Authors: Faith Martin
Mike Regis looked along the towpath with interest. He’d been to Thrupp once before, but had only got as far as The Boat, a pub where Hillary had celebrated the closing of a tricky murder case last year.
It was beginning to get dark, and the sky had that pearly luminescence so typical of approaching winter. Trees,
beginning
to lose their leaves, sighed alongside the canal, and leaves, floating down, littered the khaki-coloured waterway. A pheasant in a neighbouring field was calling noisily, and as he trudged along the muddied towpath, Mike couldn’t make up his mind whether or not he liked the place.
People used to bright lights and city streets would call it bleak, but there was something about the gaily coloured moored craft, with their paintings of flowers, castles and water birds, that defied such a word. Smoke, real woodsmoke, belched aromatically from thin chimneys, and mixed with the scent of cooking.
He found the Mollern easily enough. Hillary had explained that Mollern was the old English country word for a heron – as Brock was a badger, and Reynard a fox – and that the boat had been painted in the bird’s grey, black, white and old-gold colouring. It was the only barge like it in the line. It looked well-kept and maintained. On the top was a big tub of brightly blooming winter pansies that danced their velvety heads in the breeze. It looked very picturesque, but as he approached it he eyed its narrow confines with something
akin to unease. It reminded him of nothing so much as a giant pencil box.
Did people really live their lives in that narrow, tiny space?
He stepped awkwardly onto the small square length of deck and leant forward to tap on the door. It made him feel like some character from a fairy tale tapping on the entrance to a troll’s cave.
The door opened, and Hillary looked up at him. He saw a surprised look flash across her face, and instantly noted how tired she looked. Almost depressed, in fact.
‘Hey, I heard you broke your case. No party?’ he asked, wondering for the first time why she and the team weren’t at The Boat.
‘No one’s in a partying mood,’ she said flatly. ‘Come in, and I’ll tell you about it.’
She poured them both a glass of white wine from an opened bottle in the fridge and filled him in on the sad tale. When she was finished, Mike shook his head. He was sitting, somewhat uncomfortably, on the long narrow couch in the living area that also pulled out into a spare bed. Not that Hillary ever used it. She’d invited nobody onto the boat since she’d moved in.
‘And this girl, this Julia, simply let the little boy die? She knew about it, I mean? The doctors kept her informed of how weak he was getting?’ Mike asked, disbelief ringing in his voice.
‘Yes. Both her own doctor, and of course, poor Barry Orne’s doctors did everything they could think of to get her to change her mind. But she wouldn’t go through with it. I don’t think Julia’s parents knew anything about it, though. I’m sure they’d have said right at the beginning of the case if they’d known. I feel sorry for them, Mike. It’s bad enough to have their daughter murdered, but to learn this about her now seems somehow unbearably cruel. And then there’s the fact that there’s going to be no public sympathy for them either, when it all comes out. The trail’s going to be a nightmare for them. They’re in for a tough time.’
Mike grunted. ‘I hadn’t thought about that. More innocents
getting hurt. Shit, no wonder you’ve got a long face. It’s a real no-winner, isn’t it?’
Hillary sighed and nodded.
‘And it was definitely the mother who killed her, not the father?’ Mike said.
‘Terry Orne didn’t even know she’d hired a PI,’ Hillary confirmed glumly. ‘Though we’ll have to charge him for attempted murder on Frank.’
Mike grinned feebly. ‘I’ll bet Frank just loved the fact that it was you who saved his bacon.’
Hillary nearly choked over her drink, and for a moment, laughed uproariously. So much had happened in the last ten hours that she hadn’t even considered that yet. Now that she did, it was enough to chase away the blues. ‘You can say that again,’ she said, when she’d finished chuckling. ‘And I’m never going to let the poisonous little git forget it.’
Regis grinned, but his mind was still on his own daughter, and what he’d have done, had she been seriously ill, and discovered that there was a donor, but the donor was refusing to help.
‘I suppose your team are still tying it all up?’
Hillary nodded. After taking a formal statement from Vivian Orne, with a solicitor present this time, she’d let Janine take over, by way of a consolation prize for not being in at the kill. Tommy Lynch was still back at the Big House typing up reports on the Gregory Innes interview.
‘I’m determined to nail that private dick,’ Hillary muttered with feeling. She knew that Janine and Tommy were also just as keen, and wouldn’t be letting the grass grow under their feet. They’d be going up north tomorrow and liaising closely with the locals. For once, her team didn’t care if another Force took the credit, so long as they got their man.
‘He’ll do time, and, better still, have his licence permanently revoked,’ Hillary said. ‘That’ll teach him to play footsies with me and the Intercity Express.’
Regis had heard on the grapevine about Hillary’s near miss with the train, and made her go through it once again. She’d
already shrugged off her disabling of Terry Orne as nothing, but Regis knew it had taken quick thinking and a cool head and steady nerve to bring it off so neatly, and with such a minimum of fuss or damage.
‘They’ll be putting you up for a gallantry award if you keep this up,’ he said when she’d finished.
Hillary shuddered. ‘Don’t!’ she said. Then, putting her wine glass down firmly, took the bull by the horns. ‘You didn’t just stop by to massage my ego, though, did you?’
Regis smiled. The man had a nice smile, no two ways about it. In the confined space, she could smell his
after-shave
, even though his jaw looked like it could do with another introduction to the razor. Her dad had been like that – needed a shave sometimes twice a day. And sitting so close beneath a bright light, she could even make out the golden flecks in his dark green eyes. He was wearing old faded jeans and a bomber jacket – he’d obviously been working the streets, and had come here without changing, and she felt a distinct stirring.
She told her toenails to quit curling, and raised her eyebrows questioningly.
‘No, I didn’t. Mind you, I have no object to massaging anything that needs it.’
Hillary laughed. She liked a man with a sense of humour. She didn’t, for one second, take it as a serious come-on line.
‘I come bearing gifts,’ he said instead and reaching into his inside jacket pocket, bought out a gold and white envelope, the kind that housed photographs. Intrigued, Hillary reached forward and took them, recognizing one of the subjects at once. ‘My, my, Mr Thomas Palmer, local chairman of ESAA, no less. And the scantily clad lady kissing him lovingly goodbye is not Mrs Palmer, I take it?’
‘She isn’t,’ Mike grinned.
‘I don’t see Mr Palmer backing out of his civil suit due to candid shots of himself or his mistress. And these certainly aren’t admissible in court.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of court,’ Mike said with a slow smile. ‘I
was thinking of sending them to leading lights in ESAA. The lady is the wife of a local fox-hunter.’
Hillary blinked, then began to laugh.
When she’d finished, she put the photos away. She’d have to think about the best way to play it.
‘So, what made you decide to play Galahad again?’ Hillary asked. ‘After the way I put a flea in your ear the other day, I didn’t expect to see you for dust.’
Regis shrugged. ‘I suppose I wanted to play the big man. You know how we get, sometimes.’
Hillary did. Ronnie had liked to play the big man. The trouble was, he came to believe in his own publicity.
‘I don’t need another big man in my life, Mike,’ Hillary said flatly.
‘How about a fairly laid-back, nondescript lover then?’ The dark-green eyes held hers steadily. ‘We’re not from the same nick, so no aggro there. Different specialities – so no
competition
. We’re the same age, we think the same. We’re both adults. And I really, honest injun,’ – he put a hand to his heart – ‘haven’t slept with my wife for years. In fact,’ – he reached once more into his jacket pocket and produced a letter – ‘we filed for divorce yesterday.’
Hillary hesitated, then read the solicitor’s confirming letter with an odd feeling of both shame and satisfaction. She was unused to either emotion, and quickly thrust it back. ‘You needn’t have done that.’
‘I didn’t do it for you,’ Mike said bluntly. And even as he spoke, he wondered. Was that strictly true? ‘Things needed to be sorted. And Sylvia is old enough to choose which one of us she wants to live with.’
‘You’re moving out?’
‘Yeah. Well, it’s easier for me to move, than for Laura.’
Hillary grimaced. ‘Good luck with finding another place to live.’
Mike Regis grunted. ‘You don’t have to tell me. I was thinking of renting a barge, but having seen this one, I think I’ll pass.’
Hillary gave a surprised grunt of laughter. ‘Well, thanks a bunch.’ She looked around the boat, seeing the mellow wood, the cheerful paintwork, the cosy fittings.
‘I didn’t mean it was an old tub or anything.’ Mike held up his hands in a ‘peace’ gesture. ‘I just suddenly realized it’s not for me. I feel like a sardine.’
Hillary nodded. She knew how he felt. When she’d first moved in, she’d hated it. But the place had begun to grow on her. Anyway, if Palmer folded over the ESAA case, she might be getting her house back soon. The thought, for some reason, didn’t actually make her feel as happy as she would have
imagined
.
The Mollern bobbed gently as a passing craft, looking for a last-ditch night-mooring, chugged past.
‘So,’ Mike said, leaning forward and placing his empty wine glass beside hers, ‘about us. I don’t want to.…’
Whatever it was he didn’t want to do remained a mystery, because, like a cliché that didn’t know better, her mobile phone suddenly chirruped.
Hillary snatched it up, stuck it to one ear, and snarled, ‘Yes?’
‘Guv?’ Tommy Lynch’s startled voice sounded in her ear.
‘Tommy. Sorry.’ She quickly modified her tone. ‘What is it?’
‘I think you’d better come back in guv. We’ve just had word. Roger Greenwood has attacked his Dad. It’s bad, I think. He’s in the hospital. Theo Greenwood, that is. The JR. We’ve got Roger Greenwood downstairs. He’s in a right state.’
Hillary heaved a sigh. ‘OK, I’m coming in.’
Without a word, Regis got up and left her to it.
Theo Greenwood was still in casualty at the JR, and as soon as they walked in, held up a hand to fend them off. He was bleeding profusely from the head, and a nurse and junior doctor were in the process of applying stitches.
‘You lot can sod off as well,’ Theo Greenwood said, his sickly pallor at odds with the power and anger of his voice. ‘I’m not pressing charges against my own son, so you can forget it.’
Hillary nodded. ‘Care to tell me what happened?’
‘Nothing. Just a family argument. A misunderstanding. Nothing to do with you lot.’
Hillary, knowing a lost cause when she saw it, shrugged, and motioned Tommy to come away.
‘Back to the station, guv?’ Tommy asked. But Hillary shook her head. They’d already taken Roger Greenwood’s statement before coming to the JR. It had been a simple enough story. An anonymous phone call had led him to a meeting with a young woman who claimed to be a girlfriend of someone called Leo Mann. Roger had never heard of him. The girl, Lucy, had laughed, and told him that his girlfriend had been shagging her boyfriend silly, and Roger had almost walked out on her at that point. It had been enough to make Lucy back off, the thought of losing all that money suddenly tempering her
indignation
.
But what she’d told him had made Roger sick to his stomach. His own father, and Julia. He didn’t believe it. It had taken Lucy some time to convince him, and when she had, he’d handed over the money in a daze.
He’d driven back to the Hayrick Inn, torn between the desire to laugh and cry, and alternately not believing it, and then believing it only too well. It explained, if nothing else, the way the old man had been so dead set against them marrying.
By the time he’d confronted his father in his study, he’d been in no mood for a little chat, but had worked up a fine head of steaming rage. At first, Theo Greenwood had tried to deny it, only reluctantly admitting it when it became obvious that his son wouldn’t be fobbed off. It had been then that Roger had clobbered him with an angle-poise lamp. Just the once, right on the crown of his head.
‘No, no point going back in now,’ Hillary said eventually, in answer to Tommy’s question. ‘If his father isn’t going to press charges, I can’t see any point wasting more time and
man-hours
on them. Keep the son in overnight, then turn him loose. It’ll do him good to sweat for a while.’
Tommy nodded, relieved. He’d felt rather sorry for the young bloke. To find out your own dad had been boffing your fiancée was enough to make anyone see red.
‘Can I drop you off, Tommy?’ she asked, getting behind the wheel, but the thought of turning up at his mum’s house with Hillary in tow, made him blanch.
‘No thanks, guv. There’ll be a bus along in a minute.’
Hillary frowned. ‘OK.’ She wondered briefly what was eating him, then shrugged. It was none of her business.
At the roundabout at the bottom of Headington Hill, she waited in a small queue, her mind moving restlessly over the past few days.
Well, they had the killer, the case was done and dusted, and ready to be presented to Jerome Raleigh all wrapped up with a bow. It was good work, neat, tidy, and nothing for the CPS to whine about. As a good way to impress the new boss, Hillary knew she couldn’t have done better.
She knew Janine was in a happy mood, and had been hinting about a romantic weekend away. Personally, Hillary wasn’t sure just how keen Mel would be to go. Unless she was misreading her old friend, the signs didn’t look good on that front.