By a Narrow Majority (15 page)

‘Wasn’t she there when Janine brought Percy in?’

‘No. She was doing the grocery shopping, it seems.’

‘Oh hell! Is there an interview room free?’

‘Five is, guv.’

‘Have her in there then,’ Hillary said, getting up with a wince.

Tommy frowned. ‘Guv, you’re still on sick leave.’

‘I know. But it won’t hurt to see what she has to say.’

Tommy went reluctantly, and Hillary had only just sat herself down in room five when he came back in with Rita Matthews. She was dressed in a shin-length brown dress, and
a long raincoat in more or less the same colour. Her face was flushed red, and her eyes glittered as she sat down. ‘What’s all this nonsense about our Percy being arrested?’ she asked, without preamble. ‘I hadn’t stepped off the bus when Julie told me about it.’

Hillary didn’t ask who Julie was. She didn’t need to. In any small village, information was relayed faster than the speed of sound.

Hillary quickly set the tape running, introduced herself, Rita Matthews and Tommy Lynch, and stated the time and place. Only then did she answer the question. ‘I’m afraid we’ve found a witness who saw your husband in Freehold Street at around 6.30, on the night Mr Dale was murdered, Mrs Matthews,’ she said. ‘Won’t you tell me why you lied about your husband’s whereabouts that night?’ she asked gently.

Rita Matthews sighed heavily. ‘Because the daft sod had already said we were at home together, hadn’t he?’

Hillary nodded. ‘But you knew that wasn’t true?’

‘Course I did. He was where he always is every Monday night. Playing cards with his mates in Fred Turnkey’s garden shed.’

Hillary opened her mouth, then closed it again. ‘Tommy, I think you’d better get Sergeant Tyler in here,’ she said quietly, and then for the tape, added quietly, ‘Detective Constable Lynch has just left the room.’

Janine Tyler could feel her face flame as Rita Matthews snapped, ‘Listen, you daft bugger, stop playing the fool and tell them what’s what.’

Rita and Percy Matthews, Mel and herself, were now all in interview room three. She’d taken Rita Matthews’ testimony in interview room five with a stony face, suspecting that Hillary Greene was watching her from the observation room, and crowing with glee.

In that, she was wrong. Hillary, after Janine had returned
with Tommy, had left to go home. She knew Tommy would explain everything, and she had no desire to watch her young sergeant’s humiliation. Besides, she had to get back to meet the district nurse.

In the parking lot she’d snagged a patrol car going out, getting a lift to Thrupp. The two youngsters had been only too pleased to do it, and Hillary knew that her status would remain high for some time to come. She was now the cop who’d got shot bringing Fletcher down. Whatever the actual facts of the matter, she knew that’s how she’d now always be known. But she didn’t buck it. Better that than to be known as corrupt Ronnie Greene’s missus.

Now, with her wound cleaned and the bandaging changed, she lay out on her bed, trying to doze, but unable to do so. Although the painkillers had made her drowsy, she couldn’t help but wonder what was happening back at the station.

Although she was fairly sure she knew.

Janine listened, feeling herself shrinking further and further into a small ball, as Rita Matthews continued to harangue her husband. ‘You’ve got no more sense than to fly a kite in a thunderstorm. What were you going to do? Just sit here and let them bang you up? You tell them where you really were, or I’ll … I’ll … box your ears, you twit!’

‘Mrs Matthews, please calm down,’ Mel said sternly, but he was trying not to laugh. ‘Mr Matthews, is what your wife said true?’

Percy Matthews looked sulky. ‘Well, I was playing cards with Fred and the others, yes. We always plays on Mondays. For bottles of beer, and cheese and stuff. We all bring
something
and bet with it. Winner takes the pot. I took a farmhouse cake that night.’

‘I baked it,’ Rita put in, looking less ferocious now that her husband had capitulated.

‘I see,’ Mel said. ‘I need the names of all the others who were there.’

Rita provided them quickly, and once more Percy Matthews sulked. Janine wanted the floor to open and swallow her up, but nothing happened.

‘Right. Now, what time exactly did you arrive at Fred Turnkey’s house?’

‘His garden shed,’ Percy corrected. ‘I went straight to the shed – we all did. His son-in-law’s an electrician. Fitted it out nice. Electric fire and everything.’

Mel nodded. ‘What time, Mr Matthews?’ he persisted.

‘Twenty to seven, I ’spect it was.’

‘Were you first to arrive?’

‘Course not. Fred was there first. It was his shed. Vern was there as well. Cyril and Harry came last.’

Mel nodded. ‘Sergeant Tyler, perhaps you’d like to take DC Lynch and confirm Mr Matthew’s alibi?’ Mel said, careful not to catch her eye. ‘They all live in the village?’

‘Cyril and Harry live in Rousham,’ Percy said. ‘Cyril’s got a car, and gives Harry a lift.’ He provided the addresses and without a word, her face averted, Janine got up and left.

Mel watched her go, not sure whether to laugh or cry.

That night, Tommy dropped by. A big man, he found the boat a bit of a novelty. It reminded him of a child’s Wendy house. He insisted that Hillary stay seated, and as he made drinks for them both, filled her in.

When he was finished, he was sitting on the floor, his back to the book shelves. There was only one armchair in the tiny room, but he seemed comfortable enough.

‘So it all checked out?’ Hillary said. ‘I hope Janine’s OK?’

Tommy grimaced. ‘She’s embarrassed, but trying not to show it. Frank isn’t helping.’

Hillary grunted. So what else was new? ‘Is she still in charge?’

‘Mel hasn’t said anything. Janine’s got Ross checking out the loony animal rights movement, see if any of them were
active that night. He’s carping on about needing help with it. I’m just hoping she doesn’t send me.’

Hillary nodded. After a radical animal rights group had tried to sue her for possession of her house, she wasn’t exactly keen on the breed. Ronnie Greene had made his dirty money from an illegal animal parts smuggling racket, as investigation into his corrupt activities had proved. But they hadn’t found where he’d stashed the money, and an animal so-called charity had tried to scare her by threatening to sue her. Their argument had been that Ronnie had bought their house with illegal money obtained through animal suffering – and so the house should be sold and the money donated to their ‘charity’. Hillary had asked a friend, who was also a first-rate solicitor, to defend the case, but it had never come to court, with the animal rights people eventually backing off.

Thinking of it made her eyes move to the Dick Francis novel, now sitting on the shelf not six inches from Tommy’s head.

It had been her stepson Gary who’d given it to her. Ronnie’s son by his first marriage, Gary had cleared out an old locker of his father’s at Bicester nick, and had thought she might like to have the book back, because of the personal inscription inside.

Hillary had been puzzled to read the rather sick-making message inscribed by her to Ronnie on the inside page. Very puzzled, actually, since she’d never written it. It was only then, leafing through the pages, that she’d noticed several words underlined. ‘Too, heaven, ate,’ etc. And realized they were all numbers. Two, seven, eight, and so on. From there it had been a quick jump to realize that they probably belonged to a numbered account in a bank in his favourite spot in the Caribbean. She’d surfed the net and found the bank some months ago, and also found the missing money. All million-plus of it. Since then, she’d dithered about what to do with it.

‘Anyway, it looks as if we’re back to square one on the
Dale case,’ Tommy said, wrenching her thoughts back to the here and now.

Hillary sighed heavily. ‘It sure looks like it,’ she agreed glumly.

The train service to London from Oxford was good, and within an hour, Hillary found herself in Paddington. The first woman she wanted to see lived not far from the station, and the office where she worked was even closer.

Marilyn Forbes was a woman on the way up, if the size of her office in the well-established PR firm was anything to go by. A window with a view of endless traffic was double-glazed, letting only a mild whisper permeate the beige-and-cream space. Black leather and chrome chairs grouped around a smoked glass table, while colourful and successful advertising campaigns adorned the walls.

Marilyn still looked very much like her photograph, taken at a large charity ball a few years ago, that Hillary had found on the internet. She still wore the same short cap of
ash-blonde
hair, and her big grey eyes were highlighted with careful make-up. There were a few more wrinkles around the nose and mouth perhaps, but her figure was still reed-slim. Hillary disliked her on sight.

‘Please, take a seat,’ Marilyn said, indicating a chair. ‘Ms Welles, I think you said?’

Hillary smiled and held out her hand. ‘Yes. Thank you for agreeing to see me. I know a lot of people don’t have time for journalists.’

Marilyn laughed. ‘Except for people in my profession.’

Hillary smiled again. Marilyn’s professional instinct to be
kind to the press was exactly the reason why she’d chosen to take on the persona of a reporter.

‘You’re freelance, I think my secretary said?’ Marilyn prompted, taking a seat opposite the table, and reaching
unrepentantly
for a cigarette. ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she said, waving the offending article in the air. ‘I don’t care what the current thinking is, I need a fag every four hours to get me through the day. And since this is my office …’

Hillary shook her head with a smile, and opened her
notebook
. ‘Of course I don’t mind. And yes, I’m freelance for my sins, but hope to sell the story to several quality magazines. Superintendent Raleigh is very much man of the moment back in Oxford.’

Marilyn made a small approving sound around her cigarette, and lit it. ‘Yes, I heard. Good for him, I say.’

Hillary nodded, trying to look earnest. Obviously, their split had not been acrimonious if she still wished him well. ‘You and he were an item once, I understand?’ she asked
delicately
.

Marilyn Forbes grinned. ‘A while ago now, but yes, we were close for about six months or so.’

‘And what do you feel comfortable telling me about him?’ Hillary left the question deliberately open-ended and unthreatening and, as hoped, Marilyn quickly launched into a careful but seemingly candid description of the man, both as a policeman, and as a partner.

‘I see from my research that the superintendent never married,’ Hillary mused, again keeping her voice bland.

Marilyn grinned. ‘A bachelor through and through. Well, who can blame him?’ Marilyn shrugged. ‘He’s good-looking and not too badly off, so he has no problem getting the ladies, but his job simply eats him alive. No time for a wife, that’s the impression I got. And after a brief matrimonial disaster in my early twenties, I never wanted to tie the knot again either.’ The PR executive shrugged again. ‘So, we both knew it wasn’t going to lead to orange blossom and vows.’

Hillary nodded. ‘Did he ever talk about his work with you? I mean, obviously not specific details. Or was he the kind of man who kept it all bottled up?’

Marilyn was obviously flattered at being the recipient of an interview herself, rather than simply arranging them on behalf of clients, and again Hillary took copious notes as she talked. She remembered best the cases he’d been working on while still with her, naturally, and that had included the case of a man who’d battered his stepdaughter to death. From what Marilyn described, Hillary could tell that, even back then, Jerome Raleigh had been a dedicated investigator, the kind who never let go once he’d got his teeth into something. So, this thing he had about nailing Fletcher wasn’t particularly uncharacteristic. Perhaps he was just the type who took chances when he thought the pay-off was big enough to warrant it? Maybe she was just wasting her time.

‘He seemed to take it really personally,’ Marilyn carried on, as if in confirmation of her hypothesis, taking a last puff on her second cigarette and putting it out. ‘It was as if he really despised criminals. You know, it wasn’t just his job. He told me once, as a young copper on the beat, he was called to a house where an old lady had been beaten up for her pension money. He said it made him so angry he could feel himself burning up. I suppose something like that sticks with you.’

Hillary nodded emphatically. Oh yes, things like that stuck with you all right. She herself could vividly remember her first battered wife case, and the overpowering sense of revulsion it had awoken in her. However, all she said mildly was, ‘His bosses must have liked that attitude.’

‘I’ll say,’ Marilyn said with a grin. ‘He was still a DI when I knew him. He was trying for promotion to DCI when we split up. I wasn’t surprised to hear a few years later that he’d got it.’

‘He did well at the Met,’ Hillary agreed, not making it a
question. ‘I can’t seem to find the reason why he left to join Thames Valley. It puzzles me a bit.’

Marilyn nodded seriously. ‘Sorry, can’t help you there,’ she said with a frown. ‘You know, it surprises me too, now that I think about it. Jerome was such a big city animal. He loved London – knew it inside and out.’

Hillary sighed. Damn! ‘So you’ve no idea why he might have left? Nothing in your previous relationship with him gives you any insights?’ She knew an appeal to a woman’s intuition when it came to discussing men would never go unchallenged.

‘It can only be to do with his ambition,’ Marilyn said at last, after a long, thoughtful pause. ‘He was determined to be chief constable one day. Literally, I mean. We used to talk about it. I sometimes laughed, but he never did. If he left the Met, he must have got something really serious in return for it. He was the sort who could make sacrifices too, if he had to. You know, personal sacrifices. He had a lot of self-
discipline
.’ A certain amount of bitterness crept into her words just then, and as if sensing it, she shook her head and smiled. But her self-defences were being raised.

Hillary, detecting the change in mood, swiftly changed tack and kept it innocuous. When she’d finished, about ten minutes later, she thought she probably knew a bit more about what made her boss tick than she had before, but still, she had nothing solid to go on. Nothing specific to the
cock-up
that surrounded the Fletcher bust.

It wasn’t until Hillary was putting on her coat in
preparation
for leaving that she was given a final small nugget. ‘I’d be glad if you could let me know if you sell the piece,’ Marilyn said, reaching out to shake her hand goodbye. ‘Not for myself, naturally, but I’m sure Jerome’s mother would like a copy for her scrapbook. I still see her occasionally. Not that we were close or anything.’

Hillary blinked. Mother. She hadn’t realized Mrs Raleigh was still alive. She must be in her late seventies, early eighties, at least.
‘Oh. She lives locally then?’ she asked casually, and without a thought, Marilyn waved a hand vaguely at the window.

‘The other side of Chepstow Gardens. Linacre Road, I think it is.’

Hillary thanked her and left.

Linacre Road was depressingly long and lined with
smart-looking
but small terraced properties on either side. Paintwork gleamed, and black railings were the flavour of the moment, and someone had started a trend for planting
terracotta
pots with miniature daffodils. Early-flowering cherry trees, planted at intervals, were already displaying their first pink buds. It looked very prosperous and demure, and had one of those streets-that-time-forgot feelings about it that you sometimes stumbled upon in the capital.

Hillary stood at one end of the road with a vague sense of frustration. There was no way she could talk to Jerome Raleigh’s mother, of course, not even in her current disguise as freelance journalist. What proud mother could resist the urge to phone her son and tell him all about the fame and interest he had garnered with his latest exploits? True, Raleigh might not think anything of it. No doubt, back at HQ he was having to fend off reporters all the time. Still, he might find someone digging around and asking questions back in London and pestering his mother a bit much. And if Mrs Raleigh should describe the so-called journo …

No, Hillary thought with a shiver. She didn’t want her super knowing she was investigating him. He could make her life a misery. Just as she was about to turn around and try to seek out another of Raleigh’s past loves, she noticed an old woman get off a bus, which had stopped at the head of the road just behind her. She started to come towards Hillary, her shoulders stooped forward from the weight of the heavy shopping bags in each hand, white head bowed.

Hillary quickly walked forward to meet her and smiled. ‘Hello, can I give you a hand with one of those?’

The old woman’s head shot up, instantly alert, and Hillary gave a big inner sigh. Sign of the times, she thought cynically, but she always felt defeated whenever something like this happened. She smiled again, and took a step back. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.’

The old woman, relieved to see not a bag lady, or a member of a teenage gang, but a well-dressed woman in her forties, gave a tremulous smile. ‘Sorry, dear, but you hear of such awful things nowadays,’ she apologized.

‘I know,’ Hillary said flatly, and nodded to the bigger bag. ‘I promise not to run off with your shopping. At least let me take it as far as the end of the road for you.’

The old woman nodded, and handed it over, still a shade reluctantly, Hillary thought. It weighed a fair bit, and Hillary felt her hip twinge as she took it in her left hand – the same side she’d been shot – and quickly transferred it to the right.

Together they started to walk down the pavement. ‘I think I’m lost,’ Hillary said, as an opening gambit. ‘I was trying to find a Mrs Raleigh. Her son’s a policeman. Quite famous just now,’ she said. ‘I was hoping to do a piece on him.’

‘You mean Sylvia? I know Sylvia Raleigh,’ the old woman said at once. ‘She’s always going on about that son of hers too. Well, he’s an only child. Me, I had four. But I still think the world revolves around each and every one of them too, so I’m no better! I’m Geraldine Brewer, by the way.’

Hillary quickly gave her false name in return and then looked worried. ‘I’m not really sure if I should bother her at the moment,’ she confessed. ‘I’m trying to do a piece on Superintendent Raleigh’s latest arrest in Oxford. Maybe you’ve heard about it?’

‘Not seen Sylvia for a few days, dear,’ Geraldine Brewer said, and gave a short laugh. ‘And I don’t read the papers nowadays. Too depressing. But I dare say I’ll hear about it from her soon enough, when I meet up with her in the
supermarket
or on the bus.’

‘Well, I didn’t want to bother her unnecessarily. There’s
been just a little bit of trouble about it,’ Hillary said,
deliberately
lowering her voice. Taking somebody into your confidence was the surest way, she’d found, of learning their own secrets. ‘And I’m only a freelancer. I don’t believe in bullying people for interviews and such,’ she added. ‘Some of my colleagues in the press can be very unfair, I think,’ she added, just to reassure the old woman as to her own, more gentle, bona fides.

She felt her hopes rise as the old woman’s eyes lit up.

‘Bit of trouble, huh?’ Mrs Brewer repeated avidly.

‘Oh, nothing really bad,’ Hillary hastened to add. Although it was human nature to be interested in other people’s woes, she didn’t want to alarm Mrs Brewer. Just get her talking. ‘I wonder – did you know Jerome Raleigh at all?’

‘Oh yes! Well, sort of. I met him a couple of times, when he visited his mother. Look, this is me here,’ Geraldine Brewer said, indicating a house with a dark blue door and the
ubiquitous
terracotta tub full of daffodils. ‘Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’

The policewoman in Hillary immediately wanted to lecture her about the dangers of inviting strangers into her house. Good grief, this garrulous and friendly old lady would have been a con-man’s dream. Instead, she smiled brightly. ‘I’d love to. And if you can give me some good background stuff, then perhaps I won’t have to bother Mrs Raleigh at all.’

‘So, I suppose you can see why Sylvia is so proud of him,’ Mrs Brewer said, ten minutes later. They were sitting in her tidy, sunshine-yellow living room, sipping tea and nibbling
homemade
fruit cake. Geraldine had just got through telling Hillary all about Sylvia, who had long since retired from dentistry, and now lived a quiet life of widowhood on an adequate pension, punctuated by visits to the local church. Which, according to Geraldine Brewer, she kept going almost single-handed. ‘But you can only do so many flower arrangements, and organize so many jumble sales, can’t you? That’s
why she always makes a fuss when her boy comes to stay,’ she explained.

Hillary nodded. ‘And what do you think of him, Geraldine?’ Hillary asked. ‘When you’re trying to write a piece about someone it’s so hard if you can’t get a clear idea of what they’re like. Talking to someone who knows them, and can give an unbiased opinion, is such a help.’

‘Oh, I can imagine. I couldn’t do it. Well, let’s see. He’s good-looking, of course – never has trouble with the ladies, I can tell you. Sylvia’s been quite driven to despair. She so wanted to be the mother of the groom, you see.’

Hillary nodded. ‘She must be disappointed not to have grandchildren,’ she said vaguely. ‘You don’t think, then, that all those women might be … well, camouflage, so to speak?’

‘Oh no!’ Geraldine said at once. ‘Nothing like that. And of course, there was Elizabeth, so Sylvia didn’t miss out on grandchildren. No, he was just too fly to settle down, I reckon,’ Geraldine said with a sniff. ‘Mind you, he wasn’t the sort to shirk his responsibilities, I don’t think that was it. I know for a fact that he paid out regular for the little tot.’