The Loyal Servant (2 page)

2

‘And did you touch anything?’ The tall uniformed policeman towered over Caroline, a concerned look on his face.

Caroline shook her head. She was sitting on a hard plastic chair opposite the minister’s open door. She’d been answering questions for a while. She wasn’t sure how long. Long enough for the paramedics to come and go. Long enough for more officers to turn up, these ones wearing white paper suits with little hoods bulging from the back of their necks. They were in Martin’s office now. What were they doing with him all this time?

PC Mills had explained a detective would need to ask her more questions when he arrived later. So many questions already, Caroline’s head was spinning.

‘You’re sure?’ the PC said. He wrote something down in his notebook.

A female constable handed Caroline a glass of water, she took a sip and handed it back.

‘Sorry?’ Caroline said.

The policeman crouched down to her level and looked into her face, his gaze soft and sympathetic.

‘I know how difficult this is for you. But we really need to know if you touched any surfaces, picked anything up. We are looking at a potential crime scene.’

‘Crime scene?’

‘We can’t rule anything out at this stage.’

Caroline swallowed a rising wave of nausea and forced herself to remember the moments immediately after discovering Martin Fox’s body.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes I did. I’m sorry. I—’

She was cut short by the sight of two paramedics at the far end of the office wheeling a gurney towards her. PC Mills placed a hand on her arm and squeezed. His mouth twitched into a sad smile. She smiled back.

‘I touched Martin,’ she said quietly.

She watched as the gurney squeezed through the doorway into Martin Fox’s office. She closed her eyes for a moment, suddenly aware how heavy her arms and legs felt. She just wanted to go home. Pete and the kids would be worried sick. Her mobile was probably ringing non-stop on her desk three floors below.

‘Where did you touch him?’

She forced her eyes open and sniffed in a breath, determined not to cry. ‘His neck. But I couldn’t feel a pulse.’ She searched the PC’s face for reassurance. ‘He was warm.’

The police officer nodded, encouraging her to carry on.

‘I couldn’t remember what it is you’re supposed to do when someone… when they… I called for the ambulance.’ The inside of her nose was tingling, she sniffed again. ‘So I touched his phone too.’ She bit her lip and looked away. ‘Four nines.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I had to get an outside line,’ she said, distracted by the memory. She heard a clank of metal against wood and twisted her head towards the noise. The gurney was stuck in the doorway. Hemmed in between the metal rails on either side was a long narrow shape, covered in a red blanket. Caroline heard the constable say something to her, but his voice was muffled and distant. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gurney as the paramedics struggled to manoeuvre Martin Fox out of his room.

‘Mrs Barber?’

‘Sorry. I…’

She lifted a shaking hand to pull a strand of hair away from her face. She swallowed.

Finally the gurney was through the doorway, the paramedics hurried it along the office towards the exit.

‘Do you think you can carry on?’ PC Mills rested a reassuring hand on her arm.

Caroline nodded and forced her eyes open wide.

‘Do you remember touching anything on his desk? Did you move anything? Take anything away? A letter, a note? Anything like that?’

‘A note?’

‘Well, in these circumstances… it’s quite usual—’

‘These circumstances?’

He nodded.

It took her a moment to realise what he was getting at. ‘But you just said it was a crime scene.’

‘I said we’re not ruling anything out.’

Caroline shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see a note.’

A woman in a white paper suit waved what looked like a plastic freezer bag under the constable’s nose. Inside the bag Caroline could clearly see an envelope with her name and address written on it in fat, black marker pen. It was Martin Fox’s handwriting. She gasped.

‘My card!’ She reached towards the bag as it was snatched away and stared at the retreating envelope. ‘It’s my birthday.’ She watched the woman in the white suit stow the envelope in a large cardboard box. ‘Next Tuesday.’

PC Mills frowned at her.

‘Martin has a big calendar with everyone’s birthday on it, you see,’ she said, suddenly feeling the need to explain. ‘He never forgets.’ A sob burst out of her throat, catching her completely unawares.

‘We might be able to get it back to you – when we’ve finished with it.’ He watched his colleague as she slotted a lid on the cardboard box. ‘Not in time for your birthday though, obviously.’

Caroline stood up and tried to peer into Martin Fox’s office. ‘Did you find a CD in there too?’ She listed to one side, unsteady on her feet. Her legs gave at the knee and she thumped back down on the chair.

‘A CD?’

‘Martin said he’d make me a mix of his favourite tracks – for my birthday. It’s the same thing every birthday and Christmas.’ She sucked down a deep breath. ‘I told him not to bother – I can’t stand jazz.’

‘So you were quite close to the deceased?’

Caroline frowned up at him.

‘I mean the, erm… minister?’

‘What?’ Caroline was distracted by another white-suited officer carrying half a dozen padded envelopes from Martin’s room, each in its own freezer bag. He stashed them all in the large cardboard box.

‘Mrs Barber?’ The PC leaned his head closer to hers.

Caroline tried to focus on his face. He’d stopped smiling.

‘Can I go home now?’ she said. Her cheeks were burning, her eyes stinging. She tipped back her head to stem an approaching tidal wave of tears.

‘Just a few more questions, Mrs Barber. And then the DI, Inspector Leary, will want to speak to you. He’ll be here soon.’ He stood up and stretched his legs, shook a foot, circled it at the ankle.

‘Do you have a tissue?’ Caroline wiped the back of her hand across her nose.

The female officer handed her a man-sized square and Caroline blotted her cheeks. ‘He’s a lovely man,’ she said. ‘Everyone loves Martin.’ She blew her nose.

‘Mr Fox was your boss, is that right?’

‘My boss? No…’ She watched PC Mills cross something out in his notebook. ‘He’s an MP, the minister responsible for schools. I work in the academies division.’

The officer looked at her blankly, his pen poised. She let out a sigh. ‘An academy is a particular type of school – part of Martin’s remit. He’s very keen on promoting the academies programme. So we work closely together – the academies division and Martin’s team.’

‘So would you say you knew the minister quite well?’

Caroline nodded slowly.

PC Mills scribbled down more notes, filled a page then turned to a fresh one. ‘I’m really sorry to ask you this,’ he said, crouching again, his long legs folding awkwardly beneath him. He cleared his throat. ‘Have you noticed anything different about Mr Fox recently?’ He spoke quietly, not quite making eye contact. ‘Anything out of the ordinary? Out of character, maybe?’

Caroline shrugged. ‘Out of the ordinary?’

The constable nodded. His cheek twitched.

She didn’t know how to answer. She wasn’t sure whether or not to mention the phone message. She couldn’t really remember it. She let out a ragged breath, sucked in another.

‘Was the minister at all…’ the PC hesitated, ‘…depressed?’

‘No! Martin doesn’t get depressed.’ The words flew out of her mouth with more force than she’d meant. ‘He’s just not the type.’ She stared at a spot on the doorframe where the gurney had gouged a jagged line in the paintwork.

‘Anything at all strike you as different about him?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s been stressed. It’s a very stressful job,’ she said. ‘But no way would he…’ She turned towards a low murmur of voices coming from the far end of the office.

‘Ah,’ PC Mills said. ‘That’s Inspector Leary.’

The constable gestured towards a short man in a flapping raincoat hurrying towards them. He was deep in conversation with another man who was dressed in a formal evening suit. It took Caroline a moment to recognise him.

‘That’s my boss,’ she said.

PC Mills wrote something else in his pad.

‘Jeremy Prior.’ Caroline looked at Prior, but he didn’t return her gaze.

‘Another minister?’

‘God, no. He’s acting head of the academies division.’

‘A civil servant.’ Mills was still writing.

‘Not exactly.’

The man in the raincoat glanced at the constable and tapped his watch as he made his way to Martin Fox’s office. PC Mills flipped back a page in his pad. ‘You were saying, just now, about the minister…’ He stared at his notes. ‘He was stressed.’

Caroline pinched her lip between her thumb and forefinger.

‘In what way?’ he said.

She glanced into Martin Fox’s room and tried hard to remember the exact words of the answerphone message.
Trust
was the only one that popped into her head and stuck. Through the open door and the buzz of men and women in white suits, she caught a glimpse of the half-empty bottle of Teacher’s and handful of small round pills that had spilled onto his desk. Inspector Leary was talking to one of the forensics people, his face set in a grim expression as he caught her gaze. She looked away quickly.

‘I realise what you’re trying to suggest.’ She turned to Mills. ‘But Martin’s not… he’s not…’ She searched for the right word. ‘A quitter,’ she said eventually. ‘Martin’s not a quitter. There’s absolutely no way he would take his own life.’

3

Angela Tate poured the last of the Three Barrels into a chipped mug and clinked china against her colleague’s glass.

‘To Jason,’ she said and downed the brandy in a single gulp. ‘Bloody stupid sod.’

‘That’s no way to speak of the dead.’ Frank Carter rolled his drink around the inside of the glass.

‘But what a ridiculous way to go. London is no place for pushbikes. Haven’t I always said that? And don’t get me started on van drivers.’

‘It was a meals-on-wheels lady driving the van.’

‘Why do you always get bogged down in the unimportant details, Frank? She still swerved right into him.’

‘She was trying to avoid a motorbike on the wrong side of the road.’

Angela shook her head. ‘Details Frank… details getting in the way of the real story.’

‘Which is?’

‘The age-old struggle between good and evil. And let me say right now, Frank, Jason Morris was an angel – a lovely, lovely boy.’ She gazed at the empty desk on the other side of the open plan newsroom.

‘He was twenty-nine, Ange.’ Frank Carter pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket and peered inside.

‘Exactly,’ Angela said. ‘A babe in arms.’ She waved her empty bottle in the air before letting it slip from her fingers into the bin. She looked down at the shattered glass. ‘You got any more booze?’

Frank crushed the cigarette packet in a fist and threw it on the desk. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

‘Listen, Frank, my mother has been dead and buried for some considerable time now – it’s far too late for you to step into her shoes and start up the nagging where she left off.’

She got up and swerved across the office to her dead colleague’s desk. She grabbed the top drawer of an under-desk console and yanked it hard. It shot out and hit her on the knee. She winced but managed to keep a yelp in check. A hiccup escaped from her mouth instead. The drawer was empty. She tried the drawer below. It pulled out a few inches then got stuck. Angela bent down and peered into the void within. She slammed it shut and tried the bottom drawer.

‘God, they cleared out his stuff fast. His body’s not even cold in the ground.’

‘He was cremated, Ange.’

‘Poetic licence. Wasted on a philistine paparazzo like you.’

‘What’re you looking for, anyway?’

‘I thought young Jason might have had a secret stash of booze.’

She grabbed the top of the console and wheeled it over the uneven and stained carpet, back to her own desk. Frank scowled at her.

‘What’s that face for? The lock’s busted on mine. Might as well grab this one before some other bugger does. I’m sure Jason would want me to have it. I was like a mother to that boy. He looked up to me.’

She shook the detritus from her own console straight into the new one, locked it and threw the pair of keys into her handbag. ‘No one gets to rifle through my drawers now.’

Frank raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m going to push off,’ he said.

‘And leave me to drink on my own? We haven’t even had a chance to celebrate the
good
news. That’s got to be worth another half bottle, at least. Come on, Frankie, it’ll take my mind off poor young Jason’s premature departure.’

‘As we’re all out of booze and fags, I’d say it was a good time to call it a night.’

‘Where’s your sense of occasion?’

Angela leaned sideways in her chair and grabbed a pair of shoes from under the desk. She crammed her swollen feet into them.

‘Let’s go to the pub.’ She got up quickly and the room began to sway, lurching from side to side. Her stomach felt like it was moving to the same rhythm. She sat back down, gripped her head in her hands and waited for the motion to stop.

‘Do you know,’ she said, after taking a few moments to recover. ‘I still have my copy of the
Standard
from November 1990?’ She let out a noisy sigh. ‘Should have been a public holiday, the day Thatcher resigned.’ She slumped back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair until they snagged in a tangle. ‘Come to the pub with me. Go on, you know you want to.’

Frank grabbed his leather jacket from the back of a chair and squeezed his thick arms into the sleeves. ‘Just one drink. And it better be a small one.’ He picked up his camera bag and swung it over a shoulder.

‘That’s the spirit, Frankie.’

He started walking towards the door, stopped halfway across the newsroom and turned back.

‘Do you still want me to cover that demo next week?’

‘Remind me?’

‘The thing at the building site in Catford. Only I was thinking of taking a few days off.’

She screwed up her face. ‘You never take time off – are you moonlighting?’

‘Do you need me or not?’

‘Be good to get some half-decent shots – you never know, something might kick off.’

‘And who’s doing the kicking?’

‘Oh just a few concerned parents and a handful of militant teachers.’ She reached down for her bag and dumped it on the desk. ‘Though I’m not convinced waving a ‘Save our School’ placard and collecting a few hundred signatures is going to stop the bulldozers moving in.’

‘What’s so terrible about a new school being built anyway? You’d think they’d be grateful.’

‘It’s not just a school though, is it?’

Frank put his hands in his pockets and pulled a face. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘God, Frank – have you read none of my features?’

He rubbed a hand over his chin looking like a man who wished he’d never asked.

‘It’s an
academy
. Repeat after me: academies are evil.’

‘OK – got that. Let’s get to the pub.’

Angela made another attempt at vertical, this time employing a more gradual ascent. Thankfully the room stayed still and the contents of her stomach remained motionless.

‘Number one,’ she said, sticking a thumb in the air. ‘Academies are not accountable to the local authority.’ She waved an index finger at him. ‘Two: they headhunt all the best teachers from the surrounding schools.’

‘What’s wrong with—’

She glared at him and he took a sudden interest in his shoes.

‘Three: they suck up cash that would have been distributed to other schools. Four…’ Her mind went blank. ‘Four escapes me for the moment.’

Frank held up his hands. ‘Really, Ange – I get the picture. Just tell me what time to tip up and I’ll take all the photos you want – you can save the rest of the lecture ‘til then.’

She pursed her lips and stared at him through narrowed eyes.

‘I promise you’ll have my undivided.’

‘Hah!’

She’d been digging away at the academies story for weeks now and come up with nothing of any real substance. No nice juicy scandal to make her editor sit up and take notice. He was beginning to lose patience.

‘Come on, Ange – let’s get that drink. My shout.’

Angela wrapped a scarf around her throat and shrugged on a raincoat, taking care to keep her head as still as possible. She edged gingerly around the desk and glanced over at Jason Morris’s empty chair. ‘Such a terrible waste. He had real talent, that boy.’

Frank looked at his watch.

‘Do you know what he was working on?’

Frank shook his head. ‘Why?’

‘Thought I might be able to pick up where he left off.’

‘Not content snatching a dead man’s drawers, now you want to steal his work too?’

‘I wouldn’t take all the credit. It’d be my tribute to him.’ She laid a hand against her heart. ‘You really don’t know what he was investigating?’

‘If you don’t know it’s not likely I would, is it?’

Angela did her best to focus on Frank’s face. ‘I know how you lot like to gossip,’ she said. ‘Standing around all day waiting for a celebrity to flash an unsightly bit of cellulite at you.’

‘Is that how you think of me?’ He flashed her a smile. ‘I’m deeply wounded.’

‘You do know something, don’t you?’ She tottered over to him. ‘Come on, Frank – cough.’

Frank held out his arms. ‘Would I lie to you?’

‘Whenever you get the chance.’

‘All I know, it was all very hush-hush. But then that’s the whole point, isn’t it?’

Angela shook her head and immediately regretted it. The office pitched and rolled. ‘Whole point of what?’

‘Jason Morris was working undercover.’