by Ford,P. F.
‘So he’s only just made the will?’ asked Slater.
‘Oh yes. I didn’t even know he existed until then.’
‘Did he say why he suddenly needed to make a will?’
‘He just said it was something he’d been meaning to do for years but he’d never got around to it. There didn’t seem to be any special reason at the time,’ said Hunter. ‘Although now it does seem rather prophetic, don’t you think?’
Slater agreed with Hunter, but chose not to say anything.
‘We can take look into this as part of our inquiry,’ said Slater. ‘I can’t guarantee we’ll find her, but we’ve probably got more data at our disposal.’
‘That would be very helpful, thank you, Sergeant.’
‘Did he have much to leave?’ asked Slater.
‘There’s his house in Canal Street,’ said Hunter. ‘That’s about it. There are no other assets, and no cash to speak of.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Can I ask a question?’
‘Sure,’ said Slater.
‘Do you usually send two detectives to investigate these things? Is there some problem with Mr Winter’s death? ‘
‘We have reason to believe Mr Winter’s death may not have been an accident,’ said Slater.
‘Good Lord. Really? But he was just a harmless little old man.’
‘Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?’ Norman pitched in. ‘That’s why we need to ask questions. What else can you tell us about him?’
‘Not much really,’ said Hunter. ‘As I told PC Jolly, he came to me to make his will, but he was a very private person so he didn’t really reveal anything about himself. I know he owned his house and he lived on his own with his dog. That’s about it.’
‘So you can’t tell us where he was born, or about his childhood, or anything like that?’ asked Norman.
‘I don’t have to know any of that to help someone make a will, Sergeant, and if he doesn’t want to share that sort of stuff with me…’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Norman. ‘I didn’t mean to imply you’re not doing your job properly, we were just hoping you might know a bit more about him than we do.’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,’ said Hunter. ‘I wish I could.’
‘That’s okay, Mr Hunter,’ said Slater. ‘Thank you for your time and your help.’
‘Sounds to me like old Mr Winter knew he was going to die,’ said Norman a few minutes later, as they reached their car. ‘In view of what’s happened so far it has to mean he was threatened, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t think there’s much doubt about that,’ agreed Slater. ‘All we’ve got to do now is figure out who… and why.’
‘Do you think we should have told Hunter about the break-ins at Winter’s house?’
‘Right now, we suspect they might be linked but we have no clear evidence to suggest they are, do we?’
‘We don’t?’ Norman stared at him.
‘Not unless you know something I don’t,’ said Slater, opening the passenger door.
Norman shrugged his shoulders and climbed into the driver’s side.
‘Okay. Whatever.’
He sat in silence for a few seconds, but Slater could tell something was weighing on his mind, and it was only a few minutes later before he spoke up again.
‘So anyway,’ he asked. ‘How did Jolly Jane know Hunter was Mr Winter’s solicitor?’
‘She said one of his cards was pinned up in his kitchen. She took his phone number from there, I think.’
‘And she left the card where it was?’
‘As far as I know,’ said Slater.
‘So the guy who trashed Winter’s house could have seen the card and put two and two together just like Jane did, right?’ asked Norman.
Slater’s felt like a fool. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
‘Okay, but it’s not clear evidence, is it?’ he said, even though he knew it had been a good spot. ‘And why didn’t I think of that?’
‘I’m sure you would have thought of it, too,’ Norman said, smiling. ‘Of course, it’s possible I might be way off course and talking through my backside.’
‘No,’ said Slater, ‘I don’t think you are. Maybe our burglar thinks Mr Winter passed whatever he was looking for on to Hunter for safe keeping.’
‘It fits, doesn’t it?’ Norman’s smile broadened. ‘And who better to leave it with than your own solicitor?’
‘We’ll have to go back and ask him,’ said Slater.
‘Go on. ‘I’ll wait here.’
‘He says Mr Winter definitely did not leave him anything to look after,’ said Slater, five minutes later, as he climbed back into the car.
‘Rats!’ said Norman. ‘So much for that brilliant idea. I told you I might be talking through my arse.’
‘It was good thinking,’ Slater said, encouragingly. ‘And I think our burglar thought so, too. And at least now we know for sure that Mr Winter hadn’t given anything to John Hunter.’
‘Yeah, that’s true enough,’ agreed Norman. ‘But if we assume all this theory is correct, it means we still have no idea what we’re looking for, and even worse, we haven’t a clue where it might be hidden.’
‘But this guy seems to be desperate. If you thought Hunter had the thing you were looking for, where would you look next?’
‘You mean his house?’ Norman let out a whistle. ‘We could always stake it out. Maybe we’d get lucky.’
‘I doubt Bob Murray would agree with you, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask,’ said Slater, not looking forward to that particular conversation.
Chapter Nine
As they were just a very small three-person team, they didn’t have use of the main incident room. Instead, they were crammed into a much smaller room with barely enough room to swing a cat. The single window hadn’t been cleaned in years and permitted just a small amount of light to penetrate the layers of grime.
‘So,’ Slater had asked Norman, mischievously, ‘how are you going to apply your positive spin to this particular situation?’
‘It’s sort of like an old telephone box, but with barely any windows,’ Norman had said, glumly. But then, he brightened and with a beaming smile, added, ‘On the bright side, it’ll give us a good incentive to get out there and do some real investigating.’
Slater had rolled his eyes, and Norman had just laughed.
It was almost eleven when they got back to the tiny office, which had undergone something of a transformation at the hands of the ever-efficient Jane Jolly. When they had looked in earlier, it had resembled a store room with desks and chairs all pushed to one side. Now it looked like a reasonably orderly workspace for three people.
On the basis that she had done all the work sorting out the room, Jolly had chosen to place her own desk under the window, where she now sat pecking away at the keyboard of her computer.
‘Wow!’ said Norman, as they walked in. ‘You know you should be on TV, Jane. Magicians are really popular right now.’
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Slater said, gazing around the room.
‘Application,’ said Jolly. ‘That and an acceptance that no one else was likely to do it.’
‘Any calls, Jane?’ asked Slater, ignoring the implied slur.
‘No, sorry. Deathly quiet,’ she said.
‘Don’t apologise,’ said Norman. ‘Deathly quiet is okay. How’s your search coming on?’
The two detectives huddled behind her desk so they could look over her shoulder.
‘I’ve got a result,’ she said. ‘I’ve been through every car registration number on my list, and there are just two that belong to people who don’t live in Canal Street. Then I called in a favour with the traffic division and got them to run the two registration numbers through their search programme on the date in question. One of those cars was picked up on CCTV heading towards Canal Street and then away again a bit later. The recorded times are a good fit for this car to be the one our intruder was driving.’
‘Have you got a name and address?’ asked Slater.
‘I certainly have.’ With a broad grin, she waved a sheet of paper in the air.
‘Look out, Tinton,’ said Norman appreciatively, patting her on the shoulder. ‘Jolly Jane strikes again!’
He took the sheet of paper she offered and looked at the address.
‘Do you know where this is?’ he asked her.
‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded.
‘Want to come with me and ask our new friend some awkward questions?’
‘I’ll just finish my tea,’ she said, beaming. ‘And I’ll be with you!’
‘And I suppose that while you’re gone, I’d better go tell the boss we want to mess up his overtime budget,’ said Slater, gloomily.
While Slater set about trying to convince Bob Murray that it would be a good idea to blow his overtime budget, Norman hoped he and Jolly would make some progress in their enquiries via a nice quiet chat with Danny Trent, the owner of the vehicle in question.
‘What if he does a runner out the back?’ asked Jolly, as they drove down the road towards his house.
‘I thought of that,’ said Norman, from the passenger seat. ‘There are two uniforms waiting out the back just in case.’
‘Thinking ahead,’ said Jolly, approvingly. ‘I like it. At least now I know I’m not going to have to do all the chasing if he does make a break for it.’
Norman smiled broadly, and tilted his head to acknowledge the truth in that statement. He didn’t do running.
‘Just looking after my partner,’ he said, as she eased the unmarked car into a handy space right outside Trent’s house.
‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘He’s only nineteen and I’m old enough to be his mother. I’d never be able to catch him.’
In the event, they didn’t need to worry about their suspect doing a runner.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Norman and this is PC Jolly,’ Norman announced, showing his warrant card when the door opened. ‘We’d like to speak to Danny Trent.’
The young man who had answered the door looked shocked initially, but he quickly recovered his composure and the shocked expression was replaced with a smug grin. Youthful arrogance, Norman thought.
‘He’s not here. Why do you want to speak to him?’ he asked.
‘Who are you?’ asked Norman, noting the attitude. He liked a challenge.
‘Err, I’m John, his brother.’
‘Are you twins?’ asked Norman, looking him up and down.
‘What?’ he said, uncertainly. ‘Erm, no, of course not.’
‘Wrong answer, sunshine,’ said Norman.
Then, turning to Jolly, he said, ‘Got your cuffs handy?’
She nodded.
Norman turned back to face the now not-quite-so-smug looking young man.
‘Then arrest this man, Constable.’
Jolly took a step forward.
‘Now hold on a minute. You can’t just arrest me like this. You might think you can go around bullying people, but you’re not going to get away with it here. I’m a newspaper reporter.’
‘Really?’ said Norman, in mock wonder. ‘Oh wow. Who do you write for? The Times? Or maybe you’re a Telegraph man.’
‘The local newspaper,’ said the mystery man, looking as if he wanted a hole to open up in the ground and swallow him.
‘We’ll check that,’ said Norman.
‘And anyway, I haven’t even done anything wrong,’ bleated Trent.
‘Well now, let’s make a list, shall we?’ said Norman with an evil grin. ‘For a start you’ve just given a false name to a police officer. By doing that you’re obstructing a police inquiry, and you should understand we’re not talking some piffling little case. This is a murder inquiry.’
‘Bollocks!’ said the young man, his face reddening. ‘I’m John Trent, and I haven’t murdered anybody.’
‘Oh come on, son.’ Norman sighed wearily. ‘Do we really look that stupid? We found you through your car. We’ve seen your photograph on your driver’s licence. You might think you know it all, but you really don’t, do you?’
‘But I haven’t done anything wrong!’
‘What were you doing in the back garden of number 17 Canal Street ten days ago?’ asked Norman.
‘Never been there in my life,’ the man on the doorstep answered, a bit too quickly. ‘I don’t even know where it is.’
‘So how did your car get there?’ asked Jolly.
‘It wasn’t-’
‘It was,’ interrupted Jolly. ‘I saw it there myself and noted the registration number, just after I saw you running through the back gate.’
‘Look. I told you I’m a reporter. I don’t have to tell you anything.’ He folded his arms and leaned defiantly against the door.
‘Like I said before,’ said Norman, smiling pleasantly, ‘you don’t know quite as much as you think you do. Just so you understand, I’ll tell you again – this is a murder investigation, not some schoolboy game. Even if you are a reporter, you still have to talk to us. It’s true that if you tell us something second-hand you don’t have to reveal your source. But that’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
‘And just so you understand, mate, I’ll tell you what you can do-’ barked the young man, taking a step forward and jabbing his finger at Norman.
Norman watched with no small amount of pleasure as Jolly grabbed the man’s hand, twisted his arm up behind his back, slammed him up against the door and slapped on the handcuffs.
‘Now that was a silly thing to do,’ said Norman, patiently. ‘Now we can add threatening a police officer and resisting arrest to that list of charges. And think yourself lucky. If my colleague hadn’t been so quick off the mark, I might have been able to add assaulting a police officer to that list.’
Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘And just so you know, I am not, and never will be, your “mate”.’
He looked at Jolly and nodded his head towards the road. Jolly began to drag her prisoner towards the car.
‘Ow!’ yelled Trent. ‘That hurts, you bitch. I’ll f-’
‘Foul and abusive language, and threatening behaviour towards a second police officer,’ interrupted Norman, following along behind. ‘At this rate, I’m gonna need a bigger notebook.’
‘Do you know how difficult it is to even keep near our budgeted costs?’ Bob Murray asked, sounding exasperated.
‘I appreciate you’re under a lot of pressure,’ sympathised Slater. ‘But-’
‘And now you want me to provide protection to someone who might be in danger, but you don’t exactly know for sure, and you don’t have a clue why. Come on, David, you need to be a bit more convincing than that.’
These rants about spiralling costs were certainly becoming more and more frequent, so Slater figured the pressure from above must be really getting to Murray. It explained why he seemed to be here seven days a week recently. He thought it couldn’t be much fun for an old school copper, who had spent his entire career doing whatever had to be done to get a result, to suddenly have to start worrying about balancing books. Murray sounded like a man who’d just about had enough.
‘We believe Mr Winter died because he had some information somebody wanted very badly,’ he said, trying to stay calm and reasonable. ‘When it couldn’t be found at his house, that same somebody decided Winter must have passed it on to his solicitor John Hunter. Now his office has been turned over, but nothing was found. It seems reasonable to assume the next place to be targeted is going to be Hunter’s home. We’ve already had one murder, and we believe the person behind this wouldn’t hesitate to murder again.’
‘How long’s it going to take?’ asked Murray.
‘How long’s a piece of string?’ replied Slater, tritely.
The scowl on Murray’s face immediately told Slater he’d spoken out of turn, and wished he could take the words straight back.
‘Don’t get clever, Sergeant,’ growled Murray. ‘This isn’t some bloody game we’re play
ing here.’
‘Yes sir. I’m sorry sir,’ mumbled Slater.
Murray sighed, heavily.
‘There’s no need to grovel,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be snapping at you like that.’
Slater thought that was as near as Murray was going to get to an apology, but he also knew he had spoken out of turn.
‘No. You’re right to have a go. I was out of order,’ he admitted.
‘D’you know,’ said Murray, tiredly, sitting back in his seat. ‘There was a time when I used to love this job, but now I sometimes feel as if they want us to catch criminals with our hands tied behind our backs. How can we do the job with no bloody funds? It makes me so bloody angry!’
It was unusual for the old man to swear, and when he did it usually signified he was particularly angry about something. Right now Slater was losing count of the ‘bloodys’, and he had no wish to become the object of Murray’s ire, so he decided he should keep his mouth firmly closed.
‘Let me think about it,’ said Murray. ‘I’ll let you know later.’
‘Ok, Boss. Thank you,’ said Slater, climbing to his feet. At least the old man hadn’t said no. He figured it would probably be a good idea to get out while he was ahead.
‘Have you thought anymore about what we were talking about the other day?’ asked Murray, before Slater could escape.
‘Boss?’ asked Slater, dumbly.
‘About becoming a DI.’
‘Ah. Right. Yes,’ said Slater, awkwardly. ‘I have as it happens, but as there’s no vacancy for a DI here, it seems to me I’d have to move away. At this particular time, I’m not ready to do that. Maybe in a year or two.’
‘Serious this time, is it?’ asked Murray.
Slater looked nonplussed.
‘The new girlfriend. D’you think she might be the one?’
Slater felt himself going red. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think Murray had the faintest inkling about Cindy.
‘Don’t look so surprised,’ Murray said, smiling. ‘It’s my job to know if people are happy or not, and I’d have to be blind to miss the fact that you have a spring in your step at the moment.’
