Authors: Judith Cutler
‘Boiled alive in their own dodgy water would be more appropriate. Maeve, I’m so grateful.’
‘It’s my job, Fran. In any case, I always like returning a favour.’
Fran overrode the thanks. ‘So what do I have to do next?’
‘Absolutely nothing. Which will be a change for you, won’t it?’
It would indeed, and a nice one considering there was still the urgent matter of the appeal case file to go through. Was she getting slower or the days shorter?
‘We’ll work in tandem with the Environment Agency,’ Maeve continued. ‘We serve an order and they do the enforcing.’
‘And then?’
‘They’ll flush out the pipes and you’re back with nice pure H2O.’
‘You are my heroine – and Bill my hero,’ she added as a tacit apology for ever doubting Bill’s perfections.
Fran was so determined to get stuck into the case Mark wanted her to study that, having dropped him at the station to catch an early train for a Home Office meeting, she slipped into work almost secretly, with a banana and an apple for breakfast at her desk. Any chance phone calls would be diverted to her secretary, the caller being disappointed since Pat Harper, the saint officially on the payroll as her secretary, didn’t officially come in till eight-thirty. Pat was usually in long before this, but used the time to catch up on other work uninterrupted.
Fran rolled up her sleeves, literally and metaphorically, and opened the file.
Three photos, all passport size, stared up at her. The first was of Janine Roper, a woman in her thirties. The unsmiling, face-forward pose did her no favours, but it was clear that she had good features and well-cut hair.
Janine Roper had been eight years younger than her husband Ken, a local government officer. His photo showed an anxious-looking man in his early forties, hair already
thinning. He’d been wearing either spectacles or sunglasses before he was snapped – two marks showed on the bridge of his nose. Janine had lived with him in a semi-detached estate house in Ashford. Neighbours said they were an ideal couple, never arguing and having mercifully quiet hobbies. The only minor bone of contention was Ken’s dinghy, which he kept on his drive, with the result that he was in the habit of parking on the road in what others regarded as their spots. Ken was a keen amateur sailor, his friend Maurice Barnes crewing. Someone said Janine, a classroom assistant, was given to extensive reading; at least she was always talking about visits to the public library. Colleagues at school reported that she often seemed tired and listless, but she’d mentioned nothing apart from insomnia. In confirmation, packets of herbal and homeopathic sleeping pills had been found beside her bed.
If she and Ken were a model couple, everyone reported how affectionate Janine was towards Maurice, the other man in the case. Maurice was a big but gentle-looking man about Ken’s age, who’d permitted himself a winsome turn of the mouth that had somehow escaped the notice of the smile-resistant Passport Office. Apparently Janine was given to hugging him and linking arms with him when they went about as a threesome. Yes, the press had gone for a three-in-a-bed angle, but swiftly dropped it, preferring the jugular of a suddenly jealous husband who had killed his wife and blackmailed his friend into helping. And Maurice might have been susceptible to blackmail. A biochemist working at a perfume factory near Ashford, he was a local councillor hoping to be adopted as a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, so the less scandal in his life the better – at least until after he was elected.
The police thesis was that Ken had killed Janine in their home just before or during the spring bank holiday weekend – they’d found spots of blood in the bathroom that Ken insisted must have been caused by one of her frequent nosebleeds, though there was no medical confirmation than she had a nasal problem. Then, the allegation went, the two men had bundled her body under the tarpaulin that always covered Roper’s dinghy when it was on the drive, and then, hitching the dinghy to the Ropers’ Fiesta, set off to the sea. Neighbours had seen them waving her goodbye; the police believed that the men had waved to an empty house. There was CCTV footage of them arriving at Whitstable, the dinghy still covered in its tarpaulin. But the cameras hadn’t actually picked them up as they set sail, so there was no saying whether the vessel was lower in the water than it should have been with only two aboard or indeed if there was something still mysteriously swathed in tarpaulin by their feet. An obvious flaw in the police case was that, even allowing for the waywardness of tides and currents, no body remotely matching Janine’s had ever been washed up where they would have expected it. Neither had one appeared further afield.
Both men had vociferously protested their innocence. Neither had a record of violence, sexual or otherwise.
Meanwhile, Barnes agreed that Janine had been in his bed. His claim was that she had had a sick headache when she was round at his house with her husband, but that was considered a likely tale, though at least there was medical corroboration that she suffered from severe migraines.
So the DPP had been convinced, the jury had been convinced and the men were now doing time.
Fran leant back and rubbed her neck. Her colleagues
seemed to have done a business-like job in unearthing and presenting adequate evidence, even if almost all of it was circumstantial. As for the SIO’s notebooks, she had a nasty feeling – an instinct, nothing she would have mentioned to anyone but Mark – that old QED Moreton had put in just enough to satisfy the regulations, and that there was as much omitted as admitted. What about other suspects? He had made very little effort to trawl through other people who might have wanted Janine dead, colleagues or even sex offenders. She made a note – in her reckoning, this was a real weakness.
Another note – this one to Pat Harper – to contact the Home Office to arrange permission to visit Roper and Barnes as soon as possible. Whom should she take with her? Tom would be ideal, but it would be wrong to distract him from his new promotion. DI Jon Binns? This legwork might be a bit lowly for him. But Tom’s new girlfriend, Sue Hall – she might do. A quick phone call reached her.
‘Me? Really? Oh, ma’am – guv! – that’d be terrific.’
Was it pure or applied delight? Fran’s protégés – or protégées – tended to swarm briskly up the promotion ladder. But since Sue was seeing Tom, the most naïve of men, Fran gave her the benefit of the doubt.
‘We’ll need to look at the evidence, of course. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. Are you tied up with anything really urgent this week?’
‘Nothing I can’t fix. Oh, guv, wait till I tell Tom.’
‘I’ll give you a call the moment I can clear my diary. Love to Tom.’
Tempted though she was to drop everything and go down to the evidence store immediately, Fran thought she would
preface the visit with what she always caustically dismissed as playing politics. Mark, however, more worldly wise than she, had thought it a good idea for her to attempt another pre-emptive strike against any plans Simon might have in mind for her, so that was what she must do.
Having achieved nothing with the chief, it was fortunate she got on very well with Cosmo Dix, head of Human Resources. She phoned to invite herself down to share his first – always excellent, she’d heard – coffee of the day. He served China tea in thin china cups, complete with saucers; she’d be interested to see how he took his shots of caffeine.
In white, almost translucent, Rosenthal espresso cups, that was how.
‘The trouble is,’ Cosmo agreed, passing a plate of expensive-looking chocolate biscuits Fran reluctantly declined on her scales’ behalf, ‘that the chief will get ideas into his head that are so hard to shift. One needs to replace them gently, discreetly. A bit of circumnavigation is called for, Fran, dear. Or do I mean circumlocution? Circumspection?’
Fran shook her head. ‘Are you sure there is an appropriate word?’
‘Who cares? What I have to do is foresee a series of events that positively require him to keep you in CID, just as long as you want to stay, of course. I think it might be something to do with DCS Henson’s health, don’t you? We wouldn’t want to put any pressure on it, would we? Or do I mean him?’
‘I’ve already tried that tack with him, and with Gates, who wasn’t at all sympathetic.’
Sighing, Cosmo took what in anyone else would have been a swig from his cup. ‘Much better to leave it with me, Fran –
and for God’s sake, don’t get in any fights. Everything by the book. Softly, softly.’ He touched the side of his nose.
She finished her coffee, refusing a second cup on the grounds that she needed to sleep sometime before the week was up. ‘So I’d better go and start the homework he’s set me. A report on the needs of divisional CIDs.’
He smiled. ‘With you writing it, who knows, they may even get what they want.’
Fran went so far as to open both a computer document and a paper file. Simon had implied she should draw on her own recent experience of divisional CIDs, but – though she would never have admitted it publicly – she had been at HQ in Maidstone for so long that she felt that any recollections she had would be unreliable. So she would sally forth to talk to a few CID officers, in particular one Pete Webb.
Why not? It was a nice day, and if Folkestone was hardly the most inspiring of towns, it had sufficient sea breezes to blow away any tangling mental cobwebs.
And she wanted to nag Webb some more over the Minton case.
In fact, the ostensible reasons, as she freely admitted to Pat, when she popped into her office to say she was leaving the building, were the supplementary ones.
‘Take your bucket and spade and make a day of it,’ Pat suggested.
Fran and Pat had worked together only a few months, but they liked and approved of each other. The fact that they used the same HRT and were anxiously eyeing the prospect of elasticated waists was now less important than a sense that they were allies.
‘Go on, Fran. You know I’ll be in touch if you’re needed here – before anyone notices you’re missing. If you took an unmarked vehicle from the pound, they’d see yours in the car park and assume you were in some meeting somewhere.’ Pat smiled with a wholly feigned innocence.
Fran grinned her thanks, too grateful to pose the question that immediately sprang to mind – where on that shingly stretch of coast would you find a grain of sand?
‘Will this committee actually deliver what we want down in the divisions?’ Webb asked suspiciously.
‘How long have you been an officer, Pete? Well, then, you know the answer as well as I do. But at least if you ask for the sun, the moon and the stars you may get a few new light bulbs. And when you’ve given me your wish list – and please be as imaginative as you like – you can have a treat.’
He groaned. ‘I know your treats. You want another look at the Minton case, don’t you?’
‘You know what, I wouldn’t mind a look at Minton himself.’
‘You’re joking. Hell’s bells, Fran, is there anywhere in this new wish list policy of yours that allows you to tell a detective chief superintendent she’s off her head?’
She regarded him coldly for a second. All these days of hierarchical meetings had made her first impulse to bawl him out. So her rueful grin was directed both at him and at herself. ‘It depends whether she was announced by her title or by her name, I should imagine.’
‘In that case maybe we should compromise on “guv”,’ he replied.
‘So I’m only slightly off my head?’
‘Must be all those meetings,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy a cuppa before we start on this ’ere list?’
‘Not half.’
At last, over a matey canteen lunch after all their efforts, she asked, ‘Now, Pete, why should Alec Minton have a copy of a Lenham freebie paper and why should he have kept it? And – most important of all – did it have any connection with his death? You haven’t a spare minion you could ask to check, have you?’
He spread his hands in clear disbelief. ‘Christ, guv, haven’t we just spent the past hour saying spare minions are a thing of the past? Not that you’ve ever let us use the word, anyway. All
junior officers
are too busy getting buried under paperwork.’
‘I know, I know. I’d do it myself but—’
Her phone rang.
It was Pat, who dropped her voice conspiratorially. ‘Fran? DCS Henson’s secretary’s just phoned me. He’s not well – just a bad cold, I think – and he’s gone home. And, guess what—’
‘He wants me to go to one of Gates’ meetings for him. Oh, Pat, and I haven’t done more than have a quick paddle.’
There was no doubt that Gates registered her late arrival, so she stayed behind, schoolgirl-like, to apologise.
‘I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to conduct all your interviews face to face,’ he said, not unreasonably. ‘Have you never heard of email or the phone?’
‘Sir.’ There was no point in trying to explain the impossibility of getting hard-working men and women to respond to a cold email they believed would have no tangible
results when twenty other things cluttering their desks screamed for their attention. ‘And I have to tell you, sir, I shan’t be available tomorrow.’ His eyebrows shot up even as she drew breath to explain. ‘I shall be in court. All day, I expect.’
And even he couldn’t argue with that. Could he?
He said coldly, as if he’d like to clap her into detention, ‘Surely they’ll recess for the weekend at lunchtime.’
‘And if they do, sir, rest assured I shall be back at my desk.’
As she returned from court – it looked very much as if the case was going their way – the sun came out, turning the trudge from the car park into a stroll on a spring day. Accordingly, she took the long way round, a route which took her past the knot of miscreants in smokers’ alley. The – largely male – conclaves had always worried her, as inevitably the nicotine-stained bonding created an out-group of those who never touched cigarettes. For years the implication had been that if you were a real man, or aspired to be one, whichever gender you were, you were out there puffing in all weathers, and by way of recompense acquiring inside information. Now that official policy actively discouraged smoking anywhere in the environs of HQ, only the hardiest gaspers still congregated, and normally, hoping to escape detection, in twos or threes at most. Today there must have been nine – no, ten.
About to give them a few choice words, Fran stopped herself short. These weren’t rookies idling the afternoon away, but men – and a few women – of a similar rank to hers. She smelt not cigarette smoke but the sharp odour of conspiracy.
The huddle broke up, absorbed her, and reamalgamated. She didn’t expect them to come straight to the point, nor did
they, but it didn’t take long for her to realise which way the conversation was drifting. Once she’d seen a ballet – what the hell was it called? Drat these senior moments! – in which primitive people had circled round a maiden, persuading her that she was had been chosen to represent their needs to the gods. So far so good. But it seemed that the maiden had to dance herself to death to put their point across. Fran had a distinct feeling that she was the one round whom the elders were gathering, and though dancing was not on the menu, some sort of intercession most definitely was.