Flawed (10 page)

Caroline Walsh may have been a gangster's moll but nothing in her demeanour suggested it. She was a few years younger than Walsh, and half a class-system above him socially, and she greeted the police officers cordially, as if the Widows
&C
Orphans Fund was the charity she'd graciously consented to support this year. She had to know she was living on the proceeds of crime, but she was supremely unconcerned by the presence of detectives in her house. Everyone's job has a down side: this was his. She had no doubt Terry would deal with it.

‘How are you, Charlie?’ she said with a smile – and that was clever too, because while she knew Deacon a little she'd hardly met his sergeant. It was simply a device to put the
senior officer at a disadvantage. It didn't help that she was a notably handsome woman.

‘This is Detective Inspector Hyde, of the Serious Organised Crime Agency,’ said Terry Walsh, expressionless. ‘Go on, Inspector – ask your question.’

Alix Hyde didn't fluster easily. She wasn't flustered now. She regarded Walsh levelly. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’

He nodded. ‘I think it's best, don't you? Cards on the table and all that. I'm a plain man, Inspector, I like to keep my dealings with people straightforward and above board. What it is, darling,’ he said, turning to his wife, ‘the old rumours have surfaced again and Detective Inspector Hyde thinks I'm a crook. She has a witness who heard me planning capers – that is what you call them, capers?’ he asked Hyde, but then didn't wait for a reply – ‘in the back room of The Dragon Luck, and that's not quite as silly as it sounds because she was my mistress at the time.’

There were three seconds of absolute silence. Then Caroline Walsh was laughing immoderately, tears filling her eyes, one hand on the back of the sofa for support. And Walsh was laughing too, something between a rumble and a cackle, vastly amused.

Voss dared a glance at Alix Hyde. She was trying not to react, to wait until the merriment died down and she could find out what was so funny. But she couldn't pretend this was the response she'd expected.

Finally Caroline wiped her eyes with a fine lawn handkerchief and said weakly, ‘I take it this is Susan we're talking about?’

Walsh nodded. ‘Apparently.’

The woman patted his hand. ‘You certainly made an impression there, dear. That woman's been carrying a torch for you for years!’

‘Well, I wish she wouldn't. It's damned inconvenient.’

‘What's she said now?’

‘The same thing. I'm the Godfather of the south coast, she was my mistress, I ran half the crime in England from the safe room at the casino and she saw me do it.’

‘It's true what they say,’ said Caroline fondly.
‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
There's one thing about this fantasy of hers – it's easily disproved. At least, it was before.’ She held Inspector Hyde with a gaze of calm challenge.

Hyde was still blanking her expression. ‘You mean, you've heard these allegations before?’

‘Inspector,
everyone's
heard these allegations before. Well,’ Walsh amended that, ‘everyone from round here. You're new in Dimmock, aren't you? Maybe you should have run this past Jack Deacon before you put too much faith in Susan's delusions. He caught wind of what she was saying a few years ago and, old mate or not, he felt he had to look into it. But he's got a lot of experience in these matters. He quickly realised that Susan's story wasn't credible. It was just a rather lonely woman trying to impress people.’

Voss felt the searchlight of Hyde's gaze turn slowly his way. But he hadn't known either. Of course, Deacon had had a lot of sergeants before Charlie Voss drew the short straw a couple of years ago. He had a reputation for eating them.

Until this moment Voss had never felt in danger from him. Certainly he'd felt the rough edge of Deacon's tongue – when
he deserved it, when he half-deserved it and when he didn't deserve it at all, so often he'd come to the conclusion there wasn't a smooth edge – but this was different. They'd talked just last night. All Deacon had to do was warn Voss where this line of inquiry was leading. And he'd said nothing. He'd hung him out to dry. Voss felt betrayed.

Hyde said carefully, ‘Just for the record, then, perhaps you'll disprove it again. For the benefit of us out-of-towners.’

Caroline Walsh nodded pleasantly. ‘Of course. You know I'm a partner at The Dragon Luck? I inherited my shares from my father fifteen years ago, and naturally I keep an eye on my investment. Terry and I spend an evening there maybe once a month. But it's me conducting business there, not my husband. He whiles away an hour or so at the tables while I disappear into the back room with the Manager and the other partners.’

She smiled. ‘He's a charming man, my husband – you may have noticed this. He caused quite a flutter among the female staff. I'm afraid poor Susan mistook a bit of good-natured flirting for something more and started telling people she was Terry's bit on the side.

‘The Manager asked if I wanted her dismissed. But it was more funny than it was offensive. No one who knows Terry, who's seen him with his family, was ever going to believe her, and I didn't think it mattered what people who don't know him thought.’

‘But she was dismissed,’ said Hyde. She wasn't sure what she was hearing – the truth, a lie, or the kind of half-truth that's harder to unravel. She needed to ask more questions. But police officers don't like asking questions until they have
a good idea what the answers ought to be. ‘Six months ago.’

‘Yes, she was,’ agreed Caroline. ‘She was boasting more and more, in front of people she hardly knew. We weren't concerned about the police: they knew her story for what it was. But sooner or later someone was going to believe her and it was going to matter. Being called a philanderer wasn't going to do Terry much harm but being accused of criminal activity could. He's a businessman, his integrity is important.

‘I was on the point of doing something about it myself but the Manager beat me to it. He has a licence to protect, he couldn't have people talking about The Dragon Luck as if it was a den of vice. Susan lost her job for lying, Inspector, not because she was having an affair with my husband.’

‘I see.’ Alix Hyde spoke carefully, as if through a mouthful of broken glass.

‘Yes?’ said Caroline Walsh coolly. ‘I hope so. I really hope we don't have to go through all this again. Of course you have your job to do. But it's just plain silly to keep covering the same ground.’

Walsh saw them to their car. Until they got there Voss entertained the faint hope that Alix Hyde might yet produce a rabbit from the hat and dissipate the aura of smugness that surrounded him like cigar-smoke. But she'd been wrong-footed too, and had enough experience to know that now – undermined and uncertain – wasn't the time to take him on. She held her peace until Walsh insisted on helping her into her own car.

Then she smiled tautly at him. ‘I feel absolutely sure, Terry, that this is
au revoir
rather than goodbye.’

Walsh leant closer to her. His voice was so low even Voss strained to hear. ‘I'm counting on it, Inspector. But next time you come to my house to accuse me of everything from drug-running to marital infidelity, remember your manners. Call me Mr Walsh.’

For once, the raised voice crashing down the stairs from the CID offices on the top floor of Battle Alley was not that of Jack Deacon. However, the general feeling was that it was only a matter of time, so everyone who wasn't pressingly engaged elsewhere – and right now an axe-murderer would have been asked to come back later – kept busy within earshot. There's plenty of free entertainment to be had in a police station at any time, but senior officers publicly tearing strips off one another is a rare joy. Sometimes protecting and serving the community just has to wait.

‘You assured me of your full cooperation,’ snarled Detective Inspector Hyde. ‘I counted on it. You said you'd lend me your best officer. I counted on that too. What I didn't count on was having your old mucker Terry Walsh laugh in my face as I worked my case on the basis of evidence that you knew was flawed! That you personally had investigated and dismissed as unsafe and unsatisfactory!
Why didn't you tell me?

Deacon was still sufficiently amused to be holding onto his temper. ‘It's your case, Inspector. You didn't tell me who your new witness was or what evidence they were offering. If either you or Sergeant Voss had had the wit to pull the back-files
before
you went to see Terry, you might have heard the gentle trill of alarm bells ringing.’

‘You talked to Charlie in the pub last night! Would it have cost you blood to warn him off? To say you'd already looked at Susan's claims and they didn't stand up?‘

‘Two things,’ rumbled Deacon. ‘Charlie Voss
is
my best officer – you're lucky to have him. But he's a sergeant, and the reason for that is he still has things to learn. I lent him to you because I hoped there might be things you could teach him. I'm regretting
that
already.

‘And the other thing is, he's not my spy. He doesn't come running to me to report everything you've said and done. Yes, I bought him a beer’ – this was an outright lie and Deacon knew it – ‘and he said you'd been to Dover. He said you had a new witness, someone involved in the drugs trade. He didn't give me the name and I'd no reason to associate Susan Weekes with drug-smuggling. Despite what you might have heard, Inspector Hyde, I'm not psychic. But everything she told me when I interviewed her was in the file. If you'd looked you'd have known it was the same story from the same woman. And you'd have seen that it fell apart when I leant on it.

‘Anyone can make a mistake, Inspector. But try not to make stupid ones.’

Brodie always did the Saturday morning trawl of the Brighton antiques scene with Paddy. It was an outing they both enjoyed, and there weren't many weeks when their efforts went unrewarded. But since they had different ideas of what constituted a find, the crates in the back of the car were frequently packed with an egalitarian mix of Georgian lead
crystal, broken china horses patched with Araldite, Victorian linens, toy tractors, almost complete Worcester dinner services and plastic frogs that made a rude noise when squeezed. Paddy Farrell, now nearly seven, had inherited her father's kindness and her mother's determination but neither of them admitted responsibility for her sense of humour.

With the boss and her car on the road, Daniel was left to his own devices. Brodie had made it clear that, barring emergencies, she didn't expect him to work weekends, but actually he had nothing better to do. He walked up Fisher Hill to pay a visit to Edith Timoney. He didn't yet know enough about antiques to risk buying much on his own, even with Brodie's list of watch-out-fors to guide him. But he could scrutinise the stock and report on it when he saw Brodie this evening. If there was anything promising he thought Miss Timoney would put it under the counter for him. Miss Timoney liked Daniel.

Daniel liked Miss Timoney too. He liked her honesty. In these days when every plaster duck was a Faberge swan, Dimmock had antique shops, antique fayres and even an antiques emporium, but Miss Timoney's at the top of Fisher Hill was the only honest-to-God junk-shop left. The fact that, in an uncharacteristic moment of trying to move upmarket, she'd had the words
Ye Olde Junk Shoppe
written in a curly cod-medieval script over the top of the cobwebbed windows only endeared her to him more.

The dirty windows might have been a clever business ploy – it was impossible to see through them, if you wanted to know what she had for sale you had to go inside, at which point she considered you fair game. But they also made it
impossible to see who else was in the shop, so opening the door was a little like opening Pandora's Box.

Today what came out as Daniel was going in was Noah Selkirk.

The thing about a black eye is, it's impossible for people to look at anything else. They try not to stare, then they worry that by ignoring the patently obvious they're actually drawing attention to it, then they avoid the issue entirely by being somewhere else. Usually; normal people.

Daniel's eyes widened behind his thick glasses. ‘Good grief, Noah, where did you get the shiner?’

The boy reddened and wouldn't look at him. He mumbled something about a swing.

‘Somebody took a swing at you?’ said Daniel, astonished.

Unseen behind the dirty glass, a woman was following the boy onto the pavement. Not Miss Timoney; not by any means Miss Timoney. A woman in her late thirties with a mane of curly ash-blonde hair just about tamed in a rough chignon – which, as Daniel would have known had he known more about women, took much longer to achieve than a perfect one because the escaping tendrils didn't fall into that charming portrait of mild abandon without a lot of artistic encouragement. A small woman – not just smaller than Daniel but small for a woman – and neither thin nor plump but with just the right sort of curves in just the right places, just about visible through a straight, beautifully tailored, long wolf-grey coat buttoned up to a high stand collar under her chin. She had sea-green eyes, and when she smiled she showed small perfect teeth.

‘He said, he was hit by a swing. In the playground.’

Daniel had seen a lot of playground accidents. He'd seen
children floored by the recoil of a swing going for the Olympic record, and the catalogue of possible injuries certainly included black eyes, as well as broken noses and broken cheekbones. There was nothing about the marks on Noah Selkirk's face that called his mother a liar. And yet…

Childhood is a steep learning curve. You learn not to run down stairs, not to touch the pretty flames and not to headbutt the patio doors mostly by doing it once and not liking the consequences. And yes, you learn not to stand behind a swing to see how high you've managed to push it this time. Most childhood injuries are accidental. Even kids who seem to spend every Saturday afternoon in A8cE, whose parents know all the hidden parking spots and which vending machines make a decent cup of tea, who've already run the gamut of emotions from fear to embarrassment to grim resignation, are mostly just excitable and clumsy and brilliant at thinking up new stunts on a trampoline.