By a Narrow Majority (9 page)

Janine’s glare faltered. ‘Well, no. But that doesn’t mean anything. Even a fruitcake knows enough to wear gloves these days. Come on, boss, you can’t just let him walk!’

‘Janine, the press will crucify us if we get it wrong. Look, I’ll tell you what. See if you can get a search warrant for the Matthews’ place. If we can come up with a murder weapon, forensics, anything solid that’ll link him to the killing, I’ll feel a lot happier. Until we do, we’re not arresting him and that’s that.’

Janine nodded and went off, glad to have something positive to do, but Hillary had the nasty feeling that she was going to complain to Mel behind her back, maybe even try and persuade him around to her way of thinking. Hillary wished her the best of British luck. It was one thing for gung-ho sergeants to go rushing in where angels feared to tread, but those who had to take the backlash if things went wrong were a different breed altogether.

For now, though, the extraordinary Matthews pair would have to be left to simmer.

Tommy got in a few minutes later and headed for his desk. He listened with a worried frown as Hillary filled him in on the latest development with Percy and Rita Matthews, and its possible repercussions, then wondered aloud if Janine would have any luck with the search warrant. During his time, he’d had to apply for many warrants, and the grounds for this one sounded perilously slim to him.

‘I’m not exactly holding my breath with anticipation,’ Hillary agreed glumly, then added firmly, ‘But you’ve brought me better news, right?’

Tommy nodded, opening his notebook and arranging his thoughts.

He was a big man, standing well over six feet, and had done a fair bit of running during his college days. He knew his dark skin and level gaze made many people uncomfortable – most of them his fellow cops. With villains, the appearance of Tommy Lynch on their patch was hardly a cause for celebration either, but rather for colourful and mostly racial comments – usually said from a great distance, for his speed was well known. But for all that, there was no noticeable chip on his shoulder, which Hillary, for one, greatly appreciated.

‘Valerie Dale did have a flat, guv,’ he said at once. ‘I talked to her this morning, and she pinpointed the place easily – it was just on the hill, as you come into Adderbury. Another
couple of hundred yards or so and she’d have made it to Mrs Babcock’s front door. I found evidence of where a car had pulled in, and flattened grass where a tyre might have laid. Better than that, the spot was overlooked by two houses. In one, nobody was in, but in the other, I found a bloke who does the nightshift. He was going out the night in question, heading for work, and remembered seeing a car pulled up and a woman changing the wheel. His description was fairly spot on for Valerie Dale.’

Hillary sighed. ‘He give a time?’

‘Fits in with Valerie Dale’s statement, guv,’ Tommy said.

‘OK. So, it’s looking less and less likely it was the wife. Course, she could still have bopped hubby over the head before she went out – but that puts time of death right at the early outer limit. I want you to chase up Frank – see if he can find anyone who can confirm what time Valerie Dale left that night.’

Tommy grimaced. ‘Trouble is, it would have been dark, guv,’ he said, somewhat unnecessarily. ‘Hardly anybody out walking their dog, and most people would have got home and been putting their feet up in front of the telly round about the time in question.’

Hillary nodded. ‘I know. But try it anyway.’ She didn’t add that that should already have been covered by Frank – that went without saying. She glanced at Frank Ross’s empty seat and desk, and wondered when he’d surface. She was pretty sure he would have set up almost permanent residence in The Bell by now – Lower Heyford’s only pub. Still, while he was in there rotting his liver, he wasn’t getting in her hair, so she could hardly complain.

‘Forensics in yet, guv?’ Tommy asked.

Hillary nodded, and tossed over a thick document. ‘Nothing much we didn’t already know. The shower had showed signs of recent use, but not, they reckon, within a few hours of our vic dying, so if Valerie did kill her husband before leaving, she didn’t shower afterwards. And there’s
nothing suspicious in the washbasin or U-bend. So the killer must have cleaned up somewhere else.’

‘Not looking like the wife, is it?’ Tommy muttered.

‘No, it’s not,’ Hillary agreed. ‘Forensics found evidence of car tracks on the roadway, but only the Dales’ own. So the killer either parked up on one of the village roads, or they walked.’

Percy Matthews could have walked it easy, and although his cottage was at the top end of the village, and the Dales lived in the valley, it would have been dark, as Tommy had pointed out. And he could have kept to the shadows between the street lighting, if anyone had been about.

She re-read the pathologist’s report, but it was all very much as Doc Partridge had said at the scene – Malcolm Dale had died as the result of several blows to the head with a heavy, rounded implement. Apart from that, he’d been relatively healthy, although the pathologist had marked him down as a heavy drinker from the state of his liver, and noted that he was headed towards clinical obesity. So no surprises there.

Fed up with reading reports and getting no further forward, Hillary reached for her jacket. ‘Come on, Tommy, I want to re-interview Marcia Brock. I’m sure she’s got more to tell us.’

Tommy drove to Witney, a small smile on his face. He was out alone with the guv, and the sun was shining, even if a cold wind was blowing. They were on the hunt for a killer, and he was sure he’d done well on his sergeant’s boards. He was also sure Hillary Greene would give him glowing reports. Who knows, by the time his wedding came around, he might be pulling in a sergeant’s pay. The only thing was, with two sergeants already on her team (even if Frank Ross hardly counted), he couldn’t see Mel keeping him on with Hillary. Far more likely he’d move him somewhere else, and assign another fledgling DC for Hillary to train up. She was known to be good at it – having both patience and the gift of imparting knowledge.

The logical part of him told him that this state of affairs would probably be a good thing. Jean, his fiancée, was the only woman he’d slept with in years, and he had no doubts that marrying her would be good for them both. And he wanted kids. Pining after his boss was just plain stupid.

‘This is it – the semi, here,’ Hillary said, jerking him out of his morose thoughts and bringing his foot to the brake.

Marcia Brock opened the door after the first ring, and took a surprised step back when she saw Tommy standing on her doorstep. Then she spotted Hillary behind him, and her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, you said you’d be back,’ the campaign secretary acknowledged, standing to one side and trying to summon up a smile. ‘I just didn’t expect you back so soon.’

‘The first few days in any inquiry are vital, Ms Brock,’ Hillary said, and introduced Tommy. Marcia nodded without interest, and Hillary thought that Janine’s snap judgement about this witness’s sexual preferences were probably spot on. Not that it mattered to Hillary – unless it somehow impinged on the case. And since, somehow, she couldn’t see Marcia Brock and Valerie Dale as illicit lovers plotting to get rid of the unwanted male in their lives, namely Malcolm Dale, Hillary simply gave a mental shrug.

‘Tea? Coffee?’ Once more Marcia showed them into the kitchen, rather than the living area, and Hillary took her seat once more at the small table.

‘Coffee would be fine. Any luck at the job centre?’ she asked.

Marcia shrugged. ‘Sure, if I want to spend five months stocking shelves at Tesco’s or driving the home-delivery van for Iceland. Oh yeah, or working in a bakery.’

Hillary smiled. ‘I’d take the bakery job in a heartbeat.’ The thought of free chocolate eclairs was enough to corrupt any copper off the straight and narrow.

Marcia Brock managed a wry laugh, and returned with three steaming mugs which she set down, with some spillage,
on to the table. She pushed the sugar bowl towards Tommy, who smiled but ignored it.

‘Well, we have a much better picture of our victim now,’ Hillary began, ‘but we’re still searching for things in his private life that might have led to his murder.’

Marcia gave a tight smile. ‘He hasn’t been fiddling the books at the shop then?’

Hillary, who had yet to read the reports from the
constables
who’d been assigned to check out Sporting Chance, shook her head. ‘Can’t go into details, I’m afraid. But I got the distinct feeling, the last time we spoke, that you were, shall we say, being somewhat less than fully candid with me?’ She let her voice drift up at the end, making it a question, and watched as Marcia’s hands tightened around her mug. The younger woman kept her head firmly bowed over it, then blew on her coffee, and finally shrugged. ‘I told you
everything
I know.’

‘But not everything you suspect,’ Hillary prompted at once, making it a statement this time, and not a question. ‘What is it? Financial irregularities in his campaign?’

As expected, that made her head shoot up, and Hillary noticed a dull flush of anger stain her cheekbones. ‘Hell, no. I run an honest ship,’ she said hotly.

Hillary nodded. When questioning a reluctant witness, it was always best to lead with something they could
indignantly
deny. That way, it made admitting to the truth somehow easier. She’d have to ask a psychologist why that was sometime. ‘So it was something in his personal life,’ she pressed on. ‘What was it? An affair?’

‘Why do you coppers always assume the worst?’ Marcia demanded belligerently. ‘The poor sod’s dead, isn’t he? I didn’t like him much, but he deserves some privacy, some respect.’

Hillary nodded. ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ she said flatly. ‘And it’s up to me to find out who killed him.’ She paused a moment, to let that sink in. ‘He’s got nobody else who can help him
now. Only me. And I can only help him in that one, single way. To find out who did it, why, and make sure they’re brought to account for it.’ Hillary waited until the other woman was looking her in the eye, before adding quietly, ‘So anything you can tell me will really be appreciated. And useful. Really.’

Marcia’s high colour slowly ebbed, and she looked away, but this time, Hillary thought, with a sense of shame. It was always easier to reach the ones who still had consciences.

‘I thought he was having an affair, yeah,’ she said at last. ‘But I’ve got no proof, mind. I never saw nothing, no notes or anything. He didn’t ask me to send flowers or anything icky like that.’

‘Do you know the woman involved? It was a woman, I take it?’ Hillary said softly.

Marcia sighed softly. ‘Yeah, it was a woman. A GP. Name of Gemma Knowles. She works at the Oxlip Health Centre. I saw them having lunch, once, in this little out-of-the-way pub in Oxford. Course, I could have got it wrong.’

Hillary nodded. She talked to Marcia for a while longer, but was finally satisfied that she’d got everything out of her that she was going to. She thanked her, then left.

By the time they made their way out of Witney it was fully dark. ‘I’ll be glad when the clocks go on. This Saturday, isn’t it?’ she mused to Tommy, who nodded.

‘OK. Finish the paperwork and then you can get off,’ Hillary said, as he pulled into the parking lot back at HQ. ‘You can drop me off here. I’m having an early night for once,’ Hillary said, making Tommy look at her in some surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time his governor had gone home much before six, and never when she was working on a case. And, of course, Hillary couldn’t tell him about the raid tomorrow night until much closer to the time, mindful as she was about the super’s desire to keep this totally
hush-hush
. ‘Get some sleep yourself,’ was all she said, as she shuffled across into the driver’s seat.

Tommy watched, fascinated, as her skirt rode up her thighs, and mumbled something indistinctly.

Hillary drove home, making the three-quarters of a mile or so out of town and to the tiny hamlet of Thrupp in less than five minutes. Now that was what she called a commute.

Walking along the dark towpath, she shivered as the cold wind rippled around her. The dried sedges on the opposite side of the canal whispered to her as she opened the padlock and duck-walked down the stairs. When she’d first moved on to the boat, supposedly as a temporary measure nearly three years ago now, she’d hit her head constantly on the hatchway. Now she didn’t give it a second thought.

She’d recharged the generators yesterday, so she turned on the lights as she went, and threw her coat and bag on to one of the two chairs in the
Mollern
’s forward cabin. She rifled through the cupboards, and came up with a can of chicken in white wine sauce, a tin of garden peas, and one of new potatoes. These three items took up every saucepan the tiny galley owned.

As she reached for the tin opener, she gave a brief thought to the fine cuisine dining that the modern working woman was supposed to enjoy, as a matter of course, and snorted. As the assorted gloops started to simmer on the small gas stove, she promised herself a meal at The Boat that weekend. Something with French words in it. And a pudding that would make calorie counters sit up and weep. For a week.

She ate quickly, and had to admit that the tinned fare really wasn’t all that bad. Either that, or her taste buds had finally packed up on her. She washed up carefully after her, having long since learned the need for neatness and method when you lived in such a confined space.

Still, less space meant less housework, and she didn’t regret her decision to put the house she and Ronnie had once shared on the market. Not that it was moving yet. Trust her to hit a slump in the property market, just when her main financial asset suddenly became free.

She wiped the small table down, then folded it away, and walked two paces forward to peruse her small library. It consisted of three shelves, tucked down in the bottom
right-hand
corner, and was already overflowing. She’d studied English literature at college, and her eye ran restlessly over all her old favourites – every Brontë ever written, the same for Austen, with some modern poetry and the odd biography thrown in.

Her eyes stalled over the tattered paperback of a single Dick Francis book, and her heart did its usual slump into her boots. She was going to have to do something about that. Something soon. If she was caught with it, and somebody worked out what it contained, it could send her to prison for up to five years.

And for a cop, prison was not a good place to be.

Pushing the thought aside, she selected
Jude the Obscure
. For some reason, she was in the mood for Hardy. Perhaps she saw herself as one of his flawed, inevitably doomed heroines?

Now there was a thought to take to a cold and lonely bed with you on a windy March night.

She got in the next morning, to find Janine already ahead of her, and fuming. The moment she used her key-card to gain access to the big, main, open-plan office, she could feel waves of frustration emanating from her pretty blonde sergeant.