rearing its ugly head. It means sheep.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Kate, clutching her forehead. ‘As in Aries, the birth sign?’

  ‘Right. An aries was a Roman battering ram. Ram, ram – geddit?’

  They groaned.

  ‘He’s lucky to be alive,’ Ted agreed. ‘Like you, come to think of it, if you make jokes like that very often.’

  The budgie embarked on ‘Fre`re Jacques’.

  Ted looked hard at Kate. ‘I’ll just go and tell the gaffer about the gas stove.’

  The moment he was out of sight, Kate stripped off her jacket.

  Guljar looked hard at Kate. ‘You can’t: not for one sodding cage-bird. Wait till they’ve got the hydraulics in.’

  ‘Budgies don’t like noise. It can give them strokes and kill them. That guy Ted – he left us on our own deliberately.’

  ‘Come on, Kate – think about it. Putting your life at risk for a bird.’

  ‘Trouble is, Guljar, if I think about it I won’t be able to do it.’

  Kate sidled in, praying she didn’t have to push on any internal doors. If she did, she’d turn back, she promised herself. The door from the kitchen to the hall was open. She slid through, ending up a foot from the truck’s front bumper, which was blocking the stairs. As she paused, plaster fell on her hair.

  To her left, another door. The lintel looked sound. She risked a gentle push. And waited. No, no movement. She darted in. The cage was on a stand next to a Victorian upright piano, over by the back window. The piano was a forest of photos in frames. She grabbed a cushion, shook the cover off, and stowed as many photos inside as she could carry. In an ashtray on the grate glittered an engagement ring with a trio of pitifully small diamonds. She slipped it into a jacket pocket.

  Plaster pattered in the hall. The patter turned into a rush.

  She stood stock still.

  ‘Give us a kiss! Come on, give us a kiss!’

  She grabbed the cage, slung a crocheted shawl over it. Better keep the little thing warm. Back the way she’d come, then. No, not with the lintel creaking like that. The back window, then. That frame was creaking, too, but it still held. She shouldered it open – someone should have a word with the old couple about window locks – and passed Guljar the cage. There was a dreadful judder. The doorway to the hall was a giant rhombus.

  She pulled herself through the frame. Guljar jumped her down and settled her on her feet. The plaster was falling quite briskly now. Time for her other booty? Just. If only her arm were longer!

  Guljar flung her aside and grabbed the cushion cover. As he straightened, the glass in the adjoining window cracked and broke.

  The frame still held – just.

  He peered into the cushion cover. ‘Fucking hell, Kate! All that for a few photos!’

  ‘Mad, aren’t I? Except that those few photos and that bloody bird are all they’ll have to show for a whole lifetime. Come on, you’d better distract the firecrew and I’ll sprint across the road. Come on, Joey.’

  ‘Give us a kiss,’ Joey suggested.

  Mrs Hurst greeted Kate with a mouthed warning that Mr and Mrs Sargent were being difficult. She gestured her into the living room, hung with framed tapestries. It was immaculate apart from a ring of fur on the hearth rug. Mr and Mrs Sargent sat rigidly side by side on a sofa, their bare legs mottled with blue as they disappeared into slippers. A paramedic was literally on his knees, presumably trying to make them go for a check-up. A clutter of empty tea cups on a tray suggested that Mrs Hurst had at least persuaded them to have a drink. Tea was just what Kate needed at the moment, and she said so, loudly and brightly.

  The Sargents looked up as one. And got to their feet as one.

  Joey, unwrapped, bobbed at a mirror. ‘Give us a kiss. What about a nice fly around?’

  ‘You stay where you are, young Joey,’ Kate said. ‘I fancy Mrs Hurst has a cat.’

  ‘I’ll lock him in the conservatory,’ she promised. ‘And bring a clean cup.’

  The bird still in its cage on Mrs Sargent’s lap, the old people sat down again. ‘He’s Billy, dear,’ she said. ‘Billy, not Joey.’

  ‘Sorry, Billy. Well, there’s no kind way to say this, I’m afraid: the house is in a pretty bad way,’ Kate said, sitting down. ‘One of my colleagues will be round in a few minutes – they’ll tell you more then. But when I was collecting Joey – Billy – I got these, too.’
She opened the cushion cover. In their haste, either she or Guljar had cracked some of the glass.

  Mrs Sargent looked at her husband. ‘There used to be this radio programme. After the war. Wilfred Pickles. You remember, dear.’

  ‘Have a Go, that’s what it was called. He used to ask people what they’d save if their house was burning down. I always said if they ever asked me I’d say the family photos.’

  Taking her hand from the cage, Mrs Sargent laid it on his. ‘He was making me a cup of tea, dear, and starting the porridge. And I said he was taking all day and I came downstairs— And then, and then …’ She couldn’t go on.

  Kate drew Mrs Hurst quietly out. The paramedic followed. ‘Best leave them on their own a few moments,’ he said unnecessarily.

  Mrs Hurst led the way into the kitchen. ‘Poor things. Now, I’ve managed to get in touch with the daughter. She’s got to come all the way up from Truro. So I’ll keep them here, overnight if needs be.’

  ‘Surely Social Services—’

  ‘No. I’m not having them shoved into some sort of emergency accommodation. I don’t know what it would be like and I don’t want to find out. Old folk like that, who’ve always kept themselves to themselves. The very idea. And my Andrew – he’s in insurance, so he’ll be able to help sort out their claim.’

  ‘Thanks: you’re being more than kind. Look, I have to go off to work, now. Here’s my card – if anything crops up during the day, give me a buzz. Otherwise I’ll pop back this evening, if that’s convenient, just to see they’re still OK.’

  Chapter Two

  Kate was trying to persuade her legs, now embarrassingly stiff, to take her up the stairs two at a time when she heard someone running lightly down. Thank God – an excuse to wait a moment. Time to catch her breath after the sprint from the car park.

  And to snap to something like attention. Not that Rod Neville ever demanded such behaviour in his office, but – in public at least – detective superintendents should be treated with visible respect.