Authors: Judith Cutler
She nodded, swallowing hard as she burst his bubble. ‘Perfect.’ She turned him gently but inexorably. ‘Pity about the view.’ There, just across a picturesque bubbling stream, was a mill. Not the historic and picturesque corn-grinding sort with sails or a big waterwheel. No such luck. A Forties or Fifties brutalist papermill.
As one and in silence, they got back into the car. Mark didn’t make any further calls, and even cut off an incoming one. Fran merely pointed the car towards Dilly’s cottage and drove.
She stopped, very suddenly. ‘Oh, my God.’
Mark was out of the car as quickly as she was. A huge bunch of flowers sat on the front-door step. A quick glance showed a legitimate Interflora envelope. But it was the flowers themselves that constituted the problem. Lilies, white roses, white freesias, all sorts of other white flowers Fran didn’t know the name of made up either a beautiful wedding bouquet or a classy funeral spray.
‘Is this just what we were dreading? Has he got hold of her home address at last?’
Mark nodded at the little camera that was supposed to watching their every move. ‘At least that will help ID the delivery driver as genuine. We hope. Or not.’
The camera seemed remarkably uninterested in their presence, though she’d had an idea it was supposed be alerted by movement and to track whatever was making it. She bobbed around. It stayed put. She literally scratched her hair. It ignored her. It ignored her when she pulled Mark’s sleeve, like an importunate child, and told him.
‘Let’s worry about that later,’ he said. ‘Let’s check the flowers first. Do you reckon they’re a genuine Interflora delivery?’
Fran eyed the spray. ‘You’d have to be a pro to produce an arrangement as good as this, wouldn’t
you? It’s way beyond my stick-’em-in-a-vase-
and-hope
skills.’
‘Any latex gloves in your car?’
‘Does swag get carried away in bags?’
Very carefully they eased out the envelope and opened it. Inside was what looked like a
bona fide
Interflora card, with another giving maintenance instructions.
‘
With all my love
,’ Fran read aloud. ‘But no initial, let alone name. I smell – apart from these lovely flowers – a brown furry rodent.’
‘So what’ll you do?’
‘Call Dilly. If these really are from a friend, she’ll want them, won’t she?’
‘I can see you would!’
‘If not, she probably won’t give them
house-room
. In which case, I’ll give this card to Mike the Miserable in the vain hope he’ll find something other than pollen. Then I’ll drop off the flowers to wherever Dilly wants them delivered – a hospice or something.’ She phoned Dilly’s work number, to her alarm getting put straight though to the newsroom without being asked for any ID at all. Someone needed their ears chewing.
Dilly was out on a story, was she? At least her male colleague offered to do no more than take a message.
‘You can’t give me her mobile number?’
‘Absolutely not. It’s against company policy. Sorry.’
‘But this is very urgent. It’s the police.’
‘If you give me your number, I’ll call and ask her to phone you back. That’s the best I can do.’
‘It’s a very good best. Well done!’ Fran identified herself. ‘I do have her mobile number in fact, but it’s great to see people being careful. Thanks. Now,’ she added grimly. ‘if you could just put me through to your switchboard again…’
‘Flowers?’ Dilly sounded completely bemused. ‘Oh. You think they’re from…him, don’t you?’
‘No idea,’ said Fran cheerfully, lying through her teeth. Had the stalker known Dilly’s address all along and for the last couple of weeks continued to send the letters to TVInvicta as a bluff? If only she could move Dilly out. Bloody Daniel McDine and his piggish principles! ‘They’re lovely. Shall I send you a photo down the line? No? Well, if you weren’t expecting them, I’ll check them out with Interflora, if that’s OK with you. And have a look at anything the security cameras have shown up. Now, do you want to keep them, if you don’t know their provenance?’
‘Of course! I love flowers!’ And she still hoped they were Stephen’s, didn’t she?
‘Shall I leave them on your step or stow them somewhere safer?’
‘Round the back, maybe? Behind the water butt?’
Cutting the call, Fran obliged. And then swore, the sort of verbal blast Mark had probably not heard from her in years. ‘Look here. Under this flower pot.’
‘Bloody hell! Is that what I think it is? Her front door key?’
It certainly opened the front door. So they stowed the flowers in the sink, locked up and, using one of Fran’s latex gloves as an envelope, popped the key through the letterbox.
‘Death-wish or denial or what?’ Fran demanded as Mark drove back to Maidstone.
‘Maybe she didn’t even know it was there. Maybe the previous owner? It is a village after all.’
‘And she’s switched her phone off.’ She composed a pithy message. ‘Hello, Dilly. This is Detective Chief Superintendent Harman here. I thought you’d like to know what I’ve done with your flowers, and, more to the point, how I was able to…’
Interflora personified helpfulness. The flowers had been ordered in a central London shop, by a man paying cash. Since Fran was on official business, they handed over the phone number of the shop.
A pleasant voiced woman with the hint of a Yorkshire accent answered Fran’s enquiry. She checked her computer, declared that it was she who’d served the customer and said that he’d dictated the message. After some thought she recalled that he wore glasses that reacted to the light, but as he’d stood in direct sun for the course of the transaction she’d not been able to say much else.
Fran’s stomach sank. Spectacles. Stephen. Oh, dear.
‘Well spoken. Middle years – at least forty-five, but with the spectacles and the hat he wore—’
‘Hat?’
‘One of those with a wide brim like detectives used to wear in old black and white films.’
‘A trench coat too, by any chance?’
But the irony was lost.
Not many people wore hats, however, these days. If they did, they had good enough manners to remove them in public. Was this a disguise? A mocking disguise?
‘And when was this?’ In her irritation she’d almost forgotten to ask. She jotted the response. ‘Two weeks ago?’
‘It’s quite usual for people to specify a date in the future, Chief Superintendent.’
‘And to pay cash – it must have been quite expensive?’
‘It was over fifty pounds. Not one of our standard orders: the despatching florist was told to use her own initiative, lilies apart.’
‘How much over fifty pounds?’
‘Fifty-five. Plus delivery charge.’
‘Is there a cash machine near the branch? Sorry, I was thinking aloud.’
The woman at the other end had clearly heard all sorts of strange questions. ‘Do you want me to pop out and see? I know there’s an HSBC, because that’s the one I use myself. But there may
be others. Call me back in five minutes.’
Fran’s heart was pounding, just as it used to when she was young and involved in a chase. Alas, her fears were that this was the longest of shots was confirmed. There were three banks within walking distance, all with two or three machines. If it was any help, she added, hearing the fall of Fran’s voice, their shop till recorded the time of all transactions. This was at 13.27 hours.
‘And do you have an address for this man, Mrs Lester?’ Fran liked being on name terms.
‘Yes. But I’m afraid it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the correct one. You see, sometimes if we’re busy – and lunchtime is busy for us, same as it as for cash machines – an assistant will just ask for the post code of the delivery address and the customer points at the relevant house number when it comes up on the computer screen. I’ve done it myself in a hurry.’
‘You wouldn’t remember if you did it for this gentleman?’
‘I would remember because I don’t do it at all any more. Not since I saw what someone could do.’ She paused for Fran to agree. Perhaps disappointed, she explained slowly, ‘You could easily go and invent a postcode and remember the house number, couldn’t you? And then you’d have a false address for yourself.’
‘Mrs Lester, you wouldn’t care to join the police service, would you? I’ve got a vacancy for a right hand woman!’
‘Police! That’d be even worse than teaching! So thanks but no thanks. Thirty years in the classroom were enough for me. I can’t claim my pension yet, you see. Hence the job. But I’ve got my health and hope back.’
Health and hope. That sounded like a good basis for a second, later life career. But Mrs Lester was clearly a loss to the classroom. And she was right. The address was false.
She phoned the still unobtainable Dilly. Crossing her fingers, she left a message. Had a long-forgotten admirer worn spectacles? Please God, she added under her breath, don’t let it be Stephen.
She checked her watch. The meeting Mark had just got back in time for would have finished ten minutes ago and soon she’d hear his voice over the phone telling her it was time to go home. It had become one of the small but vital pleasures of her day.
So it would be tomorrow before she had to do anything about Jill.
Consider the lilies of the field. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.
Summoned first thing on Friday morning to see how she was getting on with what the Chief clearly saw as his personal case, Fran laid the anonymous offering on his gleaming desk – it was one of his foibles that he polished it himself. Once again the stalker had sent it through the post from London to TVInvicta, but this time it had been properly diverted. Since Mike the Miserable had reported nil returns on everything she’d sent him so far, she’d succumbed to a Dilly-like attack of curiosity and opened it herself at the Chief’s behest.
‘So he’s changed from the Old to the New Testament,’ Fran said, leaning over his shoulder to point, as if she had known all the time about Chummie’s theological tendencies. ‘Just to make sure we know it was he who sent the flowers. Having possibly acquired the cash from one of a
dozen cash points in that area of London, at about the busiest time of day.’
‘A great help, then.’
‘Exactly. Even assuming he didn’t have wads of ready cash on him – which, to be honest, doesn’t sound like the average clergyman.’
‘The one who was your only suspect so far? Up in the Midlands?’
‘That’s the one. Though I think the Barber Institute and the curry would have been ample excuse to go up there, don’t you? The Reverend Stephen Hardy. I truly do not think he was involved, but just in case, I’ve asked a West Midlands Police colleague to speak to him again.’
His eyes narrowed. Harassing clergymen didn’t come easily to him. ‘On what grounds?’
‘He’s been less than accurate in telling us when he was in London. I think he may still have been there when those flowers were ordered.’
‘Quite a time lapse?’
‘The florist says it’s not unusual to place an order in advance. He also has one feature in common with the man who ordered the flowers – spectacles with Reactolite lenses.’
‘And if he denies it?’
‘DS Hafeez asks for details of his cash cards and we see if we can match them against withdrawals in the area of the shop at an appropriate time.’
‘That’s the sort of job I got landed with when I was a rookie PC.’ He offered a matey smile, to remind her, if it were necessary, that he’d worked
his way through the frustrations of rank and file policing, just as she had.
She responded with a rueful grin. ‘I know. But that’s what police work is, isn’t it – long searches for deeply hidden bits of vital information.’
She returned to the visitor’s side of the desk.
‘More deeply hidden than Ms Pound’s key, Mark tells me. My God, under a flowerpot!’
‘Yes, sir. She tells me she’d forgotten it was there. Apparently it was the hiding place when she moved in and she forgot that time has moved on from when her ninety-year-old predecessor passed away.’
They shared the upraised eyes and overgrown shrugs of irritated professionals. But she got more than sympathy. ‘You are sure you can manage this on your own? All those bank details, for instance. It’s one thing making the calls to the banks in question, quite another checking the results. There must be other things you could more usefully be doing.’
She peered over the reading glasses she tended to wear on the end of her nose when they weren’t in use. ‘A pair of nice young eyes, Chief?’ Someone who could deal with that while she got on to the Alpha course leader. Yes, please!
‘That lad you praised to the skies last year. The one who was so good in court. Young Arkwright. Tom.’ When he could remember details like that, no one wondered why the Chief had got his job. Especially as he asked, peering over his own glasses, ‘Wasn’t there some family problem? Sick father?’
‘Cancer. In remission, thank goodness. I’d love his help. But he’s being pretty useful in DCI Tanner’s team, sir, investigating this happy-slapping business.’
‘A couple of hours a day from a team that size shouldn’t deprive her too seriously. Unless the rumours are true?’
There was no point in blustering, even in asking which rumours. Unasked, she sat down and leaned towards him confidentially, dissembling only slightly. ‘The job has grown enormously.’
‘Like Topsy.’
‘Indeed. So much that I wondered aloud to Joe Farmer – the acting Chief Super, sir – if a profiler was called for.’
‘And his response was a decided negative. You can see his point, Fran. He wants to pull a big result all by himself.’
‘It’s an awfully large rabbit and may well be stuck in the hat.’
‘So he needs more than a magic wand and an abracadabra!’
‘I would.’
‘But you’ve got nothing to prove. Now, the bastard hasn’t actually raped yet – right?’
‘So far he’s confined himself to wiping semen over his victims’ faces, apart from one indecent assault. You know, it’s almost as if he enjoys making us wait. He must know he’s got us on tenterhooks. Us, and all the women of Kent. Get Joe to ask for a profiler, sir.’
‘I don’t want to impose one on him. You
couldn’t have a word…? No? Persuade DCI Tanner to press for one? Which reminds me, Fran: this conversation was meant to be about Tanner. A very neat bit of hi-jacking, if I may say so. Straight answer time. Is she up to the job?’
‘Of course she is. Especially with the assistance of a profiler.’
‘There’s a “but” coming up, Fran. Isn’t there?’ he prompted. ‘I can hear it in your voice.’
‘I don’t think she’s well. I’ve tried talking to her informally in my office—’
He cut across ruthlessly. ‘Another but! What about Joe Farmer talking formally in his office?’
‘Absolutely not! With respect, sir,’ she added belatedly, ‘I think she’d have hysterics and walk away on six months’ sick pay and leave us with an accusation of bullying hanging over us. Not that I think for a minute she’d want to take action, but you know what these keenie-beanie
ambulance-chasing
solicitors are.’
‘Not to mention Fed Reps. Very well. So get Cosmo Dix on to it.’
Would she hell. She smiled. ‘Come on, Chief, I’ve been her friend and colleague for thirty years. I’d rather not ask Cosmo, no matter how good he and his team are, to get involved yet. Can I see what an even less formal talk, well out of the office, will do?’
‘So long as you get results, Fran.’
‘If results can be got!’
‘If indeed. Now, anything else I should know about the case? I know it’s not your brief any more,
Fran, but I bet you’re up to speed.’
‘Sir, Joe’d be very upset—’ Damn! Wrong word! ‘—concerned, that is, if he thought I was usurping his function.’
‘No one’s usurping anyone’s function! I’m asking you what you know, Chief Superintendent.’
‘Sir.’ Drat him for this oscillation between the friendly and the formal. ‘DCI Tanner’s coordinated groups of neighbourhood support officers. Each team liaises closely with a couple of schools.’
‘Does this apply to private schools too? The kids that assaulted you were from that very smart place in Canterbury, weren’t they?’
‘I’ll remind Jill to tell the teams to spread the net as widely as possible. If necessary, I could speak to school heads.’
He chuckled. ‘You could put the fear of God into them if anyone could.’
Gee, thanks, boss. She opened her eyes widely. But he was going to say something else, wasn’t he?
‘That assault on you, Fran. What’s happening?’
‘Canterbury will keep me updated, sir, as they would any other victim. I told them I wouldn’t be pushing for prosecution, but I wanted the living daylights scared out of the little bleeders.’
She was fairly sure he spotted the flaw in her report, the fact that two weeks and more after the incident she was still in the dark, but he said nothing, pushing the anonymous letter in its evidence bag back across the table. He opened his mouth to speak, but seemed to be considering how
to put something unpleasant. Something about the knife-wielding child’s injury, no doubt. For which she was responsible.
She tried not to ball her fists.
‘It’s very fortunate that every single minute of the incident was recorded on CCTV and witnessed by a whole lot of interested eyes,’ he began slowly.
He might have punched her in the stomach. It was coming. What every cop dreaded. The complaint. The allegation of police brutality. The automatic suspension.
‘The Police Complaints Commission? Because I dislocated that kid’s shoulder?’
‘Someone did mention it to them. Well, we know it’s standard procedure. So I had a look at the CCTV footage myself. You’re such a senior officer someone even higher up the pecking order has to investigate. And I could hardly ask Mark to, could I? It was quite clear that as you armlocked the child – and you clearly had to, in view of that knife thrust – another child came up behind you and pushed you hard. A third tripped you. So when they mentioned further investigation and suspension I did the obvious thing.’
She was sweating with relief. ‘Which was what, sir?’
‘I told the investigating officer to go fuck himself,’ the Chief responded, clearly relishing every moment of her shock. ‘In absolute confidence, of course.’
The Chief was one who treated wishes as gently expressed commands, just as much to be obeyed as if he’d stood up and bawled them through a megaphone. She went straight to the Incident Room. But she got no further than the door.
Despite the bright day, the sun slicing its way film noir-style through the blinds, there was a decided air of gloom. A glance at Jill’s office door told her why. Joe Farmer was standing at her desk, flicking angrily through the files and slapping them down again. He punctuated this with irate and regular glances at his watch. Regular and ostentatious glances, meant to din into the troops that he was furious with the DCI for being elsewhere. Would they stick loyally together like a class knowing their teacher was in for it, or grass Jill up? Tom was very obviously trying to meet no one’s eye, peering deep into a computer screen as if it were his girlfriend’s face.
Her presence wouldn’t help. She melted out as silently as she’d melted in. Back in her office, she called Tom’s mobile.
He stared at the oatcakes with disdain. ‘I’ll have to get on to my auntie, like, won’t I, guv?’
‘You will indeed, Tom. It shall be the first call you make when you’re seconded to me later today.’ As his face lit up, she shook her head warningly. ‘Only a couple of hours a day, and only if you can be spared. And only if you tell me what the hell’s going on in that Incident Room,’ she added, leaning
forward with a smile, as if merely asking for gossip.
Tom knew her better. ‘I’m dead worried about the DCI, guv. And DCS Farmer seems to be gunning for her. You’d think he had too many other responsibilities and roles to concentrate on just one person and her case. But it’s as if making her seem weak makes him look even stronger.’ He sipped his tea, watching under his eyelashes for permission to go further. It came, tacitly, as he must have known it would. ‘Mind you, the DCI is asking for it, like. She’s late in, home early. Misses briefings, like today. And when she is in, she’s not all there, if you see what I mean. I had a word with my mate at Ashford – but this is only station gossip, guv.’
She nodded sombrely. ‘And it won’t go beyond these four walls.’
‘The rumour is – shit, Fran, they say she’s doing dope.’
She ignored the accidental use of her first name: they’d been through a lot together, and it was only in private and under stress that he ever lapsed.
‘Came in smelling of pot the other day. And it may be worse. She used to wear short sleeves whatever the weather – used to say it saved her having to roll them up when she got busy. Now you’ll notice she wears them buttoned at the cuff, all the time. But someone reckons she saw bruises when she was washing her hands… You know, bruises from needles, like.’ He added, chin up, ‘And before you ask, no, I’ve said nothing to anyone. And if she’d been in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
first thing I wouldn’t even be telling you, would I? But someone’s got to do something, guv, and I reckon it’d be better you, because you’ve nothing to prove, than Farmer Giles, who wants a permanent job.’
She made a little circling gesture, to return to an earlier point. ‘These bruises, the tracks… Have you ever seen them yourself? With your own eyes?’
For the first time he fidgeted. ‘I’ve seen bruises. Yes. On her arms. I wouldn’t have called them needle tracks, myself. More as if a pair of hands were gripping too tight.’ He put his hands about three inches from her own. ‘And I did smell the pot, skunk, to be honest. But on her clothes, guv, not her breath.’
‘So you think it’s someone else smoking the stuff?’ Did it take a genius to suspect Rob? He was about the right age.
‘The trouble is, it’s not exactly legal, knowingly letting your premises be used for people to smoke themselves senseless, is it?’ He swallowed, aware that he’d started well but lapsed.
‘Bother the legalese.’
‘And now she’s missed yet another meeting and I’m afraid the DCS will have no option but to grass her up,’ he concluded, a child in the playground again.
They smiled sadly at each other. They could never quite be equals, but friends they certainly were. Perhaps Tom was the son she’d never had. If she got sentimental, she reminded herself that he
had a perfectly good mother, better then she could ever have been. As it was, on a day-to-day basis he was precisely the partner she wanted to work with, and the fact that the Chief had decreed it took away any residual guilt she might have had.
However, working on the Dilly case was the last thing she had on her mind at the moment.
‘I take it someone’s tried to phone Jill?’
‘Tried myself, guv: landline and mobile. Both switched off. I’d got as far as checking Traffic – you know, she might have been in a smash, like.’
‘Negative?’
‘Negative. And so I thought I’d try the William Harvey A and E.’
‘And?’
‘That was when you sent for me.’
‘Try them now. Now, what the hell’s the name of the school they send their son to?’ She ran her finger down the phone directory while Tom fought his way through the hospital system to A and E. One look at his rounded eyes and mouth were enough to stop her.