Walk a Narrow Mile

by Faith Martin

  Hillary nodded. ‘And you have no idea where she might have gone?’

  ‘No. But I’ve been thinking about it, ever since Mum called, telling me you’d been to see her.’ Rebecca got up and walked to a drawer set in a modern little desk, and withdrew a slip of paper. ‘I don’t know if this will help, but I’ve written down all the people Gilly was tight with, just before she upped and left. She always has what I would call fads though, which means that she really gets into something, then gets bored and moves on to something else. So there’s no guarantee even if any of these people might have an idea about what she was going to do, that Gilly wouldn’t have moved on again.’

  ‘I understand,’ Hillary said. ‘So what kind of fads did she have?’

  ‘Oh you know. The usual sort of modern-day hippy sort of thing.’

  ‘Like joining up with the travelling community?’ Hillary nodded.

  ‘Right. Of course, Gilly’s not really much of a gypsy at heart, so that didn’t last,’ Rebecca said with another gurgling laugh. ‘She won’t admit it, but she sort of likes being a homebody, like our Mum, but becoming a housewife or doing the whole mother thing is just too scary for her at the moment. She can’t seem to grow up properly just yet, you know what I mean?’

  Hillary nodded and accepted the piece of paper Rebecca handed over. The list of names, a few with addresses or telephone numbers next to them, meant nothing to her.

  ‘And these are?’ she prompted.

  ‘Oh, people Gilly was getting in tight with. All of them were into alternative lifestyles and advocating a different way of living or thinking. Some were into healing, laying on of hands, that sort of thing. I was a bit worried about them, in case they belonged to some sort of cult or something. That would be just the sort of thing Gilly might get sucked into. To be honest, that’s what’s been worrying me more than anything else,’ Rebecca admitted reluctantly. ‘That she might be living in some sort of weird religious commune and will end up a victim of mass suicide, like those sorts of things that happen in America from time to time.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘OK. It’ll give my young colleagues back at Kidlington something to work on.’ She smiled grimly as she imagined Vivienne complaining about having to track down and interview all of the people on the list. No doubt Sam would end up doing most of the work, but that was fine by Hillary.

  At least she could trust Sam to do a proper job.

  ‘Well, if you think of anything else, please let me know. I take it Gilly never mentioned her secret admirer to you?’ Hillary added casually.

  ‘Oh yeah, she did. But I don’t think it came to anything. I mean, Gilly had her share of men friends, and she was a bit lax about that sort of thing. I don’t think it bothered her much. He wasn’t particularly creepy, I don’t think. She never said that he was, anyway.’

  Hillary blinked and thought about the wooden cross back at HQ with Gillian’s initials burned into it. She swallowed hard, and forced herself to smile. ‘OK. Well thanks very much for this,’ she said, and waved the list of names in the air.

  And then she left Rebecca Frost’s cottage with a quick step, and a cold feeling in her heart.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next day, Hillary picked up her mail from the pub and headed in to work. Living on a narrowboat could make such things as post problematical, but luckily, she had known the pub landlord for years, and he had no objection to being an unofficial mail drop. Since she was running a little late, she didn’t stop to go through the envelopes then and there but drove into work, carrying the few bits and pieces in with her.

  Last night’s sparring with Steven had been interesting if nothing else, and this time, the fact that she still hadn’t slept properly had a lot more to do with a certain superintendent than bad dreams about the man who had left the scars on her neck. Their occasional friction at work was definitely adding spice to their encounters in her tiny bedroom, and she was very much aware that she hadn’t felt this good in years.

  It worried her. Her disastrous marriage had left her very wary indeed of trusting any man. Nevertheless, she had been awake when Steven had left just after six, and had watched him dress with a certain amount of proprietary pride. He had a neat, elegant way about him that she found very attractive. And his gorgeous good looks didn’t hurt, either. Sometimes she worried about the fact that he was a good few years younger than herself. At other times – and this morning had been one of them – she couldn’t give a tinker’s curse.

  Now as she walked into HQ, still clutching her unopened mail, she gave the desk sergeant a bright smile and headed down into the basement rabbit warren where the CRT hung out.

  She noticed in passing that the small communal office was empty and checked her watch. She assumed Sam was at uni, and had long since stopped trying to figure out Vivienne Tyrell’s working hours, but wondered what had kept Jimmy.

  She went to her own stationery cupboard, shrugging off her jacket and settling behind her desk and pulled out her notes. It was high time she got some sort of grip on this case. Deliberately, she let her mind range over the three victims, looking for anything that tugged at her radar.

  Meg Vickary had been having an affair with a married man – her boss. So had Judy Yelland, although in her case, Christopher Deakin had no connection to her work place. So, was it possible that Gillian had also been seeing a married man? Was that what set their killer off? Was he punishing unfaithful women? Had his own marriage been wrecked by an affair? Or had his mummy cheated on his daddy, thus giving the poor little dinkums some sort of hang-up?

  Hillary picked up the phone and called Rebecca Frost.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Frost, it’s Hillary Greene again. Sorry, I forgot to ask you something about Gillian yesterday. Do you know if your sister was or had been seeing a married man?’

  ‘Bloody hell no,’ Rebecca’s voice responded emphatically in her ear. ‘Gillian really hated cheaters. Our brother went through hell with his first wife – he’s long since divorced the two-timing cow now, and is happily married again to someone much better for him. But Gillian was what, fourteen, fifteen, when it happened, and Gary was always her favourite, and it totally soured her against infidelity. I often think the reason she’s leaving it so late to marry herself is because she can’t take the risk it might happen to her. She’d rather cut off her own foot and eat it than look twice at a married man.’

  ‘OK, thanks, I just needed to ask,’ Hillary said with a sigh, and hung up. So scratch that idea then.

  She glanced up as Steven knocked on the door and looked in. He smiled at her and she scowled back. ‘Has Geoff Rhumer come up with anything from Deirdre Tinkerton?’ she asked smartly.

  Steven grinned. ‘Good morning to you too, love-bunny.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Tinkerton,’ Hillary shot back, but her lips were twitching. ‘And if you ever call me that in public again, I’ll break your arm.’

  ‘Geoff didn’t have much luck with getting a photo-fit,’ he said, holding up a hand as she swore softly. ‘But the encounter happened only the once, and that was nearly three years ago,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘But he did get a fair-ish description from the witness. He was about twenty-five, dark haired, well built – which fits with your thoughts – and he was hovering somewhere near the six-foot mark, or maybe a couple of inches short of that. And there was something else Mrs Tinkerton noticed about him at the time, but can’t now quite put her finger on. Something distinctive though.’

  ‘A tattoo? Nose piercing?’ Hillary offered abruptly.

  ‘No, neither of those. But Rhumer’s team is busy collating photographs of all their top suspects and he’s going back to her with them as soon as he can. So maybe she can pick him out.’

  ‘Right,’ Hillary said grimly. ‘And maybe she can’t. Maybe he’s not even on the list. We can’t even be sure he’s still a cop. He could have resigned, transferred or even be a civilian worker, in which case he isn’t even on our radar.’

  Steven nodded. ‘I know.�
� Did she think that he didn’t lay awake at nights as well, worrying about stuff just like that? He knew better than anyone just how much the odds were stacked against them. And it brought him out in a cold sweat whenever he thought that the bastard might try and get at Hillary again. But there was no way he’d let her guess his doubts. ‘But we’ll get him – nobody’s going to give up until he’s collared. If he contacted Deirdre, he might have contacted the other family members of his victims, and yes, before you ask, that’s what Geoff and the others will be concentrating on today. You’ll be the first to know if we get any confirmation or a better ID.’

  Hillary nodded. Steven glanced over his shoulder at the deserted corridors behind him, and then turned back to her. ‘I won’t let him hurt you again,’ he said softly. ‘You’re watched day and night, and you’ll never be left alone. You know that, right?’

  Hillary nodded. She knew that. She also knew that they couldn’t watch her day and night forever. If they didn’t catch him soon, Donleavy would have to reassign the manpower somewhere else. He’d have no other option. And Hillary wouldn’t have it any other way. They needed all the manpower they had to protect the public.

  Since the attack, she’d taken a refresher course on self-defence. She also, unbeknownst to Steven, carried a very sharp bladed (and illegal) flick knife in her purse that she’d once taken off a very nasty-minded pimp, back in the days when she’d been walking a beat.

  ‘So how’s Donleavy taking it so far? Is he happy with how things are working out?’ she asked, and, as she listened to his reply, she reached for the post and began opening it. It was, as she’d suspected, the usual guff and her phone bill.

  And a letter from Lol.

  Hillary read it, then wordlessly handed it over to Steven, who broke off from what he was saying, read it and swore. ‘Right, I’ll get this to forensics.’

  But Hillary knew, as well as he did, that it would be a waste of time. Lol wasn’t about to leave either his fingerprints or his DNA on it. Still, every contact he made said something about him, and gave them something else to work with.

  ‘I’ll get a copy of this to the profiler Geoff’s brought on board. Have you read his thoughts on Lol so far?’ Steven asked, not liking the pale, pinched look that had settled on her face.

  Hillary nodded, although she wasn’t sure that she put much stock in such things. It was all right if you had a suspect to compare it too, and might be useful to academics when collating data, but what use it was in real police-work, when it came down to actually helping catching the bad guys, she wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Probably never had a real relationship with a woman, probably still lives with his parents, won’t have risen very high in the ranks, has a problem with authority/and/or female figures. Yada, yada, yada.’

  Steven laughed. ‘You’re a real Renaissance girl, ain’t yah? Good thing I still love you,’ he added lightly. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Budget meeting.’ He grimaced. ‘What are you going to be doing today?’

  Hillary glanced at her watch. ‘If Jimmy’s in, I thought I’d go and interview Marcus Kane’s wife.’

  ‘Kane – this is Meg Vickary’s boss, right? The one she was having an affair with? The one Meg’s flatmate thinks had something to do with her disappearance?’

  ‘That’s the one. Although Georgia Biggs couldn’t really come up with any reason for that belief. It was sort of odd that, now that I come to think about it. At the initial interview with her, I had the feeling that it was the way Meg spoke about Kane that gave her that impression. Anyway, I’ve already spoken to him,’ Hillary’s lips twisted. ‘Didn’t like him at all. He couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss that she’s missing, and the only thing he was anxious about was that the little woman didn’t find out about it.’

  Steven smiled widely. ‘So because you didn’t like him you’re going to drop him in it with the trouble and strife? Nice.’

  Hillary tut-tutted. ‘Now you know I wouldn’t be that petty,’ she admonished him. Then thought about it for a second, and added, ‘Well, not unless he really pissed me off. No, it was just that he was so sure that she didn’t know about it, that it made me wonder.’

  Steven nodded, instantly following her line of reasoning. And Hillary wasn’t sure just how she felt about him being able to read her so well, this quickly. ‘But the wife, even if she did know about hubby’s affair and objected to it, can’t possibly have had anything to do with Meg’s disappearance. And we know she’s not the stalker.’

  Hillary grinned. ‘Not unless she’s a big, buff lass who likes to work out and has a deep gravelly voice and gender issues. The Kanes don’t have any kids, so you never know – Marcus may be married to a tranny.’

  Steven laughed, but then began to look more pensive. His eyes sharpened on her thoughtfully. ‘You look pale and tired. And, please don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem to be approaching this case as if you were starting a murder inquiry from scratch. It’s not that I’m questioning your methods, but….’

  Hillary sighed. ‘You’re questioning my methods,’ she echoed him ironically. ‘I know. I know. But I just….’ She sighed and leaned back in her chair. ‘I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s not just that I’ve got Geoff Rhumer doing the job that I really want to be doing, nor is it the fact that we haven’t come into this case from the beginning, but like we’ve been dumped into it halfway through.’

  ‘Rather like coming into the theatre in the middle of the play you mean, and are constantly trying to play catch-up?’ he put in.

  ‘Yeah, that doesn’t help,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s something more than that. I keep feeling we’re not getting the right angle on it. Or we can’t see the woods for the trees. Oh hell, I can’t really put it into words. When I was a rookie, I had this case with my old mentor, DI Brackley. I’d worked with him before on three or four cases, all of which had followed more or less the usual pattern. But this one case – nothing seemed to fit. Interviews didn’t pan out. Coincidences that seemed too much to swallow, turned out to be just that – coincidences. The clues seemed to point one way, the evidence the other. We just couldn’t make it gel, you know? And he said that sometimes, not often I’m glad to say, but sometimes, you get a case like that. It just won’t play ball with you. He called them the dog’s breakfast cases. I’ve never had one happen to me when I was lead before.’

  ‘But now you think you have?’ Steven asked, both curiosity and concern evident in his voice.

  Hillary shot him a sour look. ‘I know what you’re thinking: that I’m a bit off my game. I’m not sleeping properly and still feeling a bit wrong-footed after the attack. And all of that might be true. But I still can’t get this case to behave.’

  Steven nodded. ‘We all have cases like it. They’re a bugger. The only thing you can do is plough on and don’t give up.’

  ‘Oh I’m not giving up,’ Hillary said grimly. And although her hand itched in her lap, she didn’t let it wander up to her neck to feel the fading scars there.

  Steven grinned at her. ‘Attagirl. I’ll see you tonight and you can tell me if Marcus Kane is married to a cross-dressing Amazon who could be our killer.’

  Hillary threw a pen at him, but he was too fast and it bounced harmlessly off the door closing behind him.

  For a moment she sat there, thinking.

  Had he really said, “It’s a good job that I love you” in any way that could be taken seriously?

  Then she shook her head. Out of all that they’d just discussed, was that the only thing that she could think about? She really was going to have to get a grip!

  Pricilla Kane lived in a big white mansion in North Oxford – the kind that only multi-millionaires could dream of. As Hillary and Jimmy pulled into the gravelled forecourt, Jimmy gave a long, low whistle. ‘And who says crime doesn’t pay?’ he muttered grumpily.

  Jimmy’s views on solicitors and barristers who represented the criminals that he worked so hard to nail were well known, and H
illary grinned as she climbed out of the car, but wondered why she was getting such a sense of déjà vu.

  Then it hit her: Christopher Deakin, Judy Yelland’s married lover, had a rich wife called Portia. Pricilla and Portia. Were there baby name books published only for the seriously well-off? Still amused over that thought, she pulled the old-fashioned iron bell pull and wasn’t surprised when a foreign-looking maid opened the door. She spoke excellent English however, and left them briefly in an impressive hallway, before reappearing and showing them through a large lounge in dazzling white, and on through to an even larger conservatory that looked like something from Kew Gardens.

  It was humid and hot, and rife with huge flowering things that reminded Hillary uneasily of the classic Wyndham sci-fi novel, The Day of the Triffids.

  ‘Hello, I’m over here by the orchids. Please, mind the wet floor,’ a Sloaney voice called out from behind a water-feature that had what looked like dead branches from huge trees criss-crossing a small pond. On them, plumes of weird-looking, tortured-shaped flowers sprouted. The woman who was tending them was dressed in a pair of white slacks and an emerald-green silk blouse. Her dark-brown hair was held up in one of those elegant chignons that Hillary was sure must take hours to arrange. It was held in place by a hair slide that glinted with what could only be real diamonds and emeralds. She was wearing a matching emerald and diamond drop pendant, and a diamond-encrusted wristwatch. Incongruously, her fingers were stained brown with earth. ‘Police, Marta said?’ Pricilla Kane said peremptorily, looking at them from a pair of level, hazel-green eyes. The eyebrows above them were perfectly plucked, naturally.

  She looked a very well-preserved twenty, which meant she was probably already well into her forties, Hillary gauged. Her make-up was light, but applied with an expert and experienced hand.