Through a Narrow Door
Page 22
‘Hillary. Something up?’
‘I think the Davies case just broke, sir,’ she said flatly, and quickly outlined her day’s work. When she’d finished, Danvers leaned back in his chair and smiled.
‘I can see why Chief Superintendent Donleavy and Mel both think you’re one of the best detectives on the squad. Well done. Do you need anything from me?’
‘No sir. I think we’ll get the arrest warrants easily enough, as well as the warrant for the Cleavers’ financial records. Unless you want to sit in on the interview, or take charge?’ she added flatly.
‘Hell no. This is your show. You’re going to try for a confession, I take it?’
Hillary sighed. ‘We’ll see. Both the Cleavers are intelligent, motivated, capable people, sir. I can’t see either of them breaking down just because we ask them some searching questions. They’ll probably admit to being gay, once they know their secret little club has been busted, but so what? So far we have no forensic evidence that puts them in that shed, although now we have suspects, SOCO might be able to match up trace evidence with their DNA, fibres from their clothes or what have you. But the trace evidence is a nightmare – that shed was filthy.’
Danvers frowned. ‘I see your problem. And we have no witnesses who saw either Jenny or Darren Cleaver that afternoon in Aston Lea? I take it you think one of them lured Billy into the shed to buy and get the photos back?’
Hillary nodded. ‘Yes – and killed him and took the photos away.’ Hillary sighed. ‘But knowing who killed Billy and proving it are going to be two separate things, I’m thinking,’ she said gloomily.
Paul nodded. ‘Anything I can do, just let me know.’
‘Sir,’ Hillary said, and hauled herself out of the chair. It was going to be a long evening.
‘What is this? Why on earth did you have to bring me here from my office like this? Don’t you realize how embarrassing it was?’ Darren Cleaver asked angrily the moment Hillary joined him in the interview room twenty-five minutes later.
Ignoring him and his outburst, Hillary turned on the tape and went through the usual spiel, stating time and those present. Beside her, Tommy sat silent and unblinking.
‘Mr Cleaver, this is a formal interview concerning the murder of William Davies on the second of this month. Are you sure you don’t want the presence of a solicitor?’
‘No, I already told you, I don’t need a solicitor,’ Darren said. It had been one of the first things he’d said when Hillary had cautioned him. And it was the first thing that struck her as being off. She’d have expected a man as savvy as this one to have demanded a legal representative right away. The fact that he hadn’t worried her slightly.
Carefully, bit by bit, she took him over the day Billy had been killed. And, once again, Darren Cleaver insisted that he’d been in his office all that afternoon. When Hillary introduced the photographs of the gay swapping club, he looked abruptly uncomfortable.
‘We’ve already interviewed Clive and Dawn Waring, Mr Cleaver,’ Hillary said, as he scanned through them. ‘And we know all about the private club that you, your wife, and these other people attend.’
Darren’s eyes narrowed a little, but he remained silent.
‘Nothing to say, Mr Cleaver?’
‘Why should I have? There’s nothing illegal about it.’
Hillary nodded. ‘These photographs were taken by Billy Davies, Mr Cleaver. They were found in a hiding place, not far from where he was killed.’
Darren Cleaver looked stunned.
Hillary stared at him for a second, then abruptly got up. Tommy half-rose too, then returned to his seat, getting no indication from her what she wanted him to do. Hillary knew that Danvers was watching in the observation room, and sure enough, he quickly joined her outside in the corridor as she punched the buttons on her mobile phone.
‘What’s going on? Why did you stop?’ he demanded, and Hillary held up a hand to silence him as she heard a voice speak into her ear.
‘Janine? Where are you?’ Hillary asked sharply.
‘At the PR firm, boss. Jenny Cleaver’s not in. Her PA reckons she probably stepped out for a bit of late lunch. She expects her back any minute.’
‘Forget it. I think Dawn Waring telephoned her and warned her – maybe they’re an item, who knows. I want you to get over to the Cleaver house now. It’s her. Not him, just her.’ She slammed the phone closed, and began to walk quickly down the corridor. ‘Guv, can you take over in there?’ Hillary said over her shoulder, without waiting for an answer.
DCI Paul Danvers watched her go and smiled. She looked on fire! Tense and animate and more gorgeous than ever. He was glad he’d bitten the bullet and moved down here from York. And he was glad even more that he’d finagled the position of being Hillary Greene’s DCI. Now all he had to do was find some way to breech those walls she’d built up around herself, and things would start to get very interesting indeed.
He pushed open the door and smiled as Darren Cleaver looked up at him, puzzled and nervous. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Paul Danvers has just entered the room,’ he said, for the tape, and pulled up a chair.
‘Now, Mr Cleaver, about your bank accounts …’
Hillary drove more quickly than she was used to, and Puff the Tragic Wagon responded gallantly, but even so, as she indicated on the main road to turn off to Aston Lea, she saw Janine’s sporty new Mini disappear down the narrow lane ahead of her. When she pulled up outside the Cleaver residence, Janine was waiting for her.
‘Boss, what …?’ Janine broke off as Hillary, ignoring her, ran to the door and rang the bell. Inside there was only an ominous silence.
‘Boss, I don’t think there’s anyone in,’ Janine said. She was peering through the front window, hands cupped to the side of her face to block out excess light.
Hillary turned and walked quickly around the side of the house, opening the wooden gate and turning the corner, intending to see if the back door was open. But suddenly she yelled, ‘Shit!’ and started to run. Janine, the adrenaline abruptly pumping into her veins, took off after her and felt her breath catch as she too, saw what Hillary had just seen.
Jenny Cleaver, her face blue and congested, her tongue hanging grotesquely out from between her lips, was dangling from a hanging basket of flowers. She was turning slowly, almost elegantly in the slight breeze, as Hillary Greene reached her. She was wearing a pale linen suit and a pair of cream Italian shoes that Janine would have given her eye teeth for. It was funny, the things you noticed, Janine thought, as she watched her boss grab Jenny Cleaver’s calves and lift her up.
‘Quick! Look for some garden shears, something, to cut the twine,’ Hillary yelled, although she knew it was probably already too late. Although Jenny Cleaver didn’t weigh much, Hillary could feel her arm muscles already beginning to strain, as she took the woman’s weight off the cord cutting into her neck.
It was only when her senior officer spoke that Janine saw that Jenny Cleaver had hanged herself with some green garden twine. The white plastic garden chair that she’d used to climb up on was now overturned on the patio flagstones. The flowers in the basket were scarlet geraniums and some pretty blue flowers. Lobelias maybe.
Janine, tearing her eyes away from the flowers with something of an effort, ran to the greenhouse tucked neatly away in one corner, and came back, not with a pair of secateurs, but with an old, sharp, garden knife. Dragging the white plastic garden chair upright again, she got up and hacked desperately at the twine, trying to keep from looking at the once-beautiful woman’s face, now so near her own.
Hillary grunted as the full weight of Jenny Cleaver suddenly slumped over her shoulders, and Janine jumped off the chair and helped Hillary lay the woman down flat on the patio.
‘Call for an ambulance,’ Hillary yelled, and began immediate CPR.
But it was too late.
Jenny Cleaver was dead.
DI Mike Regis paused in the open doorway of the pub and looked around. It was nine o’clo
ck, and the evening sun was coating everything a mellow yellow. At the bar, he spotted Hillary and her team, chatting with the barmaid.
The Boat was Hillary’s local, and just where he expected Hillary to be celebrating after closing her case. Scuttlebutt travelled fast, and as he walked over to congratulate her, he noticed how particularly fine she was looking tonight. She’d changed into a soft floating blue-and-white skirt, and matching powder blue jacket, that left a lot of skin showing under her throat. She was wearing a pair of flat white sandals, and a delicate pearl-drop pendant, that nestled in the valley between her breasts.
‘Look out everybody, its Vice,’ Janine Tyler said sardonically as Mike sidled up beside her and slipped on to the barstool. Regis nodded across at Mel, who nodded back.
Tommy Lynch sighed over his empty pint of beer as he spotted Mike Regis. He’d always suspected the Vice man had his sights set on Hillary, and now that he was divorced and free, there was nothing to stop him making his move.
But he didn’t have to stay around to watch it.
‘Guv, I’ve got to be off,’ he said, and when Hillary nodded and turned to smile goodbye, he held up his hand in a general farewell.
In three days’ time, he’d be gone. He wondered when he’d see any of them again. Then he thought of Jean, waiting at home for him, probably with a meal cooked and ready, and hurried out into the night.
As he pulled away, he failed to notice DCI Paul Danvers climbing out of his car.
At the bar, Mel and Janine were making eyes at each other, and Hillary wasn’t surprised when they, too, slipped off early. Mel met Danvers in the doorway, and for a moment they indulged in a mutual bit of back-slapping. Janine lingered long enough to watch Paul Danvers approach the bar and smiled wickedly. Unless she was very much mistaken, the shit was about to hit the fan. She supposed Hillary Greene would be flattered to have two men fighting over her. She knew she would be.
Hillary, however, saw her boss approaching, and felt her heart sink. ‘Sir,’ she said, starting to stand and alerting Mike to Danvers’s arrival.
‘Please, don’t get up,’ Danvers said, with a smile. ‘And I’ve told you before, call me Paul.’
‘Paul,’ Hillary said flatly. ‘DI Mike Regis. Mike, DCI Paul Danvers. Mike works Vice, guv. You’ve met?’
Mike Regis held out his hand and the two men briefly shook. ‘I was just congratulating Hillary on closing her case,’ Mike said, catching the barmaid’s eye and ordering a half of shandy.
‘Yes, she’s got good instincts,’ Paul said, taking the bar stool next to her. ‘I’m still not sure how she knew it was the wife, not the husband, who’d killed the boy.’
‘Heard she killed herself,’ Regis said. ‘Never good when it ends that way.’
‘No. For a start, you never get all the answers,’ Paul agreed. ‘For instance, why didn’t she just keep paying the boy his money? We know from her bank records that she had been paying him regularly.’
‘I think I know the reason for that,’ Hillary said, and went on to explain about Jenny Cleaver’s ambitions for a promotion that would see her heading for New York. ‘Thing is, her boss was a very religious woman, a Jehovah’s Witness. I think she simply got scared that Billy would tell her, just out of spite. Either that, or perhaps he taunted her about being gay. She probably begged him for the photos and maybe she just snapped when he asked her for more money. I don’t think she went there that day to kill him, because she didn’t take a weapon with her. The shears were just to hand. She probably struck out wildly and there it was.’
Both men were silent as they pictured the scene. A distraught woman, and a dead boy.
‘You told his parents?’ Regis asked gently, and Hillary nodded. ‘I walked across the moment the ambulance arrived to take her away. Aston Lea’s a tiny place. They saw it coming and were watching from the door. I had to tell them why Jenny Cleaver did it, as well.’
Regis saw the tight look of pain cross her face and reached across to take her hand and give it a squeeze.
Danvers, watching, drew in a sharp breath. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized he had any real competition. Slowly, he sipped his own drink, a mineral water flavoured with kiwi, and turned on the stool. The movement bought his knee closer to Hillary’s.
‘I was wondering if you wanted to go out for a drink again sometime,’ Danvers said quietly. ‘I really enjoyed it, the other night. And now that the case is closed, and the pressure’s off, perhaps we could go out for a meal, even?’
Hillary felt Mike Regis tense beside her. She reached for her own drink, a vodka and tonic, and tossed it back in one gulp.
And as Mike Regis and Paul Danvers looked at one another across the top of her chestnut head, Hillary waved her glass in the air. ‘Another one,’ she told the barmaid grimly. ‘Make it a double. And this time, forget the tonic.’
By the Same Author
A NARROW ESCAPE
ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW
NARROW IS THE WAY
BY A NARROW MAJORITY
Copyright
© Faith Martin 2007
First published in Great Britain 2007
This ebook edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7090 9859 1 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9860 7 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9861 4 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8305 4 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
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The right of Faith Martin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988