Murder... Now and Then (22 page)

But she said no.

Sunday, the eighteenth of February. Lloyd looked at his watch, and grunted. Almost Monday, the nineteenth of February, he thought as he wrote in his notebook. Freedom. Even if he would only have had four hours' sleep.

And one day this vicious winter would be over, too. The last two operations had also taken place in subzero temperatures, the girls risking pneumonia to make a few bob. Arresting them into the bargain seemed too unfair for words. But tomorrow he started his course, and then he would move on, to take up his new appointment. This was the last time he'd have to do this thankless job.

Lloyd had got his promotion; soon, he would be off over the river to a new station, and a new house. A brand-new house, which Barbara was already having fun planning. The kids loved it. Central heating, double glazing, you name it. It was on an estate, of course, but it was better than he'd expected for the money.

Judy had been accepted for the detective course, so she might be able to join Nottingham as a detective constable. She would enjoy that. She had been taken off the task force, and was pounding the frozen beat down below his vantage point somewhere, in response to the Met's desire to get the police back on to the streets. At least she was moving around, he thought, and shivered.

But she was a great one for worrying, was Judy. Now that she didn't have to worry about not being accepted on to the course, she was worrying about not doing well. And about moving to Nottingham. And, of course, about meeting her intended's parents, something she had been putting off like mad ever since Michael had suggested that it might be expected of her. Especially since they would be living with them. Which she was also worrying about.

He wondered what Michael's parents would think about Judy's job; come to that, he wondered what Michael thought about it. Lloyd was glad his wife wasn't a police officer. That, Judy had told him, was a sexist remark. New word – sexist. Like racist. It used to be racialist in his youth, he thought. People who hated negroes were racialist. Now people who hated blacks were racist. He had never been that, at any rate. But sexist … well, he was glad his wife wasn't a police officer.

They had had the engagement party, but she still hadn't set the date. Maybe it wouldn't happen, he told himself. She didn't seem to go much for commitment as far as he could see. But he had the feeling that marriage to Michael wasn't really being seen as a commitment. More as an expedient. But perhaps he was flattering himself.

Horton was watching for the punters, rubbing gloved, but none the less cold hands together while Lloyd awkwardly wrote up his notebook detailing their night's work. Lloyd had tried to get out of this duty once they'd taken Judy off it, but since he'd wangled his way on – by arguing that a fair amount of criminal intelligence was to be had where informants could be recruited – he had been stuck with it. Because it had worked, apart from anything else, and they had already stamped out a budding drugs ring, and recovered two thousand pounds' worth of stolen goods as the result of getting a couple of the girls to co-operate. It was necessary if they were ever to keep a lid on crime, but it wasn't something that made you feel good about yourself. These girls ran risks all the time; using them as informants increased those risks. And that wasn't really what the police were meant to do.

Still, this was the last night he would have to do it. Enthusiasm for the project was waning all round. They had done three in quick succession to see if that dissuaded the girls, but if the weather didn't, nothing would.

‘Lloyd,' Horton murmured, as the cars began to arrive, and the whole silly business of clearing the street began again.

Lloyd watched with amused interest as one of the lads made a bee-line for the Daimler driver, determined to get there first and haul in the biggest fish, and used the binoculars for a better look.

The man emerged from his car, and gave his particulars to Bannister, breathless after his short sprint. Lloyd had thought that Bannister was one of the fit ones, but his breath puffed out too fast in the night air, and he held his side, as though he had a stitch. Too much disco-dancing, Lloyd thought sourly.

He switched his attention to the kerbcrawler. He wasn't famous, so Bannister's hundred-metre sprint had been a waste of time. A tall man with a beard. He looked like the portraits of the young Edward VII, Lloyd thought, until the man turned to look over his shoulder at his fellow miscreants, and he could see the scar over which the hair wouldn't grow. The man looked up as Lloyd scruntinized him; it was as if he were looking directly back, and Lloyd instinctively turned away, then laughed at himself. He was a long way away; he didn't even know Lloyd was there.

On to the next one. Roll on four o'clock.

The measured tread which they had actually been taught how to achieve crunched on the glittering pavement as Judy and Slocombe walked the beat.

There was a limit to how much you could talk about, condemned to spend four hours in one another's company in the middle of a freezing February night when anyone with any sense was in bed. They didn't even go for refs for another two hours. So they walked in silence past the shuttered shops, the floodlit building site where everything had been frozen into immobility by the weather, the all-night café which was closed all night and all day as far as anyone knew. It was companionable enough; they had quite a lot in common. They both felt cold and fed up and wished they were at home in front of the fire.

So they would walk in silence, alone with their thoughts, until some member of the public needed them or deserved them. Judy was considering Michael's plus points.

He was handsome, in a thin, well-bred sort of way. He looked like the son of the big house, but his father was a fitter and his mother had worked in a shop. Sometimes she thought he was a little bit ashamed of that – that could be construed as a minus point, but she ought to reserve judgement on that until she met them. Her heart sank at the thought.

‘Dead tonight,' said Slocombe.

‘Mm.'

And Michael just took her the way she came; she couldn't remember his ever criticizing her, or patronizing her, or giving her unasked-for advice. Lloyd did that all the time. She felt comfortable with Michael; they got on well together. She always enjoyed being with him, and missed him when he was away. He was home this week, of course, when she was on nights. Tucked up in bed, where she should be. And that was more than satisfactory, too.

In addition to his other drawbacks, Lloyd complained that she drove too fast, that she had no soul, and that her literary education was sadly lacking. He just scraped past her in the height department, and he was rapidly developing a bald spot in his thick dark hair.

He was married, with two children, and he was making her feel guilty about Michael.

‘Do you want to help me win a fiver?' Slocombe asked.

Not particularly. ‘ Sure,' she said.

‘I bet one of the lads that I would find out Lloyd's first name before he left.'

Oh, God. ‘Did you?' she said.

‘Well?' he said. ‘He finishes tonight. If you don't tell me now, it'll cost me five quid.'

Damn Dave Bannister's eyes, she thought; he had been gossiping, of course. ‘No, it won't,' she said. ‘ It'll cost you a tenner.'

Slocombe frowned. ‘How do you make that out?' he asked.

‘Suppose you've got two fivers. You bet him one, and you win. Then you've got three. You bet him one, and you lose. Then you've only got one. You lose a fiver, but losing as opposed to winning costs you ten quid?

Slocombe worked that out. ‘So it does,' he said.

‘So it will,' she said. ‘I don't know his name.'

‘Oh, come on, Jude. Everyone knows you and him are—'

‘Everyone knows wrong,' she said. ‘ I don't know his first name any more than you do.'

‘I believe you,' he said, in a shaft of sarcastic wit.

All stick and no carrot, Lloyd had called their relationship. And she really didn't know his first name. She had never heard anyone call him anything but Lloyd, not even his wife. And, as Slocombe had said, he finished tonight, so they had finally come to the parting of the ways. Not a moment too soon, really. From now on, she was on her own as far as the job was concerned, and with Michael as far as her life was concerned; that was as it should be, she told herself firmly.

Lloyd had told her father that she would end up a detective superintendent; her father, of course, had believed him. Her father was the only man she knew who truly didn't see women as a race apart; he had no idea of the enormous prejudice against women in the force, because he had none himself.

Lloyd and her father had met at the engagement party at the flat, to which he had come with Barbara. They had got on well, both having a penchant for malt whisky and collecting donkeys' hind legs. But Judy had watched her father's quick mind put two and two together, and afterwards, when the guests had left, Michael had been driving someone home, and her mother was waiting for her father in the car, he'd asked her if she was sure she was marrying for the right reasons.

She hadn't answered; he'd given her a hug and told her that whatever she did was all right by him, and that she would always know where to come. Not, she supposed, what the father of most brides-to-be told them, but as reassuring as Ladybird pyjamas and covered hot-water bottles.

And the beat went on.

On the other side of Leyford, Bannister got back into the van, his breathing laboured, his side aching. Over two months since it had happened, and he still wasn't right. He sat back, eyes closed with sheer relief, because now, on the final raid of the night, he had at last fulfilled his obligations, and he could stop looking over his shoulder, with any luck. He hadn't a clue what the hell Holyoak was up to, and he hoped it stayed that way.

He still had another two hours of his night shift to go; he hoped he would be able to type up reports or something. Nothing strenuous. He'd done a lot of running tonight; he had even had to scuffle with one of the punters who had lashed out at another officer, and he still wasn't up to it.

But report typing was out. As soon as they got back to the station, he was put into a Panda car with Stephens.

They cruised the streets, looking for trouble which Bannister fervently hoped they wouldn't find. And it did seem as though the intense cold which had made it so difficult for him even to get out of bed that afternoon was keeping wrongdoers off the streets of the capital Stephens was driving; Bannister was on the look-out. But he kept flunking about Holyoak, wondering what all that business had been about.

Holyoak was a nutter; Bannister had seen it in his eyes when he had taken his miserable drive with him, and become aware of a total, unnatural lack of emotion. There had been nothing there. No anger, no desire for revenge, which was what had prompted Bannister's own more obvious but much less damaging violence towards Annabel. He hadn't been going to use the truncheon on the silly little bitch; he had just been making sure she was scared out of her wits that he would.

Holyoak didn't even get the twisted thrill out of inflicting pain that some people got. He had done it because that had been the quickest way to make Bannister do what he wanted, and it had made no more impression upon him than handing him a bribe would have done. He and Holyoak had been driven round while Holyoak had given him his instructions, and told him what would happen to him if it went wrong. Then he had been dumped out of the car not far from the section house. He had collapsed on the steps; some of the lads had found him, and had put him to bed, thinking that he was drunk. He had had a week's leave for Christmas; he had spent it in circumstances that he never wanted to repeat.

He shouldn't have gone back to work when he had, but he had to be available for duty, and the normal physical demands of the job were making everything take a very long time to mend. He could go to the doctor now; he hadn't dared before, in case he had put him on the sick, and then he would have been unable to carry out Holyoak's orders.

And now he didn't even understand what the hell it had all been for. It had worked exactly the way Holyoak had wanted it to; nothing had gone wrong, for which Bannister could only thank God, but it had to have been for some reason. And he would put nothing at all past Holyoak; the man was capable of anything.

Stephens was putting his foot down through the empty streets when they saw her.

‘Jesus!' he yelled, bringing the car skidding to a halt about an inch from the old woman.

Bannister was thrown against the glove compartment by the force of the emergency stop, his bruised organs protesting; he gasped with pain, but Stephens was too busy swearing to notice.

The old lady, raincoat thrown over her flannelette nightie, was by the passenger door; Bannister wound down the window.

‘Quick! Quick! There's a man – he's dead, I think. Oh, hurry, please – please hurry! The phone-box wouldn't work – I've come miles – you'll have to hurry!'

‘If you could move, love—' Bannister tried to open the door, but she was leaning on it, imploring them to hurry. He eased it open, and got the old lady in the back before she died of pneumonia. He got in beside her. ‘Now, calm down, love – what's the problem?'

‘A man – in a car. I'm sure he's dead, but hurry – he might not be! Hurry!'

Stephens started the engine, looking forward to a high-speed dash. ‘You tell me where to go, love,' he said, as the car shot forward.

She did; the car swung round corners, siren blaring, giving its back-seat passengers a rough ride. ‘There! There!' she shouted. ‘There he is.'

Once again the car's tyres screamed as Stephens pulled up in a quiet, middle-class residential square, and jumped out, crossing the road towards the car whose radio blared out, audible even inside the Panda.