High-Wired (23 page)

On the back seat Olivia sat with Hibbie cradled in her arms. ‘Why did you go. my little Hibiscus Flower?’ asked Olivia in anguish. ‘I always thought that you were such an old head on young shoulders, and we trusted you.’

‘I don’t know, Mum, I just don’t know. At the time I thought it was romantic.’

‘But why didn’t you confide in us? You know we would have supported you if it meant that much?’

‘I just don’t know Mum,’ sobbed Hibbie. her shoulders shaking. ‘I don’t think I even can talk about it. It’s too raw.’

‘Whenever you are ready, my love, you know we’ll be there for you.’

When they got back to the cottage, Hibbie went straight up to her room and cried solidly for two hours. Olivia and Hal left her to it, knowing that she needed to get it out of her system. When she had quietened down, Ben went up and sat in her room talking to her for the best part of another hour, then Olivia heard her go into the bathroom as Ben descended the stairs and asked what was for supper.

‘How is she?’ asked Olivia.

‘She’ll be fine. She’s just had a bit of a clash with the big bad world, the way I did, and now, like me, she’s come to her senses.’

This was the best news Olivia had had for some time and, vowing that she would spend more time with her kids and less at the station, she went off into the kitchen humming, only to find that Hal had already put a full casserole dish in the oven and was preparing vegetables.

‘It’ll be ready when we are,’ he said, followed by, ‘Do you fancy a celebratory glass of wine?’

‘I really do, and I think those two deserve one too. This has been a hard lesson for me, but I must get my priorities sorted out before they’ve flown the nest for good, and my job as a mother is over.’

‘Mothers can never retire: their job is never-ending,’ he said with a twinkle, a corkscrew in his hand. ‘Just think of them in about ten years’ time, needing babysitters, someone to take the grandkids for the holidays. You’ll be busier than ever.’

‘Hope so,’ she replied, taking her glass and raising it in a toast.

When Hibbie came downstairs, she was showered and dressed in her most feminine clothes. Her hair was blow-dried into a bob and she had put on a little make-up. ‘Sorry I’ve been such a wally,’ she said, lifting her hand up to pat her hair. ‘He wanted me to have it all cut off really short, and when I said no, he got so angry that I thought he was going to hit me.’

The shadow of tears appeared in her eyes again, and Hal rushed over to his little girl with a big glass of wine. ‘Drink that, my little Hibiscus Flower, and there’s one for you too, Ben. We’re all back together again, and nothing else matters.’ They all raised their glasses to that.

The next day, having informed the station that her daughter was home safely, Olivia again gave the office a miss and spent hours talking to her children asking them about their ambitions, their hopes and fears, and by the end of it, she felt like she had bonded with them again in a way she hadn’t since they were quite small. She knew she’d relied upon Hal too heavily, what with his shorter hours out of the house, followed by his early retirement, and she resolved not to let that happen again. Of course, it would, but she’d spot it sooner next time, and put it right before it got out of hand.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When Hardy got back to her office, Lauren gave her a warm welcome, asking, ‘How is everything. What happened? How did you manage it?’ Over a cup of coffee, Olivia unburdened herself of the events of the last few days, her face wreathed in smiles when she got to the bit about Hibbie choosing to come home.

‘It was a very harrowing experience, seeing her in such a situation, and by her own choice, too. I just hope she’s been sensible and won’t announce she’s pregnant in a couple of weeks’ time. It’s all very well running away for love, but you should be very careful who you think the rest of your life lies with.

‘That guy was a leech. I checked. He’s already got a record for possession of drugs – nothing Class A, but that’s beside the point. He’d have led my beautiful Hibbie in a downward spiral until she was living like a pig, old before her time through working several jobs to make ends meet. Do you know what she said he did all day?’

‘No,’ replied Lauren quietly, unwilling to interrupt the flow, as she knew Olivia needed to get this off her chest to someone not directly involved.

‘He sat around eating noodles and watching cartoons on children’s television. I don’t even know if he could read and write, and from what I’ve managed to ferret out about him he was from a very dysfunctional family. Our Hibbie deserves better than that. She’ll be more careful and not so trusting in the future, I hope.’

‘And how are they all?’

‘Ben’s glad to have his sister back, and he seems to be fully recovered now, but he’s still denying that he took the drugs on purpose. Hibbie seems very light-hearted and cheerful for someone who, only yesterday, confessed to be suffering from a broken heart. And Hal, well, he’s in a thoughtful mood, trying to work out how best to protect his chickens without seeming to. Me? I’m just a little bit older and rather wiser, but I’m glad that there hasn’t been a real tragedy over the past couple of weeks.’

‘I’m so pleased for you all,’ replied Lauren. ‘I’m glad you’re back now. There’ve been rumours buzzing around here, but nobody knows anything for certain. Devenish is keeping a very tight rein on information, but I believe there might be something in your emails. I’m sure you wouldn’t have been cut out of the loop completely because of how much time you’ve spent on this. People do have some loyalties, and I suspect you’ve got one or two surprises waiting for you.’

Olivia looked round before opening her computer. ‘Have you caught the mole, yet? And where’s Colin Redwood?’

‘On suspension awaiting investigation.’

‘What?’

‘He was caught trying to hack into your computer when he heard that you might have copies of emails sent to the superintendent. His mobile was seized, and there were some compromising texts on it, and some phone numbers that pointed the finger to him being our office leak.’

‘Good God! I hope he was well paid. He’s put his career on the line, and there’s no going back.’

‘Apparently he has large debts and expensive tastes,’ said Lenny Franklin.

‘Come on, guv,’ said Groves, ‘I can’t wait any longer. The suspense has been killing me. If I’d known how to hack into someone’s files, I might have had a go myself.’

‘DS Groves, behave yourself!’

There were indeed a few very interesting and informative messages on Hardy’s mail system, and she pointed them out to Groves, who read them over her shoulder, whistling softly under her breath. ‘Well, that clinches it, but we’ve been pulled off the case,’ she said dismally.

‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat,’ replied her boss cryptically. ‘I’ll talk to you about it later. Good God, I’d forgotten you had been staying with us. Did you get back home? I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t think about anything else but this Hibbie business.’

‘No worries. Yes, I’m safely back in my own nest, with no cuckoos in it now.’

During their lunch break, safely ensconced in the privacy of Lauren’s car, Olivia outlined how she viewed their situation. ‘I got an email from Forensics confirming that tiny splatters of blood were missed in the clean-up at the boatshed. They were from all four murder victims. And there were traces from all our four suspects in the mezzanine office. I also got an email about the sweep for fingerprints in the office at the club – Hal said there’d been some sort of fuss going on the last time he played there and, whatever Church believed, he didn’t quite manage to eliminate every print.

‘Just before we left the building, I had a phone call from Dylan MacArthur – didn’t recognise his voice; he’d been away with a nasty dose of ’flu. And he said he’d been an absolute mug and forgotten to send me a supplementary report on Genni’s body. He said that the bite marks
could
be matched to the teeth of the suspects. So all we need to do is to get them to bite into an apple and we’ve got them. That, with the evidence of Genni’s blood in the boatshed, should clinch it.’

‘But we’ve been officially warned off,’ countered Lauren.

‘From the drugs investigation and the deaths of the three men, we have. But, what about the abduction, rape, and murder of a minor? That seems to me to be a completely separate incident. I don’t see how the super can moan about us going after the remaining men on that one.’

‘He’ll tear you to shreds.’

‘I don’t care. The kids of this town need protecting. No one knows that better than me, at the moment, and I want to see that any dangers that I can identify are taken off the streets and locked up for a very long time.’

‘You’ll lose either your rank or your job,’ warned Lauren.

‘I don’t care, right at this very moment. I’ve been very close to losing both my kids recently, in one way or another, and I’m starting off the rest of my life with my priorities right. If Devenish wants the guilty to get away with things, then he’s going to get no co-operation from me. Those men are as guilty as hell of four murders. If I can only get them done for one, then I’ll be satisfied. I expect the books will be balanced when the Drugs Squad winds up its operation. If not, at least I’ve got those responsible for what I see as the worst of their crimes – stealing the life and future from a young girl, and devastating a respectable family unit.’

‘What about our drugs courier – Hanger, the man still in hospital?’

‘The Drugs Squad can vacuum him up themselves. He’ll talk when he’s conscious again, and maybe even that list of names he had will turn up in the wreck of his car when Forensics have finished with it. He’s not our birdie anymore.’

‘And I’ve remembered where I saw that Mary Mackintosh before, guv. She was up on a drugs charge at my old station.’

‘Look her up and send the information upstairs. It’s not on our agenda anymore,’ replied Hardy, with a sneer of scorn that they had been cast aside so easily when they were so close to the truth.

‘You reckon they’ll mop up the whole drugs operation in this town?’

‘As much of it as they can, without risking the lives of their undercover agents too much.’

‘For someone who’s got as many years as you under their belt, you still have a touching faith in law and order.’ Lauren couldn’t help herself.

‘I’d leave, the day I realised that had died. I need that belief to keep me going, month after month, year after year.

Anyway, I’m going out now.’

‘Where?’

‘To buy some apples.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘I know, and bad, and dangerous to know. You get Shuttleworth and one of the other Uniforms to round up our remaining two suspects, and I’ll be back to tempt them. No doubt the Drugs Squad will also pick up Mervyn Lord, wherever he’s hiding out. Us? We’re just about finished.’

An hour later, DI Hardy was informed that Teddy Edwards, aka Woggle-Eye, and Steve Stoner, aka Flinty, had both been picked up and were in a holding cell waiting for her attentions.

It hadn’t been an easy hour for the DI, and she had spent it mentally berating herself from getting so far away from her children that she couldn’t see what was right under her nose. She could, now, recall conversations with Hibbie about some guy she’d met and wanted to buy a present for, and also noticing that Ben had come home a couple of times in a state that she could only describe as ‘spaced-out’.

She’d already spoken to Hal and he’d warned him off pot, especially about smoking it in their family home. Maybe she should have taken him to see some of the recovering addicts at the out-of-town clinic, as Lauren had suggested. They should’ve used shock tactics on him; come down on him harder, so that they actually had an impact with their moaning, and he recognised that it wasn’t just the namby-pamby cotton wool wrapping that he had probably taken it for.

As it was, he’d frightened the life out of himself, and nearly out of his parents, too, and she hoped he would not leave the primrose path again after his brush with death. If Hal hadn’t gone upstairs when he did that night, they’d have probably found him dead in his room the next morning, and she’d be visiting his grave by now.

As for Hibbie, they were lucky that Ben had been able to find out what he did about her whereabouts. If he hadn’t done that, they may never have found her, and God knows what might have happened to her. She and Hal had nearly lost everything.

Of one thing she was certain, however, and that was that she was going to charge the men responsible for the abduction, rape, and murder of Genni Lacey, and see them behind bars, if it was the last thing she did in the police force – service, she reminded herself, with a wry grin.

Completely irregularly, she had the two men taken into an interview room together, with Lauren and Shuttleworth present.

When they were seated across the desk from her, she passed them each an apple, much to Shuttleworth’s consternation. ‘Would you two gentlemen please bite into the apples, then pass them to me,’ she requested, as they looked at each other in perplexity. Neither had enough brains, in her opinion, to blow their noses if their brains had been made out of dynamite.

Crunch!

Crunch!

She would feed herself to Devenish later, and he’d have to make up his own mind what to do with her. For the moment, all that mattered was getting justice for an innocent girl.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The next day Hardy drove into Littleton-on-Sea in sleety rain, knowing that a chewing-out awaited her. When she got to the office, Groves was sitting at her desk looking rather queasy. ‘What is it?’ the DI asked, concerned.

‘I had a call from Kenneth,’ Groves answered briefly, then stared into space again obviously distracted by something.

‘And what did he have to say for himself?’

‘He phoned to apologise for the anonymous calls. They were all from him, egged on by the ghastly Gerda. She thought it would be funny to put the wind up me, and he went along with it because he was so angry about us breaking up like that.’

‘They were all him?’

‘Yes, but it still doesn’t explain who set fire to my house, does it? Whoever did that is still out there.’ The sergeant was evidently very worried that the culprit would return and try again.