Gone to Ground (34 page)

"I never accused..."

"Accusations, suggestions, whatever. You took it all back. And all absolutely fine, within your rights to do so."

"I'd made a mistake."

"So, I believe, you said at the time."

"Let myself get carried away. Stupid, really. Wasting police time, last thing I wanted to do. The man in charge, Challoner, he was angry and I couldn't blame him, but what else was I to do?"

Allen's hands were pressed tightly now between his knees. His breathing loud in the closeness of the room.

"Howard Prince," Will said, "did he approach you directly, or was it somebody else? Someone acting on his instructions?"

"I don't know what you mean." But everything about him told Will that he did.

"Look," Will said quietly, the voice of reason, "whatever you tell me now, there's no way you're going to be called to testify, you won't have to sign anything, make a sworn statement. I meant what I said, all that is in the past, been and gone, but just to corroborate what I'm thinking, I'd like to know what happened to make you change your mind."

"But if that's right, what you just said, then why, why does it matter?"

"An investigation I'm working on now, concerning Howard Prince, I'm just trying to build a picture."

"This investigation," Allen said hesitantly, "it's similar?"

"I think so. Yes. Except this time someone died."

"Died? How?"

"They were murdered."

"And you think...?" Allen began, then faltered.

"Mr. Allen," Will said evenly, "just tell me what you can. Please."

For several moments, Allen closed his eyes.

"The first time he spoke to me, anything more than just passing the time of day, it was a dinner. Big council affair. Annual dinner. He must have been a guest of someone or other. Someone on the planning committee, I'd not be surprised. After the speeches and all that, everything winding down, he got me in a corner. 'I hear you've been telling tales, Michael,' he says. 'Tales out of school. Porkies. You don't want to do that, do you?' And he got hold of me here..."

Allen indicated the place between his legs.

"Got hold of me there and squeezed. It hurt terribly, I don't mind telling you, and fetched tears to my eyes, I'm not ashamed to admit it, but I said to him, 'You needn't think you're going to frighten me, because you're not.' And he let go and laughed and slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'You're a good bloke, Michael, I've always said that. More than some of them round here.'"

"And that was that?" Will said.

"That was that. Until a while later, I thought some of my post was being tampered with. Not just at the office, but at home, too. There would be nothing delivered for several days, that was unusual, and then there'd be this great pile and some of it had been opened and resealed, you could see.

"Of course, I reported it to the post office and the police and nothing happened and then, just a little while after that, the house was burgled, twice in quick succession. Nothing too much was taken, not a lot of damage, kids I thought at first. They'd helped themselves to stuff from the fridge, scribbled rubbish on the walls."

"What kind of rubbish?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter. The Fraud Squad investigation was continuing, and other members of the council had been questioned. I knew that because some of them came to me and accused me of creating mischief, telling lies, and I told them if they'd done nothing wrong, well, they had nothing to worry about."

Allen's mouth was dry and he ran his tongue quickly around his lips.

"Then I had a phone call, late one evening. He didn't identify himself, but it was Prince. I knew. He said ... He asked me when I'd last seen..." Allen looked away. "He named a boy, a boy I'd ... befriended. A church youth club I used to go along to sometimes. I was on the committee there. I used to go along and see things were, lend a ... lend a hand."

A sob caught in Allen's throat.

"Nothing ... You have to believe me ... Nothing ever happened. But he said, Prince said..."

Leaning forward, Will took hold of Allen's arms. "It's okay," he said. "It's okay."

Allen sniffed and found a handkerchief. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

Allen wiped his face again. "I went to see Challoner the next morning and withdrew what I'd said. It was a cowardly thing to do, I know, and I've been ashamed of it ever since."

"You're not the coward," Will said. "And what you did, it's understandable. I don't think you've any need to feel ashamed."

Tears sprang again to Allen's eyes and he grasped Will's hand.

TWO DAYS PASSED. THREE. EFFORTS TO CLEAN UP AND clarify the mobile phone images downloaded from the Internet had so far failed to provide any clear identification. The prints that had been lifted from the length of wood recovered from the river had come back coded NUM. No useful marks. The contrast between the developed prints and the background had been too indistinct. Now the local Fingerprint office was going to ask for assistance from the Home Office lab at Sandridge.

Threats of legal action from Adam Priestley's family rumbled on. Officers questioning Liam Ibbotson discovered that he had a cousin, Evan, who lived in Cambridge and had been banned from attending Cambridge United home games on account of anti-social behaviour: to whit, making monkey chants and shouting out racist and homophobic remarks, punching one of the club's stewards, throwing coins at the visiting team's goalkeeper and hitting one of the opposition fans with a half-brick.

Evan was duly hauled in.

"Liam, yeah, I saw Liam once in a while, family, right? But not for a couple of months. Not since the bastard nicked a brand-new fucking X-Box from round ours and sold it down the pub. And all that crap about racist chanting, that's all bollocks. One of my best mates he's black, yeah? Old man comes from fucking Mali and you don't get much blacker than that. What it is, we got this banner, right? Fucking great flag of St. George. Took it with us, away games, everything. Not like these half-arsed twats stick a couple of flags on their car every four years on account of the fuckin' World Cup. No, this was Sat'day after Sat'day, rain an' all. And what it is, there you are, this banner hung out behind you so's everyone can see, and maybe there's a bit of chanting going on, not us, could be anyone, and some dickhead with his brains where his arse ought to be thinks right that lot up there, got to be them. Makes you fuckin' sick. Stand proud by the flag of St. George, your own country's flag, and they think that means you got to be racist, got to be in BNP, niggers out, out, out, know what I mean? And, like I say, that's all bollocks, right? I mean, okay, I might vote BNP if I could be arsed, but that's not what we're talking about, what we're talking about, there's cunts who are ashamed to stand up for their club and stand up for their country and we're not and that shouldn't be no fucking crime."

The officer questioning him thought perhaps he had a point there, several in fact, but he kept his opinions to himself.

Will, meanwhile, wanting to check what he'd read in the file, spoke to the detective sergeant who'd investigated the house fire in Forest Fields for which Challoner had assumed Prince bore responsibility.

No doubt it was arson, the sergeant said, petrol bombs, three of them, two through the upstairs windows, one down. Couple as was in there, lucky to get out alive. They'd pulled in a brace of likely suspects, one of them with a record of setting fires—burned this temporary classroom down when he was still at primary school, no more than nine—but the forensics had never matched up and, one of them besides, he couldn't remember which, he'd had an alibi, off with an aunt in Sheffield, or some such. As to whether they'd been put up to it, the place targeted, there'd never been any proof.

Back on his own patch, Will tracked down one of the two officers who'd been called to the Ely hotel where Howard and Lily Prince had been causing a disturbance, retired now and working three nights a week as a security guard on an industrial estate to the east of Cambridge. Bored shitless with staring at half a dozen CCTV screens and only too glad for an opportunity to talk.

"By the time we arrived," he told Will, "things had pretty much calmed down. She, the wife that is, was sitting in the middle of the dining room, not moving, not saying a thing, while the staff cleared up around her. Plates, glasses, all broken, food everywhere, you never saw such a mess. Prince, he was pacing up and down outside, furious at the manager for having called us in the first place, making assurances everything would be paid for. Did his best to talk us into getting back in the car and driving away again. But, of course, we couldn't do that.

"'My wife's been under a lot of strain,' he said, 'she's not been well for some time.' And there was something about medication, that's it, she'd not been taking her medication.

"We talked to the manager of the hotel, took statements from the staff, some of the people who'd been eating in the restaurant. Family who'd been sitting near them, said they'd been sniping at each other all evening. Got to the point, he'd had enough, raised his voice, told her to shut her mouth. Then suddenly she was on her feet and throwing things, yelling at him, calling him names. Fornicator, that was one. I remember it striking me at the time. Not the kind of word you ever hear someone use, not unless it's in one of them period things on the tele. Most of her language, it was a good deal fruitier than that, apparently. Shocked one or two."

"How did it all resolve itself?" Will asked.

"Oh, the doctor came eventually, her doctor, spoke to her for quite a little while and gave her some kind of pills, tranquilizers, I suppose. Prince himself, he'd calmed down by then, thanked us for the tactful way we'd handled everything. Promised to write a letter to the Chief Constable, though we never heard no more about it if he ever did. The hotel, of course, they didn't want to press charges, best for them if the whole business was swept under the carpet."

"There wasn't any report of him hitting her," Will asked, "when they were arguing, Prince and his wife? Striking out in anger?"

"Nothing like that, no. More the opposite, I'd say. Once she'd really lost it, gone into overdrive, his main concern, witnesses thought, had been with her, that she wouldn't hurt herself somehow, do herself an injury."

Will thanked him and let him get back to his desk.

"When you've got your years in..." the former officer said.

"Yes?"

"Make sure you've got something better lined up than this."

Helen's pleasure at being discharged from hospital soon evaporated amid the boredom of her own company and daytime TV. She wasn't ready to go along and see her colleagues at Parkside, and the few friends she had outside the Force were working nine to five or longer. As long as she took the occasional painkiller, she could walk without discomfort, if slowly, but the local park soon outlived its interest. On day two she went to see some drab comedy with that woman from
Friends
and left midway through. She was hesitant about phoning Lorraine, but when she did, Lorraine said, without a second's thought, "God, yes, come over, it would be great to see you."

Jake was at nursery and Susie was playing contentedly with five brightly coloured cups of different sizes, banging them against one another and, just occasionally, more by accident than design, fitting one inside another.

"It isn't always like this you know," Lorraine said, smiling. "Sometimes it's like World War Three."

"I'm sure."

Lorraine had slid back the glass window and they were sitting on folding chairs on the patio with mugs of coffee—"The real thing, not instant. I can't be bothered to do it for myself, but with two of you it's different."—and slices of fruitcake.

The sky was opaque and still, with just the occasional hint of sun, little wind to speak of, just a slight breeze. A couple of blackbirds busied themselves at the field end, in and out of the hedge. In the distance, the cathedral pressed up from the horizon like something from a fairy tale, another world.

"I should have come to see you in the hospital," Lorraine said. "I kept meaning to, but somehow..."

"Nonsense. You've got other things to do, the children and everything. And besides, Will was there often enough for the pair of you. Come round any more
often, the
nurses would have been mistaking him for one of the consultants."

Lorraine laughed. "He was worried about you."

"I know."

"But you're okay now. I mean, you seem..."

"I'm fine. Fine."

"How about work? Can you go back..."

"A couple of weeks, they say. Light duties. Whatever that means."

"I suppose it doesn't do to rush it."

"No."

They sat for a while and drank their coffee, looking out. Lorraine took Susie off to the bathroom and changed her nappy, then put her back down on the rug with a rag book and an assortment of soft toys.

"She's a sweetheart," Helen said.

"I think she's showing off. If it's just me here and I'm trying to do something—I don't know, hoovering, or getting something ready for the oven—she just wants to be picked up and then the minute I put her down she starts crying."

"I couldn't do it," Helen said. "I used to think, yes, you know, it would be great. But now ... I just wouldn't have the patience, I know I wouldn't."

"I used to think that. I'd be round at my brother's—they've got two kids, boys, eighteen months between them—and watch his wife practically tearing her hair out sometimes, and think, no thanks, not for me, not in a million years. But then..." She smiled. "It's different when they're your own."

"I'm sure it must be. It's the level of dependence, though, that's what gets me. Not when they're babies so much, I don't think, even though I suppose that's when they're most dependent of all. But later—tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. On and on. Not just months, but years. I couldn't do it, I know I couldn't. I wouldn't want to."

Lorraine looked at her indulgently. "You'll change your mind."

Helen smiled. "I don't think so. Not now."