Deadly Virtues (21 page)

“Donald Murchison isn’t going off on leave, is he? And I don’t imagine you are. Well, neither am I. I’m not going to act as if I created this situation. If you can’t cope with having me here, you’d better suspend me.”

Their eyes met with a clang like hammer on anvil. Hazel was utterly astonished at herself. She
never
spoke to people like that. And this was her chief superintendent, the man who held her professional life in the palm of his hand. All she could think was that she’d burned so many boats already, the hot resin smell and the merry crackle had gone to her head.

And yet she wasn’t sorry. It had needed saying; she had needed to say it. Maybe it would be easier to live with the consequences of taking on the police establishment and losing than being afraid to take it on at all.

“Don’t make me do that.” The regret in his voice was genuine. He’d hardly noticed her before all this came up; now there was no ignoring her. It was a damned nuisance, and she was leaving him with few options, but he still couldn’t help feeling that the service needed more officers like her, not fewer. Only, somewhere else and some other time.

“I don’t think I’ve any choice,” said Hazel doggedly. “If I’m not on shift today, and people ask why not, I want it clear that it was your call, not mine. If it turns out to be a bad one, it won’t affect your career. But if people here think I’m afraid to face them, it’ll destroy mine.”

“It matters that much to you?” he asked softly.

“Yes.” She sounded surprised. “It seems it does.”

He thought a little longer, but not much. “Suspension it is, then. In the interests of the efficient operation of this police station. On full pay, of course, pending the outcome of the IPCC inquiry.” He managed a tight-lipped little smile. “Who’d have thought a Hazel would turn out to be such a tough little nut? You want it official, it’s official. And when this is all over…”

Hazel grew tired of waiting and prompted him. “What, sir?”

“I hope neither of us has any regrets.”

*   *   *

An idea was starting to form in Nye Jackson’s ginger head. He had no evidence for it, not in the photograph, not in anything Ash had said. Perhaps it had its genesis in his own fund of knowledge—of human nature in general and Mickey Argyle in particular.

If there was any truth in it, the evidence would exist somewhere. The question was where to look. So he started from where he was and worked toward where he wanted to be. He started with the photograph of
The Tempest
and the Woods boy who was a shoo-in for Caliban.

Tom Woods had graduated from schoolboy rugby—which was how he’d broken his nose originally—to the proper grown-up game, where he’d broken it twice more. His profile was now like the contour map of a banana republic. When he wasn’t playing rugby, he was studying for a structural engineering degree at Coventry University.

Jackson arranged to meet him at the college library. He got the impression that he was more familiar with libraries than the student was.

He produced the photograph as a memory aid, but Woods remembered well enough. A big grin spread across his striking and still oddly handsome face. “Old Burtonshaw was an absolute gag! He should never be trusted among the young and impressionable. The man’s an total anarchist.”

“
Were
you that impressionable?” asked Jackson doubtfully.

“Oh no, not a bit,” said Woods cheerfully. “None of us were. We were all pretty well grounded. And, it should be admitted, fairly anarchistic in our own right.”

“Including Jerome Cardy?”

“Jerome? Well, less than the rest of us. He suffered the terrible handicap of having been nicely brought up. One day he’ll make someone a wonderful mother.”

Jackson felt the jolt somewhere under his heart. “You haven’t heard.”

Tom Woods read the sports pages and, if pressed, papers on engineering. “Heard what?”

The reporter told him what had happened. He watched the blood drain from the young man’s face. “That’s … crazy! He was the
last
one to get involved in anything.…” The sentence petered out.

“I’m sorry,” said Jackson. “I didn’t realize this would be news to you.”

“When?”

“Last week. Wednesday night.”

“And it was as … as mindless as that? He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

The reporter shrugged, a shade disingenuously. “Seems like it. There’ll be a police inquiry, of course, but that’s the theory.”

“And … what do you want from me? I haven’t seen that much of him lately.” Woods might have been shocked, and he might not have been the most intellectual student at Coventry, but he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to elbow in on the story because he was flattered to be asked.

“The school play,” said Jackson, showing the photocopy. “That was one of his triumphs at Norbold. I thought it would be nice to ask fellow actors for their memories of him.”

“Oh—yes, okay.”

“I’ve talked to Ernest Burtonshaw. And you. What about Ariel?”

Despite the shock, Woods smiled, remembering. “That was a brave bit of casting. I don’t think anyone’s ever thought of Ariel as a girl’s part. But Alice was superb. She dusted talcum powder through her hair and put something sparkly in her slap, and she looked absolutely like some kind of elemental.”

“I imagine she’ll remember him.”

“Oh yes…”

There was something about the way he said it, and then didn’t say anything more, that set bells ringing in Jackson’s synapses. As if Woods had stumbled over a trip wire attached to the journalist’s toe. “Tom?”

“Nothing,” said the student quickly. “I was just … thinking…”

Jackson regarded him levelly. What it was Tom Woods was thinking he clearly didn’t want to share. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be persuaded to. “Did they keep in touch after they left Norbold Quays? Jerome and Alice. Were they, in fact, a bit of a number?”

It was a complete shot in the dark. Nothing anyone had said suggested as much. But if true, it opened up a shedload of possibilities. And if it wasn’t, Woods would probably know and say so, and save Jackson a lot of time and effort.

Tom Woods remained circumspect. “No harm to you, Mr. Jackson, but it’s not my place to comment on something like that to the
Norbold News.
Especially if—now—Jerome’s dead. Certainly they were friends. We were all friends.”

“That’s not the sort of friendship I’m talking about,” said Jackson quietly, “and you know it.”

The rugby player flushed. “You should ask…” Again he ended the sentence without finishing it.

“I should ask Alice?”

“Yes. No! Look, it’s difficult. You know who her father is, don’t you?” Jackson nodded. “And Jerome was…”

“Jerome was black.”

If he’d been that forthright with someone of his own generation, they’d have hemmed and hawed and said there were lots of reasons, because racism was something they abhorred in principle but suspected they might still harbor in practice. Tom Woods’s generation had come out the far side of political correctness. They were much more confident of their antiracist credentials.

“Well spotted,” said Woods tartly. “Which wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been just about
anybody
else. If her father had been anybody else.”

“He didn’t like the idea?”

Woods looked at the reporter sharply. “No, he didn’t like the idea. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was, he’s the kind of man who doesn’t just settle for disapproval. We’re not talking Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier here—if he’d found out about them, he’d have … done … something…” His expression changed as the words distilled the thoughts. His voice came hollow. “And now Jerome’s dead. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence.”

Jackson gave a little shrug. “There’s no question about who killed him. There were only the two of them in there.”

“What does that prove?” demanded Jerome’s friend. “People get killed in prison because someone on the outside wants them dead. People on the
outside
get killed because someone inside wants them dead. Mickey Argyle is not just bad, he’s powerful. He has a long reach. You want a story, Mr. Jackson, you find out how Alice’s father could have set a maniac on her black boyfriend.”

CHAPTER 20

N
OT FOR THE FIRST
time, Hazel Best thanked whatever gods watched over her that she’d found lodgings in town rather than taken the easy route of bunking in the station house. At least in the back bedroom of Mrs. Poliakov’s Villa Biala she could avoid policemen without it looking as if she was avoiding policemen.

She lay on her bed for ten minutes, listening to Mrs. Poliakov cleaning—the redoubtable Polish woman devoted great time and energy to household duties, although she had no talent for them—and looking over the rooftops to the uppermost branches of the trees in the park. It wasn’t the kind of view that tourists would flock for, but Hazel had always found it both pleasant and calming. It was the main reason she put up with Mrs. Poliakov’s cooking.

Then she got up and went out again. She had fences to mend with Gabriel Ash, if he’d let her in.

For a surreal moment she thought the dog had answered the door. The explanation was much more prosaic. It wasn’t closed properly, so it opened when she reached for the knocker; the dog just happened to be in the hall at the time.

The unsettling thing about Gabriel Ash’s world, she thought, was that it existed just on the cusp of sanity, where in an unguarded moment a normal person might cross the line without noticing. It was important not to allow herself to be drawn into the fantasy, to keep one eye firmly fixed on what she knew to be real. He was a man with a dog; that was all. He talked to it because he’d no one else to talk to. But it was just a dog—an intelligent dog, a dog that benefitted from its owner’s undivided attention, but still just a dog. It didn’t answer doors. It didn’t smile a welcome, or glance an invitation to the kitchen, and when it barked, just once, it wasn’t calling anyone; it was just reacting to the appearance of an intruder.

Despite knowing all this, Hazel didn’t feel remotely threatened by the barking dog in the hall, and she did go into the kitchen and sit down.

A moment later Ash appeared with a book in his hand. He glanced at her as if she’d popped across the road for a paper, not stormed out forty-eight hours earlier with a volley of parting shots that were, if memory served her right—and she was horribly afraid it did—both insulting and offensive. “I’m reading
Othello
,” he said by way of a greeting.

“Er—good,” she said. “Gabriel, I owe you an apology.”

He looked up blankly. “Yes?”

“I was very rude to you. And I jumped down your throat when you didn’t deserve it. All I can say in my own defense is, I was suffering from divided loyalties. But I am sorry.”

He had a way of focusing on what most people considered unimportant details. “Was?”

Hazel drew a deep breath and nodded. “I still consider myself part of the police family, but it seems no one else feels the same way. I went into Meadowvale this morning and found my bag metaphorically packed and waiting on the stairs.”

Ash’s eyes widened. “They’ve
sacked
you?”

“Suspended me.” It wasn’t much of an amendment, but Hazel felt it necessary to make it. She flicked him a smile that came and went in a moment. “On full pay.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then.” But the words were ironic—his eyes were appalled. He knew what it meant to her. He also knew what had provoked it. She’d supported him. She’d listened to him and supported him. “Hazel, I’m so sorry.…”

“Don’t be.” The smile lasted longer this time, bright and brittle. “In a way it simplifies things. I thought we could all be sufficiently professional about what happened to get on with our work until there’s some kind of a resolution. But that was naïve. This is just too huge.”

“So … what will you do?”

She put out her hand for the book. “I’ll read
Othello,
too.”

Ash didn’t surrender the volume. His expression was somber, concerned. “Hazel—don’t give the impression you’re working against them. Fountain and the rest of Meadowvale. If it turns out we’re right about the rotten apples, they just might, in time, forgive you for raising the suspicion. They’ll never forgive you for trying to prove it.”

“Then sod them,” she snarled. “I didn’t join the police in order to make other police officers happy. I joined—sorry to sound so pious—to help the vast majority of the population who
aren’t
police officers. And no one’s going to convince me that the public interest is served by protecting officers who are lazy, stupid, or corrupt.”

Hazel heard herself, heard the anger in her own voice, and made a conscious effort to lower her tone. “Sorry. It’s just that, for a while there, I wondered if it might be worth backing off for the sake of a quiet life. I suppose I’m rather ashamed of that.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Ash retorted firmly. “You’ve shown real courage. But now it’s time to keep your head down. You don’t need to rub their faces in the fact that you were not only bright enough to see that something was amiss at Meadowvale when no one else was but also brave enough to do something about it. IPCC will work out what Sergeant Murchison did, whether it was an honest mistake or something worse, and whether anyone else was involved. They don’t need any more help from you.”

“IPCC won’t have…” Realizing she couldn’t finish the sentence without giving offense, Hazel let it hang. Immediately, though, she knew it was too late. She hadn’t known Ash very long, but already she knew he had a talent for hearing not only what had been said but also what had nearly been said.

“Won’t have all the information?” he said, finishing the sentence for her. “Why not? You’ve told them everything you know.”

“Yes. But…” This time she took a deep breath and said it. “I believe that you heard and saw pretty much what you say you heard and saw. They won’t.”

“They won’t?” He thought about it, got a picture of himself as others saw him, and nodded ruefully. “Ah. Rambles With Dogs.”

“And that’ll be the end of it”—she nodded fiercely—“if I leave it to the IPCC. Donald Murchison will get a slap on the wrist. They may think he made an honest mistake. They may think something else but be unable to prove it. He’ll get a slap on the wrist, you’ll be written off as an unreliable witness, and I’ll get a note in my file saying I’m a troublemaker. And that’s three injustices. Maybe you don’t mind what people say about you, but I do. I’m not going to wait patiently to hear whether I’ll be trusted with a responsible job ever again.”