By a Narrow Majority (2 page)

Everyone froze. Dobbin listened, then nodded, then glanced at Hillary. ‘They found weapons. At least eight. Want me to …’ he paused and turned as Adam Fairway gave a little sigh and slid majestically from his chair towards the floor. His feet rocked the table a little as they came to rest up against the right-hand corner leg. All four of them stared down at the prostrate figure.

‘Crikey,’ Gary Verney said.

Hillary read the two their rights and had the uniforms cuff them and take them back to Kidlington for questioning. She called out the police doctor for Fairway, who she was sure had simply fainted, and then had him look at the secretary too, who seemed to be working up to a case of genuine hysterics.

By lunchtime, the Tactical Firearms Unit were gone, having
recovered, recorded, photographed and packed eleven firearms – mostly fairly old but serviceable revolvers. ‘I doubt he was getting rich on this lot,’ had been Dobbin’s final words, but he’d been pleased to get them out of circulation nevertheless. She supposed that, by now, the team would have changed out of their gear and be in the nearest pub, celebrating. She’d already phoned Mel, her immediate superior officer, back at HQ to tell him the raid had gone off without a hitch, and that several arrests had been made. She was just having a word with the evidence officer, a uniformed WPC who was even older than Dobbin and just as reluctant to retire, when one of the constables sorting through bags of fertilizer suddenly gave a shout.

It brought Frank, who’d been back in the main office drinking coffee and trying to flirt with the still weepy
secretary
, outside to see what all the fuss was about. Hillary got there first, and looked down to where the excited youngster was pointing.

‘Oh shit,’ she sighed. ‘Another one.’ The revolver, which like the others had been wrapped in a piece of old towel, looked smaller than the rest to her. Why it hadn’t been stashed in the locked filing cabinet along with all the others, she had no idea. Perhaps this was the gun Adam Fairway had intended to sell to Verney? It would make sense for him to keep the hiding place of all the other guns a secret from his customers. Unlike popular belief, there was no such thing as honour among thieves. ‘Take some pictures,’ she said curtly to the uniform who’d found it. ‘I’m not calling Tactical back again just for this. Frank, you can take it back to the evidence locker. Make sure you sign it straight in and give DI Dobson a call. He might want to keep the haul together.’

Frank gave her a two-fingered salute behind her back. She knew he’d done it by the look one of the young coppers gave him. She shook her head wearily. There was no point reporting Frank Ross for insubordination. He’d only deny it, and she was not about to ask a uniform to back her up at a
disciplinary hearing. It would blight his career for years to come.

No, thanks to her late hubby Ronnie Greene, she was stuck with Frank. Her husband had died before he could be brought up on corruption charges, but everyone and their granny knew that Frank Ross had been in the mire up to his neck too.

She made her way back to Greenfingers Inc. offices, and noticed the secretary had gone missing – probably headed for home and a stiff gin. She hoped the constable questioning her had made sure of her address before he’d let her go.

She turned on Fairway’s computer and stared at it glumly for a few moments, then reached for her phone and called Detective Constable Tommy Lynch back at HQ. ‘Tommy, it’s me. I need you in Bicester,’ she said cheerfully. One day she was going to have to take an advanced computer course. One day she was going to have to do a lot of things.

Back in Kidlington, DC Tommy Lynch took a deep breath and wished she wouldn’t say things like that to him, especially without warning. ‘On my way, guv,’ he responded calmly, then glanced across at DS Janine Tyler, sitting at the desk opposite, and shrugged.

Everyone on Hillary’s team knew about the raid, and Janine Tyler in particular had been furious to be left out in the cold. But it had been DCI Mallow’s call that only Hillary and Frank Ross need be present. After all, it had been the TFU’s show, and they didn’t need everyone and their granny there as well.

Tommy Lynch whistled as he drove to the small market town in the north of Oxfordshire. He was getting married in June, and didn’t think it was a good idea to be thinking so much about his governor, but since there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do about it, he supposed there was no point in tying himself up in knots about it either.

Hillary and the evidence officer were still pouring over the inevitable paperwork when he arrived. Hillary pointed him in the direction of the perp’s computer and told him she wanted
its every secret. ‘And see if he’s got a safe hidden anywhere, will you, Tommy,’ she added.

She had a gut feeling that Adam Fairway was the sort to keep records. Detailed records. And she wasn’t wrong. But even she was amazed when Tommy called her over about an hour later, to show her what he’d found. Hidden in a file under a separate password, were records that would make Dobbin’s mouth water. A list of weapons bought and sold going back nearly seven years.

A lot of people were going to be very happy about this – and it always paid to keep the brass happy. And the press liaison officer would be ecstatic. More than that, it was yet another good collar that would liven up her CV no end when a chief inspectorship came up for grabs. And all because Mavis Verney hadn’t liked the thought of her Gary going out tooled up when he went out to nick CD players from the local Curry’s.

Some days Hillary really liked her job.

Back at HQ, Hillary parked up and sighed. It was nearly three o’clock but she had hours of work ahead of her yet, and since it had turned overcast, it wouldn’t be long before it got dark. She’d be glad when the clocks went on next week. Another hour of daylight at the end of her shift would come in handy.

She made her way through the lobby, where somebody had placed a tub of flowering daffodils, and accepted the
good-natured
congratulations and ribbing from the desk sergeant. News of the gun haul had gone before her, of course, and it was always nice to come back to the nest a conquering hero. At her desk, she slumped down in her chair and ignored her rumbling stomach. She’d missed lunch, but doubted that her middle-aged spread would notice. That was another thing she’d have to do one day – join a gym.

Yeah, right.

Frank Ross walked in, a suspiciously heavy bulge in his overcoat pocket. Hillary opened her mouth, about to blast
him about not checking the gun into the evidence locker the moment he arrived, then got distracted as DCI Philip ‘Mel’ Mallow came out of his office and walked across the
open-plan
office towards her.

Mel was an old friend of nearly twenty years standing, and her immediate superior officer. The fact that he was nearly a year into a sexual relationship with her pretty blonde DS, Janine Tyler, was still something of a matter of contention between them. Still, she was grateful he’d kept Janine out of her hair this morning. Although a good cop who would no doubt go far, Janine tended to be too hungry for promotion and too ambitious for good sense to always reign supreme. She also suspected that Janine had applied for firearms training and had been turned down. Hillary could well imagine that her sergeant had come across as too gung-ho to be a serious contender. Still, a lot of cops saw weapons training as a way to get ahead, and Janine had certainly been keen to be in on the raid, even though the chance of any gunfire being exchanged had been judged as very low.

Mel Mallow glanced across at Frank as he spoke,
reluctantly
including him in the equation. ‘The super wants us in his office for the latest update,’ he said flatly.

Hillary groaned. ‘The Fletcher thing again?’

Luke Fletcher was Thames Valley’s biggest thorn in the side, and had been for many years. He ran both prostitution and drug rackets, and was suspected to be behind at least three murders, though nothing had ever been pinned on him. Last year, Superintendent Marcus Donleavy had been kicked upstairs, and a man from the Met, Jerome Raleigh, had been brought in. And the new broom seemed determined to sweep up Luke Fletcher.

Frank Ross grinned. ‘About time.’ For some reason, Frank, who could be guaranteed to hate the top brass simply as a matter of principle, had become a big fan of the new Super, and that alone was enough to make Hillary uneasy. And the
fact that Raleigh was insisting on keeping Frank in the loop made her uneasier still. The Met man must know of Frank’s reputation, so why was he keeping the oily little oik so close to the superintendent bosom?

Still, as she gathered up her bag and notebook and followed the other two out of the room, she had to admit that, lately, the super’s intelligence on Fletcher had been impressive. It also made her wonder how a man from London had managed to get so many fingers into so many of Fletcher’s pies, so soon. And was this the reason why the Met man had got the job? Had he been gathering evidence against Fletcher for far longer than just a few months?

Mel led the little cavalcade up the stairs to the super’s office, but let Frank get ahead as they reached the landing. He laid a quiet hand on Hillary’s arm, holding her back. ‘You have any idea who his source could be?’ he murmured quietly as the super’s civilian secretary buzzed them through.

‘Nope,’ she murmured back. Like herself, Mel was intrigued, not to mention narked, at the new super’s
impressive
dedication to nailing Fletcher. It was no secret that Mel had secretly been hoping to get Marcus Donleavy’s old job, and that his nose had been well and truly put out of joint at being pipped at the post by an outsider was understandable. She only hoped her old friend’s jealousy wouldn’t make him do anything stupid. Nailing Fletcher, no matter who got the credit for it, would be many a copper’s dream come true. Including her own.

Inside his office, Jerome Raleigh got to his feet as they trooped in. There were two men from Vice, DI Mike Regis and sergeant Colin Tanner, already present. Mike Regis’s eyes went straight to Hillary, and she felt her pulse rate thump, just a little. A while ago, she’d thought that she and Mike Regis might just have things to talk about. But that was before she’d found out he was married. Now, or so she’d heard, his divorce was imminent.

Would they have things to talk about then? She hoped so.

‘Philip.’ Superintendent Raleigh held out his hand to the man who’d hoped to have his job, nodded blankly at Frank, and smiled at Hillary. ‘You know DI Regis and Sergeant Tanner, of course. Sit down, please. Help yourself to coffee.’

Hillary did the honours, without making a fuss. She never turned down good caffeine, and certainly not in the name of sexual equality. The only one she didn’t hand a cup to was Frank.

Well, there were limits.

Raleigh hid a smile as Frank Ross heaved his bulk out of his chair to get his own. After that bit of entertainment, the meeting passed swiftly, and it was clear that the intelligence on Fletcher was building. Hillary could tell that Mike Regis, for one, was delighted. For the first time in what seemed like a long, long wait, it appeared as if Fletcher might actually be touchable after all. As a Vice man, Regis harboured a
particular
animosity towards Fletcher. Mel too was impressed, but careful not to show it, and asked several clever and cautionary questions. Hillary listened carefully and said nothing.

A small-time dealer, one of Fletcher’s minnows, had been caught with enough dope on him to merit a five-year stretch. According to Raleigh he might be persuaded to talk. There were also rumours that Fletcher was about to take possession of a big and experimental shipment of drugs. Nobody knew if that was true, or just rumour. Twice Raleigh led them over to a board on the far side of the room to check out the latest intel posted up there. Twice Hillary wondered how the Met man had got so close, so quickly, to Oxford’s kingpin.

It was already gone five, and was dark and raining, by the time Raleigh let them go. Hillary watched Frank Ross retrieve his overcoat and hurry away. Ross, a deceivingly
benign-looking
man with rounded cheeks and a chubby figure, never did overtime if he could help it. For herself, she’d be lucky to get off by nine.

‘So what do you think?’ Regis’s voice behind her out on the landing made her turn and smile briefly.

‘About what?’ she asked. Us?

‘Getting Fletcher. We’re close to it this time. I can feel it. You must be glad to have a super so hell bent on it.’

‘Marcus Donleavy was never slack either,’ she said sharply, then bit her lip as Regis gave her a quick look. Damn. The truth was, she missed having Marcus Donleavy in charge. She both liked and trusted him – as opposed to the man from the Met, whom she simply couldn’t get a handle on. She’d have to be careful not to let her loyalties show though. Not that she was worried Mike Regis would shaft her. Still. Office politics was like dynamite. It needed to be handled carefully. ‘Long day,’ she excused herself briefly.

‘Fancy a drink?’ he asked quickly.

‘Sorry, not tonight. Still got a lot to do.’ She briefly told him about the raid – all cops liked to hear a success story – and by the time she’d finished, noticed that Frank Ross was coming back up the stairs. Odd, she’d have thought he would be well on his way by now. He practically supported his local boozer single-handedly. ‘Another time, maybe?’ She turned back to Regis, trying not to sound too eager. Or too pathetic.

Mike shrugged. ‘Sure, why not.’

Hillary watched him go and sighed. She wasn’t sure why she was so attracted to him. He was nearing fifty and had thinning dark hair but very attractive green eyes. Perhaps it was because he thought the same way she did, and she liked the way he was at ease in his own skin. But then again perhaps she was fooling herself. After slapping him down in no uncertain terms just a few months ago, he’d probably already found someone else.

Frank Ross waited until Raleigh’s secretary had gone, then slipped quietly into the super’s outer office. He went straight to the coat rack and squatted down. Shit. No sign of it. He crouched down and looked under the heating unit. He was
sweating, but that had nothing to do with the hot air blasting from the painted radiator.