The Price of Failure (2 page)

By any standards, she had already suffered appallingly. But then came proof that while heaven has boundaries, hell does not. About the middle of her imprisonment, a newcomer had appeared to assault her, bringing fresh horror when he repeatedly told her that he had AIDS. Now, hospital tests showed that she was HIV positive.

2

Detective Inspector Hoskin stared resentfully at the pile of files on his desk. Police officers were being turned into clerks by the demand for paperwork – a case could call for 50, perhaps even 100 forms to be completed, signed, checked, countersigned … How many trees were felled simply because someone, somewhere, wanted to be seen to be important?

There was a knock on the door and Detective Sergeant Wyatt stepped into the room. ‘Ian's just called in, Guv.'

‘And?'

‘By the time he got there, the bird had flown.'

‘Shit!'

‘He questioned the mother, but couldn't get anywhere.'

‘Why not?'

‘She's a bit soft in the head; or makes out she is. Seems all she'd say was that Lenny left home yesterday evening and said he wouldn't be back for a couple of days.'

‘She didn't ask him where he was going?'

‘If I had Lenny living in the house and he said he'd be away, I wouldn't ask any questions in case he changed his mind.'

‘What about known contacts?'

‘He's a brother living on the other side of town, but he's straight and so there'd be no joy there. Ian's sniffing around the pubs and betting shops, hoping to find someone who can help.'

‘I want him brought in fast. There are those four other break-ins with his hallmark. With the evidence we've got this time, he's nailed, and that should persuade him to cough the others and they can be taken into account.'

Confirmation, Wyatt thought, that the DI's willingness to spend time and resources on a relatively minor case was due to the chance of clearing up several with one arrest. The monthly clear-up rate was due to be calculated soon; the last set of figures had not favoured the division.

‘Anything else on the books?'

‘A hit-and-run just beyond Altingham has just come in. The victim has a broken leg, but nothing more serious.'

‘Can he identify the car; any witnesses?'

‘No witnesses and he was far too shaken to get the number; he says it might have been a red Volkswagen, although on the other hand it might have been a Vauxhall.'

‘Great!'

‘Then we've had a punch-up on the Richard Mann estate, but that was quickly calmed down and the two men brought in and cautioned. The front desk has had old Ma Tower reporting another man in her house – one day she'll strike lucky and there actually will be one. And that's about it.'

Hoskin looked at his watch. ‘All right.'

Wyatt turned, pulled the door open, checked. ‘I nearly forgot. A woman rang in to complain of a heavy breather on the line; and he's been active for a bit. I told her we'd get in touch with British Telecom's Malicious Calls bureau and ask for their help.'

‘Send someone along in the morning to have a word with her, more as a PR exercise than anything, since there's probably nothing we can do until BT reports.'

‘Will do. 'Night, Guv'nor.'

Totally predictable, Hoskin thought. Middle aged, nearing his retirement with almost thirty years' service, unambitious, conscientious to a degree … The perfect detective sergeant for an ambitious detective inspector who was too busy watching his front to have the time to watch what was happening behind him. He yawned, locked his fingers and cracked the bones – something which made Miranda squirm – and stared at the telephone with sharp dislike, as if blaming it for the call he had received earlier. Jack Warren. Lucky bastard! One of his off-duty DCs, dragooned into shopping with his wife, looks across several racks of clothes to see Cooney Jackson who'd been on every force's wanted list for the past six months; Jackson, always boasting he could smell a split from a mile away, for once too occupied with a blonde to notice what's happening until it's happened. So Detective Inspector Warren of C division has a high profile wanted in his hands just when promotions are being discussed at county HQ. And this when E division's clear-up rate is falling, as the detective chief superintendent has mentioned a couple of times …

He stood, crossed to the ancient coat stand and lifted off his mackintosh. He left, looked in at the CID general room to check who was there, continued along the corridor to the lift. It seemed only fitting for a day that was ending sourly that the lift should be at the ground floor and seemingly determined to stay there. He carried on to the stairs and went down, trying to gain meagre consolation from the fact that he was taking a little of the exercise that both Miranda and the doctor claimed he needed.

He crossed the courtyard to the blue Mondeo, unlocked it, and settled behind the wheel. For no particular reason other than ill temper, as he started the engine, he remembered that the monthly repayments on the car were due the next day. And once again, he'd failed to win the lottery.

The twenty-minute drive took him past the railway station, through the depressing area of terraced houses of south Everden, and out into the country. Fourways Farm was a late-Elizabethan farmhouse, set in the middle of fields which belonged to the farmer who had sold the house away from the land. It had the typical long roof that had once provided the outshut, peg tiles, variegated bricks, two inglenook fireplaces, one with benches and recesses for warming mugs of ale, exposed beams by the score, and, so the agent had said, an occasional benign ghost. On their first viewing, Miranda had moved from room to room with the look of a woman who was already placing the furniture. Later, on their drive back to the modern, characterless house in west Everden – which no ghost would bother to haunt – he had pointed out that they'd set themselves a limit of a hundred and fifty thousand, which would use up a not inconsiderable part of her aunt's inheritance, and the asking price of Fourways was two hundred and ten thousand. Her reply had been typical Miranda. The agent had indicated that a quick sale would be welcome and so an offer of two hundred thousand would probably succeed; budgets were guides, not tablets of stone; by the time they'd redecorated, removed some of the so-called improvements, and got the garden how she'd have it, the property would be worth two hundred and twenty thousand, so they'd have bought a bargain. And, of course, it was her dream house. She was a genius at arranging facts to suit her wishes.

He drove into the double garage and parked alongside her battered Peugeot 205. He'd suggested more than once that she used the Mondeo and he the Peugeot because she had to do so much more driving than he, but her reply was always the same – provided a car went and stopped when she wanted, she didn't care what it looked like. He was fairly certain that her attitude to life led some people to believe her a snob, but in fact she was both determined and shy and it was this shyness that was responsible for their misjudgement. Far from striving to keep up with the Joneses, she didn't give a damn what they were doing or saying. Her reason for wanting Fourways Farm had not been because a country cottage was chic, but because from the moment she'd walked into the hall it had been welcoming and promised her and her family happiness. (She believed all houses developed character; beware of living in a hostile one.)

He left the garage and went down the gravel drive to the thorn hedge which encircled the garden, still colourful despite the month. As he opened the wooden gate – he'd promised to repair it; he would when he had the time – he recalled their first meeting. The force's annual ball, held at county HQ in Rickstone, all ranks invited, but only those who could behave welcome … By chance he'd been introduced to the chief constable's wife. She'd been a pleasant woman (unlike the present chief constable's wife, who seemed to be understudying royalty) and had chatted for a while before introducing him to the daughter of friends whom her husband had invited … Love at first sight. The sophisticated laughed at it and until then he'd regarded it as a useful ploy to get a romantically inclined woman into the sack. But he'd fallen in love with Miranda during their first dance …

Her parents, relatively wealthy, had never said so to her, far less to him, but he was certain that they'd always hoped she would marry someone from a similar background to theirs, not a mere detective constable … It was this certainty which forever fuelled an already sharp ambition. He was determined to make high rank before they died.

She met him at the front door, kissed him hullo, said she'd bet he'd never guess whom she'd met that afternoon, then gave him no chance to win or lose her bet. ‘I came face to face with Madge at Boots.'

‘Madge?'

‘Madge Sexton.'

‘Should I know her?'

‘You really are hopeless when it's not work,' she said with good-humoured resignation. ‘The parents live near the Sextons and Bill and I were like brother and sister. He married Madge Parsons and after the wedding I didn't see them again until that day they called in here on their way back from Dover. You must remember – we were picking the Bramleys and wondered who on earth we knew who owned a Bentley.'

‘I remember the Bentley, but not … Or was she the woman who looked like she'd just been frightened silly?'

‘At school we used to call her Parsley Tops because her hair was always such a mess.' She ran her fingers through her lustrous black hair that held a natural wave and almost always looked as if it had just received expert attention. ‘I asked them back here, but they were on their way to the Continent and had only stopped off in town to see if Madge could buy something she'd forgotten. She told me they've bought a house near Auch.'

‘Wouldn't Monte Carlo have been more their scene?'

She linked her arm with his. ‘Why so gritty? Has it been a hard day?'

‘Bloody frustrating.'

‘Then come on through and I'll get you a drink.' She uncoupled her arm, led the way into the square sitting room which had so low a central beam that he had to duck under it. ‘What's the order, sir?'

‘G and T, please. And if your hand slips while pouring the G, don't panic.'

She crossed to the very short, narrow passage that lay between the central brickwork of the back-to-back fireplaces and the north-facing wall, opened the cocktail cabinet that stood there.

He sat. ‘Where are the kids?'

She appeared in the doorway. ‘Ellen asked them over to play with her two and promised to run them back.'

‘She's a glutton for punishment. Wasn't it the last time that they were together that they all fought like Kilkenny cats?'

‘That was then, now's now. Which reminds me. I remembered earlier on that you've only five years left.'

‘To do what?'

‘To become chief constable.'

‘You wouldn't be rushing things, would you?'

‘Then you don't remember promising me you'd be CC by the time you were forty?'

‘A man'll say anything to get a woman into bed.'

She laughed, disappeared. A moment later, she stepped back into the room, a glass in each hand. She put these on the occasional table by his side, leaned over and kissed him. ‘Would you like to know what really got me into bed with you that first time?'

‘My irresistible sex appeal?'

‘Your woebegone expression after you and Father had had your little chat.'

‘It wasn't woebegone, it was disbelief at being forced to behave like a nineteenth-century berk and list all my credits and debits because I'd proposed to you.'

‘I'll bet the debits took a heck of a lot longer to recite than the credits.'

‘Which shows how little you know me.'

‘The little I do know, I like.' She kissed him again, straightened, moved to the armchair on the other side of the table, sat.

He studied her. A connoisseur would probably criticize the depth of her forehead, the high arch of her eyebrows, the thrust of her nose, and the size of her full, moist lips, but surely could find no fault in her deep brown eyes that sometimes expressed her emotions more clearly than she wished, or in her figure that would have been a credit to a younger woman who had borne no children …

She half turned to face him. ‘A penny for them?'

‘Will you have them expurgated or interesting?'

‘I thought you were so tired.'

‘Not that tired.'

*   *   *

She was in bed and he was changing into pyjamas when she said: ‘What's gone wrong today?'

‘Mostly a lot of little things.'

‘Such as?'

‘Minor villainy that we won't be able to clear up and the clear-up rate will suffer.'

‘But there's nothing major?'

He stepped into the pyjama trousers, walked round the bed, climbed in. ‘Not long before I left the station, I had a call from Jack Warren. Officially, he was asking for the expedition of some cross-border cooperation, unofficially, he was gloating over the fact that one of his crew nicked a villain that the whole country's been looking for for the past six months.'

‘Which means a feather in his cap?'

‘A whole bloody peacock's tail. And you know what? It wasn't smart coppering, it was sheer sodding luck!'

3

Carr left the bus and walked the two hundred yards to divisional HQ, hurrying because the drizzle was beginning to turn into icy rain. Gloria's brother lived in Sydney and every letter from him was filled with sunshine, golden beaches, warm sea, and why didn't she persuade Mike to emigrate? Perhaps in Australia, she would not have been confined to a hospital bed …

He entered the ten-storey concrete and glass building and made his way up to the CID general room on the fourth floor. Illness, injuries, and courses, had reduced numbers and only one other DC was present.