Antman (21 page)

'I'm going in a minute,' she said. She saw his expression. 'What's up? Something I've said?'

'Not at all. The bastard. Excuse my French. A colleague has pulled off a deal.'

'Surely that's good for the University.'

'An internal deal. He wins, we lose. It's a game academics play. The cuts are slicing the ground from under my research department. He's in behavioural psychology and has just been granted special development status, immunity from the current budgetary cuts and a £900,000 development grant over the next three years for what they're calling flagship research for the university. That does it. Bugger it, of course I'll help you.'

'On the rebound?'

'Definitely, and proud of it. I'd love to act as consultant, or whatever you want to call it, to this case.'

'You knew what was in that envelope before you opened it.' This was an inspired guess. His face told her the answer before he spoke.

'Not in detail. When would this consulting start?' He grinned, a boyish grin. She saw a quality of excitement in him, bubbling up at the new challenge.

'I suppose we can start now. We already have, in a way.'

'I could do it as long as it's not full time.'

'Brilliant.'

'You're a manipulator on a Machiavellian scale, Inspector.'

'Oh dear,' she feigned, 'I wanted at least to give the appearance of free choice. But I couldn't take the risk you might turn me down.'

'You sound like a suitor rather than a professional contracting a consultant,' he said and laughed lightheartedly.

Her mobile bleeped. She scanned the tiny screen.

'I'll ring you when I get back to the office,' she said. 'We'll arrange another meeting as soon as possible, to go into the details.'

*  *  *

When had Graver decided to kill more than one person? He didn't know. What was previously an unlikely eventuality now became an urgent necessity. He spent days making the list, adding and deleting names. The list gave structure to his thoughts. It enabled him to focus and prioritise. He drew it up based on a number of different factors, mainly to do with the difficulty of carrying out the project in specific cases. Then he transferred each name to a separate piece of paper. This took another week. In between, he changed his mind, deleted individuals, added them again, before he arrived at a list which satisfied him.

Then he began to differentiate them in other ways: whom to tackle first and how to conduct it. Because of all these complications, he couldn't reach a conclusion until he had tried virtually every possible permutation. All this time, he was making further amendments to the list itself, and finished up transferring all the names to filing cards. After many hours, a mood of desperation to put the difficulties beyond the scope of his own indecisiveness, he took the little pile of filing cards and quite surprisingly put them into alphabetical order. Then in some kind of spirit – he couldn't call it fairness, but it was something like that – he reversed the sequence, so that the name at the end of the alphabet now lay at the top. Finally, he abandoned the alphabet as his guide and fell back on the more fundamental principle of his own insatiable anger.

It dawned on him that ensuring they were dead was important, rather than the sequence in which they died. How they died – that was important too. He thought about that almost more than anything else.

*  *  *

Chris phoned early the following morning and arranged to call on Tom on her way to Leicester for a one-day course. When she arrived, he was in his office with the door open. He heard her sigh as she came down the corridor. She knocked and smiled brightly as she walked in.

He wasn't misled. 'We'll take a walk to the senior common room. The coffee's no better but the seats are comfier and there's less chance of the phone interrupting us,' said Tom. 'You look well brassed off.'

'It's nothing.'

'You could have fooled me. It's that lack of sunshine syndrome – what do they call it, LASS and the petfood to counteract it is Lassie?' Despite herself, she smiled, more convincing by this time.

'There's a good chance you've made that up as a diversion. Do you mean SAD, seasonal affective disorder?'

'No, sodding awful detective-work. Oops, I've put my foot in it again.'

Chris found herself laughing, not at the terrible jokes, but at his guileless efforts to be cooperative. This man was attractively naive.

'Not at all. You were trying to make me smile, which I appreciate. I can't expect you to be endlessly patient though, while I carry on behaving like this. It's Bradshaw. I'll swing for that man before I leave that Station.'

'Surprise surprise. And I thought Police Forces were so cohesive and team-minded. Has he been upsetting you? You surely aren't serious about the police as an ideal organisation?'

'Forget me for the moment. I'll tell you when you've told me your news. As for my comment about happy Police Forces, to be honest it was tongue-in-cheek. A cousin of Laura's married a copper and the tales he used to tell made it sound pretty dreadful – rather like the average University graduate common room.'

'Really?'

'Don't sound so surprised. Human nature is human nature. Change the social class, take off the uniforms and put a few letters after some people's names and you've changed nothing fundamental about their dealings with each other.'

'Point taken. Anyway, the gist of the Bradshaw situation is he's basically a sod. His approach to this case is to rule out anything that he hasn't already thought of. The only new details he will admit to his scheme of things have to be incorporated into his existing pattern first and then emerge in his chosen timescale as his own ideas.'

'From my brief contact with him I can confirm his star qualities,' exclaimed Tom with cheerful irony.

'I'll wring his bloody neck.'

'Unwise. You'd be detected.'

'Don't count on it with that crowd.'

'Is that it?' asked Tom.

'No, the remainder is a hundred and forty-nine ways in which Bradshaw refuses to acknowledge the danger posed by an extremely odd and perhaps thwarted man who has bottled it up for – who knows – ten, twenty, thirty years and may only now be starting to let it all out. That's our murderer.'

'There is one other item. I'm surprised you haven't mentioned it. You must know.'

'Go on.'

'I think Bradshaw still regards me as a possible murder suspect. That first time he came to see me, he covered pretty much the same ground you did. Only, I was one of his suspects. I could tell. Put it this way, he wouldn't exactly have been interested in asking me to act as adviser to any murder inquiries. We've had a few inquiries since – discreet ones. I wouldn't put it past him to have me followed.'

'You've no evidence of that.'

'Someone was following me that day I went to Branthorpe to meet Faith Wistow, the clerk to the coroner.'

'Bradshaw was having you followed? I'll see about this. Leave it with me.'

Tom waved her back into the chair.

'Forget it. I wouldn't waste your time. I'd rather have you here for a few minutes longer.'

She sat down. 'It couldn't have been Bradshaw. At that stage he wasn't that involved in the case.'

'It doesn't matter. Anyway, now I've a lecture to prepare.'

She paused, reflecting on what he'd said earlier.

'Did you mean what you said just now, about preferring to have me here.' Tom looked directly at her. There was a moment of complete eye contact.

'Yes,' he said. 'I meant every word of it.' Chris looked quite embarrassed. 'I tell you what,' said Tom, 'I'll make you another coffee. Have you time?'

'I've changed my mind about going to Leicester,' she said. 'There's too much going on here. I'll go into work as usual.'

Chapter 14

Bradshaw was fuming round the office, partly at the lack of movement on the case, partly at being kept at arm's length by Tom Fortius. Even more, because he sensed Chris Winchester was beyond his control.

'I've the chief breathing down my neck about the lack of progress on this murder inquiry. There'll be jobs on the line soon. What have we got from the scene of crime, Morrison?'

'They're still working on it, sir.'

'I want to know as soon as there's any development. Where's Inspector Winchester?'

'Out all day, sir.'

'Nice weather for a day's leave, if you can spare the time.'

'The DCI's on a course I believe, sir, at Leicester University.'

'Travelling halfway across the country at public expense to meet a load of cloud-niners.'

'They have that centre where they do research on riots and their control, sir. A few of us have been for conferences and short courses.'

'The last thing I want today is a conference or short course,' Bradshaw snapped. 'I want a result, PDQ.'

'Sir?'

'Pretty damn quick, unlike you, Morrison. I went to that Centre once. Strikes me they could do with some of that for their own students. I read about that sit-in last week. Can't even control them.'

'I think DCI Winchester is on a course in the forensic area, sir – I don't know the title – something to do with scenes of crime work and murder investigations. Sounded very relevant to me, sir.'

Bradshaw continued as though Morrison hadn't responded:

'Morrison, I need a report for ACC Deerbolt pronto. Summary of progress so far. Suspects, interviews, current lines of investigation. I'll be writing it, but you supply me with the info.'

'Sir, DCI Winchester – '

'Never mind her. She's out of the frame today. Unless I can reassure my paymasters we have this one in hand, Morrison, heads will be toppling. Understand?'

'Yes, sir.'

'By a quarter to nine.'

'I'll try, sir.'

'Never mind try.'

'I'll – I'll do it, sir.'

The way to the place where Bradshaw's heart would be if he had one, was by agreeing with him, unreservedly.

'Good man. You can trot round to headquarters when I've finished, so it's on the chief's desk when he walks in. Got your car with you?'

'Sir.'

'On second thoughts, have it ready by eight thirty. I'll deliver it myself on my way to my meeting. I want to bend the ear of the chief's secretary about that chief officers' trip to Copenhagen.'

Bradshaw was impressed by Morrison. He was a good officer, willing as well as bright.

*  *  *

At ten to nine, a lone driver stopped for a call of nature on the back road from Tickton past Weel, over the River Hull towards Beverley and found a man's body lying in a ditch, barely covered by loose brushwood. It was an hour before he decided to call the police.

*  *  *

Ten minutes later, Brill came into the office, looking flustered. 'Where's Bradshaw?'

'Left in a hurry in his shirtsleeves,' said Livesey.

'I asked where, not what was he wearing or doing?'

Livesey skipped a pirhouette and sang:

'I'm off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard called Jack.'

Deerbolt had collected the nickname of wizard a few years back. In the face of pressure to cut the budget, he'd successfully used the threat of rising local crime and worsening clear-up rates to persuade everybody from the Police Committee, Chief Constable to the Home Office to abandon budget cuts and preserve existing ratios of officers on the streets to other staff.

Morrison spoke up. He explained what Bradshaw had instructed him to do. Brill shook his head.

'The man's no idea. This creates endless problems. He's by-passed me, to say nothing of DCI Winchester. She'll go ape-shit when she comes in.'