A Narrow Margin of Error (2 page)

Crayle shrugged. ‘I might have.’ He shifted a touch
uncomfortably
in his chair. He
did
have an idea, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to share it with her just yet – mostly because he was not sure of his own motive in coming up with it.

When Commander Donleavy had first told him that Hillary Greene was going to be joining his team, he’d had decidedly mixed feelings about it. Of course, a lot of officers retired early, then found themselves at a loose end and missing the job. Joining the CRT as civilian consultants was a good way to stave off boredom and earn some extra cash. Jimmy Jessop, for instance, was a prime example. At sixty-two, he’d retired on a sergeant’s salary, only for his wife to die barely a year later, leaving him alone in a home that had fast begun to feel like a prison. He’d been only too glad to return to work, and there were many more just like him who had done so.

But Hillary Greene was hardly a typical CRT recruit. For a start, she’d been a full DI, and little less than a station legend, when she’d retired. Famously married to the bent copper Ronnie Greene, she’d been investigated by an internal committee when Ronnie’s illegal animal-smuggling racket had been uncovered. Of course, she’d been in the process of divorcing him when he’d died in a car accident, and she’d been cleared of any suspicion of knowing what he’d been up to.

Secondly, her arrest and conviction record was second to none – literally. Everyone knew that Donleavy rated her as one of the best investigative detectives in the region.

Then she’d been shot in the line of duty, and had won a medal for bravery.

And when her best friend and commanding officer, Philip (‘Mel’) Mallow had been shot and killed whilst standing right beside her, she’d stood firmly behind his widow, her former DS, when she’d shot and killed her husband’s killer. Some even said that Hillary Greene had saved Sergeant Janine Mallow from going down for it, since Janine had, for reasons that had never really been fully explained at the time, called her old boss Hillary Greene to the scene whilst still holding the smoking gun, as it were.

And in the aftermath of that very public and messy affair, Hillary’s immediate boss, who’d sworn to see both her and Janine Mallow fed to wolves, had for some reason, been mysteriously sidelined to the outer reaches of Hull. Meaning that Hillary must have had something on him.

All of which raised her standing sky-high with everyone at HQ. The rank and file really rated her for standing by her own, showing guts in the face of all kinds of crap, and knowing her craft. And the brass rated her for her successes.

Consequently, when she’d retired, the whole station house had seemed to go into shock.

So when Donleavy had told him that Hillary Greene was coming back, and was, moreover, to be landed in his lap, the
situation 
had needed some serious mulling over. Donleavy had also all but ordered him to give Hillary only the cold murder cases. And nothing loath to oblige, he had promptly handed her the coldest, hardest murder case on the books.

Then he’d sat back and watched her successfully solve it. He still wasn’t sure whether he admired her, or resented her. But had a sneaking suspicion it was both.

And it certainly didn’t help his dilemma any, to find himself growing more and more physically attracted to her. Even though she was older than he was; they looked the same age, and she had a hard edge to her that was tempered by a sense of humour that unexpectedly appealed to him.

There was also an aloofness to her that drove him to distraction sometimes. He knew he was a good-looking guy, and was honest enough to admit to himself that he was used to women making a play for him. But Hillary Greene tended to observe him with a certain wry mockery in her level gaze that had him going hot and hard in some very annoying places.

So when she’d picked up a stalker, and he’d found himself thinking of a possible way for them to flush him out, he was not sure if it was his brain or another part of his anatomy that had come up with a solution.

Hence his reluctance to discuss it with her.

But when he looked up to find her regarding him steadily he took a deep breath and decided to go for it.

‘You and I could always go public with a relationship.’

Hillary Greene blinked. She almost said ‘What relationship?’ before common sense took over. ‘Oh. You mean pretend to be going out with each other and see if it presses his jealousy buttons?’

Steven Crayle nodded. ‘That’s got to be his default setting, isn’t it? Don’t most stalkers have a problem with their ego? And it’s clear from his texts that you and he are already an item – at least in his sick mind you are. So if he does work at the station, and he starts seeing us going out and about together, it might make him lose his cool enough to do something reckless.’

Hillary nodded slowly. ‘It might just work – and the gossip mill in this place will certainly help feed the fire and keep the pressure on. The way the desk sergeants alone like to speculate about everyone’s private life would put a bunch of old women to shame.’

Crayle laughed. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Then again, if we were too convincing, it could just piss him off to such an extent that he just gives up on me and goes on to make some other poor woman’s life a misery,’ Hillary pointed out. ‘Which isn’t exactly the result we’re after.’

‘No. I want to catch the little pervert as much as you do. Well – think about it and let me know if you’d like to go ahead with it. In the meantime, I’ve got another murder case for you.’

And so saying, he reached into the top of his in-tray, and pulled out a thick beige folder. ‘This is just the preliminary dossier.’

Hillary gave a wry smile. ‘I know. Let me guess – there are boxes and boxes of more stuff waiting for me in the stationery cupboard.’

The stationery cupboard was what she called her office – since that was what it had been before becoming her office.

Steven Crayle’s smile utterly lacked sympathy. ‘They wouldn’t all fit in there. Most of them are in the main office,’ he admitted, without missing a beat.

It was the main difference between taking on a fresh new case, and taking over a cold one, Hillary mused an hour later, as she contemplated the piled-high documents concerning the killing of Rowan Thompson. When you’re presented with a person whose dead body has only just been discovered, all the information to be gathered is stretched out ahead of you, and in the pursuance and gathering of it, if you were lucky, you would find the killer.

But when you are handed a cold case, all of it has already been done for you. The autopsy has been performed and the results are in; the reams and reams of forensic information are neatly
catalogued
, the witnesses have all been seen and interviewed, in
some cases many times over, and the deceased family and friends have all been contacted and questioned.

And through the blizzard of paperwork, and many years later, you are supposed to go over someone else’s case, and follow in the footsteps of some other Chief Investigative Officer who has already tried and failed to solve the crime.

Hillary sighed and poured herself another cup of coffee and
reread
the initial reports, trying to get her own take on what she was being told, and gazing at the scene-of-crime photographs whilst trying to imagine herself actually there.

The facts were simple enough.

Rowan Thompson had been just twenty years old when he was killed on December 21 in 2001. The photographs of him – both alive and dead – showed him to have been five feet nine-to-ten inches tall, with spiky fair hair and big brown eyes. A
good-looking
kid, Hillary acknowledged, he was originally from Birmingham, having been raised in a typical middle-class home in Solihull. He’d been bright too, which is why he’d won a place at one of Oxford’s many colleges, where he’d been reading PPE – Philosophy, Politics and Economics. According to his parents, he’d wanted to be either a banker or a stockbroker – and maybe go into politics later in life.

Hillary gave a wry snort and sipped her coffee. With the way the economy was nowadays, if he had lived to make it in the banking world, he’d have probably been widely loathed and
vilified
by one and all by now. But he’d been spared any of that.

Instead, someone had taken a large pair of sharp scissors and had buried them deep in his stomach.

He had been rooming, along with several other students, in a Victorian property not far from Keble College, where the old house, like many others of its ilk, had long since been converted into bedsits. He was due to go home to Solihull the next day, for the start of the Christmas celebrations with his family.

Instead, his parents had spent the seasonal holidays arranging his funeral.

Hillary picked up a picture of the murder victim taken when he was still alive. It was a group shot, taken in his bedroom at the murder site and the four other people in the frame comprised the other students who shared the house.

She began to make her own notes – part of the process of claiming the case as her own.

Marcie Franks had been twenty-four years old at the time of the killing, and was thus a post graduate student, who was studying for a D.Phil. in biochemistry. In the photograph she was standing to Rowan’s right, and stood just fractionally taller than him. She had long brown hair and brown eyes, and regarded the camera with a steady, slightly bored look on her face. She and Rowan were not touching, she noticed, but her arm was casually slung around the waist of the man beside her.

Dwayne Cox was by far the best-looking of the bunch, and at six feet in height one of the tallest. With black hair and blue eyes he must have presented serious competition for Rowan, and she wondered idly if the murder victim had been jealous of him. From the quick run-down she’d given the notes so far, Rowan had had a voracious sexual appetite. And although he was
good-looking
himself in a more quirky, almost gamine kind of way, Cox was much more classically handsome. At twenty-one, he was a year older than Rowan, and was in his final year of reading
experimental
psychology.

Darla de Lancie matched her cute name, and was tiny – perhaps five feet – with red hair, freckles and big green eyes. She had a heart-shaped face and in the photograph had her arms flung around Rowan Thompson’s neck, and was giving the camera a wide, infectious smile. She was also, according to the CIO’s notes, the victim’s main girlfriend. The CIO at the time had been Detective Inspector John Gorman, and he’d made it clear that Darla de Lancie knew full well that she did not have
exclusive
rights on the promiscuous Rowan, and had to be well up on the list of suspects. She was also a year older than Rowan, and was in the process of gaining a BA in English literature.

The odd man out in the photograph was easily Barry Hargreaves. A mature student, at the time of the killing he’d been forty-one years old. Six foot two and balding, he looked like the construction worker he’d been until having what DI Gorman clearly thought was a somewhat typical mid-life crisis. Hargreaves, married for twenty years with teenage twin
daughters
, had apparently woken up one morning and decided that he should put his brains to better use, and had taken A-levels in mathematics and physics at night school. He’d left regular school at sixteen in spite of a raft of excellent O-Levels in order to earn money, and had, until then, never seemed to regret it. He’d gained a place at one of the newer colleges through the auspices of some government scheme or other, and was in the first year of a three-year course in Mathematics.

Idly, Hillary wondered if he’d ever finished the course, and wondered what he was doing now. But then, no doubt, within the next few days she’d be finding out, for all four of them were suspects in Thompson’s murder.

Along with the house’s owner, sixty-four-year-old Wanda Landau, who lived in the basement flat, it seemed unlikely that anyone else had access to Rowan’s room.

Wanda Landau had discovered him in his room at about ten o’clock in the morning. He’d been lying on the floor, roughly halfway between his bed and the sofa, with the scissors which had killed him lying beside him. From the crime scene photos, it was obvious that the room had been used as some sort of
workshop
, for swathes of coloured fabrics draped a lot of the unfashionable, brown wood furniture, and a sewing machine was set up on his table.

Gorman quickly established that Darla often made her own clothes, and tended to use Rowan’s room to do so, because it was bigger than her own, and gave her more space.

She’d admitted that the scissors were hers, and were kept sharp in order to cleanly cut the silks and satins that she preferred.

Forensics had discovered that whoever had killed him had washed the scissors at the small washbasin beside the bed – and probably their hands too – before tossing the scissors down beside the body and leaving.

Gorman had ascertained that it was almost certain, due to the amount of blood at the scene, and the probability of arterial spraying, that the killer must have had a considerable amount of blood all over him – or her. But no witnesses came forward who could remember seeing anyone in the area at the time, walking down the street with blood on their clothing. Of course, it was the middle of winter so the killer could have taken off their coat, stabbed Rowan, and then donned probably a long coat to cover their bloodstained clothes.

Or, far more likely, it was someone in the house. Although Rowan’s bedroom door had not been locked – and indeed, according to Gorman, the rest of the students were also in the habit of leaving their individual room doors unlocked – Mrs Landau always kept the main front and back doors locked, as well the door to her own flat.

So it seemed unlikely that a stranger would have been able to just wander in and gain entry that way, and Wanda Landau was adamant that she’d never let anyone in that morning. Rowan had been seen by all the others earlier on, and the ME had put the time of death at between 8.45 and 9.00 in the morning.