Killing a Unicorn (18 page)

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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

BOOK: Killing a Unicorn
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‘About five years.' She smiled at Fran's expression. ‘It's better than the Domestic Violence Unit, where I was before.'
‘Five years? I'd be a nervous wreck in a tenth of that time.' There were different kinds of violence, Fran thought,
and being put down all the time wasn't the least of them.
Kate didn't pretend not to understand what she meant. ‘Don't take any notice of his manner. It's an essential requirement for some men in the force to react to women colleagues the way he does, they're simply throwbacks to the old days. It's not my problem, it's his.'
‘Hmm.' She had a point — perhaps it was all in the way you received it.
‘Anyway,' Kate added cheerfully, ‘it's all academic. I'm lumbered with the bloke, I'm afraid. Seeing as how I happen to be married to him.'
‘Oh, wow! Sorry, I've really put my foot in it, haven't I?'
‘Don't worry, you're not the only one who looks on Dave like that, though if they had his problems … He was in the Met, see, doing a job he really liked and was good at and then — well, there was an incident, not his fault, but it was better he left. I could tell you the whole story, but I won't bore you. Just that it's made him a bit stroppy at times. It could have been one of those incidents with a commendation at the end of it, if it had turned out different. As it was, he got the mucky end of the stick. He doesn't complain. Whatever else, he has guts.'
‘I'm sure he has.' Those unfeeling, brutish men often were brave. No imagination to hamper them about what the consequences might be, Fran thought unfairly. ‘Isn't it unusual? Husband and wife working together?'
‘Unusual, yes, but not unheard of. We're a good team, believe it or not, that's why we're kept together.'
With a smile she dismissed the subject, finished her coffee and delved into a big shoulder-bag for something rectangular wrapped in polythene that she slid across the table. ‘Before I go, take a look at this.'
‘Oh, a photo of Bibi. I thought for a moment it was her book of days.'
‘You mean that one about myths and legends? Unicorns and virgins and all that?'
‘Unicorns?' For a moment, Fran seemed fazed. She
blinked rapidly. ‘No, no, I've never seen that. It was a sort of diary, I suppose, though not quite. She told me once she just wrote down anything she considered interesting, but she was paranoid about letting anyone see what she wrote. It was just like Bibi to give it such a name.'
Kate was alert. ‘No, we haven't come across anything like that yet.'
‘You'll know it when you do. It's really lovely. Sort of old, with a red watered silk cover and gilt edges to the pages, and a fancy clasp. She said it was too nice to be called a plain old diary, a book of days suited it better, and I suppose it did, really. Oh, this is lovely — one I haven't seen before.'
The framed photo had obviously been taken years ago — Bibi with a short, designer haircut, her soft, feathery curls blow dried and disciplined into a smooth cap that accentuated the fine modelling of her face.
‘A good likeness?'
‘Brilliant, but — she looks different, and I don't mean just because she's so much younger. Perhaps she just looks —
happier
, than I ever remember seeing her. Though that's probably hindsight, wouldn't you say, after what you've just told me?'
‘Mmm. Maybe. Are you saying she wasn't happy, even before those letters started coming?'
Fran took a swig of her own coffee, looked down again at Bibi's face staring up from the table and knew it wasn't her own imagination that saw the shadow behind the transient impression of happiness. ‘I don't think,' she said slowly, ‘it was in her to be really happy.'
In Chantry Street, not above a hundred yards away from where the historic old Saturday market was held in the Market Square in Felsborough, the aggressively modern brick police station sat like a complacent squatter, thumbing its nose at its ancient neighbours: the beautiful Abbey Church, a row of mellow stone cottages and the gracious buildings of the old chantry school, now the Edward the Sixth Grammar School, that had given the street its name. The nick was new, functional, and unlovely, standard design for the county, but inside it had certain definite advantages over the other buildings, especially today when it was refreshingly cool. The heating and the air-conditioning both worked like a dream, there was iced water available at the turn of a tap, coffee from a machine. Crouch couldn't understand the moans of the old guard who said they missed the solid old Victorian building on the corner, before his time, spacious and sound-deadened as it was remembered to be, but where apparently you alternately froze or sweltered, depending on the outside temperature.
He took a mammoth bite out of a rare beef on soft white bread sandwich from the canteen, spread as ordered with more mustard than butter. It made his eyes water, but it went down a treat with his half-pint of bitter. He wolfed it down with all the enjoyment of a man who hadn't eaten since a hurried breakfast at six that morning, after only a few hours' sleep, and then went out into the corridor for
coffee, brought it back and sat down to address the progress report he was compiling for Vincent.
He'd been chuffed at how much quicker the case was going down than he'd expected, how much simpler it was turning out. No blind alleys. No complications. From the moment when Armstrong's name had first been mentioned, the reason and motivation for the murder had become clear to Crouch, and his original opinion that it was bound to be a Calvert family matter had undergone a swift reversal, his doubts about motives receded: Armstrong wanted his son; he also wanted his revenge for his incarceration in prison, ergo, he had killed his ex-wife and abducted his son. Simple. All wrapped up. The main thrust of the operation could now be concentrated on collecting supporting evidence, a task that should be made much easier now that they knew who the perpetrator was. Whether Jasie had seen his mother killed or not, it was obvious that it was his father who had done the deed, and then taken the boy.
The only one who remained not totally convinced had been Kate. ‘We don't actually
know
those letters she received were from Armstrong. She seems to have thought they were from some weirdo.'
‘And what's Armstrong but a weirdo? It's the same method the bastard used before to frighten her — writing to her, ringing her up, following her everywhere.'
‘I know the probabilities are stacked against them being from anyone else, but I'd feel happier if we'd seen them.'
‘So would I, Kate, so would I. But it's the only lead we have, so far. And if he is innocent, I'd be more inclined to believe him so if he hadn't chosen this moment to do a runner.'
‘That does seem funny.'
Yet she was basically right. Amidst all the euphoria following the discovery of Armstrong's existence, Crouch realized that he had brushed aside the difficulties of apprehending him and now, though he wouldn't have cared to
admit it, the good feeling that it was all over bar the shouting had evaporated like water in the Sahara after hearing that he had broken his parole and disappeared. Dammit, he might have known. Given his luck lately, things weren't likely to be that easy — though he was still convinced they were steering a straight course in the right direction. However …
If Armstrong had any sense, it went without saying that he and the child would be out of the country by now. And then, even supposing he were found, getting him, or the boy, back could be a long-drawn-out affair. These tug-of-love cases, as the press delighted in dubbing them, and which was essentially how this had started out, were a bugger.
The child's disappearance was already generating too much interest for his liking in the media, blast them. But these were sentiments he couldn't afford: their co-operation was needed.
Usually, by now, two days after the opening of an investigation, information would be trickling in, however slowly. But not on this one. The facts surrounding Bibi Morgan's stabbing remained stubbornly obscure. As for Jasie, there had been the usual false sightings by people who claimed to have seen him, from Edinburgh to Clacton on Sea, but none of it could be given credence.
Crouch had been pinning his hopes on the local police up in Yorkshire, feeling sure that they would have gone some way towards tracing Armstrong by now, but so far those guardians of the outposts of the Empire hadn't come up with anything — probably knocked off for the weekend, he thought irritably. Armstrong had been living in Morley, a suburb of Leeds, since his release, in the house his lately deceased father had left to him, but he'd failed to report to his probation officer two weeks ago and had simply vanished, without a word to anyone. The house was reported to be as locked up and silent as it had been during the interim between Armstrong senior's death and the release of his son from prison.
Crouch wasn't actually sanguine enough to believe that the man they were looking for was certain to be found at all, though he would never have admitted this to anyone. If he had disappeared into the maw of one or other of the big cities, that might be the end of it. He had, after all, lately been living in the company of those used to existing outside the law, and if he hadn't known all the tricks and dodges by which it was possible to disappear before he went inside, he would now. Outside, there was always someone ready to employ casual labour and no questions asked, if he was without means of support, which he might well be, since how much ready cash he had was debatable. Though he now owned the house, its contents and an old car left to him by his father, they were assets which would need to be realized and, with the possible exception of the car, that wasn't easy to do without discovery. He might soon be living hand to mouth, but even in this bureaucratic age, it was possible to exist without papers. Doing so with a small boy in tow might be more difficult.
‘Let's try to work things out, how it happened,' Crouch had said to his assembled team that morning, the thirty or so men and women brought together on this assignment, ‘working from what facts we have.' First, he'd outlined the case as he saw it, simple on the face of it: after his release, Graham Armstrong had started threatening Bianca Morgan with the letters and the threat to ‘get' her. She had gone for a walk in the grounds of Membery, he had been waiting for her, had killed her and tipped her body into the water, then snatched his son and made off with him. Either by force or by persuasion.
This last would explain, argued Crouch, why the boy had made no fuss.
‘With respect, sir, I don't think that'll wash,' Kate had objected. ‘According to Chip Calvert, Armstrong had terrified the child by letting him see how he upset his mother. He wouldn't have gone willingly with him — certainly not without his mother's say-so.'
Crouch thought for a moment. ‘All right, by force, then.'
There was a moment's silence, at the thought of this man who had lost his hold on reality having the boy in his grasp. Not one person who didn't remember reading in their briefing notes what he'd said at his trial — that if he couldn't have Jasie, no one else would.
And yet, a judge had freed this man on the understanding that he had shown remorse and was no longer a risk, basing his judgement on the reports of psychiatrists and psychologists, care workers and prison authorities and his own assessment of the prisoner at a Parole Board hearing.
‘Forgive my cynicism,' Crouch had remarked on hearing that, an understandable reservation, given that within weeks of being released Armstrong had restarted his campaign of intimidation against his ex-wife and their son. Now, it seemed as though that might have been justified, that Armstrong had snatched the child. There had been no one to hear but the two old women. The big old house had thick walls, which would have deadened any sounds from outside. Even the shrill screams of a terrified small boy might not have penetrated as far as the small sitting room where the two old women had been watching the Channel 4 news, relaxing and sipping aperitifs, waiting for Jonathan Calvert and his girlfriend Jilly Norman to arrive for supper.
Crouch very soon closed the meeting and went to telephone Yorkshire yet again, to waken the dozy buggers up there in the sticks. He had never been very good at waiting.
 
 
After Kate left her, Fran had showered and dressed, washed her hair, and now feels more sense of being in control before ringing the number Mark has given her. The speed with which he answers tells her he's been waiting
for it to ring and that makes her feel good, but his short, sharp, ‘Yes?' diminishes the feeling somewhat.
Fran has always hated the telephone for conversations like this, or for those requiring any degree of intimacy for that matter, when you can't see the face of the person you're speaking to, or their body language. All the same, as she and Mark talk, she does sense that during the time that has passed since their last conversation, he's absorbed the shock of what she'd had to tell him, has got himself together and thought it through. This time he comes over strong and supportive — the old Mark — and she feels a surge of relief. Everything's going to be all right. It had all been her imagination, thinking he was holding back.
‘Right. Now, here's what we'll do,' he begins decisively. ‘Just hang on there, I'm arranging to come home, just as soon as I can sort things out and get a flight.'
‘But —'
‘No buts.'
‘No, listen, don't do that, Mark, there's really no need.' She puts a smile into her voice. ‘Anyone would think I can't see a thing like this through without a man beside me.'
‘You've been talking to Claire again.'
She laughs. ‘We had a meal together, Wednesday evening.' Actually, Claire's bright decisiveness, her clear-sighted certainty when faced with any problem, is just what she needs now — only Claire's in Spain for the weekend, meeting her future parents-in-law for the first time, out of circulation until Monday. ‘But this has nothing to do with Claire.'
‘Makes no difference, you shouldn't be on your own.'
‘You call being five minutes away from Membery on my own?'
‘No, but if I know you, you won't be creeping up there into the bosom of the family for protection, and yes,' he adds positively, ‘I am coming home, no arguing. You're far too vulnerable down there at The Watersplash with a homicidal maniac at large.'
Fran likes, and at the same time despises, the warm, protected feeling this gives her, but she says, ‘What makes you think he'd be after me? Anyway, listen — the police think they know who killed Bibi now, and he's not a homicidal maniac — at least not that sort. They think it was Jasie's father, a man called Graham Armstrong. And that Jasie's with him now.'
She rather belatedly realizes that Mark, with his quick intuition, and in view of those letters in his desk, must have made that connection already, but he gives no indication of it. ‘Do they? Well, let's hope they're right,' he says non-committally. ‘They're on the track of this guy, you say - this Armstrong?'
‘Yes.' She proceeds to tell him all that she's learned from Kate Colville, though it really hurts, knowing that most of what she now knows about Bibi, if not more, can't be news to him. She can't imagine what sort of game he and Bibi were playing, but she can't see she has any alternative at the moment but to carry on as though she isn't aware there was anything between them. A quarrel about something as important as this at long distance isn't something she's prepared to initiate. She takes a deep breath and says, ‘So you see, there's no need for you to mess everything up over there. Don't let it interfere with what you're doing. Armstrong isn't interested in anyone else.'
She hopes she sounds convincing, because she isn't convincing herself. Truly, she doesn't feel she's in the least danger from Armstrong, or anyone else, but she can't rid herself of that spooky sense of impending disaster that's been with her ever since she saw Bibi floating in the pool. Actually, it had started even before that. Looking back, she can date everything from the moment when she had that telephone call from Bibi, and then came home and saw the impression of the white owl on the mirror. Or even before that, with that creepy sensation that she and Mark were being watched. Tell herself as much as she will that it's all rubbish, she can't rid herself of the nagging feeling that
something else is flowing along there, like a subterranean current beneath the surface of the murder.
‘How can the police be so cocksure?' Mark is saying. ‘Seems to me like an unwarranted leaping to conclusions.'
‘Mark, he's got Jasie, and that's all he wants. We have to leave it to the police, it's in their hands. There's nothing we can do,' she adds mournfully, ‘but watch the clock and wait for something to happen.'

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