Cold Pursuit (9 page)

‘What noise?’

‘The motorway?’

‘Never notice it,’ came the prompt reply. And maybe it was even truthful.

Perhaps she should just take the offered tour? But that would be to raise the woman’s hopes in vain. And now she thought about it, the place was more likely to be poky than bijou, the ceilings too low for two tall people. If only her phone would ring.

At last she spoke the honest truth. ‘I really don’t
have time today. But I’ll phone your agent for particulars. Thanks.’

She slipped back into the car. But, as she noticed when she’d driven a further mile, the dog had had its silent and not very subtle revenge. She slung the mat and offending shoe into the boot and drove back in bare feet.

My love is as strong as death, but my jealousy is burning me, a great fire I couldn’t put out, even if I wanted to.

‘So while you two enjoy your jolly, I intend to do Selfridges and any other palaces of conspicuous consumption I can find,’ Fran blithely informed the two heavily braided men, as she nosed the unmarked police car through the centre of Birmingham. Mark and the Chief Constable were joining other senior officers from across the country in a discussion of matters of national security, a response to the Home Secretary’s latest diktat. Officially, of course, she was in the Midlands to interview the Reverend Stephen Hardy, whom she had phoned to arrange a meeting. Since she needed transport to reach him, car-sharing had been the obvious option.

Her declaration had a resonance only Mark picked up. The last time Fran had been to Birmingham on police business, she’d immediately
been summoned down to Devon to her dying father’s bedside.

She was still speaking. ‘…the moment I’ve checked out that theological college.’ She pulled up outside Lloyd House, the administrative HQ of the West Midlands Police. Grabbing his briefcase, Mark came round to her window, his face furrowed with anxiety. ‘Are you sure you can fight your way back into the city? God knows why they don’t have a park and ride scheme or two.’

There were days when she wanted to point out that she had even more police driving qualifications than he did, but they both had enough stress in their lives not to want to add to it by petty arguments, and, truth be told, she enjoyed being worried about.

‘I shall be all right. I can always ask a policeman. One of which is looking at me very hard even as we speak. Let’s shock him to the core.’ She leaned out and, pulling Mark closer, kissed him on the lips, enjoying the poor constable’s patent embarrassment, and the Chief’s extreme amusement. He had done at least his share in bringing the two together, so she blew him a twiddle-finger kiss too. Or was that going too far? Whatever his reaction, she was too busy dealing with traffic and getting into the right lane to notice.

She’d worked out a plan of campaign. Should anyone ask, she wanted to discuss with Steve Hardy the situation of one of his ex-parishioners. With luck the question wouldn’t arise. She always preferred the straight truth to even a half lie.

The main Hagley Road, now an arterial link between Birmingham and the M5, must have been full of gracious houses once, she mused. Now it was a mixture of mega-pubs and budget hotels, plus offices of various ages.

Bearwood, in what must be a fringe of the Black Country, was on a smaller scale altogether. It took her several changes of lights to cross what was presumably the main street. Then she found herself driving past lots of Thirties houses; a
promising-looking
park; some pubs which might have been grand drinking-palaces when they were built in the Twenties or Thirties, but would have been dwarfed by the ones she’d passed earlier. What clientele would they attract? Kids getting bladdered on alcopops or, complete with their cloth-caps and whippets, thin-faced men favouring mild?

What she hadn’t bargained for was the hills. Not just the one she was halfway down, but those on the horizon. It must have been a fearsome place when poor old Queen Vic demanded the curtains on her train be drawn against the ugliness of the industrial landscape.

Moat Road at last. It was full of houses of all eras crammed together, none very big, some pretty small. What would they cost? Had London prices oozed this far north?

Ah. There on her right were school playing fields. And a school that might have had the words Thirties Grammar blazoned across it, though the name on its notice board was more prosaic. So that
poor specimen next door must be the church. St Philip’s. Brick-built, it sat round-shouldered with hardly even a token tower to give it dignity. It couldn’t have been much fun being a pre-war Anglican church growing up alongside the historic non-conformist chapels for which she dimly recalled the area was famous.

There, another topic for post-retirement study. Not just local history, industrial history too.

So what made a man give up his career to dedicate his life to running a sad, graffiti-covered place like this? His career, and an attractive, adoring young woman.

Assuming, of course, that he had.

Stephen Hardy – it seemed he preferred the full version of his Christian name these days – sat her in a chilly office at the back of his church. He explained at some length that the four-bedroom detached house that he gave as his address was really his wife’s, and with two children it was hard to find a spare room for confidential business – which she’d stressed this was. To save the parish money, they’d rented out the proper vicarage.

‘Of course, the children are at college and university these days,’ he said, biting his lip, as if catching himself out in a lie. Or was it simply worry about the expense? He seemed the sort to worry. Slender to the point of thinness, he hunched his shoulders not so much against the cold as against life itself. Could Dilly really have fallen passionately
in love with this man, painted in watercolours, not oils? Had the head she loved already been half-bald, the skin pale, the mouth girlishly pink? Had he already worn spectacles, the sort that darkened against the light?

Sipping from a thick mug, the sort that always seemed to retain someone else’s lipstick round the rim, she said, ‘It’s about someone from your college days I want to talk.’ She shifted slightly in her chair so she could get the best view of his face as he reacted, which was with predictable horror and disbelief in face and voice alike.

‘Surely no one I knew there would be in any trouble! Ordained priests!’

‘Oh, Mr Hardy, you’d be surprised,’ she countered, with a lopsided grin that could have been cynical or sad. ‘Think Catholic priests and choirboys. But at least the dear old C of E doesn’t demand celibacy of its clergy.’

‘No,’ he agreed. He looked more puzzled than alarmed. ‘Look, is this one of those standard police enquiries into someone’s possible criminal records? Because I’d have thought your computer files might be more reliable and less time-consuming.’ Now there was distinct resentment in his voice.

She shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t ask a Chief Superintendent to do that.’ She flipped her ID again. ‘I’m speaking to you because, as I said when I phoned, we have a very confidential case in train at the moment. As far as I’m concerned, if I’m satisfied by your answers to some of my questions,
this conversation will never go beyond these four walls, apart from a report to my superior officers – in this case, the Chief Constable himself and an Assistant Chief Constable.’

‘What about my wife?’

She asked as smoothly as she could, ‘Aren’t there some conversations here that share the secrecy of the confessional?’

‘Apart from those, I tell her everything.’

‘Everything?’ she asked gently. ‘You don’t belong to the school of thought that says that some personal secrets are best kept to save hurting your partner?’

‘Partner! My
wife
, Chief Superintendent.’

In most circumstances she wouldn’t have bitten. No doubt it was because part of her still smarted because of Mark’s decision, however much she might try to sympathise with his reasons. As it was, she snapped, ‘And would you tell your
wife
if you were stalking your former mistress?’

Those pretty rosebud lips went white. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he demanded furiously, slamming down his mug and standing up. ‘How dare you!’

‘Please sit down. If it’s not you, someone else is. Someone is stalking a Ms Dilly Pound. You do know her, don’t you?’

‘Delia Pound?’

She nodded. Delia, not Dilly. At least it was more appropriate than the Delilah they’d speculated it might be. When had the change happened?

‘Know her?
Knew
her. Once. A long time ago.’ He turned in apparent fury. ‘Why does she say I’m
harassing her now?’ But he wilted under her gaze and resumed his seat.

‘She doesn’t. Not specifically. But someone is. And it’s standard practice to talk to people with whom the victim may have had a romantic entanglement.’

He stood again, pointing backwards. ‘She is in my past, Chief Superintendent. And may God forgive me for having let her into my life at all.’ He was either totally sincere or a very fine actor.

Fran might have been inclined to believe the former. But she had seen so many of the latter she had to press him further. ‘Do you ever visit London in the course of your work, Mr Hardy?’

His colour came and went. ‘I’ve been on a course recently, as it happens. But what that has to do with poor little Delia Pound I’ve no idea.’

‘Could you give me details, please? Just the dates and where you stayed. Oh, and the name of the person running the course.’

‘This is beyond belief! How dare you come in here and – and imply—’

‘Sit down. Please. Look, Stephen, someone is committing an offence. Stalking, alas, as I’m sure you’re aware, all too often leads to other, more serious crimes against the victim. Physical as well as psychological harm. If it’s not you, and I’m quite prepared to believe that—’

‘Dashing up here to check up on me! Why not accuse me outright?’

What had happened to the quiet, reasonable middle-aged man she’d pitied?

‘Because I’m quite literally trying to eliminate you from my enquiries. Please believe me.’

‘And Delia—’ He clamped his lips shut.

She relented. ‘—Is almost certain the criminal isn’t you.’

He pulled off his spectacles and opened his eyes wide. They were an amazing blue. Was it they that had first attracted Dilly? And then he smiled, the sort of pure tenderness that turned her heart over. The poor man still loved Dilly. As much as she loved Mark, and he her, marriage or no marriage. Surely he’d want to know about Dilly’s feelings, what she was doing, if she was married? Knowledge in this case might be power, but it was certainly pain. Unless asked direct, she would say nothing.

‘Thank God,’ he said. He rummaged furiously on his desk, then through the baskets of an old wire filing stalk, the likes of which she hadn’t seen since she was at college. ‘Here.’ He thrust a crumpled A5 brochure at her. ‘All the details: subjects, course tutors, everything. Two weeks’ residential.’

‘And when did you come back?’

‘Last weekend. You’re looking very serious. Is that when the stalking started? When I went on the course? No wonder you wanted to talk to me. Don’t you want me to do a DNA test, too?’

‘At this stage that’s hardly necessary.’

He was on his feet again, only the smallness of the office preventing him from pacing. He turned. ‘What’s the bastard doing to her?’

She’d not expected such a term from a
clergyman but didn’t remark on it. ‘You know how it is with stalkers – they move on from one thing to another,’ she said, knowing he’d spot the evasion.

‘What got him on to her, do you think?’

Poor man, he was fishing for news of Dilly without daring to ask. ‘I think he saw her on the TV news. Usually she reports for a local channel, but a piece she did went national.’

He sat down heavily. ‘TV! Are you sure we’re talking about the same Delia Pound here?’

She wanted to give him something to comfort him. ‘She said she needed strength to move on from the theological college, and found it. She took a degree in journalism and fetched up in front of the camera.’

‘Which region?’ he breathed. ‘No, I – but you said you were from Kent, didn’t you?’

‘I think I need to ask her permission before I pass on any details. Any at all,’ she said, trying to forestall the inevitable enquiry. She didn’t want to be the one to tell him that Dilly was teetering on the edge of marriage, if scarcely diving into it. She got to her feet. ‘Very well, Mr Hardy. I promise I shall only contact you again if I really need to, and only here, not at home. And I repeat my undertaking to tell no one except my superior officers.’

‘What about Delia? Will you tell her I’m in the clear?’

She picked up the leaflet. ‘As soon as we know you are.’

The theological college where Stephen and Dilly had met was housed in an elegant Georgian building in Edgbaston, a suburb oozing money and status. At least part of it was housed there. Other, less lovely buildings had been tacked on to the back and sides, presumably in pre-town planning days.

She handed over her card to a warmly efficient receptionist. With the minimum of fuss and wait, she was shown straight into the principal’s room, lit by a sudden burst of watery sunlight, unkind to the furniture and fittings but generous to the very handsome occupant’s patrician features and silver hair. It couldn’t have been stage-managed better.

‘Delia Pound?’ Dr Barlow’s eyes widened. ‘I’d have thought she was the last woman on God’s earth to be stalked.
Wee tim’rous cowering creature
: that was our Delia.’

‘So you can’t think of any student or member of staff who might have carried a torch for her?’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘This college isn’t like a university full of testosterone-fuelled young men –’ he dropped his eyes to look at her card ‘– Dr Harman. Most of our students are mature men or women; many have families. All are called by God.’

She nodded. To object would be to compromise the sad lovers’ confidentiality. ‘It was a very long shot. Thank you for your time.’ He kept her card, but she found herself hoping that later he would shake his head at it and flip it into the bin.

Several hours later, she was back at Lloyd House, in the foyer meeting Mark and the Chief again. At the Chief’s suggestion, she had stowed the car in an official parking slot, on the principle that if you had rank you might as well pull it occasionally. All three set off on foot through the rush hour to find something to eat before they ventured south.

Mark turned back. ‘Hang on. Have you left everything out of sight?’

‘What everything?’ Fran didn’t move.

‘The goodies you’ve bought. I thought you were going to hit Selfridges!’ He looked at her face. ‘Fran, what’s the problem?’ he asked so that only she could hear.