Tightrope

by Andrea Frazer

  Leaning over the map, she managed to make out the tiny lettering beside the marked building. ‘It’s an old Nissen hut!’ she exclaimed. ‘That would certainly explain where those lights could have been coming from. It needs a recce to check out if we’re on to something. Lauren, I want you and Daz to go out there and make like you’re just a couple having a stroll in the woods together on a nice, sunny day.’

  She didn’t see the eyes of both of the named officers light up, and carried on looking over the old map, continuing to feel amazed that things had changed so much, as she folded it over to look further south towards the sea.

  They took Westbrook’s car, and when they were on their way, he asked her tentatively, ‘How are you feeling?’ conscious that she’d had a bad time recently, and unsure whether to twinkle his eyes at her or not. She soon answered his question in no uncertain terms.

  ‘How am I feeling? Horny, DC Westbrook, seeing as you were kind enough to ask.’

  A smile slowly spread across his face and he turned to look at her. ‘I believe we have some unfinished business, DS Groves.’

  ‘Do we?’ asked Lauren, with a leer. ‘From when?’

  ‘From the moment we were paired together for this particular task. I have a blanket in the boot, and I believe there are some very private spots in those woods.’

  ‘Then we’d better do our best to find one after we’ve done what we’ve been dispatched to do, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I do.’

  ‘You don’t have to call me “ma’am”.’

  ‘I know – but I like it.’

  ‘So do I,’ was her reply, with the most lecherous look she could manage.

  ‘I think we’ll have to walk from here,’ Daz said with a change of subject. ‘It looks like we’ve just run out of road, and I wouldn’t trust my car on that rutty old track.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  There were various signs about the straggling entrance to the woodland, reading, “Keep Out”, “Private Woodland” and “Trespassers will be prosecuted”.

  ‘Some welcome,’ said Lauren.

  ‘I’m sure they can’t be aimed at us. We’re the police,’ stated Westbrook simply and with great faith.

  ‘Are you wearing a Kevlar vest?’ asked Lauren.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Well, don’t come running to me if someone pulls a shotgun on you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. This is the south of England, not the Appalachians.’

  ‘Suit yourself. And mind where you’re putting your feet. This woodland is a minefield of tripping hazards.’

  ‘Good old Sergeant Groves, ever Health and Safety conscious.’

  After about twenty minutes of stumbling over tree roots and avoiding stray bramble branches, they came across a sort of rough pathway through the undergrowth. Checking with the tiny compass that Lauren always carried in her handbag, it seemed to run from north-east to south-west, and it seemed to be that instinct was telling them both to follow it to the north-east. Had they gone in the other direction Lauren reckoned that they would end up, eventually, hitting the last of the nurseries, then the ring-road.

  Westbrook agreed with her, and they set off, keeping as quiet as they could now, in case there was someone ahead of them who may not wish them well. After a few minutes, the trees got closer together, and the undergrowth more dense and lush, and they had to walk one behind the other, the lead taken by Westbrook in a misplaced sense of chivalry.

  The way was, however, well-trodden, and no remaining obstacles were encountered on the forest floor. After quite a trudge, a more solid shape loomed up out of the almost subterranean gloom. ‘I think we’ve found whatever it is we’re looking for,’ whispered Lauren.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the more youthful Westbrook, who was a man who neither watched historical documentaries nor read books chronicling the past.

  ‘Well, it looks to me like an old Nissen hut left over from the war,’ she informed him, not wanting to let on that she’d known exactly what they’d find. ‘The fact that it’s covered in ivy gives it almost perfect camouflage, although there has been some trimming round the windows, which must be how the light got out for the travellers to witness.’

  ‘Sure,’ commented Westbrook, with not a clue as to what she was talking about. His mind was on later. ‘So, why would they trim round the windows?’ he hissed.

  ‘To save on fuel costs during daylight hours? How the hell should I know? Let’s just be grateful that we have a way of looking inside.’ Lauren’s more practical attitude won the day, and they crept forward to peer through the surprisingly clear glass panes.

  ‘No curtains,’ stated Westbrook.

  ‘No peeping Toms out here – but just look at the beds! They’re triple bunks. It’s more crowded in there than in a cheap boarding school dorm.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘Stop pulling that working class whine on me and let’s see if we can get inside,’ instructed Lauren with unexpected authority. ‘Would someone lock the door to a place like this? It’s on private land and hardly frequented, and it must be a bore if one of the occupants wants to come back for something; always having to have the key to hand.’

  ‘Oh, I do love a bossy woman. Come on, then, Sherlock. Let’s see if we can get in. What do you think it’s used for?’

  ‘I don’t know, but all the beds seem to be in use.’

  The handle of the door turned easily and without squeaking, confirming that it was used fairly frequently and, fortunately, there was no one at home, so they prowled round apprehensively for a couple of minutes, both taking photographs with their mobile phones.

  There was an overwhelming smell of humanity – of scantily washed bodies, of greasy hair, and of old clothes and shoes. There were no personal possessions at all on show, and it was impossible to guess at which sex currently occupied this hut. ‘Come on Watson, let’s make ourselves scarce,’ hissed Lauren, grabbing Westbrook’s hand. ‘I get the feeling we’re chancing our arm a bit too much now.’

  Once more outside and concealed by a screen of ferns and bushes, Lauren whispered in Westbrook’s ear, ‘Do you think we should follow the path the other way, now, and see where it leads?’

  Swatting her away, and hissing, ‘Don’t do that, it tickles,’ he agreed with her, and they set off, once again, down the well-trodden route to wherever.

  ‘I don’t really fancy you getting that blanket out now, Daz,’ said Lauren in an undertone. ‘This piece of woodland seems to have rather a lot of people using it, from what we’ve seen.’

  ‘I agree. My place after work, then.’ The evidence of the occupancy of the old hut and the dank and forbidding atmosphere of the woodland had totally dampened their ardour for more physical activities. Nirvana would just have to wait.

  The path continued in a more or less straight line, with the exception of skirting particularly large trees and recalcitrant and dense bramble bushes, until it made a sudden dog-leg to the right. A short way down this change of direction, the undergrowth and trees began to thin, and they found themselves looking out over a width of clear ground with glass houses at the other side of it. There seemed to be quite a number of these, leading to the unequivocal conclusion that they were looking at one of the town’s last nurseries.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Westbrook in quiet tones.

  ‘I think that must be a salad nursery and that it would employ quite a few pickers in season.’

  ‘And where would they get those pickers, Sergeant?’

  ‘Maybe from an old Nissen hut. I think we need to get a call through to Immigration and see if they’ve got any information about this place. Put the hut together with the nursery, and you have the ideal situation for illegal immigrants being employed.’

  ‘Don’t you think someone would have thought to investigate that old hut?’

  ‘It’s not even marked on the current map on the office wall. That’s why Olivia asked me to go and get an old on
e. It’s just disappeared into the mists of time.

  ‘Well, someone’s taken some time to preserve it and put it into fair nick without disturbing the covering of ivy too much. To eyes that weren’t actively looking for it, it simply isn’t there any more.’

  ‘Let’s go consult with the inspector, and see if she wants to go any higher up.’

  When they got back to the station, their eyes were alight not with afternoon delight, but with speculation as to what their discovery had meant, and whether there was a link to any of the other current cases.

  ‘Alle-bloody-luiah,’ sang Olivia when they had passed on the details of what they had discovered. ‘Buller’ll have an orgasm when you tell him. This’ll make his day, if not his year.

  ‘Why so?’ asked Lauren.

  ‘Because of what Desai and Leo turned up at Ali Baba’s flat. He’s already got an ID on the male found dead in the cab of the van, and the documents from the flat itself are currently, as we stand here talking, being translated into English – and there was a letter in there about the delivery of ‘parcels’ to – wait for it – Littleton Salad Nurseries.

  ‘Buller thought the ‘parcels’ could have been drugs but, from what you’ve subsequently discovered, I think they could be bodies – illegal ones. His van’s already got a marker on it to be investigated by HMRC because of its frequent crossings from a variety of Channel ports. Taking that into account and given that there was no record in the UK about the couple that were murdered in Gooding Avenue, I now think we’re finally getting somewhere.

  ‘There was a dead woman also found in the back of the van, and her body’s being sliced and diced right now. I think Buller needs to get in touch with Immigration to see what they know or suspect about our local lettuce merchants.’

  Across the office, Buller suddenly ended a phone call, threw a fist into the air and shouted, ‘Yes!’ in a triumphantly loud voice.

  ‘Won the lottery?’ asked Olivia in a droll voice.

  ‘Just about,’ he called back. ‘You know that woman that Desai and Leo found first thing this morning? Well, it’s just been confirmed that she has very recently given birth: and she’s the right ethnic origin. I think we have our mother for the little one found on the tip.’

  ‘With that in mind, guv, I think that you need to hear about what Westbrook and Groves have been up to this morning,’ said Olivia, unable to understand why this statement made Lauren blush furiously.

  During a retelling of their finds, Buller’s eyes positively danced. ‘So, that means that if we can tie her body up with that of the baby found at the tip, and we can find evidence that this woman’s been working at the nursery, then we’re just about home and dry,’ he crowed, ‘Especially if we can tie up this sliced-up corpse with Kharboub and his under-the-radar activities.’ He went straight off to phone the immigration service. If they knew about what the police had uncovered, they might already be planning a raid and would probably like police support, and if they didn’t, he would have got in first. Whichever way things went, this would result in a lot of bodies being rounded up and pulled off the streets, or the tomato plants, or whatever.

  He finished the call with his balloon slightly pricked as they had been aware of what was going on at the nursery, and had been about to ask for the attendance of the police at their already planned raid, but they told him that there was going to be a simultaneous raid at what outwardly appeared to be a perfectly respectable detached house, just outside the town centre.

  The property, by sheer good fortune, had a convenient back entrance and the premises had been, for some time, used as a brothel. The prostitutes, who had been local in the past, were now deemed to be illegal immigrants, the two operations inextricably linked, so Buller was slightly mollified that he would have this raid under his belt as well, before he went back to Drugs.

  ‘The whole thing only came to light when one of the tarts left the curtains open, and neighbours saw what was going on inside the bedroom from a side window on the first floor of their own house. Similarly un-pulled curtains downstairs had revealed a row of chairs occupied by men who appeared to be waiting for something to happen. A concerned phone call to the police and a little surveillance had provided all the evidence that was needed to organise a little visit, and now these visits by two different agencies, were planned for the following Friday at 10 p.m.

  ‘Take your pick, ladies. Which of them would you like to attend?’ he asked lasciviously.

  ‘I think we’ll take the Nissen hut, if that’s all right with you, Sergeant,’ announced Olivia rather primly in view of Buller’s expression. He did everything but lick his lips. A brothel was a bit too near the knuckle, at the moment, for her, considering Hal’s confession. It would probably be full of married men paying for a bit of extra-curricular jollies that the little woman at home simply didn’t need to know about.

  Lauren nodded in agreement. ‘As you wish, ladies, and,’ looking at his watch, he continued, ‘may I wish you bon appetit for your luncheon. I shall eat rather better knowing that there’s a brothel to be broken up.’

  The afternoon passed in a busy collating of the documents translated, processing the information in relation to the various cases, and raising files in which to contain them. Buller was in his element now, with things finally coming together, and he even went off home in a fairly triumphant mood instead of hanging around like a bad smell, criticising whoever or whatever crossed his path. Lauren was also cheerful as she left the office, and it was only Olivia who remained there, a solitary figure, wondering what her arrival at the family home had in store for her.

  What sort of mood would Hal be in? Now that the working day was at an end, her mind returned to her personal life and the problems that had just manifested themselves while she had remained in total, if not quite blissful, ignorance. She hadn’t even asked him who her husband had been unfaithful with, so stunned was she. Would he be contrite, defiant – would he even be there?

  Did he actually have the seed of a budding relationship with this bloody woman, whoever she was? Did she have any designs on her husband long-term? The only way to find the answers to the many questions that buzzed round her brain like swarming bees was to actually go there and face the situation, whatever that turned out to be.

  With a heavy heart and in a very subdued state of mind, she finally shut down her computer and slunk off outside to the car park.

  Lauren had exchanged texts with Daz Westbrook during the working afternoon, and had left the office exactly fifteen minutes after he did, as arranged. They may not have had a roll on the blanket in the woods, but it would be considerably more comfortable in his flat. It also meant that what would have been in the past was now still in the future, to be looked forward to.

  This was getting to be a habit, she thought, but rather than analysing it, she dismissed it from her mind and merely imagined the pleasures to come. Life was too short to examine everything one did with too close a scrutiny. Fun had to come into things somewhere along the line.

  When Olivia got home it was to a full complement of family members. The other three were sitting around the kitchen table, and Hal was taking from the oven the biggest shepherd’s pie she had ever seen. Her greeting was unsurprisingly quite tentative, and she had no idea whether he had passed on the details of his infidelity to the kids, and they had, perhaps, found it justified and just filed it under ‘normal’ behaviour, given the circumstances, and Mum’s apparent indifference.

  If she had been taking him for granted for so long, and neglecting her children, too, because she was simply too distracted at work, then maybe she had deserved what she had got. The children had both been through a bad time the previous year; totally different problems, neither of which she had seen brewing on the horizon. Hal’s betrayal had also been out of the blue. She had simply taken his frequent absences to be due to giving too much to his new supply job. How wrong could a wife be?

  In fact, as a wife and mother, she’d really taken he
r eye not just off the ball, but off the whole fucking game, and had been letting all of them down. She had been, as she would put it herself, ‘crap’, yet how could she devote more time to these three people that she loved the most in the world, when there were such complex crimes to be solved and such villains to be rounded up? Was there an answer – a solution – or was it one of those unsolvable puzzles that no one could get to the bottom of?

  ‘Come on in and sit yourself down, woman. You’re probably starving after a full day’s work, and I bet you didn’t find time to eat any lunch, did you?’ This was Hal, back to his ‘mother hen’ best, and she reacted to it with gratitude. They could have a private talk later when the kids were either upstairs in their rooms or out with friends.

  With all four of them present, the atmosphere was convivial in a way it hadn’t been for a long time and she was really enjoying her food and the chit-chat going on around her, when there was a long ring on the doorbell and a thunderous knocking on the wood. There was a sudden lull in the conversation, and four sets of eyes moving from side to side as if they were all simultaneously asking themselves who the hell that could be.

  Olivia rose to answer it with a simple, ‘I’ll get it,’ adding, ‘It’s amazing how belligerent these doorstep evangelists can be,’ which at least raised a smile from the others sitting at the table.

  She flung open the front door confidently, only to find a woman, a complete stranger, who must have been in her early thirties, standing waiting, her hand up to knock again. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Does Mr Hardy live here – the English teacher?’

  Dammit! Was this one of the mothers of a pupil who had tracked him down to his home address to see why he hadn’t been in today to teach her little angel? ‘What’s your business with him?’

  ‘Are you the wife?’ asked the woman, with a slight sneer. ‘I might’ve known you were a frumpy little thing who had let herself go. Let me in to see Hal. We need to talk. He can’t just desert me like this.’