Walk a Narrow Mile

by Faith Martin

  ‘So to your knowledge, she never had any real contact with him?’ Hillary pressed.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you still have the letters?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘Lumme, no. I reckon she took most of her stuff with her. Not that she had much. Didn’t believe in possessions, she didn’t. She said worldly goods just weighed you down.’

  ‘She packed her bags?’ Hillary said sharply, clearly taken by surprise.

  ‘Well, yerse, I think so,’ Deirdre said slowly. ‘Like I said, she never had much. But a few of her favourite clothes were gone. And some money she’d earned from making and selling some of her own jewellery at Bicester market. Beaten copper she said they were. Bit bulky for my taste, but she sold enough to get by.’

  Hillary nodded and glanced at Jimmy. No doubt they were both thinking the same thing: it didn’t quite fit the pattern. Both Judith Yelland and Meg Vickary had vanished without any sign of premeditation.

  ‘Did Gilly have a bank account? Credit cards, that sort of thing?’ Hillary asked sharply.

  ‘Oh, no, love. Gilly didn’t hold much with the … whatchamacallit – how did she put it? Being part of the establishment. That was it. She always kept her money close. Said banks were in league with the Devil – well, as good as.’ Deirdre laughed again. ‘I reckon most folks would now think the same thing, right?’

  Hillary nodded and agreed. ‘So what do you think happened to her, Mrs Tinkerton?’

  Deirdre’s smile faltered just a little. ‘Maybe she found some more gyppos to run off with. Or she’s gone abroad to where they live in them big tent things. She mentioned them once or twice. Out in Israel or some such place. I told her she didn’t want to be going out and messing in them sort of places. Can’t really remember what they’re called now.’

  ‘A kibbutz?’

  ‘Some word like that, I reckon. Oh, she’ll have found herself some sort of comfy little hideaway somewhere – she was always good at landing on her feet. Bit like a cat, like that. You’ll see, she’ll be fine.’

  And Hillary could see that Deirdre Tinkerton truly believed it. Apart from a lingering doubt perhaps, which was surely both natural and inevitable, that’s what Gilly’s mother genuinely believed.

  ‘OK. Well, thank you, Mrs Tinkerton. We’ll be in touch if we think of anything else we might need to know.’

  ‘That’s fine, my love, call any time. Sure you don’t want one?’ Deirdre nodded to a freshly crimped rhubarb pie.

  Hillary sighed, but again declined.

  She was silent in the car as Jimmy drove them back to HQ. Once again things had taken an unexpected turn. Even though it was early days, she could sense that this case just wasn’t going to play by the rules.

  Gilly, it seemed, had planned to leave. Her mother was sure she’d packed up at least a back-pack’s worth of stuff. And her mother was also convinced that she was safe and alive somewhere. Was that just a case of so much for a mother’s instincts? Or was she in denial and simply unable or unwilling to think the worst? Or was it not Deirdre Tinkerton’s thinking that was at fault here?

  Hillary twisted unhappily on her seat.

  ‘You seem a bit pensive guv,’ Jimmy said suddenly, glancing over at her.

  Hillary sighed in acknowledgement. ‘I don’t like the way this case is going Jimmy,’ she admitted at last. ‘This is the second time I’ve felt something is a bit off. Like we’re not seeing the whole picture. Or we’re approaching it from a wrong angle. Or … oh, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m just a bit off my game.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Jimmy said quietly.

  Hillary sighed impatiently. ‘It’s not just the stalker. There’s something else … oh forget it. It’s early days yet.’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘You’ll get there guv. You always do,’ he said.

  And if his voice sounded just a tiny bit unsure, neither of them acknowledged it.

  Back at HQ, Geoff Rhumer was waiting for her outside her ex-stationery cupboard. She unlocked the door and waved at the tiny office space. ‘I’d offer you a seat, but you can see how it is.’

  The DI grinned. ‘No worries. Just thought I’d keep you updated. We’ve got a trace installed on both your office phone and mobile, so if he calls or texts we might get lucky.’

  Hillary nodded, but said nothing. They were both very much aware that her stalker was unlikely to be caught out so easily.

  ‘I’ve also got my team started on trying to run-down any likely looking lads on staff here.’ He handed Hillary a folder with three full sheets of names. He grimaced. ‘I know. Even with narrowing down the criteria, it’s still a lot of possible suspects. We’ve kept it to men aged between eighteen and forty, and physically fit. But as you can see, that doesn’t eliminate a whole lot. We’re going to concentrate on those who worked MisPer or sex crimes, since the shrink who’s doing the profile on him thinks that’s more likely where chummy would have gravitated.’

  ‘These are the ones highlighted in yellow?’ Hillary asked.

  ‘Yeah. Could you take some time and go through them, see if any names stand out? Although the shrink seems to think it more likely that chummy won’t have had any prior contact with you. He said something about the pathology of it being wrong. But still….’

  Hillary nodded in understanding. ‘Yeah. I’ll go through them all carefully tonight and let you know if anyone sets off alarm bells.’

  Geoff nodded. ‘Anything your end?’

  Hillary gave him a brief run down of her activities, and concluded grimly, ‘So, nothing that’s standing out so far.’

  ‘OK. Well, we’ll let you know if anyone acts twitchy at interview. We’re using a cover story of missing inventory as our reason for sniffing around, but I don’t know how long that’ll hold water.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘It won’t fool him for a minute.’

  Geoff shrugged. ‘That’s not really the point, is it?’

  Hillary smiled wanly. ‘No. I don’t suppose it is.’

  Steven Crayle stood and stretched, glancing at his watch as a knock came at the door. It had just gone 6.30 in the evening, and he was more than ready to call it a day.

  ‘Come in.’

  Jimmy Jessop stuck his head around the door. ‘Just wondered if I needed to keep obbo tonight, guv,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No. I’ll see to it tonight,’ Steven said flatly. ‘I’m going over to her boat for supper and I’ll be staying the night.’

  Jimmy was careful to keep his face utterly neutral. ‘OK, guv. See you in the morning.’

  Steven sighed as the door closed. Of course, he knew that it was all over the station by now that he and Hillary were an item, but he was not so sure what the consensus was. He had an uncomfortable feeling that most of them probably thought she could do better.

  At first, he and Hillary had deliberately cultivated the rumour of their affair in an attempt to try and flush out Hillary’s stalker. But somehow the lie had become a reality, and Steven, after some initial misgivings, was glad that it had.

  And was becoming even more glad the longer it went on. The fact that she was older than he worried him not at all. And he found her no-nonsense independence reassuring, rather than emasculating. But the fact that he sometimes found himself envious of her success and reputation, however, did cause him a few sleepless nights.

  He left HQ and drove the short, barely five-minute commute to the neighbouring village of Thrupp, situated on the Oxford canal. He parked next to Hillary’s old Golf, as usual, impressed by the beauty of the scenery. Kidlington and work was only a stone’s throw away, yet here along the tow path, where yellow iris were beginning to bloom, and ducks were proudly showing off the first of the season’s ducklings, it was a different world. The evening sun made even the khaki coloured water of the canal glitter like silver gilt and the gentle chug-chug of a passing narrowboat added to the sense of calm.

  The more he visited Hillary on her narrowboat, the Mollern, the more he could appreciat
e why she chose to live in such a cramped, narrow environment. There was also something nest-like and comforting about living in such a cocooning space. And knowing that you could just cast off a rope and take yourself and your home miles away whenever you felt like it, was so liberating that it was unbelievable. Since they’d been together, they’d spent most weekends chugging up north to Banbury, or going south to Oxford and beyond.

  Now he walked to the grey-painted boat, with its black roof and white and gold trim. Hillary had already explained to him that Mollern was the old country word for heron, and that her boat was painted to reflect that water bird’s colouring. In contrast to the cheerful boats that favoured the more traditional green, yellow, blue and red, it was an elegant-looking boat and, as he approached it, he saw the back metal doors open and Hillary’s head with its distinctive chestnut hair, appeared.

  ‘I thought I heard footsteps. It’s herb omelette, salad and warm fresh baked bread. With some peach ice cream for dessert.’

  ‘Sounds ideal,’ Steven said. ‘We got any of that white wine left?’

  ‘Still in the fridge,’ Hillary assured him. She watched him come aboard, amazed, as she so often was, that someone so tall and elegant seemed not to mind the fact that his head was always barely a scant inch away from the ceiling.

  She watched him take off his jacket, slip off his tie and shoes, and make himself comfortable in her favourite chair. The sight of him brought a lump to her throat. He was both sexy and gorgeous, and fast becoming an ever-growing presence in her life.

  And she still didn’t know what she really felt about it.

  She broke the bread apart and put butter on the table, then mixed the eggs. Steven poured the wine.

  They ate easily and comfortably, with trays on their laps in the intimate sitting area, then, after washing up, watched the sunset go down from the roof of the boat, where they lay flat on their backs, watching the swallows swoop and dart.

  Hillary was listening to a blackbird serenading in the nearby willows when she felt Steven stiffen beside her. She too sat up quickly, and saw what had attracted his attention.

  A young man was strolling down the towpath, holding a padded envelope and clearly checking the names of boats. He wore black motor-cycle leathers and stopped when he reached the Mollern. He smiled up at them.

  ‘Hillary Greene?’ he asked. He was about twenty, around five feet five, and had impressive acne on his chin.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Package for you.’

  Hillary reached down and took the envelope. ‘Can you sign just there and there please?’ he asked, handing over one of those machines that had a mostly blank grey screen but with a black-outlined box and affixed stylus. ‘Where the Xs are,’ he added helpfully.

  Hillary signed and half-listened as Steven began questioning the courier. He made sure to get both his name, the name and address of the courier company, as well as the young lad’s immediate superior, before he let him go.

  They waited until the puzzled lad was gone before she turned the padded envelope over thoughtfully in her hands and studied it. It had her name and the name of her boat and nothing more. She glanced at Steven.

  ‘What do you want to bet that whoever the customer was, he paid in cash, and probably got some little kid to hand deliver it the courier’s office?’ she asked.

  Steven smiled grimly. ‘No bet. Do you want to call in the bomb squad?’ he asked seriously.

  Hillary thought about it seriously.

  ‘No. But let’s be careful.’ If they called in the bomb squad it would be all over HQ tomorrow. And for DI Rhumer’s investigation to stand any chance of catching her stalker, he needed to keep it on the Q.T. as much as possible.

  She held the envelope far away from them, dangling it over the edge of the boat and out over the water. If it did hold something nasty, maybe she’d be able to drop it in the water before it did any real damage. Then she had a sudden, appalling thought.

  ‘What if it’s anthrax or something?’ she said. ‘It mustn’t get into the water system.’

  ‘Open it flap side up. That’ll keep the contents inside.’

  Hillary did so. Nothing flashed, banged, or shot out at her, hissing. She peered cautiously between the two sides of the envelope, then reached in and drew out an old-fashioned jewellery box.

  She opened it.

  Inside, was a pretty, antique pendant of two love-hearts joined together by an arrow. Over her shoulder, Steven looked at it grimly.

  ‘Any message?’

  There was: in the envelope, obviously computer printed: From Lol.

  ‘Well, that gives us something to play with, at any rate,’ Steven said, trying to keep the mood upbeat. ‘First thing in the morning, Rhumer can start trying to trace that.’ He nodded down at the pendant.

  Hillary shuddered, snapped the lid shut and handed it over.

  ‘What say we finish off that bottle of wine and go to bed?’ she asked savagely.

  Wordlessly, Steven reached an arm around her and held her close. He kissed the side of her neck. ‘Now that’s an offer no man in his right mind would refuse.’

  After a tense second, Hillary Greene smiled.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next day, Hillary got in to work early. She’d slept badly again, and once the sky began to get light just after 4.30, she’d left Steven sleeping in their narrow fold-out bed and had spent the next few hours going through Geoff Rhumer’s list. She paid special attention to those men he had highlighted as having worked in either MisPer or on sex-crime cases involving rape or sexual attacks on women.

  A lot of the names were familiar to her for one reason or another, of course. She had worked out of the HQ at Kidlington for most of her working life, and during the years, she’d come across many of the men named. Those she knew, she put a small neat asterisk by the name and a number, and on a separate page wrote out anything and everything she knew about the man, both from her own personal knowledge, or from what she’d heard about them through the general scuttlebutt on the grapevine.

  Some she recalled simply for winning football or rugby matches and being a minor celebrity for a week, whilst others had a rep for being a bit of a lad with the ladies, or the horses, or the booze. A lot had worked on some of her cases where she had needed extra manpower doing the scut-work and labour-intensive jobs that higher-ranking members of her team wouldn’t have had time for. She spent a lot of time mulling over those particularly, since it might have been possible that she’d inadvertently ticked them off or somehow got on their bad side, but she honestly couldn’t recall a problem with any of them.

  Of the others, some she knew to speak to, others just to nod to, others had names that recalled some incident, but not a face to go with them.

  She made detailed notes of everything and anything she could remember, because when you were dealing with a crazy any detail might matter. And she knew that as well as DI Rhumer.

  For all she knew, her stalker could have targeted her because she happened to beat him to a car space at HQ. She might not even have been aware that he’d been competing for the same space. Or she might have seen a group of men, and greeted one by name, and one of the others had felt slighted. Anything could set a crazy off.

  But as she walked into HQ and sought out Rhumer in his office, she didn’t hold out much hope for the list in her hands.

  ‘Hello. Heard you had more contact last night.’ Rhumer greeted her with a thoughtful smile, and she quickly filled him in on last night’s events, although it was clear that he had already been briefed, probably by Steven.

  ‘And here’s your list,’ she concluded, handing it over. ‘As you’ll see, I’ve made notes. But nothing stands out.’

  Rhumer sighed and thanked her, and quickly began to glance through the lists. ‘So, what’s on your agenda today?’

  Hillary smiled. ‘Keep on plugging. I’m going to concentrate on Judy Yelland today, the first girl to go missing. There was no joy at all from her parent
s – and I mean that literally.’

  Rhumer nodded. ‘OK. Be careful,’ he added, and grunted a short laugh as Hillary gave him a mocking look. ‘Right. Grandmother. Suck eggs. Got it.’

  ‘I’d still rather have my job than yours,’ Hillary grinned, nodding at the long list of names. ‘It’ll take you and your team weeks to work through that lot.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Rhumer groaned. ‘But we’ll start with those both of us have marked, and who knows? We might just get lucky.’

  Hillary left him to it, thinking that they bloody well needed a bit of luck.

  Geoff Rhumer reached for her list. Towards the bottom of the alphabetical list on the last page, was the name of Thomas Warrington. It was neither highlighted in Rhumer’s yellow pen, nor did it have an asterisk with a corresponding note in Hillary’s hand.

  ‘Tell me again who it is we’re seeing?’ Jimmy asked, as he headed towards the Glory Farm area of the market town of Bicester.

  ‘Ruth Coombs. She was the friend of Judy Yelland who reported her missing,’ Hillary said.

  ‘Right, right, I remember. Didn’t the chap who took the original report think that she might well have had something to do with the girl upping sticks in the first place?’

  Hillary nodded. She’d re-read Judy Yelland’s sparse file before collecting Jimmy for the off. ‘Yes. He found her pushy and domineering. Reading between the lines, he had the feeling that she was the sort who liked to be boss, and even marked down in his notes that if Coombs had been his friend, he’d have done a runner too.’

  Jimmy snorted. ‘Sounds like we’re in for a barrel of laughs then.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘It’ll certainly be interesting to see if time’s changed things any.’

  ‘And besides, you always like to make your own judgement calls, right, guv.’