Walk a Narrow Mile (15 page)

He shook his head, and reminded himself again that the private life of his bosses was no place for a canny retired sergeant to stick his big fat nose, and reached instead for DI Rhumer’s latest report. But the DI’s team had had no joy so far on whittling out a name or face from the long suspect list. Well, that was always going to be a long job, wasn’t it? And they couldn’t even be sure, a hundred per cent sure, that chummy was on the job. Anyone could buy a police uniform from a costume shop and buy fake police ID on the Internet.

He was just closing the folder when Hillary came back into the office. She had three opened padded brown envelopes in her hand. Her face was perfectly expressionless.

‘Can you call the Super in?’ she said flatly. ‘And tell him we’re
going to need forensics, and DI Rhumer.’ She waved the envelopes in the air, and Jimmy tensed.

‘Been in contact, has he?’ Jimmy said flatly.

‘Yes,’ Hillary said. ‘He just can’t seem to resist it, can he?’ she added, with grim little smile.

Geoff Rhumer, Steven, Hillary and Jimmy crowded around Steven’s desk. All of them were wearing gloves.

‘Obviously, as soon as I saw them in the mail, I put mine on,’ Hillary said, indicating her white, cotton-clad hands. ‘I knew I wasn’t due any mail like this, and besides…’ She shrugged and just let the sentence slide. She’d just known that they had been sent by Lol. You get an instinct about this sort of thing, and she could see by the way the others in the group were either nodding their heads or giving a rueful smile, that they
understood
without needing to be told.

She met Steven’s solemn, questioning brown eyes, and gave a small smile in return, silently telling him that she was fine. But whether he believed her or not, she couldn’t tell. She reached for the first envelope, which she had carefully unsealed, causing the least possible amount of interference for the forensics people to moan about later, and tipped out the contents.

On to the table fell an ugly, fluffy pink key ring with a troll’s face. It was both comical and grotesque. The second envelope was thicker and she carefully pulled out a striped,
multi-coloured
pair of leg warmers. The third envelope produced a necklace consisting of what looked like good quality pearls, with the biggest and fattest in the middle, graduating to smaller ones the closer they got to the clasp, which was made of gold.

For a moment, they studied the items in question, none of them venturing the obvious observation, until Steven obliged. ‘You think these come from the victims?’

Hillary nodded. ‘I think the troll key ring is probably Gilly’s. It’s the kind of whimsical, funky thing she’d use. The strand of pearls, I’m guessing, would be Meg’s, simply because she was a
class act and somewhat vain about her looks, and I can’t see her covering up her legs at all, let alone with something like these.’ She nodded at the jaunty leg warmers. ‘Which, by process of elimination, I’m guessing, belonged to Judy.’

‘No note with any of the items?’ Geoff Rhumer asked without much hope. If there had been, they’d have been studying it by now.

Hillary shook her head. ‘But then, there doesn’t need to be, does there?’ she asked flatly, and for a while they stared down at the three items on the table. Each unique to their owners, their forlorn eloquence had no need of the written word.

Steven briskly shook off the gloom. ‘OK. Geoff, get these to forensics and see if you can find any trace of your man on them. I doubt you’ll be lucky, but you never can tell. Hillary—’

‘I know – I’ll get on to the witnesses and see if we can confirm the ownership of the items. For that, I’ll need first-class photos of the items.’

‘I’ll get that done first, and get them to you,’ Geoff Rhumer said briskly.

Ruth Coombs very quickly identified the leg warmers as being Judy’s. In the office at the back of the large shop, she looked at the photographs intently. ‘Of course, I can’t swear they’re hers,’ she added cautiously, determined to be scrupulously fair. ‘I dare say a lot of them were sold to a lot of people. But I remember Judy buying a pair just like these from Bicester market. When we had one of those really cold winters, you know? She liked the colours.’

Hillary nodded. ‘We were wondering if you might have kept anything of Judy’s that might still have traces of her DNA on it? A hairbrush maybe? Otherwise, we’ll have to take a DNA sample from her parents, to compare it to any traces we might find on the leg warmers.’

But Ruth shrugged helplessly. ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. I packed up all her stuff after a year or so, and asked her parents
if they wanted it. I didn’t particularly like doing it – I knew Judy never gave them the time of day any more, and probably wouldn’t have wanted me to either. But … well, I didn’t really have any right to hold on to them, you see,’ Ruth held out her hands helplessly. ‘And when push comes to shove, family is family, right? In the end they took it, not because they wanted it, but because it was the “done thing”. It would have looked odd if they’d refused, and that’s all they cared about. Too busy worrying about what the neighbours might say, but not caring a damn about what might have happened to their own daughter,’ she added bitterly.

Hillary said nothing to that, but thanked her quietly and left. Geoff Rhumer had already confirmed that a lone uniformed PC had talked to Ruth shortly after Judy had been reported missing, and that Ruth had confirmed that he had been left alone for a short time. Which meant that he certainly could, therefore, have done a quick search of his victim’s room, had he been of a mind to do so. And lifted more items than just the leg warmers? Hillary thought, on balance, that he probably had.

Unfortunately, Ruth’s description of him had been even more vague than that provided by Mrs Tinkerton.

Georgia Biggs looked at the photograph of the graduated strand of pearls thoughtfully, and then smiled somewhat ruefully. They were once again crowded into her small dental office, with the smell of antiseptic sharp in the air, and posters of gum disease rampant.

Unlike Ruth Coombs, Georgia Biggs hadn’t been at the flat when the man in a police uniform had shown up making inquiries about the missing woman, but he had talked the
landlord
of the premises into letting him ‘take a look around’. Unfortunately for Geoff Rhumer and his team, the landlord was now deceased, leaving them with, quite literally, a dead end, when it came to getting another independent description of the man they were looking for.

‘I know Meg had a necklace quite like this,’ Georgia told them, then laughed softly. ‘She was furious about it.’

‘Oh?’ Hillary asked, tensing just a little. Could they have been a gift from the stalker? She could quite see why Meg Vickary wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with them, if they had been. But if they had been one of his original gifts, why had he stolen them back?

‘It turned out they weren’t real. Oh, they were very good quality, cultured, or whatever it is they are when they’re not really natural. Worth a few hundred quid, or so the jeweller told her, but not the thousands they would have been if they’d been the genuine article,’ Georgia explained, then sighed. ‘I quite liked them personally. I would have worn them and been happy to – they had this pretty pinkish quality to them. But Meg just tossed them into the back of her jewellery case and never wore them. She gave the man who gave them to her the push as well. Well, that was Meg, really. She didn’t like being messed about.’

‘He was an old boyfriend, was he?’ Hillary asked quickly, then felt her hopes drop as Georgia nodded. ‘Yeah, she went out with him for a while. He was a company rep for some
pharmaceutical
company or something. Can’t remember his name now.’

‘Can you remember what he looked like?’ Hillary persisted. It was possible the stalker had made contact, after all, and maybe even persuaded Meg to date him a few times.

‘Really tall beanpole of a bloke,’ Georgia said. ‘Really fair hair and pale skin. Almost an albino, you know?’

Hillary nodded glumly. ‘Do you still have them, or know what happened to them? The pearls, I mean?’

Georgia thought about it for a second, and then frowned thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know. They’re probably still with her stuff. It’s all in storage. You can look if you like.’

She gave them the details of the lock-up where Meg Vickary’s worldly possessions were still kept. ‘I keep paying the rental on the space, thinking that one day she’ll turn up for them.’
Georgia shook her head and looked Hillary straight in the eye. ‘But she won’t, will she?’

Hillary smiled gently. ‘If you’ll just give us written
permission
to access the storage?’

Georgia obligingly wrote down the address and handed it over.

They drove to the lock-up, which turned out to be in one of Swindon’s suburbs, but although they eventually found Meg Vickary’s jewellery box, they found no string of pearls – fake or otherwise.

Hillary was interested to note that all the jewellery in the box was of the costume variety. But she was sure that a woman of Meg’s tenacity and ambition must have been given plenty of the genuine article by her many admirers.

So where was it?

It was possible that Georgia Biggs had ‘redirected’ it to her own jewellery box, and she knew that many of her colleagues would automatically assume that that had been the case. And they might be right.

But there was another explanation for it being missing, and Hillary was beginning to think she might have a damned good idea what that was.

Deirdre Tinkerton took one look at the photograph of the fluffy troll key ring and abruptly and rather heavily sat down on a chair. ‘Oh, that ugly thing. Yes, Gilly had one just like it, but…’ She looked up at them, her pleasant round face slowly turning pale. ‘Why are you showing me a photograph of it now? Is there something you’re not telling me? Is my Gilly…?’ Her voice suddenly seemed to lose its strength, and she cleared her throat noisily. ‘Is my little girl dead?’ she asked in a small voice.

Hillary cursed herself for having to bring this to the poor woman’s door, and cursed the stalker even more. It seemed heartlessly cruel to rattle Deirdre Tinkerton’s comforting belief
that her daughter was alive and well somewhere, and just thoughtlessly remaining out of touch, especially if what Hillary was coming to believe might be true, was indeed
actually
the case.

‘We have no reason to believe that at this time, Mrs Tinkerton,’ she said firmly, carefully avoiding Jimmy Jessop’s eyes. ‘I imagine these little fluffy troll things were sold in their millions anyway,’ she added.

Deirdre Tinkerton visibly forced herself to rally. ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right about that. They were a bit of a craze, weren’t they? There’s nothing to say this was my Gilly’s, is there?’

‘Nothing at all. We simply wanted to know if it might be,’ Hillary said, then went still as Mrs Tinkerton laid a hand on her arm and said quietly, ‘You would tell me if you found a body, wouldn’t you, love? One that had a key ring on it like this?’

‘Mrs Tinkerton, I swear to you, we haven’t found any bodies,’ Hillary said, perfectly truthfully.

She fought back the ridiculous urge to say something totally inane, such as ‘Try not to worry about it’ or something equally stupid, and patted her hand instead. ‘We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions. Remember, we’re still just trying to figure out what, if anything, has happened.’

Deirdre smiled, but her eyes were beginning to look haunted.

Outside, Jimmy let out his breath in a long, slow exhale. ‘Sometimes I hate this job,’ he muttered grimly.

Hillary knew exactly what he meant.

Back at HQ, Hillary checked her voice mail and found that a long message from Sam had been left for her.

Their very first interview with one of the retired gangsters had come up trumps. Whilst Mike Pratt had claimed not to have taken much interest in Meg himself – he was in to very young, leggy blondes, apparently – he did know for a fact that a ‘colleague’ of his had very much taken a shine to her. A man by the name of Liam Hardwicke, who’d specialized in smuggling
of all kinds – from booze, to fags to female sex slaves – had ‘fancied her rotten’. And had let her know it.

Apparently, Meg had been suitably flattered and, by all accounts, the interest had been mutual.

She and Jimmy listened to his report and then grabbed their coats. It was time to talk to Marcus Kane again.

Kane pretended to be wearily annoyed but painstakingly patient to see the police in his office again.

‘Yes, hello again Mrs Greene, and just what can I do for you this time?’

Hillary settled herself comfortably in the chair in front of his desk and smiled cordially. She’d teach the bastard to call her
Mrs Greene
.

‘Liam Hardwicke,’ she said briskly. ‘He was a sex slave
trafficker
and general all-round nasty piece of work. Your firm represented him and acquired Queen’s Counsel for him on a number of occasions during the past ten years. Is that correct?’

Marcus Kane didn’t even blink. ‘All our clients are entitled to legal representation, Mrs Greene, as I’m sure you know,’ he said smoothly.

‘I do know,’ Hillary said shortly. ‘I also know that Mr Hardwicke seemed to be very impressed with Meg Vickary. And that she didn’t, shall we say, exactly discourage him in his interest either. I’m sure that a smart man like you couldn’t have failed to notice.’

Marcus shifted slightly on his seat. ‘Liam was a bit of a ladies man, yes. He’d been married and divorced, I think, three or maybe even four times,’ he agreed cautiously.

‘Was he between wives when Meg Vickary did the paperwork on his case?’ She shot the questions at him rapidly, allowing him little time to think up lies.

‘I believe he was.’

‘Where is he now?’ she demanded.

‘I have no idea. As you’ll be aware, if you’ve done your
homework
,
Mr Hardwicke was found Not Guilty in his last court appearance,’ Marcus returned fire smoothly.

‘Were you jealous of him? You and Meg were, after all, involved in an affair of your own.’