Road Closed

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Why did you do it?’ Sophie asked again. She was staring at Geraldine now. ‘They told me what happened. You risked your own life to save mine, after I tried to kill you. Why?’ They gazed helplessly at one another for a moment. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  Geraldine lay the flowers on the bed. ‘The courts will be sympathetic’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I don’t care what they do to me. But how am I going to manage for the rest of my life without him?’

  Geraldine turned and walked out of the ward. She didn’t look back.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’ll soon be up and about, right as rain,’ a sturdy nurse assured her. Geraldine hurried past without answering.

  ‘What did you expect?’ the DCI asked when Geraldine told him about the visit. He closed the door of her office, turned and raised his eyebrows at her.

  ‘She made me feel as though I’d done the wrong thing.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. You saved the woman’s life. If you hadn’t been there, she almost certainly wouldn’t have made it. She has a chance now.’

  ‘I don’t think she wants a chance, sir.’ Geraldine stared wretchedly at the floor. ‘She chose to die and I prevented it.’

  ‘Well, if that’s what she wants, there’s nothing stopping her. Unless you plan to stand guard over her for the rest of her life. She still has the option to kill herself. There’s plenty that do. But she also has the option to live her life. And if it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t have that choice. So please don’t start bleating on about saving the poor woman when all she wanted was to die. Chances are in a few years’ time she’ll have remarried and be – oh, I don’t know, raising a family, growing prize roses. Whatever it is people generally do when they choose to live their lives.’

  ‘Once she’s served her time.’

  ‘Yes. There is that. Well, perhaps a spell behind bars will help salve her conscience. And she deserves to be punished for what she did. Being miserable doesn’t give anyone the right to take the law into their own hands. Nothing sanctions that.’

  ‘I know. And I daresay the courts will be lenient, under the circumstances. I reckon they’ll find she was temporarily deranged after the death of her husband, don’t you think, sir?’

  Ryder let out a vexed sigh. ‘Totally deranged, if you ask me. Round the bend and up the bloody wall.’

  ‘She had just lost her husband, sir.’

  ‘My point exactly. Anyone who gets married and wants to stay that way has to be completely barking.’ With that enigmatic statement, the DCI left the room, leaving Geraldine to wonder, not for the first time, about his personal circumstances. She had been working closely with James Ryder for three weeks, but she knew nothing about him.

  65

  Friends

  Geraldine spent the following day finishing off her final report and packing up her things. There was still paperwork to tie up, but the investigation was over. The flimsy internal wall of Geraldine’s office shook as someone knocked. Before she could respond, the door opened and Peterson stuck his head in. ‘Are you coming, gov? We’re all off to the pub.’

  ‘You’re looking cheerful today.’

  ‘We sorted it out.’ He stepped into the office and closed the door.

  ‘Sorted it out?’

  ‘Me and Bev. It was this, funnily enough.’ He pointed at his black eye. ‘You’d think it would’ve put her off but soon as she saw it she was all over me. So we’re back on. Till the next time.’ He grinned. ‘She said we belong together.’

  Geraldine smiled back, wondering if anyone would ever say that to her. She didn’t even belong in her own family. She turned away, suddenly brisk. ‘That’s great. Now, I must get packed up here –’

  ‘Sure. Sorry, gov. See you over the road.’ The wall trembled as he closed the door. Geraldine sat down at her desk and opened a drawer stuffed with papers. She sighed and began rifling through them.

  She had just about finished when James Ryder strode in.

  ‘Still working, Geraldine?’ He sounded put out but when she looked up she saw he was smiling. ‘You coming for a drink?’ Geraldine wished fleetingly it was a personal invitation from a man who wanted to spend time with a woman, not a DCI summoning his DI to a team drink at the end of a case.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’ He hovered just inside the room.

  ‘Yes, thank you sir.’ She turned to collect her coat which she had thrown on the filing cabinet behind her.

  She heard the door close but when she turned round, Ryder was inside the room. ‘I always feel a bit low when a case ends,’ he confessed. ‘Once the adrenaline rush fades, and there’s nothing left but paperwork.’ Geraldine nodded, uncertain how to respond. ‘But we’ve done a good job, so let’s go drink to that. Come on, there’s someone over the road who wants to see you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ For a second their eyes met, then he turned and left. The image of his tall figure lingered in her mind. With a sigh she pulled on her coat and left the room. It was no longer her office. There would be no more visits from James Ryder. Geraldine wondered if they would work together again.

  The pub was packed. Geraldine saw Kathryn Gordon at the bar, beaming, and made her way over. The DCI’s face had lost its grey sheen. She looked more robust than ever. Geraldine wondered with a pang if she would work with James Ryder again, now that Kathryn Gordon was back. She looked around but couldn’t see him. She turned to Kathryn Gordon.

  ‘You look great, ma’am. You look as though you’ve just had a holiday.’

  Kathryn Gordon was not so kind. ‘I wish I could say the same for you, Geraldine. You look washed out. I hope you haven’t been overdoing things? You’re a valuable officer. You have to look after yourself.’

  Geraldine bit back the obvious retort. She wasn’t the one who had just suffered a coronary. Kathryn Gordon made no reference to Geraldine’s visit to the hospital.

  Leslie Bennett bought a round. They were all pleased that Callum Martin would go down, but five people had died and another had been crippled in the course of the investigation.

  ‘So what’s going to happen to Barker?’ Polly wanted to know. ‘Martin’s arrested for the deaths of Evelyn Green, Thomas Cliff, Maggie Palmer and Brenda whatever her name is, and he’s responsible for Sophie Cliff’s suicide attempt too if you think about it. But it was the burglaries that started the whole thing off. Barker’s to blame too.’

  ‘That’s Bennett’s case,’ Kathryn Gordon replied. There was a momentary lull in the conversation. They all waited to hear what Bennett had to say.

  ‘We know Barker was in Deborah Mainwaring’s property –’ he began.

  ‘He admitted as much,’ Peterson said.

  ‘But as for the Cliff house,’ Bennett paused and took a swig of his pint. ‘Not a lot we can do without any evidence. We got a warrant to search their house, but there was no sign of the stolen goods, and we couldn’t find any glass cutters. We’ll keep on at Barker though.’

  ‘An ongoing investigation,’ Kathryn Gordon said and a low groan went round the gathered officers.

  ‘Exactly,’ Bennett agreed. ‘We know he was involved, along with Martin, but there’s no way of proving it. Martin’ll go down for murder, one way or another. There’s too much on him. He’ll be going down for a long time.’

  ‘Can’t be too long,’ Peterson interjected.

  ‘But we can’t touch Barker for now. We’ll keep watching him though. Sooner or later he’ll slip up. And when he does, we’ll be waiting.’ Bennett didn’t sound very dynamic.

  ‘But they were responsible for the whole thing,’ Polly insisted. ‘We can’t let them get away with it.’

  ‘Martin’s not getting away,’ Peterson said.

  ‘Has he made a statement?’ Kathryn Gordon asked.

  ‘He denies everything,’ the sergeant told her. ‘But he killed the woman, Brenda, and we’ve got him driving the stolen vehicle used to run over Maggie Palmer. That’s two murders,
and assaulting a police officer.’

  ‘We don’t know Barker’s a murderer,’ Geraldine pointed out. ‘He was with Martin on the burglaries but, for all we know, as far as he’s concerned, it all went wrong and he never intended for anyone to get hurt. He certainly seems pretty clueless about what happened. And he hasn’t exactly got off scot free. He was assaulted and almost burned to death.’

  ‘He won’t be able to walk properly again,’ Bennett added. ‘And he’ll be disfigured for life.’

  ‘Lost his good looks,’ a constable said and a few people laughed.

  ‘At least we’ve got Martin,’ someone said.

  Kathryn Gordon looked uneasy. ‘From what I’ve heard, Martin killed his girlfriend, Brenda, in a struggle. He can plead manslaughter. As for the other victim, Maggie Palmer, we can prove he drove the car that was used to kill her, but can we prove beyond all doubt he was driving it at the time of the accident?’ No one answered. The celebratory mood fell flat.

  At that moment, James Ryder burst into the pub, beaming. ‘I’ve just heard from forensics. Sample tissue has been retrieved from under the finger nails on Cartwright’s right hand.’

  ‘The scratches on Callum Martin’s face,’ Geraldine said with sudden excitement.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for DNA confirmation,’ Ryder added, ‘but they’ve found a fragment of someone else’s hair under one of Cartwright’s nails. It matches Martin’s stubble.’

  ‘Do you think Cartwright did it deliberately?’ Geraldine asked. ‘Realising Martin was about to kill him, he dropped his glasses hoping they’d be found and lead us to him, and scratched Martin’s face knowing it would incriminate Martin if we found the body.’

  ‘More likely he lost his glasses in the scuffle and hit out at Martin in a desperate attempt to defend himself. I like your theory, but it sounds a bit far fetched. He was an old man frightened for his life,’ Ryder replied. Someone handed him a pint.

  ‘He was a detective sergeant,’ Geraldine protested. Her voice was drowned out by cheering as the DCI held up his glass.

  ‘Whatever happened, we’ve nailed Martin for murder,’ he said. There was another cheer. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better team. And, as you all know, partnership is what this job is all about.’

  ‘Yes,’ Geraldine agreed, ‘we’re a good team.’ No one was listening to her. She raised her glass and drank to the memory of a solitary old man sitting in the corner of a pub.

  Also by the same author

  Cut Short

  Copyright

  First published in 2010 by No Exit Press,

  An imprint of Oldcastle Books Ltd,

  P O Box 394, Harpenden, AL5 1XJ

  www.noexit.co.uk

  This ebook edition first published in 2010

  All rights reserved

  © Leigh Russell, 2010

  The right of Leigh Russell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978-1-84243-426-0