A Narrow Return (3 page)

Melvin McRae had still been at the garage, going through his time sheets and paperwork when a uniform had come to inform him of his wife’s death and to escort him back home. The bobby who’d picked him up, a 50-year-old veteran whom Hillary remembered from her youth as having a wise head on his shoulders and not being someone easily fooled by good acting or superb lying, had been in no doubt that his shock and grief had been genuine.

‘Exit the husband,’ Hillary mused out loud, then clamped her mouth shut. Hard. At least in her solitary splendour in her stationery cupboard nobody had heard her talking to herself.

She sighed, and returned to the file.

Anne McRae, according to the path report, had died some time between two and five o’clock in the afternoon. She’d last been seen in the back garden by a neighbour around lunch time. She lived in a small cul-de-sac of council houses, which were probably mostly privately owned by now, and had been there since her marriage, so the whole family was well known. Cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, but there were no surprises there. The murder weapon, a wooden rolling pin, had been found beside the body, bearing traces of her blood, hair and brain tissue.

Hillary studied the scene-of-crime photos and grimaced. Unfortunately, the surface of the rolling pin wasn’t much use for fingerprints, as most were smudged, and the only partial prints they could identify belonged, not surprisingly, to the family members.

DI Andrew Squires was SIO, and from what Hillary could tell over the course of a solid three hours’ reading, had done a good and thorough job on the McRae case.

Which was a relief. The last thing she’d wanted to find was a shoddy job.

But Squires had very quickly discovered everything there was to know about the victim, and as far as she could see, had covered every lead doggedly.

Married at just eighteen, Anne had her three children in quick succession, but had retained her youthful looks and figure with regular keep-fit sessions at a local sports hall. From the photographs of her, she had been an attractive blonde woman, five feet four inches tall, with green eyes and a large smile. She seemed to be both popular and well-liked by her neighbours, had a healthy number of friends and outside interests, and volunteered a few hours a week at a charity shop in the nearby market town of Bicester.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given that her husband’s job meant that he was away for weeks at a time, Squires had been keenly interested to find out if the lady had indulged in adultery and quickly discovered that indeed she had.

With her own sister’s husband no less.

Hillary gave a silent whistle, guessing at once where this was going to go.

And sure enough, Anne’s elder sister Debbie, married to one Shane Gregg, quickly became Squires’s prime suspect. It didn’t take him long to discover that Debbie, elder, plainer, and less popular than her sister, had always resented her younger sibling. She had no alibi for the time of her sister’s murder, and, living in Bicester, had easy access. She was resentful and bitter on interview, and subsequently left her husband within weeks of her sister’s murder. But the lack of both physical evidence, and witnesses thwarted Squires.

As Debbie had, of course, visited her sister’s house on numerous occasions – Christmas and so on – any traces of her in the house hardly proved conclusive one way or another. And although Squires pressed her hard there was no confession. Worse still, although house-to-house went on for weeks afterwards and wide publicity was given in the local press asking for any witnesses to come forward, nobody was ever found who could place Debbie Gregg at her sister’s house on the afternoon that she was killed.

Not that Squires concentrated on her to the exclusion of everyone else, Hillary noted with approval. It was very easy for a investigator to become obsessed with a fixed idea, or – the gravest of all sins – start trying to force evidence to fit around his pet theory. But Squires hadn’t succumbed to the lure of either of these.

The lover, the victim’s brother-in-law Shane Gregg was gone over with a fine-tooth comb as well. But he’d been at work in his office in Summertown all day. The manager of a car sales showroom, he’d had witnesses in the form of his secretary, and several forecourt salesmen who confirmed that he hadn’t left the premises all day. He even ate in his office, since he’d been keen to sell a fleet of cars to a Japanese computer outfit that was relocating to Oxford and wanted some top-of-the-range vehicles for its executive staff and didn’t want to miss their arrival.

So, exit the lover.

Squires had even made sure that all of the victim’s children had been in school all day – they all had – and as far as possible, ruled out any of the neighbours. Nobody seemed to have – or would admit to having – any kind of a grudge against the victim.

Nothing was stolen from the house. A single strand of unidentified hair was found on the victim’s body, the DNA of which couldn’t be matched to anyone in Anne’s life.

According to the husband, the victim’s behaviour hadn’t changed at all; she was outgoing and busy and happy right up to the end. There’d been no threatening letters or phone call, no sign of a stalker, or a disgruntled ex-boyfriend in the wings.

As far as Squires could ascertain, Shane Gregg had been the victim’s only extra-marital affair, and Debbie Gregg had sworn up and down that she didn’t know about it.

From his case notes, it was clear that DI Squires didn’t believe that, although he was inclined to believe that the husband, Melvin McRae, had had absolutely no idea about his wife’s affair.

Here Hillary broke off and sighed. That was the trouble with reading something years old. She wanted to see the husband for herself and assess his reactions with her own two eyes. But of course, all of this had happened two decades ago. The man would have had twenty years to grow calluses over his emotional wounds and become inured to his loss.

She was used to being on the spot and in the moment, but now she felt distanced and wrong-footed. She was seeing this only from Squire’s perspective, and although she hadn’t, as yet, any reason to doubt him or his conclusions, it wasn’t the same as making her own observations and deductions.

She couldn’t wait to get out there and start doing stuff herself.

She stretched her arms and arched her back, hearing her bones click. She wasn’t used to sitting still for so long, and, needing to stretch her legs, got up and walked across the corridor and poked her head into the other room.

‘What do you do for lunch around here?’ she asked vaguely, and Sam Pickles held up a tupperware lunch box, from which he extracted a sandwich.

‘We nearly always bring our own,’ he said, unnecessarily.

‘I was just thinking of going up to the canteen, guv,’ Jimmy Jessop said diffidently.

Hillary silently blessed him and wondered if he used the term ‘guv’ simply out of habit, or if he had sensed her unease earlier.

‘Has it improved any in the last eighteen months?’ she asked with a grin.

‘Doubt it, guv,’ Jimmy said with grin of his own. ‘There’s always the Black Bull.’

‘Done. Sam, Vivienne?’

‘Not me, guv, I’ve already eaten,’ Sam Pickles said at once, picking up on Jimmy’s wording without seeming to notice. ‘Besides, I’ve got seven more folders to get through and get back to Sergeant Handley before I can clock off.’

‘I’m not here this afternoon,’ Vivienne said quickly.

Hillary nodded and went back to her cupboard to get her bag. This part-time thing that her fellow team members took for granted was going to take some getting used to, she mused. And she tried to remember that she wasn’t living in the good old days any more. She didn’t have hot and cold running constables to order about and see to her every whim now.

‘You got a car, Jimmy?’ she asked, meeting the older man back in the corridor.

‘Yes, guv, but it’s nothing much.’

Hillary laughed. ‘It’s got to be better than my transport. I’ve only got a push bike at the moment.’ Seeing his surprise, she smiled. ‘I live on a narrowboat. Moored up in Thrupp. Getting a car is going to have to be a top priority, I can see. You don’t know anyone with a reliable second-hand banger for sale do you?’

‘Not off hand, guv, but I’ll keep my eyes open,’ he said obligingly.

Hillary thanked him as they set off for the car park, where it turned out that Jimmy Jessop owned a dark green five-year-old neat hatchback, which he drove with casual but impressive skill.

‘Something about the way you walk and talk reminds me of the military, Jimmy,’ she said as they headed out onto the main road.

‘Yes, guv. I joined the army when I was twenty, and then got turfed out when I was thirty-five. They like their grunts young and fit. I joined the police force straight away. Left when I was sixty.’

Hillary nodded. ‘Married?’

‘Was, guv. The wife died a few years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Jimmy Jessop shrugged. ‘That’s life, I suppose. Anyway, after retiring with all these plans – me and the missus were going to go on a cruise, get an allotment, you know, all that sort of thing.’ He sighed and touched his brakes as a prat in a Mazda cut him up at the traffic lights. ‘I suddenly found myself on my own in a nice little flat out by the canal, with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs all day long. Turns out I can’t grow a cabbage to save my life, so I gave up the allotment, and when I saw CRT advertising for us old codgers, I jumped at the chance.’

‘Regret it?’

‘Not so far, guv,’ Jimmy said cautiously and Hillary grinned. As she’d suspected, he was a man after her own heart.

In the pub, Hillary began to pump him gently for information about Pickles and Tyrell and – even more delicately – about Crayle.

‘Sam’s going to be all right, guv, I reckon,’ Jimmy said, over his ploughman’s lunch. ‘Bright lad, a bit green still, but he’s got enough stuffing in him to make a go of it. The little madam’s another matter. She’s one of these butterfly types, must have had a dozen jobs since leaving school and can’t stick at any of them.’

Hillary grinned. ‘Not a Vivienne fan then, hmm? I thought those big brown eyes of hers would melt butter at fifty paces.’

Jimmy Jessop grinned and bit into a lump of cheddar. ‘I dare say they could at that. But she’s been wasting her time trying to melt the super and not having much luck, which has come as a bit of a nasty shock for her. Still, better that than her trying it on with Sam. She’d have that lanky loon in a puddle at her feet before you could spit.’

Hillary nodded. ‘What’s Crayle like to work for?’ she asked neutrally, and trying not to feel too pleased at the fact that Steven Crayle, unlike most men, seemed able to resist temptation when it was flaunted under his nose.

Jimmy Jessop leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his half a shandy. ‘Clever, I reckon. And ambitious, of course, that goes without saying. But he knows what he’s doing. In spite of his looks, he’s been a decent enough thief-taker in his time. Divorced now for a few years, with a couple of kids, nearly fully grown. He’s straight with you, I’ll say that for him, but I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side. All in all, I’ve worked for worse.’

Hillary snorted. ‘Tell me about it.’

Jimmy Jessop said nothing. He knew that she and a certain superintendent had crossed swords in the past, with the Super in question now licking his wounds up in Hull, and his career prospects in tatters.

He looked at her over his drink and thought that here was another one that he wouldn’t want to cross either. Not that she wasn’t a totally different kettle of fish from Crayle. Steven Crayle would make a great muckety-muck one day, but give him a copper like Hillary Greene any day. He was still looking forward to working with her, and the more he got to know her, the more relaxed he felt.

‘So, what case has he given us?’ Jessop asked, picking up a cherry tomato with nicotine-stained fingers and munching it thoughtfully.

‘Anne McRae. I’ll let you have the file when we get back – you can have Vivienne copy the relevant parts of it and get up to speed.’

‘Oh she’ll love that,’ Jimmy chuckled over his shandy. ‘So is it a rape case?’

‘No. Murder. I take it they get priority?’

‘Yes, guv.’

‘Fine. I’m going to be out in the field a bit, re-interviewing witnesses, that sort of thing. I’ll need to give Sam some good work experience, but I was hoping you might like to ride shotgun too every now and then.’

Jimmy Jessop’s pale eyes glittered. ‘Any time, guv,’ he said happily.

Hillary nodded. ‘Right then. Back to the cupboard – sorry, office. I’ve got to get some admin stuff sorted out – get my ID and salary sorted. But first thing tomorrow we get cracking. And until I get a car, I was hoping that you wouldn’t mind acting as chauffeur.’

Jimmy Jessop didn’t mind that in the least.

That night, Tom Warrington worked up a sweat in his dad’s garage. Tom had turned the workspace into a reasonable gym, complete with a boxer’s sparring bag, a rowing machine, weight-lifting apparatus and various other pieces of equipment, all designed to increase his muscles.

His Dad approved. Although he was proud of his son, and the police uniform that he wore, he and his mother couldn’t help but worry about him. It was a bad world out there, and the news was full of coppers who got knifed and shot and beaten up by scum.

He certainly didn’t begrudge leaving his car out in the rain so that his only child could keep fit.

He brought a cup of tea out for him now, and stood watching him work. He danced around the boxer’s punch bag like that Muhammad Ali in his heyday. And John Warrington nodded with approval at his son’s bulging biceps and the force that went behind each thump. Just let any snivelling little drug dealer take on his Tom and he’d soon regret it all right.

‘Here you go, son,’ he said, putting the mug down on top of a set of rounded iron weights.

‘Thanks, Dad.’ Tom stopped sparring to walk over and take the mug, careful to unwrap the protective bandages around his knuckles before picking it up.

‘You heard anything about that promotion yet, son?’ John asked. ‘I’ll be glad when you’re out of uniform and off the streets.’