Road Closed (8 page)

‘Sit down, Mrs Cliff. We’ve found nothing to suggest a third party was involved.’ Geraldine glanced at the sergeant who was busy taking notes. ‘Can you think of anyone with a grudge against you or your husband?’

‘No. There was no one. Only us. There was only us.’

‘The fire started inside the house, in your kitchen. There’s no evidence of arson, nothing to suggest a third party was involved.’ Watching the widow’s face, Geraldine felt uneasy. There was something odd about Sophie Cliff’s reluctance to look at her directly, as though afraid her eyes might reveal too much. And people had been murdered for a lot less than a million pounds.

13

Interviews

On the way to Sophie Cliff’s workplace, Geraldine and Peterson went over what they knew about Sophie. They agreed there was something strange about her, but there was nothing to implicate her in her husband’s death.

‘She never once looked at me, not directly,’ Geraldine remarked. ‘She could be painfully shy. It might’ve been the shock. But she made me feel as though I wasn’t there. She looked right past me. Never once engaged with me while we were talking. It was the same when she went to view the body. I felt…’ she struggled to find the right word. ‘There’s something – cold – about her. Detached. Like she’s living on the other side of a glass wall.’

‘It could be grief shutting her off.’

‘It’s not just now. They didn’t socialise with the neighbours,’ Geraldine pointed out.

‘Perhaps she’s one of those people who isn’t comfortable around people?’

‘Maybe.’

‘She inherits the house,’ Peterson added after a pause.

‘But if that’s what she wanted, why would she risk destroying the property in the process of getting her hands on it?’

‘Insurance?’ The sergeant shook his head. ‘Unless she’s totally insane – which we can’t rule out – however you look at it, setting up a gas explosion has to be a very dodgy way to plan a murder. It’s dangerous and unpredictable. There’s so much could go wrong, and the chances of success are slim. And she would have been risking her own life too. I can’t believe
this was a deliberate murder. Arson maybe, but it can’t be a premeditated murder. Can it? It doesn’t make any sense, gov.’

‘There’s no rule book where murder’s concerned.’

It took them just over half an hour to reach Sophie Cliff’s work place. At night the journey would have taken about twenty minutes. She worked in an unprepossessing building on an industrial estate on the East side of the town. From outside it resembled an airport hangar. The interior was smart and conventional, with light powder blue walls and floor covered in matching carpet tiles. A young woman sat behind a curved pine desk, studying her computer screen.

She looked up as they entered. ‘Can I help you?’

Geraldine held out her warrant card. ‘We’d like to speak to your IT manager, please.’

‘Certainly, madam. Would you like to take a seat, while I give him a call?’ She flicked a button on her switchboard. ‘Mr Corrigan, can you come to reception, please?’ A moment later, she picked up her phone. Her finger nails gleamed scarlet in the halogen lighting. ‘Yes sir. But there are two visitors to see you, sir… Yes, sir… But sir… It’s the police, sir… Yes, sir.’ She hung up and turned to Geraldine. ‘Mr Corrigan will be with you directly, madam.’

The manager arrived after about ten minutes. ‘I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. We’re desperately short staffed and my back up operator has gone down with the flu. Would you believe it? Typical. How can I help you?’

Geraldine stood up. ‘We’d like a word with you in private.’ Mr Corrigan hesitated. ‘If it’s not convenient to talk here, you can accompany us back to Harchester police station. It’s only about half an hour’s drive from here. But we’re as keen as you are not to waste any time. We’d appreciate your co-operation.’ Without a word, Mr Corrigan turned and led the way through two sets of swing doors and along a hushed powder blue corridor.

‘We can talk in my office,’ he explained over his shoulder as they followed him to a door labelled Edward Corrigan. ‘Please, take a seat.’ He sat behind a large wooden desk, where he swivelled gently from side to side on a leather chair as Geraldine spoke.

‘Mr Corrigan, we’d like to begin by confirming Sophie Cliff’s movements last night.’

He nodded. ‘I heard about the fire. Terrible, just terrible. Is her husband going to be all right? He was in the house, wasn’t he, when it happened?’

‘Mr Cliff died in the fire. Did you know him?’

‘Never met him, I’m afraid.’

‘He worked here.’

‘A lot of people work here, Inspector. He worked on the admin side, I think. Our paths don’t often cross. I may have been in the same room as him, but I wouldn’t recognise him. We’re a large organisation… But this is simply terrible. What a horrible way to go. And they’d not been married long.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry to hurry you, Inspector, but our systems operation has to be my top priority. We have banks dependent on our print runs, and hospitals. The penalties are prohibitive if we overrun. So I’d be grateful if we could keep this brief, with minimum disruption to my staff. We’ve already lost Sophie – I don’t suppose you have any idea when she might be able to come back to work?’

Mr Corrigan confirmed that Sophie had been called into work on Friday night. She had been contacted at two twenty, and had arrived at the office at two fifty-five.

‘Would it have taken her thirty five minutes to get to work at that time of night?’ Peterson asked.

‘She had to get dressed,’ Geraldine pointed out. Sophie’s phone had registered an incoming call at two twenty from a withheld number. Corrigan’s confirmation saved them having to trace the call. He told them it was a regular occurrence but
there was no way Sophie could have known in advance if she was going to be summoned on any particular night. Her contract stated how often she had to be on call but often she could fix problems remotely without leaving home. She had to go into the office about once a month, on average.

Corrigan was unable to give a view on whether the Cliff’s marriage was a happy one.

‘I assume they were happy,’ he said. ‘They’d only been married about a year or maybe two. But it’s not something I discuss with my colleagues. We don’t have time to sit around gossiping, even if we wanted to.’

‘Did you ever see her looking miserable?’

‘Only when the system crashed.’

Geraldine spent the rest of the afternoon ploughing through reports, but they had been given the gist of the case at the morning briefing. Her afternoon reading material merely corroborated what she already knew. She read through it conscientiously, alert for some detail that didn’t fit, but nothing struck her as out of place.

It was dark outside by the time she left. A heavy rain was falling as she crossed the car park. She shivered and walked faster. Damp and disgruntled, she pulled out into the street and caught sight of Peterson disappearing into the pub across the road. She was tempted to join him but was suddenly too tired to make the effort.

It was half past eight by the time she reached home. She threw her coat on the hall chair, shuffled into her slippers and hurried into the bedroom where the light on her answer phone was flashing. Her spirits lifted when she heard Craig’s voice but he was calling to cancel their date for Sunday. ‘I don’t think I can make it back in time tomorrow after all. Can we make it Monday instead? I’ll assume that’s all right unless you call.’

Geraldine wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a small glass of red wine. Then she sat down by the phone in her living
room and hesitated. There was no reason for her to ring Craig. If he didn’t answer and she left a message he might see the missed call and think she couldn’t see him on Monday. She glanced at her watch. It was twenty to nine. She went back to the kitchen and refreshed her glass.

Tired, and with no immediate task to distract her, Geraldine thought about her mother. When their parents divorced, Celia had been the one to comfort her, leaving Geraldine feeling excluded, as usual, from the family circle. When Celia had married and given birth to a daughter of her own, she had grown even closer to her mother. Geraldine meanwhile, single and childless, had thrown herself into her career. On occasional visits home, she had been faintly shocked to observe the intimacy that had developed between her mother and her sister, and had felt even more isolated from them. With her mother’s death, Geraldine wondered if she and Celia might forge a stronger relationship. She hoped her sister would want that too. She picked up the phone.

‘Who’s calling?’

‘It’s Geraldine. Celia’s sister. Who’s that?’

‘Babysitter.’

Geraldine went in the kitchen and poured herself another glass of wine. Glancing at her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace, she was startled to see how haggard she looked: beneath straggly black hair her eyes were like empty holes, bored into a pallid face. She had spent so long around corpses she was beginning to look like one. An uncharacteristic wave of self-pity threatened to overwhelm her. Resolutely, she set her wine glass down on the table, opened her briefcase, and pulled out her laptop. At least she had her work.

14

Plan

When Cal had offered to put him up, Ray had jumped at the opportunity. It was better than staying at the hostel. He could learn a lot from Cal. There wasn’t a lock Cal couldn’t open. He could tell if a house was worth breaking into just by looking at it. He only had to walk past and he’d know. He was clever like that.

‘How’d you do it, Cal? How do you know?’

‘See what wheels are in the drive,’ Cal answered, as though it was obvious. ‘And watch the people when they go in and out. Check out what they’re wearing, especially their shoes. Shoes are a dead giveaway. And whatever you do, don’t touch a house with kids. Chances are a lot of equipment’s stashed in the kid’s bedroom where, let’s face it, the brat’s only got to wake up and you’ve landed yourself right in it. Mate of mine was sent down as a nonce for being picked up in some kid’s room. Gadgets, that’s what he was after, not some poxy kid.’ He spat on the pavement. ‘Kid wakes up and there’s Donny, in his bedroom. What a carry on that was. Mother screaming, father yelling, and the kid was only waving a cricket bat in Donny’s face. That bloody kid damn near had his eye out and for that the poor sod was put on the sex register before he could open his gob.’ He heaved a deep sigh. ‘Once they’ve got hold of you, no one listens.’

Ray nodded his head wisely. ‘Ain’t that the truth.’

‘Steer clear of kids,’ Cal repeated. ‘They’re the devil.’

Cal knew everything there was to know. ‘Done more jobs than you had hot dinners,’ he liked to boast, ‘and never been
caught, not since I was a teenager.’ He had done a stretch inside before he reached twenty, same as Ray. It gave them something in common.

‘Wasn’t called a young offenders’ institution in those days,’ Cal told him. ‘But it was the same in all but name. Bloody hole.’ Ray nodded. They went to the pub where they passed a comfortable evening exchanging experiences. ‘Makes you grow up fast, doing time,’ Cal said. That was when he had offered to put Ray up.

‘Stick with me and you’ll be all right, kid,’ he told Ray. ‘Two pairs of hands are better than one, and you look like you learn fast.’ Ray grinned.

Cal’s previous partner was inside. ‘He was careless,’ Cal explained. ‘I got away, I’m quick like that, but he was too slow. Shame. We’d done a lot of jobs together, but you got to move on. You stick with me and you’ll be all right.’

‘What happens when he comes out?’

‘Who?’

‘What happens when your old mate gets out? What happens to me then? To us?’

‘He won’t be out for years. Don’t worry about him. Now, your round I think?’

Thanks to Cal, Ray knew how to open security doors and how to get through closed windows. He was learning how to cut glass in the overgrown bushes beside the canal path. It was the perfect place to practise. No one else ever went down there. Cal had a stash of glass cutters. He had given one to Ray and made him promise not to bring it in the house or carry it around with him.

‘I know it looks like a pen, but it isn’t a pen,’ Cal explained. ‘It’s a giveaway.’ Ray kept it in a hole in the trunk of an overgrown tree beside the canal. ‘We’re going to be rich one day, you and me,’ Cal boasted, ‘thanks to these little beauties.’ He nodded at the glass cutter in Ray’s gloved hand.

It had all been going so well. Now Ray was worried. Cal had set up a job and Ray had blown it. He didn’t care so much about losing the stuff. Of course he was gutted about the dosh but Cal would find them another job. Cal was clever like that. They had already broken into lots of houses. It wasn’t difficult. But Ray had let him down.

‘These people are all idiots,’ Cal said. ‘All that fancy gear in big houses, they’re asking for it to be lifted. All we’ve got to do is keep at it till we hit the jackpot.’

The first few jobs had been disappointing. Then they had found something really worth nicking – and Ray had left the loot behind. As long as they kept going they would be lucky again, sooner or later, but Ray was afraid Cal wouldn’t want him tagging along any more. If Cal had done that last job on his own he might have had enough to retire on by now. But Ray wouldn’t know what to do without Cal. He had to do something to prove himself before Cal gave him the push.

The idea came to Ray when he was standing at a bus stop in the rain. He studied the houses across the road and thought about everything Cal had taught him. That was when he had his brainwave. It was so simple. He was going to pull off a job all by himself. Then Cal would take him seriously. He could stop calling him ‘retard’ as well. Retard Ray never remonstrated at the nickname, but it rankled. Cal showed him no respect.

No one had ever taken Ray seriously. He had always been an also ran. Even as a kid, he had been a hanger on, drifting about on the fringes of other kids’ gangs. Finally he had ended up in Stan’s outfit. Stan’s boys spent their time on the streets, mugging kids and turning over small time corner shops.