Walk a Narrow Mile

by Faith Martin

  But what could it be? It made no sense. Unless…

  ‘Meg Vickary,’ he said casually. ‘You’ve been talking to her workmates you say. So, was she close to any of them? Any of the costa villains, that is?’

  Vivienne sighed. To be honest, Sam had done most of the chatting, since all the secretaries were women, and they seemed to take to him; the stuck-up cows hadn’t wanted to give her the time of day. And she hadn’t liked to ask Sam what he’d found out, because then she’d have to admit that she hadn’t come up with much herself.

  But she wasn’t about to admit any of this to Tom, so instead she sighed again. ‘Come on, lover boy, you know I can’t talk about it,’ she cajoled. ‘Hillary Greene would have my hide. She’s always going on about our need for discretion and keeping our mouths shut. Anyone would think we were working for the Secret bloody Service or something. I tell you, that woman’s unhinged.’

  Tom nodded understandingly, but his hand, curled around his pint glass, tightened until his knuckles showed white. What the stupid cow meant was that Hillary Greene was a professional, through and through. Being forced to work with sub-standard dregs like Vivienne, the old geezer and Sam Pickles must really rankle. It made him want to go up and shake the top brass by their silly bloody necks and ask them what the hell they thought they were playing at, treating their star player like this.

  He forced himself to push the anger away and concentrate, knowing he could be in serious trouble here. He’d always known that Hillary, his wonderful Hillary, was clever. Tenacious; the best bloody cop at HQ, but he didn’t like the way her mind seemed to be working.

  He didn’t like it one little bit.

  He only hoped the three envelopes would distract her. Otherwise … well, otherwise, he’d have to speed things up before it all got spoilt. And he couldn’t let it get spoilt.

  ‘Have I told you I’m seeing a man about a caravan this weekend?’ he said softly, turning to nibble on Vivienne’s earlobe. ‘Me and you are gonna have to make plans to start spending some quality time alone together. All alone, in the woods somewhere…’ – he let his voice lower softly – ‘where no-one can hear you scream,’ he added with a twinkle in his green eyes.

  Vivienne smiled smugly. ‘Now you’re talking!’

  The weekend was one of those golden ones that mark the end of spring and the beginning of summer. The sun showed its true strength, and on the Mollern, Hillary and Steven threw open all the windows and took to the outdoors. The ducklings were growing apace, and the swallows, all now arrived, were busy swooping along the khaki-coloured water of the Oxford canal, scooping up beaks full of liquid to help them to construct their mud nests.

  Lying on top of the roof on fluffy beach towels, they spent the days sipping chilled wine, reading, talking, and sunbathing before going below to fix light meals.

  Steven had taken the whole weekend off, and Hillary appreciated the pampering. At night, they wandered to The Boat for their evening meal, then spent the nights together in her small bed. Sunday morning, they went for a long walk northwards, passing the village of Kirtlington’s Three Pigeons Lock, the hamlet of Northbrook, and as far as the villages of Lower and Upper Heyford, before turning back. She taught him what cuckoo flowers looked like, and the difference between buttercups and celandines. He told her about his past marriage, his ambitions for the future, and how he loved the minuscule proportions of her ridiculous bed.

  It was one of those moments in life that should never have to come to an end, but when it did, and she followed him into work the following Monday morning, she knew that something fundamental had changed in her life.

  And she wasn’t sure that she knew what to do about it.

  On the plus side, she’d not thought about the fading scar on her neck once.

  Before Vivienne and Sam set off for the Smoke, where they were due to talk to three fairly low-level and now fully retired criminals about Meg Vickary, she gave them another task.

  Vivienne, who was impatient, stood restlessly beside her desk, glancing tellingly at her watch and sighing elaborately. Hillary ignored her.

  Sam, however, listened carefully.

  ‘When you get back from London, I want you to check out any rural artistic-type retreats you can find,’ she told him. ‘Go country-wide, but they have to be set in the countryside – converted farms, barns, mills, anything of that sort, and they have to be artisan-based,’ Hillary explained. ‘No religious overtones, or anything political. I don’t think either of those are Gillian Tinkerton’s thing at all.’

  Sam nodded. ‘You think she might have run off to some place to paint butterflies or something, guv,’ he said, grinning.

  Jimmy, who knew damned well that Gillian was dead, looked up curiously, wondering why Hillary was giving them this particular task now. Even if Gillian had gone off to join some sort of artist’s colony to escape her stalker, it was clear she hadn’t made it. But perhaps the guv thought that he might have followed her to wherever she’d gone and then snatched her from there? In which case, the youngsters might just uncover a witness. But it was a hell of a long shot, in his opinion.

  Hillary smiled briefly at Sam, giving nothing away. ‘Something like that. Concentrate on those that provide live-in accommodation or provide solid business links with the local community. I can’t see Gillian being taken in by any outfit where the artists end up paying the management for the privilege of staying there. And she’s canny enough to want to be sure to make a living out of what she’s doing. So any fly-by-night or dodgy set ups is out. I think she’s canny enough to have checked them out beforehand, so concentrate on those that have been going for some years and have a solid rep. You can do most of it on the net I expect, or by phone. I want a list of possibles on my desk as soon as you can.’

  ‘Right, guv.’

  ‘Can we get going now?’ Vivienne whined.

  Hillary smiled patiently, and waved them away.

  Jimmy watched her leave the office and go on through down to her own small space. He didn’t know how she could stand it in there – it would drive him mad. Still, she lived on a narrowboat, so obviously claustrophobia wasn’t one of her problems.

  He frowned, wondering what she was up to. Usually he could follow her thinking and get some idea of where she thought the case was going, but not this time. So far, she’d solved both of the cold case murders that the super had given her, and his confidence in her was only growing. But this case was obviously giving her trouble, and Jimmy wasn’t so sure that being stalked could account for all of it. He didn’t believe she’d lost her nerve, but her confidence wasn’t as strong as it should have been. Her mind though, he would have bet his last pay packet, was as razor-sharp as ever.

  But for the life of him he couldn’t figure out her strategy. Was her mind really not on the job? Being attacked and nearly knifed to death had to affect you, no matter how tough you were. Was she still feeling so distracted by the thought of being the next target of a serial killer that she really couldn’t think straight?

  Jimmy didn’t think so. He believed he had the measure of Hillary Greene by now and, when it came down to it, he’d place his bets on her any day of the week. If her stalker thought he’d got the better of her, he’d better think again.

  Besides, so far, between the super, himself and his old pals, they’d been keeping her covered every moment of every day, and she knew it. And, needless to say, chummy hadn’t made a move on her. Knowing they had her covered had to help her feel secure.

  He knew that the super had spent the entire weekend with her, and not just because he wanted to keep her safe either, but Jimmy didn’t let himself speculate about that. It was none of his damned business. But she did look more relaxed and happy than he’d seen her in a while, which said it all, really.

  He shook his head, and reminded himself again that the private life of his bosses was no place for a canny retired sergeant to stick his big fat nose, and reached instead for DI Rhumer’s latest report. But the D
I’s team had had no joy so far on whittling out a name or face from the long suspect list. Well, that was always going to be a long job, wasn’t it? And they couldn’t even be sure, a hundred per cent sure, that chummy was on the job. Anyone could buy a police uniform from a costume shop and buy fake police ID on the Internet.

  He was just closing the folder when Hillary came back into the office. She had three opened padded brown envelopes in her hand. Her face was perfectly expressionless.

  ‘Can you call the Super in?’ she said flatly. ‘And tell him we’re going to need forensics, and DI Rhumer.’ She waved the envelopes in the air, and Jimmy tensed.

  ‘Been in contact, has he?’ Jimmy said flatly.

  ‘Yes,’ Hillary said. ‘He just can’t seem to resist it, can he?’ she added, with grim little smile.

  Geoff Rhumer, Steven, Hillary and Jimmy crowded around Steven’s desk. All of them were wearing gloves.

  ‘Obviously, as soon as I saw them in the mail, I put mine on,’ Hillary said, indicating her white, cotton-clad hands. ‘I knew I wasn’t due any mail like this, and besides…’ She shrugged and just let the sentence slide. She’d just known that they had been sent by Lol. You get an instinct about this sort of thing, and she could see by the way the others in the group were either nodding their heads or giving a rueful smile, that they understood without needing to be told.

  She met Steven’s solemn, questioning brown eyes, and gave a small smile in return, silently telling him that she was fine. But whether he believed her or not, she couldn’t tell. She reached for the first envelope, which she had carefully unsealed, causing the least possible amount of interference for the forensics people to moan about later, and tipped out the contents.

  On to the table fell an ugly, fluffy pink key ring with a troll’s face. It was both comical and grotesque. The second envelope was thicker and she carefully pulled out a striped, multi-coloured pair of leg warmers. The third envelope produced a necklace consisting of what looked like good quality pearls, with the biggest and fattest in the middle, graduating to smaller ones the closer they got to the clasp, which was made of gold.

  For a moment, they studied the items in question, none of them venturing the obvious observation, until Steven obliged. ‘You think these come from the victims?’

  Hillary nodded. ‘I think the troll key ring is probably Gilly’s. It’s the kind of whimsical, funky thing she’d use. The strand of pearls, I’m guessing, would be Meg’s, simply because she was a class act and somewhat vain about her looks, and I can’t see her covering up her legs at all, let alone with something like these.’ She nodded at the jaunty leg warmers. ‘Which, by process of elimination, I’m guessing, belonged to Judy.’

  ‘No note with any of the items?’ Geoff Rhumer asked without much hope. If there had been, they’d have been studying it by now.

  Hillary shook her head. ‘But then, there doesn’t need to be, does there?’ she asked flatly, and for a while they stared down at the three items on the table. Each unique to their owners, their forlorn eloquence had no need of the written word.

  Steven briskly shook off the gloom. ‘OK. Geoff, get these to forensics and see if you can find any trace of your man on them. I doubt you’ll be lucky, but you never can tell. Hillary—’

  ‘I know – I’ll get on to the witnesses and see if we can confirm the ownership of the items. For that, I’ll need first-class photos of the items.’

  ‘I’ll get that done first, and get them to you,’ Geoff Rhumer said briskly.

  Ruth Coombs very quickly identified the leg warmers as being Judy’s. In the office at the back of the large shop, she looked at the photographs intently. ‘Of course, I can’t swear they’re hers,’ she added cautiously, determined to be scrupulously fair. ‘I dare say a lot of them were sold to a lot of people. But I remember Judy buying a pair just like these from Bicester market. When we had one of those really cold winters, you know? She liked the colours.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘We were wondering if you might have kept anything of Judy’s that might still have traces of her DNA on it? A hairbrush maybe? Otherwise, we’ll have to take a DNA sample from her parents, to compare it to any traces we might find on the leg warmers.’

  But Ruth shrugged helplessly. ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. I packed up all her stuff after a year or so, and asked her parents if they wanted it. I didn’t particularly like doing it – I knew Judy never gave them the time of day any more, and probably wouldn’t have wanted me to either. But … well, I didn’t really have any right to hold on to them, you see,’ Ruth held out her hands helplessly. ‘And when push comes to shove, family is family, right? In the end they took it, not because they wanted it, but because it was the “done thing”. It would have looked odd if they’d refused, and that’s all they cared about. Too busy worrying about what the neighbours might say, but not caring a damn about what might have happened to their own daughter,’ she added bitterly.

  Hillary said nothing to that, but thanked her quietly and left. Geoff Rhumer had already confirmed that a lone uniformed PC had talked to Ruth shortly after Judy had been reported missing, and that Ruth had confirmed that he had been left alone for a short time. Which meant that he certainly could, therefore, have done a quick search of his victim’s room, had he been of a mind to do so. And lifted more items than just the leg warmers? Hillary thought, on balance, that he probably had.

  Unfortunately, Ruth’s description of him had been even more vague than that provided by Mrs Tinkerton.

  Georgia Biggs looked at the photograph of the graduated strand of pearls thoughtfully, and then smiled somewhat ruefully. They were once again crowded into her small dental office, with the smell of antiseptic sharp in the air, and posters of gum disease rampant.

  Unlike Ruth Coombs, Georgia Biggs hadn’t been at the flat when the man in a police uniform had shown up making inquiries about the missing woman, but he had talked the landlord of the premises into letting him ‘take a look around’. Unfortunately for Geoff Rhumer and his team, the landlord was now deceased, leaving them with, quite literally, a dead end, when it came to getting another independent description of the man they were looking for.

  ‘I know Meg had a necklace quite like this,’ Georgia told them, then laughed softly. ‘She was furious about it.’

  ‘Oh?’ Hillary asked, tensing just a little. Could they have been a gift from the stalker? She could quite see why Meg Vickary wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with them, if they had been. But if they had been one of his original gifts, why had he stolen them back?

  ‘It turned out they weren’t real. Oh, they were very good quality, cultured, or whatever it is they are when they’re not really natural. Worth a few hundred quid, or so the jeweller told her, but not the thousands they would have been if they’d been the genuine article,’ Georgia explained, then sighed. ‘I quite liked them personally. I would have worn them and been happy to – they had this pretty pinkish quality to them. But Meg just tossed them into the back of her jewellery case and never wore them. She gave the man who gave them to her the push as well. Well, that was Meg, really. She didn’t like being messed about.’

  ‘He was an old boyfriend, was he?’ Hillary asked quickly, then felt her hopes drop as Georgia nodded. ‘Yeah, she went out with him for a while. He was a company rep for some pharmaceutical company or something. Can’t remember his name now.’

  ‘Can you remember what he looked like?’ Hillary persisted. It was possible the stalker had made contact, after all, and maybe even persuaded Meg to date him a few times.

  ‘Really tall beanpole of a bloke,’ Georgia said. ‘Really fair hair and pale skin. Almost an albino, you know?’

  Hillary nodded glumly. ‘Do you still have them, or know what happened to them? The pearls, I mean?’

  Georgia thought about it for a second, and then frowned thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know. They’re probably still with her stuff. It’s all in storage. You can look if you like.’

  She gave the
m the details of the lock-up where Meg Vickary’s worldly possessions were still kept. ‘I keep paying the rental on the space, thinking that one day she’ll turn up for them.’ Georgia shook her head and looked Hillary straight in the eye. ‘But she won’t, will she?’

  Hillary smiled gently. ‘If you’ll just give us written permission to access the storage?’

  Georgia obligingly wrote down the address and handed it over.

  They drove to the lock-up, which turned out to be in one of Swindon’s suburbs, but although they eventually found Meg Vickary’s jewellery box, they found no string of pearls – fake or otherwise.

  Hillary was interested to note that all the jewellery in the box was of the costume variety. But she was sure that a woman of Meg’s tenacity and ambition must have been given plenty of the genuine article by her many admirers.

  So where was it?

  It was possible that Georgia Biggs had ‘redirected’ it to her own jewellery box, and she knew that many of her colleagues would automatically assume that that had been the case. And they might be right.

  But there was another explanation for it being missing, and Hillary was beginning to think she might have a damned good idea what that was.

  Deirdre Tinkerton took one look at the photograph of the fluffy troll key ring and abruptly and rather heavily sat down on a chair. ‘Oh, that ugly thing. Yes, Gilly had one just like it, but…’ She looked up at them, her pleasant round face slowly turning pale. ‘Why are you showing me a photograph of it now? Is there something you’re not telling me? Is my Gilly…?’ Her voice suddenly seemed to lose its strength, and she cleared her throat noisily. ‘Is my little girl dead?’ she asked in a small voice.

  Hillary cursed herself for having to bring this to the poor woman’s door, and cursed the stalker even more. It seemed heartlessly cruel to rattle Deirdre Tinkerton’s comforting belief that her daughter was alive and well somewhere, and just thoughtlessly remaining out of touch, especially if what Hillary was coming to believe might be true, was indeed actually the case.