Kind of Cruel (17 page)

4

1/12/2010

Sam Kombothekra was in Proust’s office, sitting at a desk and in a chair that wasn’t his. He’d never done it before, even on days when Proust was guaranteed not to come in. Sam hadn’t known until he’d tried the door today that the Snowman was in the habit of leaving his small glass-walled cubicle unlocked; it had never occurred to him to wonder. Unless it wasn’t a habit; maybe Proust had found yesterday so stressful that he forgot, but Sam didn’t think so. More likely he assumed his office needed no lock – the fear he’d instilled over the years would be sufficient to keep people out.

On the desk in front of Sam was his DI’s new ‘World’s Greatest Grandad’ mug: red with white lettering and a picture of an old man with goofy teeth and a pink strawberry-shaped nose. Were the manufacturers trying to suggest that all grandads were alcoholics, or only the jolly ones? This mug was bigger and uglier than its predecessor, which the Snowman had hurled at Simon Waterhouse’s head a couple of years ago. Simon had moved out of the way and the mug had smashed against a filing cabinet. Sam would have put money on Proust having bought this replacement for himself. His grandchildren were well into their teens and bound to hate him by now.

Sam watched as Gibbs walked into the CID room and did a double-take when he looked through the window of Proust’s office and saw where his sergeant was sitting.
Yes, I’m in the wrong place
, Sam thought.
I’ve been in the wrong place for a long time
. Tomorrow, everything would change. Gibbs and Simon would be out of a job and Sam would have handed in his resignation. What would Colin Sellers do? These days, Sam felt as if he hardly knew Sellers, who had become secretive and withdrawn since the break-up of his extra-marital relationship with a woman called Suki. Sam had never met her, but he’d seen photos he wished he hadn’t – photos he couldn’t believe anyone would think of taking, let alone showing to colleagues. As Sam’s wife Kate had been quick to point out, Sellers seemed to have got it the wrong way round: recklessly open while he was cheating on his wife, bragging about his long-running affair to anyone at work who would listen, then suddenly cagey when it was all over and he had nothing to hide. Nothing Sam knew of, anyway.

Gibbs came in without knocking. ‘There’s something you need to know, assuming we’re pursuing the Amber Hewerdine angle.’

‘We are,’ said Sam. He’d lain awake most of last night wondering how he would handle work today. Proust was sure to insist he worked out his notice, knowing it was the last thing he’d want to do, but in every way that mattered, today was Sam’s last day. He was determined to make it count. He would leave all other cases on hold for the next few hours and focus only on Katharine Allen’s murder.

Which meant pursuing the Amber Hewerdine angle. Not because he was scared of Simon’s anger if he didn’t, or to prove anything to Proust, but because it was the obvious way forward. Simon had handled it badly, but he was right: Amber Hewerdine was an important lead, and they weren’t exactly spoilt for choice. Sam couldn’t remember ever having had so little to go on.

‘When I went to Hewerdine’s house to bring her in, she had her two daughters with her,’ said Gibbs. ‘First thing she did was warn me off letting them find out I’m police. She said it like it was a dirty word. Her attitude fucked me off, and it only occurred to me in the middle of the night to ask a question I should have asked straight away: why would she care if her daughters saw her talking to a detective? Hardly suggests innocence.’

‘They’re not her daughters,’ Sam told him. It had the effect he hoped it would. He noticed, because his words usually made so little impact. Simon and the Snowman were the show-stealers.

‘You’re joking. Who are they, then? She called them “my girls”.’

‘Dinah and Oenone Lendrim.’

‘In-own-y? What the fuck kind of name’s that?’

‘Greek mythological.’ Sam smiled, knowing Gibbs would assume he knew this because his father was Greek. ‘She’s Nonie for all practical purposes. She and her sister Dinah are the children of Sharon Lendrim.’

‘Am I supposed to recognise the name?’ Gibbs asked.

‘I thought you might,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t either. Sharon Lendrim was murdered on 22 November 2008. In Rawndesley. Unsolved.’

‘And Amber Hewerdine’s got her kids?’ Gibbs shook his head as he processed the new information. ‘This is . . . I don’t know what, but it’s something. Does Waterhouse know?’

Sam wasn’t surprised by the question. Simon, in spite of his rudeness and unpredictability, was and would always be the human intelligence system into which all pieces of relevant information needed to be fed. Gibbs worshipped him. Sam believed Proust did too, in a funny sort of way. Nothing counted for anything until Simon knew about it; there was no point thinking about a problem unless Simon was thinking about it simultaneously, pulling your thoughts along with his. Sam had kidded himself for years that it wasn’t the case, and he’d grown tired of the lie. He was Simon’s superior in rank only. He’d be better off doing something completely different.

‘He’s not answering his phone,’ Sam told Gibbs. ‘I’ve left him a message. And . . . I need to get out of here.’ He stood up, wondering what had possessed him. What was he doing in Proust’s doom-box? ‘Fancy a pint at the Brown Cow?’

‘Sounds good,’ said Gibbs. ‘I’ll leave Sellers a message. Where is he, d’you know?’

More than once in the past few months, Sam had been ignorant of the whereabouts of every single member of his team. ‘I sent him to talk to Ginny Saxon. Probably a waste of time.’

‘Don’t know till you try, do you?’

Gibbs marched ahead as they left the building. He was a surly sod, but recently he’d started to offer Sam regular words of encouragement.
You tried your best, sarge. Good thinking, mate
. Colin Sellers was the same, and Simon. As if Sam were a shy new recruit with a confidence deficit. Which, come to think of it, was how he felt most of the time.

‘No point me asking where Waterhouse is,’ Gibbs said as they stood at the bar waiting for their pints amid the suits and ties and loud voices.

‘There might be,’ Sam told him. ‘Not that I’ve heard from him, but I can guess.’

‘Amber Hewerdine?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I rang her at work this morning.’

‘Dark horse, aren’t you?’ Gibbs sounded surprised.

‘I’m a DS. I’m supposed to make decisions and act on them.’

Gibbs looked momentarily confused. ‘So what did she say?’

‘Simon rang her first thing, asked to meet up. She gave him the brush-off. That’s not how she put it, but it’s the impression I got – before she gave me the brush-off too.’

‘She was happy enough to talk to Waterhouse last night,’ said Gibbs. ‘He had a job persuading her to leave.’

‘Too busy at work, too many meetings, it’ll have to wait till tomorrow – that’s what she said.’

‘So if Waterhouse isn’t with her, where is he?’

They picked up their drinks and made their way to the nearest free table. Gibbs pulled over a third chair, from which Sam inferred that he was expecting Sellers to join them. Gibbs was more relaxed in Sellers’ presence than out of it. Sam wasn’t close to either of them – he wasn’t close to anyone at work – but he knew he’d miss his team more than he’d ever enjoyed working with them.

The Brown Cow had recently been renovated again. The walls were covered in wood panelling, painted a colour Sam’s wife Kate called ‘teal’, while the old wood floor had been replaced with a red, blue and white tartan carpet. The landlord liked to change the look every couple of years, and the current flavour seemed to be trendy Scottish hunting lodge. The only constant was a large oil painting of a brown cow that had been there forever. There would be an outcry if anyone tried to take it down – a genteel, Spilling kind of outcry – and quite right too. Sam had grown fond of the cow, which kept its intelligent eye on you wherever you sat, and had proved over the years to be a good listener. Better than Simon, Sellers or Gibbs. Sometimes, when he was having trouble getting through to his DCs, Sam imagined he was talking to the cow instead and found he was able to express himself more clearly.

‘Simon’ll be thinking what you thought,’ he said to Gibbs. ‘How come Amber’s avoiding him suddenly, after being so helpful last night? Was he wrong to trust her and tell her as much as he did?’

‘I can answer that,’ Gibbs muttered.

‘He’ll want to check her alibi for 2 November. That’s where he is: working his way through everyone who was on that driver awareness course, or as many of them as he can. It won’t be good enough for him to see a tick in a box next to her name. He’ll want to find someone who remembers her face, and can tell him if she was there for the whole day, or if she nipped out for half an hour at any point between eleven and one. Driving time from Rawndesley Road Conference Centre to Kat Allen’s flat can’t be more than five minutes.’

Sam raised his glass. ‘
Να
σκ
ά
σουν
οι
εχθρο
ί
μας
,’ he said, before taking a sip. Gibbs wouldn’t appreciate the irony of the Greek toast, which meant, ‘May our enemies burst with envy’. Sam had no enemies, and as far as he was aware no one had ever envied him.

‘The Conference Centre?’ said Gibbs. ‘That’s where the course was?’

Sam nodded. ‘Amber said there were twenty there, right? Twenty speeding drivers?’

‘If you call a couple of miles over the limit speeding, yeah,’ said Gibbs.

‘More than enough people to take up Simon’s whole day.’ Sam sighed. ‘He can’t risk coming into work. Someone like me might ask him how he feels about getting fired, puncture his denial. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t turn up tomorrow at nine for the official sacking ceremony.’

‘He’ll turn up,’ said Gibbs.

‘Will he? I thought he’d ring me when he got my message about Sharon Lendrim. I made a point of withholding most of the story, give him an incentive to get in touch.’ Sam shrugged. ‘I’ve heard nothing from him.’

‘Don’t take it personally. Tell me instead, if you can be bothered.’

Sam was shocked. ‘It’s my job to be bothered.’
A job I soon won’t have
.

‘Look, we both know what’s going to happen tomorrow morning,’ said Gibbs. ‘To Waterhouse at nine and to me at nine fifteen. I just thought . . .’

‘It’s not tomorrow yet,’ said Sam, feeling panicky. ‘It’s still today, and you still work for me.’

‘All right, no need to pull rank.’

Sam laughed. ‘Most DSs pull rank several times a day, every day. If I’d done it more often, maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.’ Gibbs stared at him for a few seconds, then turned back to his pint.

What do you expect him to say? Don’t blame yourself, there’s nothing you could have done
? Of course Sam wanted to tell Gibbs about Sharon Lendrim’s murder; of all the conversations they might have today, it promised to be the easiest.

‘All I know at this stage is what DS Ursula Shearer from Rawndesley’s told me. Sharon Lendrim lived in Rawndesley, on Monson Street. She was a single mum with two kids, worked at the hospital as a diabetic dietician.’

‘Kids have the same father?’ Gibbs asked.

‘No one knows, but there were no dads in the picture at any point. Sharon’s mother Marianne told the police she was sure Sharon had used a sperm bank, or a donation from a gay friend – to spite her, because she knew Marianne would be against both. According to DS Shearer, spite’s the only reasonable reaction to Marianne Lendrim.’

‘Did they alibi her?’ Gibbs asked.

‘They did. She was in Venice staying in a friend’s apartment on 22 November 2008, so whoever poured petrol through Sharon’s letterbox at ten past one in the morning and chucked a match in after it, it can’t have been Marianne.’

Gibbs frowned. ‘That’s what happened?’

‘Sharon was asleep in bed, died from the fumes.’

‘What about her daughters?’

‘This is the interesting part. As soon as the blaze took hold, neighbours noticed it and called it in. When the fire service arrived, they found Sharon dead inside the house and the girls’ beds empty. They’d been expecting to find the two sisters the neighbours had told them lived in the house, a five-year-old and a six-year-old.’

‘In Venice with Wicked Grandma?’ Gibbs guessed.

‘No,’ said Sam. ‘Nothing so normal. While their mother was dying alone at home, Dinah and Nonie Lendrim were at the pub.’