Walk a Narrow Mile

by Faith Martin

  She paused and looked at Hillary defiantly. ‘As I said, I read up about it. Serial killers and true-crime stories and all that sort of thing. And a lot of them went on about how hard disposing of a body is.’

  Hillary nodded. She was impressed. Disposing of a body was by far and away one of the hardest things to do, and it was usually bungling this – and being grassed up by those in the know – which led to the majority of killers being caught and convicted.

  ‘You’ve done your homework,’ she acknowledged briefly.

  ‘Right. So ever since you came to me, I’ve been driving over to Chris’s place and watching him.’

  ‘And did he drive to any remote woods?’ Hillary asked gently.

  Ruth flushed. ‘Don’t be so bloody superior! If he had, I’d have called you straight away and told you to bring some cadaver dogs.’

  Hillary had to smile – just a little twitch of the lips. ‘Yes, Miss Coombs, I’m sure you would. So, Mr Deakin hasn’t checked up on Judy. What has he done?’

  ‘Nothing much. The first night he went to one of his lock-up facilities, but that’s only where he stores some filming equipment and the expensive cameras and stuff. It has good security. He’s been working long hours,’ she added reluctantly. ‘But he’s acting oddly,’ she insisted defiantly. ‘I can tell. He’s upset and worried.’

  Hillary looked at Ruth for a long moment. Just what did this strange, obsessed woman regard as acting oddly she wondered.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s losing weight. I mean, visibly, I can tell. And it’s only been a few days. You don’t lose weight that fast unless you’re really stressing, do you?’ Ruth said flatly.

  Hillary blinked. Just how closely was this woman watching Christopher Deakin that she noticed if he’d lost a few pounds?

  ‘Is Mr Deakin aware of your, er, activities, Miss Coombs?’

  Ruth’s eyes flashed. ‘Of course not! Give me some credit. I keep my distance.’

  But have a good pair of binoculars, I’ll bet, Hillary added silently.

  ‘I’m telling you, he’s the one you want. You need to speak to him again,’ she said stubbornly.

  Hillary nodded. ‘Very well, Miss Coombs, I’ll be sure to do that.’

  ‘When?’ Ruth asked aggressively, and for once, looked surprised, but then satisfied, as Hillary got to her feet.

  ‘Right now in fact, Miss Coombs. Let’s walk you out. I dare say you can tell me, is Mr Deakin at work now, or at home?’

  ‘Oh he’ll be at work,’ Ruth said at once. ‘He never knocks off early, even though it’s a Friday afternoon.’

  Hillary, Jimmy and Ruth Coombs, walked back through the CRT rabbit warren and back up the stairs into the warm May afternoon and out to the car-park. There they saw her safely off and then headed for Hillary’s old car.

  ‘I’m glad that woman hasn’t got her sights on me, guv,’ Jimmy said with feeling, as they drove out into the gathering rush-hour traffic. Unlike Mr Deakin, apparently, a lot of other less conscientious workers had left work early, and they had to endure the usual stop-start-stop fiasco of traffic jams all the way into the city. Since they should have been going in the opposite direction from the main flow Hillary couldn’t understand it for a moment, until she realized that most of the traffic was due to the school runs.

  She idled behind an old Volvo that had a faulty exhaust and rubbed the back of her neck tiredly. She hoped Steven was going to come over tonight. She liked lying next to his long, comforting length in bed; to have him there, to touch when it got to be three o’clock in the morning, and everything seemed that much darker.

  ‘You think Deakin knows what she’s been doing, guv?’ Jimmy asked, coughing a bit on the Volvo’s exhaust fumes, and rolling up his window.

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ Hillary said laconically.

  Christopher Deakin welcomed them into the same office they’d visited previously, and did indeed look a little more gaunt than he had before. Hillary could almost imagine the I-told-you-so look on Ruth Coombs’s face as she took the seat the television producer offered her.

  ‘So, this is still about Judy, yes?’ he asked, looking from Hillary to Jimmy. ‘Have you found out anything new?’

  Hillary caught the uncertainty behind the question, and felt her hackles rise. Ruth Coombs might be a woman obsessed, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be right about certain things, and something in the way that Christopher Deakin’s hazel eyes moved restlessly from her to Jimmy, told her that this man was indeed feeling very uncomfortable.

  ‘We’re always finding out new things, sir,’ Hillary said sweetly. ‘We investigate. That’s what tends to happen when you investigate – you find out things. Like if someone’s been telling you lies. Or, shall we say, not being as totally forthcoming as they might have been.’ She allowed her voice to rise slightly at the end of the sentence, thus turning it into a query.

  It was an old trick, and she had used it often in the past. When dealing with someone who was trying to hide something, but you had no idea what, sometimes it paid off to simply bluff. If you hinted that you knew all about it, a suspect’s dodgy conscience would often do the rest. That, plus the fact that most people had the subconscious desire to confess, simply because the relief when they did so was so great.

  So she gazed calmly across at the other man, and saw Deakin’s skinny frame slowly collapse, like air going out of a balloon.

  ‘All right. So I didn’t tell you about the money I loaned her,’ Christopher said with a credible stab at embarrassed nonchalance. ‘I just didn’t want you to get the wrong impression of Judy, that’s all.’

  Hillary nodded. What money?

  ‘We know how much it was, sir,’ she said smoothly. ‘Financial records, in a serious criminal inquiry, are never as private as the general public seem to think.’

  Christopher nodded gloomily. ‘Like I said, I didn’t want you to run away with the idea that Judy was some sort of gold-digger, or that she was the money-grubbing sort. She wasn’t. I was happy to loan her the ten thousand.’

  Ten thousand, Hillary thought. An interesting sum, that. Not huge, by today’s standards. But not peanuts either. She glanced around the room, taking in the ergonomically designed chairs, the limited edition prints on the walls bearing famous names in the world of modern art, the arrangement of fresh lilies in a cut crystal vase on a good quality nineteenth century mahogany sideboard.

  Yes, he could well afford it. Probably. On the other hand, people didn’t get rich and successful giving money away. But Judy hadn’t been just anyone, had she, Hillary mused? She’d been his lover. So – was it blackmail or genuine affection? She tilted her head and looked at Christopher Deakin thoughtfully.

  ‘You appear to have lost weight, sir,’ Hillary said, and saw him shoot her a totally flummoxed look. ‘You’re very lean anyway, which is why I noticed. Since it’s hardly likely that you’re on a diet, I wondered if it might be due to stress. Have you been feeling particularly under pressure recently?’ she asked innocently.

  Christopher swallowed hard. No wonder Ruth Coombs thought he was acting strangely. Right here and now he was acting the classic guilty man, found out.

  ‘Oh, just work,’ he said, his voice slightly hoarse. ‘Working in television is always very time-orientated you see. The pressure is always on to get things done on schedule because productions over-running are so expensive. And filming on one of our documentaries has hit a snag. Unforeseen circumstances and all that – and we haven’t budgeted for it. That sort of thing.’ And then, as if aware he was rambling, he abruptly stopped talking.

  Hillary looked at the good-looking, blond man, and felt uneasy. She also experienced an odd little frisson of déjà vu. ‘Let’s get back to the money you loaned Judy. I take it you never got it back?’ When in doubt, follow the money trail. How often had she heard that from her old sergeant, back in the days when she’d still been in uniform?

  ‘No. Well, she, er … left,
and so, of course, she could … didn’t repay it. Not that I really expected her to,’ he added quickly. ‘I mean, we called it a loan, between ourselves, but we both knew that really it was, well, a gift I suppose.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Did she say why she needed it?’

  Deakin hesitated, and then again, just as he had before in their previous interview, quite obviously – to Hillary at least – lied. ‘No,’ he said firmly, his eyes briefly flickering. ‘She didn’t. And I didn’t like to ask.’

  Hillary nodded.

  And wondered.

  Had Judy become truly afraid of her stalker by then? Had she asked her lover for money so that she could run away and hide? To disappear for a bit, to maybe just shake off the man who was harassing her, long enough anyway, for him to get bored and find someone else to torment? And if she had, wouldn’t she have told him? So was Deakin so freaked out because he thought that Judy was alive and well somewhere and in hiding from her stalker, and that cops stumbling around might put a spoke in the wheel? But then, that would mean she’d spent four years in hiding, or so he thought. And if he was still holding a torch, waiting for her, then he was a better man than she’d have given him credit for.

  If any of this was true, or he thought it was, then why didn’t he come clean about it now? Obviously, Judy herself might have asked him not to.

  Hillary mentally shook her head. No. It was all too far-fetched. It was far more likely that their affair had run its natural course and he hadn’t given her a thought since. He had probably even been relieved, since it meant the risk of his wife finding out would finally be over. Deakin might simply have seen the money as a good investment if he knew that Judy was going to take it and go out of his life for good.

  And now, years later, here it all came back to potentially bite him in the backside.

  Yes, that might be it.

  Then again, it might not.

  No. It might not.

  Hillary nodded. ‘Well, thank you for your time, Mr Deakin. And please don’t lie to us again. If you think of anything, anything at all, that you think we should know, please give me a call. You still have my card?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Deakin said, smiling with visible relief, and stood up when they did.

  Hillary nodded, turned and walked to the door, then stopped halfway and turned back. ‘Oh, and Mr Deakin, if you want to file a complaint against Ruth Coombs, you can also do that through me, if you like.’

  Christopher smiled shakily. ‘Oh, no. Ruth’s fine. I mean, she’s just a little … no, it’s fine.’

  Hillary nodded. At that point she would have bet money on him saying just that.

  Once back outside, they hit the rush hour proper and sat for nearly half an hour in stalled traffic on the Banbury Road.

  Hillary said nothing, although once or twice she saw Jimmy glance across at her curiously. But by now Jimmy knew enough about his guv’nor to know when to talk and when not to interrupt her when she was thinking.

  And Hillary was thinking, at last. For what felt like the first time since taking this dog’s dinner of a case, she felt as if she was beginning to properly function again. Act like the cop she was, and always had been.

  The only trouble was – what she was thinking was insane. Indeed, it was so insane that she had no intention of voicing her theories out loud. Apart from anything else, Steven would yank her off the case before she could complete so much as a full sentence.

  No. She needed to gather evidence, and the rock-solid, incontrovertible kind of evidence at that. If what she was beginning to suspect was even remotely true, then it was so far off the wall, that only an air-tight argument would do. Otherwise they really would be sending for the men in white coats to come and take her away.

  But where the hell did she start?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That Friday night, Tom checked his appearance in the mirror. He was wearing tight fitting, good quality denim jeans that showed off his powerful thigh muscles to perfection, and a plain white T-shirt, again, stretched tight to show off his pecs. He slung a fashionably beaten-up leather jacket over his shoulders and smoothed back his hair.

  He was taking Vivienne to a pub-cum-restaurant in the nearby village of Hampton Poyle and he was feeling rather flat. Why couldn’t it be Hillary that he was dressing to impress? He scowled at his image in the mirror, then smiled slowly as he turned and reached for the three envelopes on his desk.

  They were all brown padded envelopes, with computer-printed address labels on the front. They all had self-seal tabs on them, and he’d used water to paste down the stamps. Each was addressed to Hillary Greene and each had a small item inside that he’d been almost loathe to part with. He’d enjoyed gloating over them over the years, imagining delicious scenarios concerning their original owners. It would be a shame to give them away.

  Still, it was in a good cause. He needed to up the game. Since he’d discovered she was being guarded and watched day and night by that bastard Steven Crayle’s lackeys, he hadn’t been able to do much. She might be wondering if he’d forgotten about her or given up on their game, and he couldn’t have that.

  He smiled when he thought of her getting his latest gift via the services of Her Majesty’s Royal Mail, and what her reaction would be. She’d be intrigued, and surely relieved to hear from him.

  He picked up the envelopes with a tuneless whistle and pocketed his car keys and then, still whistling, checked his mobile. He’d been left one text message, but he recognized the number and ignored it. He was due to meet a guy who had a caravan for sale, but it could wait. He probably only wanted to change the time when they’d agreed to meet so he could look it over, and he had more important things on his mind just now.

  Running down the stairs into the hall, he called a vague ‘goodbye’ to his parents, who he could hear listening to the telly in the living room, and went out to his car. He drove to the small village and decided to use the post box there to mail his letters. He took a quick look around and on finding the village lanes deserted, he mimed kissing the back of each envelope, imagining it was his Hillary’s lovely lips he was kissing, popped them into the iconic red box and then took off his driving gloves and walked into the pub.

  Vivienne was late. But then, she nearly always was.

  Tom used the spare time to buy the drinks, and think about how he was going to kill her. When she finally arrived, she was dressed in one of those flowery summery print dresses that reminded you of your granny, but were now back in fashion. With her curled long dark hair and expertly made-up pretty face, she instantly attracted the attention of every man in the room, but Tom took one look at the frilly Laura Ashley confection and knew that Hillary wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it.

  He forced a smile. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d stood me up.’

  ‘Nah, just busy. You wouldn’t believe what the mad cow has got us doing now,’ Vivienne said, missing the sudden tightening of his smile and the way his cat-green eyes glittered angrily. ‘She’s only got us sorting through any costa cons that one of our missing girls might have got mixed up with.’

  Tom, fighting the urge to slap her silly face and warn her to watch her foul mouth when talking about Hillary, felt himself suddenly stiffen.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply. ‘What costa cons?’ Then, realizing that she was surprised by the tone of his voice, quickly forced the smile back. ‘I mean, it sounds dangerous. You shouldn’t be talking to real villains; it’s not as if you’re a real copper yet.’

  ‘Oh that’s sweet! You’re worried about me,’ Vivienne teased, taking a sip of her drink.

  Tom smiled. He couldn’t care less what trouble the silly bitch got herself into, but he needed to get to the bottom of this. It didn’t make sense, and that worried him.

  ‘Which missing girl we talking about then?’ he asked casually, looping one leather-clad arm around her shoulders and splaying his fingers tantalizingly across the top of her arms. He gently rubbed her skin with one
thumb, and took a sip of his own pint.

  ‘The one who worked in the posh solicitor’s office,’ Vivienne said, putting a hand on his thigh under the table. Bloody hell, it felt as if it were made of iron! ‘Apparently, the outfit she worked for did a lot of the defence work for a load of ex-pat villains. It’s how they make a lot of their money, apparently.’

  ‘Why does she want to know about them for?’ Tom asked, genuinely curious.

  Vivienne sighed and shrugged. ‘Dunno. Who knows how her mind works? Still, I’m not complaining, not really. It gets me and the ginger minger out of the office and doing something a bit more interesting. Mind you, all we’ve been doing this afternoon is chatting to her workmates at the office and trying to find out who she was close to. We’ve got some names, and we’re going to try and interview them on Monday morning, so that’ll be a bit of excitement. I’ve never met a career criminal before. I’ll bet you have,’ she said, flatteringly, nudging up a bit closer and digging her fingers suggestively into his flesh.

  Tom smiled enigmatically. The only criminals he knew were the boozed up tossers who cut each other in knife fights every weekend, or vandalized bus shelters. ’Course. They’re all right, some of them. Just you be careful though,’ he added, realizing that she was expecting him to say something like that. ‘But what’s she thinking of? Has she said why she wants you to find out about them?’

  It worried him when Hillary did stuff that he couldn’t figure out. What had she got hold of that he hadn’t? The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that she had thought of something that he’d missed, and that thought left him breathless in equal parts of admiration and unease.