Ash & Bone (17 page)

'Her twenty-first,' Karen said, doing the sums in her head.

'Yes.'

A brief image of Katherine flickered behind Elder's eyes.

'Vanessa confirmed,' he said, 'that was the watch Maddy still wore.'

'In which case,' Karen said, 'where is it now?'

They both turned towards the map on the wall, the area around the old railway line where Maddy's body had been found. Thick scrub, bushes, trees.

'It's been searched once,' Karen said.

'It could be searched again.'

'You think it's that important?'

'If it isn't there, there's a possibility whoever killed Maddy took it with him.'

'A souvenir?'

'Maybe.'

For several moments no one spoke. If that were so, it told them something about the killer, something a profiler could usefully work with.

Karen leaned across and dropped the polystyrene cup and what remained of its contents into the waste bin. 'Getting enough bodies out there's going to be a problem. We may have to rely on volunteers. But I'll make the case as strongly as I can.'

'Good.' Elder was on his feet. 'Just one other thing.'

'Go on.'

'Kennet. That alibi of his. I assume it all checked out?'

Karen shot him a look. 'I thought you didn't fancy him for this?'

'I know. It's just hard to get away from the idea that whoever did this, Maddy knew him, maybe knew him well.'

'I wouldn't exactly say Kennet knew her well, would you?'

'They'd had a relationship.'

'If you can call it that.'

'They'd slept together.'

'Half a dozen times in what? Three months?'

'That isn't a relationship?'

'You tell me.'

Elder held her gaze. 'I'd like to get Sherry to make a few more checks into his background. If you've no objection.'

Karen thought it would be pretty much a waste of time.

'Go ahead,' she said. 'Thanks.'

* * *

Graeme Loftus adjusted his position, feet apart, arm extended, sighted along the barrel of his pistol and fired into the centre of the stencilled figure that was menacing him from the target by the far wall. Eighteen rounds clustered around the heart.

By the time he'd signed out and left the building, the rain that had been threatening off and on again had set in with a vengeance. Mike Ramsden intercepted him on his way across the car park.

'Graeme Loftus?'

'Who wants to know?'

'DS Ramsden, Homicide.'

'What's this about?'

'Few minutes of your time, won't take long.'

'I'm getting soaked standing here.'

'That's my Sierra over there. Let's get in out the rain.'

Lee Furness was in the back seat and, with Ramsden holding the door open, Loftus grudgingly slid in alongside him.

'Bloody weather, eh?' Furness said with a grin.

Loftus said nothing. His reddish hair was darkened by the rain.

'Maddy Birch,' Ramsden said.

Loftus blinked. 'Who?'

'Maddy Birch.'

Loftus shook his head.

Furness took a photograph from his pocket and held it up between them.

'Oh, yes.' Loftus blinked again and wiped something, real or imaginary, from his moustache.

'You remember her now,' Ramsden said.

'Of course I bloody do.'

'Knew her well, then?'

'No.'

'You're sure.'

'Course I'm sure.'

'Not for want of trying.'

'Look, what —'

Ramsden smiled. 'All over her, what I've heard. Like a rutting bloody stag.'

'That's bollocks.'

'Pig at the fuckin' trough.'

Alongside Loftus, Furness laughed. Outside, the rain showed no sign of easing.

'Listen,' Loftus said, man to man. 'I gave her a bit of chat, offered to buy her a drink, you know how it is.'

Ramsden grinned encouragingly. 'Sure. Good-looking woman, out on her own. Few pints down. You were on the pull.'

'If you like, yeah.'

'Leg over at the end of the evening, only natural, right? Where's the harm?'

'Yeah.'

'Except she didn't want to know. Maddy.'

'Yeah, well… Can't score every time, you know?'

'And when she told you no deal?'

Loftus shrugged. 'That was that. End of story.'

'You walked away.'

'Yes.'

'And then?'

'Then nothing.'

'Had to smart a bit, though, getting the big no in front of everyone. Slinkin' away with your dick between your legs. Not so good for the old ego.'

Loftus shook his head. 'Happens, doesn't it?'

'Often? To you, I mean?'

Loftus bridled. 'No, not often.'

Ramsden glanced across at Furness and winked. 'Lover man. Cock of the walk. Just see him, Lee, can't you? Strutting his stuff. Rutting around.'

'All right,' Loftus said, colouring, 'that's enough.'

'Temper, too. Quick to rouse. Redheads, of course, what you expect. True to type.' Ramsden's fingers executed a little paradiddle along the back of the seat. 'Didn't take your temper out on Maddy, I hope? When you saw her again? You did see her again, didn't you?'

Loftus pushed open the car door. 'All right, we're through. Anything else you want to say to me, make it official. Federation solicitor, the whole bit. Otherwise, stay out of my way.'

Leaving the door wide open, he strode off into the rain.

'Touchy, isn't he?' Ramsden said.

The drive north to Hertford was slow and rendered slower by a broken-down lorry and two sets of competing roadworks, cable companies digging for gold. Close to where the A10 met the M25 near Waltham Cross, the rain started to fall for the second day running. Light at first, by the time Elder had turned off towards the centre of the town, it was swingeing down with such force he had the windscreen wipers working double time. The only space into which he could shoehorn the Astra was at the extreme edge of the car park, about as far from the entrance as it was possible to be. Running, collar up, he was nonetheless soaked by the time he pushed his way inside and reported at the enquiry desk.

A uniformed constable took him up to the small office with Detective Superintendent Ashley's name plate on the door.

Ashley shook Elder's hand affably and commiserated about the weather.

'If you want to take off that coat, put it on the radiator?'

'Thanks, I will.'

Ashley himself was wearing an ageing tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and around the cuffs; Elder half-expected him to take out a pipe and begin the ritual of striking match after match, trying to get the damned thing to light.

'You're one of Framlingham's cronies, then? The old geezer brigade.'

'Is that what they call us?'

'Amongst other things. Mind you, they already call me that and worse.'

Elder thought they were probably of an age.

'Helps supplement the pension, I dare say,' Ashley went on. 'Prevents the joints from seizing up.'

'Something like that.'

'What was it in the old days? Taking over a newsagent's. Running a pub. Now it's security. Guarding some posh enclave where they expect you to touch your cap and call them sir and madam.'

'You don't see yourself doing that?'

'Would you?' Ashley grinned and eased himself back in his chair. 'Herefordshire, me. Best fishing there is. Outside Scotland, of course. Got a little place all staked out.'

Elder had heard it, or similar, many times before, and wondered if it would ever come to pass.

'You wanted to talk about Maddy Birch,' Ashley said.

'Yes.'

'What happened to her, that kind of mindless violence, like those women in London, out running in the park, well, you know the statistics as well as I do. No matter how much you massage them, violent crime, crime against the person, it's up — what? — 15 per cent last year. And there's that pillock of a Home Secretary, fannying about with fancy schemes for tracking offenders by bloody satellite, telling people on council estates if they want decent policing they've got to pay for it themselves. Talk about the blind leading the poor bloody blind.'

He raised his hands, palms outwards.

'I know, I know, I'm ranting, but that man, this government, they get my bloody goat.'

Elder smiled and waited for Ashley to calm down. The rain continued to lash against the windows outside.

'You think there might be some kind of connection?' the detective superintendent said. 'Between the Grant shooting and Birch's murder?'

'I'm not sure. I think it's possible, without really seeing how. Just casting around, I suppose.'

'I'll tell you what I can.'

'You interviewed her yourself, you and DCI Mills?'

'That's right.'

'How did she strike you?'

Ashley gave it a few moments' thought. 'A little on edge, maybe. But no more than most in that situation. Wary of being criticised. Found in the wrong.'

'And was she?'

'Not as far as I can see.'

'And her version of events, the shooting…?'

'Basically the same as everyone else's. Detective Superintendent Mallory shot and killed an armed man in the line of duty; the circumstances didn't leave him any alternative.'

'Mallory's version of events, though, the business with the second gun, it depends to a large extent on Maddy Birch's testimony.'

'Not really. Even without it, there's no real alternative. No reason for Mallory to open fire without due cause.'

'You didn't ever consider bringing her in again?'

'We thought about it, yes, at one time. DCI Mills was pretty keen. But then… Well, you know what happened then. We'd lost our chance.'

Ashley pushed an uncapped pen across the papers on his desk. 'I can't see it would have changed anything.'

Elder thanked him for his time and not so many minutes later he was back in his car, the one o'clock news just starting on the radio, the sky lightening to the south where the rain was easing.

* * *

Karen had always thought going after Loftus would lead nowhere and from what Mike Ramsden had said there was little to make her change her mind. In some instances, the haste to employ a lawyer might be seen as an admission of guilt, but with Loftus it seemed to be short temper and little else. Earlier that day, she'd had a word with his immediate superior in SO19 and all the indications were that, aside from being a little prickly, he was a good officer with a near-exemplary record. Another blind alley, Karen thought. But maybe worth exploring a touch longer, just to be sure. She would get young Denison to poke around a little, see what, if anything, he could find.

More, maybe, than the half-dozen officers and twenty volunteers who'd been searching the woods along the railway line for any sign of Maddy's watch, and had so far come up empty-handed.

Whether Elder was still up in Hertford or not, she wasn't sure. Possibly back at his flat by now, she thought, smiling, taking an afternoon nap. In retirement that's probably what you got used to.

It was some way short of three when Sheridan came bustling towards her, tie akimbo, excitement palpable on his face.

'Sherry, what's up?'

Karen listened, not quite believing. 'How come we didn't know this before?'

'Never made it on to the computer.'

'Fuck!'

Grabbing her coat from the back of the chair, she brushed Sheridan aside. 'Tell me about it on the way down. Everything you've got.'

She called Elder from the car. 'Kennet, eleven years ago his then girlfriend applied for a restraining order against him.'

'And we've only just found this out?'

'This afternoon. When she didn't follow through with the application, any record was wiped clean. Sherry found out by chance, asking around, tracking back.'

'The girlfriend, any idea where she is now?'

Karen allowed herself a smile. 'Write down this address. I'll meet you there, thirty minutes' time.'

Karen drove fast: roundabouts were a test of nerve, traffic lights a starting grid. After weeks of dead ends and disappointment, she was pumped up. Friern Barnet, Totteridge and Whetstone, Hadley Wood. The roads narrowed, then broadened, then narrowed again. All those questions, statements, searches leading nowhere. Trees, some recently pollarded, lined the pavements; houses, mostly detached, stood back from the road behind tall hedges, neat gardens; small blocks of flats sat on the edge of curving drives clustered with BMWs and Jaguars, SUVs. Slow down, she told herself, slow down.

In the event, Elder was there before her.

'The restraining order,' he said, 'just stalking or more?'

'More.' Karen's face, he noticed, had taken on a definite glow.

The house was brick-built, slate-roofed, the windows on the first floor a cross-hatch of small squares that would have made the window cleaner curse inwardly and add another fiver to the bill. A near-mint Mini Cooper, grey with silver trim, stood outside the double-width garage.

When she rang the bell, Karen half-expected it to be answered by a maid, not the cap-and-frilly-apron kind, but someone overqualified and underpaid from Croatia or Brazil. In fact it was Estelle Cooper herself, Estelle Robinson as she'd been when Kennet knew her; Mrs Cooper now, alone at home with the
Mail
and daytime TV until the school run, parents sensible round here and taking it in turns so as not to clog up the roads; Jake and Amber were being collected today by Tara's mum from number 35.

'Mrs Cooper? I'm Detective Chief Inspector Karen Shields. This is my colleague, Mr Elder.'

They followed her through a parquet-floored hallway into a long living room at the rear of the house, French windows leading out into a diamond-shaped conservatory, large tubs of geraniums brought inside to protect them from the frost. There were photographs of the children above the fireplace and on an oval table at the side of the room, mostly those school photos with pristine uniform and artificial lighting that had always seemed to Elder, where Katherine and her friends were concerned, to transform them into distant cousins of the kids they really were.

Estelle Cooper sat small in the centre of a wide high-backed settee, the print dress she wore in danger of getting lost amongst the busy flowers of the upholstery. She had a sharp face with a downturned mouth and faded eyes, like a doll that had been played with, discarded and left, most of the life and stuffing gone.