Director's Cut (15 page)

When she walked from the small office she found three uniforms
and a detective sergeant waiting. There were a dozen more uniforms at
Hinckley but they were out, on the streets or pulling nights. The four
men turned toward her, asking the question. They all knew about her
affair with Wooderson.

“I might be seconded to HQ,” she said in a downbeat voice that
came at you full of London Town.

DS Sam Butler tut-tutted the idea. He was the only man on the team
she trusted. She could talk to him and know that it would go no further.
With him there was no innuendo, no eye contact that went on too long
and meant something else, no flirting whatsoever. Talking to him was
like talking to family. Safe and easy. And predictable. Once Cole had
gone and dinner had finished the booze had made conversation easy.
The baby had cried and she'd seen him as a father. Some men, not
many, were made for the job. Sam Butler was one of them. She'd
wondered fleetingly, what sort of father Cole would have made. Not
very good, very absent, was her guess. She'd held the baby. Lucy.
Arms and legs and big eyes that had stayed blue and a little smile that
was wind that kicked you in the middle.

“When?”

Butler's question dragged her back. “Monday, unless we can come
up with something new. Oh, Sam, we've got to. This is a real shit.”
“Don't worry. We've got a few days yet. I'll think of something.”
The DS gave her his best smile of encouragement but it wasn't
convincing.

She lowered her voice, “Jack's being an absolute arsehole.”
“Expected nothing less, did you?” Butler resisted an impulse to
mention office affairs and shrugged. “Men of his age, and mine come
to think of it, we tend to panic when we know it's all gone by and
there's fuck all in front.”

She threw him a grin. It came from nowhere and changed her mood
and his. Still smiling she said, “How can you say that with Lucy and
all?” She turned toward the door. “Think of something, Sam. Quickly.”
“I will, but in the office you shouldn’t be so familiar – you’ll get
people talking and they do enough of that already. You should try
sergeant or DS Butler or even skipper. I'm easy.”

She turned back. “You've always been easy Sam.” She stuck out
her tongue. It was pink, girlish, and caught Butler right where it hurt.
The door swung shut.

Hinckley nick was quiet; it was that time of the morning, the
uncivilized hour, the time when milkmen filching double rounds
started out. The few patrolling coppers were parked up in their
favourite corners, taking turns to close their eyes. A PC on the front
desk yawned and stretched. It was close to the end of his shift and he
was winding down, as he had been for the last two hours. The desk
phone rang. He listened for a few moments then pressed hold. Or at
least he meant to. Instead, he cut the line.

“It's Missing Persons, Sarge, about a message sent this afternoon.”
Sergeant Mills groaned. He'd been hoping for a quiet end to the
shift, now paperwork loomed large. He said, “Missing Persons? At this
hour? Are they taking the piss, or what? Who filed it?”

“Came from next door. Sam Butler.”

“Well?”

“Well what, Sarge?”

“Well, what do they say?”

“Oh, yes.” He examined the note he’d scribbled on his pad.
“They've made a link with these missing women and two more out of
area. The other two are pregnant.”

The Sergeant shook his head. “Pregnant? Are you sure it's for us?
Sounds like a wrong number to me. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll
leave a note on DS fucking Butler's desk asking him to get back to…
Did you get a name?”

The kozzer drew a quick breath.

“It's always a good idea to get a name, son, particularly if you're
going to ring them back. Stick with me. You'll learn something every
day.”

Margaret Domey was based at Sheerham and known in the office as
the psychologist from hell. When all five-four and slightly swollen
belly of her breezed into the nick the duty sergeant pretended to be
doing something else. Bollocks to that for a living. She wore a grey
two-piece, low heels, and thin lips. She wasn't unattractive and with
her slightly fuller figure a lot of the kozzers took more notice than
usual.

As she made her way to Cole's office uniforms stood aside and in
the IR the conversation died and male defences went up along with the
eyebrows.

“Margaret.”

“Rick.”

“Are you back?”

“Tomorrow. Heard a rumour about Geoff Maynard. Tell me it's not
true?”

“It's true, but it has nothing to do with your absence. I'll show you.”
Cole led her back into the incident room. The team pretended to be
hard at it, paperwork, screens, not looking up. She took in the action
boards and skimmed through the crime reports before shaking a
bemused head. “Interesting. What does Geoff say?”

“Nothing yet. We'll see.”

“But he is coming?”

Cole shrugged.

“He'll come. Sex and violence, it's irresistible. Of course he'll
come.”

In Cole's office again and with the door closed she said, “I did think
he was in the past. It was a comforting thought.”

He smiled easily, “I know what you mean.”

She said tightly, “He got too close last time. I'll make sure it doesn't
happen again.”

“A lot of us feel the same way but the second attack sealed it. You
should take a closer look.”

“Tomorrow. I'll have a look tomorrow. They're letting me back for
a couple of hours a day.”

“Sam's been on. He'd like you to spend some time at Hinckley. The
missing women.”

“That old chestnut. For goodness sake, he's got – ”

Cole cut her short. “He's got an idea or two. I think you'll be able to
help him and – ”

“And Sam needs all the help he can get. Tell me something new?”
Cole smiled. A couple of weeks with her head down the pan hadn't
softened her at all.

“How are you, Margaret?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You want it in one?”

“Go for it.”

“Pregnancy is shit. Don't let anyone ever tell you any different.”
“Sounds good to me.”

Her eyes narrowed further. “I know why I like you, Cole. It's your
sense of humour.” She smiled. Her lips filled out and for just a
moment she looked just right. “I'll see you tomorrow. Right now I'm
going to make the most of today. I'm going to spend some money
which is every woman's favourite pastime. I've got my eye on a very
old chestnut cooking pot.”

Cole remembered that she had an interest in antiques. He guessed
her home was cluttered with old things and that there would be little
room for a child.

“You know the shop, down the road from the Indian? The
Gallery?”

“I know it. Never been in, of course.”

“Of course. But that's where I'm going now. I want the chestnut
pan. But I want the feel-good factor too. I want to spend.”
Cole laughed. Maybe he liked her, after all.

There was another man on the way whose feelings toward her had
never been made clear. And she was frightened of him because he
knew too much. He was the only man in the world who had ever made
her feel inadequate. More than that even, for she had been quite happy
with the subservient role. And now, with Geoff Maynard’s return more
than just a possibility, her feelings were edged with apprehension.
There was the challenge, certainly, but with that came the possibility of
failure. And failure, for Margaret Domey, was not an option.
It was some time later when the phone rang and Margaret Domey
featured again.

“Ricky?”

“Yes.”

“John Domey.”

“Hello, John. How are you?”

“Good. Listen, old boy, you haven't seen my wife, have you? She
mentioned she was popping in.”

“Yes. This morning. Is there a problem?”

“No, not at all. It crossed my mind she'd got involved in something
over there and forgotten the time. You know how she is? Once she gets
involved with work everything else goes by the board.”

Cole waited for more.

“We had an appointment at the hospital, that's all.”

“Nothing serious, is it, John?”

“No, no, no. A touch of blood pressure, a scan, nothing serious. But
I expected her back. She's probably gone directly there, forgot that I
was going to go with her. You know what she’s like.”

“Of course. She stayed a few minutes. She was going off to buy…
Hang on, it will come back to me.”

“A nineteenth-century cooking pot.”

“That's it.”

“She's had her eye on it for some time. There's a place on the
dining-room wall that's been earmarked.”

A silence came between them. Something cold caressed Cole's
back. He said, “John, get back to me, will you, when she shows up? I'd
like to know that she's OK.”

“Will do. Absolutely.”

Cole hung up, considered the call for a few moments then glanced
at the paperwork in front of him. He sighed. This wasn’t police work.
It was something, but it wasn’t police work.

Mid-afternoon Butler found the note from night shift and made the
call.

When Anian arrived just after five he called her to his desk, showed
her the note and said formally, "I'm going to go with Cole on this.
We'll concentrate on the pregnancies. You check the index, I’ll check
Catchem.”

Catchem controlled the national database on sex crimes and killings
of girls and young women.

He went on, “And that painting in Ticker's living room…”
“It was porn.”

“Art, girl, art. But obviously Helen Harrison spent a long time with
the artist, right? Just a thought.”

Anian hesitated then said quickly, “Actually, Sam, I've already paid
him a visit. He's painting my picture.”

Butler frowned. “Go on?”

“I said I was a friend of Mrs Harrison, saw the painting and wanted
something well… Not like that.”

“You didn't flash your warrant card?”

“No. Should I have done?” She fell in and reddened.

“You should have told me. We're supposed to be a team, Anian.”
“I know, I know. It was such a long shot. You’re not angry?”
“No, surprised. It's done now. What's he like?”

“He's an old man, sixty or thereabouts and old-fashioned, weird but
harmless. I've got a couple more sessions booked. If nothing else
comes of it I've got a painting. He's really very good.”

Butler nodded. “OK, see how you go. But keep me informed.” His
voice didn’t betray him but apprehension edged into his thoughts.
They worked through the evening towards the last bell. Eventually
Butler called a halt. His mood had lifted. He said, "Come on girl, I'll
buy you a drink. Just in case you do get transferred you better know
where the watering hole is.”

She checked the office clock. “You seen the time?”

“I know this little place that's open all night.”

The White Horse was thick with smoke and the smell of smoke and
booze. Dog-ends spilled from ashtrays and glasses stuck to tables.
It was a British boozer.

A smoker’s bar.

It was a place that, like many that coppers frequented, hadn’t
needed an extension to its licensing hours because they had never been
observed anyway.

It was, therefore, an hour after the last bell had closed the doors and
pulled the curtains on the dim lights. The place was busy with stale
kozzers on the back-end of their shift doing what kozzers did best and
that meant that the jovial old owner with his proud belly hanging over
his leather belt and his sour-faced, thin-haired wife were full-time
pulling pints and jerking shorts. There were a few others in the bar
beside the policemen, good-as-gold regulars who made no noise when
they left and wouldn’t even cough if they thought it might cause
offence, and that was good enough.

ence than would otherwise have been the case,
“That sounds like a cracking good idea.”

Chas Walker, ex-army, REME, went on, “You need it strong to put
up with the job nowadays. In our squad we’ve got two fucking
dyslexics that take twenty minutes to read a caution and a Muslim who
stops chasing villains to get his prayer-mat out.”

Their conversation took an unlikely turn as they saw a tall rangy
man carrying his drink toward Cole's table.

Walker frowned. Company and Cole didn't go together. Not for a
while.

Martin James nodded as memory put a name to the face and he put
them right. “That’s Geoff Maynard,” he said soberly. “A dangerous
bastard.”

“Him and Cole together,” Walker mused for he had heard the
stories. “Should be interesting.”

Martin James nodded and, as his eyes dulled, he said seriously,
“Maybe, as long as you don't get caught in the flak. And there's always
plenty of that.” He was remembering back to another case when rules
were written for someone else.

Geoff Maynard found Rick Cole at a table at the back, partly secluded
from the bar and the woodentops by a couple of thick timber
stanchions treated to make them look ancient. They'd even got some
dummy woodworm holes drilled in. It was a barrier of Cole's choosing.
Geoff Maynard said, “What are you going to do when they ban
smoking in public places?”

“They wouldn’t dare, would they?”

“You never know with these clowns.”

“God save us from the meddlers and their junk-free lifestyles. The
graveyards are full of them, smokeless, vegetarian, composting like the
rest of us.”

Maynard smiled. “You take the average family and they haven't got
a clue about what goes on, not the things we see. We see things that no
one should see; we hear things that no one should hear. Tell me how
police officers hold on to their sanity?”

“Do they?”

“You're right. They don't. That's why they never make real friends.
That's why their marriages seldom work. No one can live with them,
except nurses, maybe, who see the results.”

Maynard eased into a chair opposite and placed his drink on the
table.

“Hello Geoff.”

“Rick.”

“You're not a police officer.”