Perfect Sins (28 page)

He seemed not to believe her. “But it's a valid question, isn't it? Am I chasing phantoms? And if so, is there a right time to stop? Will I know if that time comes? Has it already come, and gone?” There was a barred note of challenge in his voice, as if he wanted her to say yes so he could shout her down.

Hazel shook her head. “No one can answer that but you. If you want my opinion, it's that an hour and a half into a pursuit across the east of England is not a good time to be wondering. When we left Grantham, you thought there was something to be learned from following this man. Nothing has changed: If there was then, there still is. We've come this far, let's see where he takes us. If you're serious about maybe calling it a day, we can talk about it after we get home.”

It was an eminently sensible response from an eminently sensible young woman, and it deprived Ash of the argument he had been working himself up for. He didn't know why he was angry with her. He wasn't even sure it was her he was angry with. But he knew that he was angry. And that was new, too, and if it took Hazel by surprise, it astonished Ash. It was years since he'd dared to feel angry.

There was something liberating about it. He'd every reason to shout and even scream. If his therapist had been here, she'd have reminded Ash that if he hadn't done it before and he wanted to do it now, that was because he was finally feeling safe enough to let his emotions off the leash. Safe in himself, safe with those he was with. But Laura Fry wasn't here; she was in her office in Norbold. And this wasn't something that could wait until his next appointment.

“Stop being so damned reasonable!” he snarled. “I asked what you think—not what you think I want to think you think!”

Reasonable was Hazel's middle name. It was what made her good at her job. It was, she believed, a big part of what made her a valuable human being, and she was damned if she was going to apologize for it. But her tone hardened just enough that it should have rung warning bells. “Gabriel, what's this all about? I am not your enemy. I've tried hard—bloody hard, at times—to be a good friend. I wasn't criticizing what you're doing. If I had anything to say about that, I'd come straight out and say it, not pretend I was talking about something else. I thought we knew each other well enough that you'd know that.”

He did. At least the rational core of him did. The intelligent, intuitive part of him, which had made him good at his job, knew she'd been more than a friend to him; she'd been an anchor, a candle in the dark. It knew she bore him nothing but goodwill, and that he didn't want to shout at her. That side of him wanted to stop, right now, and throw itself on her mercy once again, and hope that once again she'd touch his hand and quietly talk him out of the dark place.

But the liberated, angry part was reckless and stormed on. “We
don't
know each other! You don't know anything about me. You think I'm crazy, wasting my life chasing a dead woman and two dead boys. You thought I was crazy the day we met, and nothing that's happened since has made you revise that opinion.”

“I never thought you were crazy,” said Hazel, with a sort of forced calm and a certain economy truthwise.

“Of course you did! You all did, everyone at Meadowvale. You called me ‘Rambles With Dogs'!”

She had to admit that much was true. Most of Norbold's police force didn't know his real name and wouldn't have thought to ask. “Well … you know … You
do
talk to Patience the way most people talk to other human beings.”

He couldn't deny it. He didn't try to deny it. “What
you
don't know,” he retorted triumphantly, “is that
she talks back
!”

On the backseat the white lurcher rolled her toffee-colored eyes. Ooooh shit, she murmured, you've done it now.

Afterward Hazel tried to convince herself that he'd been joking. He'd picked a fight with her for no better reason than that he was tired and discouraged and thought he was on a fool's errand, and then he'd tried to defuse it with a silly joke. It hadn't come out as a joke because he hadn't been getting much practice. But right now, and also later, if she was honest with herself, she knew that he meant it. He talked to his dog, and he thought she talked back.

What she might have done next is anybody's guess. The sensible thing would have been to ask her sat nav to find the nearest hospital with an emergency psychiatric unit. Or at least to have performed a 180 at the next roundabout and taken him home. But she didn't, and the reason she didn't was that before she could reach even that obvious a conclusion, two cars ahead of her Stephen Graves indicated left and turned toward Cambridge.

Two car lengths isn't long enough to come up with a whole new strategy. She did what she'd come here to do. She followed him.

 

CHAPTER 28

“H
E'S HEADING FOR
Midsummer Common.”

Hazel looked at Ash in surprise. It was the first thing either of them had said since he dropped his bombshell, and he spoke as if the last five minutes simply hadn't happened. As if he hadn't lost control and ranted at her as if he hated her, and then knocked her sideways by admitting that he heard voices. Only it hadn't been an admission, exactly. There was nothing guilty or confessional about it. He'd thrown it in front of her as a challenge. As if it was a trump card, daring her to better it.

She couldn't—
couldn't
—reopen that conversation. Better to go on with this one. “Er—you know Cambridge?”

“Cathy was at Clare.”

“What did she read?”

“Economics.”

For some reason that surprised Hazel. All she'd known of Cathy Ash till now was as a wife and mother, and victim. Somehow she hadn't pictured her as a high-achiever as well.

Ash didn't notice her blink. Perhaps he was too busy looking for the fence-repair kit. “What about you?”

“BSc with qualified teacher status,” she said, expressionless. “And then police studies at Liverpool.”

“He's turning.”

Graves was turning into one of the prime bits of real estate in Cambridge, an area of modern apartments with views over both the Common and the Cam, a short walk from the city center. Hazel stayed on the main road when the car ahead pulled into a residents' car park.

“Let me out,” said Ash urgently. “You can't stop here, and I don't want to lose him.”

“You keep your eye on him,” said Hazel tersely, “and let me worry about parking.” She pulled into a residential parking bay on the opposite side and fifty meters farther up. She pulled something out of her glove compartment and wedged it against the windscreen.

Ash peered at it as he got out. It was a printed card:
Doctor on call
. “But you're not…”

She looked at him exactly the way Patience might, and he didn't finish the sentence.

“Which building?”

Graves was still climbing the steps as they crossed the road. The glass doors swung closed behind him.

Beside her, Hazel felt Ash gathering himself to run; she held him with a touch. “Let him get out of sight.”

“We'll lose him!”

“We'll find him again.” As the elevator swallowed the businessman, Hazel walked briskly into the lobby and fixed the concierge with an authoritative eye. “Constable Hazel Best, Norbold Police. Give me the number, please, of the apartment where Mr. Graves is heading.”

Even an active member of the police in a distant town would have had limited powers in Cambridge; and what she produced in support of her authority was not, in fact, her warrant card, but her pass to use police sports facilities. But it had the badge on it and it had her name on it, and most members of the public don't see enough police documentation to discriminate between one thing and another, particularly when someone is standing over them radiating the right to be there.

The concierge was a responsible middle-aged man who took his duties seriously; and one of those duties was to help the police to protect his residents. Graves was known to him as a visitor, but he was not a resident, so the question of divided loyalties did not arise. He barely hesitated before answering. “Ms. Regan's apartment—four oh five.”

“Is Ms. Regan in?”

“I don't believe so, no. She moved out a week ago. Mr. Graves has a key. Er…” He was still trying to be helpful. “Shall I phone ahead?”

“On no account.” Hazel tempered the admonition with a quick smile; then she headed into the second elevator, dragging Ash along with her. “See? Now we know where he's going, we don't have to get close enough for him to see us.”

“What do we do if Ms. Regan really
is
his mistress?” asked Ash.

“Ask what he's doing there after she's moved out,” said Hazel.

The elevator reached the fourth floor. Hazel got out first, in case Graves was still in the hallway. He wasn't—no one was—but the sound of a door closing told her where he had gone. Polished brass numerals on the door confirmed it.

“How do we get in?” whispered Ash.

She had to remind herself that although he'd been involved in national security for years, he'd worked mostly behind a desk. What seemed blindingly obvious to her might be a minefield of new experiences to him. She said patiently, “We ring the bell.”

Stephen Graves was not expecting visitors. He took the precaution of using the peephole before he opened it. What he saw was a fresh-faced young woman in an open-necked shirt proffering a folded piece of paper. “Message for you, sir.”

It could have been anything, important or not.
She
could have been anyone, including a member of the building's service staff. He opened the door to find out.

Graves had been alone in the apartment. Now suddenly he wasn't alone anymore, and one of the two people who'd come in so quickly that they'd crammed him up against the wall was about the last person in the world who should have been here.

“A—Ash!” he stammered, fighting for calm. Ricocheting off the narrow walls, his uncertain gaze found Hazel. “And … who are you?”

Hazel's voice dipped significantly. “I'm a police officer, Mr. Graves.” Then she waited while he worried about that.

Finally he managed to say, “You followed me.”

“Yes,” said Hazel flatly. “We did.”

“
Why?”

Hazel let a little impatience creep into her tone. “Come on, Mr. Graves, don't let's waste any more time. You've been less than frank with us, haven't you? Well, the time has come to tell us exactly what you know—
all
you know—and we'll see if there's a way you can walk away from this.”

It was as if someone else was talking. She hadn't learned this in police studies. She thought she'd picked it up from the late-night transatlantic cop shows for which she entertained a secret weakness. Doing her own job on the streets of Norbold, she would never have dreamed of playing fast and loose with procedure. But here it was different. She had no lawful authority to throw the man up against his girlfriend's wall and put the fear of God into him, and in a way that made it easier. If she was acting as a private citizen, why should she be bound by police regulations? Hell, they'd sent her on gardening leave because they thought the stress had got to her. Maybe they were right.

Graves made a valiant attempt to restore his dignity, pulling down his jacket and straightening his tie. He looked at Ash as if he'd caught him kicking a puppy and said loftily, “I don't know what it is that you think I'm keeping from you. I've done everything in my power to help you, long after there was any chance that it would do any good. This is the thanks I get—to be hounded and harassed and treated like some kind of criminal?”

His haughty gaze shifted to Hazel. “I want to state, for the record, that I am not involved in any criminal activity, nor have I ever been, and if you're basing this accusation on anything Gabriel Ash has told you, you should know the man spent two months in an insane asylum! Now, are you ready to leave, or shall I call my solicitor?”

For a moment Hazel felt her resolve wavering. But it was already too late for that. Backing away with a muttered apology wouldn't get her out of this. Only if Ash was right, and they could prove it, would she come up smelling of roses rather than fertilizer—and not even the nice stuff that comes in bags.

She breathed heavily at him. The trick, she knew instinctively, was to make him feel the way she'd been made to feel by Sergeant Mole, who'd supervised her initial training. Sergeant Mole, whose measured footsteps made grown men and women hide in cupboards, whose lifted eyebrow had been known to cause hysterics, the curl of whose lip reduced intelligent people to gibbering wrecks. He'd never been known to lay a hand on anyone. He didn't need to. He just had to look at you
that way,
and let your painful awareness of your own inferiority do the rest.

Hazel Best wasn't Sergeant Mole. And Stephen Graves wasn't a raw police recruit already wondering whether he'd bitten off more than he could chew without choking. But by God, she was going to give it her best shot.

She let her head move fractionally from side to side in a rigidly controlled expression of bitter disappointment. Her voice had gravel in it. “Mr. Graves, do you think—do you really think—that I'm here because Gabriel Ash thought it was a good idea? Do you really think that's all it takes to launch a police operation? That you can whistle up a squad car like ordering a pizza, and pursue someone across half of England on the off chance that they'll be surprised enough to tell you something useful?
Have you any idea of the paperwork involved
?”

Graves blinked. Hazel had a sense that the ground under his feet seemed less firm than it had a minute before. “So … what's this all about?” he said at last.