Walk a Narrow Mile (16 page)

‘Of course I wasn’t jealous of him!’

‘A good-looking man, is he? I have to say, I haven’t seen a photograph of him, but I can imagine the type.’ Hillary smiled knowingly. ‘Middle aged, but in good physical shape, I imagine. Something of the bad boy about him – women always seem attracted to those sort, don’t they, Mr Kane?’

Marcus flushed slightly. ‘If you like the bluff, somewhat bucolic look, I suppose he wasn’t that bad looking,’ he agreed thinly.

‘Did Meg flirt with him?’ Hillary asked crisply.

‘Meg liked to keep the clients happy,’ Marcus said, his voice becoming more and more clipped.

Jimmy, his pen flying across his notebook as he took notes, was careful to repress a smile. The guv’nor was getting under his skin all right.

‘Was that one of the things you paid her for, Mr Kane?’ Hillary asked softly.

‘I’m not a pimp!’ Marcus said sharply, then suddenly let loose with a shark-like smile. ‘And really, I can’t see where all this can possibly be going. As far as I can remember, Liam Hardwicke retired to Spain somewhere months before Meg went missing.’

Hillary nodded. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Kane,’ she said, abruptly dismissing him. ‘That will be all for now.’ Then she appeared to change her mind and added very casually, ‘Oh, by the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a contact phone number for Mr Hardwicke, would you?’

Marcus Kane rose and smiled beatifically at her. ‘I’ll ask my secretary to make sure you get it on your way out, Mrs Greene.’

Liam Hardwicke came to the telephone the moment Hillary Greene identified herself to his Spanish housekeeper. According
to Kane’s records, he was living on the south coast in one of the lesser-known resorts, but almost certainly in a sumptuous villa with a view of the Med.

It made Hillary sick to think about it.

But back at HQ, with Jimmy listening in to her end of the conversation, she forced herself to concentrate on the task in hand.

She identified herself, and her work at the CRT. ‘Mr Hardwicke, we’re currently trying to trace the whereabouts of a missing person by the name of Margaret Vickary. She was a secretary working for your solicitors, back here in Oxford. I’m sure you remember her?’

The voice on the other end of the line was understandably cautious, but he agreed that he did. ‘Sure, a good-looking woman. Charming too. I’m sorry to hear she’s gone AWOL.’

Hillary could trace the last vestiges of a lingering cockney accent in Hardwicke’s voice. ‘From all accounts, you seem to have got on very well with her. You wouldn’t have happened to invite her over to Spain at any time, would you, Mr Hardwicke?’

There was a moment of silence. Then, ‘Like I said, I got on fine with her. She had a good sense of humour and was a lovely lady and charming with it. But why should that mean that I would invite her over to Spain with me?’

Hillary didn’t fail to notice that he wasn’t giving her any yes or no answers, but was forming the habit of answering her with a question of his own. She found the equivocation interesting.

‘Just trying to tie up any loose ends, sir,’ she said brightly. ‘After all, we don’t want to waste our valuable time and resources trying to find her, if she’s simply relocated to Spain, do we?’

‘Has anyone told you she’s over here?’ Liam Hardwicke asked jovially.

‘No sir,’ Hillary said. ‘Like I said, we’re just checking.’

‘No ’arm in that, as my old man always said. Sorry I can’t help you, luv.’

Yeah, I just bet you are, Hillary thought, as she put the phone down.

‘Well?’ Jimmy asked curiously.

‘Slippery as an eel,’ Hillary said flatly.

Jimmy shrugged. ‘I can’t really see that it matters one way or the other guv, does it? Meg disappeared over here in Blighty, and we already know the who and the why of it, after all.’

Hillary nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I believe we very well might.’

Jimmy shot her a quick, puzzled look, then shrugged.

She continued to stare out of the window, her mind carefully and methodically looking for flaws in the growing intricacies of her theory.

And not finding all that many.

A
t noon the next day, Tom Warrington was walking slowly around a fully road-worthy and quite spacious white camper van. It was in fairly good nick with perhaps just a hint of rust around the wheel arches, and was about ten years old but came with a full service record and tax. Although it looked rather pedestrian inside – being more leatherette and fake pine veneer than IKEA – it was clean and serviceable.

The price wasn’t too bad, but on principle, he spent half an hour haggling it down with the seller, a middle-aged turf accountant who was getting divorced, and wanted to stash as much cash away on the q.t. as he could before his soon-to-be
ex-wife’s
solicitor came sniffing around.

Finally, they shook hands on the deal and Tom left, telling the gloomy old sod that he’d be around later that evening sometime to pick it up, with the first instalment in cash, and more bone fides to ensure that he’d get the rest of his money, though Tom rather thought that his police uniform was doing him more favours than his solid credit rating. It was rather touching how some members of the public still trusted the police.

He was back late from lunch, and the dragon guarding the records office sniffed at him and looked at her watch with a significant roll of her watery eyes, but she at least had the good sense not to say anything. Tom gave her his best green-eyed toothsome smile and turned to his computer.

He played with the idea of calling up Hillary’s personnel file,
just so that he could feast on her past glories and moon over her ID photograph, but with the dragon already miffed and keeping an eye on him, he knew it wasn’t a good idea. He contented himself with sending Vivienne a text message instead.

Then, with a sigh, he got down to work.

Vivienne read the text message in the office, a big smile lighting up her face. Sam was with her, and they were just finishing up the latest boring stuff Hillary had given them to do whilst talking over their exciting day yesterday, when they’d actually got to talk to real-life gangsters.

Needless to say, she’d been more impressed than he was by the big houses, the bling, and the glamour of the wives, although none of the men had looked much like Ronnie Biggs or even Ray Winstone for that matter, which was a bit
disappointing
.

But Tom’s text cheered her up no end. He was picking up their little love nest later on, and he was anxious for her to come and try it out with him. Finally, Vivienne thought smugly, saving the text and putting the mobile back into her bag. It was about time she got him between the sheets! And wasn’t playing hard to get supposed to be a woman’s
prerogative
, anyway?

The printer was just printing off the last round of artistic colonies that she’d been able to find on the Internet, when Hillary Greene finally deigned to grace them with her presence. Vivienne listened with genuine interest, however, as her boss updated them on her latest interview with Marcus Kane, but knew that she’d only bothered to do so because it was their information and hard work that had turned up the lead for her in the first place.

If ‘lead’ was the right word. For the life of her, Vivienne couldn’t see where all this was supposed to be going. Then again, it was clear that she and Sam were still being kept out of the loop on the investigation. She had no idea what Hillary had
been doing all morning, for example, except that she’d been closeted in Steven’s office with DI Rhumer.

She’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall in there and find out what it was that was really going on. But she’d bet her wage packet that it wouldn’t be long before they were back to doing more of the boring stuff and, sure enough, once Hillary had finished telling them about Meg Vickary’s exploits, her next words made Vivienne’s heart sink.

‘Now,’ Hillary said, glancing down at her notebook. ‘I need a thorough background check run on Christopher Deakin’s
financial
status. He admitted to lending Judy Yelland a substantial sum of money just before she disappeared and I want to know how much it would have hurt him, if at all, to do it. I know he’s obviously doing well today, but I have a feeling that might not have been so much the case four years ago. The company was still relatively new. As it was started mainly with his wife’s dosh, I want to know if she was the type to keep her eye on it, or if she simply trusted to her husband’s business acumen.’

Hillary thought that it might tell her a lot about Christopher Deakin to know the answer to that particular question.

Vivienne grimaced at the thought of trying to translate spreadsheets and accountant’s gobbledegook. Luckily, Hillary’s eyes went straight from hers to the ginger minger.

‘Sam, that can be a job for you. If the banks give you trouble, start with the Inland Revenue and stuff in the public domain. I’m sure his company is a public limited one, so there’ll be records. His personal finances might be harder to trace, but it’ll be good practice for you.’

‘Guv.’

‘And then you can come with me to interview the wife,’ Hillary added, with a small smile.

‘Guv,’ Sam said, with far more enthusiasm.

‘Vivienne, do you have that list of artist colonies I asked you for?’ She turned to look at the young girl, who was dressed in what looked like hot pants. Good grief, were they back in
fashion now? Or was she just expressing her much-vaunted ‘individualism’? Hillary didn’t know, and couldn’t have cared less.

‘Just printing off the last of them now, guv,’ Vivienne said smugly, and handed over a sheaf of papers. ‘I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet though.’

‘I’ve highlighted in yellow some of the more promising ones we did earlier, guv,’ Sam said, with an apologetic glance at Vivienne. ‘The ones at the bottom of the pile. I was working on them while Vivienne was doing the last of it.’

Vivienne shot him a knowing smile. He was so anxious to earn brownie points it was pathetic.

‘Thanks, Sam. Right, you can get on with Deakin then. Vivienne … you can type up the report on the costa cons.’

Vivienne grimaced. ‘Right, guv,’ she said listlessly. Did she look like a bloody typist? Or a secretary?

‘Or you can always help Sam with the financial search,’ Hillary said archly.

‘No, that’s OK, guv,’ Vivienne said quickly, scooting back behind her computer screen. Over in his chair, Jimmy Jessop coughed tellingly into his cupped hands. Hillary gave him a wink as she sauntered out.

Back in her office, she began to sort through the list of possible retreats that Gillian Tinkerton might have been
interested
in.

There were, surprisingly, quite a few. Even though it was hardly the Age of Aquarius any more, alternative lifestyle options were obviously just as popular as in the hippies’ hey day. The choice was surprisingly cosmopolitan. They ranged from learning how to become a crofter in the far flung Scottish Highlands, to becoming an eel-catcher in the Norfolk Broads, to learning how to weave baskets and other traditional wares in osier, or green willow. And not all were work-based or
profession
-related either. A lot of places offered would-be Picassos tutorials whilst being catered to in country-house type
residences
,
whilst yet others offered more leisure-based activities. Musicians offered to give flute lessons, and several places
promised
to give ‘degrees’ in alternative healing therapies. Hillary read one on-line brochure on how she too could be taught to place warm stones on ‘healing’ centres on middle-aged flabby bodies in country spas, and shuddered.

She put all Vivienne’s most recent offerings to one side and turned to Sam’s highlighted list.

And nodded in approval.

Yes, these were more what she wanted, and she began to compile them in geographical order, with those nearest to Kidlington at the top.

Seven in particular, looked like the kind of thing that she might be interested in, and she settled herself comfortably in her chair and reached for the phone.

Two hours later, she had a short-list of four.

The owner-managers (or in two cases, the representative of the co-ops) of the facilities had varied in the limit of their desire to help the police with their inquiries, but she hadn’t picked up any really bad vibes from any of them.

Due to modern technology, she’d been able to wing a
photograph
of a young-looking Gillian Tinkerton to all seven places, but none of them had immediately acknowledged knowing her. But then, that in itself meant nothing, she knew.

For a start, Hillary knew from experience, that people could change and physically alter drastically over the years, and the photograph Deirdre Tinkerton had given her of her daughter was in itself a few years old to begin with. People, and women in particular, could look vastly different in just a few years: weight lost, weight gained; hair styled or cut differently and probably, in gypsy-like Gillian’s case, dyed; eyeglasses discarded for contact lenses, or failing eyesight meaning the need for glasses on a woman previously unencumbered with them could all radically alter the look of a person’s face. So it was easily possible that people genuinely wouldn’t recognize
someone else from a photograph if they were sitting just a few feet away.

Then again, artistic communes were probably as good a place as any, if you needed a reason to ‘hide’ from society. Women keeping out of the way of abusive partners, for instance, would probably find refuge there. Or men trying to avoid paying child maintenance. Hillary could well imagine that if you had a
tight-knit
community, especially one where some members had been together for a long time, that nobody would be anxious to discuss your business with strangers on the telephone.

Wearily, she made herself a cup of coffee and leaned back in her chair, tapping the paperwork in front of her thoughtfully, mulling over the scant details she’d been able to glean from speaking to the organizers.

Greensleeves Artisans, based in Wiltshire, had been going for nearly twenty years. The founder member had been a farmer’s son, already disillusioned with the way the farming industry was going, and had seen some ramshackle barns on his property as a way of supplementing his income. He’d employed local stone-masons, carpenters and other skilled workers to convert the barns to accommodation and studios, mainly pottery and artists’ studios, with a wood-carver’s workshop tacked on. Cannily, he’d had several of the renovators work part-time for him, training others in their particular disciplines, as well as renting out the accommodation to other people more interested in pure art.

Leyline Literati were based on the Berkshire border, and boasted an old rambling rectory as their main place of residence, in a small village that still mostly belonged to a vast estate. As its name implied, it gave room and board and ‘vanity publishing advice’ to writers who were interested in the more esoterically minded disciplines. If you wanted to write about interesting hauntings, the possibility of alien visitations, the uncanny, otherworldly knowledge supposedly possessed by ancient tribes, or any other whimsy from psychics with ESP, to
cats that could predict the future, they could help guide and advise. The small print assured you that they only took a small percentage of any royalties you might earn. It was, Hillary supposed, a small price to pay for any budding author, desperate to see their name in print.

Hillary could well see that Gillian might be attracted to the idea of being a published author. Hadn’t her friend said that she never stayed with one discipline for long? And didn’t everyone believe that they had at least one book in them?

Hillary had to smile at herself there. She herself had written a book last year, a fictional piece based on one of her old cases, and sent it off to a publisher.

Naturally, she’d heard nothing back since.

The third of the outfits she was interested in was based just over the Welsh border, and specialized in glass, teaching people to blow glass, make stained-glass windows, small collectable animals, paperweights with those intricate designs and even glass jewellery. Through a Glass Brightly also offered live-in accommodation and promised ‘gifted’ glass artists a show-case for their work and the chance of a regular income via a number of local shops that would display and sell their items on a commission basis.

The last of the four was set on Dartmoor in Devon, and was mostly based on painted art, with live-in tutors willing to give lessons to professional artists who wanted to expand their repertoire. But they did offer a side-line for those who wanted to become illustrators for children’s books, or become graphic artists. Or, Hillary interpreted cynically, grown men who wanted to stay little boys by creating comic-book characters. Baskerville Artist’s Colony might appeal to Gillian if she had any drawing skills.

Hillary sighed, and looked up as a tap came on the door. Quickly, she stuffed the paperwork into a folder as Steven, without waiting for an invitation to enter, pushed open the door and looked in.

He watched, with interest, the way she casually closed the folder and smiled. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Fine,’ Hillary said.

‘Geoff and his team are making progress you know, even if it is only in ruling people out.’

Hillary nodded. They’d spent all morning with Geoff Rhumer, who’d filled them in on his team’s progress to date. So far, as Steven had said, they’d eliminated, for various reasons, nearly half the people on his list.

‘Don’t worry – I’m not getting impatient,’ Hillary said
truthfully
. ‘I always knew it was going to be painstaking work, and would take time. And I’m not getting disheartened. You don’t have to mollycoddle me.’

Steven grinned at her, and Hillary felt her heart give a little flip. Damn, he was too good-looking for her own peace of mind.

‘Perish the thought,’ Steven said, leaning negligently against the door post. ‘Why don’t you come to my place tonight? I’ll cook.’

‘You can cook?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far,’ he admitted. ‘Let’s just say that I can produce food that’s reasonably edible.’