Dark Side (8 page)

‘It would still be an amazing coincidence as far as Greenway's concerned.'

The house phone rang and Patrick, who was sitting nearest, answered it. I could hear that it was a female caller and that she was agitated but not speaking all that loudly.

‘OK,' Patrick said. ‘Act quite normally. We'll be there in a few minutes. Don't mention that you've called us and when you answer the door act as if we're friends expected for supper.'

He slapped the phone down, gathered up Vicky, who was almost asleep and said, ‘The Carrick's place – now. That was Joanna. James is about to detonate as Mallory's parked nearby this time and although he got the crew of an area car to ask him to leave a while ago, which he did for a while, he's back.'

J
ames and Joanna live only a few miles from us in a farmhouse they restored from a semi-derelict condition. After leaving the main road at the top of Hinton Littlemoor the Somerset lanes we had to use to reach it are twisting and narrow, with passing places, and there is no room for error. Patrick drove the Range Rover as fast as he dared with me acting as look-out on the tight right-handed bends. We met a tractor but luckily were near the entrance to a house and Patrick swung the car into the open gateway to enable it to pass.

Nearing our destination, he slowed as we did not want Mallory to think us anything but ordinary visitors. With this in mind I had made a quick detour to the kitchen on the way out and grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack, placing it in a small carrier bag containing a pair of sandals I had bought that afternoon, tipping them out unceremoniously on to the worktop. Poor Vicky had fared little better, dumped, with apologies, in her grandmother's arms just as she was about to serve their, and Matthew and Katie's, dinner.

We drove into the farmhouse drive, not looking again at the same black hatchback we had seen outside Cooper's house parked close by. Acting all jolly, we got out of the vehicle and Patrick secured it while I headed for the front door. Joanna opened it before I got there.

‘Lovely that you could come!' she cried, arms wide.

We hugged. Then Patrick hugged her amid cries of ‘Darling!' and lots of ‘Mwaa! Mwaa!' sound effects, he playing the complete idiot.

Once inside, the door shut, Patrick stood with his back firmly against it, Carrick having just emerged from one of the two large living rooms. One did not have to be very clever to realize that he had been hitting the single malt.

‘What's this then?' he queried.

‘I invited them round,' Joanna said.

‘I see,' he replied, adding, ‘good,' unconvincingly.

‘To dinner,' his wife added. ‘Sort of a last-minute decision.'

To Patrick, James said, ‘Now you're here, I'd like you to help me get rid of Mallory. He's outside this time.'

‘That's why I asked them to dinner,' Joanna went on. ‘To stop you getting rid of Mallory.'

The DCI was still looking at Patrick.

‘No,' said Patrick.

‘Then I'll go and speak to him myself.'

‘You won't because he'll be all ready to wind you up. You must get the area car crew back to talk to him more forcefully.'

‘But—'

‘All they have to do is tell him that there have been a spate of rural burglaries lately, which I happen to know is true, and that behaving in suspicious fashion is not in his best interests. They'll need to remind him that he has a criminal record.'

Carrick made no response to this.

‘James, I do
not
want Cooper or Mallory to know I'm with the law,' Patrick continued. ‘Not yet. Not only that, I'm in a position to prevent you from causing a breach of the peace which would be highly damaging to your career if you were to lose your temper and assault him.'

‘How the hell are you, other than by not permitting me to exit through my own front door by sheer physical force?' Carrick snorted. ‘There are two back ways out of here, you know.'

‘I do know and it's quite simple. I shall arrest you.'

There was quite a long silence.

‘You can't handle much more of this, can you?' Patrick whispered. ‘Not with all the other pressures at work as well.'

‘No,' Carrick acknowledged, no louder.

‘If I promise to do everything in my power to sort this out for you on condition that you completely ignore both Cooper and Mallory's provocations from now on, except to take steps through strictly legal channels – as you're going to do right now – does that help?'

‘I don't know,' he said after another few seconds' pause.

‘All you need is patience and to rely on me.'

‘Patrick—'

‘Have I ever let you down?'

‘No.'

He could hardly forget that Patrick had also saved his life on one occasion when he had been bolted inside an industrial boiler in an old brickworks in Wemdale and left to die. Realizing that the DCI would not have gone down without inflicting damage on the mobsters responsible, Patrick had combed the grim northern town's most disreputable pubs for ne're-do-wells showing signs of having come off worst in a fight. He had found a group of three: a strapped-up broken nose, a closed eye and a fat lip, put money on the table and they had led him to the factory. They had then decided that they would steal the rest of his money, wristwatch and anything else of value and he had had to do a lot more damage to them before he and James could get away.

Patrick said, ‘I want your solemn undertaking on this. You can't play into the hands of these scum.'

‘You won't be able to fit it in between all your official work.'

‘I shall make time. Ingrid and I have already been watching Cooper's house.'

Carrick registered surprise and then said, ‘Greenway won't like it.'

‘Tough,' Patrick responded with a shrug and then held out his hand.

‘Sometimes you're a bastard,' Carrick said through his teeth.

Patrick knew exactly what he was referring to and gave him a big smile. ‘You don't want to be marched through the door of your own nick, do you?'

After another agonizing pause Carrick swore – probably, I could not be sure as he always swears in Gaelic – grasped the hand and at least two of those present breathed out.

The phone call was made, the area car arrived very shortly afterwards, advice was given and Mallory drove away. He did not return, at least, not that night.

‘Paul Mallory,' Patrick said early the next morning when he first woke up. I knew this because I had been awake for some time and was scraping together the will to go downstairs and put the kettle on. I had been lying there, exceedingly comfortable, gazing at the man in my life. He was very peaceful, the slightly austere features in repose, those mesmeric grey eyes veiled. We were both getting older, I told myself, probably too old for the kind of things we did in connection with our SOCA job. We have five children.

Ye gods.

‘What time is it?' Patrick continued muttering.

‘Only six-fifteen. Tea?'

For answer he rolled over towards me, not saying anything and not having to, his actions demonstrating an immediate personal preference with regard to the next activity. Sometimes prone to these pirate tactics he would nevertheless have desisted instantly, or at least undertaken a little gentle persuasion, had I not been willing. Yes, I was willing – very. Afterwards, when my husband had muffled my whoops of pleasure with the quilt – I have always been very noisy when thus engaged – we clung to one another breathlessly.

Perhaps we weren't too old after all.

‘I'll get the tea,' Patrick then said, preparing to get out of bed. He crashed off to sleep again instead.

‘Paul Mallory,' Patrick said for the second time that day, staring at the computer screen. ‘Forty-two years old, five feet seven inches tall, receding light brown hair, pale complexion. An only child, born in Norfolk to wealthy parents. Home was a slightly run-down estate. But his father wrote him out of his will and everything went to a cousin when his mother died. What is a bit odd is that this man had no criminal record until after he met Benny Cooper. Of course, that doesn't mean he wasn't a bit dodgy before that – perhaps he just never got caught. Obviously, he never got on with his father.'

‘Did he have an actual trade or career?' I wondered.

‘Nothing about that in his records. From what Carrick said he doesn't appear to work now, so he must have some saved money.'

The rest of the previous evening had gone well, considering, and Joanna had managed to stretch her cooking to serve four and added a cheese course. The ‘wee one', as Carrick now referred to his daughter, had remained soundly asleep throughout and I gathered that advice from Carrie about changing the baby's routine and milk formula had made an improvement.

We were working in the living room, handy to supervise the two older children's homework, the house rule being that they do it on Saturday mornings if at all possible so as to leave the rest of their weekend free. Matthew and Katie were seated at an antique gateleg table belonging to their grandparents that can be folded up when not in use. Both were wrestling with English essays that had to be handwritten.

Patrick glanced up from the screen and caught my eye. And smiled, and then chuckled. Then proceeded to carry on chuckling in a bloke version of the giggles.

‘What's funny, Dad?' Katie immediately wanted to know, all ready to share a joke.

Patrick could hardly tell her that her adoptive mother's very own choral symphony earlier, swiftly stifled, always makes him laugh and he left the room, still chortling.

Four eyes gazed at me blankly.

‘It happens to the best of people,' I told them solemnly. ‘What's with the essays?'

‘My day at the seaside,' Katie lamented. ‘So
boring
. I haven't even started.'

‘Does it have to be true?'

‘No, you can make stuff up.'

‘OK, you're building a sand castle—'

‘I'm too old for sand castles!'

‘All right, you're helping your little brother build one, when you dig up what looks like a large human hand.'

Her eyes shone. ‘What, all rotten – green bones with bits of skin hanging off?'

‘Yes, and the police are called and the beach is cordoned off and dug up while people look for the rest of the body. Only eventually the hand turns out to be the remains of a turtle's flipper that had been washed up.'

‘That's fantastic!'

‘I haven't started either,' Matthew said hopefully. ‘It has to be about one of my hobbies.'

‘Which are?' I queried, knowing the answer full well.

‘I don't have any really – only my computer and it has to be something else.' He looked quite upset. ‘I'm really worried about it as it should have been handed in last week.'

This lack of hobbies had been a point of contention for quite a while; he was steadfastly disinterested in joining in with the sporting interests of his friends or anything else we had suggested. Even an offer from James Carrick to coach him in rugby seemed to have cooled after initial enthusiasm.

I said, ‘Perhaps you ought to go and find one – quickly.'

‘Would Dad help?'

‘Well, as you know he's already tried to – but do go and ask him again.'

The boy went away and I wondered what Patrick would make of
that.
As it happened the solution would probably not earn Matthew any cred with his chums but after a slightly shaky start he would grab at it with real keenness. I'm sure Patrick, a bit exasperated by now, reverted to lieutenant colonel, took him to the livery stable, ordered him on to his horse George and started to teach him to ride, which up until now Matthew had always insisted was only for adults and
girls.
The essay, penned at some speed later that day, was mostly about not quite falling off.

On Monday morning, Patrick having departed by train for London earlier, I rang Sulyn Li Grant to ask her if she had any of her husband's possessions that might hold traces of his DNA. At first she said that she had thrown out everything he had left behind, got rid of ‘all his rubbish', but then remembered an old rucksack he had used that she thought might still be in a cupboard somewhere. She said she would look for it and phone me back so I gave her the number of my official SOCA mobile. In this job you don't give personal phone numbers to anyone other than close friends and family.

I had to wait for over two hours for a reply but when it came she said that she had found it after much searching. I asked her to put it in a safe place in a plastic bag of some kind so it could be collected and then rang Patrick. He promised to contact the relevant Met department. This seemed to be the best course of action; after all, they were in possession of the body. DNA testing normally takes around a week but Patrick asked for it to be fast-tracked.

It was very important, for friendship's sake if nothing else, that Patrick was seen to be doing something on the Cooper/Mallory front. A round-the-clock watch on Cooper and tailing him everywhere was really the only way that his new-found mobster friend could be identified but, from our point of view, completely impractical right now as neither of us could spare the time. Carrick could hardly justify police time and expense for such an exercise either when no actual crime had, to our knowledge, been committed. I was fully in sympathy with his anger and frustration.

Almost three days dragged by, during which I found myself unable to concentrate on writing. My main character, a middle-aged DCI of outwardly placid manner, kept morphing in my imagination into a dark-haired sort of smarmy-looking man wearing shades. Finally, unable to put up with this any longer, I shut down my computer mid-afternoon and went outside through the front door, hoping to find inspiration if I went for a walk around the garden.