Cover Up

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Just this once then,’ Kate said, feeling more relaxed after a good meal.

  ‘So there’s only one thing left to settle,’ Barnard said, putting his arm round her as they got up to go and giving her a hint of a hopeful smile. ‘Are you coming to bed with me, Miss O’Donnell? Or not?’

  Kate looked at him for a long time. ‘I don’t think you are up to it yet,’ she said carefully. ‘And maybe I’m not either.’

  SIXTEEN

  Next morning, as soon as she and Barnard had finished breakfast, Kate phoned Carmel Jordan in Formby. A sleepy voice answered and Kate guessed that Mrs Jordan was probably still in bed.

  ‘It’s Kate O’Donnell,’ she said. ‘You remember I came to see you last Sunday, looking for my da?’

  ‘Have you found him yet?’ Mrs Jordan asked, sounding more coherent than when they’d met.

  ‘No,’ Kate said. ‘But that’s not why I’m calling. I was wondering if your husband was home yet? I need a quick word with him about some of the photographs I took last week.’

  ‘He’s not back yet, la,’ Mrs Jordan said. ‘He’s got more meetings with the housing minister apparently. Or that’s what he says. He says it’s going very well. But I expect he’s staying at the Ritz with that little floozy Doreen Darcy, so maybe that is going well too.’

  ‘So she’s not back in Liverpool, either?’ Kate asked, aware of Barnard listening to her end of the conversation intently. He grabbed Kate’s arm to attract her attention and pointed to her ring finger.

  ‘Ask if he would have bought Doreen a diamond ring,’ he whispered. When Kate relayed the question it reduced Carmel to silence for a moment.

  ‘He could have done,’ she said angrily, as if the words were being forced out of her. ‘He likes buying jewellery, doesn’t he? He used to buy me lots of diamonds when we first got married and the business started making money, but he doesn’t bother now. Maybe he does the same for her. At least I’ve got most of mine stashed away safely in the bank now, where he can’t get his hands on them to pass on to someone else.’ Kate was aware that Carmel’s voice had become muffled and she realized that she was crying quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said. ‘But if Terry’s not back, Doreen won’t be either?’

  ‘She’ll come back with him, I expect. Though I think Terry said he was going down there with someone from the cathedral, so maybe Doreen had to go on the train. You know what the clergy are like. Doreen won’t be pleased with that. She likes swanning around with Terry in the Jag, I do know that.’

  ‘The cathedral?’ Kate asked, surprised by that unexpected connection although she recalled being told on her own visit to the site that Terry Jordan was a generous benefactor.

  ‘Oh they love our Terry at the cathedral. They think he’s some class of saint. He’s given them a lot of money for the new building over the years. But this is about some land they own that they don’t need which is close to where they’re planning this new town.’

  ‘So he’s advising them or something?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Carmel said. ‘He reckons God’s smiling on him, the money he’s made, and he should pay a bit back. It’s just a pity his generosity doesn’t extend to me. The last thing he bought me was a feckin’ teapot, and that was only because I chucked the one we had at him one night when he was being more bloody-minded than usual.’

  ‘Does he really stay at the Ritz?’ Kate asked. ‘Could I contact him there?’

  ‘Well, if he’s with one of the Monsignors he might be staying somewhere else. They may have special places for special priests. And saints. Who knows? But that might not be such a good idea for Terry if he’s got Doreen in tow. It wouldn’t do his reputation much good, would it, if they cottoned on to what he gets up to with her? Anyway, dear, you could try the Ritz. If not, the housing ministry should know where he is. Don’t they have – what is it they call them? – public relations people? They should know what’s going on.’ Carmel, Kate thought, was not as clueless as maybe she liked to appear.

  ‘Right, I’ll see if I can track him down, one way or another,’ Kate said. ‘Thanks for your help.’ She hung up and turned to Barnard.

  ‘Did you get the gist of that?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s still in London? Yes, I got that.’

  ‘He’s still got meetings to go to at the housing ministry. It sounds as if he’s going to build a new town single-handed on some land the Church owns. For a left footer from Scotland Road he’s not short of ambition, you have to give him that.’

  ‘And if he’s here, Doreen is probably still here too, alive or dead. But no one will have reported her missing up there or down here. She’ll not have been missed, will she, except by Terry Jordan. And if he killed her – or is covering up for someone else who did – he won’t report her missing in a hurry, if at all. I reckon we could have found our victim, don’t you?’

  Kate nodded cautiously.

  ‘But how do you identify her?’ she asked. ‘You won’t get any help from the Liverpool police after all that’s gone on.’

  ‘I can’t even ask them to check out her whereabouts myself. That will have to come from higher up. I’ll talk to DCI Jackson later, maybe. And keep you out of the picture. I don’t think he’ll be too pleased to hear you’ve been making inquiries on my behalf, so I’ll play that down.’

  ‘What, no Robin to your Batman? That can’t be right,’ she teased.

  ‘Best not. Or not just now, anyway,’ he said stealing a quick kiss. She sighed.

  ‘Not just now,’ she said.

  Kate was in the darkroom at work later that morning, finishing processing the last of the pictures she’d taken in Liverpool, when someone banged on the door.

  ‘There’s a phone call for you,’ one of her colleagues shouted. The receiver lay unattended on its shelf at the far end of the office, and she had to hurriedly finish what she was doing before she could switch on the light and open the door to the daylight. At first she did not recognize the voice at the other end. The accent sounded so unfamiliar.

  ‘DCI Strachan, in Liverpool,’ the man repeated. ‘You remember me? It’s about your brother.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ Kate’s stomach lurched uncontrollably.

  ‘As all right as he’ll ever be,’ Strachan said. ‘They’ve kept him in hospital. Improving, they say. A delicate flower, isn’t he? A pretty pansy maybe?’ He laughed, although there was no humour in the sound.

  ‘What do you want?’ Kate asked, her mouth dry.

  ‘I want you to listen to me very carefully,’ Strachan said. ‘This is not negotiable, so make sure you get it right. If you don’t, you need to remember that I can get your brother locked up for a very long time. Just depends on what I choose to charge him with.’

  ‘So what is it you want?’ Kate repeated, knowing that whatever Strachan wanted could not be good.

  ‘I’m not going to spell it out over the phone,’ Strachan said, the man’s almost permanent anger seeming to splutter out from the receiver. ‘I want you to meet a colleague of mine. You’re about to take your lunch break, we know that, but I want you to avoid your boyfriend today. Forget the Blue Lagoon and go to the Corner House at the Trafalgar Square end of the Strand, opposite Charing Cross station. Order a sandwich or beans on toast or something and someone will join you. Listen very carefully to what he has to say.’

  Unnerved by Strachan’s knowledge of her usual routine, Kate glanced around the office and realized that she had the place to herself. There was no one there either to hear what she was saying or to help her if she needed help.

  ‘You’re trying to blackmail me,’ she hissed. Strachan laughed.

  ‘It’s all in a good cause, my dear,’ he said. ‘But do it, or it will be the worse for your brother. Someone like him won’t last long in Walton Gaol. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  Kate’s instinct was to give in to her fury and hang up on Strachan, ignoring the call, but she knew that in Tom he had a weapon that he w
ould certainly use if it suited him and which could tear her family apart. The silence lengthened at her end and Strachan’s breathing became more pronounced at the other.

  ‘I understand,’ she whispered at last. She knew she had no choice.

  The man who joined Kate as she picked at a sandwich in the crowded Corner House was not threatening. Of medium build, fair and slightly balding, he wore a somewhat crumpled grey suit, a sober striped tie and horn-rimmed glasses. He was not a man to stand out in a crowd in any way. He did not identify himself and, glancing out of the window overlooking the point where Whitehall meets Trafalgar Square and the Strand, she guessed that he had probably emerged from one of the government buildings stretching away towards the Houses of Parliament. He smiled, as if it was an effort on his part, but his eyes remained stone cold. Kate had absolutely no doubt that whatever he promised or threatened would indeed happen, and she and her family and probably Harry Barnard would be steamrollered by the forces he could call into play to get whatever it was he wanted.

  ‘Miss O’Donnell, I’m happy to meet you,’ he said, dismissing the hovering waitress with a wave of the hand. ‘And I’m very pleased that you have decided to help us. Any other decision could have made life difficult for us all.’ He was not as crude as Strachan, she thought, but the threat was still very much there.

  ‘I have no idea what all this is about,’ Kate said, her anger bubbling beneath the surface and threatening to erupt.

  ‘You don’t need to know my dear,’ the man said, his voice cool and quiet. ‘We just need your help for a very short time while a small political crisis is defused.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ she asked, feeling as if the breath was being sucked out of her.

  ‘This is a crisis that has a Liverpool dimension and a London dimension,’ he said, his voice entirely calm. ‘The Liverpool dimension is, I am assured, under control. Your role is to keep us in touch with whatever Detective Sergeant Harry Barnard is doing that might impinge on the measures we are taking to resolve the difficulties. I am told he keeps you fully informed. He is what is usually known as a loose cannon. He has an unfortunate habit of taking unilateral actions that his superior officers don’t always know about, and we can’t afford that in these circumstances. He is a minor player but, in plain words, we need to know exactly what he is up to without alerting the Metropolitan Police as to what measures we are taking to avert a potentially embarrassing situation.’

  Kate gazed at the man transfixed. She had been neatly trapped between her brother and Harry and she could see no way of refusing to do what she was being asked to do without putting one or other at serious risk. The man waited and Kate was sure he could see her conflicted emotions ebb and flow like a dangerous tide, calm on the surface but with a powerful current beneath.

  ‘We could, of course, take direct action against Barnard,’ he said eventually, still calm, still cold, casting a carefully calibrated chill over the table. ‘Given his track record, it would not be too difficult to discipline him and get him out of the force. But from past experience, that would not necessarily stop him doing his own thing or talking out of turn. It would have to be a charge serious enough to put him behind bars. I think you wouldn’t want that, would you, Miss O’Donnell?’

  ‘How would I contact you,’ Kate whispered, ‘if I agree to do what you ask?’

  ‘When you agree,’ the man contradicted her. ‘Have you moved back into Barnard’s flat?’

  ‘Yes, sort of,’ Kate said. ‘He thought I would be safer there because my stuff was being searched …’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose that was you, or your friends, was it?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ the man said. ‘We need you to stay close to Barnard, so stay at the flat, please. Of course we can’t contact you there by phone – he would be likely to pick up, or at the least ask who you were talking to. We’ll contact you at work. I will ring you every morning when you arrive at nine and you can fill me in about what, if anything, has been going on. We will ask his superior officers to keep an eye on him, too. I’ll give you a number where you can contact me or one of my colleagues to update me if anything unexpected happens – but only if what you have to tell us seems serious. Do you understand?’

  Kate nodded, feeling utterly numb. The man’s gaze intensified for a moment and she realized that she and Barnard must have blundered into territory far more dangerous than they could have guessed when the Vice Squad began investigating the murder of an anonymous woman dumped under the trees in Soho Square. She had no doubt that this man was in some way official and he was evidently ruthless, as ruthless as a government facing a general election within months was likely to be after being blown apart the previous year by a scandal that had run out of control. She and Barnard were very small fish in very deep waters. And she had no idea where to turn to for help.

  Kate sat in the front passenger seat of a clapped-out-looking Austin A40 parked about 100 yards from the main entrance to Dolphin Square. Barnard had picked her up from work at about five thirty and they’d made a sedate journey along Oxford Street and down Park Lane then west past the faded Victorian terraces of Pimlico until they reached the fortress-like walls of the square.

  ‘It looks as if it should have a portcullis and a drawbridge,’ Kate said, trying to lighten the mood. The atmosphere in the car had been tense on the drive across the West End, as if neither of them dared to raise what really concerned them. That, Kate thought anxiously, was doubly true in her case, but she was sure that Barnard would in part put her uneasy silence down to her uncertainty about their relationship rather than anything even worse.

  He parked a little way past the main entrance which, even at a time when residents might be expected to be returning from work, seemed pretty well deserted.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘DCI Buxton went in this door the last time I saw him,’ he said. ‘So I guess anyone else heading for that flat would do the same. You could have a little stroll around, I suppose, but keep an eye on the doors. I’ll recognize the woman I spoke to, if she turns up. I need a photograph of her or we’ll never be able to identify her.’ He turned towards Kate looking grim, his bruises still pronounced enough to make him look disreputable at least, dangerous at worst.

  ‘I know there was something going on in there that shouldn’t have been,’ he said. ‘Call it a smell, a hunch, anything you like. Maybe it was something I half heard in the background. But there was something wrong. I need to know what it was, and if Buxton was up there he’s implicated. Nothing’s surer. Believe me.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Kate said, opening the car door, feeling bewildered, uncertain who was straight and who was bent and who was as crooked as a corkscrew. ‘Keep an eye out for me,’ she said as she closed the car door and began to walk slowly back towards the main entrance to the square, where a couple of men with briefcases were hurrying indoors, looking suitably hot and bothered after their underground journey from the city. She used her camera cautiously, keeping it largely hidden behind her handbag and a folded copy of the Evening News, which she had chosen because it had bigger pages than the Standard. As far as she was aware no one noticed what she was doing, and there was nothing at all to indicate that anyone she took a picture of was anything other than a legitimate resident on the way home.

  But the comings and goings subtly altered as the evening wore on. Increasingly people came out of the building, smartly dressed and clearly heading for an evening’s entertainment, and the trickle of people going into the building began to dry up.

  ‘The light’s getting tricky,’ Kate said as she returned to the car, which was filling with cigarette smoke as Barnard struggled to fill the time, his fingers drumming intermittently on the steering wheel as he fought to contain his impatience. ‘I’ll give it another twenty minutes. After that we won’t be able to make anyone out in the gloom. The pictures will be pretty useless.’ She changed the film in her camera and set off again.
Barnard watched her in the rear-view mirror, his eyes following her walk down the street, and marvelled at her apparently endless patience.

  But although Kate had taken pictures of people returning home to the flats and going out to meals and theatres and films, either alone or in pairs or groups, there was no one who looked even remotely suspicious on the street or going in through the doors to Dolphin Square, which appeared to be the epitome of middle-class respectability. But just as she was about to give up she saw a woman smartly dressed for an evening out – in stilettos and a short tight skirt underneath a fun-fur jacket, her hair not unlike Cilla Black’s, though dark not red – coming out of the foyer unusually cautiously, scanning the street carefully before setting off in the direction of Barnard’s car. As she passed by, Kate quickly took a photograph of her, keeping the camera low in case it was seen. The woman overtook the parked A40 without glancing at it or at Barnard. Kate followed close behind and opened the passenger door quietly.

  ‘She looked a bit different,’ she said softly.

  ‘She was the woman from the flat,’ Barnard said, starting the engine. ‘Get in, we’ll follow but I don’t want her scared off. Let’s see where she goes.’ He drove down the quiet street a hundred yards or so behind their quarry. Eventually she stopped at one of the few shops in the neighbourhood, went inside and came out smoking, with the packet of cigarettes still in her hand.

  ‘I’d stop her, in spite of DCI Buxton’s threats,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘But judging by the way she’s dolled up there must be something going on there tonight. It might be better to hang about and see what happens, and then report back to DCI Jackson with a bit more hard evidence.’