In Too Deep (Knight & Culverhouse Book 5) (8 page)

T
he morning briefing
was far more subdued and far less eventful than it should have been.

There came a stage in every investigation where it felt like things were hitting a brick wall. That usually came after a few days or weeks, once the witnesses had been interviewed, the family spoken to and the evidence examined. In this case, however, things were a little different. There were no witnesses, no-one knew anything about what or who Tanya Henderson had been investigating, and there was seemingly no evidence to examine.

As things stood, their best hope was that Tanya Henderson would make a full recovery as quickly as possible and be able to provide them with all of the missing links. At the moment, however, that seemed like a bit of a long shot.

By lunchtime, the mood in the room had dipped enormously. A search through Tanya’s bank statements and credit card bills had uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. Calls to her past work colleagues and associates had proved unfruitful. They were quickly running out of options.

Culverhouse knew that before long there’d be pressure from above to get results, though, mercifully, Tanya Henderson’s family were being very understanding at the lack of progress the investigation had made thus far. Of course, if Tanya’s situation were to take a turn for the worse, however, things would change. It would then become a murder case, which raised the stakes to a whole other level. The lack of evidence would prove to be a huge problem, particularly as they wouldn’t then have the potential hope of Tanya being able to provide them with some of the information herself. Not only would the seriousness of the situation ramp up dramatically, but the one hope that would give them a chance of succeeding would disappear. That wasn’t a possibility any of them wanted to entertain.

Sensing the mood in the room, Ryan spoke up. ‘Why don’t we all take a step back for a bit?’ she said. ‘Besides which, we could all do with some food. There’s a new place in town I quite like which opens at lunchtime. How about I treat us all to lunch?’

Steve Wing was, unsurprisingly, the first person to latch on to the mention of food. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. ‘I’m wasting away here.’

Culverhouse raised his eyebrows. ‘The only thing that’s going to make you waste away is a massive dose of leprosy, you fat fuck.’

‘So, who’s coming?’ Ryan said, ignoring Culverhouse’s remark, and keen to keep the mood from dropping even further.

‘And who’s going to man the phones?’ Frank Vine said.

‘Front desk, same as always,’ Ryan replied. ‘If anything interesting comes in, they can patch through to our mobiles. Anyway, we won’t be long.’

‘How far is it?’ Frank asked.

‘Not far. Fifteen minute walk, maybe?’

‘Bugger that. I’ll stay here and have my sandwich.’

‘Suit yourself. You’ll come, won’t you guv?’ she asked Culverhouse.

He seemed to squirm inwardly, before looking over at Frank, who was unwrapping a very unappetising sandwich.

‘I was just going to stay here with Frank, but on second thoughts...’

I
n the end
, the walk took them closer to twenty minutes, with Steve seemingly not used to walking more than about a hundred yards in one go, but they eventually got there.

The outside of the V Café was painted green, the sign proudly proclaiming it to be Mildenheath’s first vegan restaurant.

‘What the hell’s this?’ Steve said, trying to catch his breath.

‘It’s the restaurant,’ Ryan replied, deadpan. ‘You coming in?’

‘What, to eat a plate of lentils and tofu? No thanks.’

‘Alright. You’d better start walking back, then,’ Ryan said. ‘You might still have a few minutes left for a sandwich and a glass of water by the time you get back to the office. On the other hand, they do the best pineapple juice this side of Jamaica.’

Steve looked up at the restaurant again, then back down the hill towards the centre of Mildenheath.

‘Might as well give it a go seeing as I’m here. But if they try any of that “meat is murder” shit, I’m off.’

Ryan smiled as she ushered Steve into the restaurant. Culverhouse walked in behind him, not saying a word, but at the same time not taking his eyes off Ryan.

Steve Wing and Jack Culverhouse sat at the table gingerly, as if it were made of plywood and liable to crack under their weight. They eyed the menu suspiciously, Culverhouse holding it pinched between his thumb and forefinger in one corner as though it were covered in something contagious.

‘What the fuck’s
quin-ower
?’ he said after a few moments.

‘It’s pronounced
keen-wah
. It’s quite nice, actually,’ Wendy said.

Culverhouse glared at her.

‘I can recommend the five bean burger,’ Ryan chipped in. ‘Really good with their guacamole.’

‘Five. Bean. Burger,’ Culverhouse said slowly, enunciating each word. ‘A burger. Made of beans.’

‘Well, it’d be a bit silly making it out of dead cow for a vegan restaurant, wouldn’t it?’ Wendy said, not sure about the five bean burger herself, but keen to try and make Ryan feel as if she had an ally.

‘See, that’s what I don’t understand,’ Steve said, his eyebrows narrowed. ‘If vegans hate meat, why do they insist on making vegetables look like meat? I mean, I’m not going to go around asking for a rasher of bacon in the shape of a lettuce leaf.’

‘Have you ever tried putting a spoonful of beans inside a burger bun?’ Ryan replied, silencing him.

Culverhouse let out a deep sigh. ‘I suppose you’re going to have a load of time off sick every few weeks, then, if you’re one of these vegelesbians. You never see a healthy-looking one.’

Ryan smiled. ‘I’m a vegan, not a vegetarian. And before you ask, yes I’m a lesbian.’

‘Fuck me,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘Getting a full fucking house here, aren’t we? Shame you’re not black, or you’d’ve filled our quota for this year’s intake on your own.’

‘I know. But I can use a wheelchair if that’d help,’ Ryan replied.

Culverhouse just raised his eyebrows.

‘I presume you’re the butch one,’ Steve added, with all the tact and delicacy of a sledgehammer to the face. ‘I mean, having a bloke’s name and all.’

‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask my girlfriend, Thor?’

‘Thor?’

‘It’s a joke, Steve. She’s called Mandy.’

‘That’s a yes, then,’ Culverhouse muttered under his breath.

‘Right, well I think I know what I’m having,’ Wendy said, keen to move the conversation on to less controversial topics. Since last night with Xav, she’d felt different, almost as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She dared not say as much, but it was almost as if she’d begun to move on, started to see that it was possible to enjoy life and the company of men once again.

Well, some men at least.

F
rom the restaurant
, Wendy headed straight towards Mildenheath General Hospital. She wanted to get some more insight into the medical situation of Tanya Henderson — anything which could potentially help them with their inquiries.

Up on the ward, she found a very tired John Henderson sitting at his wife’s bedside. The bags under his eyes were growing ever more pronounced.

‘How are you holding up?’ she asked him.

He forced a smile, one which didn’t last very long before the muscles in his face succumbed once again to tiredness.

‘Any news from the doctors?’

John shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just seems to be a waiting game. How are the kids?’

‘They’re fine,’ Wendy replied. ‘The Aldridges are happy to keep an eye on them for as long as you’d like.’

‘Thanks. If we had other family closer, we’d... Well, you know.’

‘Don’t worry about it. They seem like good people, your neighbours. You’re lucky. Most people don’t even know who their neighbours are.’

‘Yeah. Well I just don’t want the kids seeing Tanya like this. It’s not fair on them.’

Wendy agreed. Seeing Tanya’s battered and bruised body, her head partially shaved, all manner of wires and tubes sticking out of her — that wasn’t something even an adult should see, let alone a small child. ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked him.

‘Uh, yeah, a few hours ago probably.’

‘Why don’t you head down to the café and grab yourself something? You need to eat.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ he replied.

‘But you need to eat. It’s not going to do you any good to just sit here and look at her. It’ll only take a few minutes. If there’s any change, I promise I’ll come and get you myself.’

‘I’m fine. Honestly.’

Wendy could see there was very little point in arguing with him while he was so tired and in that frame of mind, so instead she smiled, rose, and headed for the nurse’s station. When she got there, she was fortunate enough to be able to steal some time with the ward nurse, who was kind enough to offer Wendy fifteen minutes of her own lunch break.

‘Has there been any news since we last spoke?’ Wendy asked her.

‘No, everything’s still pretty stable. That’s generally a good sign, although we’d obviously want to see signs of improvement. She seems to be coping well, though.’

‘Well enough to be able to do it on her own?’ Wendy asked, knowing that the only way they were going to make a real breakthrough on this case was if Tanya regained consciousness and was able to tell them who might have done this to her.

The nurse raised her eyebrows momentarily. ‘It’s entirely possible. You never know. The brain’s a funny old thing. To be honest, the levels of intracranial pressure were on the high side of normal when she came in, but they haven’t risen at all since then. If anything, they’ve dropped slightly.’

‘That’s a good sign, surely?’ Wendy asked, wanting at least something to hold onto, at least some good news to tell Culverhouse.

‘Yeah, absolutely. It’s only one thing, though. There are a number of things we look at when we decide whether or not to induce a coma or to end an induced coma.’

‘And, in your opinion, do you think she’s close to being brought out of it?’

‘In my opinion, yeah. I probably would’ve brought her out of it by now. Actually, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have induced it in the first place.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I mean, obviously it’s got its risks — any medical procedure does — but on top of that, I wouldn’t have said she was quite at that critical level. Then again, different doctors and different consultants have different views on these things. Some think you’re better safe than sorry, and others like to allow the body to do its own thing. Medicine’s a rich tapestry.’

Wendy smiled and nodded. ‘A bit like policing, then.’

‘I should imagine there are a lot of similarities,’ the nurse replied, beaming. There was always an odd sense of inter-service camaraderie between the different areas of the public sector. Almost a unifying, defiant knowledge of what the other had to go through in order to simply do their job in modern times.

The door opened and the friendly face of Julian Mills, the consultant, peered round it. ‘Alright if I come in?’ he asked.

‘Of course, no problem,’ Wendy replied. ‘We were just talking about Tanya Henderson. And about how long she’s likely to be in the induced coma.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Mills said. ‘Well, it’s always a very delicate balancing act when we’re talking about brain trauma. Personally, I like to make sure things are stabilised for a bit longer than usual before we take any drastic measures. A lot of the brain’s healing is done over long periods of time, some of it years after the patient leaves the hospital. There’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest that their long-term recovery can be sped up by a slightly increased period of medically induced coma. It’s a bit like that extra half an hour in bed in the morning; it can give you a good couple of hours of extra time at the end of the day.’

‘When you say slightly increased,’ Wendy asked, ‘how long are we actually talking?’

‘Impossible to say,’ the consultant replied. ‘Sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear.’

‘But she’s stable at the moment, yes?’

‘Yes, at the moment she is. Things can still change very quickly, though. Don’t forget it’s been barely thirty-six hours since the original trauma. There’s still a lot of instability under the surface. Things might be stable while she’s in a medically induced coma, but bringing her out too early could reverse all the good that’s been done.’

Wendy sighed and looked at the nurse, who took her unspoken cue to leave the room.

‘The thing is,’ Wendy continued, once she’d gone, ‘we need to find out who did this. An innocent woman being attacked on her own front doorstep, with her four-year-old daughter watching.’ She could see the empathy in Julian Mills’s eyes. ‘Do you have children?’

‘Yes, two,’ he replied.

‘The problem we have is that the only direction we have to go in right now is that of Tanya’s own witness testimony. Everything else leads us to a dead end. Without being able to speak to her to find out what she knows, I’m afraid it’s looking extremely unlikely that we’ll ever discover who did this. And bearing in mind there’s a very high chance that Tanya’s life and the lives of her children will be changed forever, and a half-decent chance that she might not recover at all... Well, would you want your kids to have to go through that? Never knowing why it happened or who did it?’ Wendy stared at Julian’s crestfallen face, knowing that she’d hit the right spot.

‘Listen, there are always compromises that can be made. Like I said, it’s still early days. But if she stays stable for the next few hours, I’m happy to look at starting to reduce the levels of barbiturates. If we see signs of deterioration, though, we’ll have to increase the dose again. I want to help you as much as I can, of course, but I do need to put my patient’s safety first.’

Wendy smiled. ‘Thanks, doc.’

J
ack Culverhouse closed
the door to Charles Hawes’s office behind him and walked back down the corridor. The Chief Constable was, to all intents and purposes, generally on his side, but it was hard not to feel the increasing weight of pressure on him, knowing that it was going to be all but impossible to find out who had attacked Tanya Henderson — not without her own witness testimony, at least, and there was a distinct and growing possibility that her testimony was something they were never going to get.

He didn’t have too long to ponder the possibilities, however, as he was soon fishing his ringing mobile phone out of his jacket pocket. The display showed him it was Antonio García, calling from Spain. He swiped the screen to answer the call.

‘Antonio,’ he said, flatly.

‘Jack. Why so cheery? Shit weather again?’

‘Yeah, something like that,’ Culverhouse replied, for once too exhausted to engage in the usual banter.

‘Well, let’s see. I’ve been doing a bit more work for you. You can buy me a few beers later. I think we’re up to around one hundred,’ García said, laughing. ‘A guy I used to work with, Leandro Martín, now works privately. Cheating husbands, social security cheats, all that sort of thing. He owes me a favour too, so I mentioned you to him.’

‘Oh, right,’ Culverhouse replied, not quite sure how to take this.

‘Jack, he’s good. He has contacts. He had a tip-off from someone about a woman and her daughter in Redován. It’s a town about twenty, twenty-five kilometres inland from Torrevieja. Listen. You mentioned a while back that your daughter Emily has a birthmark on the back of her neck, yes?’

Culverhouse swallowed. ‘Yeah. Just behind her left ear. Why?’

‘Because the girl Leandro’s been watching has one too. We can’t say anything for certain at the moment but, in Leandro’s words, she certainly doesn’t look Spanish. She has blonde hair.’

Culverhouse could feel his heart racing. Whenever he looked back and thought of Emily, it was her bright blonde hair he first saw, the light glistening off it as she played in the garden without a care in the world. Surely there were a number of blonde girls in Spain, so there was nothing yet to say this was Emily, but even the fact that there was the smallest chance it could be her — that kept him hanging on. It was the closest he’d come to finding her since she left. After the best part of a decade without any information, this was music to his ears.

‘What about Helen? Is she with her?’

‘There is a woman sometimes, yes. Her mother, it seems. That’s what Leandro thinks, anyway. She has darker hair, cropped short. Wears glasses.’

It was possible it could be Helen. It didn’t seem to match how she’d looked recently, but that didn’t mean much. She only wore glasses occasionally, but it was entirely possible she’d wear them all the time now. And as for the hair, it would only have taken her an hour to get a new hairdo. That was perfectly feasible, particularly if she was looking to start a new life. The girl, on the other hand, sounded just like Emily.

‘I need to tell you, Jack, it is very early days. Leandro has been trying to keep his distance, but has also been keeping an eye on them. That’s not as easy as you might think, particularly not in this place where they’re staying. But he has been doing his best. He sent me a photo. I’ll email it to you now,’ he said.

A few seconds later, Culverhouse’s mobile pinged and vibrated in his ear.

‘One sec,’ he said, taking the phone from his ear and navigating through to his email inbox. After what seemed like an age, the email and the photo loaded. It had been taken from quite some distance, and the people in the image could have been anyone, but that was no bad thing as far as Jack was concerned. It meant it could also be Helen and Emily. The older woman’s face was obscured, but it was feasible it was Helen. As for the younger girl, Emily had been so young when he last saw her that he wondered if he would even recognise her walking down the street.

‘What do you think?’ García’s voice said, tinny and distant as it came through the phone’s earpiece.

Culverhouse put the phone back to his ear. ‘I dunno. It’s possible,’ he said. ‘I’ll need a better picture before I can say for sure.’

‘He’s working on it,’ García said. ‘But it’s not easy. Redován is a small place. You can’t get up close and take a picture very easily. He can’t even park too close to the house as everybody in the area will know if there is a strange car. He has to park on the adjacent street and use a long lens. It’s difficult to get closer. We don’t want to spook her.’

Culverhouse agreed. The last thing he wanted was for Helen and Emily to figure out what was going on and disappear into the ether again. ‘Listen, send me the address,’ he said.

‘Jack, are you sure? It’s—’

‘Just send me the address. If it’s them, it’s best that I get out there and see them for myself. If I turn up, she’s hardly likely to just run. She’s come back twice already, so she’s obviously open to speaking to me. But if she reckons your guys are government officials or police, we’ve lost them, particularly if she’s been living off-radar all this time.’

‘And if it’s not them?’

‘Then it won’t make a blind bit of difference, will it? A strange Englishman turning up on their doorstep and saying “Sorry, wrong house”? What’s the worst that can happen?’

García sighed. ‘You tell me, Jack. You tell me.’