I Let You Go (8 page)

‘You can drop me here,’ Tom said, unbuckling his seat belt while the car was still moving.

‘But we’re two streets away from the school.’

‘Dad, it’s fine. I’ll walk.’ He reached for the door handle and for a moment Ray thought he was going to open the door and simply hurl himself out.

‘All right, I get it!’ Ray pulled over to the side of the road, ignoring the road markings for the second time that morning. ‘You know you’re going to miss registration, don’t you?’

‘Laters.’

And with that, Tom was gone, slamming the car door and slipping between the traffic to cross the road. What on earth had happened to his kind, funny son? Was this terseness a rite of passage for a teenage boy – or something more? Ray shook his head. You’d think having kids would be a walk in the park compared to a complex crime investigation, but he’d take a suspect interview over a chat with Tom any day. And get more of a conversation, he thought wryly. Thank God Mags would be picking the kids up from school.

By the time Ray reached headquarters he had put Tom to the back of his mind. It didn’t take a genius to work out why the chief constable wanted to see him. The hit-and-run was almost six months old and the investigation had all but ground to a halt. Ray sat on a chair outside the oak-panelled office, and the chief’s PA gave him a sympathetic smile.

‘She’s just finishing up a call,’ she said. ‘It won’t be much longer.’

Chief Constable Olivia Rippon was a brilliant but terrifying woman. Rising rapidly through the ranks, she had been Avon and Somerset’s chief officer for seven years. At one stage tipped to be the next Met Commissioner, Olivia had ‘for personal reasons’ chosen to stay in her home force, where she took pleasure in reducing senior officers to gibbering wrecks at monthly performance meetings. She was one of those women who were born to wear uniform, her dark brown hair pulled into a severe bun, and solid legs hidden beneath thick black tights.

Ray rubbed his palms on his trouser legs to make sure they were perfectly dry. He had heard a rumour that the chief had once blocked a promising officer’s promotion to chief inspector because the poor man’s sweaty palms didn’t ‘inspire confidence’. Ray had no idea if it was true, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. They could get by on his inspector salary, but things were a bit tight. Mags was still on about becoming a teacher, but Ray had done the sums, and if he could manage another couple of promotions, they’d have the extra money they needed without her having to work. Ray thought about the morning’s chaos and decided Mags already did more than enough – she shouldn’t have to get a job just so they could afford a few luxuries.

‘You can go in now,’ the PA said.

Ray took a deep breath and pushed open the door. ‘Good morning, ma’am.’

There was silence as the chief made copious notes on a pad in her trademark illegible handwriting. Ray loitered by the door and pretended to admire the numerous certificates and photographs that littered the walls. The navy blue carpet was thicker and plusher than in the rest of the building, and an enormous conference table dominated one half of the room. At the far end, Olivia Rippon sat at a big curved desk. Finally, she stopped writing and looked up.

‘I want you to close the Fishponds hit-and-run case.’

It was clear he wasn’t going to be offered a seat, so Ray picked the chair closest to Olivia, and sat down regardless. She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

‘I think that if we just had a little more time—’

‘You’ve had time,’ Olivia said. ‘Five and a half months, to be exact. It’s an embarrassment, Ray. Every time the
Post
prints another of your so-called updates, it simply serves as a reminder of a case the police have failed to solve. Councillor Lewis rang me last night: he wants it buried, and so do I.’

Ray felt the anger building inside him. ‘Isn’t Lewis the one who opposed the residents’ bid for the limit on the estates to be dropped to twenty miles per hour?’

There was a beat, and Olivia regarded him coolly.

‘Close it, Ray.’

They looked at each other across the smooth walnut desk without speaking. Surprisingly, it was Olivia who gave in first, sitting back in her chair and clasping her hands in front of her.

‘You are an exceptionally good detective, Ray, and your tenacity does you credit. But if you want to progress, you need to accept that policing is about politics as much as it is investigating crime.’

‘I do understand that, ma’am.’ Ray fought to keep the frustration out of his voice.

‘Good,’ Olivia said, taking the lid off her pen and reaching for the next memo in her in-tray. ‘Then we’re in agreement. The case will be closed today.’

For once Ray was glad of the traffic that held him up on his way back to CID. He was not looking forward to telling Kate, and he wondered why that should be his overriding thought. She was so new to CID still, he supposed: she wouldn’t yet have been through the frustrations of having to file an investigation in which so much energy had been invested. Stumpy would be more resigned.

As soon as he got back to the station, he called them into his office. Kate came in first, carrying a mug of coffee she put down next to his computer, where three others sat, each half-full of cold black coffee.

‘Are they from last week?’

‘Yep – the cleaner refuses to wash them up any more.’

‘I’m not surprised. You can do them yourself, you know.’ Kate sat down, just as Stumpy came in and nodded a greeting to Ray.

‘Do you remember the car Brian and Pat saw on the CCTV for the hit-and-run?’ Kate said, as soon as Stumpy was sitting down. ‘The one that seemed to be in a hurry to get away?’

Ray nodded.

‘We can’t make out what type of car it is from the footage we’ve got, and I’d like to take it to Wesley. If nothing else we might be able to eliminate it from our enquiries.’

Wesley Barton was an anaemic, scrawny individual who had somehow secured approval as a police CCTV expert. Working from a windowless basement in a stuffy house on Redland Road, he used a staggering array of equipment to enhance CCTV images until they were suitable to be used as evidence. Ray assumed Wesley must be clean, given his police association, but there was something seedy about the whole set-up that made him shudder.

‘I’m sorry, Kate, but I can’t authorise the budget for that,’ Ray said. He hated the thought of telling her all her hard work was about to come to an abrupt end. Wesley was expensive, but he was good, and Ray was impressed with Kate’s lateral thinking. He hated admitting it, even to himself, but he’d taken his eye off the ball in recent weeks. All this business with Tom was distracting him, and for a moment he felt a stab of resentment towards his son. It was inexcusable to let his home life affect work, particularly such a high-profile case as this one. Not that it mattered, he thought bitterly, now that the chief had issued her decree.

‘It’s not a huge cost,’ Kate said, ‘I’ve spoken to him, and—’

Ray cut her off. ‘I can’t authorise the budget on anything,’ he said meaningfully. Stumpy looked at Ray. He’d been around the block enough times to know what was coming next.

‘The chief has told me to close the investigation,’ Ray said, keeping his eyes on Kate.

There was a brief pause.

‘I hope you told her where to stick it.’ Kate laughed, but no one joined in. She looked between Ray and Stumpy, and her face fell. ‘Are you serious? We’re just going to give up on it?’

‘There’s nothing to give up on,’ Ray said. ‘There isn’t anything else we can do. You’ve got nowhere with tracing the fog light casing—’

‘There are a dozen or more index numbers outstanding,’ Kate said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of mechanics who don’t keep paperwork for their jobs. That doesn’t mean I won’t be able to trace them, it just means I need more time.’

‘It’s a waste of effort,’ Ray said gently. ‘Sometimes you have to know when to stop.’

‘We’ve done everything we can,’ Stumpy said, ‘but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. No index number, no colour, no make or model: we need more, Kate.’

Ray was grateful for Stumpy’s backing. ‘And we don’t have more,’ he said. ‘So I’m afraid we need to draw a line under this investigation for the time being. Obviously, if a genuine development comes in, we’ll follow it up, but otherwise…’ He trailed off, conscious that he was sounding like one of the chief’s press releases.

‘This is down to politics, isn’t it?’ Kate said. ‘The chief says “jump” and we say “How high?”’ Ray realised how personally she was taking this.

‘Come on, Kate, you’ve been in the job long enough to know that sometimes there are difficult choices to make.’ He stopped abruptly, not wanting to patronise her. ‘Look, it’s been nearly six months and we have nothing concrete to go on. No witnesses, no forensics, nothing. We could throw all the resources in the world at this job and we’d still have no solid leads. I’m sorry, but we’ve got other investigations, other victims to fight for.’

‘Did you even try?’ Kate said, her cheeks flushed with anger. ‘Or did you just roll over?’

‘Kate,’ Stumpy said warningly, ‘you need to calm down.’

She ignored him and stared defiantly at Ray. ‘I suppose you’ve got your promotion to think about. It wouldn’t do to pick a fight with the chief, would it?’

‘That has nothing to do with it!’ Ray was trying to remain calm, but the retort came out louder than he had intended. They stared at each other. From the corner of his eye he could see Stumpy looking at him expectantly. Ray should be telling Kate to get out. To remember she was a DC in a busy CID office, and that if her boss said a case was closing, then it was closing. End of. He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak.

The trouble was that she was spot on. Ray didn’t want to close the hit-and-run job any more than Kate did, and there was a time when he’d have stood in front of the chief and argued his case the way Kate was doing now. Maybe he’d lost his touch, or maybe Kate was right: perhaps he did have too much of an eye on the next rank.

‘It’s tough, when you’ve put a lot of work in, I know,’ he said gently.

‘It’s not the work’ – Kate pointed to the photo of Jacob on the wall – ‘it’s that little boy. It just seems wrong.’

Ray remembered Jacob’s mother sitting on the sofa, grief etched on her face. He couldn’t counter Kate’s argument, and he didn’t try. ‘I’m really sorry.’ He cleared his throat, and tried to focus on something else. ‘What else has the team got on at the moment?’ he asked Stumpy.

‘Malcolm’s in court all week on the Grayson job, and he’s got a file to get in on the GBH in Queen’s Street – CPS have gone for a charge. I’m working on the intel from the Co-op robberies, and Dave’s seconded to the knife crime initiative. He’s at the college today doing some “community engagement”.’

Stumpy uttered the term as though it were a swear word, and Ray laughed.

‘Gotta move with the times, Stumpy.’

‘You can talk to those kids till you’re blue in the face,’ Stumpy said. ‘It’s not going to stop them carrying a blade.’

‘Well, maybe, but at least we’ll have tried.’ Ray scribbled a reminder to himself in his diary. ‘Let me have an update before morning meeting tomorrow, will you? And I’d like your thoughts on a knife amnesty to coincide with the school holidays. Let’s try and get as many off the streets as we can.’

‘Will do.’

Kate was staring at the floor, picking at the skin around her fingernails. Stumpy thumped her gently on the arm, and she turned to look at him.

‘Bacon sandwich?’ he said quietly.

‘It won’t make me feel better,’ Kate muttered.

‘No,’ Stumpy continued, ‘but it might make me feel better if you don’t spend all morning with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.’

Kate gave a half-hearted laugh. ‘I’ll see you up there.’

There was a pause, and Ray saw she was waiting until Stumpy had left the room. He closed the door and returned to his desk, sitting down and folding his arms in front of him. ‘Are you okay?’

Kate nodded. ‘I wanted to apologise, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’

‘I’ve had worse,’ Ray said with a grin. Kate didn’t smile and he realised she wasn’t in the mood for jokes. ‘I know this case means a lot to you,’ he said.

Kate looked again at Jacob’s photo. ‘I feel like I’ve let him down.’

Ray felt his own defences crumble. It was true, they had let Jacob down, but it wouldn’t help Kate to hear that. ‘You’ve given everything you had,’ he said. ‘That’s all you can ever do.’

‘It wasn’t enough though, was it?’ She turned to look at Ray and he shook his head.

‘No. It wasn’t enough.’

Kate left his office, closing the door behind her, and Ray thumped his desk hard. His pen rolled across the desktop and dropped on to the floor. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head. His hair felt thin and he closed his eyes, feeling suddenly very old and very tired. Ray thought of the senior officers he came across on a daily basis: most older than him, but a fair few younger, hurtling through the ranks without stopping. Did he have the energy to compete with them? Did he even want to?

All those years ago, when Ray joined the job, it had seemed very simple. Lock up the bad guys and keep the good folk safe. Pick up the pieces from stabbings and assaults; rapes and criminal damages, and do his bit to make the world a better place. But was he really doing that? Stuck in his office from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. most days, only getting out to a job when he turned a blind eye to the paperwork; forced to toe the corporate line even when it went against everything he believed.

Ray looked at Jacob’s file; stuffed with the results of wild-goose chases and fruitless enquiries. He thought of the bitterness on Kate’s face, and her disappointment that he hadn’t fought harder against the chief’s decision, and he hated the fact that she thought less of him as a result. But the chief’s words were still ringing in his ears, and Ray knew better than to go against direct orders, no matter how strongly Kate felt about it. He picked up Jacob’s file and placed it firmly in the bottom drawer of his desk.