Cold Pursuit (12 page)

He shook his head.

‘You don’t live together?’

‘You know that.’

‘Any reason why?’ She looked about her,
wide-eyed
. ‘There’s more than enough room for two, surely.’

‘If there is a reason it’s none of your business, Dr Harman. Upstairs on your right,’ he added irritably to Mark, who’d made a silent enquiry for the loo.

Why not a downstairs cloakroom? There must
be one, surely, in a house as spacious and expensive as this.

‘Of course not. It’s just that so many people live together these days before they marry.’ Talk about stating the obvious.

‘That’s one of the problems with today’s society, if I may say so. And I have to pick up the pieces, Dr Harman. Two-thirds of my pupils come from single-parent homes. Maybe more. Seventy-five per cent are entitled to free school lunches, they’re so poor. I’m trying to bring down the rates of pregnancy amongst our girls, without, I may add, having the school nurse dish out morning after pills like so many Smarties.’ For the first time he sounded passionate. ‘I work twelve-hour days. At weekends I supervise games. Now do you understand why I don’t get married? And until I move to another school, I don’t see how I can.’

‘How does Dilly feel about this?’

‘She’s very understanding. At one point she suggested simply nipping into a register office, just the two of us, but I don’t see why the girl should be denied her big meringue day, do you?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Fran agreed, with more emphasis than was necessary as she suppressed fleeting, wistful thoughts of her own, non-existent, one. ‘But I was wondering – until you told me about your working week – if it might not be sensible for her to move in with you for protection from her stalker.’

‘I can’t see how being in an empty house is going
to offer more protection than her own. Can you?’

‘Chummie is more likely to find her address than yours – especially if she’s been a good citizen and put herself on the electoral roll. Tell me, Daniel,’ she continued, leaning forward confidentially, ‘have you any idea who it might be? I know you wouldn’t say anything in front of Dilly lest you alarm her, but I’m sure you must have a theory. Have you met her colleagues, for instance? Might any of them be besotted? Enough to send anonymous notes?’

He shook his head. He clearly hadn’t much time for any of them, and Fran suspected only a rigorous application of the equal opportunity laws prevented him making a scathing remark about their sexuality.

‘What about other friends and acquaintances? Yours, for instance. Sometimes church groups attract one or two people who are socially inadequate. Would there have been anyone on this Alpha course who might have developed a crush on her?’

He shrugged.

‘No, don’t dismiss this out of hand. Give it some active thought. And some inactive! I reckon I get most of my best insights when I’m at the gym.’

He sighed. ‘Your best bet would be the course leader, I suppose. The Vicar of St Jude’s.’

St Jude. According to Hardy, if she remembered her A level days aright, the patron saint of lost causes. Much more appropriate a parish for poor Stephen Hardy, come to think of
it. She smiled to herself, saying aloud, ‘Thanks. That’s a big help.’

He didn’t respond. ‘I still don’t know why you made me take time off work to discuss Dilly’s problems. She’s a grown woman, for goodness’ sake. Getting het up over some quite nice notes.’

She pounced. ‘Quite nice? You’ve seen them then?’

‘No. But she tells me they’re romantic. Nothing threatening.’

‘Not yet,’ she conceded. ‘Tell me, have you ever been aware of being followed, when you’re together?’

‘Followed?’

‘Followed.’

‘She did come to me a few weeks back with a story about hearing footsteps behind her, but never seeing anyone when she turned round.’

‘When?’

‘You’d have to ask her.’

‘Anything else? However trivial?’

‘She had a couple of nightmares – she’d fallen asleep on the sofa and woken to imagine men looking through the window, that sort of thing. But it turned out she thought she’d seen President Bush, who was, as I was able to demonstrate, engaged elsewhere at the time. And she promised not to be so silly.’

And now too scared of him to contradict him.

But he hadn’t finished yet. ‘What I still can’t understand is police involvement at any level, especially the highest.’

She suppressed an irritated sigh. ‘What happens if a pupil starts tormenting another? If you don’t stop it quickly? You see? Only when someone escalates violence against a woman, we don’t call it bullying. We call it sexual assault. The next escalation is rape. And you don’t need a degree in criminology to work out what the stalker might do next.’

I will come now, and find you, wherever you are, whichever town, whichever street, whichever house, whichever room. I will find you whom I love with all my heart and all my soul.

‘Of course, I haven’t seen it,’ Mark said, as he started the car, ‘not officially, but there was a Bible beside his bed. With the marker ribbon at the Song of Songs. Have you ever read it? It’s remarkably erotic stuff. It’s supposed to be about God’s relationship with the Church, isn’t it? But it looked remarkably like human love to me.’

She scratched her head. ‘The Bible! Mike the Miserable said the language of those notes was very biblical.’

‘Mike Dalton! Is he still working? He’s as old as Methuselah!’

‘Retiring shortly – may go part-time. Anyway, he said the language reminded him of the Bible.’

‘Did he now? And all I was interested in was McDine’s reading matter… I wonder…’

‘Deskbound you might be most of the time, but there are still glimmers of the detective in you,’ she said, patting the hand on the gearleaver.

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘You don’t want to turn back and challenge him?’

‘And stand there like a rookie cadet as he explained it away?’ he snorted. ‘No, thanks. In any case, I don’t see how it helps us. So much of our more poetic language is derived either from the Bible or from Shakespeare, isn’t it? Anyone might use it subconsciously.’

She giggled. ‘I’d like it to be McDine!’

‘I’d never have guessed. But I don’t see how we can possibly pin anything on him with such a tenuous connection.’

‘Unless we can prove he bunks off school every day to go to a London pillar-box. Or gets a colleague to do it for him.’

‘But I can’t imagine anyone taking that sort of risk: “Here, just pop this in the post, will you? I don’t want my fiancée to know who’s sending Biblical erotica to her”.’

She pulled a face. ‘And I can’t exactly get on to every innocent churchgoer in London, can I? Then every Christian who doesn’t go to church but studies at home? The whole Bible thing may be taking us off on quite the wrong tangent. But if Stephen Hardy was in London longer than he admitted to, then I need to talk to him again. Especially if we could place him in Ashford recently.
I don’t want another trip to the Midlands, not at the moment, and I can’t see how I could get him down here. And the last thing I want is some Brummie plod stamping in there in his size twelves.’

‘You know they don’t all wear woad, my love. What about that nice young woman who was so useful in the stolen identity case? DS Afrizi or something?’

‘Farat Hafeez? Yes! You’re brilliant. I’ll get on to her as soon as we get back. Then all I need worry about is protecting Dilly while we find out. Not that I think Stephen has anything to do with it at all. His is genuine love, not some sick fantasy – I’ll stake my retirement lump sum on it.’

‘So what will you do? About Dilly?’

‘Bar supplying her with a permanent presence, I’ve no idea. And unless the letters get overtly threatening, I can’t see how I could justify the expense. So we play a waiting game, I suppose.’

‘What if the implicit threat does become explicit?’

‘And what if she didn’t imagine being followed and having President Bush eyeballing her? Mark, I don’t know! I almost wish he would contact her directly – with a box of choccies, or something harmless. Then we can get on to suppliers. A genuine lead.’

‘And if he happened to doctor the choccies, that would give us another lead.’

‘Let’s talk to her about being followed, at least.’ She called up Dilly’s work number, and left a
message. Then she left another on her mobile. ‘She must be working out of the building. Drat and double drat.’

‘Tell you what, since there’s absolutely nothing else either of us can do till we get back to work, let’s check out that Elham cottage. It’s only a couple of miles out of our way…’

Jill Tanner was on the phone, literally tugging the roots of her hair. But it didn’t seem to Fran, standing silently in the open doorway of Jill’s office, as if it was to style her hair in that outdated Afro she favoured. At last she flung the phone down, turning sharply. Leaning her arms on the nearest filing cabinet, she buried her face in them.

Before Fran could move across to hug her where she was, however, she pulled herself straight, and made a great show of burrowing in the top drawer for a file, which she flicked through irritably and replaced. But she did keep the next, though slinging it hard on to her desk meant some of its contents sprayed out.

Fran gathered up those her side of the desk and laid them quietly down. ‘Fancy a cuppa? I need a sounding board.’

Jill’s face suggested for a moment Fran was paid enough to hire a private one. But, sighing so her shoulders slumped, she nodded. ‘Of course, guv. Only I’m—’

‘Kettle’s hot, coffee-maker’s primed,’ Fran declared. Her office was much more private than
Jill’s. As she walked through the outer office, in a draught caused by all those flapping ears, she added, projecting just enough, ‘I really don’t know where I’m going with that case the Chief’s landed on me. I thought another pair of eyes…’

‘No need to mess around, ma’am,’ Jill said, standing to attention before Fran’s desk.

Fran was momentarily diverted. When she’d done wrong at school, she’d have stood just like that. What did McDine make his miscreants do?

‘For goodness’ sake, Jill, take the weight off your feet. I meant exactly what I said. And now you make me think I should have meant something else. What, precisely?’ She plonked two mugs of green tea on the desk, and sat. ‘Jill, please sit down. And bugger that “ma’am” nonsense.’ The phone rang. She leaned across to reroute it. ‘You and I know each other better than that. How long do we go back? Thirty years? Well, then.’ Stony silence from the visitor’s side of the desk. ‘Shall I tell you my problem first? Or will you tell me yours?’ Tom’s auntie’s and her own homemade biscuits having gone the way of all things tempting the flesh, on to her hips, Mark had supplied her with much dourer oat biscuits, an eye to their glycaemic index, no doubt. She fished out a packet and put it on the desk. Jill stared as if it were a snake.

‘OK. Me first, then. I told you I’ve got a local celebrity being stalked. The name is need-to-know
only, I’m afraid. Like you, I’ve no leads at all. Except, in my case, the Bible…’

She paused, eyebrows raised humorously. Eventually Jill supplied the sort of words she’d hoped for, ‘And even in these heathen times, quite a lot of people read that.’

‘Quite. So do I offer her terribly expensive protection, knowing the stalker may do nothing, or simply keep a watching brief hoping he doesn’t take this for acquiescence and do something dreadful?’

‘Sounds like a Bramshill exercise,’ Jill managed.

‘All too real. Past lover? Present fiancé?’

‘Or some guy in a dirty mac who really thinks he has a relationship with her? Watch and wait, I’d say – all reasonable precautions being taken, of course. Maybe watch and pray!’ She managed a grin. ‘But you didn’t really need my advice for that, did you? That was just so no one in the team knew you were going to bollock me.’

‘Why should they think you needed a bollocking?’

‘Because I’m getting nowhere fast.’

‘Either,’ Fran inserted, with a grin somewhere between compassionate and conspiratorial. ‘So who are you sharing your problems with? Are you an upwards or downwards woman these days? Joe Farmer or one of your team?’

‘What problems?’

‘The getting nowhere fast problems. Tom Arkwright, now – he’s a smashing listener. He kept me going when my parents were so ill last autumn,
bless him. Or Joe – he’s terribly new and he knows he’s only temporary, so a daily natter might make him feel more secure. Especially if he managed to say something useful. Or at least thought he did.’

Jill managed a doleful snort. ‘I thought so. He’s been grassing me up.’

‘For not getting an immediate result? Come off it! Which reminds me, just as a matter of interest, have you any idea what’s happening about my assault? I know I said I wanted to be treated exactly like Josephine Public, but surely even she should know what’s happening to her assailants. Especially she, actually.’

‘You mean no one from Canterbury’s been in touch? That’s bloody shocking.’ Grabbing a pall-point, she scribbled on the back of her hand.

Fran nodded mildly. ‘They’re probably rushed off their feet. But I do seem to recall we had some policy about keeping victims informed every step of the way.’

‘Which you drew up, if I remember right, guv. I’ll snap at a few heels.’ She sighed again, exhaling the last drop of energy from her body.

‘You’re sure you’re all right, Jill? You’re looking a bit peaky, come to think of it.’

‘Oh, the lads will be sure it’s my time of the month,’ she said with a savage grin.

‘One joke about that and I’ll have them on toast, Jill. And that’s a promise.’

But Jill didn’t take up the challenge. ‘That or I’m menopausal.’

If she was kind before, now Fran was empathy itself. ‘And are you? Because there’s a lot can be done these days.’ Surreptitiously she patted her own HRT patch, her amulet of good health.

‘Not as far as I know. Let’s just say my get up and go has got up and gone.’

‘What drove it away? And would a game of tennis bring it back?’ It all too clearly wouldn’t. ‘Oh, Jill – come on. You can trust me. As a friend, for goodness’ sake! Or if not me, a counsellor. You know you can get an absolutely confidential referral. It’s not like the old days when stiff upper lips and post-traumatic stress ruled.’ Breezy wasn’t working. She dropped her voice. ‘I hate seeing you like this, love.’

She’d gone too far. Jill clammed. Her voice
ultra-bright
, she got up. ‘If that’s it, then, guv, I’d best get back.’

‘Fine.’ There was no point in poking a dead fire, as they said somewhere or other. She got up to see her out of the room. ‘So long as you remember that the door’s always open. Whatever the problem, here or at home.’

‘Chartham mean anything to you?’ Mark demanded, as he joined her for their canteen lunch.

‘That nice village where Dilly lives?’

‘The same. And I’ve just had these particulars arrive. Fran, my lovely, it looks as if this house might just have our name on it.’

‘Like that Elham place did?’ she asked ironically.

‘Well, they can’t all be as bad as that. Look at this.’ He dropped some faxed sheets beside her plate of salad.

The cottage he pointed at was the sort of Kentish village domestic architecture that demanded a village green, complete with cricketers, a pub and a church. The second sheet wasn’t so clear, but all the same something made her swallow coleslaw the wrong way. ‘Do my aged eyes deceive me or is that a suit of armour in that shot of the lounge?’

Mark peered, arm at maximum stretch. ‘I’d need a magnifying glass to tell.’

‘Or some reading glasses. Come on, presbyopia is a sign of maturity. And you can’t say my specs aren’t chic. You’d be able to peer meaningfully over them. Here, for goodness’ sake borrow mine. They’re supposed to be unisex, after all.’

Reluctantly, disdainfully even, he took them. ‘You’re right. It is a suit of armour. Do you think it comes with the house? Or we could make an offer for that, too! Look – just the right size garden for us. A pond. A terrace. Enough rooms to invite my kids to stay – if you don’t mind, that is.’

‘Of course I don’t.’ If only she could believe they would come. ‘Tell you what, I could make an excuse to go and see what Crime Prevention have done about Dilly’s security and check it out.’

‘Er…’ He looked both cunning and guilty. She was hard put not to reach over and plant a smacking kiss. ‘Let’s do better than that. Come on: get that down you and let’s look at it together.
I’ve got some time-off-in-lieu owing.’

‘I thought you’d got wall-to-wall meetings.’

‘I could have sent you in as my substitute, but I shall send apologies.’

‘Mark!’ She was genuinely outraged.

‘It just looks so perfect. We won’t see it properly if we leave it till this evening.’

She had a very bad feeling about this. But he so rarely thought about even bending a rule, let alone breaking one, she’d better go along with him.

‘Dilly’s cottage first?’ She pulled up short. ‘Actually, is it appropriate for us to move in so close to a client, as it were?’

‘You’ll have sorted Dilly’s case by the end of the month. We shall be living in that cottage till we’re carried out feet first.’

Mark might not have been at that meeting, or even at his desk, but he assuaged his conscience by spending the entire journey on the phone, time off in lieu or no TOIL.

Fran was happy enough. She’d always liked driving, and today’s light traffic gave her a chance to scan the countryside as she drove. Any day now it would be greening into spring. She might not be an Easter bride but to be an Easter co-mortgagee would pretty well do. What greater way to show your love for each other than by tying yourself into expensive property till the end of time? And this cottage was definitely at the top end of the range they’d allowed themselves, even though retirement
lump sums would eventually pay off much of the balance.

Almost as if touching wood, and despite her caveat about putting work first, she chose a different way into the village from the one she’d used to approach Dilly’s cottage. This involved a level crossing. It was closed. She cut the engine as she waited for not one but two local trains, which crossed on the crossing. Was this a good omen or a bad? At least the village had a station, even if it was little more than a halt. How many times a day did trains to and from Charing Cross stop there?

Mark still officially chuntering away and now checking something in his diary, she treated the crossing-keeper to what in her younger days would have been a dazzling smile and pressed on. She picked her way through the village and parked right at the cottage gate.

Mark cut the call with unreasonable haste, almost tumbling from the car in his efforts to see the cottage close up. ‘Fran, my sweet, this is it! Isn’t it lovely?’ He put an arm round her shoulders, as if to embrace their new home as well.