The Loyal Servant (9 page)

‘Hoping he might.’

Angela peered out from behind the tree, but couldn’t make out distinct faces. She saw Frank creep closer to the huddle of mourners, snapping off shots as he went.

‘Who else Frank?’ She heard the photographer gulping down another breath.

‘One of the deputy assistant commissioners from the Met in all his finery. Medals and everything. Can’t remember his name. You probably know him.’

Angela tried to focus on the uniformed man and spotted something flash at the far side of the grave. It flashed again. Then more flashing beside it. It took her another moment to work out what it was – sunlight reflected off pairs of mirrored sunglasses as heads turned in Frank’s direction. Then the heads and the sunglasses were on the move. Even from that distance Angela could see they weren’t regular plain-clothes policemen, or even personal protection for Mrs King and Oakley. They looked more like eastern European weightlifters, their arms and legs bulging in borrowed suits. They looked, in fact, very much like Larson’s men from the building site.

‘Watch out Frank! Three heavies heading straight for you, two o’clock.’

Frank pulled his camera from his face and started to run. Angela could hardly bear to watch. His flabby arms and legs pumped as hard as they could, but the three thugs were gaining on him.

‘Frank! Can you hear me? I think there’s something wrong with the connection – there’s a funny noise.’

‘That’s me! Can’t breathe!’

‘Thank God you’re still there. Who else did you see, Frank?’

The wheezing got louder.

‘Frank?’

‘Jesus… Ange… dying here.’

More rattling breaths.

‘Come on Frank!’

The thugs were almost on him.

‘Hang a sharp right.’

Frank looked up. ‘Too many… coppers.’

‘Your choice Frank – murderous-looking bastards right behind you, or the uniformed regular kind in front.’

Angela ducked back behind the tree. The heavy breathing on her mobile stopped. ‘Frank?’ She glanced at the screen. He’d ended the call. She risked another peek from her hiding place. Frank was in the middle of the police line, already making conversation with one of the officers. The three Larson thugs were keeping their distance. She looked for others of the same ilk and counted half a dozen before she stopped. It seemed the academy-sponsoring entrepreneur was taking his private army to funerals now. That either meant he was getting seriously paranoid in his old age or he was genuinely under threat. But who had made the decrepit old bastard that twitchy?

*

As soon as PC Mills saw Caroline approaching, he glanced left and right as if he was looking for an escape route. After a moment he shoved his hands back in his pockets and pulled back his shoulders. The corners of his mouth turned up a fraction.

‘I was beginning to think I’d imagined you,’ Caroline said.

The police officer stopped smiling.

‘I wanted to speak to you last week. I called the number on the card you gave me.’

‘I didn’t get any messages.’ He frowned at her.

‘You wouldn’t have.’ Caroline glanced at the main group of mourners. They were starting to drift back towards the chapel and the entrance of the cemetery. Out of the corner of her eye she saw PC Mills checking his watch. ‘I didn’t leave any,’ she said.

‘What did you want to speak to me about?’

‘I didn’t leave any messages because when I tried the number a second time they told me they’d never heard of you.’

‘What? When was this?’

‘Last Monday.’

‘Ah.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I wasn’t there. I’ve been transferred.’

‘The woman on the phone said there was no record of you.’

‘Who did you speak to?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Sometimes they get temps in.’ He lowered his head. ‘And between you and me they can be a bit useless.’

‘She sounded competent enough to me.’ Caroline scrutinised the constable’s face. ‘Transferred? On Monday?’

He nodded.

‘Why did you give me your card then, if you knew you wouldn’t be there?’

‘I didn’t – the job came right out of the blue. I’ve waited so long to be a detective – I was gobsmacked.’

‘You’ve been promoted and you didn’t even know it was coming?’

‘Not promoted – I’m still a constable.’

‘Didn’t you ask why?’

He shrugged.

Caroline blew out a long breath and tried to assimilate the new information. It didn’t make sense. ‘If you’ve been transferred, what are you doing here? Presumably this isn’t your case anymore.’

He looked at the ground. ‘It isn’t. This is my day off.’

‘So why are—’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’m a good listener.’

Mills sniffed and started to nibble at his bottom lip. He rocked back on his heels and gazed towards Martin Fox’s grave.

‘The minister’s wasn’t the first suicide I’ve attended, not by a long way,’ he said quietly. ‘The first dead body I ever saw was a suicide.’ He breathed out and his chest heaved. ‘I didn’t get a chance to pay my last respects to her, so I try to get to the funerals of other people who’ve… you know…’ His cheek twitched. ‘I’ve been to too many over the years.’ He rubbed both hands across his face. ‘Occupational hazard, I suppose.’

Caroline had so many questions she wanted to ask him about Martin Fox, but now suddenly didn’t seem the right time.

‘Had you been in the job long, that first time?’ she said.

‘It was long before I joined the force.’ He swallowed. ‘Years before.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Twelve.’

Caroline automatically reached out a hand. He recoiled from her touch. ‘She was my sister,’ he said.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It was just the way you described it.’

Caroline frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘She was still warm when I found her. Just like you said, you know… about finding the minister’s body. Brought it back.’

Caroline stared at the grave.

Mills sniffed loudly and puffed out a breath. ‘I should go now.’ He started to move away then stopped. ‘What was it you wanted to speak to me about, when you called the station?’

Caroline hesitated, not sure she should broach the subject. ‘I needed someone to talk to about Martin’s death.’

The policeman sighed. He reached into a pocket and pressed a business card into her hand. It looked the same as the last one, except now instead of a Belgravia address, it gave details of a police station in Lewisham.

‘You’ve crossed the river,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it a bit downmarket, after Westminster?’

Mills shrugged. ‘Give me a call on the new number. I can put you in touch with counsellors in your area. Posttraumatic support. I’m not really qualified to—’

‘I don’t want to talk through my feelings.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘I want to talk to
you
. About the investigation.’

He screwed up his face.

Caroline withdrew her hand. ‘That night – when you were questioning me, you asked me if I’d moved anything, do you remember? Anything like a note or a letter.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Do you remember what I said?’

He nodded very slowly.

‘Then how do you explain the suicide note that was leaked to the papers?’

He rubbed his face again. ‘I saw the note myself.’

‘What?’

‘When I read the story in the paper I thought it was weird. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t remember a note at the scene. So I went and checked the evidence myself. And there was the note, plain as day.’

‘But there wasn’t a note – especially not stuck to the monitor on his desk. You know that.’

‘We must have missed it.’

‘I know what I saw.’ There was a tremor in Caroline’s voice.

‘And I know what I saw in the evidence box.’

‘So you think it’s genuine?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be? What are you suggesting?’

‘You didn’t see a note at the scene. Neither did I. All your forensics colleagues managed to miss it too. Then suddenly one turns up?’

Mills’ cheek twitched. ‘Stranger things happen.’

‘That’s reassuring.’ Caroline started to bite her bottom lip. She was getting nowhere.

‘Look,’ Mills said, ‘I’ve really got to go.’

‘Wait.’ She laid a hand on his arm. ‘You said yourself it was your day off.’

‘Still…’

‘Assuming for a moment the note is genuine, how far have you got in tracking down the blackmailers?’

‘What?’

‘If it’s genuine, those blackmailers supposedly drove Martin Fox to take his own life. That’s not just blackmail – that’s manslaughter, isn’t it? What are the police doing about that?’

‘I’m working out of a new station now. It’s not my case anymore.’

Caroline threw back her head and gazed up at the cloudless sky. She sucked down a breath. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘what about your colleague, then – the woman constable – the one who drove me home? She’s still on the case, presumably. I’ll talk to her.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Just give me her name.’

‘She’s not at work at the moment.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s off – long-term sick. She’s done her back in.’

‘What? When did this happen?’

Mills shook his head. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s just a coincidence. You can’t read anything into it.’

‘When did it happen?’ Caroline asked again, but had a feeling she knew the answer already.

‘Same day I got transferred.’

12

Caroline wandered up Victoria Street from the station in a daze. Everyone else seemed to be hurrying in the opposite direction, banging shoulders and elbows as they rushed past, hurrying back to work after their lunch breaks. She got as far as the bus stop opposite House of Fraser and sank onto the narrow plastic bench inside the bus shelter.

She’d planned to go back into the office after leaving the cemetery, and catch up on the missed morning’s work. But now she was less than ten minutes away from the department, the reality of sitting at her desk, desperately trying to concentrate while Pam fired questions at her about the funeral was making her stomach churn. She retrieved her mobile from her bag, called a colleague and explained she wouldn’t be in until the morning. She felt better as soon as she slipped the phone back into her bag.

Moments later the number 11 arrived, which would take her to Charing Cross, where she could jump on a train to take her home. Right now the idea that she could simply close her front door on the day made everything just a little easier to bear.

She gazed blankly out of the window on the top deck, replaying the events of the morning over and over. The faces of the mourners lined up in her head and the memory of Martin Fox’s casket being lowered into the ground seemed to repeat on an endless loop. She searched the surrounding seats for a discarded
Metro
or early edition of the
Standard
, anything that might distract, shift her attention to something other than Martin Fox. She spotted a copy of the
Evening News
on the seat opposite and reached across the aisle for it. Most of the front page was taken up with a photograph of the leader of the opposition, trying to look statesmen-like as he stared grim-faced into the camera. The launch of his party’s manifesto apparently warranted front page headlines. Caroline read the first few lines of the accompanying article. William King’s election announcement had caught the other parties completely by surprise. It was a miracle they’d managed to magic up a coherent election message at all in the space of a week. There wasn’t much to distinguish one major party from another. The opposition’s manifesto bore an uncanny resemblance to the current government’s. The election would probably be won on personality alone. Caroline wasn’t sure how most people felt about William King, he was doing well enough in opinion polls, but having worked under him at the department for the last two years, she couldn’t muster any feelings of goodwill towards him. Thoughts of King inevitably turned to memories of Martin Fox and the funeral she was trying to forget. She quickly opened the paper and scanned the inside pages for entertainment news and celebrity gossip, desperate to take her mind off the events of the morning.

A series of shouts from the lower deck reverberated up the stairs, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps. She turned to see a boisterous gang of two teenage boys and three girls clatter down the aisle to the back of the bus. Immediately a distorted dance track crackled from one of their mobile phones.

‘What you looking at, Grandma?’ one of the girls shouted at her.

Caroline was tempted to fire back a withering reply but decided instead to rise above the insult. She turned back to the
Evening News
and skimmed over the stories, keeping half an ear on the insults being hurled her way from the back of the bus. She continued turning pages still searching for something to grab her attention. The picture at the bottom of page nine did just that. She stared open-mouthed at the colour photograph of her mother being bundled into a police car. She checked the headline at the top of page:

AN ACADEMY TOO FAR?

She’d just finished reading the first paragraph when a half-crushed can of Coke skidded up the aisle of the bus and came to halt by the seat in front of hers, fizzing sticky froth all over the floor. Caroline turned to see the five teenagers all staring at her with their chins up and arms folded. She puffed out a weary sigh and stood up.

‘OK – whoever threw that can come here right now and pick it up.’

The kids looked at one another, barely suppressing their laughter and then stared back at her.

‘I mean it.’

‘What you gonna do?’ The same girl who’d spoken before shouted at her again.

Not today. Please not today.

They were nudging one another now, clearly egging each other on. Caroline looked at the spent can of Coke as it slid under a seat on the other side of the aisle.

Not today.

She slowly sat down to the sound of clucking from the back seat. She turned once again to the article, willing the words to register and sink in, the noise from the teenagers getting louder all the time. The story didn’t seem much more than an anti-academy rant, focusing on the delayed opening of a new academy in Hammersmith and the protests at the proposed site in Catford. Hence the photograph of ‘Frail old age pensioner Jean Henderson.’ Frail wasn’t an adjective Caroline would ever have imagined being used to describe her mother. She carried on reading.

In the final few paragraphs the tone of the piece seemed to change. It switched from a condemnation of the principle of academies in general to a more specific and personal attack on the sponsor of the Catford academy. The journalist questioned Sir Fred Larson’s motives for his charitable works, and suggested control of the curriculum in the two academies he’d sponsored so far might be at the root of his apparent generosity. Caroline scanned the rest of the story until one word jumped out at her. She tried hard to remember Larson’s academy applications. She’d dealt with the proposal for his first academy in Dagenham herself. Like the new one in Catford, the first two were business academies – focusing on excellence in entrepreneurism. She couldn’t recall any mention of deviation from the standard curriculum in religious studies. Or biology. She read the paragraph again.

Creationism
?
Really
?

Her phone started ringing. She pulled it from her bag and saw the number had been withheld. It was just possible someone from the department was checking up on her, Pam most probably. She answered just before voicemail kicked in.

‘Mrs Barber?’ A man’s voice. ‘This is Ralph Mills.’

Something in Caroline’s gut flipped over.

‘What’s happened?’

He didn’t answer. Caroline heard him exhale.

‘Constable?’

‘Nothing’s happened. I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have called you like this. I don’t have any news for you about the minister. I’m not on the investigation… I did try to explain before.’

‘What is it, then?’

A shout went up at the back of the bus, followed by chanting. Caroline stuck a finger in her ear.

‘I’m phoning to apologise.’ He puffed out another loud breath. ‘After we spoke I got in touch with someone from my old station – Belgravia?’

‘Apologise about what?’

‘I asked him to find out when your birthday card could be released – it was last week, your birthday, wasn’t it?’

Caroline had to think for a moment. Tuesday had come and gone without much of a fanfare. ‘Actually I’d forgotten all about it.’

‘Seeing you today… I thought you might like—’

‘When can I have it?’

‘That’s why I’m phoning… it’s not a regular occurrence, but when there’s so much evidence collected… mistakes can happen.’

‘I don’t understand what your saying.’

‘He couldn’t find a record of your card logged on the system. I’m really sorry.’

‘But I saw it being put into the box myself.’

‘Like I say – sometimes these things happen. Put it down to human error.’

‘Did your colleague actually look for the box itself? Isn’t it possible it’s in the box but not on the system?’

‘Things just slip through the cracks sometimes. I thought I should phone you personally to apologise – no one else would even know about it.’

Caroline sniffed. She’d forgotten about the card, but now she’d been reminded it felt like another memory of Martin Fox had been erased. ‘Could you ask him to check the box again?’

A sudden burst of shouting and swearing erupted from the back of the bus.

‘What’s going on there?’ Mills asked.

‘Just some stupid kids.’

Caroline turned to see a young girl, not that much taller than Ben, but probably Dan’s age, had appeared at the top of the stairs. She was dressed from head to toe in black and purple, thick eyeliner under her eyes, her hair gelled into fierce black spikes.

‘Please constable – can you ask him to check again?’

‘I thought I’d explained – he can’t – there’s no record of your card because there’s no record of the box.’

‘What?’

‘The box containing the envelope addressed to you, and all those other envelopes… it’s gone.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘Like I say – it doesn’t happen often. I’m really sorry.’

There was another shout from the back of the bus.

‘Oi!’ It was the girl with the big mouth again. ‘Oi! Lezza! What d’you fink you’re doing, sitting right up at the front? You’re spoiling my view innit? Fuckin’ ugly bitch.’

Caroline swallowed. She couldn’t let it go this time. ‘Look, detective, can I call you back?’

‘I… erm… I shouldn’t really be speaking to you at—’

Caroline hung up.

The mouthy girl shouted again. ‘You should be sitting downstairs with the other weirdos.’

The young goth glanced over her shoulder towards the commotion and quickly turned back again.

‘Yeah – you! Get off the fuckin’ bus, yeah?’

Caroline stood up.

‘Ooh, watch it – Granny’s after us.’

Caroline got as far as the stairs when the bus lurched to a halt; she shot out her hand and managed to grab a handrail before completely losing her balance.

‘Careful Grandma!’

‘If anyone’s getting off this bus it’s you,’ Caroline said.

‘Whassat, Gran?’

‘Come on!’ Caroline walked towards them. ‘Get up, all of you.’

‘Ooh, I’m scared.’

‘Off the bus – now!’

‘Can’t make me.’ The loud girl stood up, her friends stayed seated, one of them pushing her forward, further into the aisle.

A burst of radio static blared up the stairs from the lower deck.

‘Nice bunch of friends you’ve got there.’ Caroline looked at each of them in turn until they looked away. ‘Loyal are they?’

‘What?’

‘Do you even know the meaning of the word? Will they back you up when the police come?’

The teenagers started to fidget in their seats.

‘That’s right – the driver’s radioed for assistance. The police should arrive any minute – lots of them in this neck of the woods.’ She glanced out of the window – the bus had turned into Whitehall, the Houses of Parliament behind them.

The girl held her ground but didn’t say anything.

‘Now,’ Caroline said. ‘You sure you’ve got nothing on you that the police might be interested in?’

The teenagers glanced furtively at one another.

‘You see, primarily they’re geared up for terrorists round here. You could be arrested and taken away and no one would ever find out what happened to you. Shoot first and ask questions later – if you know what I’m saying. Do you remember what happened in Stockwell tube a few years back?’

One by one the two girls and two boys got to their feet and slipped around their noisy friend, heads hanging low. When they’d finally disappeared down the stairs, the shouting-girl started up the aisle.

‘Be-atch,’ she said, leaning into Caroline’s face as she passed.

Caroline followed her down the stairs and watched as she joined her friends on the pavement.

Someone started clapping at the back of the bus and the rest of the lower deck joined in. Caroline glanced at the other passengers and immediately felt heat bloom in her cheeks. She rushed back up the stairs and sat down as the applause died away. The tiny goth was staring at her.

‘Cheers,’ the girl said. ‘Though I would have just ignored them – usually the safest bet.’

Caroline smiled at the girl, embarrassed, wondering why she always needed to plough in when anyone else would have pretended nothing was happening. She sat down. The newspaper was lying open on the seat, the photograph of her mother staring up at her.

What a day
. As far as Caroline was concerned, it couldn’t end fast enough. She ran a hand over her face and let out a long, defeated breath.

‘Are you OK?’ The goth girl was still looking at her.

‘Oh, you know… I dare say I will be.’

‘You look like you might throw.’

Caroline smiled at her. ‘No chance of that – I haven’t eaten anything all day.’ She picked up the newspaper. ‘Really – I’m fine.’ She glanced down at the article and pretended to read, hoping the girl would lose interest in her. A few lines in the final paragraph caught her attention.