A Narrow Margin of Error (3 page)

Of course, it was always possible that Rowan had answered the front door and let the killer in himself, but again the landlady’s evidence seemed to rule this out. She’d heard no one enter the hall whilst she’d been in her flat, and no one had rung the main doorbell. But she’d admitted that Rowan could be ‘a sneaky little so-and-so’ especially when it came to smuggling in girlfriends.

Not that she barred her ‘boys and girls’ from having friends in: it was more likely that he wanted to make sure Darla De Lancie was kept in the dark about what he was up to.

So it was possible that Rowan had let a woman in and had taken her up to his room for some hanky-panky, and got far more
than he’d bargained for. Gorman seemed to think that it was also possible that, given the victim’s habit of bedding anything
agreeable
, an aggrieved boyfriend or a cuckolded husband might also be responsible. Although why Rowan would let in a male rival, of course, couldn’t be ascertained from the facts available.

According to Gorman’s notes, Thompson was something of a sexual athlete, not averse to experimentation and had a voracious appetite for sexual kicks with very little sense of discernment.

From time to time, Hillary caught a whiff of distinct
disapproval
in Gorman’s rather dry, rather pedantic notes, but since the man was now dead, and thus couldn’t be consulted, she couldn’t be sure how much Gorman’s own prudish nature had coloured his judgement of the victim.

But from the little she’d read so far, Gorman was nothing if not thorough.

Her coffee finished, Hillary turned to the first of the forensic reports.

The room, as was to be expected, was awash with fingerprints, nearly all of them belonging to the victim, his girlfriend, and the other housemates. Some were traced to an electrician who’d been called in to see to a fault the previous week, others that were much older were never tracked down. But given the history of the house as a student residence, there was nothing much unexpected in that.

Likewise, the victim’s clothes had many fibre traces on them, some inevitably from the carpet, some from clothes that were a match to Darla de Lancie’s, but again, given their close
relationship
, that was hardly earth-shattering. And since there was no way of knowing when the traces had been left on the victim, there was no way to put Darla actually at the scene at the time of the killing.

The only blood found on the victim belonged to the victim. Sometimes, with a stabbing, the killer cut himself, and thus left valuable DNA behind. But in this case, the murder weapon hadn’t been an unwieldy knife, but a neat pair of scissors, complete with
rounded plastic handles, making it almost impossible for the killer to wound himself in the stabbing process.

The medical report was the usual mixture of hard-to-
understand
medical pronouncements, but the summary at the end made it clear: there was only one blow – but it had been delivered deep and low, probably in an up-and-under underarm
movement
, and with a fair amount of force. A woman could certainly have done it, since the blades penetrated the lower part of the abdomen, where it was mainly soft tissue, where you wouldn’t encounter bone or any other obstacle that would have required brute force to penetrate.

The victim had died of blood loss and shock, so again, no surprises there, but one thing did stand out.

Tox screens showed that Rowan Thompson had minute traces of some sort of drug in his system that the labs hadn’t been able to identify. Gorman, of course, had been straight on to Thompson’s GP, but the murder victim had not been prescribed drugs of any kind for a medical condition. In fact, Rowan seemed to be in the peak of health, and the only time he’d consulted his GP had been for regular screenings for various STDs. He’d been clear of those too, so he had obviously been a careful boy.

That left a whole raft of illegal drugs to consider.

Hillary sighed cynically. It was Oxford, he was a student, and a young man who probably thought of himself as immortal and, moreover, was the kind who liked to experiment. Where the hell to start? On the party scene nowadays there were always new drugs popping up overnight, some even technically legal. The law seemed to be constantly playing catch-up when it came to outlawing designer drugs.

No doubt Rowan had taken something either at a rave, or a private party, or just between friends – probably sometime within forty-eight hours of his death.

But since the ME made it clear that the unknown drug could in no way have contributed to the cause of death, Gorman hadn’t wasted too much time pursuing it.

Hillary could understand why, but she didn’t much like it. She trawled through the boxes of stuff to find Gorman’s personal notes, and was glad to see that he’d copied the information and passed it over to the narcotics squad, but she could find no follow-up on it from them.

She made a mental note to get either Vivienne or Sam Pickles, the other young wannabe on her team, to see if they could find any report on it from the drugs squad. It would probably come to nothing but you never knew.

If Rowan Thompson was a regular drug user, he must have had a dealer. And drug dealers and murder went together like whales and pilot fish. Perhaps he’d refused to pay up, or had grassed on the dealer to someone, or, even worse, taken his business
elsewhere
.

People had been killed for far less.

Apart from that, science wasn’t able to help much. Although the public was used to seeing crime shows where forensic science wrapped up even the most baffling of cases in one hour flat, with some very fancy microscope work and a scrap of esoteric
knowledge
, real life was seldom that cut and dried.

And although a lot of the CRT’s work consisted of reopening cases when new advances in technology made re-examining retained evidence practical, there were the odd cases, like this one, where simple, good old-fashioned detective work was needed.

And it was this little niche that was Steven Crayle’s own. And now hers.

‘OK, Rowan,’ Hillary said to the photograph of the
cheeky-faced
youngster who’d been in his grave for nearly a dozen years now. ‘Let’s see if we can’t find out who killed you.’

A
t the end of the day, Hillary wearily pushed the stack of folders aside, and stood up to stretch. She had taken a mountain of notes from the Thompson case, and had a list of
to-do’s
for her team tomorrow that would make Vivienne grumble for a week at least. She’d already informed them that they had been handed another murder inquiry, which had met with considerable enthusiasm from Sam Pickles, a vague excitement from Vivienne, and quiet satisfaction from Jimmy Jessop, the retired sergeant she’d begun to think of as her right-hand man.

Tomorrow the hard work began in earnest. She’d already set all of them on the task of tracking down the current whereabouts of the various witnesses and asked for any updated background information on them to start being collated. Since there would be little help from the new advancement in forensics, this case, she could see, was going to rely very heavily on the fact that new eyes were taking a look at it, coupled with any fresh information witnesses might be able to offer.

Which wasn’t as forlorn a hope as some might think. Often, the passage of time could be a good thing, in that people who might have been more reticent at the time of the murder now felt more at ease and less threatened by the passage of over a decade. People who might have kept silent from sheer fright or unease might now be persuaded to talk. They might not even be aware that they knew anything of significance, which was where Hillary’s overall view and experience came in. All she needed
was to spot one little thread to unravel, one loose end that had never been tied in, and the case could suddenly come alive.

One thing was for certain: if she could not get any new insights, or didn’t have luck on her side, the case was going to stay closed. And she was realistic enough to know that you couldn’t win them all. She’d struck gold with her very first case for CRT, but that didn’t mean her second case was bound to follow suit. If her close rate was only 20% on these hard-nut cases that Steven Crayle was determined to give her, then the brass would be happy with that.

Not that she wouldn’t take it personally if she failed to find Rowan Thompson’s killer. She knew herself well enough to be aware of just how much it would rankle to have to accept defeat. But it was way too early yet to even conceive of such an outcome. She let her mind wander over the case as she’d found it so far.

Gorman had dithered between Barry Hargreaves and Darla de Lancie as his chief suspects since their motives seemed the strongest, but in the absence of any forensics, witnesses or a confession, the case had stalled. But the fact that Gorman hadn’t been able to find anyone else who might have wanted the student dead, didn’t mean there hadn’t been one. If she couldn’t find his killer at the house where he lived, then she’d just have to widen her net. But that was listed firmly in her mental ‘last resort’ file.

She glanced at her watch, saw that it was just gone five, and sighed. Ever since Steven had come up with his rather
cockamamie
plan to lure out her stalker, she’d been considering its merits.

She’d been the target of her stalker for nearly two months now, and it was clear that his campaign was only escalating. At first, she’d been prepared to wait a while, to see if it would fizzle out of its own accord. But that was clearly not going to happen. All their other efforts to discover his identity had crashed and burned, and she was growing more and more impatient to knock this thing on the head before it got really out of hand.

But was Crayle’s idea to pretend to be an item actually likely to work? Or was she just fighting shy of it for reasons of her own?

She was well aware of her growing attraction to Steven Crayle. And unless she missed her guess – and she rarely did – it was not exactly a purely one-sided state of affairs. So if they ‘pretended’ to get together, she could well see it veering off into the realms of reality. And wasn’t that at the back of his mind too?

And technically at least, there was nothing to stop them getting together. They were both single and old enough and mean enough to tackle an affair. Now that she was no longer a DI, Steven was not even her superior officer, so there’d be no reason for the top brass to suck the air in through their teeth with
disapproval
.

She’d just never particularly liked the thought of mixing
business
with pleasure in this way, that was all. She’d rather they just dated, or just set out to get her stalker. Combining or blurring the line between the two just seemed to be asking for trouble to her. On the other hand, some sort of definitive action needed to be taken. She had the feeling that this was going to get very nasty, very fast, and that her
admirer
was going to start making her life very miserable before he was through. And her instincts had always been pretty reliable.

‘Oh, to hell with it,’ she muttered and, grabbing her bag and coat, she walked through the maze of subterranean corridors to Crayle’s office and knocked on the door.

There was no answer. She reached into her bag for her mobile and, as she headed upstairs, speed-dialled his number. It was answered on the second ring.

‘Crayle.’ His voice was low, almost whispered.

‘Guv, it’s me. Wonder if I could have a word.’

‘I’m in a meeting. I’ll get back to you in half an hour,’ he said tersely.

Hillary said thanks and hung up, her lips twisting wryly. So much for the beginnings of a sweet romance.

She drove back to Thrupp, parking in her favourite spot in the local pub’s car park, and walked down the towpath. She could see the dark splash of crimson blooms lying on the top of
The
Mollern
from several yards away. She carried on stalwartly walking, snatched the gift of fifty red roses from the boat roof and carried on up the towpath.

When she reached
Ivanhoe
she tapped on the roof and waited. A moment later, her next-door neighbour of five weeks standing poked his head from the door in the stern. Alfie Bix, a pensioner with a penchant for producing fine crochet work, grinned back at her. He used his boat as a mobile shop, and regularly sold his wares to the tourist hotspots at Henley-on-Thames and
Stratford-upon-Avon
. ‘Hello, lovely lady.’

‘Hello, Alf. Didn’t I hear you say that you and Betty had a wedding anniversary coming up?’ she asked, waving the roses under his nose. ‘These any use to you?’

Alf happily accepted the gift and asked her down for a drink of his home-made cowslip wine. Hillary, who’d already sampled it – and the headache that followed – quickly refused.

Back on her own boat, she made herself a cup of coffee and
listlessly
contemplated dinner. Beans on toast? Or go for something really flashy, like Sainsbury’s own frozen lasagne? She was still thinking about that one ten minutes later when her phone rang.

‘Sorry about that,’ Steven Crayle said. ‘What’s up?’

‘I was thinking about your offer – to see if we can lure out my admirer. I want to take you up on it.’

There was a moment of surprised silence on the other end of the line, then his voice came back, as smooth and unruffled as ever. ‘OK. What about starting tonight? You had dinner yet?’

The Plough and Anchor on the outskirts of Islip, a small village not far from Kidlington, had a good reputation for food, was cheap and on a mid-week night at least, didn’t require a
reservation
. It was also a fairly well-known spot for coppers to frequent, which was why Steven and Hillary had chosen it.

He’d picked her up from her narrowboat, which he’d been curious about, and found himself admiring it in a neutral sort of way. He could see that it suited her perfectly, and he could see the
attraction of taking long weekends in it, or the odd week’s holiday, but probably not living in it on a daily basis. He was too tall and liked space and light – the boat would probably begin to feel too claustrophobic after a while. His own house in Kidlington, that funnily enough also enjoyed a view of the canal, suited him just fine. It was big, modern and, since his wife had moved in with her new man, had been redecorated from top to bottom in the style that he preferred,

He drove a very nice mid-range black saloon car, which he negotiated around Islip’s quirky road system with ease. Finally parked in the small and nearly full pub car park, he glanced around casually.

‘Let’s hope there’s someone here to spot us and gossip about it,’ he said mildly. And then, aware that that might have sounded, at the very least, less than gallant, added quickly, ‘Not that I would mind taking you out any number of times.’ He stopped, realized that hadn’t exactly helped matters any, and added awkwardly, ‘I mean, I’d be happy to see you regardless of the circumstances.’

Hillary, enjoying the unusual sight of the suave Steven Crayle floundering, suddenly grinned. ‘You ever heard of that
well-known
advice? When you find yourself in a hole—’

Crayle laughed and nodded. ‘Stop digging. Right.’ They climbed out of the car and walked towards the pub. He was dressed in a dark-blue suit with a cream shirt and mint green, black and cream tie. He looked good enough to eat, Hillary thought, with a certain wistful pang.

She too had been careful in her choice of clothes, and had worn a long, very dark green velvet skirt, with a pale lemon silk top. With her hair pulled back to reveal dangling ear-rings, and with slightly more lavish make-up than she usually wore, she knew she looked good. Too good for this just to be a casual meal with a mate, anyway, which was the impression they were out to give. Anyone they knew seeing them together couldn’t help but realize they were on a date.

As they entered the pub and walked to the bar, she was slightly surprised by how full it was. She asked for a white wine spritzer, and then waited whilst Steven was served at the bar.

‘We’ve got a table in the conservatory area,’ he said a few minutes later, handing her a glass. ‘We might as well go through. And, by the way, I’m sure the fat bloke with the combover sat by the bar with the big-boned blonde is in Traffic.’

Hillary glanced that way, and vaguely recognized the man who was pretending not to notice them. ‘Yes, I think I’ve seen him around,’ she admitted.

‘So, mission already accomplished, what say we have a nice time, and enjoy the meal?’ he said, checking out the table numbers, and glad to note that theirs was a quiet table for two, lit by flickering candles, tucked away in a far corner.

He pulled out her chair for her, and Hillary sat down with a smile.

Good enough to eat and a gentleman to boot.

Tonight was going to be interesting.

The next morning, Hillary arrived in the office at a few minutes to nine. Vivienne, unsurprisingly, had not yet turned up for work, but both Sam, a tall, lanky, sandy-haired lad doing a
sociology
and economics degree at Brookes University, and Jimmy were in.

‘Guv,’ Jimmy nodded. ‘We’re making progress on the stuff you gave us yesterday. We’ve got a list of witness locations for you, and the background we’ve got so far.’

‘Good.’ Hillary took the list from the grey-haired man and ran a quick eye over it. ‘Wanda Landau still lives in the same house?’ she asked, with just a hint of surprise in her voice. In her experience, a lot of people moved house when someone was murdered on the premises. But perhaps it had not been
financially
possible for the landlady to move. Either that, or she was a tough old bird, the kind who’d be too stubborn on principle to be driven out of her own home. Or maybe she just hadn’t cared
enough about Rowan for it to bother her. Whichever it was, she needed to find out.

‘Seems so, guv. She’s still renting out all four rooms to students as well, though she must be in her seventies by now. Still, it’s a good income for her, innit?’

Hillary nodded. ‘Yes. Well, we might as well start with her. It’ll give us a chance to check out the house for ourselves as well.’ She glanced up, her gaze going between Sam and Jimmy.

Jimmy, as the experienced officer, would be more use to her, but she was well aware that she was supposed to be giving Sam as much experience and on-the-job training as she could.

‘Sam, you want to drive?’

The youngster didn’t have to be asked twice, and Jimmy grinned at Hillary as he shot up and scrambled eagerly for his notebook.

‘Jimmy, hold the fort. And you might as well take the time to get acquainted with the files while I’m gone, and start up the murder book.’

The murder book was a new folder, set up by herself, and all members of the team were expected to keep it updated with any new information they came across in the course of the
investigation
. This meant that everyone was kept up to date, and could see the progress of the case at a single glance, lessening the chance of a possibly important fact slipping through the net, because someone had failed to mention it or see its significance at the time. Overseeing it was an important job, and since this was going to be a difficult case, Hillary could sense, she wanted Jimmy on it.

‘Guv,’ he agreed.

Outside, the sun was shining, and as they walked through the foyer, the desk sergeant began to whistle cheerfully. The tune, though somewhat garbled and less than tone-perfect, was instantly recognizable as the old Hot Chocolate classic
You Sexy
Thing
.

Hillary shot him a look and saw the old reprobate wink back at
her. Bloody hell, she thought, that was impressive, even by station-house standards. And then she thought back to last night, and Steven Crayle’s expert, lingering kiss in the car park, under the boggling gaze of the man from Traffic, and knew she was actually blushing.

Which, naturally enough, didn’t go unnoticed by the desk sergeant.

‘Bloody hell!’ she hissed. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d actually felt her face go warm over something like that.

‘Guv?’ Sam said.

‘Nothing, forget it,’ Hillary said sharply and threw him her car keys.

Sam’s face fell. ‘We not taking my car, guv?’ he wheedled
hopefully
.