Chill Factor (14 page)

Dave said: “They were married to two sisters, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” the DI confirmed.

“And then they were knocking off two mates?”

“That’s right.”

“It all sounds a bit cosy.”

“It does, doesn’t it? But the important thing is that Silkstone’s story tallies with what’s in the files. He was with Latham, Latham was with him, in the Lord Nelson. The two women confirmed seeing them there. Bingo – eliminated from enquiries, even though it’s a pack of lies.”

“Margaret Silkstone’s dead,” I said. “What about the other one?”

“Michelle Webster?” Bob replied. “We haven’t found her yet, but she’s our next priority.”

“It’ll be interesting to hear what she has to say,” I stated.

“Ye-es, very interesting,” the DCC agreed.

It was Iqbal’s last day with us, Allah be praised, and Annette came to tell me that the troops were meeting in the Bailiwick at home time, to give him a send-off. I told her to make two coffees for us, and bring herself back to my office. Maybe she’d appreciate the assertive approach.

When she was seated opposite me I told her all about the Silkstone interview. She listened gravely, and offered the opinion that lack of alibi and possession of a photograph was hardly enough to convict a man for murder.

“Except that he went on to kill again,” I said.

“That’s not evidence,” she stated.

“No,” I agreed, “but the Somerset boys can go back and look at the case again, with Latham in mind. We haven’t seen the file. There might be a load of stuff in there that will all fall into place, now.”

Annette was right, though. We have to be careful. You can’t arrest a man because he has a scar on his cheek, and then announce to the court that he has a scar on his cheek, just like the witness said. Latham was only in the frame for Caroline because he possessed her photograph. We couldn’t then use that piece of non-evidence to clinch his guilt. I heaved a big sigh and took a bite of chocolate biscuit.

“You look tired, Charlie,” she observed.

“Yeah, a bit.”

“So where does all this leave us?”

“Us?” I queried.

“I meant the Latham case. Our Latham case.”

“Everybody agrees that it’s sewn up,” I told her. “Latham killed Mrs S. Mr S came home and found her, then he killed Latham. Balance of mind, manslaughter, three years top
whack, free in one.”

“I thought you weren’t happy about it.”

“I’m happy,” I protested. “The evidence is good. Why does everybody want me to be out of line?”

Her face lit up in a smile. “Because that’s where you belong,” she said.

We sipped our coffee in silence for a few moments, her left hand absentmindedly straightening the papers near the corner of my desk until they were exactly parallel to the edges. “Do you think of Georgina Dewhurst very often?” she asked.

I wasn’t expecting it, and it took me a few moments to reply. Georgina was a little girl, murdered by her stepfather. “Yes,” I admitted. “Probably more often than is healthy.”

“I was a WPC on that case,” Annette told me.

“I know. You were with the Child Protection Unit.”

“Good grief!” she exclaimed. “I’m amazed you noticed.”

I grinned, saying: “As SIO, it was part of my remit to keep a fatherly eye on all the young WPCs.”

Her smile was warm and comfortable, the best I’d ever seen her give. “That’s when I decided I wanted to be a
detective
,” she said. “Not just be a detective, I wanted…well…oh, never mind.”

“Wanted what?”

Her smile was still there, fighting to be seen through the blush that crept over her face like a desert sunset. “Oh, nothing,” she said.

I didn’t insist on an answer. People with red hair and freckles blush easily, but it was strange that she never did when answering questions about our clients that some
people
would find embarrassing. Then, she was totally
professional
. It was only when…Ah, well, it was something for me to ponder over.

“Tonight,” I began, “after we’ve given Iqbal a send-off. We could go for a Chinese again, if you’ve nothing on. Or a curry. I’m just as well-known in the Last Viceroy as I am in
the Bamboo Curtain. You missed a good steak on Saturday, by the way.”

She nodded and said: “Right. See you in the pub.”

I did paperwork and made phone calls until after half-past six, then walked over the road to the Bailiwick. The lab had done a micro-analysis of various samples taken from the Silkstone bedroom and their report was in the post. Expecting me to wait for it was like asking a child to wait until Easter for his Christmas presents. I asked for a
condensed
version over the phone.

They’d found skin flakes from all three involved, but not too many from Tony Silkstone. The sheet and duvet cover were probably clean on that day, which had made things
easier
. The footprint scans were relatively straightforward, too, as the whole house had been thoroughly vacuumed. All three of the protagonists had climbed up and down the stairs a couple of times, and last one down was Silkstone himself. No signs of a struggle, no tracks left by trailing heels. All good stuff, which led us nowhere. Mrs Silkstone liked a tidy house and clean sheets for when her lover called, and that was about it. The jammy sod, I thought. Pity about the
dagger
in the heart.

Jeff and Iqbal were sitting in a corner, behind half-empty glasses, the barman was reading the
Mirror
and the cat was asleep on the jukebox. All-day opening has closed more pubs than any temperance society ever did.

“Ah, Inspector Charlie!” Iqbal exclaimed as I entered. “What can I purchase for you?”

“Oh, a pint of lager would go down nicely, please,” I replied, and Iqbal went over to the bar.

“Where is everybody?” I whispered to Jeff.

“Dunno. Playing hard to get, by the look of it.”

“Annette said she’d be here.”

“I saw her leave, in her car.”

“Oh.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

Iqbal returned with my drink. He placed it carefully in
front of me, saying: “Jeffrey was just explaining how the legal system in your country, and therefore in mine also, dates back to the twelfth century, and that there are still
several
anomalies in the statutes book that have no relevance to the modern world.”

“So they say, Iqbal,” I replied, adding: “Cheers,” and
taking
a long sip of Holland’s major contribution to
international
goodwill. It was an old chestnut that poor Jeff had dug up to keep the conversation flowing.

“For instance,” he continued, “Jeffrey tells me that it is still permissible, due to an oversight or perhaps lack of time in Parliament, for the driver of a vehicle who is taken short to urinate against the front offside wheel of the
aforementioned
vehicle. Is that really so?”

“Not quite,” I told him. “It’s the front
nearside
wheel.”

“Offside,” Jeff asserted.

“Nearside,” I argued.

“Offside.”

“Uh-uh. Nearside.”

“It’s the offside. I looked it up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Oh heck. No wonder I got some funny looks in the High Street this morning.” One or two of the others arrived, so Iqbal’s send-off wasn’t a complete disaster. I was just starting my third pint, which is about double my normal intake, these days, when Annette arrived. She was wearing a blue pinstripe suit with a shortish skirt and high heels. I smiled at her and moved along to make some room, but didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure I could control what might come out if I tried to talk. Someone fetched her an orange juice.

At half past eight people started to make excuses and drift away. We all shook hands with Iqbal, telling him what a delight his stay with us had been, wishing him well for the future. I pointedly asked Annette if she’d like a Chinese, and she said: “What a good idea.”

I opened the invitation to the others but they all politely declined. Dave had eaten, he said; some had meals waiting for them, and Jeff had defrosted a vegetarian lasagne for himself and Iqbal. “Just us, then,” I told Annette, and our ears were burning like stubble fires as we walked away from them all.

“Your reputation is now in tatters, you know,” I said as I fastened my seatbelt in her Fiat.

“That’s what reputations are for,” she replied, clunking the car into first gear.

We went through the menu and had fun. I introduced Annette to wontons and Mr Ho introduced both of us to various other delicacies he kept bringing from the kitchen. “Umm, delicious, what is it?” Annette would giggle, and he would reply in Chinese.

“What’s that in English?” she’d demand.

“You no rike if I tell you in Engrish,” he’d laugh.

I grabbed the bill when it came. “This was my idea, and I earn more than you,” I told her, not allowing her the chance to object.

“Oh, er, right, thanks,” she said.

“My pleasure. Any chance of a lift home?”

She wouldn’t come in for coffee. We were sitting outside my house with the car’s headlights still on and the engine running. Switching off, stopping the engine, would have been a statement of intent. It didn’t come.

“At the risk of being politically incorrect,” I began, “you look stunning, Annette.”

“Oh, I can take political incorrectness like that,” she replied with a smile.

“Good. I’ve enjoyed tonight.”

“Mmm, me too.”

After a silence I said: “Are you going away this
weekend
?”

The smile slipped away and she fiddled with a button on the front of her jacket. “Yes,” she replied, very softly.

One of the neighbours came walking down the pavement with his little dog on a lead, returning from its evening crap at the other end of the street. I have very considerate
neighbours
. “Is he a good bloke?” I asked.

Annette turned to face me. “How do you know it’s a bloke?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t, but it usually is.”

“Normally. You mean normally.”

“Usually, normally. They’re just words.”

“I’m the station dyke, Charlie,” she replied. “Surely you know that.”

“You’re a great police officer and I’m very fond of you. That’s all I know.”

“Would it bother you if I were?”

“What? Gay?”

“Mmm.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I was tired. I hadn’t thought out my arguments. Or my feelings. “I don’t know. It just wouldn’t,” was the best I could manage.

The button came off in her fingers and she gave a tiny snort of dismay. “They don’t make them like they used to,” I said.

“It’s been loose all night,” she replied.

“You could’ve had that coffee, and I could’ve sewn it back on for you.”

The smile came back. “Role reversal,” she said. “I’m all in favour of that.”

“They teach you to sew buttons on in the SAS,” I told her.

“Were you in the SAS?”

“Mmm. Under twelve’s branch. They threw me out because I wouldn’t wear the oblong sunglasses.”

She laughed, just a little, and called me a fool. And Charlie. “You are a fool, Charlie” she said, in the nicest
possible way.

“Thank you for a pleasant evening, ma’am,” I said,
opening
the door. “Don’t be late, in the morning.”

“What time do you want picking up?” she asked.

“God!” I exclaimed, pulling the door closed again. “My car’s still outside the nick, isn’t it. Um, in that case, whenever.”

“About twenty to eight?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. If I can get up. I think I’m slightly pissed.”

I opened the door just enough for the interior light to come on. Annette said: “For the record, yes, he is a good bloke.”

“Your friend in York?”

“Mmm.”

“Does he deserve you?”

“I think so. He’s a schoolteacher, and has two daughters, seven and nine.”

“Divorced?”

“Widower.”

“Rich?”

“He’s a schoolteacher.”

“Right,” I said. “Right.” I felt hollow inside. A
schoolteacher
I could deal with. I’d ask the local boys to waste him and arrange for the coastguard to drop his weighted body off the edge of the continental shelf. Not the girls, though. I couldn’t be that much of a bastard.

“Annette…” I began.

“Mmm.”

“Would you be willing to…you know…make allowances for my intoxicated state if I…sort of…transgressed, type of thing?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied, warily. “What do you have in mind?”

“Um, well, I was just wondering, er, if there was any chance of, um, a goodnight kiss?”

She leaned over and gave me a loud peck on the cheek,
completely catching me off guard. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it was a start. “There,” she said.

“Thank you,” I told her, pushing the door wide.

“Charlie…”

I twisted back to face her. “Mmm.”

“You should get pissed more often.”

Friday morning I put eggs, bacon and tomatoes from the fridge out on the worktop, together with corn flakes, bread, marmalade, a tub of Thank Christ It’s Not Butter, the
frying
pan and the toaster. It was my attempt at humour, but Annette waited in the car for me. I finished my coffee and went out.

“Another day, another collar,” I said, winding myself into the Fiat’s passenger seat. Italian cars make no concessions towards the different body shapes of their European
neighbours
. Short legs and long arms – take it or leave it. “Thank you, Ms Brown. The office, please.”

But there were no collars to feel, that day. Some of the team were out looking at burglary scenes, others, me
included
, caught up with paperwork and reading. Dave went out for sandwiches at lunchtime, and brought me hot pork in an oven bottom cake, with stuffing. They don’t do them like that in M & S. And at a fraction of their price.

In the afternoon the remains of Jamie Walker, loosely arranged in some sort of order, were buried with full Christian pomp. His mother prostrated herself on the
coffin
, for the
Gazette
’s photographer, then repeated the scene, with sound effects, when local TV arrived. Practice makes perfect. He was a good son, she told them: everybody loved him and his mischievous ways. This wouldn’t have happened if the police had been more firm with him, and she was
considering
taking legal action against them. Nobody from the job went to the funeral, under orders, but we all caught it on TV later that evening.