Particular Stupidities (The Romney And Marsh Files Book 5)

by Oliver Tidy

  Rather loudly, he said, ‘Dover CID. I’m representing Dover CID. CID stands for… for… for criminal investigation department. I want to… that is, my name is… I am Detective Inspector Romney of Dover CID.’

  ‘Has he been drinking?’ whispered a voice in the front row a little too loudly to be a private enquiry.

  Romney reached for the glass of water that Superintendent Vine had been sipping from moments before. He took a long draught – some of it went down his chin to blot his shirt front – and then set it down clumsily and noisily.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Not feeling too great. Dover CID, as many of you will know, I mean, just know, not from personal experience. I’m not suggesting that many of you will have been the subjects of an investigation by us. That’s not what I meant. Dover CID, well it’s common knowledge what we are, what we do. Isn’t it? I mean, do I have to explain it to anyone?’

  All his thoughts up to now regarding the turn of his evening and his fortunes had been personal, private and focussed on the betrayal, his stupidity, the crushing enormity of it all and his feeling of utter foolishness. And then he had a professional thought and it surrounded the position he was now in, his career, his standing, and because of his confused mental state, he verbalised it. ‘Oh fuck. The shit I’m in.’

  He heard a female gasp. It was close enough to have been Boudicca. He felt the heat again. The rising steam trapped inside him, like his body’s regulator was broken, Nature’s valves sealed off. Nowhere for the heat to go but up. It scalded his eyes from within and exited through his itchy scalp. And with it came the remaining contents of his stomach as it purged him. Searingly hot vomit fountained out of his mouth. His arms hung uselessly at his sides. So paralysed with the shock of his public and private humiliation was he that he could make no attempt to staunch the flow. He was dimly aware of a flash bulb going off as he spewed across the desk and the couple of feet of stage that separated them from the audience.

  The woman directly in front of him in the first row cried out in disgust, leapt to her feet and began wiping at the front of her skirt with a tissue. Romney was aware of Boudicca getting up and taking his arm. She was speaking loudly to the people and, although Romney could not make out through his fog what she was saying, he instinctively felt that she was being supportive, not berating him. Recording everything for posterity and the amusement of the Dover Post’s readership, the constant camera flashes highlighted his shame as the photographer had the night of his professional life.

  In the silence that followed, a noise indicating a commotion outside drifted up the corridor to where they all sat. At that moment Romney would have been happy to see a troop of Kalashnikov-clutching religious extremists looking for hostages come through the doors. General attention was diverted. The noise grew louder. A scream made a couple of the audience flinch in their seats. People turned to look at each other. The sound of running feet filled the void. The doors were yanked back on their hinges to slam into the door-stops behind them with a loud crash. A young woman burst in. Clearly she had not considered that the hall would be in use. She held a knife and there was blood on it and on her face and T-shirt.

  She froze. The camera flashed. The girl was startled into a decision. She ran into the only vacant channel and towards the stage. She was almost there when Detective Sergeant Marsh burst through the doors in pursuit.

  ‘Stop her,’ she shouted. ‘Peter’s been stabbed.’

  The girl bounded up the steps to the stage. Romney was aware of everything. But he could not stir himself into action. Something in his nervous system had disconnected, shut down. He felt Superintendent Vine release her hold on his arm. He stood helpless and inert as Vine moved to block off the girl’s escape route at the back of the stage.

  All could see that the girl was just a teenager and terrified. Many in the hall knew her. Someone called her name. The girl turned at the sound of a friendly voice and Boudicca took the opportunity to grab her knife arm and twist it up until she dropped the weapon. The camera flash bounced off the walls repeatedly.

  In her blind panic the girl swung at Vine with her free arm and caught her in the face. Blood immediately ran out of the station chief’s nose. The camera flashed. The girl thrashed against the senior officer’s lock, like a feral cat caught in unyielding wire. Marsh arrived just as Boudicca’s foot found Romney’s pool of vomit. Both feet went from under her. The camera flashed. Consummate professional that she was, Superintendent Vine did not release her hold on the girl, who, given her weight disadvantage, was obliged to follow Boudicca down to crash on the wooden floor.

  The last thing Romney remembered before slumping back in his seat was the glare of the camera’s flash illuminating the stocking tops, suspenders and matching black drawers of the station chief as, legs akimbo, her regulation skirt rode up to reveal her less than regulation underwear and a flash of milky-white inner thigh.

  ***

  26

  Romney sat in one of his patio chairs under the stars. The night air was exceptionally fragrant with the odours of country crops, and chilly with it. The moon was full and bright. He could make out much of his garden in the silvery light, somewhere that he thought, with a sudden painful sensation in his guts, he might be seeing a lot more of in the near future. Zara was already in bed. Quietly, he had made himself a cup of tea and gone outside to drink and think.

  His collected calmness surprised him. He felt he should be experiencing some sort of mental episode after the evening’s traumatic revelations. Not only had he suffered a gross humiliation in his private life, something that made him squirm, seethe and ashamed in equal measure, but with his particular stupidity where Julie Carpenter was concerned he had royally fucked himself as far as his career went.

  In his general uncertainty there was one thing that he was quite sure of: he wouldn’t be compounding his private misery with the ignominy and disgrace of accepting demotion or worse from a disciplinary board. He would resign. But he’d need to find alternative work soon. He had a mortgage. The image of him wearing an orange apron, helping dithering old people to choose paint in B&Q, sprang to mind. If it came to that he’d have to leave the area. He could not bear the idea of people who knew him seeing him like that: a washed up failure, a study in humiliation.

  He remembered little of what had happened in Aylesham after overhearing Julie Carpenter and Patton colluding in the toilets. He knew he’d embarrassed himself as a man, all that puking in public and incoherent speech, and then his complete lack of reaction when a blood-spattered, knife-wielding teenage girl strayed into the hall.

  The one possible saving grace there was that Boudicca had picked up on his comment about eating something that hadn’t agreed with him. (There’d been plenty of evidence for that.) His ‘condition’ had quickly been unwittingly exaggerated to possible food poisoning, given his most unRomney-like behaviour. He’d declined the offer of a ride in the ambulance to A&E with Grimes, and a squad car had brought him home. He wouldn’t have been any good to anyone at the scene and, from what he could vaguely remember, Marsh seemed to have had things under control.

  Thinking of his team depressed him. He’d let them down. In the same way that Julie Carpenter had betrayed his trust, he had betrayed theirs. One of Romney’s core professional beliefs was that police officers have a fundamental right to be shown consideration by those who they work alongside. That meant on the job and outside it. A police officer was never off duty. It was something that had been drummed into him as a probationer and he’d broken that golden tenet of the job. A rotten apple had the potential to taint everyone.

  He had failed his team and his fellow officers in Ladywell station. He had jeopardised the individual reputations of those who he worked closely with, and he’d risked the reputation of the station with his incredibly stupid antics. And all for what? A leg over with a young, attractive woman that boosted his ego. He cringed now at the absurd idea that Julie Carpenter had been genuinely regretful for their break-up,
that she’d still felt something for him, was still attracted to him. To Romney, Julie Carpenter was now nothing more than a clever, scheming whore who had sought to use him to pervert the course of justice and deflect attention elsewhere for her crimes. On top of that, not only was she engaged to be married but she was obviously screwing Patton as well as him. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He had never experienced such self-disappointment. As he sat staring out over his garden he was forced to wonder whether he’d ever really known her at all.

  He still had one wrong left to right, even though it was going to cost him his career. (Just the thought of leaving the police under such shameful circumstances distressed him to the very limits of his temporary physical capacity to deal with the idea.) In the morning he would share with his team what he’d overheard before going up to see Boudicca and revealing the full extent of his lack of professional ethics, his utter stupidity with Julie Carpenter. He would be signing his career’s death warrant, but better that he did it than wait for things to be uncovered. There would be some dignity in his voluntary admission of guilt. The way Julie Carpenter had acted in the toilets, he didn’t think that it would take much to break her in a police interview room.

  He switched his gaze to the stars and wondered how and why Lance Leavey had died. How involved Julie had been. Who had dealt the blow that ended the young man’s life? Whose idea had it been to hide the body in the container? Why hadn’t they removed it and what were their plans for it? There were many questions that needed answers. He was sorry that he wouldn’t be the one to discover them.

  ***

  27

  Sleep had been a rare state for Romney during the night. An hour before dawn broke, he stopped pretending and got up. He dressed in some old, casual clothes and after making himself a coffee in a Thermos mug, went for a walk across the field at the back of his garden.

  He ended up in a pocket of small unmolested woodland – that way because no roads ran beside it, so no one could drive a van up to it and throw all their rubbish out rather than drive it to the local tip which provided free dumping facilities.

  The peace and tranquillity at that time of the morning went someway to making him feel a little more relaxed about what he had to do. He found a fallen tree to perch upon and he satisfied himself with making the most of it for an hour.

  *

  The getting ready for work, the taxi ride to his car in Aylesham, the drive back to Dover, the walking through the car park and then the station to CID was a snowballing of emotional torment and unhappiness. As he made his way through the corridors and people, he was glad that it was only him who knew of his dereliction of duty.

  He was still in before anyone else in CID. He made a start on his paperwork and tried not to keep an eye on the time as his guts roiled.

  The three of them came through the doors together and in seemingly good spirits. Romney looked up to see them fussing around Grimes’ bandaged arm. Romney put down his pen, took a deep breath, put on his brave face and went out to join them.

  ‘How is it?’ he said to Grimes.

  ‘It is a scratch,’ said Marsh. ‘That’s all.’

  Grimes looked a little put out at Marsh’s trivialising of his knife wound. ‘It needed seven stitches,’ he said. ‘It’s an injury received in the line of duty. Maureen had a look on the Internet this morning. I might be in line for a payout. Criminal injuries compensation.’

  ‘Compensation for what?’ said Spicer. ‘You’re right handed and it’s your left arm that’s cut.’

  ‘Mucked up my violin playing though, hasn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t play the violin.’

  ‘They’re not to know that.’

  ‘What if they ask you to play to prove it?’

  ‘I’ll say I can’t because of the injury.’

  Marsh said, ‘How are you this morning, sir? I wasn’t expecting to see you, if I’m honest. You looked very poorly last night.’

  They were all looking at Romney. What he had to share with them made his eyes sting. He rubbed at them. ‘Something I ate. Rough night. I’m pretty tired.’ He wasn’t sure if any of them were aware that he’d thrown up on the stage in front of everyone and he wasn’t going to be the first to mention it. One thing he was not going to share with anyone was the reason that he had been physically sick and then physically incapacitated.

  ‘It was a success though, guv,’ said Grimes.

  ‘Yes,’ said Romney a little sardonically. ‘We got the tyre-slasher. How old is she?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ said Marsh. ‘She’s not all there. I feel very sorry for her. She was distraught last night. Seems she was put up to it by others. They just used her because she’s a bit simple.’

  ‘A result is a result, I always say,’ said Grimes.

  Romney took a deep breath and looked at the floor. ‘I need you all in the meeting room in ten minutes. There’s been a development in the Lance Leavey enquiry.’

  *

  Spicer’s phone rang just as he was leaving his desk. While they were waiting for him Romney said, ‘So what actually happened outside last night?’

  ‘It was just like you said it would be, guv. There were three of them. Kids. Soon as they gathered round your car we broke cover and went after them. Two of them ran into the darkness but the girl with the knife delayed long enough for me to grab hold of her. She might be small but she was strong and slippery. In fairness to her, I don’t think she meant to stab me. When she saw the blood she panicked and ran into the hall.’

  Marsh said, ‘I saw the blood all over him and I thought she’d really done some damage.’

  ‘So did I,’ said Grimes.

  Spicer let himself quietly into the room. He wore a face that attracted Romney’s attention for the wrong reasons. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘That was Mr Foyle’s partner, guv. Just calling to let us know that Mr Foyle had a stroke last night.’

  Romney closed his eyes and explored a few private thoughts. When he opened them they were all looking at him.

  ‘That is most regrettable,’ said Romney.

  ‘Because we can’t go after him?’ said Grimes.

  ‘No. Because he didn’t do it.’

  After a few moments’ silence Marsh said, ‘But yesterday you were convinced.’

  ‘Yes, I was. Blind, stupid and committed to his guilt. I have made a grave professional error of judgement.’

  Such self-critical language combined with an admission of fault were not things that any of them associated with their DI.

  ‘So if you know he isn’t our man,’ said Grimes, ‘does that mean you know who is?’

  Romney nodded. ‘Yes.’

  He told them everything. How it had been Julie Carpenter who had suggested to him that Foyle was where he should be looking regarding Lance Leavey’s death and, like a fool, he had not rigorously questioned the possibility but blindly embraced the idea.

  He told them about nipping out for a jimmy and a smoke five minutes before the meeting began and about overhearing what Patton and Julie had said through the little toilet window. At this revelation Marsh’s eyes widened, Grimes’s jaw slackened and Spicer’s remaining hair seemed to stiffen.

  Before any of them had a chance to comment on this turn of events, he told them that he’d been seeing something of Julie on a social footing almost since the case had broken. This was news to none of them. He confessed that he knew from the outset that he was straying into dangerous operational territory, risking compromising the integrity of the investigation, not to mention falling foul of Professional Standards, but he never considered for a moment that she might actually have anything to do with the murder, let alone be an architect of it.

  For a moment he was unable to continue. He just stared at the floor, composing himself. None of them uttered a sound. When he was ready, he told them that he acknowledged he’d made a dreadful mistake and that given the nature of his involvement with someone who would now be charged with a number of serious offenc
es in a murder investigation that he had been conducting, his position as a detective inspector was made untenable.

  ‘As soon as Boudicca arrives I shall ask to see her,’ he said. ‘She will have no option but to suspend me and we all know it won’t, it can’t, end there.’

  Still no one spoke. They just stared at him. It occurred to him then that in being the architect of his own downfall under such circumstances his past, present and future would have an impact on each of them. For this he was sorrier than he could say, so didn’t bother trying.

  ‘Anyone got any questions? Anything anyone wants to ask? Now will probably be your last opportunity.’

  Marsh said, ‘Does Julie know you know?’

  Romney shook his head.

  ‘Patton?’

  ‘No. They think they’re getting away with it, although from what I understood when I overheard them last night Julie is about ready to break. She mentioned something about phone records. I think you’ll find something there to link Lance Leavey to one or both of them.’

  The noise of a car arriving floated up through the open window. Romney looked out. From his body language it was obvious that Superintendent Vine had arrived for work.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He walked to the door.

  ‘Wait,’ said Marsh with a forcefulness that she usually reserved for dealing with suspects and fools.

  Romney had his hand on the door handle. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come back and sit down, please, sir.’

  Neither Grimes nor Spicer could ever remember Romney being spoken to like that by a junior officer. Not even an officer of equal rank.

  But Romney was past such observances. ‘My mind is made up, Joy.’