Requiem Mass (10 page)

He knew what Fearnside was going through and why he
made daily complaints against the police. With himself, it had been constant calls to the doctors, venting his anger, frustration and despair. One moment, he had been moving through life with his goals clearly defined, details organised, and the next everything was shattered into a kaleidoscope of change and pain. Each day brought a new shift, a new pattern, making less and less sense. But it would be difficult and unpopular to reopen the case, despite his suspicions, and there were no legitimate grounds for complaint. Depressed, he started to draft a reply.

… Thank you for your letter … As my colleague has already explained … standard procedure had been followed … details are on the Police National Computer … If you would like to proceed with a formal complaint you should follow the guidelines in the leaflet enclosed …

His work was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a damp, warm, dishevelled bundle that tottered across the room and landed firmly in his lap. Tough little Bess was in tears, sobbing hopelessly for her mummy, her brother and the father she had grown used to seeing every day during her mother’s final decline.

After he eventually put her to bed, reading her story after story in a whisper until she was too deeply asleep to hear him leave, Fenwick returned to the study. He tore his letter to Fearnside into small pieces.

Every man had the right to a second opinion before being forced to acknowledge the ruin of his life. 

CHAPTER EIGHT

A late bout of spring flu had swept through Harlden Division, leaving the CID team desperately short of men. Reluctantly, the ACC called Fenwick and told him to take up his old post again. There was a nasty spate of organised car theft going on and it was about time someone sorted it out.

But Fenwick’s thoughts were on another case entirely and he knew he had to choose his moment with the ACC carefully, and make his request appear as casual and routine as possible. He bumped into him on the stairs as the ACC was sprinting to a regular meeting with the Police Authority, keen to arrive exactly at the appointed time. The man hardly listened to his request and nodded him away with the instruction: ‘Take who you need from the Division, one man will be enough. And don’t drag it out.’ Fenwick knew exactly the man he needed and where to find him. He set off for his old office at Division with a lighter heart.

Thursday started routinely enough for Detective Sergeant Cooper. He breakfasted early with his wife – eggs (poached these days because of all the worry about fat and cholesterol), some nice smoked back rashers (only two now, though), a tomato (vitamin C), the butcher’s special sausage (one, small) and a piece of fried bread (a man had to have one indulgence) – and was in the office to catch up on endless paperwork by eight o’clock. The message from DCI Fenwick came as a surprise. He knew he had returned but had been told he was stuck at HQ.

They had worked together in the past and each time it had been a significant case: a child abduction and an apparently motiveless murder, both solved by a combination of dogged police work and timely intuition. They were successes that had brought a thrill of achievement to Cooper, unexpected this late in his career. He and Fenwick worked together well. Divisional CID didn’t stretch to the luxury of employing an analyst of team behaviour. Had they done so their expert would have observed that Fenwick and Cooper were a natural team, their strengths were complementary, and one’s weaknesses brought out hidden depths in the other. Despite their radically different appearances and careers, they shared beliefs and values that allowed them to trust each other fundamentally. They were a winning combination.

Prosaic as always, Cooper wouldn’t have seen it like that. He respected Fenwick, didn’t understand the half of what the man said, of course – the words he used, his daft ideas that led to unexpected results – but he would rather work with him than any other DCI.

He had been disappointed by Fenwick’s increasing preoccupation with his wife’s illness, hated to see him lose his sharpness and to watch the natural toughness deteriorate into a bullying, vindictive spite that had alienated many of his colleagues, some of them probably for good. But Cooper had realised, with an insight Fenwick would have found surprising as well as disturbing, that his sometime partner had needed to lash out in order to survive. Cooper was curious to see what was left of the original man as he headed for Fenwick’s old office.

‘Morning, sir.’

‘Morning, Sergeant.’ Fenwick barely looked up from a slim brown file in front of him but at least waved Cooper to sit down. The burly, heavy man eased himself into one of Fenwick’s notoriously uncomfortable metal-framed chairs.

‘Coffee?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but shouted out to the group secretary: ‘Anne. Coffee, please – one for me and one for Sergeant Cooper – white, two sugars for him.’

He turned to Cooper. ‘It’ll be a while. She’s still got the old
machine – takes an age but makes the best coffee around.’

Cooper reflected that it might take an age but for most other people at Division the delivery of palatable coffee would be a miracle. Some old habits died hard.

‘Now, about this complaint.’

As usual, Cooper found himself trying to keep on top of the DCI’s rapid speech and staccato sentences, surfing from one topic to the next with few clues as to where they were heading.

‘Yes, sir. I thought you might want to discuss my report on what’s been happening at the Dell. I’ve got it with me.’

‘The Dell?’ Fenwick looked surprised for a moment, as if interrupted in the middle of a puzzle for which Cooper was expected to supply a different answer. ‘The Dell? Don’t know anything about it. That’s not the reason I wanted to see you. Read that.’

Fenwick threw him a complaint file with a family photograph on the front cover.

‘Sir?’

‘Just read it, Cooper. I want an unbiased opinion.’ He left Cooper to it as he wandered off to investigate his old territory in the minutes before the coffee arrived.

Cooper tried to settle himself more comfortably into the visitor’s seat. There seemed to be no way he could arrange his bones to fit the chair’s angles despite his ample padding. Fenwick’s own, old-fashioned chair was very tempting but he didn’t dare. At least the coffee would offer some compensation.

Ignoring Fenwick’s instructions to reach his own, unbiased opinion, he turned to the first page, written in the Chief Inspector’s familiar, slanted scrawl. There were a dozen questions listed, half of them heavily underscored. He read the notes twice, slowly and deliberately. Then he turned to the rest of the file, his deeply lined face creasing further as he worked through the few pages. By the time he had read through those twice, the frown had been replaced with an expression his friends would have recognised as a smile of grim satisfaction.

He had the answer to his biggest question: Fenwick was back in style. Who else would have spotted the innocuous but
curious set of coincidences that should have transformed a routine missing persons case into a suspected abduction? He doubted whether he would have picked up all the loose ends himself without prompting.

Cooper looked afresh at the list of questions. It was the modelling agency that troubled him most, that and the fact that Deborah Fearnside had apparently set out to an unknown destination confidently and without a worry in the world. As he waited for Fenwick, he started routinely to try to contact the agency. The local paper would be the first step. As he lifted Fenwick’s phone he noticed the familiar scrawl again on a clean white desk blotter that wouldn’t last the month.

BIG QUESTIONS:

• Does the agency exist?
  
• If not, what was behind the charade? (Did D. F. make it all up? Highly unlikely given his constant demand for serious follow-up!)
  
• If it was real, is there a conspiracy?
  – to attract provincial housewives to London?
  – to attract
  a particular
  housewife to London?
  
• What is/was so special about D. F.?
  
• Is this an abduction or murder
  – local?
  – London?
  

He left a careful message on the answering machine for the local paper’s archive department (they didn’t open until nine o’clock) and thought about Blite, an ambitious young upstart, more ruthless than talented, who had just been promoted to DI. Why hadn’t Blite become suspicious and probed further? If Deborah Fearnside hadn’t simply walked off (it had to remain a possibility) she had been abducted in a way designed to remove suspicion from her disappearance. She might just have been an unlucky dupe but they couldn’t discount the possibility that she was a targeted victim.

Fenwick spent some time wandering around Divisional HQ,
stopping by the front desk to pass the time of day with the duty sergeant before poking his nose into the room which housed Divisional CID. Nearly all the desks were empty, including the one in the airy office that Detective Inspector Blite had moved into on promotion. A plastic, brass-effect nameplate with a self-adhesive backing had been stuck on to the door. ‘Detective Inspector’ had been spelt out in full, as had all of Blite’s initials, ‘R. A. C.’ Fenwick wondered whether Blite had bought it himself or whether it had been a gift from his adoring wife. It confirmed his assessment of the man, a complete lack of taste and style compensated for by limitless ambition and ruthless self-confidence.

His meanderings around Division confirmed that he was lucky to have kept his office. He’d have Superintendent Beckitt to thank for that, and for keeping Blite out of it. The old man wasn’t an advocate of the new DI despite the ACC’s endorsement.

Detective Constable Walters was glad to see Fenwick, standing up automatically when he entered. Fenwick brushed his welcome to one side, not unkindly but sympathy was still difficult to take and he had become practised at warding it off before it started. He asked Walters about the latest car theft.

‘Taylor and Peters are out now, three more last night.’

Fenwick made a mental note to check with them when they returned; he’d need a quick result.

‘You back then, sir? For good?’

‘For now, Walters, for now.’ He continued towards the door.

‘Well, it’s good to see you, sir. A number of us’ll be relieved, I can tell you.’

Fenwick did not want compliments that verged into petty politicking. He lifted his hand in tacit farewell and left.

As he was walking back towards his office Superintendent Beckitt’s secretary dashed out of her small cubbyhole and almost grabbed his arm.

‘Chief Inspector Fenwick! Thank goodness, I’ve been searching for you everywhere. The ACC wants to talk to you,
urgently. He’s on the Superintendent’s line. Wanted to talk to him really but I can’t reach him at home.’

The ACC was furious. He had just arrived for the Police Authority meeting, confident that he would be able to keep Counsellor Ward in his place for once, only to be confronted by him on an even more sensitive matter than the incident involving his driver.

The Assistant Chief Constable could barely contain himself as he recounted the story to Fenwick. During an incident at an unofficial travellers’ encampment, the Dell, one of the travellers had suffered a serious heart attack. Residents were blaming police harassment.

The ACC had immediately called the officer in charge at the scene. His story was that his officers had been pelted with stones and broken bottles. They’d been searching for suspected car thieves reportedly in the camp. The volley of stones that greeted them was fierce. Both constables confirmed that they saw a woman open her caravan door and look out. Seeing a bolt hole the man they were chasing had dived for cover in her van. The officers had followed hard behind.

The woman had collapsed and been taken straight to hospital, and all the officers involved had been ordered to HQ. The ACC had promised an immediate internal inquiry. There was little public sympathy for travellers but even so, the story would make the local paper’s front page and from there could become syndicated to the nationals if they were unlucky. There was the real risk of a formal PCA investigation.

Fenwick’s heart sank. He was being ordered to head the inquiry, reporting direct to the ACC. His hopes of devoting the next few days to tracing Deborah Fearnside vanished but he would still try to do what he could.

‘Who are the officers involved, sir?’

‘Taylor and Peters entered the caravan.’

‘And the officer in charge?’

‘DI Blite.’

‘I see.’ Fenwick’s tone was perfect in its neutrality.

* * *

‘Right, Cooper. We’ve a lot to do and we need to do it quickly. Do you agree?’

‘Yes, sir. Definitely.’

‘Well, come on. Tell whoever you need to that you won’t be around for a few days.’

‘Done that, sir.’

‘Good. Well, it’s two cases we’re working on and there’s a lot to do on both – quickly.’

Cooper refused to look confused.

The Dell case needed urgent attention for it not to get out of hand. Fenwick worked up a full list for Cooper, starting at the county hospital. Fenwick would need to interview Peters, Taylor and Blite, which meant returning to HQ almost at once. But he also left Cooper with the copious list of actions from the front of the Fearnside file, starting with a hunt for the catalogue company and modelling agency. The local advert seemed their only lead. As always, he had overprepared, but Cooper knew any instructions from Fenwick took none of the initiative away from him and that, if anything, even more would be expected.

Cooper disappeared to collect his coat and hat. He was back inside five minutes, during which he had also telephoned his sympathetic wife and issued a gloomy prognosis for their weekend. Inside though, he could feel the adrenalin starting to flow. Working with Fenwick, being trusted by the man, had motivated him more than he had thought possible. He should be counting the years to retirement, carefully managing his time and energy. Instead, he was happily prepared to overturn the prospects of a weekend’s late spring gardening and a visit to his new granddaughter, to work on two complaints. Carrying a fax from the local paper and his report on the Dell, he joined Fenwick in his car.