Ash & Bone (11 page)

Stone wall: try again.

So far Forensics had given them little or nothing. No skin beneath the victim's fingernails from where Maddy had sought to fight off her attacker, no saliva, no semen; what resembled a snail's slow trail across her body had proved to be exactly that. The only blood was Maddy's own. All the indications were that she had been raped, penetration had certainly taken place; a condom had presumably been used though one had not had been found, discarded, at or near the scene. Shoe prints and boot prints were too confused, too partial to be of any direct use. Of any possible weapon there was no sign.

The other members of Maddy's yoga class had all been interviewed; Maddy had chatted to one or two of the class before the session started, a few more once it was over, nothing consequential. She had been among the last to leave. The cafe in the centre had closed at seven and there had been few other people still on the premises, all of them tracked down and spoken to. Occupants of the properties backing on to the centre had been canvassed; appeals made for anyone who might have been using the lane or the old railway line as a cut-through or to walk their dogs to come forward.

The caretaker remembered seeing someone, almost certainly Maddy, heading off along the lane towards Crouch Hill, the opposite direction to the one she would have taken if she were going directly home. But then Crouch Hill would have quickly led her down to the Broadway and bars, restaurants and cafes aplenty, where she could either have been meeting someone by arrangement or meaning to have supper or a drink alone. Except that none of the waiters or bar staff recognised Maddy as having been amongst their customers that evening.

So had she been attacked almost immediately after leaving the centre — risky, with others still presumably within earshot — or had she, indeed, walked down to the Broadway and later returned by the same route? And was her attacker some stalker, as yet unknown, someone waiting for her, out there amongst the shadows, waiting for his chance? Or had it been a random act, Maddy's misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Too many questions still unanswered.

'Phone, ma'am,' said one of the office staff, interrupting her train of thought. 'For you.'

'Who is it?'

'A Frank Elder? He's called several times before. Something about Maddy Birch, apparently.'

Karen sighed. It was way past seven already. Staff pulling in overtime. What she wanted was to go home, open a bottle of red and drink the first glass while she soaked in a hot bath.

'Okay.'

Karen perched on the end of a desk, one foot resting on the seat of a chair. Across the room she could see Lee Furness slowly scrolling down through a list of names on the computer.

'Hello, this is DCI Shields.'

'Frank Elder.'

'I believe you've got some information about Maddy Birch.'

'Not information exactly.'

'What then?'

'I worked with her. Maddy. In Lincolnshire.'

'How long ago?'

A pause. 'Eighty-seven, eighty-eight.'

'And you were what? Close? Close colleagues? What?'

'Close, I don't know. Not really. We worked together, that's all. I was just wondering how things were going. The investigation.'

'How things are going? What do you think this is?
Crimewatch?'

'I'm sorry, I was given your name…'

'Look, maybe you should talk to the press office. If anyone. Just hold on and I'll get you transferred.'

'No, it's okay. It doesn't matter. I'm sorry to have taken your time.'

Karen heard a click as the phone was replaced.

Just about the last thing she needed, some old geezer with too much time on his hands.

'Bloody shame,' Linda Mills had said, when she heard of Maddy's death.

'Shocking,' Trevor Ashley agreed.

'Now we'll never get the chance to talk to her again.'

Ashley looked at her sharply, but kept his counsel.

Things moved slowly on. It was the second week of December, some eight weeks since the inquiry into the Grant shooting had opened, three, give or take, since Maddy Birch's body had been found off Crouch Hill.

Despite the often open hostility of many of those who were interviewed, the inquiry had kept, doggedly, to the rails. Linda, frustrated by their lack of progress, had become grimmer and more short-tempered even as her superior seemed to become more avuncular and benign. But for all of their probing, questioning, reconstruction, after almost two months there was no proof of any wrongdoing, no reprimand, no charge.

That Grant was a major villain was beyond doubt, the presumption that he was close to fleeing the country well-founded, as was the supposition that he would be armed. The logistics of the raid itself left something to be desired and a recommendation to review planning procedures would be attached as a codicil to the final report. At base, however, the facts spoke for themselves: Grant had fatally wounded one officer and if Mallory had not acted as he had there was every reason to believe he would have killed another.

End of story.

Wrap it up, dot the i's and cross the t's, sign your name and leave.

Honour satisfied and justice seen to be done.

When it came down to it, whatever her lingering doubts, Linda Mills would be glad to shake the dust of London off her feet. Ashley had warned her what it would be like, that she would feel isolated and embattled and regarded as the enemy, and he'd been right. The experience, though, had been something she wanted, something to add to her profile, broaden her CV.

'I owe you both a vote of thanks,' the Assistant Commissioner said in his office. 'A difficult task professionally executed.'

'I owe you a slap-up dinner,' Ashley said later, broad grin on his face. 'Prawn cocktail, steak and chips, black forest gateau, the whole bit.'

'You owe me,' Linda told him, 'a sight more than that.'

* * *

The day after the final report had been delivered to the printer, the day before the bound copy was delivered to the Assistant Commissioner, she had been sitting on the low steps outside the Portakabin that had remained their temporary home, smoking a longed-for cigarette.

She had scarcely heard Mallory as he crossed the car park, light of foot, only glancing up at the last moment and dropping her cigarette hastily down, like a fourth-former caught behind the legendary bike sheds.

'Don't worry,' Mallory said. 'Your secret's safe with me.'

As she stood up, Linda squashed the smouldering butt beneath her foot.

'We're all guilty of something, big or small,' Mallory said. 'Wouldn't be human, else.' The smile lingered in his eyes. 'Here,' he said, taking a packet of Benson & Hedges from the side pocket of his blazer. Blue blazer and brown trousers. Highly polished shoes. 'Have one of mine.'

'No, thank you, sir.'

Mallory shrugged and produced a lighter. 'I was hoping I might bump into you,' he said, the smoke drifting towards Linda's face.

'Sir?'

'Before you shut up shop and turn tail for Hatfield…'

'Hertford, sir. It's Hertford, actually.'

'Hertford, Hatfield, Hitchin - all the same. Penny-ante little market towns with scarce a pot to piss in. Low-grade drug dealing and a handful of public-order offences of a weekend the best you can hope for.'

Linda nodded noncommittally.

'Always the worry,' Mallory said, 'let one of your kind out of the box and you never know which way they'll jump. Chancy that. Like letting off a firework in the middle of the bonfire, Guy Fawkes Night. Any bloody thing could happen.' Almost imperceptibly, he moved closer towards her. 'Someone could even get burned.'

For a moment, maybe more, his eyes bore into her, before, with a deft smile, he stepped away.

'But you now,' he said, 'no need to worry by all accounts'. Everything by the rules. Light the blue touch-paper and stand well clear.'

'You've seen the report,' Linda said, challenging.

'Place like this, difficult to keep things under wraps.'

'But you have seen it. A copy at least.'

'You think so?'

She knew it. He'd read it, relished and relaxed. Exonerated in Times New Roman, double spaced. Her signature at the bottom.

'You may think,' Mallory said, 'I owe you a favour.'

'Not at all, sir. We did our job, that's all. Just like you said. And I was only the junior officer, after all.'

'Junior, maybe, but always pushing hardest, eager for the truth. Gave poor Maddy Birch a rough ride, from what I hear. Had her up against the ropes. To mix a metaphor or two. Still, no gain having your card marked by a fool and you're no fool.'

A wink and a smile and he was on his way, leaving Linda wondering if there wasn't something crucial that they'd missed.

* * *

'Cocky bastard,' Ashley said when she told him. 'Not enough to be ahead of the game, he has to let you know.'

'Why me, though? Why not you? You're in charge.'

Ashley laughed. 'Mallory's way of thinking, not worth getting out of bed to put one over on old jossers like me. But you. You're sharp, bright, on the way up. A woman, too. If he can intimidate you a little, then he will.'

'I don't see what he stands to gain.'

'Right now? Aside from pumping up his vanity? Control. Leverage, some time in the future. Who knows?'

She looked at him keenly. 'You think we've let him get away with something, don't you?'

Ashley shrugged. 'This time, I honestly don't know. But I did my time in the Met, before opting for a quieter life. Coppers like Mallory, old school, they've been getting away with stuff for years. Big, small, more often than not just to prove they can. It's what gives them a buzz.'

Thinking about the way Mallory had materialised almost silently alongside her and the sly superiority of his smile, Linda shuddered as if someone had just stepped close to the corners of her grave.

It bit into him, like a tick that had infiltrated beneath his skin. No matter where he went, what he did. The routines with which he'd bolstered up his life since moving west no longer seemed enough. Each day he made a point of listening to the radio, scouring the papers for news.

On page 2 of the
Telegraph,
mid-December, something caught his eye: the investigation into two deaths in a police raid carried out a little over two months before. The paper's crime correspondent, claiming to have seen a leaked copy of the report, forecast a positive outcome to the official inquiry carried out by Superintendent Trevor Ashley and officers from the Hertfordshire Force.

Alongside, two columns wide, there was a photograph of a smiling Detective Superintendent George Mallory, taken outside the Old Bailey, his DCI, Maurice Repton, standing several paces behind, almost squeezed out of the frame. At the time, we were reminded, Mallory's commanding officer had been quick to attest to the professionalism with which the raid had been planned and carried out. A further paragraph referred to the tragic death of Detective Constable Paul Draper, a small head-and-shoulders shot rendering him almost impossibly young.
If it had not been for Superintendent Mallory's quick thinking and resolute action, more lives might have been lost.
Nothing about Draper's young widow and child.

Two pages on, a single paragraph near the foot of the page attested to the fact that the investigation into the death of Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch was still ongoing and that no arrests had so far been made.

Let it alone, Frank, he told himself. Let it be.

After yet another restless night he rose early, made coffee, walked down to the coast path to clear his head, rang Robert Framlingham and caught the London train.

* * *

Paddington station was thick with travellers, the natural hubbub and bustle overlaid with the saccharine wail of poorly amplified voices wishing them all a merry little Christmas. As Elder crossed the forecourt, a
Big Issue
seller with tinsel in his hair and two extravagant sprigs of mistletoe tied either side of his head like horns, lurched towards him, puckering up rouged lips.

The Underground platform was dangerously crowded — delays on the District, Circle and Bakerloo — and, when it arrived, the first train was near impossible to board. At Oxford Circus there was a five-minute queue to get out of the station.

In daylight, the skeletal snowflakes and reindeer that hung high above the street looked ugly and incomplete. Shop windows burgeoned with tawdry and expensive imprecations to buy, and Elder, hating it, hating every bit of it, felt nonetheless guilty he had neither bought a present for Katherine nor thought of one; had, in fact, bought nothing for anyone.

The restaurant was on one of the narrow streets that ran between Regent Street and Great Portland Street, home, for the most part, to small clothing wholesalers, their windows sprayed with fake snow. A sign on the door wished Elder Merry Christmas in Italian and inside red and green streamers looped cheerily along the walls.

Framlingham was already seated at a corner table, tucking into an antipasto of tuna and fagiolini. He was wearing a tweed suit that reminded Elder of damp heather, a cream shirt and a mustard tie.

Levering his tall frame out of his chair, the Chief Superintendent held out his hand. 'Frank, how long?'

'Seven years, eight?'

'And since you and I were the scourge of every bully-boy and malefactor in Shepherd's Bush?'

Elder smiled. 'Thirteen or so.'

A waiter took his coat and pulled out his chair.

When Elder had first moved down to London with Joanne, Robert Framlingham had been his immediate superior. Now, after one or two high-profile successes, his standing, as head of the Murder Review Unit, was growing. He had a house in Chiswick that he'd had the foresight to buy against the boom, and a cottage in Dorset, near the coast. Sailing was his passion.

There was a wife whom Elder had met no more than once or twice; three children, the youngest still at university, the others out in the world, paying back, no doubt, their student loans.