The Hireling's Tale (11 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

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Shapiro’s eyebrow shot up again. ‘I didn’t know she had a key.’
‘Donovan let her in. You had your keys on you when you were shot.’ She thought about telling him that Donovan had borrowed his car, decided not to. He’d need to be stronger to cope with that bit of information. ‘Is there anything you need?’
He couldn’t be bothered thinking. Talking, even to her, had drained him. ‘Just the roller skates and a football,’ he said sourly.
‘Something to read?’
‘The Walker’s Guide to the Peak District?’
Liz gave up. ‘If you think of anything, have someone call me. I’ll see you later.’
Shapiro just grunted. He knew he wasn’t
behaving with much fortitude. He was too low to care.
 
 
Going to the hospital had made her late. A message was waiting on her desk to see Superintendent Hilton as soon as she got in.
He’d taken over Shapiro’s office. It was the obvious thing to do, the incumbent wasn’t going to need it back for a while and Queen’s Street wasn’t so capacious that spare offices were available on every floor. Still it stung Liz to have to tap on this door and wait for a reply, and then introduce herself to the man inside.
‘Detective Inspector Graham, sir. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. I’ve been to the hospital.’
Most men get broader, bulkier as they get older. But Hilton was smaller, more compact than she remembered, like a spring packed into an ever tighter space. He still had the moustache - out of sheer stubbornness, she supposed, he must know by now who it reminded people of - and the carborundum eyes. The manner had, if anything, grown more abrasive. Not one of life’s charmers, she reflected, so probably he was very good at the job. He hadn’t cosied his way up to Superintendent.
‘Not feeling well, Inspector?’ he said. Almost but not quite snidely.
‘To see Superintendent Shapiro, sir,’ she said woodenly. But he already knew that: he was baiting
her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of rising. For that he’d have to try Donovan.
‘How is he?’
‘Keen to get back in harness, sir.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie but it certainly inferred something that wasn’t the truth. But the less permanent Superintendent Hilton felt in this chair, the better.
‘Really?’ Hilton sounded surprised. ‘At his age?’
They were fencing, testing one another’s strengths and weaknesses, keeping just the safe side of objectionable. Liz set her jaw. If there was one thing Castlemere didn’t need right now it was a Senior Investigating Officer who felt he had to mark his territory with little wounds.
‘I’ve put Detective Inspector Colwyn in the room at the end of the corridor,’ he said. ‘I imagine that’s all right.’ Not hope but imagine: he wasn’t seeking approval, just informing her. ‘You’ll be working closely together.’
The name rang a bell: when she remembered why her heart lifted. Divisional HQ’s financial expert. It made her wonder if Hilton might make up in acuity what he lacked in personal charm. ‘In that case perhaps he’d like to share my office, next door.’ It wasn’t really big enough for two, but it was probably better than evicting Donovan to haunt the building like the Ghost of Christmas Past.
But Hilton thought it was a kind gesture and softened slightly. ‘Perhaps. Have a word with him. In fact, call him in here while we go over what we’ve got so far.’ He’d been in Queen’s Street half an hour and already it was ‘what we’ve got’.
She realized she was being unfair. It was a difficult task, to take over in the middle of an investigation. It caused resentment, it caused confusion, it meant you never got a chance to learn the significant minutiae of either a town or a police station; but someone had to do it because police officers were as mortal as anyone else and you couldn’t put a murder investigation on hold while you invited applications for the post of SIO. Visiting firemen were a necessary evil and deserved a great deal more sympathy than they ever received.
But it was hard to sympathize with someone whose motto appeared to be Divide And Conquer. It was easier to sympathize with the DI who had the task of travelling with him, trying to make the round hole squarer, attracting the same negative feelings without the protection of seniority. She called his name, turned with a smile as DI Colwyn joined them.
Sheer surprise froze it on her face. Detective Inspector James Colwyn, Divisional HQ’s idea of a top-flight financial expert, couldn’t have been a day over twenty-six. That was in a suit. If he changed into jeans, people would assume he was waiting for an appropriate adult to arrive before he could be interviewed.
Liz blinked quickly and hoped he hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t his fault he was so young. It almost certainly meant he was gifted at his work and Queen’s Street was lucky to get him. She tried to shrug off the feeling that if they were here late tonight she’d start worrying about his bedtime.
She summarized what had happened so far. They’d had the bones from HQ but that was like playing Chinese Whispers: the actual facts always came as a surprise when you’d only had them filtered by Division. Liz concentrated on what had happened and what they knew; she could add in the detail and the suppositions later. She finished with Donovan heading for King’s Lynn to collect what might turn out to be a valuable witness and might turn out to be an hysterical self-publicist.
‘Donovan,’ said Superintendent Hilton thoughtfully. ‘Irish?’
‘I believe so,’ said Liz; which was an idiotic response but the only one which permitted the requisite degree of cool.
‘I think I came across him at the Met.’ He said to Colwyn, ‘The surliest detective constable I ever met.’
‘Really?’ said Liz. ‘Superintendent Shapiro’s managed to get some excellent work out of him.’
This was a master stroke: Hilton couldn’t pursue his attack now without including Shapiro in it, so he had to leave unchallenged the suggestion that Shapiro had succeeded at something in which he himself had failed. He changed the subject; but Liz saw in his eye that he had recognized the trap she’d laid for him, marked it and wouldn’t forget it.
‘Meanwhile the Kendall family is at a safe house in Northampton. The address?’
She’d been half-expecting this. She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask, or at least not in front of anyone else. She took a deep breath. ‘In the circumstances, I’m trying to keep that information to as small a circle as
possible. The Kendalls don’t know the address. I know, so do the two officers at the house, and that’s all. I spoke to Superintendent Giles, and he agreed that he had no overriding need to know, and the fewer people who had the information, the less chance of it accidentally getting out.’
Superintendent Hilton smiled at her, without warmth. ‘I think Detective Inspector Colwyn and I can keep a secret.’
‘I’m sure you can, sir. I still think it would be safer to leave it with me until you have a need to know. Two people can keep a secret, because if it gets out they both know who was responsible. Any more and only one knows for sure. Right now, I’m the only person in this building who can betray the Kendalls.’
Hilton’s smile was a real crocodile job. ‘Which is too much of a burden for anyone, so I’m going to take it off your shoulders. The address, Inspector Graham.’
She gave it one last try. In the final analysis, if he wanted the address she couldn’t withhold it. But she was right to try, and he was wrong to press. ‘Sir, if you insist on having the information I’ll give it you. You can also get it from Divisional records. But it’s my urgent recommendation that we leave things as they are. Lives depend on our discretion, and I see no overwhelming benefit to justify the risk of spreading the information further.’
His gaze held her, speculative. ‘I presume you are no less mortal than Mr Shapiro, Inspector. Suppose something unfortunate befalls you too?’
‘Then I imagine you would inform Division, and get the address of the safe house at the same time. If you’re sure I’m wrong about this, sir, make it an order and I’ll comply. But those people have already been shot at twice, by a professional killer who’s very good and very patient and will exploit the first mistake we make. I’m sure I seem absurdly overcautious. But I don’t mind making a fool of myself if there’s the chance it may make a difference.
‘With a top professional after him, I’m not sure how long we can keep Philip Kendall safe. But if despite all our efforts he ends up dead I don’t want to think there was anything more I could have done to prevent it. If that means making a fool of myself, so be it. I don’t want to make your job harder than it is already, so if you require that address I’ll give it you. But if it was your life on the line, I think you’d be hoping I wouldn’t have to.’
He went on looking at her with the same speculative, ground-glass gaze until it took a real effort of will for her not to start shuffling. Finally he astounded her by nodding crisply and saying, ‘All right, I’ll give it some more thought. You move DI Colwyn in with you and show him where everything is. And, Inspector Graham?’
She paused in the door, expecting a late-firing rocket.
‘If it
was
my life on the line, I’d be content to have it in your hands.’
Colwyn followed her dutifully and shifted his scant belongings from Donovan’s office into hers. ‘I’ll
try not to get in your way.’ He had a light, ambivalent voice that sounded even younger than he looked.
Liz shook her head. ‘I’m glad to have you here. I was trying to contact you yesterday. I need someone who can put some background to a list of rich foreigners. Round here their idea of a rich foreigner is a man from Peterborough with monogrammed socks.’
Colwyn laughed, apparently with relief. ‘Let me have the list, I’ll see what I can come up with. It’s nice to have something useful to do. Mostly when we arrive somewhere I have to fight for the privilege.’
‘I can’t afford to stand on my dignity,’ said Liz. ‘Frank Shapiro leaves a big hole, I can’t fill it on my own.’
‘Will he be all right?’
She shrugged. ‘He’ll live. For all right we’ll have to wait and see.’
DI Colwyn closed her door behind him. ‘I’m sorry you and Hilton got off on the wrong foot. He’s not an easy man to work for, but he is a good detective. Sometimes, people who get past the rather gritty exterior find themselves quite liking him.’
Liz stopped her eyebrows from soaring incredulously. ‘You’ve worked with him before, then?’
‘I’ve worked with him for the last eighteen months.’
‘And this is what you do? Go round plugging holes in other people’s dykes?’
‘Pretty much. We’re not very subtle, I’m afraid, but we don’t have time to grow on people gradually. We’re sent in because things have gone wrong and
somebody needs to take control quickly. The Top People’s Cop reckons you can make friends or get the job done but not both.’
Liz kept her face straight. ‘The what?’
Colwyn grinned. ‘Hilton – the Top People’s Hotel? It’s just a joke.’
‘Does he know you make jokes about him?’
He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t me who came up with that one. I’m not sure, but I’ve always rather suspected it was him.’
When Maddie Cotterick saw the maroon Jaguar, refined and expensive and deeply conservative, she let out a hoot of laughter. ‘I had you down for a GTi man. Something you could corner on two wheels.’
Donovan gave his saturnine smile. ‘I always corner on two wheels. I’m a Kawasaki man: this is my Superintendent’s.’
She was impressed. ‘He must have a lot of faith in you.’
Honesty was always like a fox under Donovan’s tunic. ‘Actually,’ he admitted, ‘he had a lot of anaesthetic in him.’
He’d come in by the Cambridge road so he left by the Peterborough road. Not because he thought anyone would be waiting, just because if anyone was it would make his life that little bit harder. He didn’t think anyone could have followed him. He wasn’t convinced anyone would want to. But he’d been sent to collect a witness who was afraid to return to Castlemere alone, and it wasn’t his job to decide if her fears were justified. Maybe they weren’t, but the only way he’d know for sure was if he didn’t take the proper precautions and it turned out they were.
There are police officers who specialize in close protection work, who develop keen instincts for who is in danger and where it will come from. Donovan wasn’t one of them. He’d done the defensive driving course, and various counter-terrorism sessions - at which he always ended up playing the mad bomber - but all he knew of the work of a bodyguard was what any policeman needed to: keep moving, vary the route, avoid crowds, avoid wide open spaces. He would return by a different route because it was good practice to do so.
Maddie settled herself in the front passenger seat with an audible purr, cat-like in her pleasure. ‘He’s a man of taste, your Superintendent.’
For a moment Donovan felt indulgent, thinking such luxury was probably a rare treat for a girl like this. Then it struck him, deflatingly, that a girl like this would have sat in an awful lot more posh cars than he had, if only for ten minutes at a time. He said, ‘Turn on the radio if you want. If you know how it works.’ She did; and she did.
But not for long. She surfed through the stations but could find nothing to interest her; unless that was a guise and what she really wanted was to talk. As they left Lynn behind she said, ‘Aren’t you going to question me? You’ve come a long way, don’t you want an explanation?’
Donovan shrugged. ‘I’m just the babysitter. My Inspector will do the interview when we get back to Castlemere.’
She bridled at his lack of interest. At first, after she fled the hotel, she’d thought the police would be
hunting for her and it was to escape them that she flung some things together and left town on Sunday night. News of the shooting at Kendall’s house on Tuesday gave matters a whole new perspective, and by the time she’d worked out what it meant she knew that her best hope of safety lay in offering herself as a witness for the prosecution. She’d expected to have trouble persuading Queen’s Street that she knew enough to need protection but thought that when they did turn up there’d be a barrage of questions to answer. The dark man’s indifference stung her.
‘You think I’m wasting your time. You think there’s nothing I can tell you about Linda’s death that you couldn’t get from other, more reliable sources. You think I’m like those sad people who confess to crimes they didn’t commit because it gets them a bit of attention!’
‘I think,’ said Donovan heavily, ‘that my Superintendent’s in hospital, there’s a replacement due this morning and my Inspector wanted me out of the way for a few hours while she gets him broken in. I think if you hadn’t called she’d have found some other fool’s errand to send me on.’
Maddie nodded, a terse, jerky little movement. Watching the road, Donovan couldn’t see the bitter disappointment on her face, but he heard it in her voice. ‘At least we know where we stand. You think I’m a liar, I think you’re a fool. The difference is, if you’re right I still won’t get you killed.’
That caught his attention. His eyes flicked sideways at her, surprised. If it was an act it was a good
one. ‘I didn’t say I don’t believe you. I don’t know anything about you - well, nearly nothing. I don’t know what you have to say. I’m not going to interview you in the car because that’s not how it’s done. For all I know you could be a suspect by now: I could banjax the entire investigation by chatting away to you just to pass the time. You’re going to have to be patient, Maddie. DI Graham will hang on every word you have to say. Me, I’m just the chauffeur.’
She wasn’t mollified, but she was damned if she was going to beg him to interrogate her. It wasn’t even that she was desperate to tell the story. She just didn’t appreciate being treated like a package. She didn’t let clients treat her like an inanimate object, didn’t see why she should put up with it from an officer of the law. She paid her taxes. Well, some of them.
The real reason she was angry with him was, of course, that she was afraid. Fear is disabling; anger empowers. It made her feel less helpless to be angry with someone and Donovan was handy.
A mile further on she said, ‘Was it you went to my house?’
He saw no reason to lie but was obscurely uncomfortable about admitting it. ‘Some of the girls thought you might be in trouble. After what happened to - Linda?’
‘Linda Collins,’ she nodded, ‘we shared a flat when I lived in Cambridge.’
‘She was’ - he hesitated how to put this - ‘in the same line of business?’
Maddie nodded. ‘It made sense to live together. It
was a bit of mutual support and protection, and it meant we weren’t annoying two other flatmates. I came to Castlemere when my grandmother died and left me her house.’
Donovan gave a grim chuckle. ‘Must have gone down a bundle with the neighbours: swapping a little old lady for …’ He ground to an embarrassed halt.
Maddie’s laugh was brittle. ‘I’m a prostitute, Sergeant. Don’t let the word bother you, it doesn’t bother me. It’s an accurate description of what I do. Or a tom, or a hooker. Call-girl’s rather nineteen-sixties, and I have to say I find whore a bit vulgar. Prostitute will do nicely.’
After a moment he said, ‘You’re not what I was expecting.’
She looked at the sprigged cotton dress and shrugged. ‘This isn’t my working gear. I
could
be what you were expecting. I can be just about anything.’
‘Why do you do it?’
‘Why are you a policeman?’ she retorted instantly.
Donovan frowned, unsure if she meant it as an insult. ‘I suppose, because it interests me and I’m some good at it.’
‘That’s why I’m a prostitute.’
‘But—’ It was: it was an insult. But it was a long drive back, he didn’t want to spend it arguing with her. He fell silent.
She finished the thought for him. ‘But … I let men I don’t know inside me? That’s not what sets me apart from other girls, Sergeant Donovan, it’s the fact
that I do it for money. How often have you taken a girl back to your place the night you met? Did you think it was love every time? Me and my clients don’t even pretend. They don’t take me to expensive restaurants, they give me the cash instead. I happen to think it’s more honest that way.’
In fact she was talking to the wrong man. Donovan wasn’t celibate either by nature or design, but the combination of a demanding job and a personality that did not encourage casual friendships meant that he had about as many one-night stands as the Singing Nun. But he took her point. ‘It’s still a hell of a risky job.’
‘More than yours? Yes, I’ve been knocked about. I bet you have too. Since I learned the ropes there are certain individuals, and certain types of individual, I don’t do business with any more. I bet that’s a luxury
you
don’t enjoy. Even when you’re a superintendent with a flash car of your own you’ll still be vulnerable to a bullet in the back because you haven’t the right to say there are some jobs and some people it’s just too dangerous to deal with.’
Again she’d misjudged him. Donovan would never be a superintendent. Barring a major change of policy at the top, Donovan would never be an inspector. Not because he wasn’t up to it and not because he didn’t deserve it, but because he wasn’t The Right Type. Liz Graham was The Right Type. Oddly enough, Frank Shapiro wasn’t, but at least he’d never been as aggressively The Wrong Type as Donovan. Superintendent Hilton wasn’t the only member of the police hierarchy who remembered
him as the surliest detective constable in the history of the force, and had never updated that image in light of subsequent successes.
He gave a dour sniff. ‘That’s how you see me? As a different kind of prostitute?’
Maddie nodded negligently. ‘Pretty much. Look, if you don’t like the word, call us hirelings. You’re a body for hire, same as I am. Look what you’re doing here. You’re putting yourself at risk because I’m in danger. You’re not doing it for love, or because you think I’m such a special human being I must be preserved at all cost. But if somebody comes after me with a knife, or a gun, you won’t even ask yourself if I’m worth it. You’ll do what your Superintendent did - protect me, even if it means getting hurt yourself. Because it’s your job. Because you’re paid to.’
His mouth opened and shut a couple of times before he was forced to concede that, in a particular narrow sense at least, she was right. He wouldn’t go on doing this if they stopped paying him. It
was
a job: he took a pride in doing it well, but not always in
what
he had to do. That was the nature of the thing: you took the rough with the smooth, the boring with the hair-raising, the plainly right and important along with those things you only did because someone higher up had decided you should. He’d done a lot of things he’d taken no particular pleasure in, and a few he was ashamed of. He’d done them because it was his job. He consoled himself with the thought that handling whatever came along was the mark of a professional. He
hadn’t thought till now that such was also the prostitute’s creed.
‘Hireling,’ he said finally. ‘I’ve been called worse.’
 
 
Even among the new generation of computer-literate policemen Detective Inspector Colwyn was a class act. He was as familiar with the workings of the Police National Computer as Liz was with the contents of her own desk. He took Philip Kendall’s list of delegates and started passing the names through successive databases, collecting information as he went.
By mid-morning he had reduced forty-odd men to a shortlist of five. Before he went any further he made a hard copy on the printer. He might be able to explain to DI Graham what the icons on the screen meant, but Superintendent Hilton would be a pieces-of-paper man to the end of his career.
‘If we accept Maddie Cotterick’s word that she can link the girl’s death to the attempts on Kendall’s life,’ said Colwyn, ‘then we can make certain inferences about the person responsible. He’s a man who can call up first-class help at short notice, which means he has money or connections or both. He’s from out of town, or he’d have taken more trouble disposing of the girl’s body.’
‘Which all points to one of the overseas delegates at the Bespoke Engineering conference,’ said Hilton. ‘He killed a prostitute then hired someone to tidy up the mess. This Maddie girl thinks he wants her dead
because of what she knows. If he also wants Kendall dead, that suggests he knows something too.’
Liz refrained from saying that she’d reached that conclusion before he even arrived in Castlemere.
‘With this in mind,’ Colwyn went on hurriedly, ‘I correlated information on everyone on the list, and discarded off the bottom those without that kind of influence or any kind of a track record. There’s a mid-range of men who could cover up a murder in a foreign country but aren’t likely to have committed one in the first place. And what rose to the top are five men who look like reasonable suspects.
‘They have certain features in common. They’re all foreign nationals. One of them was representing his government, the others are executive directors of private companies. All are wealthy men by any standards, and could additionally call on the resources of their state or company. Any of these five could afford the services of a top-flight assassin.’
He’d printed three copies of his research, one for each of them. He studied his own primarily, Liz thought, to give her and Hilton time to catch up.
Kim Il Muk managed a petroleum refinery in Pusan, South Korea. Four years earlier the under-housekeeper of a Paris hotel had accused him of attempted rape. The Paris police had it down as a misunderstanding due to lack of a common language. Mr Kim apologized through an interpreter and was released with a caution. He was a man of about forty-five.
Ian Selkirk’s father owned a shrimping fleet, a cannery and most of a village in Yucatan. Selkirk,
who was thirty-two, was known to be handy with his fists, and on one occasion with a baling hook. There were also suspicions that the shrimp-boats had been smuggling drugs into the United States, and that the death of a Federal investigator was linked to that. The FBI were still looking for proof.
Nicu Sibiu and his brothers ran the family munitions business in Romania. Twice during the civil unrest they used the finished product to defend the factory against angry mobs and Nicu, then in his late teens, was known to have shot a protestor dead. In view of the general chaos of the times, no action was taken to establish the legitimacy of this act.

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