Road Closed (16 page)

‘How long is she going to stay?’ Gerald Pettifer asked his wife one evening. She shrugged. ‘Well, you’d better find out. I’m sorry for the poor woman, who wouldn’t be? That’s why I brought her in. But we can’t put her up indefinitely. How long did you invite her to stay?’

‘It wasn’t that specific. She’d just lost her husband. She was hardly in a fit state to be making plans.’

‘Well I think it’s time you found out.’

‘Of course you’re welcome to stay.’ Jane smiled brightly at Sophie across the breakfast table the following morning. She poured Sophie a cup of coffee. Gerald rustled his paper. ‘But…’ She hesitated. ‘Would you like some muesli?’ Sophie toyed with her cereal.

Gerald finished his coffee and left the table and Jane followed him into the hall.

‘You said you’d ask her when she’s leaving,’ he reminded his wife, a touch of irritation in his voice.

‘I tried… it’s hard to know what to say. I can’t just come out with it and ask her when she’s leaving.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.

‘You ask her then,’ Jane countered irritably.

‘Me? It’s better coming from you. You’re a woman.’

‘But –’

‘You’ll speak to her then.’

‘Oh, very well, leave it to me.’ She muttered something that her husband didn’t catch.

‘Just sort it out, will you?’ he called over his shoulder from the front door. ‘Give me a ring at the golf club and let me know how it goes. Leave a message if I’m out on the course.’

Jane returned to the kitchen and sat down opposite Sophie. ‘Right,’ she said firmly. She didn’t meet Sophie’s eye. ‘We need to talk. You’ve been here five nights now. Of course we’ve been very happy to help out. We, Gerald and I, we love having you here. But…’ She paused and poured herself some coffee. ‘Gerald wants to know… we want to know… that is, we’d like to know what your plans are. How long do you intend to stay here? We’d just like to know, that’s all,’ she ended lamely. A hot flush spread down her neck and across her chest.

‘It’s been very kind of you to let me stay.’ The voice was flat and distant. Sophie’s mouth seemed to move independently in a face otherwise immobile. ‘I’ll move out today.’

‘Oh don’t feel you have to go… not just yet…’

Sophie went upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. From the landing, Jane could hear the tap running. With a sigh she went back into the kitchen and began to clear the table.
Sophie sat down on the side of the bath. The simplest of actions took careful planning. It was hard to think. First she would go back to the house and pack a small bag. She wouldn’t go into the damaged part of the house, where it had happened. Once she had a few belongings, she would find somewhere to stay. After a while she might go to her parents’ house. But not yet. One day she might go back to work, but not yet. Right now all she wanted to do was sleep.

She washed her face, brushed her hair, and went downstairs to find Mrs Pettifer. ‘I’ll be off then,’ she announced. Her voice sounded cheerful. Forced.

‘Where will you go?’ As if Jane Pettifer cared. No one cared. Not now.

‘I’m going to visit my parents,’ she lied. She needed to go away, somewhere she wouldn’t see pitying looks, hear hushed voices. If only she could find her way out of this horror, find her way back to Tom.

‘Will you have a cup of coffee before you go?’ Sophie shook her head and her eyes fell on the local paper, lying on the kitchen table. 

GANG TRIGGER GAS EXPLOSION

Sophie snatched up the paper and read the article. Until that moment, she hadn’t understood what had happened. She had assumed the fire had been sparked by a fault. If the report in the paper was true, the man she had seen running away that night had broken into her house and left the gas on, killing Tom as surely as if he had stuck a knife in his chest. Sophie put the paper down. With her eyes closed she could picture his face, glaring wildly: the face of the intruder who had caused Tom’s death. Tom’s killer. She should have run him over, and left him to die.

‘Are you all right?’ Mrs Pettifer asked. Sophie didn’t answer. It was a stupid question. She hurried out of the kitchen and ran from the house without a word of thanks.

‘Well, of all the ungrateful…’ Jane Pettifer muttered under her breath, her indignation overshadowed by relief. Smiling, she picked up the telephone to tell her husband the good news.

It was growing late and Geraldine’s mind wasn’t focused on work. She had another visit to pay before the day was over.

A door swung open silently and she entered the coronary unit. The nurse on the desk didn’t even glance up as she approached.

‘I’ve come to visit DCI Gordon.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The patient’s name is Gordon. Kathryn Gordon.’

‘Oh yes, the police woman.’ Geraldine nodded. Illness cared nothing for rank. ‘Second room along on your left. Don’t stay long.’ The nurse looked up with a weary frown. ‘Are you a relative?’

‘I’m her niece.’ The pointless lie slipped out on the spur of the moment. It was too late to retract it. Geraldine hurried away along the hushed corridor. The hospital atmosphere brought a rush of memory that caught her unawares. She had to stop and catch her breath. She blinked, fighting the image of her mother lying in a hospital bed; her sister weeping noisily, eyes and nose streaming, clutching a sodden tissue, looking up as Geraldine entered the room… and Geraldine swamped by guilt, because by the time she arrived at the hospital, her mother was already dead.

‘Are you all right?’ A young nurse had stopped.

Geraldine forced a smile. ‘I’m fine, thank you. It’s just… hospitals…’ She turned and made her way along the corridor to the room where Kathryn Gordon lay shored up on pillows.

Geraldine was shocked at how the DCI had aged overnight. Her cheeks had lost their usual ruddy flush and seemed to have collapsed inwards beneath bones that jutted out. Her lips were taut in a sour expression as though someone had removed her teeth. Geraldine stepped into the room and hesitated. Kathryn Gordon appeared to be sleeping. She was attached to a drip and a monitor that displayed her heart rate electronically in a fine green line that flickered disconcertingly at the periphery of Geraldine’s vision. She looked like a frail old woman, clinging on to life by a fine green thread which moved inexorably up and down on the screen; it could stop at any moment.

Geraldine turned away, guilty at her intense relief that she wouldn’t have to struggle with expressions of sympathy. She wasn’t sure how Kathryn Gordon would react. Reaching the door, she glanced behind her. Kathryn Gordon’s eyes were open now, staring straight at her. Geraldine hesitated, but she couldn’t leave now that the DCI had seen her. She turned back into the room and approached the bed.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked. Clumsily.

‘How’s the investigation going?’

‘Don’t worry about that. You need to concentrate on getting yourself fit.’ How many more foolish platitudes were going to slip out of her mouth? Kathryn Gordon glared, faintly belligerent. ‘Don’t worry about the case,’ Geraldine repeated. She was caught completely off guard, shocked at seeing the formidable Kathryn Gordon reduced to a feeble old woman. It was unbearably sad. Geraldine hadn’t come to the hospital with the conscious intention of discussing the case, but standing helpless by the DCI’s bedside, Geraldine realised that was what she had been hoping to do.

Kathryn Gordon began to speak but her voice failed. Geraldine had to bend forward to distinguish the words. ‘Who… senior…’

‘James Ryder.’ She thought she saw a gleam in the older woman’s eyes and wondered if it signified anger or approval, before she realised Kathryn Gordon’s eyes were filling with tears. Geraldine had to look away.

Kathryn Gordon was the first to regain her composure. ‘Geraldine,’ she rasped softly. ‘I’m not going to die. Don’t think…’

The door opened and a nurse bustled in. ‘Time for your niece to leave, Kathryn.’

Kathryn Gordon’s eyes widened in surprise. Geraldine shrugged, and turned away to hide her embarrassment. She couldn’t think of anything to say. When she glanced over her shoulder, she realised that words were unnecessary. Kathryn Gordon was smiling at her.

28

Recognition

As soon as the local paper had come out, members of the public had started phoning in. Every call had to be taken seriously, but most were from people concerned about the safety of their gas appliances. The staff on the switchboard were soon fed up of giving out the phone number of the gas board.

‘Good news for gas service engineers,’ a constable remarked.

Geraldine had to step out of her office to find out how the calls were progressing. On her previous case the police station had been too small for her to have her own office. She had preferred working at a desk in the Incident Room. Now, she could hear a buzz of activity through the flimsy partition wall without being able to distinguish words. It was distracting as she found herself listening, trying to make out what was being said. Even when she managed to block out the hum of voices, it was impossible to ignore the shrilling of phones.

Raymond Barker had been taken down to the cells to kick his heels overnight. They were getting nowhere with him. They would have to let him go before long. In the interim, he was kicking up an appalling fuss. Fed up, Geraldine wandered off to the canteen. A constable found her there, staring moodily into her coffee.

‘Sophie Cliff’s been found, ma’am.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She’s been brought in. She’d left her neighbours and was picked up driving around. Seems she wasn’t sure where she was headed. She seems a bit confused.’

‘Sounds like it. All right. I’ll see her now.’ Geraldine took a deep breath and ran over a few platitudes in her mind as she walked along the corridor.

Bloodshot eyes looked up at her from a grey face. If she hadn’t known better, Geraldine would have thought Sophie Cliff was suffering from a terminal sickness. Her hair was sticking up in wild clumps, her blouse was crumpled, her eyes crazed.

‘I read the paper,’ Sophie Cliff said hoarsely. Geraldine sat down. ‘There were intruders in my house?’ Geraldine waited. She wasn’t sure where this was heading. ‘They left the gas on, didn’t they? It wasn’t an accident. Those burglars. They killed my husband.’ Geraldine would have felt more comfortable with anger or grief; there was a steely quality in Sophie’s stilted voice that was unnerving. The other woman’s grief felt like an accusation to Geraldine, unable to mourn for her own mother. Perhaps, when the case was over, suppressed emotion would surface and she would weep for her mother. ‘Who are they?’ the widow was asking, her voice strident. ‘I want you to tell me who killed my husband.’

‘We’re following several leads, Mrs Cliff – Sophie.’

‘What leads? I have a right to know.’ She was shaking now, her flat voice belied by her zealous eyes.

Geraldine explained that they had recovered some of the goods stolen by the burglars; candle sticks and other valuables. Officers were interviewing all the victims and neighbours again. ‘I assure you, Mrs Cliff, we’re doing everything we can to find these men. I’ll let you know as soon as there are any further developments.’

Sophie Cliff took a deep breath and launched into a description of the face she had seen, illuminated under a street lamp, as she had driven off to work on Friday night. Geraldine nodded. Sophie Cliff’s workplace had confirmed that she would have left her house shortly after two thirty. She had tried to leave quietly, she said, so as not to wake
her husband. ‘He was sleeping,’ she explained, as though it mattered now. ‘I didn’t want to disturb him.’ Geraldine sat and listened while Sophie Cliff talked.

It seemed that Sophie Cliff must have disturbed the intruders when she left the house. One of them had tried to run past her car. Sophie had nearly knocked him down. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have braked.’

‘You said earlier you thought you might recognise this man if you saw him again.’

‘I’d know him anywhere.’

Geraldine studied the desperation in the pale face opposite. ‘Are you sure, Mrs Cliff?’

‘He was standing right under the street lamp.’ She blinked at Geraldine through her glasses. ‘I don’t think he could see my face, in the car. He probably didn’t know I could see him. But I saw him. I saw him as clearly as I can see you now.’

‘Mrs Cliff –’ Geraldine sighed. Sophie Cliff was in a state of extreme emotional disturbance. Geraldine could imagine a defence counsel coldly deconstructing a case built around her conviction. ‘Mrs Cliff,’ she began again. ‘If you’re feeling strong enough, we’d like you to describe this man you saw to an E-fit officer who will produce an image of his face. Do you think you could do that?’

Sophie stopped abruptly and gripped Geraldine by the arm. ‘What will happen to him? He’ll go to prison, won’t he? He’ll get life if I tell you what he looks like. He’ll never get away, will he?’

‘You have my word for it that we’ll do our best to see justice done.’ Geraldine hoped that her words wouldn’t turn out to be a hollow promise.

Half an hour passed before Geraldine’s phone rang. It was the desk sergeant. With a sigh, Geraldine made her way to the entrance. Sophie Cliff was sitting on a chair in the lobby,
staring straight ahead. With a shrug at the sergeant, Geraldine sat down beside her.

‘Thank you for your information, Mrs Cliff. Is there anything else you want to tell us?’

‘You’ll get him now, won’t you?’ Sophie Cliff was animated, her hair splayed out wildly around her thin face.

‘We’ll keep you fully informed. Where will you be?’

‘I’ll go to my parents.’

‘We’ll be in touch, I promise.’

As she pushed open the internal door, Geraldine glanced over her shoulder. Sophie Cliff hadn’t moved.

On her way back to her office, Geraldine passed Barker being escorted along the corridor. A sudden shriek floated through the door to the entrance hall. Geraldine turned and hurried back along the corridor. Sophie Cliff was on her feet jabbing her finger at Barker. Her eyes blazed and her arm trembled wildly, like a child waving a sparkler.