A Narrow Return (14 page)

The desk sergeant was an old crony of his, and recognized him immediately. They chatted for a short while, but desk sergeants were canny beasts, and without Andy having to ask him, he soon pointed him down into the depths where CRT hung their hats.

‘Hillary Greene’s the gal you want,’ the desk sergeant called to his retreating back, and grinned to himself as old Andy waved a thanks. The poor old guy must be shitting himself, scared stiff that the wonder girl was going to succeed where he’d failed. Nobody liked to look a chump, retired or not. It was a shame that. He’d been a good copper had Andy Squires.

But not in Hillary Greene’s class, and no mistake. They were currently taking bets on how long it would take the newly-back-in-harness Hillary Greene to solve her first cold case. He himself had a tenner on her bringing it in before the end of the month.

The desk sergeant heaved a sigh, and went back to his crossword puzzle.

Jimmy looked up at the stranger in the doorway. ‘Yes, sir, can I help you?’

Andy nodded. ‘I was looking for Hillary Greene. I’m DI Squires. Sorry, ex-DI.’

Jimmy grinned and got up, holding out his hand. ‘Sir, glad to meet you. I’m ex-job myself. Sergeant James Jessop. I know the guv was hoping to speak to you at some point. Hang on, I’ll go and fetch her.’

He left, returning a scant moment later with a good-looking redhead.

Andy took a deep breath. So this was the legendary Hillary Greene. His palms felt slightly damp as they reached out to shake her hand.

H
illary stepped forward as ex-DI Andy Squires turned around. He looked to be in his early seventies, and was one of those lean men with an exceptionally rounded pot belly, probably due to drinking too much beer. He’d kept a full head of hair, but it was dirty-white in colour, with a yellowish tinge. If his hands had been the same colour, she’d have said it was due to nicotine staining. His eyes were vaguely dark, vaguely bloodshot, but he was wearing a clean pair of heavy-material black trousers, and his knitted dark blue sweater was equally clean.

‘DI Greene,’ Andy said, but Hillary quickly shook her head.

‘Not any more. I’m a civilian consultant now. Call me Hillary.’

‘Sorry.’ Course. I was in the Bull the other day, and I heard you’d pulled one of my old cases. I just thought I’d pop in and see if you wanted to pick my brains.’

‘I’d love to. Jimmy, how about some coffee all round? Please, Mr Squires, take a seat.’

‘Thanks. Call me Andy.’

They all sat and sipped the not totally unpalatable coffee for a few moments. ‘So, you’ve been retired long?’ Hillary asked affably.

‘Nearly thirteen years now. Bloody hell, where’s the time gone?’ Andy moaned.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Hillary said with a smile, as Jimmy snorted and echoed the sentiments. ‘Me and Jimmy here, as you can see, just couldn’t keep away,’ Hillary added. ‘You miss the job too?’

‘Not so much as I want to come back to it,’ Andy said after a few moments of thought. He looked faintly surprised to be hearing himself say it. ‘Of course, I think about it often. Especially the ones that get away, you know?’

Hillary did.

‘Anne McRae was one of them for you, I take it?’ she asked, careful to keep her tone emotionless. The last thing she wanted was for him to get proprietorial or defensive.

Andy sighed. ‘Yeah. I guess she is. I can still see her now – a pretty blonde lass, laying out on her kitchen floor, with the rolling pin that killed her laying beside her. It seemed so damned
wrong
, you know?’

Again, Hillary did. Every death you investigated was different. As a general rule, dead junkies made you tired and sad. RTAs made you depressed and grateful that it hadn’t been you or yours in the mangled wreckage – which in turn made you feel guilty for thinking it. Domestics could make you angry. And then there were the ones like Anne McRae. The ones who just didn’t fit. And Hillary could easily see why the death of a young mother of three, being bludgeoned to death in her own kitchen whilst in the middle of making her family a meal, would sit heavily and uneasily on the senior investigating officer.

‘I’ve read and re-read the file, of course,’ Hillary said, getting down to it, whilst Jimmy unobtrusively switched on a tape recorder. ‘You liked the sister for it, right? Debbie Gregg.’

‘Oh yeah. She had it all – means, motive and opportunity. And she was spitting mad with her sister. I don’t know if that was because she still loved that useless husband of hers, or whether she was just floored because her younger, prettier sister had poached him from her. But I’d never seen a woman more bubbling with rage.’

‘When did she find out about the affair exactly?’

Andy sighed heavily over his coffee mug. ‘She claims she didn’t know about it until after the killing, when we were nosing around the neighbours and some of them put us on to Shane.’

‘You think she was lying? That she knew long before then?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Giving her motive.’

‘And she would have had access to her sister’s house. And no alibi for the time.’

‘Home alone, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And Shane Gregg?’

‘Cast iron alibi.’

‘What was he like?’ Hillary pressed. ‘It’s a bit of pain not being able to interview him.’

‘Right. He died in a car crash a couple of years later, yeah? To be honest, I wouldn’t have pegged him as a ladies’ man. I reckon he was going through a mid-life crisis or something. He swore up and down that Anne instigated the affair, and he just went where he was led.’

‘You believe him, or was he just bullshitting?’ Jimmy asked, with a man-to-man grin. Andy shrugged.

‘To be honest, I never did make up my mind. The lady was dead, and couldn’t defend herself. On the other hand, like I said, I didn’t have Shane Gregg pegged as a sexual predator.’

‘Right. You found no other evidence of her having any affairs?’ Hillary asked, again careful to keep her voice emotionless.

‘No. None.’

Hillary nodded. She was not about to tell him about Mark Burgess, or that she was sure that the eldest daughter, Lucy, almost certainly knew about other affairs her mother had had. It would smack too much of rubbing his nose in it, and she wanted him focused and co-operative.

‘I’m surprised she seemed to be so popular,’ Hillary changed tack. ‘Attractive women, and especially ones who cheated on their husbands, tend to be disliked as a general rule.’

‘Yeah, I know. But I couldn’t find anyone who had a bad word to say about her, apart from her sister, of course. Oh, and her mother-in-law.’ Andy rolled his eyes. ‘What a harpy she was.’

Hillary blinked. ‘There’s not much about her in the files. This is Melvin McRae’s mother we’re talking about, yeah?’

‘That’s right – her own parents were both deceased. Her mother-in-law was in her late seventies at the time. I think she was at bingo or something when Anne was killed.’

‘But she bad-mouthed Anne?’ Hillary pressed.

‘Oh yeah. Said she wasn’t surprised at all to learn that she’d been sleeping around. She even made hints that the youngest child, Jenny, probably wasn’t her real grandchild.’

‘Crikey,’ Jimmy put in. ‘I bet that caused some feathers to fly.’

‘Oh, she never said it in front of her son – she was too canny for that. But he can’t have been oblivious to the fact that his mother and his wife never got on.’

‘You checked her out?’ Hillary asked sharply, then could have kicked herself, as Andy flushed angrily.

‘’Course I did. Put a constable on it. Like I said, she was at WI meeting, or jumble sale or something.’

Hillary quickly backtracked. ‘Sorry, of course, you said.’

‘Anyway, I didn’t take her bile all that seriously. I got the feeling that Mother Theresa wouldn’t have been good enough for her little boy. He was an only kid. Mother was a bit reluctant to let go of the apron strings. You know what I mean?’

‘Got it. But apart from the disgruntled mother-in-law-from-hell nobody struck you as holding a particular grudge against the vic?’

‘No. Everything seemed to point straight to Debbie Gregg. No one else had anything approaching a motive. It wasn’t robbery. No strangers were seen hanging around the house prior to the murder, or entering it on the day it happened. And back then there were still plenty of neighbours around – it’s not like it is nowadays, with everybody out at work. There were several old couples who had nothing to do but “people watch” as they call it nowadays. Plus a stay-at-home mum with two infant twins. It was a sunny day – folks were out and about in their gardens. Strangers would have stood out.’

Hillary nodded. Of course, she’d been a cop for too long not to know that that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Anyone watching the house from a distance could gauge when it would be a good time to make his move; old folks slept in the hot summer afternoons, and a mother with twins had lots of things to distract her.

‘What was Debbie’s attitude to questioning?’ Hillary asked curiously.

Andy sighed. ‘About what you’d expect. At first she was all co-operative and anything-I-can-do-to-help. Then she got antsy when she figured out she was our prime suspect. Then she got herself a solicitor and finally stopped speaking to us altogether. Got defiant, got angry.’

‘And you just couldn’t place her at the scene?’

‘No,’ Andy said reluctantly.

‘No forensics on her?’

‘Oh, her presence was all over the house, but then it would be. She was family – she visited regularly. There wasn’t much forensics one way or the other – apart from the stray hair found on the body – everything else was family.’

Hillary nodded. They went over it again for nearly an hour, with both Jimmy and Hillary wracking their brains for a new lead, but when Andy finally left, they’d come up with nothing helpful.

‘Well, that’s about it,’ Hillary said, glancing at her watch as Jimmy came back from walking the retired DI out of the building. ‘It’s nearly five. Might as well call it a day.’

It was a novel experience for her to quit every day at five on the dot. When she’d been working before on a murder case, overtime – unpaid of course – had been the norm. But as she had to keep reminding herself, Anne McRae had been dead for twenty years.

Office hours meant nothing to her.

That night, she went into The Boat for the first time, and was promptly cheered by the regulars.

‘Thought I saw the Mollern parked up beyond the bridge,’ the landlord said by way of a greeting, pouring, without having to be asked, her favourite glass of Rioja and setting it down in front of her at the bar. ‘Then, when you never came in, I thought you were ignoring us. Or maybe you’d sold the old girl on, and there was a stranger living aboard.’

‘Sorry, John. I haven’t been in because I’ve been busy getting stuff sorted out. I’ve actually got a job.’

The next half an hour passed pleasantly as each brought the other up to date on their lives since they’d last talked.

‘By the by, I don’t suppose you want to buy back that old car of yours, do you? You know, the one you sold my Colin,’ the landlord asked, after he’d left her to serve a couple of pints of cider to two regulars who were organizing a dart’s match.

Hillary felt her heart actually lift.

‘What, Puff?’ she asked, a tentative grin creeping over her face.

‘Dunno about that. He calls her Junkheap,’ John said, grinning at Hillary’s outraged expression. ‘Thing is, he’s finally saved up enough cash for this little babe-magnet he’s got his eye on, and is looking to sell it on. He’ll let you have it cheap.’

‘I should bloody well think so,’ Hillary said, ‘considering I practically gave it away in the first place.’ Then, as the landlord was still spluttering with laughter, said cautiously, ‘How much we talking about?’

The next morning, being a Friday, had that usual little air of excitement about it that told everyone that the weekend was nigh. When she bicycled in and locked up her trusty steed, the sun was beginning to peep through a layer of cloud, and several uniforms milling around in the lobby were full of the joys of spring.

She took off her coat and bag in her stationery cupboard, then walked in through to the office.

‘Hello. Sam, Vivienne, I have a little job for you.’

Vivienne sighed audibly. Sam looked interested. Briefly she went through their chat with DI Squires yesterday.

‘I want you to re-check the mother-in-law’s alibi,’ Hillary said. ‘When we talked to ex-DI Squires, he said at first that she was at bingo, then he thought it might have been a WI meeting or a jumble sale. I got the idea he only put one DC on it, and he may not have done as thorough a job as I’d like.’

‘Oh for Pete’s sake, she was an old woman,’ Vivienne said. ‘She must have been dead for yonks.’

‘Almost certainly,’ Hillary agreed evenly. ‘But that doesn’t mean to say that she couldn’t have killed her daughter-in-law. When I was your age, my sergeant had a case where a ninety-two-year-old committed murder. Spry old sod, the sort who could run marathons. He took exception to a seventy-two-year-old who was trying to get off with a woman he had his eye on. Just because they’re a wrinkly, doesn’t mean they can’t kill.’

Vivienne sighed again, even more audibly.

Jimmy looked as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to get angry or laugh. Eventually he decided yet another reprimand would be a waste of breath, and let it pass.

‘Go back over the file,’ Hillary said, addressing Sam, ‘and find out the details and then get on with checking it out. Interview whoever you have to.’

Sam nodded eagerly, and pounced on the file. Whilst he read and made notes, Vivienne did her nails.

Hillary went back to her stationery cupboard until she heard the youngsters leave. Then, with a sigh, she went down the corridor and tapped on Steven Crayle’s door.

‘Come in.’

He looked up as Hillary walked in, and leaned back in his chair. Today, she was dressed in a pale lilac pencil skirt and matching jacket, with a white blouse. He felt that instinctive quickening of interest which so annoyed him, and squashed it firmly.

‘We’re making some progress with Anne McRae, sir. You have five minutes?’

Crayle thought at once that he’d always have time for Hillary Greene, then frowned at the thought, and nodded.

Hillary frowned right back at him. ‘I can always come back if you’re busy, sir.’

‘No, I’m not busy. And call me Steven.’

‘Yes, si … Steven.’ She took a seat and brought him up to date. She was concise but left nothing of significance out. Crayle listened to her voice, liking it, and listened to what she had to say, liking it even more. He had to admit – the commander had called it right. She was good. Very good. Already she was unearthing suspects that the original team hadn’t been able to find.

When she was finished, he was tapping his pen thoughtfully on the desktop.

‘You need to get Mark Burgess’s DNA and compare it with the hair fibre,’ he ordered briskly.

‘Already got Jimmy on getting a warrant.’

‘And you think the eldest girl – Lucy is it? – might have knowledge about the identity of some of her mother’s other lovers?’

Hillary stirred. ‘Let’s just say, I think she’s holding back on us. I’d like to take another crack at her later. I’ve got the youngsters investigating her recent activities. I’ll ask Sam for an update on that when he gets back to HQ. I’d like a little more leverage before tackling her again. She’s got a hard shell, and it’ll take some cracking.’

‘The mother-in-law seems a stretch,’ Crayle said, watching her carefully.

‘She probably is,’ Hillary acknowledged readily. ‘But until we know, she can’t be ruled out. Doting mothers can go postal, as we both know. If she was reasonably fit, I can’t see why she couldn’t have hit Anne with the rolling pin. The victim wouldn’t see her as a threat, and so wouldn’t be on her guard. And you read the post mortem report – Anne McRae had a fairly thin skull. The ME didn’t rule out a woman as a possible killer.’