Killer Plan (15 page)

38

Janice looked around the
class. For once they were all quiet, reading or looking at their books with glazed eyes. Her gaze lingered on a sandy-haired boy staring miserably out of the window. If any other child had been so blatantly inattentive, she would have snapped at him to focus. The teachers had been warned to keep an eye on Matthew. They had discussed whether it had been wise to keep him and his brother at home for a week after their father was murdered. Janice had thought it sensible. But they had all agreed something wasn’t quite right when the mother sent only one of the twins back to school. Almost all of Janice’s colleagues held strong views on that point, making for lively discussion in the staff room. Finally the head teacher had put an end to the discussion.‘Matthew’s ready to come back to school, and Edward isn’t. The boys must be treated as individuals. We can’t insist Ed returns to us before he’s ready. But by the same token, his mother can’t keep Matthew at home if it’s better for him to be here and distracted.’

Sitting in the staff room at break time, Janice had been convinced the head was right. Now, watching Matthew slumped over a table, she wasn’t so sure. It must be difficult enough for him, losing his father suddenly like that. It could only make him feel worse knowing that his twin brother was at home with his mother while he was packed off to school by himself. He was bound to feel excluded, as well as bereaved. She called his name three times before he heard her. At last he raised his head and looked at her with lacklustre eyes.

‘Come here, Matthew.’

He was normally such a live wire it was heartbreaking to see him looking so downcast. His arms hung limply at his sides as he shuffled obediently over to her desk.

‘Matthew, I know this must be very tough for you. If you want to talk about anything, you know you can talk to me, or there are other people who can help you.’

He looked up eagerly. ‘Will they make Ed come back?’

‘Ed just needs a bit more time at home. People cope in different ways…’

The boy shook his head vigorously. ‘Ed’s not at home. He’s gone to stay with my mum’s friend. She keeps saying he’s coming home, but he never does. It’s not fair. How come he gets out of school and I don’t?’

Worried, Janice mentioned Matthew’s complaint to the head teacher at lunch.

‘Do you think we should tell Matthew’s mother how upset he is? I don’t think he’s eating.’

The head thought it was probably better for Matthew that his brother had gone away, rather than staying at home with their mother. At least Matthew couldn’t feel his mother was choosing his twin over him. All the same, she shared Janice’s concern. Matthew was clearly missing his brother. It must be even worse for Ed who had been packed off with a stranger, leaving his brother at home with their grieving mother. It wasn’t healthy for a ten-year-old boy. The boys should be together at such a difficult time in their lives. The fact that they were twins made it even worse to separate them. To leave just one of them at home with their mother was wrong.

‘But whatever we think about it, perhaps it’s best if we leave them to sort themselves out,’ the head said firmly. ‘It’s bound to take time.’

‘Shall I phone the mother?’ Janice asked. ‘Let her know Matthew’s missing his brother? I’ll be careful,’ she added, aware that the person Matthew really missed was his father.

‘If you want to.’

Janice wished the head had given a clear indication as to whether she thought it was a good idea to contact Matthew’s mother. After lunch, she popped along to the school office to use the phone. There was no answer. Thoughtfully, she replaced the receiver. By the time she left work, the children had all dispersed. Sometimes their parents hung around chatting, but it was raining and they had all gone. There was no sign of Matthew or his mother. It was only a short detour to drive past their house on her way home. Without giving it much thought, she turned into their road and drew up outside the house. She wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. The head had advised leaving them to sort themselves out. It was no doubt sound advice. But Janice was worried about Matthew. It wasn’t just that he looked pale and depressed. She had worked with children for long enough to know when a boy was frightened.

Mrs Robinson opened the door. Given her present circumstances, it was hardly surprising she looked terrible. Even so, Janice was shocked at the change in her. At their previous encounters, Mrs Robinson had struck her as didactic. She must have needed to be bossy, raising twin boys. Now she stood in the doorway looking cowed and pale. She didn’t seem to recognise Janice.

‘Mrs Robinson, I’m Janice Threadgold, Matthew and Edward’s teacher.’

‘Oh yes,’ the other woman responded dully.

‘I’ve come to ask when Ed’s coming back to school.’

Mrs Robinson started as though she had been slapped. ‘Ed?’ she repeated.

Janice hesitated to invite herself in. There was a sharp wind, and the rain wasn’t letting up. She shivered.

‘Can we discuss this indoors?’ The other woman didn’t respond. Janice forced a smile. ‘No problem. We can talk here.’

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘Mrs Robinson, we are wondering when Ed might be coming back to school?’

It was a question, but the other woman didn’t respond. She wasn’t making it easy for Janice.

Janice tried again. ‘Where is Ed?’

‘Gone to a friend.’ Mrs Robinson sounded defensive. ‘He’s fine. It’s just that – he’s with my friend.’

‘Where is he?’

The other woman grew unexpectedly sharp. ‘I don’t see that’s any of your business.’

Janice gave up. ‘We were just concerned about Matthew...’ she muttered as the door closed.

The head teacher was right. The family would have to come to terms with their terrible loss in their own way. With a sigh, she turned away and walked briskly back to the road, wrapping her arms around her chest in an effort to conserve her body heat. There was nothing she could do to help.

39

‘Poor cow,’ Reg muttered
as they picked up their protective clothing at the mortuary. ‘That’s Eve I’m talking about, his widow. I know we’ll do everything we can to support her, but it’s not the same, is it? I mean, it can’t be, can it?’

Geraldine nodded without answering. She understood he was talking inconsequentially to distract himself from what they were about to witness. His mask dangled from one hand. She watched it swing gently as he continued.

‘I mean, she didn’t strike me as the sort of woman to cope on her own. She didn’t seem to know what was going on. What did you make of her?’

The intensity of his gaze made it impossible for her to ignore the question.

‘It’s difficult to say, really. It’s not like we saw her under normal circumstances.’

Reg nodded. ‘I’ve met her a couple of times. She always struck me as lacking in confidence. A mousy little thing, wouldn’t you say?’

His words sounded calm enough, but she could hear the tension in his voice and observed it in his set features. Reluctantly they finished fiddling around covering themselves. It was time to go in. Geraldine took a deep breath. Above his mask, Reg’s anxious eyes stared straight ahead as he stepped forward to open the door. He hesitated with his hand outstretched, then shoved the door quickly and strode in. Geraldine followed.

Miles Fellowes looked up at them solemnly. Usually cheery and ready to crack jokes, he stared glumly across the body at Reg. ‘One of yours, wasn’t he?’

Reg responded so promptly, it sounded as though he had been rehearsing his reply. ‘Nick Williams was a fine officer and a remarkable detective.’ Preparing to deliver a eulogy could well have been in his mind, as he went on to enquire when the body might be released for burial.

Miles gave a miserable grimace and turned away with a shrug. ‘That rather depends on how you get on with your investigation, doesn’t it?’

With a conscious effort, Geraldine turned to observe the body. Disturbingly, Nick’s eyes were open. Gazing upwards, he seemed to be looking straight at her. Shocked, she saw that one of his eyes was slightly closed. Even in death he appeared to be winking at her, in a macabre parody of their brief physical intimacy. Below his staring eyes his flesh had been sliced through several times, his cheeks mere strips of white flesh slashed by dark streaks. Never normally fazed by cadavers, she was afraid she was going to pass out, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off him. The lump of flesh, hacked about on the table in front of her, was almost unrecognisable as the man she had known. Almost, but not quite.

Dazed, she listened to Miles’ account. She was barely able to control her trembling. Her conscious mind knew this was happening, but inside her head she was paralysed in a nightmare. Once before she had been to view the post mortem of a man she had interviewed only days before as a witness. It had been a shock seeing him on the slab, all the mannerisms and quirks that had made him an individual wiped out with one blow. But nothing could have prepared her for the sight of her lover, lying dead just inches away from her, his chest sliced open.

She struggled to follow what was going on. ‘Obviously he was taken by surprise,’ Reg was saying. ‘There’s no question about that. All my officers are trained in self-defence. Highly trained.’

‘Yes,’ Miles agreed. ‘He could well have been caught off guard, because he was hit from behind.’

He nodded to his colleagues who turned the body over. When it was settled on its front, face down, he indicated a deep gash across the back of Nick’s head, just at the nape of his neck.

‘This was the first blow, and it knocked him clean off his feet, fatally damaging his spinal cord. He must have been stunned but he wasn’t knocked out cold because he tried to fight back after he was on the ground. He was still moving around for a short time at any rate…’

‘You mean…’ Reg interrupted, excited. He broke off, staring eagerly at Miles.

Over the inert corpse, the pathologist looked miserably from Reg to Geraldine and back again. He shook his head.

‘I know what you’re both thinking,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s unlikely we’ll get anything from his defence wounds other than traces of mud and maybe a few bits of grit. We’ve sent off whatever we could scrape out from under his nails for analysis, of course, but I don’t hold out much hope.’

Nick’s body had been lying beside his front doorstep overnight.

‘His wife never reported him missing,’ Reg said.

‘Perhaps she was used to him sometimes working nights,’ Geraldine suggested, her voice curiously hollow.

Miles estimated the time of death to be between eight and nine o’clock on Monday evening. When he had been discovered on Tuesday morning he had been dead for nearly twelve hours, lying outdoors, abandoned to the wind and rain. The thought made Geraldine want to cry.

Miles turned back to the body, which was still lying on its front. Geraldine was fleetingly relieved at no longer having to see Nick’s face, until she remembered running her fingers through his hair. Now caked with dried blood where his head hadn’t been shaved, it was almost unrecognisable.

Miles turned to her. ‘Did you want to ask me anything while you’re here?’

He was probably thinking that it wasn’t like her to be so quiet. She shook her head, too choked to speak.

‘Are you all right?’ He looked at her more closely. ‘You look awfully pale.’

She mumbled something vague, determined her voice wouldn’t tremble in front of Reg. Miles raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly. Meanwhile Reg continued staring at the body.

‘He was a valuable addition to our team,’ he announced, ‘and a good friend. A fine man. We will all miss him.’ He was back to rehearsing his funeral eulogy.

Geraldine couldn’t trust herself to speak.

40

Geraldine drove cautiously along
Upper Street, her wipers making a faint scratching noise as they swept across the windscreen like a slow pendulum. She wished it would either stop drizzling or else rain properly. As it was, the wipers were smearing water across her field of vision. Passing people hurrying to the station beneath their umbrellas, their collars up against the wind, she turned off into her own street, and was soon driving through the gated entrance to the small car park at the back of her block. She had never been more pleased to arrive home. Throwing off her coat and shoes, she went in the kitchen to fix herself something for supper. For the first time in her life, viewing a dead body had made her feel faint. Now she was home, she was ravenous. It seemed somehow disrespectful, but she had hardly eaten anything all day. Nothing would be gained if she fell ill. She had to stay on top of her game and make sure she tracked down whoever had killed Nick.

Invariably, her sister contrived to pick the worst time to call, as though she had a sixth sense about what was happening in Geraldine’s life. Cursing herself for answering, Geraldine muttered that she was about to make herself supper.

‘Oh, well, if you haven’t started on it yet, it can wait a few more minutes,’ Celia said promptly, ‘unless you’ve got someone coming round,’ she added archly.

Geraldine sighed. Celia’s calls were never over in a few minutes.

‘How’s it all going?’ her sister asked finally, after talking about herself for nearly ten minutes. ‘What happened with that guy you were being so secretive about?’

Celia had called one evening just after Geraldine had been out for a drink with Nick. Excited by his attention, she had vaguely mentioned him to her sister, saying only that she might be seeing someone. That had been enough. Celia had latched onto the throwaway comment and had been curious about him ever since.

‘I’ve already told you, there’s no secret,’ Geraldine insisted wearily. ‘Nothing happened between us, and nothing’s going to happen.’

‘Don’t say that. You never know what’s round the corner. He might phone tonight. You never know.’

‘I do know, and he won’t phone.’

‘There’s no need to be so hostile. And anyway you can’t be sure. He might be thinking about you right now, plucking up the courage to call you.’

‘Yes, I can be sure, and no, he’s not.’

‘You never know…’

‘Celia, drop it, will you? I know he’s not going to call me.’ Geraldine held back from telling Celia that Nick was dead. She couldn’t cope with sympathy. ‘Look, Celia, I don’t want to talk about it any more.’

‘But…’

‘I said I don’t want to talk about it, so if you keep on about it, I’m going to hang up.’

Celia gave up, and the conversation moved on. At last Geraldine rang off and went in the kitchen. As she prepared her supper she could hear the phone ringing. She tried to ignore the shrill summons, just as she tried to ignore the tears that were streaming from her eyes. It took her a few minutes to recover her composure. The caller left a message. It wasn’t Celia. She recognised the voice of her sergeant, Sam Haley, who was off work recuperating from an injury sustained during the course of an investigation.

With a pang, Geraldine remembered how Nick had saved her life, and Sam’s too. Much to Sam’s chagrin, Nick had come to their rescue like a knight in shining armour. What made it worse was that the situation had been entirely Geraldine’s fault. Unwittingly, she had sent Sam to the house of a killer on her own. By the time Geraldine had realised her mistake, Sam had already arrived and was questioning a demented psychopath. Geraldine had raced after her sergeant too late to prevent them both being attacked. Only Nick’s quick thinking had saved their lives. Geraldine had escaped relatively unscathed, but Sam was still recovering from her injuries. They were both lucky to have survived the encounter. To his credit, Nick had never mentioned it afterwards, but Sam was still smarting from the debt she owed him. She had never liked Nick, her dislike exacerbated by his friendship with Geraldine.

By the time Geraldine heated up something to eat she had lost her appetite so instead of opening a bottle of wine she made herself a cup of tea. She sat down in front of the television, trying to take her mind off Nick, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him, wondering if he might still be alive if she had taken his concerns seriously. The thought made her cry again. Weak and lightheaded, she forced herself to eat something, still sobbing as she ate. She had never felt so alone, not even when she had first moved to the capital.

She wondered whether she ought to talk to a counsellor about what had happened. If she still felt upset in the morning, that might be sensible. Emotional distress could affect an officer’s judgement, and in her job errors of judgement could cost lives. As she had just demonstrated. On the other hand, the only other person who had known about her secret was dead. She didn’t have to confess her ineptitude to anyone else. What she did have to do was work out a way to deal with her secret. Finding Nick’s killer would help alleviate her guilt. She would start with that.

After clearing away her supper things she called Sam back.

‘I heard,’ were the first words Sam said. ‘How terrible. Are you all right? What happened? Or would you rather not talk about it?’

‘No, that’s OK. I mean, I’m OK talking about it. But there’s nothing much to say except that we’re on it, but we haven’t got anywhere yet.’

‘It’s early days.’

‘I know.’

‘If there’s anything I can do…’

‘You can get better and come back to work!’

Sam gave an appreciative grunt before asking, ‘Who’s working the case with you?’

‘You won’t know him. He’s called Max Grey. He’s been brought over from West London. Thinks he knows it all. You know the type. Arrogant youngster, barely out of college…’

‘Hey!’

Sam wasn’t much older than Max.

‘He’s a graduate on the fast track to promotion, thinks he’s going to be Commissioner by Christmas. And of course Reg falls for it. He thinks Max is a bright young lad. Well, he’s clever all right, but as for being a good officer, you’re worth ten of him. He’s been decent enough so far, but he’s ambitious as hell and I daresay he’ll turn out to be a bit of a shit.’

‘So you like him, then?’

Geraldine laughed for the first time since she had heard about Nick’s death. They chatted for a while, avoiding talking about their dead colleague.

After Sam rang off, Geraldine remained sitting on her sofa, dozing fitfully. Finally she dragged herself off to bed. Nick flitted in and out of her dreams, sometimes alive and flirting, at other times a grinning death’s head, drenched in blood. Once she woke from a dream in which her own hands were dripping with blood. In the dream she knew it was Nick’s blood, but she didn’t know why it was on her hands. She woke, trembling with terror and confusion, glad when morning came.

Before climbing out of bed, she leaned over to slide open her bedside drawer. Taking out an envelope, she pulled out an old photograph, the only souvenir she had of the mother she had never known. Having given her up for adoption at birth, her mother had refused to have any contact with her. Geraldine had spent some time searching for her mother. When she had finally traced her address she had summoned all her courage and gone to meet her, only to discover that the records were out of date and her mother had moved away. After a period of nearly unbearable expectation and apprehension, the disappointment had been acute. Fear of yet more disappointment had put her off making another attempt.

Nick’s death had reminded her that life was short. If she had agreed to go out with him when he had first asked her, they might have had more time together. It was a mistake to hold back. Under her breath, she made a promise to the sad-faced woman in the photograph who stared back at her with her own eyes. Once Nick’s killer was safely behind bars, Geraldine would look for her mother again. This time she would find her.