A Narrow Return (2 page)

Marcus Donleavy grunted. ‘Oh don’t get me started on that!’ He sighed heavily then shrugged. ‘As you’d expect, with the government cutbacks biting us so deeply in the arse nowadays, Crayle’s budget is paper-thin. Most of the resources are eaten up with trying to keep the immediate crime figures down – so cold cases hardly get a look in. And youngsters who want to join the force are facing one hell of an uphill struggle just now. It’s not like it was when you left us. Admin are actually cutting the numbers of staff we have, let alone hiring on new ones. How the government thinks we can still provide what’s needed on half the….’

Hillary picked up her cooling coffee and let him get on with his moaning. She agreed with every word he said, but didn’t need a lecture on it. Instead she let her mind wander a bit.

It felt good to be back, both in Thrupp and back in her old station house, but that didn’t mean she was ready to jump head-long into the thick of things just yet.

Oh yeah
, a little sneering voice piped up in the back of her head.

‘So when Crayle put forward the proposals for the training programme, the accountants jumped at the chance.’

Hillary blinked. ‘Huh?’

Marcus smiled bleakly. ‘Simply speaking, youngsters who want to join up are now looking for back-door methods to get in. Some are becoming community officers.’

Hillary nodded. They did good work – men and women, not police officers but with some authority, who worked mostly in the cities, pounding a beat, being visible and trying to take on the mammoth task of prevention, rather than actual policing. They did an invaluable job taking on the lesser and more time consuming peace-keeping work, thus leaving trained officers to tackle the more serious issues.

‘Others are taking courses in specialist areas. Family liaison training, rape-crisis management, that sort of thing,’ Marcus went on. ‘And now, we have Crayle’s wannabes, as I call them. Most of them are still at uni, or in a gap year, or are looking for employment. They work on a volunteer basis, but get basic part-time pay if they put in a certain number of hours. Plus they get on-the-job training, all of which is supposed to put them in a better position to land a proper placement when the time comes. Even this government must finally come to its senses and realize that we can’t keep law and order without the manpower, and the means to start a new recruitment campaign.’

Hillary sighed. ‘In other words, we’re getting the foot soldiers without paying them a proper wage for it,’ she translated bitterly.

Marcus Donleavy grimaced, but was secretly pleased to hear that word ‘we’ creeping back into her vocabulary. So she still thought of herself as a copper. Well, that didn’t surprise him. She had the job in her bones. It only surprised him it had taken her this long to get tired of civilian life and come back where she belonged.

‘Exactly. So as you can see, Steven needs all the experienced help he can get. He was delighted when he heard that he was going to get his hands on you. So to speak.’

Well, perhaps not delighted, Donleavy mentally observed, but his smile never faltered.

Hillary sat up straighter in her chair. ‘Now just hang on a minute, sir,’ she said, her voice low and flat. It was a voice that Donleavy instantly recognized, and one that always made him pay attention.

‘I haven’t even made my mind up yet about whether or not I want to come back to work. I’m not even sure if working as a consultant will even suit me. I was used to being a full DI, and the Crime Review Team might not be the answer. I’m just here to dip a toe in the water, that’s all. I might be on my way again tomorrow.’

Donleavy nodded. ‘Of course, whatever you say Hillary,’ he said, spreading his hands benevolently. Once Crayle had handed her her first case file, she’d be hooked. And then he could sit back and enjoy the show. He’d always admired the way Hillary Greene could crack a murder case. And he was rather interested to see how Steven Crayle would react to having a star in his firmament.

That Steven Crayle was ambitious, Marcus knew and approved of. He had a good university degree, and nowadays a failed marriage was par for the course and nothing to his detriment. He had good instincts in spotting a villain, could play the politics game, gave a good performance with the media, and had brains. Marcus was more than happy for him to climb high. But he could tend to be just a trifle complacent at times.

And he rather thought that being confronted with the station legend would do him the world of good. Hillary, if nothing else, would give him something to think about other than where his next promotion was coming from.

The Crime Review Team had their offices in the basement. Hardly surprising, Hillary thought with a gloomy sigh as she followed the commander down into the depths. A low-priority department would have to make do with the leftovers and be thankful. But high windows on a level with the parking lot let in a lot of natural light and banks of fluorescent lighting at least gave the bland cream walls and beige carpeting an airy appearance. Nothing could disguise the fact that it was a bit of a rabbit warren, though, with old-fashioned offices, cubby holes and nooks and crannies that told her that this whole floor had once been used as a storage facility more than anything else.

She thought of her old open-plan office on the third floor with a sigh of regret.

Donleavy first popped his silver head into what he called ‘the hub’ where computers ruled the roost. His appearance caused a bit of a stir amongst the sparse human population, and Hillary was introduced and given a quick run-down on the CRT’s main purview – which was comparing cases in the hopes of finding matches, it seemed.

A rounded man, about two inches shorter than herself, who introduced himself as Sergeant Handley, explained how things worked.

‘Say we have a rape case, two years old, come down to us from above,’ he began, making Hillary wonder for a moment if he was some sort of religious nut, until she realized that he meant it rather more literally, when he pointed upwards towards the main offices. ‘After two years, all inactive files come down from central to be processed,’ he added. ‘We then run a programme to see if the MO matches any other cases we already have on file – since, as you know, many rape cases that aren’t solved in the first six months are serials.’

Hillary nodded. Date rapes, or rapes by a disenfranchised ex tended to be a one-off and were more often than not solved quickly. The problem came when you had a lone male targeting women unknown to him. Serial rapists, in other words. These were the hardest to catch because they had no other contact with the victim, and so the chances of tracing him were significantly reduced.

‘So as soon as we get a new unsolved rape,’ Sergeant Handley went on, ‘we compare it with others with a similar MO and check on the physical evidence. You’ll be surprised how many we can match up after a while. The sighting of a car or a partial registration plate in a similar case six or four years ago now matches that with one of the suspects in the latest case. Or a DNA sample from a case that’s fifteeen years old and that couldn’t be matched, now has a new suspect to type it against. And so on.’

Hillary got it. ‘The more strands you have, from as many cases as you can identify, gives you more to go on, and thus a better chance of pinpointing a suspect.’

‘Right. Often it’s even easier than that. If a perp has done time, his DNA is now in the system. And so by regularly running any physical samples from our older cases, we often get a hit. And once a perp’s in prison, he’s more likely to cop to other crimes in the hopes of getting them written off as time served.’

‘CRT comes in very handy when our solve-rates figures get reviewed,’ Marcus put in drolly. ‘I’m sure that’s one of the reasons it even gets funded at all.’

The shorter man glanced at him nervously, not sure if he was being facetious or was being genuinely appreciative.

‘You must get a good clearance rate,’ she mused, and meant it. Collating and comparing cases, putting together all the facts and figures and getting a major overview of stacks of data must inevitably bring up patterns that wouldn’t necessarily be noticed in the field. But this sort of thing wasn’t her cup of tea at all. ‘But I can’t see it being of much use when you get one-off murder cases, for example.’

‘Ah, that’s where Superintendent Crayle’s team comes in,’ Sergeant Handley said airily. ‘Not my department, I’m glad to say,’ he added thoughtfully, and glanced almost lovingly at a computer that was churning out columns of tax-reference numbers. He had the look of one who lived in virtual reality and Donleavy was quick to thank him and let him get back to his cyberspace world.

Leading her further into the rabbit warren, he then paused before a door and gave a brief tap. On it, the words DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT STEVEN CRAYLE had been stencilled in black letters.

‘Time to meet your new boss,’ Donleavy said.

Hillary opened her mouth to tell him yet again that she hadn’t agreed to anything, but he was already opening the door and ushering her inside.

The office was surprisingly spacious, with two high windows letting light stream in. Several large and colourful abstract paintings hung on the plain white walls, and a large, modern ash desk sat beneath the windows, to make the most of the natural light. And rising from behind the desk was one of the best-looking men Hillary had seen in an age.

Hillary looked at him and swore, very softly, under her breath.

He was perhaps just a little bit over six feet and lean in that elegant way some men have. They tended to move like Fred Astaire and could wear those bulky Fair Isle sweaters and yet still look sexy as all hell. He had a head of thick, dark brown hair worn a little long for a super, and dark brown eyes under arched dark brows. Clean-shaven, his square-jawed chin looked just a shade dark. He was obviously one of those men who had to shave at least twice a day or just give it up and grow a beard. High cheekbones gave him just a slightly Slavic look. At first glance he appeared to be about thirty, but very fine lines at the corner of his eyes told Hillary that she should add another decade to this. He was, quite simply, stunningly beautiful in a classic, masculine way.

He should have been modelling something on a fashion catwalk in Paris. As it was, he wore a plain dark blue suit with a white shirt and black enamelled cufflinks. His tie was electric blue with some sort of tiny motif in black, white and gold. And he still should have been modelling it on a catwalk in Paris somewhere.

Her libido abruptly sat up and took notice.

She silently told her libido exactly what it could do, and listened instead with a grim smile of agreement at what the sardonic voice at the back of her head was telling her.

Namely that this was just what she needed. Not.

‘Commander,’ Steven Crayle said, acknowledging Marcus first, his voice carefully neutral. And then he turned those velvet chocolate brown eyes to Hillary. They were guarded.

Most definitely guarded.

And the sardonic voice in Hillary’s head picked up a gear. Great, not only was he gorgeous, he was hostile too.

Oh this just got better and better, her little voice said gleefully. Anyone with an ounce of sense would just turn around and scuttle back to her narrowboat and head for the hills.

Or even the Greater Manchester canal.

‘And this must be DI Greene.’ His voice was pure Oxford.

‘Ex,’ Hillary said flatly.

‘Of course. You have consultant status now,’ Steven Crayle smiled briefly. The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Welcome to Hades,’ he said, and put out his hand. Seeing her startled look he smiled again. ‘Sorry, that’s what the troops call this place. But I hope it’s not as bad as all that.’

Oh, I wouldn’t bet on it
, Hillary thought grimly as she took his hand and felt her fingers tingle. He had a strong grip, and the tingles shot up her arm and onto pastures new.

She took her hand back quickly, and wondered if the heating system was buggered down here. It felt very hot all of a sudden.

She cast a brief glance at Donleavy. She looked faintly bored, politely interested and cautious. It would take someone who knew her very well to know that she was actually mad enough to contemplate kicking him in the shins. Hard.

Donleavy, who knew her very well, smiled jovially. ‘Well, I’ll leave Steven here to show you around,’ he said and smartly left.

Hillary glared at the door closing behind his back and silently promised herself that he would get his.

Then Superintendent Crayle moved around the desk and walked up to her. He was wearing an expensive aftershave, or maybe cologne, one of those that smelt faintly of citrus or pine.

‘Let me introduce you to your team.’

Hillary opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t have a team, and might never have a team, that she hadn’t even made her mind up to come back to work yet. And even if she had decided to give it a go, he was probably the last man on earth she wanted to work with. Who needed the aggro?

Then she closed her mouth again.

Why bother?

She was back, and she knew it.

S
uperintendent Crayle led the way through the rabbit warren until he eventually came to a reasonably sized office for one. Unfortunately, it now housed three people, who all turned and looked at her when Crayle walked in. Or rather took one step in and then turned to let Hillary precede him.

She smiled briefly and nodded all around as Crayle made the introductions. There was a single large desk in the middle of the room, with one computer on it, and three chairs pulled up around it. Even then, the backs of the chairs rested against the wall on the far side. It felt stuffy and smelt of coffee and perfume.

‘Age before beauty,’ Crayle said with a smile, and held out his hand towards a sixty-something man who had a full head of pale grey hair and bushy white eyebrows. It was hard to see the colour of his eyes from across the room but they looked pale, and they regarded Hillary steadily. She liked him right away. It was rare to have gut instincts, but she already had him tagged as her right-hand man before he’d even said a word. ‘This is James Jessop. He’s been on the team now for five months, isn’t it?’ The older man nodded.

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘He retired as a DS from Bicester nick nearly three years ago now it must be. Nearly everyone calls him JJ,’ the superintendent made the introduction with a brief smile. Again, the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Hillary thought she could detect on the face of the older man a bit of a wince in this pairing of his initials, and walking forward to shake his hand she said firmly ‘Jimmy is it?’ and got a warm smile back.

‘Ma’am, I’m glad to be working with you,’ Jimmy Jessop said, and meant it. Although he’d never worked out of Kidlington HQ before coming to the CRT, he knew enough about Hillary Greene to have felt excited when the super had told them all yesterday that she’d be joining their team. As the token ex-copper, he’d been leading the team if it could be called that, until then of course, but he was more than willing to become second fiddle if he could watch and learn from a master like Hillary Greene.

‘Well, we’ll have to see how it goes, Jimmy,’ Hillary said, still determined to be cautious. ‘It might not be permanent,’ but even as she said it, she knew in her heart that she’d already made up her mind.

‘And this strapping lad is Sam Pickles. Sam’s at Brookes, doing a BA in sociology and economics,’ Crayle carried on, and a tall, lanky, sandy-haired lad with a smattering of freckles and round hazel eyes grinned back at her. At six foot two or so, he was just beginning to develop the stoop-shoulders that some tall people get, as if they’re trying to reduce or apologize for their size.

She smiled at him and gave a mental nod. She’d soon get him out of that habit and teach him to stand up straight. If he was going to be a beat copper one day, he’d need all the advantages his size could give him.

‘Sam,’ she said, shaking his hand, and making a mental note to herself to teach him how to intimidate. With his size it should be a doddle. All he needed to do, really, was learn how to hide his basically friendly face behind a dead stare.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, somewhat awkwardly copying Jimmy’s deference, and she smiled.

‘I don’t know whether or not that title is appropriate, Sam. I’m not a full DI now you know,’ she added, glancing across questioningly at Steven Crayle. He’d know better than anyone what the etiquette was around here.

‘We mostly tend to use Christian names,’ he said smoothly, picking up on her unspoken query.

‘Right. Hillary it is then,’ Hillary said, not really liking it much. Which made her wonder. Had all her years being referred to as ‘guv’ given her a sense of superiority? So much so, that she now felt uncomfortable with her given name? The thought made her feel distinctly wrong-footed.

‘And last but not least, of course, Vivienne Tyrell,’ Crayle continued, and a hint of reserve in his voice made her turn swiftly to the final member of her team. The one, no doubt, responsible for the perfume.

Vivienne Tyrell was young, barely twenty, Hillary would have said, with long curling dark brown hair and big pansy-brown eyes, which were expertly outlined in mascara to make the most of her lashes, and with a subtle bronze-amber eye shadow to highlight her best asset. She wasn’t quite as beautiful as she obviously thought herself to be, but Hillary had few doubts that she could still have her pick of men simply by beckoning them over with one of her gold-painted nails.

‘Hillary,’ she said promptly, and held out her hand perfunctorily. It was obvious that she was not impressed with this stranger being foisted upon her, and was making it clear that she wasn’t going to do any toadying.

Which was fine with Hillary.

‘Vivienne.’

‘Well, let me show you to your office,’ Crayle said, then gave a brief laugh. ‘Well, I call it office. I think it was probably once a stationery cupboard. But at least it’s convenient – just across the corridor here.’

Which was something of a blessing, Hillary thought, and wondered just how many times she’d get lost down here before she learned the layout of her new domain.

He showed her to a tiny room with a tiny window, a desk which just had room to house a computer (not the printer, which was underneath on the floor) and an old-fashioned beige-coloured filing cupboard pressed up against one corner like a cowering suspect. ‘Sorry, but at least it’s a bit of privacy when you need it,’ Crayle said, looking around the beige-painted room. It wouldn’t even have made a decent cell. Hell, the prisoners rights groups would be up in arms if any criminal was housed in such a bleak space.

He watched her look around, curious to see what her reaction would be. When she’d left here, she’d been used to the open plan office upstairs, with a lofty view, a roomy desk and an obvious amount of respect accorded to her by her peers. Down here, they were all but invisible to the vast network up above, and, being out of sight, were also mostly out of mind. It must be something of a culture shock for a high-flying DI to suddenly find herself as a civilian consultant in the humble CRT.

When Donleavy had first told him he’d got a letter from Hillary Greene expressing interest in the CRT, he wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sorry.

And he still wasn’t.

Although he’d worked out of first Abingdon and then St Aldates nick, he’d come to Kidlington HQ about six months before Hillary had retired, and knew all the scuttlebutt about her. He’d been here when the debacle with the Myers case and her ex-sergeant, Janine Mallow, had kicked off. It hadn’t taken him long to discover that she was popular with both the lads and with the movers and shakers. The high esteem in which Commander Donleavy held her, for instance, more than proved that. And of course her gallantry medal and the way she stood by her people had earned her an almost legendary status with the rank and file.

But it was not that so much as her arrest record, which gave him reason to think. Once Donleavy had dropped the bombshell on him that she was going to be working for him, he’d quickly done his research, and he knew she had an arrest and conviction rate that had always kept her star riding high in the ascendant. And in murder cases in particular, her skill was enviable.

And he knew himself well enough to know that he was envious. Although his own record was pretty good, it made him uncomfortable to compare it to hers.

So it hadn’t come as much of a surprise when Donleavy had called him into his office just before the weekend and all but ordered him to give her nothing but the murder cases. And he’d dropped strong hints about giving her a good second-in-command, with a decent team behind her as well. His reasoning being that the better her tools, the better her performance.

Which on the face of it, all seemed well and good, he supposed.

If she did well, it would reflect glory back onto the CRT and his department in particular, naturally. And since he wanted to make Chief Super by the time he was forty-eight, he could use all the kudos he could get. Even so, if she became too successful, she might start to hog too much of the limelight again.

And that would be a problem. When the bosses talked about the CRT he wanted it to be his name that came first. He was, after all, still a serving officer and relatively young. Hillary Greene, for all her assets, was now a retired civilian consultant.

And he would have to make sure that nobody, including herself, ever forgot that.

‘This is fine,’ she said, breaking him out of his reverie, and making his lips twist in a grimace.

‘It’s barely adequate,’ he contradicted her flatly, ‘but it’s the best I could do,’ he added, totally truthfully. Space down here was problematic at the best of times, and not even he could magic a decent office for her, Donleavy’s pet or not.

She nodded, her expression utterly unreadable. And it popped into his head that he wouldn’t like to play poker with this woman.

The overhead lighting was making her hair gleam a deeper red than usual, and as she moved behind her desk and sat down, she gave the printer underneath it an accidental kick, which brought his eyes down to her legs.

And very shapely they were too.

He quickly dragged his eyes back up. He had enough trouble with the Tyrell girl mooning over him. The last thing he needed was to attract any spurious sexual-harassment charges his way. Not that Hillary Greene was the sort who’d do that. Everything he knew about her told him that if he started making overtures in that direction, he’d be more likely to get a knee in his groin rather than a formal complaint lodged against him.

Not that that was ever going to be an issue, of course. He knew all about that poor sod Paul Danvers – the whole station house did. Her former boss, DCI Danvers had fancied her for years, and had never got anywhere, much to everyone’s amusement. And Steven Crayle had no intention of becoming another butt of station house jokes.

‘I’ll just go and get you your first file,’ he said, abruptly turning around and vanishing.

Hillary sat in her chair, her face thoughtful. Then she glanced around and grimaced. Well, one thing was for sure, she wasn’t going to be spending much time in here. In fact, if she had been at all claustrophobic she’d already be climbing the walls. Then again, if she had been at all claustrophobic she wouldn’t be living on a narrowboat.

She stashed her handbag in the large empty bottom drawer of her desk and turned on her computer. She’d need a password. She turned if off again, sighed, then looked up as Crayle reappeared.

‘I thought you might like this now. You’re not supposed to take it out of the building of course, but …’ he shrugged and gave a brief smile. Hillary got it at once. She could take it out, but don’t get caught.

‘Right, guv,’ she said. She used his title without giving it a conscious thought but for some reason the simple acknowledgement of his status made him blink and take a quick breath.

‘Er, right. I’ll let you get on with it then. I take it you’ll be starting straight away?’

Hillary smiled grimly. ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it,’ she said dryly. So much for being cautious.

Crayle nodded and returned to his own office. There he poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down, drinking thoughtfully.

So that was the legendary Hillary Greene.

From her personnel file, he knew she was going to be fifty in just a few weeks’ time, but she looked much younger. For some reason he just hadn’t expected her to be so attractive. For days now he’d speculated about her, seeing her as a potential threat, rival, or even a possible liability. After all, she’d stood at the side of her old friend, Mel Mallow when he’d been shot dead, and on her last case, a former colleague had also died. But for all that, she didn’t have the reputation of being a Jonah; but you never knew.

He shrugged off all this speculation about just another consultant on his team, and brought his mind firmly back to work. And with that, he smiled wolfishly.

Well, Donleavy had told him to give her only murder cases and who was he to disoblige a superior officer? In fact, it had given him great satisfaction to go through his back files and pick out the hardest, coldest, meanest ones that he could find.

Now he could just sit back and see what the station legend was really made of. And it would certainly be interesting to see how Donleavy’s blue-eyed girl tackled the impossible!

Back in her stationery cupboard, Hillary Greene stared down at the slightly grimy folder on her desk. The case file was thick, as she supposed most of the cold cases would be, since the investigation had already been done and dusted. No doubt this was just the basic brief. There were bound to be boxes and boxes of other stuff relating to the murder victim stored away somewhere. All of which would have to be gone through carefully.

It felt odd to be coming onto a case where the victim had been dead for twenty years.

Nevertheless, it beat idling away her days, desperately trying to find something to do.

With a happy sigh, she opened the file and began to read.

Mrs Anne McRae, née Carter, born on 2 February 1956, had been found dead in her home in the village of Chesterton on 6 June 1991, by her 13-year-old daughter Lucy.

Hillary took a deep breath, trying not to imagine the kind of trauma that moment must have been for a young girl. Or how it must have blighted her life ever since.

The victim was married, with three children, the eldest at the time being a boy named Peter, aged fifteen, the youngest, a girl of eleven, named Jennifer. All three children had been at school on the day of the murder. The victim’s husband, Melvin McRae drove a coach for a holiday firm, and had been returning from a continental tour on the day of his wife’s death. His alibi had been closely checked, of course.

He’d spent the previous week in the Netherlands with his forty-or-so passengers, and had just returned to the UK that very day. He had been at the coach station, returning his vehicle at the time the pathologist had estimated as time of death.

Questioning of all forty passengers confirmed that he’d been with them all that day, and had dropped the last five people off at the final drop-off point in Oxford at 2.45 p.m. The office and garage staff confirmed that he’d arrived in their depot at Weston-on-the-Green at 3.05 p.m.. This wouldn’t have given him time to go home to Chesterton and kill his wife, even if he had found somewhere inconspicuous to park a large grey and white touring coach. Even his mileage and been checked and confirmed – there had been no little detours.