by Faith Martin
‘All right. I’ll find him and send him over. What exactly do I tell him?’
‘Tell him to report to me and follow my orders. And, sir, it’s vital he comes in before anyone from either the rapid-response team, or whichever regular SIO is given this case, is allowed on scene. And he needs to keep his mouth very firmly shut, and when I tell him to, skedaddle without logging his name anywhere. There must be no official record that he was ever on site.’
There was a moment’s silence at this, and Hillary understood why. Going against protocol was never something anyone did without thinking about it. Especially an ambitious survivor like Marcus Donleavy.
‘And if he doesn’t?’ Marcus asked cautiously.
Hillary smiled grimly. ‘Then, sir, I’m probably going to have to involve myself in a very undignified physical struggle, which I might well end up losing, the result of which will cause embarrassment all around, and muck up what should otherwise be a very straightforward suicide case here. Oh, and negatively affect an active, unsolved murder case that’s out of our manor.’
It was this last warning, she knew, that would force the commander to accede to her wishes. Nobody liked to cause a stink that would earn you the animus or derision of another police service.
‘Do I want to know what this is all about?’ he asked grimly.
‘Not if all goes well here, sir,’ she said, hoping fervently that it would. She didn’t want Rollo Sale to have to take any of the flack if it turned out that she couldn’t keep Gareth — and by association, the CRT — out of the mire.
‘So you’d better see to it that it does then,’ he warned her.
‘Yes, sir, thanks for that,’ Hillary said bitterly, and hung up. It wasn’t often you got to hang up on the likes of a commander, but it sure felt good when you did!
Then she took a deep breath and went back to Jason Morley’s flat. She was relieved to see that Gareth hadn’t moved from his position on the sofa. While she’d had to take the risk that he might have torn up the page from the suicide note and flushed it down the toilet while she’d been making her phone call, she thought it unlikely. He wouldn’t want to risk even a trace of it being found at the scene, for one thing. He’d learned enough in all his training courses to know that pieces of paper could be retrieved from u-bends.
‘Gareth,’ she finally said quietly, and saw him jump and look around. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he looked awful. She held out her hands in a ‘peace’ gesture. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. What she meant was, did he have himself all together.
‘Ma’am, what are you doing here?’ Gareth croaked.
‘When Claire told me that you’d got a text that seemed to upset you, I thought it might be something to do with your friend again. Jason Morley, right?’ She glanced quickly at the dead man, then away again. ‘Is that him?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, swallowing hard.
‘Were you here when he . . . ?’
‘Sort of, ma’am.’
‘Tell me what happened. I’ve already called for a team to come out, so you might as well get your thoughts in order by practising on me first. Whoever they assign SIO will want your detailed statement.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he muttered, visibly pulling himself together. ‘As you know, Jase — sorry, Jason — texted me, about an hour ago it must be now, saying that he needed to see me urgently. He’s been really depressed lately, so I thought I’d better come.’
Hillary nodded. ‘You’ll have the text on your phone? The SIO will want to see it.’
‘Yes, ma’am. When I arrived, I rang his bell and then immediately heard a gunshot. The door wasn’t locked, so I rushed in and found him . . .’ He waved a hand in the direction of his dead friend but didn’t look at him.
Hillary nodded. So Gareth must have arrived barely a minute or two before she did. He’d have taken the lift, given his weaker leg and the amount of stairs to climb, which is how they must have missed each other in the lobby.
‘Had he given any indication of being suicidal?’ she asked gently. She needed to play for time now, to give Rawson time to arrive. If she remembered rightly, he was actually stationed at Bicester, so with a bit of luck he could be here within minutes.
Gareth hesitated. Then sighed. ‘Yes and no. He was depressed and angry and couldn’t seem to hold down a job. He moved flats recently because he couldn’t seem to settle. But he’d been like that for a while. Today . . . I suppose it just all got too much for him.’ He swallowed hard.
No doubt, Hillary thought grimly, the poor sod was now thinking back, trying to see if he’d missed signs, and giving himself hell for not being a better friend. In her experience, the family and friends of suicide victims often blamed themselves unnecessarily.
‘Any idea why he waited for you to ring the bell before . . . seeing it through?’ she asked delicately.
Gareth winced. ‘I suppose he wanted to be sure that I would be the one to find him, ma’am. Spare any civilians the trauma of discovering him, I mean, or even a member of his family.’
Hillary nodded. She supposed that made some sort of macabre sense.
She spent the next five minutes gently coaxing him to talk about Jason Morley, all the while listening out for the arrival of Rawson. It wasn’t his footsteps coming along the corridor that announced his arrival though, but the vibration of her phone.
She brought it out and saw an unknown number on the screen. She punched the button. ‘Hillary Greene,’ she said.
‘Guv, it’s Sergeant Rawson. Commander Donleavy asked me to make contact?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Downstairs.’
‘Come to the top floor. I’ll meet you not far from the open door to the flat at the far end of the corridor.’
‘Guv.’
The click in her ear had her rising slowly to her feet. She’d never met Rawson in person, but she knew that she’d have no trouble with him, even if he were aware that as a former DI, she didn’t have any official standing any more. Getting a phone call from a commander and being given direct orders tended to focus the mind very speedily on what was, and was not, relevant!
Gareth looked too washed out and miserable to move, and when she heard the outer door from the stairwell open, she felt safe enough nipping out for a few moments to give Rawson his orders.
The sergeant did indeed look to be in his late teens, though she knew him to be somewhere in his late twenties. Slim, with fair hair and a pale face, he was dressed in jeans, sneakers and a faded T-shirt.
He watched her approach with interested eyes. He knew who she was of course — everyone knew about DI Greene, station-house legend, winner of a medal for bravery, and with a solve rate second to none. And when he knew he’d finally be meeting her, he knew it was going to be something good.
‘Sergeant,’ she said briefly, keeping her voice low. ‘I take it Commander Donleavy has briefed you?’
‘Not really, guv. He just said I was to get myself here double-quick and do whatever you told me then make myself scarce, like.’
Hillary’s lips twisted. Nice wording on Donleavy’s part, she mused. If, later, things went belly up, he could always deny giving any specific orders. Which left her very neatly holding the poisoned chalice. But she didn’t mind that. They both knew how things worked, and she didn’t need her hand holding.
‘Right. Here it is — in there,’ she indicated the far flat, ‘we’ve got one male dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Also present is Gareth Proctor, a former soldier and now a member of my team in CRT. He sustained injuries to the left side of his body in the army. It’s his best friend lying dead on the floor so he’s not in the best of shape. An armed response unit is on the way but has been informed there is no immediate danger of further gunfire. Commander Donleavy will have ordered them to wait for me to give the go-ahead before coming in. With me so far?’
Nick Rawson’s eyes had slowly widened, but although his mind must have been racing with questions, that w
as the only indication on his face that he was in any way affected. ‘Yes, guv.’
‘Gareth Proctor has a piece of paper in the back right-hand pocket of his trousers. I want you to extract it from him, without his knowledge, at the first opportunity that presents itself, and give it to me, without him seeing you do it. I’ll try and get him on his feet quickly, and with his back to you. All right?’
Apart from an even further widening of the sergeant’s eyes, there was again no other sign that Nick Rawson found the situation in any way out of the normal. He’d go far, this boy, Hillary thought happily. ‘Yes, guv,’ he said.
Hillary nodded and jerked her head. ‘Put some gloves on and follow me then,’ she said softly, reaching into her bag and pulling on a pair of gloves herself.
They went in, and Gareth looked up. Even to someone who didn’t know him, it was clear that he’d just had an almighty shock.
‘Gareth, this is Sergeant Rawson. I need to phone Superintendent Sale,’ she said, somewhat dryly, ‘and let him know we’re safe.’
She took a deep breath and punched in Rollo’s number, mentally preparing herself for a well-deserved rollicking.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For once, luck was on Hillary’s side. After meekly accepting her tongue-lashing from her highly relieved superintendent, she gave him a succinct briefing and promised to hold the fort until reinforcements arrived.
She managed to get Gareth up and out of the flat by simply ordering him to follow her outside into the corridor, without explaining herself. She figured that, as a former soldier, this was probably the best approach. He was still visibly shaken, but was already beginning to rally somewhat. And having an order to follow would probably help him to feel as if things were beginning to get back to some kind of normal.
Once outside, she noticed that Rawson casually positioned himself behind Gareth, who was leaning heavily on his walking stick, and try as she might — and even though she knew what was about to happen — could not detect the moment when he artfully lifted the page from Gareth’s back pocket.
It was only when he moved slightly to one side and gave her the briefest of nods that she knew he’d done it.
Facing Gareth, she said gently, ‘You look all done in. I think you’d be better off outside in the fresh air.’ Seeing that he was about to argue, she added, ‘You can’t help your friend by staying in there,’ jerking her head to indicate the flat behind them, ‘but you can make yourself useful by briefing the next attending officer and directing them up here to me.’
Gareth drew in a slow breath and straightened his spine. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.
‘Sergeant Rawson will go down with you,’ she added, giving the young officer a quick look to see if he’d got the message. He had. He gave a brief nod of understanding. Once he’d seen Gareth outside, he’d be off before he had to give his name and appear in any official log.
As all three waited by the lift, Hillary felt something touch her hand and realized it was the piece of paper. Without looking down, she closed her gloved hand around it, and making sure that Gareth was unaware of what she was doing, slid her hand down to her side, keeping it out of sight.
When the two men got in the lift, she nodded at Rawson. He nodded back.
Once the lift door closed behind them, she moved quickly back to the flat and reached down to pick up the other two pages of the suicide note that Gareth had left in situ on the coffee table to one side of the sofa. She hoped that it was in the same place where he’d first noticed it.
She slipped the sheet of paper back into place, smoothing out the creases, and quickly read the entire thing through. It was, as she’d thought, a suicide note, and was thankfully unambiguous. The first sheet began with an apology to Gareth for choosing him to be the first on the scene and leaving him with the initial problem of starting to clean up his mess and telling him the envelope he’d left with him contained his will, and funeral preferences. As well as a slim, expensive watch, which he wanted Gareth to keep in remembrance of him.
The second page stated simply and factually that he’d ‘done for’ Clyde-Brough, who had deserved everything he got, and gave enough details of the killing to satisfy her colleagues in Reading.
The final page was a lament to his parents, and a brief word for the coroner, stating that nobody had helped or aided him in his efforts to kill himself.
Although the segue from first to third page (without benefit of the second) was a bit clumsy, she doubted that it would have been unduly commented on by either the SIO or coroner, if it had been logged into evidence without the middle page. After all, nobody expected somebody about to blow their brains out to be overly concerned with their syntax.
Leaving the now-intact note on the table, Hillary breathed a sigh of relief and then nearly jumped out of her skin when her phone vibrated in her bag. She switched it back to ringer mode and answered it. She kept her eyes firmly away from the still, damaged figure lying on the floor.
‘Hillary Greene’ she said simply.
It was Rollo, with news that Inspector Sam Waterstone would be arriving on the scene shortly, and was SIO on the suicide case. Also en route was the armed response team, who would still have to assess the situation, given that there had been a discharge of a firearm.
Hillary thanked him and hung up. She and Sam Waterstone were good mates of long standing, and she knew the big, rugby-playing inspector wouldn’t question her with any great suspicion or give her or Gareth a hard time. Which made her feel guilty. Abusing the trust of a friend was not something that sat well with her.
She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that Jason had committed suicide, and her actions had kept all the evidence intact for him, but it still left a bad taste in her mouth.
And could she detect the subtle hand of one Commander Donleavy in ensuring that it was Sam who’d been assigned this particular case?
She smiled wryly. Trust the commander not to miss a trick.
* * *
As she’d surmised, when Sam joined her outside the door to the flat about twenty minutes or so later, he listened to her evidence without questioning any of it. She told him about Gareth’s worry over his friend, and her worry over Gareth, and how she’d arrived mere moments after him, the gun having gone off as Gareth rang Jason Morley’s doorbell.
It took a good hour for Sam and his team to get both her and Gareth’s witness statements down. The only bad moment came when Sam asked her about Rawson. In all her rush to get things sorted, she’d simply failed to plan for this obvious oversight. It made her mad at herself for overlooking it. Of course Gareth was bound to mention Rawson’s presence when giving his statement.
It was scant comfort to her to realize that, even if she had anticipated this, she could have done little to mitigate it. She couldn’t have asked Gareth not to mention Rawson without him getting suspicious and demanding to know why. And the last thing she needed was for Gareth to get antsy or bolshie, thus undoing all her good work on his behalf by making Sam Waterstone wary.
She shrugged at her old friend and said that she knew Rawson from before, and that he was stationed very nearby, and so she’d called and asked him to come by, in case she needed an official and serving police officer on the scene. Until the arrival of the tactical team, she pointed out, there’d been no official representation at the crime scene. When it became clear that he wasn’t needed, he’d left.
And as soon as she had a moment, she quickly found and called Rawson and told him what story he should stick to, if asked.
When they were finally finished, she walked with Gareth towards the side street where he’d parked his car. He looked tired, and dragged his left leg visibly.
‘You should go home,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve had a hell of a shock.’
‘I’d rather go back to HQ, ma’am, if it’s all the same to you,’ he said flatly.
Hillary nodded. She understood his reluctance to go back to his quiet and empty flat all too well. Somet
imes, when you’d had your world rocked, you needed people, noise, and normalcy around you. Left alone in a quiet space, there was nothing to distract you, allowing things to grow and magnify in your mind.
‘All right. But I’m going to ask the police doctor to give you a going-over.’
‘Ma’am, I’m fine,’ he protested.
‘Good. Then the doctor won’t have much work to do on you, will he?’ she said with a gentle smile.
As they reached his car, she looked at him closely. ‘I think we’ll take my car. I’ll drive. Give me your keys, and I’ll have someone drive your car back to your place.’
‘Ma’am,’ he said, too tired to argue. He reached into his right jacket pocket and handed them over.
They walked on in silence to where she’d left Puff, and went back to HQ in even more silence.
One thing was for certain, Hillary mused, he’d not yet checked his back pocket. But when he did, things would get very interesting indeed.
At first, he’d think he must have lost it somewhere. But when he stopped and realized it couldn’t have easily fallen out of his tight pocket, his quick mind would soon put one and one together.
And then there’d be fireworks.
As she drove, Hillary was already mentally rehearsing just how she was going to respond to the flare-up when it inevitably came.
* * *
While Hillary Greene contemplated her immediate future, Mia de Salle was contemplating her distant past.
The churchyard where Michael Beck was buried was looking at its best in a ray of spring sunshine. In one corner, a white-flowering cherry tree looked heartbreakingly lovely, and in it a jenny wren was singing its little heart out.
Mia walked the familiar route through the graves, although she hadn’t been there for some time now and stopped in front of the white gravestone. She had a bunch of colourful and sweet-smelling freesias in her hand, and bending down, was glad to see there was room (and water) for them in the small pot recessed into the bottom of the plinth.
