Desperate Measures: A Mystery (6 page)

The lurcher wasn’t giving up. There was nothing remotely aggressive about her stance or even her persistence, but she had the air of someone who would stand on the bridge as long as it took for the bodies of all her enemies to float underneath.

“No,” said Hazel firmly. “I’ll come back, I’ll keep checking on you till he gets home, but you have to stay here. I can’t do what I have to do with a damn great dog in tow!”

Ten minutes later they were driving back through Norbold, Patience on the backseat like the queen on a state visit, Hazel working out how she could do what she had to do with a damn great dog in tow.

*   *   *

She could have called Charles Armitage to ask if he’d sent someone to search her flat and, if so, what it was he’d hoped to find. But Hazel had learned her trade from some good teachers, men and women who’d policed Britain at a time when information technology was the landline telephone, the lapel radio, and a copy of the local A to Z; who hadn’t grown up thinking that the answers to most questions should be no more than a couple of clicks away; and who therefore knew the art of discovering information for themselves, often from people who didn’t want to part with it.

And one of the best bits of advice she’d been given had been: Try not to ask a question until you have at least some idea what the answer should be. Then you’ll know if you’re being told porkies, and who’s worried enough to be telling them.

Or she could have swallowed her misgivings and gone to DI Gorman. Until she’d got home and found her key catching in her door, she’d never had reason to doubt his integrity, even at a time when the rest of Meadowvale was treating her as a pariah. The fact remained, the only connection between Hazel and the owner of the laptop was Dave Gorman.

Plus, of course, all the paperwork that attended even something as simple as restoring a bit of lost property to a careless visitor. Once Gorman had recorded who’d handed the machine in, almost anyone in the police station could have accessed the information. Still, she was reluctant to pour anything more into a bucket she thought might be leaking.

There was one thing she’d noticed that might lead her somewhere: the remarkable tidiness of her flat after the search. That wasn’t a couple of local hoodlums hired for twenty quid apiece; that was a professional job.

The British police have an odd relationship with private investigators. Officially they’re dismissive, on the grounds that anything that needs investigating is the preserve of the police and paying a private investigator to investigate anything else is like pushing money down a manhole. Unofficially, though, there is often a kind of guarded respect between them, not least because many private investigators are retired police officers.

A retired police officer would know how a search should be conducted, and would have the time to do it properly.

Hazel presented herself at the front desk just as Sergeant Murchison was coming on duty. She thought she saw him wince, but she might have been mistaken. For one thing, he owed her. Until she worked out how the recent death in custody had come about, much of the responsibility had hovered over Donald Murchison’s shoulders. One day he would be grateful to her.

Perhaps it was a little soon for gratitude. But as long as she stayed this side of the counter, she was a member of the public and he was there to serve her. Worse, she was a member of the public who
knew
he was there to serve her.

“Hazel,” he acknowledged cautiously. “How can I help you?”

“I need the name of a reliable private investigator. Ex-job. Discretion and professionalism more important than cost. Anyone come to mind?”

If a genuine member of the public had asked him that, Murchison would have referred her to the Yellow Pages rather than make a recommendation. But Hazel Best was still, more or less, a colleague. He’d need a reason not to help her out, and he couldn’t think of one quickly enough. “What’s it to do with?”

She was ready for that one. “Lost property.”

Sergeant Murchison relaxed, just a little. “I suppose.…”

“Yes?”

“I suppose you could try Martha.…”

*   *   *

Martha Harris wasn’t everyone’s idea of a private investigator. But then, she hadn’t been everyone’s idea of a detective sergeant either, certainly not twenty years before, when she first came to Norbold on promotion from Newcastle. She was a woman at a time when most detectives were male; even in her twenties she was somewhat stocky, at a time when women were still judged first by their looks and only then by their abilities; and finally, though a quick temper had got her into trouble on a number of occasions, she was plainly a kind woman. No one raised on cop shows expected that of an ambitious female detective.

Now she was twenty years older, significantly fatter, and curious to discover what Hazel wanted. While she waited, she pushed the second half of a box of chocolates across the desk in her visitor’s direction. “Help yourself, pet. Them ones in gold foil are good.”

Hazel put on her friendliest smile and took a strawberry cream instead. “Ms. Harris, do you know who I am?”

The other woman considered for a moment before nodding. “Aye, pet, I do.”

“Then you know I’m a police officer.”

Another thoughtful pause. “Who you are, what you do, what you did.”

Hazel’s smile never wavered. “Did you know that when you broke into my flat?”

This time the pause was much longer. Martha Harris reached out and took another chocolate. It was the last one in gold foil. “I didn’t break anything,” she said eventually.

“That’s how I know it was you.”

It’s a sad fact of policing that almost the only compliments you get are from other police officers. Those who go solo forfeit even that meager source of appreciation. Ms. Harris offered half a smile in acknowledgment. “Off the record?”

“For now,” conceded Hazel carefully.

“I didn’t know you were job when I took the man’s shilling. When I realized, I gave it back.”

“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to ask what man?”

The smile broadened. “No, pet.”

“What were you looking for? When you didn’t break into my flat.”

The investigator considered at length before answering that one. She decided that she could, in a general way, because she had not identified the client. “Photographs.”

Hazel wasn’t expecting that. “Photographs of what?”

Martha Harris shrugged. “Digital ones, on any sticks and discs I could find. But actually, it was the photos on your mantelpiece that told me who you were.”

Hazel frowned. “How?”

The older woman gave her an old-fashioned look. “The dog, pet. I’ve lived in this town for twenty years, but if I’d only lived here six months, I’d have recognized that dog. Gabriel Ash not so much, but his dog? Easy. And who was going to have pictures of Gabriel Ash’s dog? Gabriel Ash’s friend. Constable Best, who took on Norbold’s senior police officer
and
its last godfather, and won.”

“It didn’t feel much like winning,” said Hazel wryly.

“You’re alive, aren’t you? And they’re not. From where I’m sitting, that’s a big-time win.”

“So what did you give him?” asked Hazel. “This client you’re not going to identify.”

“Nothing,” said Martha immediately. “I told you. As soon as I realized you were job, I was out of there. I didn’t copy nothing. I didn’t even look at anything that you didn’t have framed and on show. I returned his retainer and told him to think again. I haven’t heard from him since. I’m not expecting to.”

“And that’s all he asked you for—digital photographs?”

“Aye. I had a bloody great EHD with me, so I could copy everything I found. But I never got it out the bag. I wasn’t in the flat five minutes.”

Hazel nodded slowly, taking it in. An explanation of a kind, but more questions raised than answered. And apart from the one thing she knew Martha Harris would never tell her, and Martha didn’t know that she already knew, she didn’t think the woman was holding anything back. “All right. We can leave it there, for now.

“Just one thing,” she added, turning in the doorway. Martha raised an interrogative eyebrow. “You’re a neat worker. But next time you break into someone’s flat—”

“I didn’t break anything,” interjected Martha firmly.

“
Next
time you break into someone’s flat, don’t leave it tidier than you found it.”

CHAPTER 8

C
HARLES ARMITAGE HAD MISLAID HIS LAPTOP,
Hazel had handed it in to the police, and within days the structural engineer had it back. But instead of sending flowers as a thank-you, he’d hired a private investigator to search her flat for photographs. The only possible conclusion was that he had pictures on that laptop that he
really
didn’t want people seeing.

Hazel had bought herself a box of chocolates on the way home. The ones in gold foil were indeed particularly good. The white dog was curled up at the other end of the sofa, not begging—which she clearly thought beneath her—just close at hand if anything happened to be going spare. Hazel knew chocolate is toxic to dogs. Every so often, as she mulled over what she knew and what she thought, she offered Patience one of the little pink wafers, and the dog graciously accepted.

The plans for Dirty Nellie’s might be commercially sensitive. But did structural engineers resort to burglary to protect commercially sensitive information from someone who wasn’t even a competitor? Burglary was a panic reaction that seemed less like a company defending its legitimate interests and more like an individual caught with his pants down.

Mr. Charles Armitage, successful professional and family man, had been doing something he shouldn’t with someone he shouldn’t, and had been unwise enough to keep the evidence as a file of photos on his laptop. And now he was afraid he was going to be blackmailed.

As simple as that? He had a bit on the side, he’d taken photographs of her—maybe he’d taken photographs of them together—and now he thought he’d lose everything if copies reached his wife? Hazel sniffed indignantly. Did Armitage really think she had nothing better to do than point out his shortcomings to a wife who was almost certainly aware of them already? With very little encouragement, Hazel would have called him up to tell him so.

But as she thought about it, and took a certain amount of satisfaction from the panic she would hear in his voice before he realized this was as bad as it was going to get, wiser counsels prevailed. It was one of those “Least said, soonest mended” occasions. If, like Patience pretending she’d never liked chocolate anyway, Hazel exhibited no interest in Charles Armitage’s affairs—in both senses of the word—she fully expected he would lose interest in her. And that would be best.

*   *   *

“They’re alive, Ash. Your wife is alive. Your sons are alive.”

“Yes.” He’d seen them. After four years, he’d seen them, alive and, as far as he could see, well. He wouldn’t have recognized the boys if he’d bumped into them in the park, but Cathy wouldn’t have lied. She’d stood them in front of the Webcam for a minute, then ushered them away into some other room. She hadn’t wanted them to hear what she had to say to him.

She’d been supplied with more of the cards. She sat down facing the computer and read them out one by one. Ash thought she already knew what was on them. Her voice was breaking before she got to the punch line.

“You don’t have to do what they want.” There was no emotion in Stephen Graves’s tone, only the careful emptiness of someone who has passed through shock and out the other end. “It’s asking too much. No one would blame you if you decided this … conversation … never happened.”

“You didn’t,” Ash reminded him. His voice was oddly flat, as if it was a straight choice between that and screaming. “You decided Cathy’s life was worth more than your business, more than your honor, and she wasn’t even your wife.”

Graves was dismissive. “A business is only money. Honor is only a notion. I wouldn’t have given what they’re asking of you.”

“She’s my wife,” Ash said simply. “They’re my sons.”

Graves regarded him somberly. “You’re serious? You’re prepared to … pay their price?”

Ash didn’t have to think about it. “I have no choice.”

“You don’t even know…” Graves had to stop and clear his throat. “You don’t know that they’ll do what they say they’ll do. Even if you do everything they ask, how can you be sure they’ll send your family home?”

“They’ll have to convince me. Nothing will happen until I
am
sure.”

Graves had no idea how Ash intended to get guarantees he could believe in. But he had no doubt that Ash could structure the deal to his satisfaction. This was the security analyst he’d first met five years ago, not the pale imitation who’d occupied his skin for much of the intervening time.

“But
how
? I heard what they had Cathy say, too. That they’ll send her and your boys home as soon as … as soon as they feel safe. But for God’s sake, man, you can’t just take their word for it! What makes you think you can trust them?”

Ash regarded him with a fine scorn. The apologetic stoop was gone, leaving him a bigger man than Graves remembered. “I
don’t
trust them, Mr. Graves. But I can ensure that they don’t get what they want until I’ve got what I want.”

Graves shook his narrow head in appalled wonder. “But how?”

Ash gave him a chilly, remote smile. “It’s funny you should ask that.…”

*   *   *

Mrs. Poliakov regarded Patience gravely. Patience regarded Mrs. Poliakov in much the same way. Hazel held her counsel, and her breath.

Finally the landlady said firmly, “No dogs. It says in the tenancy agreement. No dogs.”

“Yes, it does,” Hazel had to agreed. “Which wasn’t a problem eight months ago, because I didn’t have a dog then.”

“You said this is not your dog now.” Mrs. Poliakov sounded suspicious.

“And that’s true,” Hazel said quickly. “She belongs to a friend of mine. He’s having a really difficult time, he needs me to look after her, but it’s only a temporary arrangement. He’ll take her back as soon as he can.”