A Deadly Thaw (8 page)

Connie walked back to the police station along Bampton High Street, keeping a wary eye out for local hoodlums she’d occasionally had to deal with when she was in uniform. She spotted them now and again. Their eyes would lock, and she was never the first to look away. Today the only people out in force were afternoon shoppers taking advantage of the warming spring day to leave their heavy winter coats at home and walk into town.

A figure walked towards her who Connie recognised but struggled at first to place. She was slim, wearing a close-fitting leather jacket in a deep shade of burgundy and dark jeans. Connie looked at the high-heeled ankle boots and shuddered. The last time she had tried heels, she had ended up tripping over the pavement outside her flat. On the way out to a date as well.

She would have carried on walking, but the figure stopped in front of her. ‘Hi, Connie. You out on your own?’

It was the voice that switched the light on in Connie’s head. Slightly breathy with a hint of a Derbyshire accent. Joanne, Palmer’s wife.

‘They do let me off the leash occasionally.’ It sounded more sarcastic than she’d intended, but, honestly, did Joanne think she had to be accompanied everywhere? However, the frown on the woman opposite suggested that the tone hadn’t gone unnoticed.

‘Damian at the station?’

It was Connie’s turn to frown. What business was it of Joanne’s where Palmer was during working hours? Or was she being unfair? Perhaps that’s what it was like when you were married. Wanting to know where your spouse was all the time. She made a face. ‘Probably.’

There was a short silence. She turned to move on, but Joanne put out her arm. ‘Perhaps we could meet for a coffee? Have a nice girly chat. We only ever meet in the pub.’

That was an outright lie. This was their third meeting in total. The previous time had been at Joanne’s wedding to Palmer last year. The only interaction had been a kiss on Joanne’s cheek in the wedding line-up. She’d shaken Palmer’s hand. The time before that had been on one of the team’s socials where partners had been allowed but discouraged. It was a time for letting off steam after a difficult case but Joanne had come and had sat there with a frown on her face. She had spotted Connie and Palmer laughing in the corner – only about something innocuous, but he’d been dragged off home. That was the last time, as far as Connie could remember, that he’d been out on a work do.

Connie, for once, was at a loss for words. She had nothing in common with this woman. It was Palmer she liked. Sort of. Why would she want to go for coffee with Joanne? ‘Of course. When this case is finished. We’ll have more time then.’

Joanne remained impassive, but Connie was sure she saw a flash of fury cross her face. She wondered what went on underneath that polished exterior.

‘I’ve not seen much of him the past few days. He’s busy with his job as usual. You’re working on that body found at Hale’s End?’

So Palmer was the type to bring his work home with him. Well, she could hardly blame him for that, could she? If she’d had a partner she would also have been sorely tempted to tell him about the case she was working on. But that would have been accompanied by a warning for him not to divulge she was discussing the case with him. Joanne, she suspected, was playing games.

‘We’re all a bit preoccupied. You remember the last murder investigation. It takes over your life.’

Joanne’s mouth turned down at the edges. ‘I remember. I just thought things might have been different after we were married.’

But why?
thought Connie.
Why would getting married make any difference to how much work you have to put in when a killing takes place?

Perhaps it was better she didn’t have a partner in her life continually fretting about what time she was going to arrive home. Her occasional bouts of loneliness could be tempered by the knowledge of the hours she was putting in to further her career. She wondered about saying something reassuring about Palmer. After all, it couldn’t be much fun starting off married life with an absent husband.

But Joanne was looking down the high street, beyond the shops to where the road curved out of Bampton. ‘Funny that body turning up at Hale’s End. When I was growing up, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the place. It had an awful reputation.’

‘It gave me the creeps,’ Connie couldn’t help herself admitting.

‘It wasn’t that. It was the local place to go and park your car. You know, with your boyfriend. A lot of teenage fumbling went on around that building.’

‘It’s isolated enough but spooky. Why would anyone choose to go there?’

Joanne gave her a look of distaste. ‘Best thing about being married. Not having to put up with that sort of thing any more. I’ll see you soon then.’ She turned away from Connie, who was aware that her bag was buzzing alarmingly.

She dug into it and pulled out her silent mobile. She’d missed a call from Palmer. What now?

The Peverill Arms missed cigarette smoke. Many landlords, after the ban came into effect in England forbidding all cigarette-smoking in public spaces, used the opportunity to redecorate their establishments. Yellowing ceilings were surprised with a white slick of paint and the sludge-brown carpets slung in favour of the original wooden floorboards underneath. Not so the Peverill Arms. Its attraction was that it had refused to change. It had even tried to hold out against the smoking ban, but a steep fine after a tip-off to the police had indicated the futility of pitting itself against government regulations. But it still looked like a smokers’ pub.

Mark pushed open the door and scanned the room. In the corner, as expected, were two of the men he was looking for. The three half-drunk pints of mild suggested that Brian, the man he particularly wanted to see, was probably in the toilet.

He went to the bar and ordered himself a half of the same brew. He didn’t ask the others if they wanted anything because that wasn’t their way. Money was tight for all of them, and the niceties of shared rounds were for better times. Like when they had all been in the employ of Her Majesty’s armed forces. But that was in the past. Now everyone got his own drink, and it wasn’t a problem.

As if on cue, Brian came back from the gents, checking the flies of his trousers. He was a physically imposing man. About six foot three and broad across the shoulders. He was running to fat around his stomach, but over the rest of the body the extra weight was solid enough. He nodded at Mark. ‘We don’t normally see you in here of a lunchtime.’

‘Alcohol in the day sends me to sleep.’

‘What you doing here then?’

Mark looked over to the corner. ‘Got a problem I need to discuss.’

Brian’s features flattened into a neutral expression. ‘Get your drink and join us.’

By the time Mark had paid for his beer and joined the gang at the table, there was an expectant hush over the group. Brian had clearly tipped them off. If Mark had any friends in Bampton, these were them. A group of ex-military who had created an informal network to support and help each other. They kept their ears to the ground about job opportunities, benefits they could claim and gossip about others they had known in the forces. The Peverill Arms was their meeting place.

‘I don’t know how much I can tell you about this. It’s not me being shy. It’s a friend’s problem. I’m helping her out.’

‘Her?’ Jack, the oldest of the group, grinned a gap-toothed smile at him. ‘You’re coming to us about a woman’s problem?’

Mark drew a face in the froth of his beer. ‘Someone sent her a gun.’

The men stiffened. The third, Paul, looked towards Brian. ‘A gun?’ he repeated, his eyes still on Brian.

‘I’ve told her to go to the police. Which she’s doing. At least I’m pretty sure she is, but she wants to know where it came from.’

‘How did she get it?’

‘It was delivered by hand. From a young boy. Well, a teenager.’

It was Jack’s turn to look at Brian. ‘A young lad,’ he echoed again.

‘What’s this?’ Mark frowned, feeling for the pulse behind his temple. ‘Everything I say is being repeated.’

Brian pushed away his beer. ‘It’s been a couple of weeks since you came here. I know, I know. You don’t like drinking at lunch. Although we only have the two.’

‘But we do bugger all else the rest of the day.’ Again the gap-toothed smile from Jack.

‘I had a visitor recently.’ Brian leant back in his chair. ‘A young lad. Tall, a bit underweight. Anyway, he knocked on my door of an evening and asked to speak to me about something.’

‘About mid-teens?’

‘Something like that. Couldn’t see much of the little blighter, to be honest. He had his hoodie pulled down low over his head. Put me on alert for a start.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I let him into the hall. No further, mind you. Anyway, he come straight out with it. Asks me where he could get hold of a gun.’

‘Seriously?’

‘I kid you not.’

Mark decided it was time to lay his cards on the table. Well, some of them. ‘It’s not exactly a coincidence I’m here.’ The three men were silent. ‘I made a few phone calls just now. You know. To some of the gang. One of them mentioned I should speak to you, Brian. Nothing else. He didn’t give anything away. I just rang around and asked about a gun. They told me to speak to you.’

‘What’s going on, Mark?’ Paul was the person he knew the least. There was a spark of suspicion in his eyes. ‘Hang on. It’s not to do with that guy shot at Hale’s End?’

The group fell silent once more. Suspicion was radiating off the three of them.

Mark decided honesty was the best course. ‘I can’t tell you who it is. I said I’d try to help a friend, that’s all.’

Brian was refusing to meet Mark’s eyes. ‘I’ve told you what happened. I told the boy to bugger off. I don’t know where he got my name from, but I don’t get hold of weapons for anyone. Especially young lads like him.’

‘I assume you haven’t been to the police. I don’t blame you.’ Mark could feel the tension of the group relax. ‘But I want to know where that boy got the gun from. Call it helping someone who’s helped me.’

This went down well. Even Paul had adopted a sage expression.

‘I don’t know where he got a gun from, but it wasn’t me,’ said Brian. ‘Little sod, arriving on my doorstep like that. If he shot that guy, I hope the coppers catch him. Coming to me. Little bastard.’

‘Let me go over this one more time. You’re absolutely positive that you didn’t recognise the boy with the hood. You’ve never seen him before at all.’

The policeman who she’d first met, a Detective Sergeant Palmer, was taking her statement, writing rapidly on a notepad. He was small and compact with greying hair that did nothing to offset his boyish demeanour. He was wearing a wedding ring that he kept fiddling with as she told her story. When she got to the part about the gun, he had recoiled, even though she kept the weapon in her bag.

‘Hold on. Just stay there.’ He’d sprinted out of the room and returned a few minutes later with two men in uniform with guns strapped across their chests. They’d demanded her handbag and had taken it away.

It had left her feeling exposed. She had no money and no house keys. She hoped she would be getting these back soon.

DI Sadler had come into the room a few minutes later. It was him that she’d originally asked for, but she had been told sharply by the woman at the desk that he was busy. Clearly the revelation that Kat was at the station with a gun in her bag had been deemed more important than whatever he’d been doing.

It was Sadler who was now questioning her. He looked wary. At their first meeting at the house, she could have sworn there had been a spark of empathy between them. That had gone. During the retelling of the story, she had grown self-conscious. ‘I didn’t get a good look at the boy’s face. His hood was pulled down low but I’m pretty sure I’d not seen him before.’

‘And this is the best description you can give us. Tall and thin with brown eyes and possibly blond hair.’ Palmer didn’t look up as he asked the question but continued to write on the notepad.

‘I can’t swear to the hair colour. It’s just the impression I got. That he had blond hair I mean. But I could be mistaken.’

‘It matches the description of around half the male teenagers in Bampton. Are you sure you’re telling us everything?’

Kat should have felt outrage, but she couldn’t summon up the emotion, not least because she wasn’t giving them the whole truth. There was a large part that she’d missed out. About the conversation with Mark and his reassurances that he would help. She told herself that, at least, she could claim client confidentiality, but she felt like a complete hypocrite. ‘Hand on heart, I’d never seen him before.’

‘And would you be able to identify him again?’ This time the sergeant did look up. His gaze, like Sadler’s, was assessing.

Kat looked between them both and felt like crying. ‘Probably.’

They let her go eventually. Gave her back her handbag and thanked her for her cooperation. As she came onto the street, the warming May day made her feel feverish. She checked her phone. No messages from anyone.

She passed a figure on the steps of the station and recognised DC Connie Childs, the detective who’d questioned Lena about the finding of Andrew Fisher’s body at Hale’s End. The detective did a double take when she saw her. ‘Are you going out or coming in?’

It should have sounded rude, but Kat felt pathetically grateful that someone cared enough to ask. ‘I’m leaving. Something happened today. A boy came to my counselling room and gave me a package, saying it was from Lena. It was a gun.’

‘A gun?’ She looked shocked. ‘The one used in Andrew Fisher’s killing?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve given it to them inside.’ Kat inclined her head.

Connie’s eyes flickered, and Kat could see something like amusement in her face. ‘Which detective did you see?’

‘Detective Sergeant Palmer to begin with.’

Kat was surprised to see her snickering. ‘I bet he nearly wet his pants when you showed him the gun. I wish I’d been there.’

Tears blurred Kat’s eyes. She felt Connie’s hand on her arm.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry. Don’t listen to me. Gallows humour is rife in this job. It must have been a shock getting the weapon. Was it loaded?’

Kat shook her head. ‘No.’

‘How do you know?’

Kat’s mind stopped in shock. How to answer this without mentioning Mark. ‘They told me in the station.’

Connie seemed content with the answer. ‘Look, I know a good café nearby.’

‘I can’t, I’m sorry. I need to get back. Feed the cat and see if Lena’s home. It’s all getting a bit much for me, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry. But you must look after yourself. Have you thought about getting away, maybe just for a few days?’

‘I can’t concentrate. I thought the trip to the coast might help, but even the delights of Whitby yesterday did nothing for me.’

She felt the hand on her arm suddenly tighten. Through her tears she could see Connie’s face come close to hers. ‘Did you say Whitby?’