High-Wired (12 page)

‘Yes. I don’t know how to apologise enough …’

‘Don’t be silly. Do you think that’s the first time that’s happened to me? Would you like to consider my age and add it up?’

‘If you’re sure I haven’t upset you …’

‘Lady, you’ve made my day. That’s the first thing that’s made me laugh since before I found Ben last night, and you have my undying thanks for that. So, what’s gone wrong in your life? There must be something, as you dossed down here last night and came back this evening.’

Lauren found it easier to tell than she’d thought possible. ‘I went home knowing I’d find Kenneth there, then I picked up some strange vibes and concluded that Gerda and Kenneth had been to bed together. When I went to her room to confront her, she said they’d been at it like knives since just after she started working for us, and we … sort of had a fight. That’s how I split my lip, when she pulled me to the floor.’

‘Good God in Heaven, Lauren. Why didn’t you say something?’ Olivia was stunned at her friend and work partner’s reticence in this matter.

‘How could I, with everything that went off here. I couldn’t say anything when I first got here because I felt ashamed, as if it were my fault somehow. Then Hal found Ben, and you know the rest.’

‘But what’s happened since? Have you been home since then?’

‘I contacted my solicitor – actually, he’s our solicitor, but I got first bagsy – and I’ve initiated divorce proceedings; gosh, how formal that sounds! When I got home tonight, I was about to give Kenneth the news that I was divorcing him when he floored me with the news that when he went back to work, he was taking Gerda with him, but he’d need use of the granny annexe for him
and her
when he was on leave, so that he could keep in contact with the kids. Then he had the cheek to inform me that when they had a family of their own, he’d need to sell the house, making his own kids homeless, so that he could house the little bastards he intends to father in the future.’

The two women grasped each other in a full body hug, and Hal put his arms around both of them. ‘Oh, my poor injured darlings,’ he crooned. ‘You’ve both been through the wringer, haven’t you, in the last twenty-four hours.’

Olivia suddenly broke away. ‘Has anybody let Hibbie know? And where the hell is she anyway? And what happened in the office today? I haven’t even given work a thought.’

Hal got in first. ‘I texted her this morning, and she replied that she’d stay on where she was as it was convenient at the moment. I haven’t let her know about this turn for the worse, because it could still all be a storm in a teacup.

‘And we’ve got that other body,’ said Lauren, ‘but I don’t want you to concern yourself about that now. We’ll muddle through, somehow. We’ve both got messes to sort out, and life demands that they’re what we concentrate on,’ she declared. ‘I’ll call in for both of us tomorrow and speak to Superintendent Devenish, to see if we can both have a couple of days’ compassionate leave.’

‘But we can’t …’

‘That’s what’s going to happen, and there’s no point in you arguing, guv. Neither of us would be any use on a major crime scene at the moment, so I think it’s best left to someone who can concentrate all their mind on the finer points than let us two loose with all the distractions we have to live with for now. We’d be worse than a couple of rookie PCs.’

‘But the other murder …’

‘If you really want to know the details, I’ll tell you after we’ve all had a couple of glasses more wine each, but it’s unpleasant and I don’t want to upset you anymore.’

‘Nobody could achieve that at the moment. I just want to know.’

The next morning brought good news from the hospital. The additional substance had been checked and, thankfully, dealt with, and they were going to wake Ben that evening, if his parents wanted to come in when they took him off the ventilator. Olivia had been told in no uncertain terms by her sergeant that she had spoken to Devenish, and he would get some support staff in if they could be certain to come back the next day.

Not sure whether this would possible, but fairly certain it would be a good thing to get back to work as long as she could concentrate, Lauren went home to see what the situation was; whether she’d been relegated to the garden shed while the erstwhile au pair lorded it in her former bedroom, perhaps.

She was pleased to find that there was no other human presence in the house, and that, after a quick peek through the windows of the annexe, there seemed to be a lot of possessions thrown about in some disorder. Kenneth’s car was gone from the garage, and she presumed that he and his paramour were still resident in the annexe, and that they had gone out together. That suited her fine.

They could stay there, thought Lauren, as she went up to Gerda’s little apartment up in the attic and gathered up all the German woman’s possessions, then dragged them all down to the annexe door. She pushed a note under the bottom of the door to inform them that she had returned all that was Gerda’s, and that she hoped they’d be very happy together. And she meant it. Today, to use a shameless cliché, was the first day of the rest of her life.

She felt a shudder of shame run through her as her hope was tainted with poor Olivia’s continuing uncertainty about the recovery of her son, but she didn’t have the energy to worry about more than one person at the moment – and that person was her. She’d need to advertise for a holiday nanny and a cleaner, for when the children were home. Or, she could advertise for a live-in housekeeper, and choose her own candidate. She’d managed as practically a one-parent family for years now, and there seemed no reason why she couldn’t do it permanently, with the necessary domestic help.

Back at the police station, Superintendent Devenish had decided to take things into his own hands rather than chasing after recently retired detectives to fill the unexpected absences of two of his plain clothes officers. He had been warned about promoting women in plain clothes, been told that they’d never stand the emotional strain or the call of domestic matters, but he didn’t consider what Detective Sergeant Groves had told him in confidence that morning as anything like that.

Both Groves and DI Hardy had suffered domestic disasters that would equally have made his male detectives take at least a few days off work, and he had no criticism of them requesting some compassionate leave. Devenish had decided to take over the investigation himself, an unprecedented move but one designed to keep everything in-house. He warned his staff, nonetheless, that he didn’t want his involvement bandied about, during his morning briefing on what had been squirrelled out of their records the previous evening by ‘a bunch of dedicated officers who gave up their own time out of devotion to duty’, everyone knowing that he was making clear that the overtime budget had already been blown for the month.

House-to-house enquiries would continue near both sites, and known offenders would be brought in for questioning – a long and laborious process which might yield precisely nothing, but which would nevertheless have to be done.

‘I have every faith in your abilities, and I would be delighted to see these two unfortunate matters cleared up as quickly as possible,’ he told them, while at the same time realising that it was very unlikely to happen.

INTERLUDE

‘Good job so far, lads. I think we’ve earned ourselves a takeaway, don’t you?’

There was a rowdy cheer at this suggestion, and they all headed for one of the pubs down near the river, where there was usually dance music playing, live or piped. The rounds were simple – four pints of lager and four whisky chasers – and there were three rounds.

As the last one was put on the table, the main man said, ‘I think we’ll have that one over there in the pink glitter. What do you think, eh?’

‘Looks absolutely delicious. Can we all have the same?’

‘I don’t see why not?’

‘Will we put the container in the bin afterwards? I think so. There’s a big black one just at the back of the pub. We should be able to put it in that when all the punters have gone and the landlord’s safely tucked up in bed for the night. I’ll go and place our order, shall I, and meet you outside. Same as always, except we’ll clear up after ourselves this time.’

The man who had spoken rose and approached a girl at the bar sipping cider through a straw, braving out any lusty glances towards her through her thick covering of make-up.

‘Hello there, love. Would you like another drink? Only I’m going to have one, and I want to play a trick on my mates, if you wouldn’t mind coming outside with me for a minute. There’s a score in it for you. Easy money, and I’ll order when we get back in.’

The young, over-painted face turned up to him and smiled, and she went with him without a murmur, at the promise of twenty quid and a free drink
.

CHAPTER SEVEN

As Kenneth wasn’t due to go back to the Middle East for another three days, Lauren was at her desk by 7.30 the next morning. She didn’t really want to be in the kitchen when those two started larking around in the annexe right next door – something she suspected they might do purely to get at her. She had to catch up with rapidly developing events in the murder case anyway. The case would obviously go to Olivia now, and she needed to get a grip on what she’d missed, as she had been acting SIO when the most recent murder victim had been discovered. She needed to hand over to her boss with as much detail as she could.

There had been a lot of interview and door-to-door enquiries reports left on her desk, and she set to going through them all, making her own notes. She felt Olivia would be in good spirits when she arrived. Lauren had been relieved when the DI had phoned her, just after six in the hope that she’d be up, to inform her that the hospital had just called. Ben had had a comfortable night after they’d left the previous evening, and was in no further need of the ventilator. His heart also seemed to be behaving itself too.

The DI intended to go into the hospital on the way to work, and would leave Hal with him, on guard. She would be in at her normal time, and she didn’t want news of what was going on getting round the station grapevine; they’d twist it all sorts of ways and she’d never live it down. Rumour seemed to be believed more avidly than truth.

When the DI did arrive, she breezed into the office trying to look as normal as possible, as if she’d just spent her two days off at her leisure, and greeted everyone as she made for her desk. Her desk was positioned opposite Lauren’s, with her back to the DCs, and, just for a few seconds after she had sat down she let her face relax into an expression more akin to what she really felt like inside.

Lauren had the good luck to be looking her way at that moment, and cast her a questioning glance. Discreetly and out of sight of the others, Olivia gave her the thumbs-up to indicate that Ben’s condition had not worsened, then began trying to sort through the paperwork that had appeared on her desk in the previous two days. Much of it was superfluous to current enquiries, a lot of it general internal stuff that she could ignore for now. When she had sorted the wheat from the chaff, she summoned her sergeant to the other side of her desk with a nod of the head, and asked her to go through everything they had so far.

As many officers as could be spared had been engaged in enquiries, trying to identify individuals and locations involved in drugs, and several known faces had been brought in for questioning. Indeed, the cells were fully occupied at the moment with a few who had been picked up very early this morning, before they could be up and about.

The last four still to be interviewed were Teddy Edwards, aka Woggle-Eye; Steve Stoner, aka Flinty; Mervyn Lord, aka The Knife; and Dennis Trussler, aka Scabby. Lauren looked at her superior, expecting information on these peculiarly named characters. Being fairly new to the town, she hadn’t come across these individuals before.

‘They’re a right bad lot,’ Hardy explained. ‘Drugs, mugging; aggravated burglary; shoplifting; ABH – GBH for Trussler; illegal dog fighting; D&D; driving while under the influence; assaulting a police officer; resisting arrest; and TWOCing.

‘They’ve done just about everything except being nailed for a long stint in jail, and they’ve escaped CPS charges on several occasions because of lack of physical evidence or witnesses suddenly changing their stories. I suppose we’d better include intimidating witnesses in that list as well, because that wouldn’t surprise me at all. And that’s just what we know about. God knows what else they’ve got up to undetected.

‘All four of them have been known to the police since they were pre-teens, and none of them seems to understand the concept of going straight. I don’t think any of them have ever worked a day in their lives.’ ‘They sound a right bunch. Are they fairly young?’ asked Lauren, innocently.

‘A bit of a mix really. Trussler is in his forties, Lord isn’t far behind, but the other two are only in their twenties and look up to the other two as sort of godfather characters.’

‘But they’ve all been in prison?’

‘Yes, but not for nearly long enough, and not for anywhere near enough of their crimes.’

‘Can we interview them together, or would you rather one of the men went in with you?’ asked the sergeant, hoping to get the chance to have a peek at these local villains.

‘What, go in with one of those pussies? You’ve got to be kidding. No, I’d rather have you by my side.’

‘Shall we start now?’

‘No time like the present, Groves.’

The first detainee brought in was Woggle-Eye Edwards, who had suffered an overdose of some unknown substance years ago, and had been left with a wandering eye. He was twenty-nine years old, and as vicious as an American pitbull. He had insisted that his ‘brief’ was present when he was interviewed, and a solicitor sat in with him on the other side of the table.

Edwards had a shaven head covered in tattoos, and some disturbingly large holes in the lobes of his ears. His nose also sported several gold rings. Compounded by his grey and irregular teeth, he was a most unprepossessing character, someone who was regularly avoided in the street by less exotic members of the public.