A Shred of Evidence (2 page)

Guv. Villains. She smiled. Suspected stolen goods were iffy, known stolen goods were hookey, according to Tom. His immediate superiors were guv, the public were punters. It had begun in an effort, Judy felt, to counteract his fair-haired, well-scrubbed schoolboy look, but then Tom had discovered that it drove Lloyd mad, and now sounded like a veteran of a dozen police series.

He had once told Lloyd that he had spotted a couple of well-known brasses in a boozer—it was some time before Lloyd understood that Tom was not a keen connoisseur of the heavy horse regalia often used to decorate public houses. Or so Lloyd would have people believe, at any rate.

“All right, Sergeant,” she said. “Fifteen minutes, then we pack this in before we all melt or die of boredom.”

She had committed two cars and four people to this, Tom’s information having been that there would be two people in the lorry and two in the car, all of whom would, in his words, try to leg it. The uniformed officers had had to be begged; they were parked at the rear, where they couldn’t be seen from the road.

If it was a success, then fifteen thousand pounds’ worth of stolen goods would be recovered; if the information was wrong, then her name would be mud. She was acting DCI in Lloyd’s absence, which she was rather enjoying, but it did mean that you carried the can, and it looked like that was what she would be doing.

It was thanks to Lloyd, whom she had known almost all her adult life, that she had ever been anything other than a uniformed constable, but at times she wasn’t sure that thanks were in order. Her relaxed morning hadn’t prepared her for the day ahead; she had set out into the warmth of yet another beautiful
day, pleased that Lloyd would soon be back, pleased with her handling of the job in his absence, pleased with her lot, and in an undeniably good mood, until she had tried to start her car. When it had finally consented to go, she had spent the next half hour queuing up behind the lorries at the lights before she ever got on to the dual carriageway, which she had had to share with the same lorries, all suddenly strict upholders of the speed limit, as though they had had an astral tip-off about what she did for a living.

In other words, despite her early start, she had arrived late for work and almost, unforgivably, late for the stake-out. Her mood had been shattered, and nothing short of an entirely successful operation would restore it.

Only two things in her life could get to her like that. One was the internal combustion engine; the other was on a seven-week course at the Police Staff College and would be home soon.

Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd knew that the others all had him marked down as the short bald bloke who lived in the past. He was short—shorter, at any rate, than all of them. And he was, he now had to admit, bald. There had been a long time during which he had thought of himself as thinning, then receding, then even, though it had taken severe soul-searching to admit it, balding. But now there really was no
ing
about it. He was bald.

What hair he had grew back from the middle of his forehead and down from about an inch above his ears; he had cut the latter crop very short at Judy’s suggestion, and was glad of that decision on the dreadful day when he had realized that it was turning grey into the bargain, because hardly anyone had noticed yet.

He did not, however, live in the past, though that was the impression he was quite deliberately giving. That was his platform, that was the character he was playing. Judy said he was always acting, which wasn’t entirely true, but he certainly was this time. And he was glad that it was this short bald bloke who was doing this course instead of him, because he would have loathed it, worthy though it undoubtedly was.

Lloyd had always had trouble with the unreality of education; however complex and difficult a situation on a course was, it could never match reality. The final week had provided a very realistic set-up, but Lloyd’s solution to it, though it had worked, had had the same hint of theatricality as the problem.

Judy had done this course shortly after her promotion to inspector; Lloyd wondered with which practical problem she had been faced. One to which she had found, no doubt, a practical solution.

As a method of assessment it had stood the police in reasonably good stead, he supposed. And now he was even attending a computer studies class, of all things, because he had admitted shortcomings in that area. He was once again head of Stansfield CID, and had been getting to grips with all the state-of-the-art egg-sucking technology now available to him; he had been paying close, if reluctant, attention to the advances of modern science and didn’t think he was showing himself up too much.

Computers were almost miracle tools, as far as Lloyd was concerned. They had revolutionized life itself, never mind policing. He just didn’t know how to work them, that was all, and he felt that he never would, but he was doing his level best to learn. The short bald bloke, however, thought they were the invention of the devil, and if the police were going to rely on cameras and computers, then the detective was going to lose his most important asset—his nose. Talking to people, asking questions, wondering.

Wondering why a known car thief had suddenly apparently gone straight, or why the little woman who had had a flower stall on the market for years had suddenly not been there one day.

Each of these things had netted him a career-enhancing arrest in his time, he said to the assembled company, and neither was something that a computer would have had any time for.

Neither of these things had ever happened, or if they had, they had certainly not happened to Lloyd. They might have happened to the short bald bloke, though.

“Thief takers,” one of his fellow DCIs said in response, “are a thing of the past.”

You are not joking, mate, the short bald bloke thought. You would not chuckle. And Lloyd had to agree with him.

Colin Cochrane waited until the last of his charges had gone noisily off before having a quick shower himself and pulling on his tracksuit. He had had only one gym session so far, it being the first day of the new school year, but he wanted to grab a quick cup of coffee, and teachers of more intellectual subjects had a morbid fear of the smell of good honest sweat.

He ran a comb through his thick, dark, longish, permanently damp hair, and liked what he saw in the mirror, giving it a smile.

The sun, which had perversely arrived just as the school holidays were ending, was warm on his back as he walked from the gym, across what was left of the once-extensive playing fields, to the main school building. Oakland School had started life as a grammar school, with all the facilities that any educational élite could possibly need or want. Now you couldn’t have a decent game of cricket without threatening the windows of half a dozen supposedly temporary buildings through which a second generation of pupils was passing.

Colin’s wife Erica was the school secretary; she had been married and divorced before coming to work at the school, and meeting Colin. He had known, from the moment he had caught a glimpse of her, that she was the one for him.

He had played the field; it had been time to settle down, and Erica—early thirties, slim, elegant, tumbling dark hair—had come made-to-measure. They had been together for three years and had finally married in March.

“It’s over there,” she said as he went into the office.

“It” was his fan-mail. Erica had been impressed by the steady flow of letters in the beginning; she would open them for him and sort them out into bundles.

Kids wanting advice about running, and advice about all manner of other sporting endeavours about which Colin knew little. He would pass the hurdlers and the pole-vaulters and the
hammer-throwers on to the appropriate people, and answer the ones about middle-distance running himself.

Kids simply wanting his autograph—he had had photographs taken with a band at the bottom so that he could write a message, which was usually
“Yours in sport, Colin Cochrane.”

Kids telling him their problems. If they seemed serious, Erica would find out which organizations they could contact, and write sympathetic letters for Colin to sign.

And love letters, which used to make Erica laugh, until the one that hadn’t. Not all from kids, the last category, but they had made her laugh all the same, even the raunchy ones. Not any more. But it was hardly his fault that females of all ages fell for him.

The mail was always like this after the long summer break. People saw him on television during the summer and wrote to him at the school. Much too much mail for the pigeon-hole in the staff room, which was where it usually went. For the first few days after the long holiday, his pigeon-hole could accommodate only internal mail. Erica had dealt with that too, once upon a time.

Colin was famous. Not for what he had done, particularly; he hadn’t been all that spectacular at what he had done, which was one reason why he had never given up the day job. But he was telegenic. The TV people had liked interviewing him, having him in the studio to discuss the merits or otherwise of competitors at the odd meeting when he was nursing an injury and couldn’t compete.

He had been to three Olympics and had been knocked out in the first round of the fifteen hundred each time, but had reached the semi-final of the eight hundred once, failing to qualify for the final as a fast loser by two hundredths of a second.

Now, he was in his mid-thirties, and he wanted to move up to five and ten thousand, perhaps even the occasional half-marathon, where stamina was more important than sudden bursts of speed. He didn’t really like long distances, and stamina wasn’t his strong point, but he was working on that.
Mostly these days he appeared on television, and got very well paid for it.

“Will you be training tonight?” Erica asked

“Yes. Well …” Colin thought that perhaps he ought to be more aware of Erica’s needs than he was tending to be at the moment. “Not if you’d rather I stayed in,” he said.

“No, you do what you want,” she said, her voice cool. “There’s a film on that I want to see anyway.”

“Good,” said Colin. “I won’t stay out too long.”

“It doesn’t finish until ten,” said Erica.

“And you don’t want me coming in in the middle of it and spoiling it?”

She managed a smile, for the first time that day.

Colin smiled back. “I’ll be home at ten, then,” he said. “I’ll make it a long run tonight.” He picked up his unopened mail as he spoke. “I’ll put this lot in the car,” he said. “Get it out of your way.”

The frost was fairly thick in the office, and he went out into the warmth of the late summer day with a sigh of relief. Those who liked to mind other people’s business had suggested that it was a mistake, her keeping on her job at the school after they had got married, but it had been during the summer holidays that things had got sticky, so that seemed to have had very little to do with it. Not that she had to work, but she wanted to, she said, and it made very little difference to Colin one way or the other.

He dumped his mail on the back shelf of the car, locked it up again, and went up to the staff room, taking the stairs two at a time as the others came down.

“Stop showing off, Colin,” said Trudy Kane, the pleasantly plump divorcee, who, if Colin was any judge, fancied him more than a little. He certainly wouldn’t kick her out of bed either, but their relationship had never progressed beyond banter and never would.

He poured himself a coffee in the deserted staff room, opening the dusty Venetian blinds to persuade some of the smoke out of the window. They objected to the smell of sweat, but he was supposed to put up with breathing in their stale
smoke. Maybe he should campaign to make the staff room a non-smoking area.

He smiled, and closed the blinds again, absentmindedly trying to straighten the bent slat that had been like that for as long as he’d been there. He didn’t care if they smoked, really, and anyway it was only a couple of them who did, these days.

He studied the timetable, clearly designed to have as many staff and pupils running round in circles looking for where they were supposed to be as it possibly could. He had a free period, then another gym session before lunch. He was looking forward to the afternoon, and the chance to get the older boys out into the sunshine for a double period.

His pigeon-hole had the usual stuff; memos from the head, notes about staff meetings, union business … He saw the envelope and closed his eyes briefly. He had thought—he had hoped—that the letters would have stopped, but they had He opened it, read it, stuffed it into the pocket of his tracksuit top and threw the envelope into the waste basket.

He would dispose of the letter somewhere safer than here.

Erica sat in the office, watching through the window as Colin walked back towards the gym, and the clock showed that it was one minute to the final period before lunch. Colin was never late, never early. He had said he would be back this evening at ten, and that was when he would be back—not a moment earlier, not a moment later. In a way she wished he was unreliable, like Patrick.

She had met Patrick in March, when he had come for an interview at the school, and Colin had been away, as usual, at some indoor athletics meeting.

Despite the fact that she was still practically on her honeymoon, Patrick had made a play for her. She hadn’t let anything happen, of course, but it had been nice, having someone pay attention to her. Colin’s attention had lapsed even then, before he had begun training practically every night and had lost interest in her completely.

Patrick had moved to Stansfield at Easter, though his appointment wasn’t until September. Erica imagined that his
decision to leave his previous school had been forced upon him, having got to know him quite well since then. His wife had only just joined him—obviously, she had been doing some serious thinking about whether she was going to come at all.

Erica had been the only person in Stansfield he had known then, or so he had said, when he had come calling, and she had resisted his little-boy-lost act. Then she had found that letter, and Colin had tried to talk his way out of it … It would have been very easy to succumb to Patrick’s overtures after that. But she hadn’t.