Stranded (6 page)

I can't believe what I'm hearing. A brief offering me readies to go round and heavy the kind of toerags I'd gladly sort out as a favour? There has to be a catch. ‘You're not telling me the Legal Aid would pay for that, are you?' I say.

Sarah grins. ‘Behave, Terry. I'm talking a strictly unofficial arrangement. I thought you could go and explain the error of their ways to these blokes. Introduce them to your baseball bat. Tell them if they don't behave, you'll be visiting them again in a less friendly mode. Tell them that they'll be getting a bill for incidental legal expenses incurred on their partners' behalf and if they don't come up with the cash pronto monto, you'll be coming round to make a collection. I'm sure they'll respond very positively to your approaches.'

‘You want me to go round and teach them a lesson?' I'm still convinced this is a wind-up.

‘That's about the size of it.'

‘And you'll pay me?'

‘We thought a basic rate of two hundred and fifty pounds a job. Plus bonuses in cases where the divorce settlement proved suitably substantial. A bit like a lawyer's contingency fee. No win, no fee.'

I can't quite get my head round this idea. ‘So it would work how? You'd bell me and tell me where to do the business?'

Sarah shakes her head. ‘It would all go through Chrissie. She'll give you the details, then she'll bill the legal firms for miscellaneous services, and pass the fees on to you. After this meeting, we'll never talk about this again face to face. And you'll never have contact with the solicitors you'd be acting for. Chrissie's the cut-out on both sides.'

‘What do you think, Tel?' Chrissie asks, eager as a virgin in the back seat.

‘You could tell Kimmy you were doing process serving,' Sarah chips in.

That's the clincher. So I say OK.

That was six months ago. Now I'm on Chrissie's books as her research assistant. I pay tax and National Insurance, which was a bit of a facer for the social security, who could not get their heads round the idea of me as a proper citizen. I do two or three jobs a week, and everything's sweet. Sarah's sorting out Kimmy's divorce, and we're getting married as soon as all that's sorted.

I tell you, this is the life. I'm doing the right thing and I get paid for it. If I'd known going straight could be this much fun, I'd have done it years ago.

A Wife in a Million

T
he woman strolled through the supermarket, choosing a few items for her basket. As she reached the display of sauces and pickles, a muscle in her jaw tightened. She looked around, willing herself to appear casual. No one watched. Swiftly she took a jar of tomato pickle from her large leather handbag and placed it on the shelf. She moved on to the frozen meat section.

A few minutes later, she passed down the same aisle and paused. She repeated the exercise, this time adding two more jars to the shelf. As she walked on to the checkout, she felt tension slide from her body, leaving her light-headed.

She stood in the queue, anonymous among the morning shoppers, another neat woman in a well-cut winter coat, a faint smile on her face and a strangely unfocused look in her pale blue eyes.

Sarah Graham was sprawled on the sofa reading the Situations Vacant in the
Burnalder Evening News
when she heard the car pull up the drive. Sighing, she dropped the paper and went through to the kitchen. By the time she had pulled the cork from a bottle of elderflower wine and poured two glasses, the front door had opened and closed. Sarah stood, glasses in hand, facing the kitchen door.

Detective Sergeant Maggie Staniforth came into the kitchen, took the proffered glass and kissed Sarah perfunctorily. She walked into the living-room and slumped in a chair, calling over her shoulder, ‘And what kind of day have you had?'

Sarah followed her through and shrugged. ‘Another shitty day in paradise. You don't want to hear my catalogue of boredom.'

‘You never bore me. And besides, it does me good to be reminded that there's a life outside crime.'

‘I got up about nine, by which time you'd probably arrested half a dozen villains. I whizzed through the
Guardian
job ads, and went down the library to check out the other papers. After lunch I cleaned the bedroom, did a bit of ironing and polished the dining-room furniture. Then down to the newsagent's for the evening paper. A thrill a minute. And you? Solved the crime of the century?'

Maggie winced. ‘Nothing so exciting. Bit of breaking and entering, bit of paperwork on the rape case at the blues club. It's due in court next week.'

‘At least you get paid for it.'

‘Something will come up soon, love.'

‘And meanwhile I go on being your kept woman.'

Maggie said nothing. There was nothing to say. The two of them had been together since they fell head over heels in love at university eleven years before. Things had been fine while they were both concentrating on climbing their career ladders. But Sarah's career in personnel management had hit a brick wall when the company that employed her had collapsed nine months previously. That crisis had opened a wound in their relationship that was rapidly festering. Now Maggie was often afraid to speak for fear of provoking another bitter exchange. She drank her wine in silence.

‘No titbits to amuse me, then?' Sarah demanded. ‘No funny little tales from the underbelly?'

‘One that might interest you,' Maggie said tentatively. ‘Notice a story in the
New
s last night about a woman taken to the General with suspected food poisoning?'

‘I saw it. I read every inch of that paper. It fills an hour.'

‘Well, she's died. The news came in just as I was leaving. And there have apparently been another two families affected. The funny thing is that there doesn't seem to be a common source. Jim Bryant from casualty was telling me about it.'

Sarah pulled a face. ‘Sure you can face my spaghetti carbonara tonight?'

The telephone cut across Maggie's smile. She quickly crossed the room and picked it up on the third ring. ‘DS Staniforth speaking . . . Hi, Bill.' She listened intently. ‘Good God!' she exclaimed. ‘I'll be with you in ten minutes. OK?' She stood holding the phone. ‘Sarah . . . that woman we were just talking about. It wasn't food poisoning. It was a massive dose of arsenic and two of the other socalled food poisoning cases have died. They suspect arsenic there too. I've got to go and meet Bill at the hospital.'

‘You'd better get a move on, then. Shall I save you some food?'

‘No point. And don't wait up, I'll be late.' Maggie crossed to Sarah and gave her a brief hug. She hurried out of the room. Seconds later, the front door slammed.

The fluorescent strips made the kitchen look bright but cold. The woman opened one of the fitted cupboards and took a jar of greyishwhite powder from the very back of the shelf.

She picked up a filleting knife whose edge was honed to a wicked sharpness. She slid it delicately under the flap of a cardboard pack of blancmange powder. She did the same to five other packets. Then she carefully opened the inner paper envelopes. Into each she mixed a tablespoonful of the powder from the jar.

Under the light, the grey strands in her auburn hair glinted. Painstakingly, she folded the inner packets closed again and with a drop of glue she resealed the cardboard packages. She put them all in a shopping bag and carried it into the rear porch.

She replaced the jar in the cupboard and went through to the living-room where the television blared. She looked strangely triumphant.

It was after three when Maggie Staniforth closed the front door behind her. As she hung up her sheepskin, she noticed lines of strain round her eyes in the hall mirror. Sarah appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘I know you're probably too tired to feel hungry, but I've made some soup if you want it,' she said.

‘You shouldn't have stayed up. It's late.'

‘I've got nothing else to do. After all, there's plenty of opportunity for me to catch up on my sleep.'

Please God, not now, thought Maggie. As if the job isn't hard enough without coming home to hassles from Sarah.

But she was proved wrong. Sarah smiled and said, ‘So do you want some grub?'

‘That depends.'

‘On what?'

‘Whether there's Higham's Continental Tomato Pickle in it.'

Sarah looked bewildered. Maggie went on. ‘It seems that three people have died from arsenic administered in Higham's Continental Tomato Pickle bought from Fastfare Supermarket.'

‘You're joking!'

‘Wish I was.' Maggie went through to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of orange juice as Sarah served up a steaming bowl of lentil soup with a pile of buttered brown bread. Maggie sat down and tucked in, giving her lover a disjointed summary as she ate.

‘Victim number one: May Scott, fiftyseven, widow, lived up Warburton Road. Numbers two and three: Gary Andrews, fifteen, and his brother Kevin, thirteen, from Priory Farm Estate. Their father is seriously ill. So are two others now, Thomas and Louise Foster of Bryony Grange. No connection between them except that they all ate pickle from jars bought on the same day at Fastfare.

‘Could be someone playing at extortion – you know, pay me a million pounds or I'll do it again. Could be someone with a grudge against Fastfare. Ditto against Higham's. So you can bet your sweet life we're going to be hammered into the ground on this one. Already we're getting flak.'

Maggie finished her meal. Her head dropped into her hands. ‘What a bitch of a job.'

‘Better than no job at all.'

‘Is it?'

‘You should know better than to ask.'

Maggie sighed. ‘Take me to bed, Sarah. Let me forget about the battlefield for a few hours, eh?'

Piped music lulled the shoppers at Pinkerton's Hypermarket into a drugged acquisitiveness. The woman pushing the trolley was deaf to its bland presence and its blandishments. When she reached the shelf with the instant desserts on display, she stopped and checked that the coast was clear.

She swiftly put three packs of blancmange on the shelf with their fellows and moved away. A few minutes later she returned and studied several cake mixes as she waited for the aisle to clear. Then she completed her mission and finished her shopping in a leisurely fashion.

At the checkout she chatted brightly to the bored teenager who rang up her purchases automatically. Then she left, gently humming the song that flowed from the shop's speakers.

Three days later, Maggie Staniforth burst into her living-room in the middle of the afternoon to find Sarah typing a job application. ‘Red alert, love,' she announced. ‘I'm only home to have a quick bath and change my things. Any chance of a sandwich?'

‘I was beginning to wonder if you still lived here,' Sarah muttered darkly. ‘If you were having an affair, at least I'd know how to fight back.'

‘Not now, love, please.'

‘Do you want something hot? Soup? Omelette?'

‘Soup, please. And a toasted cheese sandwich?'

‘Coming up. What's the panic this time?'

Maggie's eyes clouded. ‘Our homicidal maniac has struck again. Eight people on the critical list at the General. This time the arsenic was in Garratt's Blancmange from Pinkerton's Hypermarket. Bill's doing a television appeal right now asking for people to bring in any packets bought there this week.'

‘Different manufacturer, different supermarket. Sounds like a crazy rather than a grudge, doesn't it?'

‘And that makes the next strike impossible to predict. Anyway, I'm going for that bath now. I'll be down again in fifteen minutes.' Maggie stopped in the kitchen doorway, ‘I'm not being funny, Sarah. Don't do any shopping in the supermarkets. Butchers, greengrocers, okay. But no self-service, pre-packaged food. Please.'

Sarah nodded. She had never seen Maggie afraid in eight years in the force, and the sight did nothing to life her depressed spirits.

This time it was jars of mincemeat. Even the Salvation Army band playing carols outside the Nationwide Stores failed to make the woman pause in her mission. Her shopping bag held six jars laced with deadly white powder when she entered the supermarket.

When she left, there were none. She dropped 50p in the collecting tin as she passed the band because they were playing her favourite carol, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter'. She walked slowly back to the car park, not pausing to look at the shopwindow Christmas displays. She wasn't anticipating a merry Christmas.

Sarah walked back from the newsagent's with the evening paper, reading the front page as she went. The Burnalder Poisoner was frontpage news everywhere by now, but the stories in the local paper seemed to carry an extra edge of fear. They were thorough in their coverage, tracing any possible commercial connection between the three giant food companies that produced the contaminated food. They also speculated on the possible reasons for the week-long gaps between outbreaks. They laid out in stark detail the drastic effect the poisoning was having on the finances of the food-processing companies. And they noted the paradox of public hysteria about the poisoning while people still filled their shopping trolleys in anticipation of the festive season.

The latest killer was Univex mincemeat. Sarah shivered as she read of the latest three deaths, bringing the toll to twelve. As she turned the corner, she saw Maggie's car in the drive and increased her pace. A grim idea had taken root in her brain as she read the long report.

While she was hanging up her jacket, Maggie called from the kitchen. Sarah walked slowly through to find her tucking into a plate of eggs and bacon, but without her usual large dollop of tomato ketchup. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and the skin around them was grey and stretched. She had not slept at home for two nights. The job had never made such demands on her before. Sarah found a moment to wonder if the atmosphere between them was partly responsible for Maggie's total commitment to this desperate search.

‘How is it going?' she asked anxiously.

‘It's not,' said Maggie. ‘Virtually nothing to go on. No link that we can find. It's not as if we even have proper leads to chase up. I came home for a break because we were just sitting staring at each other, wondering what to do next. Short of searching everyone who goes into the supermarkets, what can we do? And those bloody reporters seem to have taken up residence in the station. We're being leaned on from all sides. We've got to crack this soon or we'll be crucified.'

Sarah sat down. ‘I've been giving this some thought. The grudge theory has broken down because you can't find a link between the companies, am I right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you thought about the effect unemployment has on crime?'

‘Burglary, shoplifting, mugging, vandalism, drugs, yes. But surely not mass poisoning, love.'

‘There's so much bitterness there, Maggie. So much hatred. I've often felt like murdering those incompetent tossers who destroyed Liddell's and threw me on the scrapheap. Did you think about people who've been given the boot?'

‘We did think about it. But only a handful of people have worked for all three companies. None of them have any reason to hold a grudge. And none of them have any connection with Burnalder.'

‘There's another aspect, though, Maggie. It only hit me when I read the paper tonight. The
News
has a big piece about the parent companies who make the three products. Now, I'd swear that each one of those companies has advertised in the last couple of months for management executives. I know, I applied for two of the jobs. I didn't even get interviewed because I've got no experience in the food industry, only in plastics. There must be other people in the same boat, maybe less stable than I am.'

‘My God!' Maggie breathed. She pushed her plate away. The colour had returned to her cheeks and she seemed to have found fresh energy. She got up and hugged Sarah fiercely. ‘You've given us the first positive lead in this whole bloody case. You're a genius!'

‘I hope you'll remember that when they give you your inspector's job.'

Maggie grinned on her way out the door. ‘I owe you one. I'll see you later.'