A Narrow Margin of Error (14 page)

The whole thing just wasn’t … meaty enough. To stick a pair of scissors into someone, face to face … that spoke of something … desperate. Something big. A spat due to boy-girl, or boy-boy, or boy-twosomes just didn’t seem to have enough weight behind it to make sense.

And yet what else was there?

She walked into her stationery cupboard, determined once
more to read through every scrap of paper in the Thompson case in search of a sniff of anything more substantial than mere sexual peccadillo, and found instead a wooden cross lying on her desk.

She froze momentarily in the doorway, and then glanced behind her. Which was absurd, of course. The basement was a rabbit warren of corridors and little offices. And whoever had left her latest ‘gift’ was long gone.

Cautiously, wearily, she tossed her handbag into the space under her kneehole desk and walked forward.

The cross wasn’t big – about twelve inches tall by five or six inches across, and was evidently hand-carved from some sort of native wood. She was no expert, but it could have been ash. Or hazel, maybe. No doubt there’d be an expert somewhere who could tell her what it was, and maybe even the area where it had been cut from. Although what good that would do her, she wasn’t sure.

The bottom of the cross had been whittled into a sharp stake – like someone out to give a vampire a bad time.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and drew out a pair of thin latex gloves. It was an old habit, carrying them around with her, since her work at the CRT made them largely unnecessary now.

But she was glad of them as she picked up the cross and inspected it closely. In the crossbar section, on the horizontal bar that joined the vertical shaft, a hot poker had been used to carve the letters JOY.

Hillary slowly sat down and stared at the cross thoughtfully.

This, she could see at once, was different.

No more roses.

Or chocolates.

Or Valentine cards.

Or text messages.

This felt like the next level to a very different game.

Briefly, she wondered if the cross could have been left by anyone other than her stalker, but quickly dismissed it. Likewise, it could have no bearing on the Thompson case.

No. This was him.

So. What exactly was this wooden cross supposed to tell her? This cross with a lethal spike on the end?

Well, the cross was symbolically a religious symbol, of course, but she didn’t think her stalker was a man of God. Or interested in His edicts.

The cross was a symbol of death too. Wooden crosses marked graves.

And the word JOY.

The death of joy?

Was her charade with Steven Crayle paying off? Had her stalker finally heard the rumours about her and Steven? Perhaps seen them together? Was this meant to tell her that she had killed his joy by being unfaithful?

Maybe. A bit tenuous, though?

Gingerly, through the rubber of the thin glove, she touched one finger to the tip. It was sharp. Very sharp.

The cross obviously represented a lethal weapon. A killing weapon.

Kill joy.

She was being a killjoy perhaps? Hillary had to laugh a little at that. So her stalker had a sense of irony, maybe.

Then she felt a cold hand suddenly grip the back of her neck, making her swallow hard. Or maybe it meant something else entirely.

She got up on legs that felt just a little bit rubbery themselves, and reached into the lower left-hand drawer for an evidence bag, and dropped the cross inside. Not that she expected to get any fingerprints from it, of course. She doubted the wood would take them well, even if her stalker had been so stupid as to forget to wear gloves himself when handling it.

Locking it in the bottom drawer of her desk, she then walked down to the main computer room.

Sergeant Handley saw her first, and raised an eyebrow. He knew Hillary as Steven Crayle’s chief investigator, and as such,
she rarely put an appearance in with the statisticians and the number crunchers.

‘Hillary,’ he said curiously, as she approached his desk.

‘Sarge,’ she said briskly. ‘Can you do me a favour when you’ve got time? Can you ask your babies’ – she indicated the busily working computers all around her – ‘to cough up the name of any woman with the first name of Joy who reported having picked up a stalker within the last ten years? Or any woman with the same first name who was reported missing, or has come up dead in suspicious circumstances, again in the last ten years?’

‘This for Superintendent Crayle?’ Handley asked sharply.

Hillary smiled briefly. ‘Of course.’ She could lie with the best of them. The truth was, she wasn’t going to take this to Steven until she had to. Especially since she might be on the wrong track entirely.

No woman liked to look stupid in front of her boss. Especially one who was making her libidinous hormones jump through hoops.

‘OK. It shouldn’t take too long,’ Handley agreed, losing interest. ‘Luckily Joy’s not a very common first name.’

Hillary thanked him and left.

Natasha Hargreaves worked for a large PR firm in the Smoke, but luck was for once on their side. When Hillary telephoned her work number, she was informed by a very helpful assistant that Miss Hargreaves was actually in Henley-on-Thames for the day. She was there, apparently, checking out a venue for an
advertising
campaign for an unpopular politician, who was trying again to be flavour of the month.

The very helpful young lady then gave her directions to a large country club on the river Thames, which made Sam’s eyes widen as they pulled up to the entrance to the car park.

The country club had once obviously been a large house for a Victorian gentleman and his very extended family. It had gables and turrets, dormer and round windows, bits here and bobs
there, even a bit of gingerbread trim. It should have looked like something of an architectural dog’s dinner, but, in that magical way that some buildings have, managed to look quirky and charming instead.

In the car-park, there were an awful lot of Mercedes, and Jaguars and others of their ilk. Hillary hoped the unpopular politician wasn’t hoping to reach out to the ‘common’ man by having a photo opportunity here.

The country club had its own golf course (of course), plus tennis courts and the usual array of spa extras. And being in Henley, it naturally had a flotilla of boats at the bottom of a perfectly manicured lawn. Not to mention some expensive and nifty little water craft for those who liked to mess about on the water in style and comfort.

‘Very nice,’ Hillary said sardonically, as Sam parked in a space with a Ferrari on the left and a BMW convertible on the right. His sporty little Mini somehow managed to look jaunty and undaunted by the foreign competition. ‘I wonder what they’d do if I chugged my narrowboat up here and moored on their jetty?’

Sam grinned, somewhat nervously, since he wasn’t actually sure if she was joking or not.

They found Natasha Hargreaves by the simple expedient of asking the first person they saw wearing the acorn and crown motif of the country club on the navy-blue T-shirt of their uniform. He was twenty-something, looked as if he’d been carved from oak, and was already sun-browned. And if the muscles in his upper torso were anything to go by he would probably be rowing for his country in the next Olympics.

‘Oh, the PR people – they’re all in the bar,’ he grinned. ‘Go around the side there, past the big conservatory and take the next door in. The hospitality suite is right in front of you.’

They thanked him and followed his instructions. Inside, Hillary had no difficulty in pinpointing the regulars, who were mostly scattered about in armchairs, dressed in tennis whites and quaffing gin and tonics. Over by the bar area, however, were a
small gaggle of business-suited men and women who seemed to be hanging onto the words of a white-haired man with the
red-veined
nose of a serious drinker.

‘I’ve seen him somewhere before, guv,’ Sam said uncertainly.

Hillary smiled. ‘Nice to see our student body is still socially aware enough to recognize an MP when it sees one, Sam,’ she said. ‘Let’s not go in mob-handed. Natasha’s working, and it won’t put her in a good mood for talking to us if we go in flashing our Old Bill IDs and making her boss wonder what’s up.’

As she was speaking, Hillary was taking one of her cards from her bag, and wrote a few brief words on it and it handed it over to Sam.

‘See the tall brunette, beside the bald-headed bloke? Unless I miss my guess, that must be her. The other two women with them are too old. Hand her this and then go to the bar and stand me a pint. Since you’re driving, you can stick to orange juice.’

‘Thanks, guv,’ Sam said, with a grin of his own. Hillary nodded. It was nice to see the youngster was starting to relax a little more around her now.

She looked around, saw a quiet spot in one corner, and went over to it slowly and sat down. As she looked up, she was just in time to see Natasha glance down and read with a puzzled frown the short message on the card that Sam had just handed to her.

She looked around the room and saw Hillary half-raise her hand in acknowledgement, then she whispered something to the bald-headed man beside her and walked over.

As she did so, Sam came up beside her, two glasses in his hands, and followed her to the table.

‘Miss Hargreaves?’ Hillary showed her ID. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thanks. I still have one untouched somewhere. Police? Are you the same people who spoke to Dad? He said you were looking into Rowan’s case again.’

Natasha was one of those tall, willowy women with long hair and oval faces who looked like they should be modelling for a pre-Raphaelite painting. She was wearing a short, dark-blue skirt and matching tightly fitted jacket with a discreet red pin-stripe, and a plain white blouse. She wore black tights and a neat black shoe with a modest heel.

She sat down in a single folding movement that kept her knees together and left her posture almost as rigid as that of a Victorian lady in tight corsets.

‘Yes. Your father was very helpful,’ Hillary acknowledged. ‘I just have a few follow-up questions for you. I won’t be long, I know you’re working.’

Natasha cast a quick look over at the bar and gave a brief smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’m pretty low in the pecking order for this account. I’m only along to make up the numbers.’

And provide eye candy, Hillary thought cynically and silently.

‘So, what on earth can I do for you?’ Natasha asked brightly. ‘I can barely remember Rowan.’

Hillary sipped at her pint and nodded. Somehow she doubted the veracity of that statement.

‘You and your twin sister used to regularly visit your dad in Oxford, back when he was getting his degree, or so he told us?’

‘Yes, that’s right. But me and Rommy spent most of our time in town though, shopping or hanging out at a burger place we liked.’

‘But you went to the house in Kebler Road from time to time. To your father’s room there?’

‘Oh sure.’ Natasha began to fidget with her watch, a small discreet affair with a black leather band.

‘And you met Rowan?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old were you at the time?’

‘We were both fifteen. We were sixteen and a half when Dad got his degree. He was so proud of himself. Of course, it had a good effect on us, really, because both Rommy and me went on
to uni ourselves. Until then, neither of us had really thought about it.’

Hillary smiled. ‘From what I’ve been learning about Rowan, he must have made quite an impact on a fifteen-year-old girl. From his photographs, you could tell he was a good-looking boy.’

‘Sure, if you like that sort of thing. I prefer the David Tennant type myself,’ she smiled widely. ‘You know – tall, dark and dishy. But Rommy liked the blond cheeky-little-boy type more.’

Hillary nodded. ‘So he flirted with her, did he?’

‘Oh, all the time. But we never took him seriously. Even at that age, we knew he was just being over-the-top with us. You know, kissing our hands, putting on a funny French accent, playing the clown. He did that sort of thing really well, but it wasn’t anything serious.’

Again Hillary took another sip from her glass. ‘Did you know that Inspector Gorman – he was the officer in charge of the
original
murder case – discovered a rumour going around that Rowan had slept with a pair of young identical twins?
A deux
, as it were.’

Natasha Hargreaves’s classically beautiful face wrinkled up in a brief flash of disgust. ‘Ugh! That sounds so tacky, doesn’t it? But what can I say?’ She spread her well-manicured hands in a graphic gesture. Her nails, Hillary noticed, were coated in clear varnish. ‘It wasn’t us. But it was just the sort of thing Rowan would probably make up and boast about, if you ask me. Probably more as a lark than anything else.’

‘So you never slept with him yourself?’

‘Good grief, no.’

‘What about your sister?’

Natasha opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Instead a thoughtful look settled down between her dark, plucked brows. ‘You know, I was going to say “no way” without even thinking about it, but I can’t really be sure, can I? Even though we’re
identical
in looks, we definitely don’t think the same – we never have.
Rommy may have slept with him. She was always more
adventurous
than I was. And I have to admit, she grew up faster than I did, in many ways. So she might have done. But I still rather doubt it.’

Natasha opened her eyes wide in a ‘see-how-painfully-honest-I’m-being-with-you’ look.

Hillary smiled her appreciation. And ploughed on. ‘How did your father react to Rowan flirting with you?’

Natasha smiled and again waved her expressive hands in the air. ‘Oh, you have to know Dad. He didn’t really like it, but he didn’t go all Raging Bull about it. He warned us both what Rowan was like, said how much he trusted us girls to be sensible, and then made damned sure that whenever we came to the house we were never left alone with him. Rommy thought it was
hysterically
funny the way Dad guarded us.’