Walk a Narrow Mile

by Faith Martin

  He hadn’t asked what it was all about, which intrigued Geoff slightly. Then again, it was becoming clear to him that Faulkner belonged to the strong, silent group. Either that, or he just knew enough not to volunteer any information, and to hold his fire until he was sure in which direction the battle lay, and then scream for the representation to which he was entitled.

  As White drove them back into HQ, Geoff glanced at his watch. So far there’d been no calls either on his mobile or over the radio to indicate that any of the others had had any trouble.

  So at least, that was something.

  Hillary Greene, Sam and Jimmy were just pulling out of the HQ car-park lot as Rhumer drove in. They didn’t quite pass, and Hillary was too busy looking for a break in the traffic to notice them. The search warrants had come in, and she was headed for Summertown.

  ‘So what exactly are we going to be looking for guv?’ Sam asked from the back seat, clearly excited.

  ‘Now that’s the question, son,’ Jimmy responded for her. ‘And the knack to conducting a successful blind search.’

  ‘Blind search?’

  ‘Yes. There’s three kind of searches,’ Jimmy explained patiently. ‘You have a suspect you think knifed someone in a bar-room brawl. So you’re looking for a specific item – a switch blade or whatever. That’s one of the most common ones, and straightforward enough. Then you have a suspect, say a suspected rapist, and a victim, and you’re searching his house for any signs that the rape took place there, or signs of the victim’s presence – like her ripped panties, or torn-out ear-ring, or what have you. A bit wider in scope, but still fairly straightforward. Then you get something like this – where you don’t really know what you’re looking for, but just hope like hell that you’ll recognize it when you find it.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sam said. Behind her, Hillary heard the lad gulp.

  She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Sam. We’re looking for anything that can help us find out what might have happened to Judy Yelland. When I’ve got a better idea of how the land lies, I’ll direct you to look for something specific – maybe a diary, or women’s clothing, something specific anyway. Jimmy and I will do the blind bit.’

  Sam sighed. ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to be good enough for this job, guv,’ he said quietly.

  Hillary smiled again. ‘Don’t worry. We all thought the same thing, at some point. You can only do so much studying and training. The rest is just experience and time served. You’ll do fine,’ she reassured him. Which was more than could be said for the still absent Vivienne.

  She was going to have do something about Miss Tyrell, Hillary realized with an inner sigh. It was clear she had no place in the police, and she’d have to make her feelings clear to Steven.

  Not that she liked ensuring that anyone got the push, but in Vivienne’s case the writing was on the wall.

  Back at HQ, Geoff Rhumer and Steven Crayle had a problem. All the teams had returned to HQ, only one of them had come back empty-handed.

  The team assigned to pick up PC Tom Warrington from his parents’ house had to report that Warrington had not returned to the family home the night before. His parents, however, weren’t either worried or particularly surprised, since their son had recently purchased a caravan, and had left last night to set up a site for it.

  Unfortunately, they had no idea where that might be.

  Hillary paused at the Summertown roundabout and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘You remember what Ruth Coombs said, Jimmy, about her following Christopher the day that she knew the case had been reopened?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Didn’t she mention him going to one of his storage places, or something?’

  Jimmy grunted and twisted around to get the file off the backseat. Sam quickly passed it over. Jimmy rustled through the pages for his notes. Behind her, an impatient git in a flash BMW blared his horn and Hillary shot him the finger in her mirror.

  ‘Right, guv. To a storage place in Headington. Apparently, television equipment can be bulky and costly, so a lot of TV production outfits rent space like it.’

  ‘But do you remember how Deakin made a point of saying how he was running into scheduling problems recently?’ she asked, ignoring the BMW driver as he made a point of manoeuvring around her and roaring away up the Banbury Road.

  ‘So?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘If you were a busy and harassed television exec, would you take time out to go and check on camera equipment in storage?’

  Jimmy shrugged. ‘You want to start with the lock-up?’ He wasn’t much fussed where they began, and if the guv had a hunch, he was more than happy to follow her lead. Though it seemed a bit thin to him.

  Hillary shrugged. ‘We’ve got to start somewhere. And I really can’t see that he’d keep anything incriminating in his office, do you?’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Fine by me.’

  Hillary indicated to take the next left and headed towards the Oxford suburb of Headington, high up on the hill.

  It turned out to be an inspired choice.

  The storage facility was manned, but the security guard checked their ID and read the search warrant carefully and then let them straight in without a fuss. Unit 48, when he opened it with the pass key, was indeed large and full of equipment. Jimmy found the switch for the overhead strip lighting, thanked and dismissed the guard, then stood peering into the cavernous space gloomily.

  ‘OK then, Sam,’ he said, eyeing a huge television camera that was set on wheels. ‘Ever taken apart one of these babies?’

  ‘No guv.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Jimmy grinned.

  But Hillary had already spotted something else. ‘Hold it.’ She beckoned them to follow her and led the way to the back of the unit. Against the back wall, and humming faintly to show that it was plugged in and working, was a large, white chest freezer.

  Hillary stopped and looked down at it thoughtfully. ‘Do you suppose there can be much fancy electronic equipment that needs to be kept frozen?’

  Jimmy tensed, then frowned uncertainly. ‘I dunno, guv, I’m no technological wizard. Maybe film, developing equipment, or acids, or something like that needs to be frozen to stop it deteriorating?’

  Hillary sighed. ‘Could be. I’m no expert on stuff like that either. But I’d have thought that nowadays, it’s all digital stuff and computers, isn’t it? I’d have thought actual film and chemicals were miles out of date. But I could be wrong.’ She smiled grimly. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  She reached out, took a breath, and lifted the lid of the freezer. Inside were lots of smallish-to-mid-sized packages, wrapped in what looked like black plastic bin liners. She and Jimmy took one each, both instinctively keeping the lad away from them, as they’d had identical thoughts as to what just might be inside. As they’d been talking, they’d donned rubber gloves, so they had no worries about contamination. But the first package to be opened, the one Jimmy had, revealed nothing more ominous than spools of some sort of film.

  Hillary let out a long slow breath. It had probably been too much to hope that the search would be as short-lived and as easy as all that. Now she was sure that they weren’t dealing with chopped-up body parts, she stood aside and nodded to Sam to take over, and began to wander around the shed.

  Why had Deakin come here? Surely if something had needed retrieving, he would have sent a gopher. Or perhaps Ruth had had it wrong, and—

  ‘Guv,’ Jimmy said sharply, and Hillary felt her heart thump as she turned and quickly walked back to the freezer. She peered inside to see what had caused the hint of anxiety in Jimmy’s voice and quickly understood.

  Jimmy and Sam had removed all the smaller packages, to reveal one very long, very large, black-wrapped bundle folded at the bottom. Even to Sam’s untrained eyes, it looked like a human form, with knees bent, and head tucked around, to fit into the confined space at the bottom of the freezer.

  ‘Do we peel back the plastic?’ Jimmy asked uncertainly.


  Hillary took one look and shook her head. ‘No. Let’s get forensics in here first. And if it turns out to be a very oddly-shaped piece of filming equipment, we’ll never live it down.’

  But it wasn’t.

  Half an hour later, the ME arrived, and half an hour after that, Hillary, Sam and Jimmy drove to Christopher Deakin’s office and arrested him for the murder of Judith Yelland.

  At HQ, a curious Geoff Rhumer, Sam and Jimmy stood in the observation room as Hillary and Steven Crayle sat at the table opposite Deakin in interview room eight.

  The television executive was pale and shaking. A solicitor sat, impassive-faced, beside him.

  Jimmy took one look at the handsome, fair-haired man and shook his head. ‘He’s gonna crack open like a hazelnut,’ he predicted, and glanced at his watch. ‘The guv’nor will have it all wrapped up in time for afternoon tea, you watch.’

  Sam grinned uncertainly. Geoff nodded in agreement.

  In the interview room, Steven quickly ran through the procedure and made sure that the tape recorders were working. But he left the questioning to Hillary. They had discussed it before, and had agreed that Deakin, who clearly had all the backbone of a jellyfish, would respond better to a woman with a softly-softly approach, than a man going in hard, simply because, if he crumbled too much, his barrister and their tame hired shrinks might try to get any confession excluded on the grounds of mental health issues, or bullying by the police.

  Well aware of this, Hillary smiled gently. ‘Mr Deakin, do you understand why you’re here?’

  Christopher nodded.

  ‘For the tape please, Mr Deakin, I need you to verbalize your responses,’ Hillary said patiently.

  Deakin leaned slightly forward and whispered, ‘Yes.’

  Hillary nodded. She’d prefer it if he spoke up a bit, but she was unwilling to jeopardize the rapport she was trying to build with him by making yet another demand. ‘Mr Deakin, I have to tell you that earlier this morning, acting on a search warrant, we searched a storage facility registered to your company in Headington. Do you know the one I mean?’ She read out the address.

  The solicitor sitting next to him, a small, middle-aged woman with a sharp foxy face and weary eyes, whispered something to him. Deakin shrugged, then turned and looked at Hillary.

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t really have much to do with the nuts-and-bolts of production you understand. I’m more in admin.’

  Hillary nodded. She could, of course, hit him with the fact that Ruth Coombs had followed him to that very lock up not a week before, but decided to hold back. Not only would it raise doubts about Ruth Coomb’s suitability as a witness, and possibly blur the issues, Hillary preferred to hold a little ammo in reserve.

  ‘I see. I’m sorry to have inform you, Mr Deakin, that in unit forty-eight of that facility, the one you personally set up, signed for, and paid for from the company accounts,’ she let the implications of that bit of information sink in for a moment, before remorselessly continuing, ‘we found the remains of a young woman.’

  Deakin swallowed hard but said nothing.

  ‘At this moment, she’s being taken for scientific examination, but we have no doubt, at this point, that the victim is Judith Yelland. Apart from being frozen, there’s been very little decomposition, and her facial features are quite recognizable. And I have no doubt that DNA will prove her identity beyond any doubt.’

  The solicitor looked about to speak, then obviously decided not to.

  Deakin paled ever more.

  Hillary leaned forward slightly. ‘I have to say that she looked a bit like an angel, Christopher, when we saw her, frozen like that. Like a princess in a fairy-tale. She was very beautiful, wasn’t she?’

  ‘You don’t have to answer that,’ the solicitor said flatly.

  ‘I can see why you fell in love with her,’ Hillary continued, as if she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘She was lovely,’ Christopher agreed hoarsely. His hands shook as he poured himself a glass of water and took a noisy gulp.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you killed her,’ Hillary said.

  ‘Don’t answer that,’ the solicitor told him sharply. Then she turned to Hillary. ‘If you have any specific questions for my client, please ask them.’

  ‘Why did you lend her the money?’ Hillary obliged.

  Deakin looked surprised by the sudden shift, and then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She asked me for it. She needed it, she said.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘Ah. She was blackmailing you.’

  ‘No!’ Deakin said, at the same time as his solicitor said, ‘You don’t have to answer that.’

  Hillary sighed. ‘Come on, Christopher. We know you had an affair with her. We found her body in a freezer in a unit that you rented. Haven’t you lived with this on your conscience long enough? A man like you – a sensitive, decent man, it must have been torture all these years. Just tell us how it happened. Was it an accident?’

  ‘Yes! That’s what it was,’ Deakin, as she half-expected, reached for the life-line she’d just offered with eager, desperate fingers.

  But Hillary remembered a time back in Unit 48 when the ME pointed out the possible finger-marks on the neck that suggested Judy had been strangled. Hillary sighed but nodded gently. Just how did you ‘accidentally’ strangle her, Christopher, she wanted to ask. Instead, she kept her voice steady and gentle as the solicitor beside the fair-haired young man frowned heavily. ‘I’m sure it was. You didn’t mean to kill her, right?’ she prompted softly.

  ‘No, I didn’t. But we argued. She wanted money, and I was scared she was going to tell my wife. She said she needed to get away for a little while, but I don’t know how it happened. I accused her of not loving me anymore, and she said that was rich, and that it was me who didn’t love her because I wouldn’t leave my wife and … and somehow my hands were around her neck and … I don’t know how it happened. I just don’t know.’

  He leaned forward suddenly, resting his face against his arms, which were lying flat on the table and began to cry.

  Hillary let him cry, and then, when he was more coherent, said patiently, ‘All right, Mr Deakin, let’s start at the very beginning, shall we, and make sure we get everything nice and clear. Now, what day was this….?’

  Beside him, the solicitor sighed heavily. It was clear to Hillary that sometimes the stupidity of her clients obviously depressed her.

  Two hours later, it was all down on tape and was being transcribed. Deakin had been formally charged and was looking, paradoxically, better, as he was led down to the cells. It was often the way: confession was a carthasis. It would only be later, as the true nature of his predicament came to him, that the fear and depression would take over.

  In Steven’s office, they all celebrated with a mug of coffee. Sam was elated, and Jimmy relieved to have got it over with so quickly. It wasn’t often it happened as sweetly as that, and he for one, could appreciate a quick, clean, confession.

  Geoff Rhumer glanced uneasily at Steven, who nodded and sighed.

  ‘Hillary, we’ve hit a snag,’ Steven began. ‘One of our suspects wasn’t in his place of residence. And he hasn’t turned up for his shift, either,’ he added grimly.

  Hillary’s head shot up. ‘Who?’

  Geoff hesitated for a moment and then tossed her a folder. Hillary opened it up and stared down at the photograph inside.

  ‘His name’s Thomas Warrington,’ Steven said, and explained the circumstances surrounding his newly bought caravan and why he hadn’t slept that night in his parents’ place.

  Hillary stared down at the PC in uniform, noting the cat-green eyes, the square-chinned, handsome face. ‘We’re not sure it’s him yet,’ Geoff carried on. ‘We’re still interrogating the other four. But … well, to be honest, none of them are looking good for it. One has an alibi for the time of the attack on you. One had a bout of illness and was hospitalized around the time that Gillian Tinkerton was being stalked. And the other two just don’t smell
right to me.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘OK,’ she said flatly.

  ‘We’ll keep looking for him and bring him in the moment he surfaces,’ Steven added.

  ‘OK,’ she said again, and handed the file back.

  ‘We have no reason to suppose that he knows we’re on to him,’ Geoff added.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’ll probably just walk in here for his next shift, and we’ll be waiting with open arms,’ he tried again.

  ‘OK.’

  Steven shifted in his seat. ‘Are you all right?’

  Hillary smiled. ‘I’m fine,’ she said dismissively. ‘And right now, we’ve got a pile of paperwork on Deakin to follow up on.’ She finished her coffee and rose. Jimmy and Sam hastily followed suit.

  The two senior officers watched them depart, and Geoff sighed. ‘She doesn’t say much, does she?’ he asked ironically. ‘I’d feel happier if she bawled us out a bit. She must be simmering that Warrington’s slipped through the net.’

  Steven nodded, grimly. He too, didn’t like it when Hillary Greene went quiet.

  It never boded well.

  Hillary set Sam and Jimmy to dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on the Deakin case, and went back to her office.

  There she sat, morosely staring at the pile of paperwork in her in-tray, and trying not to see a pair of cat green eyes smiling back at her. But the truth was, the moment she’d seen his face, she’d known it was him. She could feel once more the weight of his arm draped around her shoulders and the touch of cold steel against her neck. His breath, warm against her neck.

  She shuddered.

  He was still out there. Maybe he knew about the pick up of the other four officers. Maybe not. Maybe he hadn’t turned up at work because he was too absorbed in his new toy. Then again, maybe, like most predators, he’d sensed something in the wind and had gone to ground. Either way, sitting and brooding about it wouldn’t do her a damned bit of good. She needed to get her mind firmly back on to other things.