Double Fault

Table of Contents

Cover

A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

The Lina Townend Series

DRAWING THE LINE

SILVER GUILT *

RING OF GUILT *

GUILTY PLEASURES *

GUILT TRIP *

GUILT EDGED *

The Josie Welford Series

THE FOOD DETECTIVE

THE CHINESE TAKEOUT

The Frances Harman Series

LIFE SENTENCE

COLD PURSUIT

STILL WATERS

BURYING THE PAST *

DOUBLE FAULT *

 

*
available from Severn House

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First published in Great Britain 2013 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

First published in the USA 2014 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

110 East 59
^th
Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2013 by Judith Cutler.

The right of Judith Cutler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Cutler, Judith author.

Double Fault. – (A Fran Harman mystery; 5)

1. Harman, Fran (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Policewomen–England–Kent–Fiction. 3. Missing

children–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-72788-339-1 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-480-5 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

To my friends at Cirencester Tennis Club – Adam Swann, a wonderful coach who makes me feel better than I am on the tennis court, Douglas Emmett, who makes me feel better about life in general, and the whole roll-up squad, who turn up to play in all weathers and are never less than cheerful and supportive.

I could never have written this novel without help from the following people, to whom I am very, very grateful:

Paul Bethell, Senior Review Officer, South Wales Police. Although the novel changed radically in structure and content from our original conversations, it wouldn't have started at all without his invaluable input.

Keith Bassett, Food Standards Agency inspector extraordinaire and dear friend, who put his finger straight on to a horrible plot-hole and enabled me to darn it in time.

John Webster, Corinium PC Clinic, who rescued me when my computer died midway through Chapter Five and then, when the new computer deleted every last word of the text, retrieved it at a time when other men would still have been sleeping off their Sunday lunch.

Anna Chesson, who put me back on my feet after not one but two tennis injuries and kept smiling throughout.

Ivor Higgins, who meticulously spots typos and corrects my MSS before anyone else in the world sets eyes on them.

S
he watches the black-jeaned figure trudge along the main road towards the industrial estate. He's still on their side of the road. Any moment he'll have to pick his way between the jam of cars and buses, his beige hoodie ducking and weaving as he slouches, resentful hands in low-slung pockets.

His father grunts. ‘If those bloody jeans were any lower they'd fall off.'

‘It's the fashion, isn't it? And it isn't as though he'll look out of place there,' she says.

‘What sort of place is it that lets its trainees turn up as if they're off to a party?' he retorts. ‘No, not a party. Whatever kids call them these days.'

‘It's a youth project: of course they let them dress to express themselves. It's not as if they need to be clean – refurbishing the place is going to be dirty work.'

‘And later on, when some do-gooder's paid for all the expensive kit, then they're all going to make hit records,' he jeers. ‘Hang on, I've lost him.'

‘We shouldn't be doing this anyway. Spying on him.'

‘We're not spying on him. We're making sure that for once he's going to be where he says he is: not wagging off school, not missing job interviews, not skipping medical appointments. We're going to see him into this last chance saloon. And I tell you straight, if he messes this up, he's out.'

She stiffens. ‘What do you mean, out?'

‘Out. Out of the house. I wash my hands of him.'

‘He's our son! Our only son.'

‘And whose fault is that?'

She closes her ears, and concentrates on the little figure in the distance. He still hasn't crossed the road. She flicks a glance at her watch.

‘Late for bloody work again, are we?' he asks. ‘Dearie me. A meeting with the head? A problem pupil? Well, I've said this before, and I'll say it again, if you'd stayed at home and looked after him, he'd have turned out better than this.'

‘And where would we have lived? And what would we have eaten?' It's the nearest she'll get to reminding him that since year one of their marriage she's out-earned him. She isn't even a high-flyer – a fairly low-flyer, compared with all her friends, in fact. But he's still very much earthbound.

‘You'd have been there. Look at him.'

She blinks hard; her contact lenses are troubling her. All she sees is the morphed figure of a child becoming a man, but not quite making it. Her baby. Trying to cross the road. And her not there to hold his hand.

I
f this was retirement, why had he ever hesitated? What could be better than nipping out to the tennis club he'd joined a few months ago and having a workout in the surprisingly warm Easter sunshine?

Smiling to himself, Mark parked at right angles to the high mesh fence surrounding the courts and the clubhouse itself. He'd manoeuvred cars for years under the beady eyes of colleagues and couldn't break the habit of perfection. He grabbed his bag and headed for the clubhouse, where people were already doing their stretches on the decking. Clubhouse! It was actually a one-room wooden pavilion, not much larger than a shed, though it did boast running water and electricity. The only sanitation was a Portaloo round the back. Apparently that had been a recent acquisition: until then members had had to retire discreetly to the woods the site backed on to.

He greeted several people by name and got waves and smiles in reply. A friendly place. An ex-county badminton player, Fran would love playing here, once she was fully mobile again.

Tennis clubs had an image problem, didn't they? Or was that just when he was young? It was supposed to be awfully nice people with cut-glass accents and no brains consuming Pimms and cucumber sandwiches and deigning to hit the occasional ball so long as they didn't break sweat.
Jeunesse dorée
, retired colonels and all that, not to mention Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

If this club had been like that, he wouldn't have become a member – firstly because he wouldn't have applied, and secondly because he'd probably have been blackballed. Retired public servants would never make the social elite. But he rubbed happy shoulders with a retired plumber, a woman who had once been make-up artist to the stars, a couple of accountants, a nurse and an ex-teacher. There was also a taciturn man who he'd bet was – under a different name, of course – a career criminal. A lot of people simply turned up to play, asking no questions and volunteering nothing about their own pasts. And here they all were, in the grounds of a stately home, Hogben House. Not that the present owners, people called Livingstone, had anything to do with the club: they simply leased out the land and complained if the floodlights were used after ten o'clock.

Apart from the Golden Oldies, seniors who had special sessions on Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons, there were some really good young, fit players who played for the club in the local league. And he wouldn't talk down his fellow seniors, ponytailed Tony, for instance, who was just arriving on his menopausal man motorbike, his racquet sticking up out of one of the panniers like a stubby aerial. Many made up for their comparative lack of mobility with low cunning derived from sixty years of hard-won experience.

Not him. He'd hardly played since his teens, and had only recently taken it up because everyone said it would be good for him after his breakdown. It was – even when it had been so cold that he'd had to play in two tracksuits, a woolly hat and a pair of gloves. Today it was a different matter – he'd already stripped down to shorts. Even his level of play exercised muscles his gardening didn't, and got him talking to other people, not just to robins and blackbirds nagging him to unearth more worms. And yes, he loved it with a passion. Better than the gym any day of the week, especially in this idyllic setting. At his back were mature woodlands; in front of him were the eight courts – in two groups of four, separated of course by more fencing, making a big rectangle – and an expanse of cow- and horse-filled fields as far as the eye could see. On quiet days, with the wind in the right direction, if you had good ears it was possible to detect the A road that ran along the valley, but apart from an artistically placed church tower – not their own village's St Anselm's, but one he'd always intended to visit when he got round to it – there was no building to be seen. Even the Hall was tucked away behind banks of mature trees. Which begged the question of how the owner knew if the lights were on, but he let that pass.

Shrill laughter came from the furthest courts, swarming with kids: Zac French, the young man they'd recently appointed as coach, entertaining a load of kids. Zac had once been a Wimbledon junior champion, and was now leading the men's team in a charge up the league. The women members might pretend to swoon over his dark good looks, but more importantly everyone liked his friendly openness. He'd got a wonderful track record of teaching, not just the very youngest toddlers to the stroppiest adolescents, but even old-timers like Mark – his hour's coaching every Friday morning was a revelation.