Authors: Val McDermid
She nodded. ‘I’ve got you. You can count on me.’ I didn’t have a lot of choice, so I just smiled. ‘I’ll get round there right away. I was going to pop round anyway to see how Tony was doing. We got on really well, me and Angela. She was older than me, of course, but we played tenpin bowls in the same team every Wednesday. I couldn’t get over it when I heard. Burst appendix. You never know the hour or the day, do you? You leave this to me, Kate,’ she added, glancing at my card again.
We walked down the path together, me heading back to my car and her next door. As we parted, she promised to call me on my mobile to let me know what happened. I was on pins as I sat watching the Sheridans’ house. My new sidekick was definitely a bit of a loose cannon, but I couldn’t think of anything else I could have done that would have been effective without warning off Allen’s partner in crime, particularly since they’d be on their guard after the earlier debacle at Richard’s house. About half an hour passed, then the front door opened and my target emerged. Judging by the way she threw her briefcase into the car, she wasn’t in the best of moods. I’d had my phone switched off all day to avoid communicating with the office, but I turned it back on as I pulled out behind the woman.
She was back inside the block of flats by the time my new confederate called. ‘Hiya,’ she greeted me. ‘I think it went off all right. I don’t think she was suspicious, just brassed off because I was sitting there being dead neg about the whole thing. I just kept saying to Tony he shouldn’t make any decision without the kids being there, and that was all the support he needed, really. She realized she wasn’t getting anywhere and I wasn’t shifting, so she just took herself off.’
‘You did really well. Do you know what she was calling herself?’ I asked when I could get a word in.
‘She had these business cards. Greenhalgh and Edwards. Tony showed me after she’d gone. Sarah Sargent, it says her name is. Will you need us to go to court?’ she asked, the phone line crackling with excitement.
‘Possibly,’ I hedged. ‘I really appreciate your help. If the police need your evidence to support a case, I’ll let them know where to find you.’
‘Great! Hey, I think your job’s dead exciting, you know. Any time you need a hand again, just call me, OK?’
‘OK,’ I said. Anything to get out from under. But she insisted on giving me her name and phone number before I could finally disengage. I wondered how glamorous she’d find the job when she had to do a fifteen-hour surveillance in a freezing van in the dead of winter with a plastic bucket to pee in and no guarantee that she’d get the pictures she needed to avoid having to do the whole thing all over again the next day.
I started my engine. I didn’t think the con merchants would be having another go tonight. But I still had miles to go before I could sleep. A little burglary, perhaps, and then a visit to clubland for a nightcap. Given that I wasn’t dressed for either pursuit, it seemed like a good excuse to head for home. Maybe I could even squeeze in a couple of hours kip before I had to go about my nocturnal business.
Never mind mice and men. Every time I make a plan these days it seems to go more off track than a blindfolded unicyclist. I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps towards my bungalow when I heard another car door open and I saw a figure move in my direction through the dusk. I automatically moved into position, ready for fight or flight, arms hanging at my side, shoulder bag clutched firmly, ready to swing it in a tight arc, all my weight on the balls of my feet, ready to kick, pivot or run. I waited for the figure to approach, tensed for battle.
It was just as well I’m the kind who looks before she leaps into action. I don’t think Detective Constable Linda Shaw would have been too impressed with a flying kick to the abdomen. ‘DC Shaw?’ I said, surprised and baffled as she stepped into a pool of sodium orange.
‘Ms Brannigan,’ she acknowledged, looking more than a little sheepish. ‘I wonder if we might have a word?’ Looming up in the gloom behind her, I noticed a burly bloke with more than a passing resemblance to Mike Tyson. I sincerely hoped we weren’t going to get into the ‘nice cop, nasty cop’ routine. I had a funny feeling I wouldn’t come off best.
‘Sure, come on in and have a brew,’ I said.
She cleared her throat. ‘Actually, we’d prefer it if you came down to the station,’ she said, her embarrassment growing by the sentence.
Now I was completely bewildered. The one and only time I’d met Linda Shaw, she’d been one of Detective Inspector Cliff Jackson’s gophers on a murder case I’d been hired to investigate. There was a bit of history between me and Jackson that meant every time our paths crossed, we both ended up with sore heads, but Linda Shaw had acted as the perfect buffer zone, keeping the pair of us far enough apart to ensure that the job got done without another murder being added to the case’s tally. I’d liked her, not least because she was her own woman, seemingly determined not to let Jackson’s abrasive bull-headedness rub off on her. What I couldn’t work out was why she was trying to drag me off to a police station for questioning. For once, I wasn’t doing anything that involved tap-dancing over a policeman’s toes. That might change once I got properly stuck in to the investigation of Alexis’s murdered doctor, but even if it did, the detectives I’d be irritating were forty miles away on the other side of the Pennines. ‘Why?’ I asked mildly.
‘We’ve got some questions we’d like to ask you.’ By now, Linda wasn’t even pretending to meet my eye. She was pointedly staring somewhere over my left shoulder.
‘So come in, have a brew and we’ll see if I can answer them,’ I repeated. I call it the irregular verb theory of life; I am firm, you are stubborn, he/she is a pig-headed, rigid, anally retentive stick-in-the mud.
‘Like DC Shaw said, we’d like you to come down the station,’ her oppo rumbled. It was like listening to Vesuvius by stethoscope. Only with a Liverpudlian accent instead of an Italian one.
I sighed. ‘We can do this one of two ways. Either you can come into the house and ask me what you’ve got to ask me, or you can arrest me and we’ll go down the station and I don’t say a word until my brief arrives. You choose.’ I gave the pair of them my sweetest smile, somehow choking down the anger. I knew whose hand was behind this. It had Cliff Jackson’s sadistic fingerprints all over it.
Linda breathed out hard through her nose and compressed her lips into a thin line. I imagined she was thinking about the rocket Cliff Jackson was going to fire at her when she got back to base without me meekly following at her heels. That wasn’t my problem, and I wasn’t going to be guilt-tripped into behaving as if it was. When I made no response, Linda shrugged and said, ‘We’d better have that brew, then.’
The pair of them followed me down the path and into the house. I pointed at the living room, told them they were having coffee and brewed up in the kitchen, desperately trying to figure out why Jackson had sent a team round to hassle me. I dripped a pot of coffee while I thought about it, laying milk, sugar, mugs and spoons on a tray at the same time. By the time the coffee was done, I was no nearer an answer. I was going to have to opt for the obvious and ask Linda Shaw.
I walked through the living-room door, dumped the tray on the coffee table in front of the detectives and took the initiative. ‘This had better be good, Linda,’ I said. ‘I have had a bitch of a week, and it’s only Tuesday. Tell me why I’m sitting here talking to you instead of running myself a long hot bath.’
Linda flashed a quick look at her partner, who was enjoying himself far too much to help her out. He leaned forward and poured out three mugs of coffee. Looking like she’d bitten into a pickled lemon, Linda said, ‘We’ve received an allegation which my inspector felt merited investigation.’
‘From whom? About whom?’ I demanded, best grammar on show.
She poured milk into her coffee and made a major production number out of stirring it. ‘Our informant alleges that you have engaged in a campaign of threats against the life of one Richard Barclay.’
I was beyond speech. I was beyond movement. I sat with my mouth open, hand halfway towards a mug of coffee, like a Damien Hirst installation floating motionless in formaldehyde.
‘The complainant alleges that this harassment has included placing false death announcements in the local press. We have verified that such an advert has appeared. And now Mr Barclay appears to have gone missing,’ the male detective asserted, sitting back in his seat, legs wide apart, arm along the back of the sofa, asserting himself all over my living room.
Anger kicked in. ‘And this informant. It wouldn’t be an anonymous tip-off, would it?’
He looked at her, his face puzzled, hers resigned. ‘You know we can’t disclose that,’ Linda said wearily. ‘But we have been trying without success to contact Mr Barclay since nine this morning, and as my colleague says, we have confirmed that a death announcement was placed in the
Chronicle
containing false information. It does appear that you have some explaining to do, Ms Brannigan.’ Any more apologetic and you could have used her voice as a doormat.
I’d had enough. ‘Bollocks,’ I said. ‘We both know what’s really happening here. You get an anonymous tip-off and your boss rubs his hands with glee. Oh goody, a border line legitimate excuse to nip round and make Brannigan’s life a misery. You’ve got no evidence that any crime has taken place. Even if somebody did place a bullshit ad in the
Chronicle
, and
The Times
too for all I know or care, you’ve got nothing to indicate it’s anything other than a practical joke or that it’s anything at all to do with me.’ My voice rose in outrage. I knew I was on firm ground; I’d paid for the
Chronicle
announcement cash on the nail, making sure I popped in at lunch time when the classified ads department is at its busiest.
‘It’s our duty to investigate serious allegations,’ the Tyson lookalike rumbled. ‘And so far you haven’t explained why anyone would want to accuse you of a serious crime like this. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing most people do unless they’ve got a good reason for it. Like knowing about some crime you’ve committed, Ms Brannigan.’
I stood up. I was inches away from really giving them something to arrest me for. ‘Right,’ I said, furious. ‘Out. Now. Never mind finishing your coffee. This is bollocks and you know it. You want to talk to Richard, sit outside on your arses and waste the taxpayers’ money until he comes home. The reason you haven’t been able to contact him, soft lad, is because he’s a rock journalist. He doesn’t answer his phone to the likes of you, and right now, he’s probably sitting in some dive listening to a very bad band desperate to attract his attention. He’ll be in the perfect mood to deal with this crap when he gets home. Now you,’ I added, leaning forward and pointing straight between his astonished eyes, ‘are new in my life, so you probably don’t know there’s a hidden agenda here.’
I swung round to point at Linda, who was also on her feet and edging towards the door. ‘But you should know better, lady. Now walk, before I have to drag Ruth Hunter away from her favourite TV cop to slap you with a suit for harassment. Bugger off and bother some proper villains. Or don’t you know any? Are you kicking your heels waiting for me to provide you with enough evidence to arrest some?’
Linda was halfway through the door by the time I’d finished my tirade. Her sidekick looked from me to her and back again before deciding that he’d better follow her and find out what the real story was here. I didn’t bother seeing them out.
I couldn’t believe Linda Shaw had let herself be sucked into Cliff Jackson’s spiteful little game. But then, he was the boss, she had a career to think about, and women don’t climb the career ladder in the police force by telling their bosses to shove their stupid vendettas where the perverts shove their gerbils. And as for their anonymous source—that cheeky, malicious little toad Will Allen was going to pay for ruining my evening. If he thought he could frighten me off with a bit of police harassment, he was in for the rudest shock of his life.
The front door closed on a silence so tremendous I could hear the blood beating in my brain. The last time I’d been this angry had nearly cost me my relationship with Richard, who had infuriated me to the point where violence seemed the most attractive option. This time it had been a police officer I’d nearly decked. The repercussions from that might have been less emotionally traumatic, but they would probably have cost me just as much in different ways. On the other hand, trying to sell a share in a business where the remaining partner is on bail for assault would present Bill with one or two problems…I nearly ran after Linda Shaw and begged her to wind me up again.
I rotated my head enthusiastically in a bid to loosen some of the knots the CID had put there and went through to the kitchen. I wasn’t about to let Linda Shaw put me off the job I had planned for later that night, but I could allow myself the necessary indulgence of one stiff drink. I raked around in the freezer until I found the half-bottle of Polish lemon pepper vodka I’d been saving for a rainy day and poured the last sluggish inch into a tall slim tumbler. There was no freshly squeezed grapefruit juice in the fridge, which tells you all you need to know about the week I was having. I had to settle for a mixer bottle lurking behind the cheese. It needed the kind of shaking I’d wanted to give Linda Shaw. I’d barely swallowed the first mouthful when the silence gave up the ghost under the onslaught of the patio doors opening from the conservatory.
‘Brannigan?’ I heard.
Stifling a groan, I reached back into the fridge and pulled out one of the bottles Richard periodically donates from his world beer collection so he doesn’t have to walk all the way back to his kitchen when he’s in my bed. Staropramen from Prague, I noted irrelevantly as I grasped the bottle opener, wishing I were there. ‘Kitchen,’ I called.
‘Hullawrerrhen,’ said another voice behind me. At least, that’s what I think it said. I turned to see Dan Druff grinning warily in the doorway. Silently, I handed him the Czech beer and reached for the next bottle in line. Radeberger Pilsner. I popped the top just as Richard appeared alongside Dan.