Beside a Narrow Stream (16 page)

Hillary frowned. ‘Oh? Why?’ And then listened with a growing sense of grim anger as Nancy described what had happened that afternoon.

‘So, who was she then?’ Nancy asked, when she’d finished. ‘By the look on your face, you recognize my description of her.’

Hillary forced herself to smile. ‘Oh yes. Sorry, I forgot for a moment, I asked her to drop by. That’s my new Sergeant, Gemma Fordham. I gave her my key and asked her to pick something up for me,’ she lied, without a tremor.

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ Nancy said. It was a good job she was a bit tipsy, Hillary knew, otherwise the older woman might have picked up on her angst. Not much was missed by the sharp-eyed divorcee.

‘Well, now that I’ve drunk you dry of margaritas, I’ll say goodnight,’ Hillary said, struggling a little bit herself to get up. She walked up Nancy’s steep stairs with extra care, and jumped off on to the towpath with more caution than usual.

Nancy waved her a vague goodbye through her porthole, and Hillary waved back.

Once on her own boat, Hillary washed her face in cold water and looked around with a cold, gimlet eye.

Nothing looked out of place, and nothing was missing. If Nancy hadn’t spotted her DS leaving the
Mollern
, she might never have known she’d been there.

Hillary made herself a large mug of coffee, forced herself to drink it, and then sat down in her chair for a good long think.

Well, this explained what Gemma had been doing rifling through her bag. She’d obviously had a key cut. Hillary made a mental note to change the padlock tomorrow, which smacked somewhat of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted, but still. At least it would prevent the nosy DS from coming back for a second search.

But the question was of course – just what the hell had she been doing here?

What did Gemma Fordham
want
?

H
illary Greene awoke that Saturday morning with a
hangover
and vague sense of foreboding. She lay in her narrow bed, the
Mollern
rocking slightly beneath her as a passing narrowboat went by too fast, and listened to a skylark, trilling high above.

She closed her eyes against a throbbing headache and let everything wash over her.

Gemma Fordham.

The murder of Wayne Sutton.

Mike Regis.

Life, the universe and everything.

What, exactly, was she supposed to do about it all?

Well, first things first. She swung her legs out of bed and reached into her handbag; taking out a bottle of aspirin, she dry-swallowed two and coughed. Dragging herself to the bathroom, she took a quick two-minute shower, then dressed in a clean pair of black slacks and a cream T-shirt. Over it she slipped a beige cardigan and thrust her feet into beige pumps. Once in the galley, with a cup of coffee in her hand, and the sound of the morning papers landing on her roof, she felt, if not happier, than at least not so grumpy.

OK – Gemma Fordham. There were several possibilities there, she reasoned, and none of them was good. She could be simply a bent cop, or one who was so ambitious that she was
trying to find something on Hillary that she could hold over her, thus gaining promotion or easy assignments. That fitted in fairly well with what she knew of Gemma so far. According to Mel, she was something of a high flyer with an impressive record behind her. But then, if she was used to prying out secrets about her immediate superior officer, then she probably
would
have just that rep. What’s more, her DI in Reading would have been ecstatic to transfer her out of his hair, and endorsing her to Thames Valley would accomplish just that.

But for all that, Hillary hadn’t got that vibe from the tall blonde woman. Gemma was too competent, too able, too sure of herself and her abilities to go down that route.

OK, so what else? She took a sip of hot coffee and wished her head would stop thumping. Well, Gemma could simply be carrying out orders. If Hillary herself was under investigation, then Gemma Fordham’s assignment to her team made sense. She’d been short a viable sergeant for some time, so she’d have no reason to be suspicious of a new appointee. The only problem with that was – what could the brass possibly think she’d been doing that needed investigation? The most obvious answer, of course, was the old trouble with her late husband, Ronnie Greene. But he’d been dead nearly five years now. There was still the question of the money he’d stashed, but Marcus Donleavy knew exactly what had happened to that, and although he wouldn’t be in any hurry to blab about it, he would surely have been able to put a discreet stop on any further investigation into trying to find it. Besides, that was old, old news. And it just didn’t feel right. If she was still under suspicion, she thought she’d have felt it by now.

She had a good nose for trouble.

And if Gemma
was
working undercover, either Donleavy, Mel, or maybe Danvers would know about it. And whilst she could see Danvers keeping quiet, and maybe, at a pinch, Donleavy, she knew her old friend Mel would have found a way to tip her the wink.

So what did that leave? Did Gemma Fordham have some sort of personal vendetta against her? Hillary blinked her tired, gritty eyes and sipped her coffee morosely. She was sure she hadn’t met Gemma before, so if there was something personal going on, it couldn’t be a direct link between them.

Of all the possibilities, though, this one seemed to be the most likely. But what did she do about it? Confront her? Hillary sighed and shook her head. Gemma was tough – she’d almost certainly flat out deny it, and then where would she be? No proof, and Gemma on the alert that she’d been sussed. No, she had no other option but just to wait and see. Do a little discreet digging, find out more about her, see if she could find out what the problem was before it escalated even further. It was deeply unsatisfactory having something like that hanging over her head, but she didn’t see what else she could do about it.

What else.

Mike Regis.

Well, there were only two things she could do there – either call it all off, or sit him down and tell him straight how she felt about things. Neither appealed. But as soon as the case was over, she’d have to bite the bullet and choose one.

That left Wayne Sutton, and the only thing she could do about her murder victim was drag her sorry, hungover backside to HQ and knuckle down to it.

She drained her coffee mug, wisely deciding to leave life, the universe and everything for another day, and headed aft. After she’d walked up the stairs, the act of shutting the padlock reminded her of another chore she had to do. Change the lock.

She stashed the weekend papers under one arm, and glanced wryly at
Willowsands
as she passed. Nancy Walker’s curtains were still firmly drawn against the cheerful skylarks and bright sunshine.

It was all right for some.

When she got to the office, Barrington was there ahead of her. She nodded at him as she took a seat, then went straight to the coffee pot for another mug. Her headache was receding a bit, but she still felt like something no self-respecting cat would ever dream of dragging in.

She sat down stiffly, and glowered at her in-tray. She’d cleared it last night before going home, but it had magically started to overflow again. She spent some much-needed time dealing with her other cases, signed off some reports, read and passed on inter-office memos and generally cleared the decks. By the time she’d finished, Gemma Fordham was at her desk, and so, incredibly, was Frank Ross. It was nearly ten o’clock, and she had no idea then, that in less than forty minutes, she’d have solved her seventh murder case.

Keith Barrington glanced across at his boss as she dealt with the last file in her in-tray and looked towards the coffee pot again. It was his opinion that she drank far too much caffeine, but he was not idiot enough to tell her so.

‘Guv, I’ve got the name of the chap in Heyford Sudbury that Colin Blake is friendly with. Man by the name of Jasper Fielding. He owns a place called Heyford Court. Family used to be big in biscuits or something. You know, back in the Victorian era, owned a huge factory and made a mint. Course, the factory closed down during the wars and never got up and running again. I reckon the family’s been dwindling along with the fortune ever since. Now it’s down to a last remaining son – Jasper. I’ve been ringing him on and off all morning but no reply.’

‘He’s away at the moment,’ Hillary said vaguely, making Barrington give her a double take.
How the hell did she know that?

‘I don’t suppose there’s anybody called Annie in his life?’ she asked, but Barrington shook his head.

‘’Fraid not, guv. And he’s got no record.’

Hillary got up and refilled her mug, then sat back down, staring at the morass of paperwork strewn across her desk. She’d reread every ongoing file on the Wayne Sutton murder at least three times by now, and she just couldn’t face doing it again.

She reached instead for the morning papers (well, technically, it was supposed to be her day off) and, as was her habit, turned first to the Weekend/Arts section of the
Oxford Times.

And found the answer to her murder case staring her in the face.

But it didn’t hit her at once.

Firstly, she found herself staring at two portraits, placed side by side. Both were of the same woman, a rather plain-looking brunette, in a blue-and-white lace dress with a lace cap in one, and wearing a rather more formal, dark-brown gown in another. The caption read ‘JANE AUSTEN – Another Portrait Found!’

Hillary began to read the write-up.

The piece went on to give a brief biography of the
little-known
artist. A spokesman for the National Portrait Gallery also said his piece, insisting, not unnaturally, that they still had the only known, authenticated portrait of Jane Austen in existence, and added, somewhat stiffly, that the Gallery would, of course, be interested in Mr Brownlow’s findings, but pointed out that, even if the portrait was genuine, there was still no proof that the sitter was the famous authoress herself.

But by then, Hillary had stopped reading.

Instead, she let the paper fall to her lap and stared blankly in front of her, as it all became clear.

It explained everything. Annie, and the reason for the paper
heart. Wayne Sutton finding his fortune in Heyford Sudbury, and no longer needing his coterie of ladies. Everything.

‘Well for crying out bloody loud,’ Hillary said, and, walking past the startled Barrington and Fordham, took her newspaper into Paul Danver’s office.

Danvers looked up as the door to his office opened without a preliminary knock, but one look at Hillary’s face had his heart leaping. Not only did she look radiant and fierce, enough in itself to get his loins tingling, he also knew from old what that gleam in her eyes actually meant.

‘Sir, I think you should read that,’ she said, dropping the newspaper article in front of him.

And as he read, Hillary filled him in.

At his desk, Barrington’s phone rang and he reached across for it absently. He’d seen Hillary Greene before when she’d suddenly had a brainwave, and knew that it meant that things would be happening – fast.

‘Hello, DC Barrington,’ he muttered into the phone, his own eyes, like those of Frank and Gemma, fastened on the DCI’s door. What could she have read in the papers that had …

‘Keith?’ Gavin Moreland’s tense voice broke across his thoughts and made him jump.

‘Hey!’ Keith said, casting a quick, nervous glance at Frank Ross who was fiddling with a pen and trying to look busy. ‘I was hoping you’d call,’ Keith said, wishing he could talk properly. ‘How are you? Are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.

Gemma Fordham glanced across at him curiously, realizing it was a personal call, but she went back to her computer terminal almost at once, obviously uninterested. Ross, however, was beginning to catch on too, and gave Keith a leering grin that was probably meant to be supportive. Barrington felt his guts clench. He mustn’t mention Gavin’s first name.

‘They’ve only arrested him, haven’t they?’ Gavin said in his ear, his voice hoarse and thickened, and Keith realized, with dismay, that his lover was drunk.

‘What for?’ Keith asked blankly, unable to think of anything else to say.

Gavin laughed bitterly over the phone. ‘Does it matter? He’s been charged, and his team are arranging bail so he can come home. At last. You bastards have kept him in for nearly three days.’

They must have asked for, and been granted an extension, Keith thought automatically, then registered the personal pronoun in the accusation.

‘Hey, hold on,’ he said softly. ‘It’s nothing to do with me … darling.’

There was a startled silence on the other end of the line, and then a harsh bark of laughter. Barrington winced and held his hand over the phone, in case Ross picked up on the masculinity of it.

‘Oh, I get it. Can’t even call me by my name, huh?’ Gavin slurred hysterically. ‘Afraid someone will hear you and twig that you’re as bent as a corkscrew, eh? Just like me? Well, you know what? That won’t be a problem for you anymore. You think you coppers can do this to my Dad? Well,
darling
, screw you!’ Gavin screamed and crashed down the phone.

Shaken, Keith lowered his own receiver.

‘Woman trouble, huh, Red?’ Frank Ross laughed. ‘They’re all the same, mate, and plenty more of them in the sea.’

Keith, hating himself, smiled grimly back at the older man and shrugged. Could he get time off and drive down to London? Damn, if the case was breaking, now was the worse time ever to ask for leave. He glanced up as the door to Danvers’s office opened, and his heart fell as he saw the tight, hard look on Hillary’s face, and the avid, eager look on the DCI’s.

‘I’ll take the brief to Mel, and we’ll get the warrants as fast as we can,’ Danvers was saying, and since it was a Saturday
morning, and slow, his words carried clearly across to Hillary’s team. ‘You going to bring him in now?’