by Faith Martin
‘When I watched you tampering with a crime scene, do you know what I should have done, Mr Proctor?’ she asked, again cutting across him, but careful this time to keep her tone casual. ‘I should have backed out, called Superintendent Sale, told him what I’d seen, and have Sergeant Rawson come over to arrest you on the spot. I’d then have retrieved Jason’s confession to the killing of Clyde-Brough, when it would have been used not only to clear the Reading murder off the books, but also at your own trial. That’s what I should have done. That’s what my duty as someone working for the police dictated I should have done,’ she emphasized.
She let that hang in the air for a moment and was glad to see that he was having difficulty looking her in the eye now. ‘But is that what I did?’
When he remained silent, she repeated gently, ‘Is that what I did, Mr Proctor?’
‘No, ma’am,’ he said reluctantly.
‘No, I didn’t, did I? Instead, I called in a favour and got Sergeant Rawson — who in case you were wondering, was taught the tricks of the trade by a very successful pickpocket — to come and retrieve the evidence without any fuss. And then leave, making no report of it anywhere, and agreeing to keep his mouth firmly shut. Thus putting his own professional neck on the line to save yours.’
This direct hit made Gareth flinch. Good. He was beginning to realize that he — and more importantly, Jason Morley — were not the only ones he needed to think of now.
‘I then returned the now-intact suicide note to the coffee table, compounding the irregularities, thus putting my neck on the block too, and what’s more, never said a word to the SIO who’d been given the case. And by the way, just in case you’re interested, Sam Waterstone is a good mate of mine,’ she said flatly, ‘and lying to him didn’t sit well with me. At all.’
Gareth shook his head. ‘I never asked you to do any of that,’ he said stubbornly, but without much force now.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Hillary agreed, suddenly feeling very tired. Something of her weariness must have shown on her face, for his fierce gaze started to soften.
‘I did it because, in spite of the spectacular evidence to the contrary given your actions today, I think you’re a good man,’ she carried on. ‘I think you have good brains and I think, given time, you’d make a good fit with my team and be a real asset to the CRT.’
She ran a hand over her face and sighed. ‘Now, I want you to go home and instead of thinking about your friend, who is now dead and thus beyond your help, I want you to think instead about all the people who are not.’ She shifted in her chair and shook her head. ‘Gareth, you’ve been with us long enough now to know and fully grasp the importance of what the CRT does. It finds killers. It brings the truth out into the open, delivers justice for the dead, and hopefully brings some kind of peace and closure to the loved ones of the victims. People like the Becks. And you need to make a decision now. Perhaps one of the more important ones of your life. Do you want to stay a part of that? Do you want to spend the next ten, fifteen or even twenty years working on behalf of the dead, the forgotten, the mourned? Or are you going to let your friend’s tragedy ruin your own life too?’
‘Ma’am, I—’
‘Shut up,’ Hillary said brutally, but in truth she really was beginning to feel wrung out. It had been a hell of a day. She’d had to deal with a devastating suicide, receive a rollicking from a man she both liked and respected, done Marcus Donleavy’s dirty work for him yet again, and had been forced to make ethical decisions that she felt totally unequal to making.
She was tired and she wanted nothing more than to go back to the Mollern and the peace and quiet of the canal, and just curl up on her bed and go to sleep.
‘I simply don’t have the energy or the patience to deal with you anymore right now,’ she added flatly. ‘So go home. Think about everything I’ve said. Then come in to work tomorrow and either hand in your resignation, or be prepared to do your bloody job. I have a feeling things will be moving in the Michael Beck case very soon and we’re going to have to be on the top of our game. Go on.’ She waved to the door behind him. ‘Get out of my sight.’
He stiffened, looking about as tired and beat as she felt, but turned to go. When he was halfway out of the door, she said laconically, ‘And by the way, Mr Proctor, if you do decide to stay on and do a worthwhile job, don’t ever expect me to pull your fat from the fire again. If I can’t trust you, you’re of no use to me.’
For answer to that warning, he slammed the door behind him.
Hillary sighed and closed her eyes for a few moments, then gave a weary half-snort, half-laugh. Well, she’d either got through to him or she hadn’t.
By now, Sam Waterstone would have read Jason Morley’s suicide note, bagged it in evidence, and been in contact with the Reading murder squad, who would no doubt greet his news with open arms.
There would be no scandal or newspaper headlines tearing into Thames Valley’s performance over the mishandling of a suicide, and Commander Marcus Donleavy and Superintendent Rollo Sale could rest easy in their beds tonight.
And Hillary Greene?
She suddenly grinned. Hillary Greene was going to go back to her boat and have a bloody stiff drink. That’s what Hillary Greene was going to do.
And then tomorrow she was going to close the Michael Beck case.
With a bit of luck, and supposing the universe wasn’t still feeling in a bloody-minded mood, that is.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hillary drove into work not knowing if Gareth Proctor was going to be at his desk or not. But she didn’t go straight to the small communal office as she would normally have done, or even her own, but made straight for Rollo Sale’s office instead.
She tapped on the door, uncomfortably aware that, for the first time in their working relationship, there might be awkwardness between them. It made her sad, but it didn’t deter her.
After zonking out and getting about four solid hours of deep sleep, she’d spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, not thinking about Jason Morley or Gareth Proctor, but about the state of her latest case.
And although she thought she could now take a pretty good guess on the identity of Michael Beck’s killer, as well as the motivation behind it, she knew, right now, that was all it was: a guess. And if she was going to successfully close the case, she needed help. Initially, her boss’s help and maybe that of DI Robin Farrell as well.
She tapped on the superintendent’s door, waited for the summons to come in, and stepped inside, searching his face for signs of annoyance.
There were none. He looked up from behind his desk, and a brief, professional smile lit his face. ‘Hillary, come in.’
‘Sir. Do you have time to discuss the Beck case?’
‘I’ve a meeting in an hour.’
‘That should be fine.’
She took a seat, and then began to talk. She started at the beginning, going through all that they’d done so far, and why she’d come to the conclusions she had. Rollo, as was his habit, let her talk without interruption, occasionally making notes. When she was finished there was a long moment of silence.
‘It’s very thin,’ Rollo finally said.
‘Yes, sir. Paper thin.’
‘You have no forensic evidence at all?’
‘No, sir, not after all this time. And with no witnesses and no corroborating evidence — yet — the CPS won’t touch it with a barge pole.’
‘In other words, we’re going to have to rely heavily on a confession. Always supposing we can get one, and always supposing that’s enough for the CPS.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hillary said. Then said cautiously, ‘Of course, the murders that DI Farrell is investigating might hold out better hope of a result.’
‘Hmm. This idea you have that Michael’s murder and those of Newley and Kirklees are connected, and share the same killer, is somewhat thin, Hillary,’ Rollo pointed out.
Hillary nodded, utterly agreeing with him. ‘Yes, sir. But I think our
best way forward is to concentrate on those now. The fact that all three appear to have been murdered with a similar, unusually shaped weapon has to count for something.’
‘DI Farrell won’t like it,’ Rollo predicted with a smile. ‘He’s convinced Larry Spence killed them to expand his empire.’
‘Yes, and he may well be right,’ Hillary said mildly.
‘But you don’t think so?’
‘No. But as of this moment, I have nothing to go on but instinct and years of experience.’
‘Ah. That good old feeling in your bones you mentioned.’ Rollo smiled.
‘Which might well turn out to be rheumatism,’ Hillary put in, with a smile of her own. Not that she had much to smile about. The Beck case was proving to be far more complicated than she’d initially thought, and was going to be a real hard nut to crack. Plus, she was not at all sanguine that she could crack it.
Although the idea that Michael Beck’s killer would never be brought to account was a hard one to stomach, she knew that the chances had to be pretty high that she might just have to deal with exactly that scenario.
‘We need to get DI Farrell on board,’ Rollo mused. ‘I’ve been keeping an ear out for news about that, and I’m pretty certain that the Newley/Kirklees case stalled and Farrell’s guv’nor had powered it down. So it might just be that Farrell will jump at any chance to keep it active, even if it doesn’t align with his own thinking on it. Let me get him down here anyway, and see what he thinks. What, exactly, do you want done?’
Hillary felt some of the tension drain out of her. ‘Well, sir, as you know, here in CRT we can’t really do surveillance — we don’t have the manpower or the training for it. If DI Farrell and his team can be persuaded to keep a watch on our target, we might get lucky. If I’m right, and Michael Beck found treasure trove all those years ago — and was killed because of it — at some point, the killer will want to offload some of the items. I think that, over the years, that’s what had been happening, with Newley acting as go-between.’
‘So you’re assuming, what, that for some reason that relationship went stale, with our target being forced for whatever reason to get rid of his fence?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Kirklees? Why would our target kill him?’
Hillary spread her hands helplessly. ‘I don’t have all the answers yet. At this stage, we’re still in the dark about some things. But with the MO being so precise, whoever killed Newley had to have killed Kirklees too. The timing, with both men being killed the same day, with what appears to be the same unusual weapon, makes it virtually certain as well. We just don’t know why yet.’
Rollo sighed heavily. ‘Even if you’re right about the recent murders being tied up with our cold case, there’s no telling when the target will approach a new fence in order to sell off an item.’
‘No, sir. It could be days, weeks or even months,’ she admitted grimly.
‘No way we can afford to keep the target under surveillance for that long! Even a few days will be stretching the budget,’ Rollo told her in no uncertain terms.
‘Yes, sir. But we might get lucky. And it’s a start. Like you said, we really need to know more about why Newley and Kirklees were killed, and make the connection. Ideally, I’d like to take a look at DI Farrell’s files, but I know he won’t wear that.’
‘Neither will the top brass,’ Rollo agreed. ‘Cold cases are our remit — not ongoing ones.’
‘Yes sir, I know. It’s a pity we don’t have enough to get a court order to check on whether the target has a safety deposit box or not. Let alone get permission to look inside it.’
‘You think whatever Michael Beck found is lodged in a bank somewhere?’ Rollo asked sceptically.
Hillary laughed. ‘Well, sir, if you found a fortune in ancient gold by digging it up out of the ground, where, presumably, someone had once hidden it for safe-keeping, would you feel safe re-hiding it?’
Rollo grunted. ‘No, I suppose not. No, it’s not human nature, is it? You’d want to keep it somewhere you knew nobody could stumble on to it. And you’re right, that probably means a safety deposit box. And it’s certainly safe enough if that’s where it is, because right now no judge in the country would say we had grounds to have access to it.’
For a moment the two of them looked at one another with the same, grim thought. ‘This is turning out to be a real sod of a case, isn’t it?’ Rollo eventually said.
Hillary couldn’t disagree.
‘All right.’ Rollo glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll ask DI Farrell to come down and see if he’s willing to put a watch on the target. Like I said, I think he’ll be desperate enough to agree to that. But I don’t think he’ll be overly impressed with our reasoning.’
Hillary didn’t think he would be either. But it’s not as if they were awash with other options.
‘In the meantime, you’ll keep digging on the Michael Beck end of the case, right?’ Rollo Sale prompted.
‘Yes, sir. There are still things we can do there. We need to identify the murder weapon if possible. Now we know that Michael Beck must have been using specialist equipment for his hobby, we might be able to ascertain what might have been used to kill him. That’s something the original team never had a chance to do.’
‘Right.’
‘And then there’s the detector. If, as I suspect, Mrs Beck rings me back today to say that she can’t find it, then my theory as to what happened the day Michael was killed is looking better and better. It’s always possible that avenue might provide some physical evidence at last.’
Rollo snorted. ‘I can’t see our target being stupid enough to keep either the detector or the murder weapon, can you?’
But here Hillary surprised him. ‘Normally I’d say no, sir. But in this case . . . I’m not so sure.’
But on that she wouldn’t be drawn further. She didn’t want to look like a complete idiot if she was getting everything really, really wrong.
When she left Rollo’s office, she had to pass the door to the communal office, and heard the unmistakable sounds of human voices — one male, one female.
She didn’t pause at the doorway however as she might otherwise have done, but carried on to her stationery cupboard. There she found her desk clear of any unstamped envelopes containing a resignation letter. Which was promising.
But the day was still young.
She settled down at her desk, went through her emails, then started looking at archaeology websites, concentrating on the tools used by excavators. Michael Beck, Simon Newley and Lionel Kirklees had been killed by blows to the head with an oddly shaped, rounded metal object. And although there were a few things that looked vaguely promising for use as an impromptu murder weapon, nothing was totally ideal.
It wasn’t until she left the professional sites, and started looking at more amateur posts, usually set up by how-to-get-rich-quick merchants peddling the idea that anyone could find hidden treasure, that she finally found what she was looking for.
Not surprisingly, amateurs out on the hunt for easy pickings were more inventive (and more budget-strapped) than most, and one self-confessed ‘guru’ of metal detectors and treasure-seeking on the cheap offered quite a range of ‘useful’ if unconventional kit that could help out your average night-hawk.
One of which was a simple spud planter.
And on finding more information on this humble gardening accessory, Hillary began to feel as if she was earning her salary at last.
A spud planter was exactly what its name suggested. It was an implement for people who wanted to plant potatoes — or anything of similar size or shape, one presumed — which saved the gardener or allotment owner the need to dig a trench.
Some of these were long-handled, with a round metal tube or cone shape on the end, with a bar just above it, allowing the user to apply the weight of their foot — a bit as you would with a normal spade. The idea being that you stuck it in the ground, pressed down and pulled up — removing a deep, roun
d piece of sod. You then dropped the spud in, and by releasing the handle, popped the divot back on top.
Great for planting a row of spuds. Or, if you’d just had a beep on your metal detector and didn’t fancy digging a bloody great hole with a regular spade, pushing it into the ground directly over the ‘ping’ in the hope of pulling up something very interesting in your divot of turf.
Rounded, metallic, hefty, but probably not commonly used as a murder weapon.
Just then her phone rang. It was Rollo Sale, telling her that DI Farrell had just reluctantly permitted two of his greenest constables get some surveillance practice on the target, starting immediately. Which, they both concurred, was no more than they could reasonably have hoped for.
She had just hung up and found the original forensic pathologist’s file (which to her relief did confirm that spud planters hadn’t been looked at as a potential murder weapon) when the phone rang again.
This time it was Martina Beck, confirming that her son’s metal detector was nowhere to be found. And that she could not recall seeing it after her son’s murder.
Hillary thanked her, assured her she’d been very helpful, and hung up.
Things were beginning to fall into place, but they were only minor things. Just little pats on the back here and there to reassure her that she was on the right track. But there was nothing yet that she could say was going to light a fire under her case.
And yet, for once, Hillary’s pessimism was uncalled for. Perhaps she’d just had her quota of bad luck for a while, or perhaps the random whims of fate had turned once again capriciously in her favour. But barely four hours later, when DI Farrell’s green constables had been watching the target for less than two hours, they hit pay dirt.
The first indication she had that things were moving, and moving in quite a spectacular fashion, was when Rollo called and asked her to come to his office pronto.
Once she’d hot-footed it to his door and answered his summons to come in, the first face she saw was not that of her boss, but that of Robin Farrell.
And he was grinning from ear to ear.
