Through a Narrow Door

by Faith Martin

  At least she didn’t have to make any specific announcements. That action alone told everybody watching what had happened. She’d been booted back to DI again.

  There was a sudden buzz of conversation, and she knew that most of it was sympathetic to her cause. It made her chest feel warm and some of the numbness began to wear off. OK, so she’d been dealt a shitty deal, but that was life, and there’d be plenty who’d be in her corner. Danvers, as a cop who’d investigated another cop, had never been popular, and now he’d be even less so. She supposed it was petty of her to be glad about that, but she was only human, after all.

  She dumped her stuff noisily on to her empty desk and Janine looked up in surprise, then watched as her grim-faced boss settled herself back in. She shot a glance across to Tommy Lynch, who looked dismayed by this latest event, and then bent back over her report. She wasn’t going to ask. She had more sense. Everybody knew that something weird had gone on during the Fletcher bust, and Raleigh’s abrupt departure was still a mystery, although everyone suspected that Hillary knew more about it than she was saying. So if her boss not getting the permanent promotion to DCI was some kind of payback, she didn’t want to get involved.

  Frank Ross, who’d sneaked in sometime during her interview with Donleavy, grinned hugely, but had enough sense – just – to keep his mouth shut as well. A fifty-something, slovenly fat man, with a surprisingly endearing Winnie-the-Pooh type face, Frank was loathed by one and all, but nobody could call him stupid. Besides, he too was keeping his head well down for the moment. He was lucky to still be employed with an intact pension after what that bastard Raleigh had tried to pull. And the fact that he owed his saved skin to DI Hillary Greene still rankled.

  It was Tommy, of course, the youngest and most straightforward of her team who asked the question. ‘Guv, what’s going on?’ He was a tall, athletically built black man, who’d passed his sergeant’s boards some time ago and was just waiting for a position to become vacant, and he, of all the team, had been the most pleased to see Hillary get Mel’s job. He’d been secretly half in love with her since joining her team, and the fact that he was getting married in a month’s time to his long-time girlfriend, Jean, didn’t stop him from still feeling protective of his boss.

  Hillary shrugged. ‘Just what it looks like, Tommy,’ she said flatly. ‘Donleavy just told me they’ve appointed a new and permanent DCI.’ She pushed the last of her personal stuff, a somewhat unhappy-looking African violet (a gift from her mother) to one corner of her desk and looked across at Janine. ‘So, what’s happening? Anything interesting?’

  Janine shrugged. ‘Sorry about the promotion, boss,’ she said quietly, and truthfully. She’d enjoyed working as top dog on the small team for the last few months, and was genuinely appalled that Hillary Greene hadn’t got the promotion. She’d worked hard for it and deserved it. Even more significantly, if she’d got it, it would have meant that she, Janine, could have petitioned Mel for Hillary’s old job.

  Janine had just sat her inspector’s boards, and was sure that she’d aced them. But now, with Hillary back in her old slot, Janine felt aggrieved. She didn’t particularly like working for a woman, although she had nothing against Hillary personally.

  ‘Anything good been happening, besides the McKinley bust?’ Hillary prompted. Now she was back in harness again, she might as well go out and get cracking. Interview somebody. Put the wind up a snout. Drag some pervert in for questioning. Something, anything, besides sitting here, having people feel sorry for her.

  ‘Not really, boss,’ Janine said. ‘I’ve got McKinley sewn up. There’s an alleged rape—’

  The telephone on her desk shrilled and Hillary snatched it up. ‘Yes?’ she barked.

  ‘Hill, it’s me,’ Mel said. ‘Look, sorry, I didn’t know what was happening until a few minutes before you arrived. Donleavy didn’t warn me, or I’d have told you.’

  ‘Sure,’ Hillary said flatly. ‘By the way, is your promotion to superintendent confirmed yet?’

  The long silence on the other end, spoke volumes. ‘I see,’ Hillary said flatly, glancing across at Janine, who was staring at her avidly. ‘Of course it is.’

  Not three months ago, Mel and Janine had been an item, and had been for some time. It was the main reason, or so the station gossip had it, that Mel hadn’t been promoted to superintendent the first time around. And look where that had led to – the appointment of Jerome Raleigh. But now that the man from the Met had legged it, and Mel had shown his penitence by dumping Janine, his promotion had been a sure thing.

  Janine looked quickly down at the file she was reading and tried to look uninterested. But Hillary knew that her mind must be racing. Her pretty blonde sergeant believed that being dumped by Mel gave her an edge, and who could blame her? Mel was riddled with guilt, and wide open in the do-me-a-favour-or-else department. If Janine didn’t eventually get a promotion to DI out of the situation, Hillary was a Dutchman’s uncle.

  ‘Look, Hill, the reason I called you,’ Mel said in her ear, interrupting her dire musings, ‘I’ve just had a suspicious death come in. Almost certainly homicide by the sounds of it. It’s right up your alley. You need to get over to some place called Aston Lea. It’s a hamlet, I think, near Steeple Aston. You know it?’

  Hillary didn’t, but knew she would find it. ‘Fine, I’m on my way,’ she said flatly. But although her heart leapt at the thought of getting her teeth stuck into something worthwhile, she was not about to offer her old boss any olive branches just yet. She’d just been right royally shafted, and wasn’t in any mood to be magnanimous. Still, having Mel owe her a favour or two didn’t exactly hurt.

  She hung up and reached for her bag. ‘Come on everyone.’ Her gaze reluctantly included Frank Ross as she spoke. ‘We’ve got a suspicious death.’

  Janine was up before she’d even finished speaking. ‘What about the new DCI?’ she said. ‘Won’t he or she want to brief you first? You know, get settled in to the new office, get acquainted and all the rest of it?’ What she really meant, of course, was that Hillary should stay here and play office politics, leaving her to grab some glory out at the murder site.

  Hillary, reading her like a book as always, smiled with all the panache of a great white shark spotting a disabled seal. ‘Oh, I’m sure Detective Chief Inspector Danvers can find his way around without me holding his hand,’ she said softly. And, as she looked at the stunned faces of her team, she added softly, ‘After all, if he gets lost, I’m sure some kind soul will show him to his new office.’

  chapter two

  Hillary tossed her car keys to Tommy in the car park and checked her watch, making a mental note of the time she had remaining before nightfall. ‘We’ll take my car. You can drive. I need to check the map.’

  ‘Right, Guv.’

  Hillary slid into the passenger seat and raided the car’s glove compartment for its road atlas. The page was already opened at Oxfordshire, and she quickly found the village of Steeple Aston. The single unnamed black dot on the map about a mile away was, she hoped, Aston Lea. ‘Right, we need the main Banbury road,’ she said to Tommy as she thrust the atlas back into the glove compartment and checked the rear mirror. Already Janine’s sporty little ‘new’ mini was waiting behind to follow. Of Frank’s latest rust-bucket there was no sign, but since nobody cared whether he made it to the crime scene or not, Tommy quickly pulled out and sped away.

  Hillary rolled down the window, for the sun was blazing away through the windshield, and admired the rows of flowering laburnum trees in the gardens skirting Kidlington’s main thoroughfare. Already the women walking through the pedestrianized shopping precinct were wearing their summer togs. Legs in shorts and shoulders in skimpy tops might look white and pasty, but who cared when the sun shone and the cherry blossom cast pink petals into a slight breeze?

  It was not the kind of day that most people would associate with murder, and Hillary hoped that, for most of them, it would stay that way. But she couldn’t help
but wonder who’s life had just been wrecked. Who would forever afterwards associate a lovely May day with loss and misery. So far she knew nothing about the victim, his or her family, or the circumstances. But in the next few hours, all that would change. And for the next few weeks, maybe months to come, her life was going to revolve around this moment in time.

  ‘Guv, I thought I should let you know,’ Tommy began diffidently, indicating to pass a slow-moving car and wondering if now was really the right time to bring this up. ‘I got a letter in the post this morning. There’s a sergeant’s spot opened up at Headington nick. They’ve offered it to me.’

  Hillary smiled widely. At least there was some good news today. ‘Tommy, that’s great,’ she said, and meant it. ‘I worked out of Headington for a while, in my WPC days. It’s a nice billet. You’ll enjoy it there. And haven’t you and Jean just got a mortgage on a small semi out that way?’ And when Tommy nodded, she turned back to the passing scenery and said placidly, ‘Well then, it looks like you’ve finally got things sorted.’

  Tommy sighed a little wistfully, but was smiling nevertheless. ‘I guess so. But they don’t expect me to start for another two weeks, so I won’t be leaving you short-handed. At least, not yet.’

  Hillary nodded and wondered who her next green and eager newly promoted detective constable would be. Mel and Donleavy, she knew, rated her in-house training, and a clerk in records had once admitted that Hillary had gained something of a rep for being a safe pair of hands for ‘problem’ children. Not that Tommy had ever been a problem, but being big and black and ambitious, he’d no doubt worried somebody in the higher ranks, and she hadn’t been surprised when she’d been appointed his senior officer. She only hoped whoever she got next would turn out to be as quick a learner as Tommy, and, if she was really lucky, would be as easy to get along with. She was going to be sorry to see him go, but he deserved the promotion.

  Seven miles later, she nodded towards the crossroads up ahead and said, ‘Keep going past the lights at Hopcrofts Halt, then take the next turning on the right.’

  The road to the hamlet turned out to be single-car access only, with the odd passing spot carved out on the grass verge. Out of her window, towering ranks of white cow parsley – or ladies’ needlework as her grandmother had always insisted on calling it – flashed by, then Tommy slowed the car to a crawl as first one bungalow and then, on the opposite side of the lane, another bungalow, hove into view. ‘Is this it?’ he muttered doubtfully. Down the road he could see the roofs of maybe one or two more houses, and that was it.

  ‘See any patrol cars?’ Hillary asked, just as doubtfully.

  ‘No, Guv.’

  Hell, perhaps this wasn’t the place, Hillary mused, and was reaching for the glove compartment again when a uniformed constable suddenly popped up out of a hedge to take a look at them. Tommy pulled over, and when Hillary opened the car door and got out, she could see that there was, in fact, a concealed entrance in the flowering hawthorn bushes. As Tommy parked up on the grass verge, Janine’s Mini pulling in behind him, Hillary walked towards the uniform. A traditional five-barred country gate of rather rickety parentage gave way to a surprisingly thriving set of single-chain allotments.

  ‘You can’t park here, madame,’ he began, and Hillary reached instinctively for her badge. The constable was probably new, or maybe from Bicester or Banbury, since most of the Kidlington rank-and-file knew her by sight. ‘Sorry ma’am,’ he added respectfully as he read her name on the card. It still, she noticed with a brief and short-lived shaft of fury, listed her as an acting chief inspector.

  ‘Where’s the crime scene?’ she asked, glancing back at the bungalows on either side of the road. They looked like typical members of their species, with good paintwork, neat walling, and lavishly flowering gardens. Probably both occupied by retired people. She hoped the murder victim wasn’t old. There was something particularly harrowing about murdered seventy or eighty year olds.

  ‘Through here ma’am,’ the constable said, pointing past the gate and taking her by surprise. At first glance, she’d seen nothing out of place on the productive allotments. The constable was a fairly fit, forty-something, with the weathered skin of a dedicated outdoorsman. ‘A young lad found dead in his father’s allotment shed,’ he added, guessing from her start of surprise that she hadn’t been briefed yet. ‘He was found by his younger sister at roughly 2.45 p.m. She ran home to tell her parents, and her father came and confirmed it. He phoned us. He’s in the car now,’ he added, pushing the gate open and standing aside to let her pass. He nodded at Tommy and Janine who’d arrived on the scene to listen to his initial statement.

  Once inside, Hillary could see that a patrol car had pulled into the allotments themselves, and was parked up on a wide grass road, which followed the line of the hedge around the perimeter of the lots. Inside the car, she could see two heads, one in front; one in back. ‘Janine, perhaps you can go and get an initial statement from him. Tommy, with me. Has the medical examiner arrived yet Constable?’

  ‘Not yet, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you. You’d better stay here and look out for him, and SOCO. It’s an easy spot to miss.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ he said placidly. For a man who couldn’t have been called upon to attend the scene of many homicides, he was reassuringly calm and matter-of-fact. Hillary appreciated the type – content not to make promotion, but do the job well, collect his pay cheque, and go home to his wife and kids and garden – or whatever hobby he favoured. She wished there were more like him.

  It was not hard to spot the actual crime scene now, for it had been efficiently sealed off with blue-and-white ‘POLICE – DO NOT CROSS’ tape. There were seven allotments in all, five of which had sheds. The strips of land all looked to be thriving, with rows of about-to-be-dug new potatoes, and cheerfully flowering scarlet runner beans running up wigwams or rows of staked sticks, depending on the owner’s preference. The allotments, she noticed gloomily, were tucked well out of sight, being bordered on the road side by the thick hawthorn edge, and down at the bottom, by a more straggling row of native trees. Witnesses were probably going to be non-existent in this isolated and well-hidden spot. It was the allotment tucked in the far right-hand corner that drew her eye.

  A young lad was dead inside there, or so the constable had said. How young? She felt her stomach clench at the thought of a dead child. Of all the nightmares coppers faced in their careers, dead children were the worst.

  Tommy stood beside her, worriedly chewing on his lower lip, no doubt thinking the same. Hillary gave a mental shrug and told herself to get on with it. She glanced at the ground and sighed. It was dry and hard, no doubt due to the recent two days of bright sunshine. So, probably no chance of footprints or other useful evidence. The wide grass road lead straight down to the allotment, but she could see no signs of a vehicle passing this way. So the killer didn’t arrive by car. Or if he or she did, they parked on the road. She made a mental note to ask the uniforms to appeal for witnesses to any car parked nearby at the relevant time.

  She walked to the edge of the pathway, brushing up against the hawthorn, and indicated to Tommy to do the same. ‘We’ll walk down there and take a peek. Careful, SOCO won’t appreciate too much disturbance.’

  ‘Guv,’ Tommy said, carefully placing his big, heavily clad feet in her own smaller footsteps. The hedge behind him was a mass of white flowers that gave off a rather sickly smell, and Tommy felt his gorge rise. He swallowed hastily and told himself not to be a muffin. Since working with Hillary Greene this would be his fifth murder case, and he was not about to blot his copybook now by upchucking on the broad bean plants.

  Hillary paused a little way from the shed and regarded it carefully before going inside. Most of the other sheds were the standard, tiny wooden shells that you either bought flat-packed and put up yourself, or had delivered, more or less ready-made and simply plonked down wherever it was required. But this shed was different. It was bigger and more raggedy so
mehow. It had the look of being cobbled together from odd planks of wood. Definitely a Heath Robinson sort of affair, it smacked of parsimony. Couldn’t they afford a proper shed? Was the victim’s family that hard-up? There was one small window, covered in grime and set slightly off kilter. There was no door facing her, which meant she’d have to go around the side. She glanced once more at the ground in front of her, bending down to check the grass more thoroughly. Although she could make out flattened areas where someone had trod – probably the father, and maybe even one or both of the uniformed officers responding to the call – she could make out no tread patterns that might prove useful, and satisfied that she wouldn’t be causing any damage, carefully stepped out to the opposite side of the path and made her way around the far side of the shed.

  The entrance stood open. She wouldn’t call it a door, as such, for there was no handle or latch, and it comprised barely two planks of wood crudely nailed together. A piece of string had been looped through a natural hole in the wood, and she could just make out a rusted hook screwed into the other side of the entrance, where it could be tied off. The gap between was very narrow and, as she suspected, it looked dark and gloomy inside. She moved forward, careful to keep her hands in her pockets (the policeman’s mantra at any crime scene) and peered inside. To enter, she’d probably have to turn sideways and edge in like a crab.

  She could smell dust and compost, and a not unpleasant aroma of antiquity, and at first could see only the usual junk associated with such places. Wheelbarrows, old and disused, the latest and newest model to the fore. Standing around the walls, long, tall, poking things: rakes, hoes, spades, forks. On the uneven flooring, bags of fertilizer, a big bale of string and … with a start, she suddenly saw him. He was sitting on a sack stuffed with something hefty.