Beside a Narrow Stream

by Faith Martin

  ‘No. Why should I? What is it?’ she leaned forward for a better look as Hillary held it up and turned it around, the better to display it. ‘It’s just a cut-out, red paper heart,’ Denise said, as if wondering what the trick was.

  Hillary nodded. ‘Yes. Somebody gave it to Wayne Sutton,’ she said, with masterly understatement.

  Denise Collier laughed spitefully. ‘I dare say one of his dozy old women gave it to him,’ she said scornfully.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t?’ Hillary asked mildly, and again Denise Collier laughed.

  ‘Don’t be daft! I’m the one who receives valentines, not gives them out. I expect my men to pay court to me – not the other way round. I wouldn’t be caught dead doing something so … yucky!’ And she shuddered. ‘Wayne must have laughed himself sick at whichever silly cow gave him that.’

  Hillary very much doubted that Wayne Sutton had been alive to do any laughing at the time he was given this particular valentine. She sighed, gave the usual customary warnings about not leaving the area without notifying the police, and let her go.

  Milton Lester looked even more relieved than his client.

  ‘You don’t like her for it, guv,’ Barrington said, as they all trooped back to the office.

  ‘You saw and heard what I did,’ Hillary countered. ‘What do you think?’

  Barrington nodded. ‘She might be a very good actress though.’

  ‘Always a thought to keep in the back of your mind, Constable, when interviewing witnesses,’ Hillary advised.

  Back at their desks, Gemma Fordham picked up the Heyford Sudbury file. ‘Guv, I’d like to follow up on some things for this. You need me in the office for a few hours?’

  Hillary shook her head. ‘No. Keep on it,’ she said, and watched as her sergeant collected her gear and left. She was sure, if anybody could find whatever needle in the haystack she was looking for at the Cotswold village, it would probably be Gemma Fordham.

  Hillary yawned and reached for the first file in her in-tray, but when the phone rang, she moved the direction of her hand towards that instead.

  ‘Hello, can I speak to DI Hillary Greene please?’ The voice was one she vaguely remembered hearing before, and belonged to one of the many white-coated, scientific boffins who inhabited the forensic science laboratories.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Case file …’ Hillary rapidly wrote down the digits and letters quoted to her, immediately recognizing it as belonging to her murder case. ‘Yes, the Wayne Sutton inquiry,’ she acknowledged, thus letting the boffin on the other end know that she knew the case number as well.

  ‘Fine. It concerns the victim’s car.’

  Hillary felt herself being taken by surprise – something she was not particularly used to. Since the victim’s car had been parked in the garage throughout the investigation, it had been obvious that Wayne Sutton had walked to his rendezvous with death. Consequently, she hadn’t given his car a second thought. Why should she? It couldn’t possibly have any bearing on the case.

  No doubt its low-priority status was the reason why a forensic report was only now coming in on it.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, curious and wary. Had she missed something? Had she (every cop’s nightmare) made a serious, gaping mistake?

  ‘It’s basically clean. Plenty of DNA traces, fibres, fingerprints, etc., nearly all the vic’s. Evidence of other-people usage, of course, but nothing to ring any alarm bells. But my supervisor thought you might like to know that we’ve lifted a very recent set of prints from the passenger door. Very recent. They superimpose all others, so were the last fingers to touch the door before we impounded it. They don’t fit any member of the deceased’s family or, ah, close circle of friends.’

  Hillary knew that the uniforms would have arranged for all the vic’s nearest and dearest to be printed – including all his ‘women’. It was routine.

  ‘Now that’s interesting,’ she said. A stranger? The mysterious Annie, perhaps? Had they, at last, got some tangible proof of her existence?

  ‘But they do match up with the victim’s girlfriend’s father. A Mr Victor Freeman.’

  Hillary blinked, and immediately focused her mind on the nurseryman. The last time she’d seen him, she’d been interviewing him at his garden centre, shortly after breaking the news of Wayne’s death to his girlfriend. And, as she recalled, Victor Freeman had made no real secret of the fact that he’d thought his daughter could do a whole lot better.

  In fact, she’d come away with the distinct impression that he wouldn’t give Wayne Sutton the time of day. So what were his fresh prints doing on the victim’s car?

  ‘Now that is interesting,’ she said softly, thanked him, and hung up.

  Outside, Gemma Fordham walked briskly to her car. She had no intention of going to Heyford Sudbury, or the library. She had only one destination in mind, and it was not five minutes drive down the street.

  Also in the car park, George Davies was just starting up his patrol car when he spotted her. ‘There she is!’ he said, sounding like a twitcher who’d just spotted a Dartford Warbler.

  His long-time partner, Ian Gill, jumped. ‘What? Who?’

  ‘The leggy blonde, over there. Remember, I told you about her,’ George reminded him. ‘She keeps ringing a bell in the old brainbox but I just can’t place her. I told you about it yesterday.’

  Ian, like George, was on the edge of retirement and just as glad of it, and now he stared across the parked cars and gave a slow, appreciative wolf whistle. ‘Very nice. Legs right up to her bum. Bit skinny for my taste though.’

  ‘Let your Jenny hear you say that,’ George warned with a laugh. ‘So she doesn’t ring any bells with you?’

  ‘No. Well, I know she’s DI Greene’s new sergeant. Bit of ball-breaker they say. Does all those kung-fu moves, you know? Half the station’s drooling over her, but she looks like one to stay clear of to me.’ Thus having given his verdict, Ian turned around to pull on his seat belt, wondering when he’d be clocking off that night.

  George Davies, however, still had his mind firmly on the blonde. ‘DI Greene. You mean Hillary Greene?’ he asked. And the moment he said the DI’s full name, in a flash, he remembered where he’d seen the mysterious blonde before.

  Of course. Of course! With Ronnie bloody Greene. That wanker.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Ian confirmed, oblivious to his partner’s revelation. ‘Well, she needed someone after her old DS married Mel Mallow. And let’s face it, Frank Ross is a waste of space, so she’s been coping with only a DC. And he’s that Barrington fellah from London. The one who decked his old sergeant.’ Ian shook his head. ‘You ask me, she could do with all the help she can get.’

  George, for once, was disinclined to gossip, or pull the wings off CID butterflies. Like most men in uniform, he had an ambivalent relationship with plain clothes, but now he was too busy thinking of other things.

  Shit. Hillary Greene. She couldn’t know about her new DS, could she? And then he swore under his breath even more graphically. And neither could the top brass. They sure as hell would never have assigned the leggy blonde to Hillary’s team if they knew she’d been Ronnie Greene’s one time squeeze.

  He felt himself begin to sweat. What the hell should he do? With only a few weeks to go before his retirement, his first instinct was to forget about it. A man in his position didn’t need to rock any boats. And that went even more for boats that swam in the same lake as the likes of DCI Paul Danvers, that toady from York, or Mel Mallow. Or Detective Chief Superintendent Donleavy for that matter.

  The sweat began to itch between his shoulder blades. No, he should just forget about it and walk away. And yet. Like the rest of the station house, George Davies both liked and admired Hillary Greene. She’d weathered the internal investigation into her bent husband, and herself, with grim dignity. She’d always had a rep for being fair. And lately, she’d handled a few good murder inquiries. Then she’d got that medal for taking a bullet for Mel Ma
llow. A genuine heroine, no question about it.

  Turning his back on her just didn’t sit right. Damn it, if he were in her place, he’d want to know about it.

  It was all coming back to him now. There’d been a bad case over in Reading – a kiddie had been kidnapped. A similar case in the same city, three years ago, had resulted in a child’s body being found in a large area of waste-ground and scrub, on the city outskirts. The brass there had asked for, and got, large numbers of uniformed manpower from neighbouring forces to help with the finger-tip search of the area. George and about twenty others from Thames Valley had been roped in.

  DI Ronnie Greene had also been around for about a week, since he’d handled a similar missing kiddie case from his own patch, that they thought might match up. As he recalled, neither the kiddie, nor a body, had ever been found.

  But Ronnie Greene, billeted away from home, had run true to form, and had quickly found himself a woman – the usual young, blonde crumpet. George could even remember the DI boasting in the pub they’d all used to congregate in of an evening, that this one was a student at the Uni. Which made her a bit more brainy than he usually liked them, but what the hell.

  George could see them together now, drinking at a corner table, heads close together, the girl looking smitten. Yeah, it had been her all right.

  And surely Hillary Greene had a right to know her latest DS’s history?

  But then he thought about just what it was he’d have to do in order to tell her, and the sweat migrated from his armpit and forehead and broke out all over his face. He could almost feel himself heating up.

  Embarrassing or what?

  What exactly was he supposed to do? Just walk up to her, and say, ‘Hey, DI Greene, ma’am. Did you know that blonde sergeant of yours was once a floozy of your late husband?’

  ‘What we doing still sitting here then, George?’ Ian asked, sounding amused. And with a start, George realized he’d been sat there like a lemon, staring out of the windscreen for the past few minutes. Gemma Fordham had already started her car and was long gone.

  With an amiable swear word, George Davies started the patrol car, and headed out of HQ, still with no idea what he was going to do about his new-found and deeply unwanted knowledge.

  Keith Barrington drove to Banbury in near silence. He was very much aware of his DI sitting beside him, but Hillary Greene didn’t seem in the mood to chat.

  Perhaps the memory of the telling-off she’d given him was still too clear in both their minds.

  In fact, Hillary Greene was thinking about red paper hearts. There was something about it that just didn’t sit right with her but she couldn’t, for the life of her, put her finger on what it was.

  It hadn’t got wet, so the killer must have put it on Wayne’s corpse after dragging his head and shoulders from the stream. Too carefully planned? Too pedantic and neat? Would a woman, presumably heart-broken and in a rage, be so precise?

  Well, possibly, yes. A woman could have killed in a cold rage. The death was almost certainly premeditated, after all. First with the note luring him there, and the paper heart properly clinched it. Nobody went for a walk in the meadows with a red paper heart already cut out, did they? Not unless they already had a use for it all planned out. No, the killer had meant to kill Wayne, did kill Wayne, and left her message. The red heart.

  So it wasn’t that that was niggling her.

  She sighed heavily and shook her head. She could drive herself crazy trying to figure it out. Perhaps she should just be grateful that no more young men had turned up dead and adorned with the bloody things. Aserial killer on the loose was the last thing anyone wanted.

  ‘We bringing Freeman in, guv?’ Barrington asked, taking her heavy sigh as an invitation to talk.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Hillary said. She still couldn’t see the car as being all that important. There’d been no signs of it parked near the crime scene, and no one had seen their vic driving it just prior to his death. ‘It’ll probably turn out to be just something we need to clear up, that’s all.’

  Gemma Fordham turned into the narrow lane that lead to the hamlet of Thrupp. Here, the hedges grew thick and close to the road, shutting out the bright sun and making her feel just slightly claustrophobic. Within seconds, however, she saw the cheerful, khaki glitter of sunlight on the Oxford Canal, and the road opened out, revealing a pub called The Boat. She parked in its car park but didn’t go inside for a much-needed long cold drink.

  Instead, she got out and walked to the tow-path, glancing both ways down the canal – to her right, leading further into Kidlington itself. Left, and more open countryside. There was a long line of moored craft in either direction, far more than she’d expected.

  Guessing that Hillary Greene wouldn’t be moored too far from the road, she turned right and began walking, checking the names of the boats as she went.

  Further down the canal behind her, she could hear the gentle chug-chugging of an approaching boat. The speed limit on the canal, she knew, was a mind-blowing 4 mph. It would have driven her crazy to be a passenger on anything that went that slow.

  She walked on past boats that were mainly painted the bright, primary colours of traditional narrowboats – mostly blues, greens and reds. But it was a narrowboat painted a more sophisticated blue-grey, white, black and gold that bore the name she was looking for.

  ‘Mollern.’

  With a smile, Gemma hopped on the back and reached inside her bag for her newly-minted key.

  Hillary walked into the small garden centre shop and saw Victor Freeman right away. He was behind a tiny counter, selling a jar of something poisonous to an attentive old man.

  ‘This’ll kill elder for sure,’ Victor Freeman was saying, ‘but you have to be careful. Cut the trunk or side shoots down as low as you can first, and then brush this on. But then you must cover it with something – a polythene bag, an old Tesco bag, something like that. If you’ve got any pets, or if cats come into your garden, it could kill them, so I’d heap some stones or something over it as well just to be sure. And be careful not to get any of it on any leaves of plants that you want to keep.’

  The old man said something very nasty about elder, something almost as nasty about cats, thanked him, paid and left. She noticed that Vic Freeman had noticed her the moment she’d walked into the shop, and had been casting quick, worried looks her way throughout the recital. Now he raised a tight smile as she approached the counter.

  ‘Mr Freeman. You remember me?’

  Vic Freeman smiled a bit more. ‘Of course, DI Greene. You’re unforgettable.’ And then the smile fled, and a look of extreme consternation crossed his slightly freckled face. ‘Not that I meant … I mean, I didn’t intend to imply … Oh hell.’

  Hillary smiled to show that no offence had been taken. ‘Your wife not here today?’

  ‘She’s out delivering a van load of Leylandii to Cropredy. People will still buy them.’ He sighed, as if to say, ‘what-can-you-do?’

  Hillary smiled in sympathy, but got right down to business. ‘When did you last ride in Wayne Sutton’s car, Mr Freeman?’

  Vic Freeman’s jaw dropped. ‘What? Huh, never. I don’t think I’ve ever been in his car.’

  Hillary sighed heavily. So much for just clearing a few things up.

  Why did people always have to lie to her?

  Gemma Fordham ducked her head carefully to avoid banging it on the roof as she walked awkwardly down the three steep steps that took her into the body of the narrowboat.

  And instantly felt uncomfortable.

  Stretching before her was a narrow corridor, so narrow in fact, that she almost felt as if she needed to turn sideways and scuttle down it like a crab. Being tall, she also felt as if the roof of the boat was about to crash down on her head at any moment. The windows, although they let in a lot of light, felt stingy, and the relative darkness inside the boat contrasted unpleasantly with the bright sunshine outside. What’s more, she felt somehow belittled.
It took her a moment to realize that the floor of the boat was far lower than she was used to, and the windows, far higher. Instead of looking out of the windows on a more or less eye-to-eye level, as you did in a house, on a narrowboat the windows were higher, making you look up.

  She opened the first door, and found herself looking at a tiny, neat bedroom. The single bed was neatly made. Quickly, she set about a methodical search. She was wearing gloves, of course, and started on the wardrobe first, checking the pockets of jackets and blouses, trousers and coats, careful not to rearrange the order of the clothes.

  Nothing.

  She ran her clever fingers around the hems, lapels, collars, anywhere a slip of paper might have been sewn in. Nothing rustled, nothing felt unduly stiff. The stitches had that unpicked look. A tiny chest of drawers was next.

  Nothing.

  Feeling a little like Alice in Wonderland, after drinking from the bottle that made her into a giant in a small world, Gemma moved on to the next door.

  Here a minuscule bathroom made her eyes widen. How on earth did a grown woman live in this doll’s house? The shower had enough room just about to turn around in, and the loo was obviously one that required some special requirements. It wasn’t a chemical one, but neither was it the sturdy kind she was used to that flushed loudly and with copious amounts of water.

  She shuddered, and turned away from it, concentrating on a narrow shelf and tiny cabinet. She checked toothpaste and deodorant, even the bars of soap. Nothing.