Power Games (16 page)

The air was buzzing with suppressed exclamation marks. Not for one minute would Sue spell out that she thought he'd been criminally irresponsible not to tell someone all this. But he was getting the message, no doubt about that.

‘And was sent off with a proverbial flea,' Stephen confirmed, lifting his chin.

‘Any idea which police station?' Kate asked, forgetting she shouldn't.

‘No. But Kings Heath would be the logical one, given where she lived. Wouldn't someone have kept some sort of record?'

Sue made a non-committal noise.

‘Well, they should have done!' he said, on the offensive at last. ‘She was making a serious allegation!'

‘An allegation like that has to be against someone before we can act. You've no idea, Stephen, the number of nutters who're convinced that MI5 are tailing them. So have you any idea whom she alleged was stalking her?'

He shook his head.

‘You're quite sure? Even the longest of shots?' Sue prompted him.

He shrugged angrily: ‘The sort of enemies she'd made wouldn't tail anyone themselves.'

‘Enemies? That's a very strong word. Come on, Stephen. What enemies?'

‘How do I know? You're the police!'

‘What enemies?' Sue pursued.

‘Look, I said all this to that bloke the other night, when I was showing him Rosemary's house. Tried to. I should have told him something else, if he'd listened.'

Kate asked, ‘What's that?'

‘Oh, I said – it was a joke, really – I said if she was worried she should write everything down and send it in a letter to her bank. Look, I would have told that guy the other night.' He turned to Kate, hostile. Probably with guilt. ‘You said the bloke in charge was the best. Some best, not to take any notice of what I was saying.'

‘DI Crowther wasn't involved in the investigation at that point—' Sue began.

And in any case Kate had meant Rod. So why had Sue mentioned Crowther?

‘Which must mean he is now. So why doesn't he get his sodding finger out?' Stephen turned his back on them, and fiddled ostentatiously with a peg and a measuring tape.

‘Which organisations had Rosemary annoyed?'

Stephen straightened and turned. ‘Well, I offered that guy a sight of all the Lodge Preservation Committee records, but he didn't seem interested.'

‘I am. Very interested,' Sue said. ‘In fact, I'll take you home now, to pick them up.'

He dug in the pocket of a donkey jacket hung on one of the few remaining fence posts. ‘I don't want to leave this site. I'm working in my own time, as Kate knows. And Kate also knows she wants her garden! So why don't
you
go and pick them up? You and Kate. You're policewomen, after all. This is the front door key – right? And this little chap's my filing cabinet key – the one on the right of my office. Don't bother about the other one – just rubbish. Oh, and the burglar alarm code's the date of the Battle of Waterloo.'

Kate raised her hands in despair. He knew this was urgent and yet he was still prepared to fart around.

‘Ah. 1815,' Sue said crisply.

 

‘I suppose it could have been a more obvious date,' Sue said, unfastening her seat-belt. She peered upwards. ‘Are you sure this is the place? It's huge!'

‘Obvious?'

‘It's obvious if you have kids doing that particular era of history, anyway.'

‘I didn't think schools bothered with such trivia as dates,' Kate said. And she'd been too ignorant to be able to talk sensibly to Graham about the Victorian Army and its buttons.

‘I do. So my kids learn them, syllabuses or not.' Sue set her jaw.

Kate had no difficulty believing her. ‘Maybe Stephen lives up there.' She pointed to a coach house, cheek by jowl with an enormous Victorian pile, still a family house by the look of it. ‘He said he'd hate my house because it was overlooked. He wouldn't be overlooked there. And probably he'd get a corner of what is no doubt a huge garden for his own use.'

‘Let's try, anyway. Oh, isn't that obliging of him.' Sue pointed to a neatly printed name above his doorbell. And then at some jemmy marks. ‘And isn't obliging of someone else, to spare us having to use these keys?'

‘Burgled! Why should anyone want to burgle my flat? Well, you've seen! There's nothing worth nicking!' Stephen sat down heavily at Kate's kitchen table.

‘There isn't now, certainly,' Kate said. ‘Especially not in your filing cabinets. Either of them.' She heaped sugar into a mug of tea, and passed it to him.

Stephen drowned in a long slow flush. As the colour receded, he was left so pale she was afraid he might faint.

‘Head down. Right down. Long deep breaths,' Sue Rowley said. ‘Better? Right, now, Stephen, we'll get on to this straight away. But it'd be a big help if you could tell us precisely what's missing. So I suggest you come back to the flat and have a quick look round and tell us. You know, just routine.'

‘It isn't just routine, is it? You don't get a detective inspector and a detective sergeant every time a yob nicks your telly. You're tying this up with Rosemary, aren't you? And with what happened to Rosemary?'

‘They could be connected,' Sue said mildly. ‘It'd help my colleagues if you could remember the names of the other Lodge Protection Committee members—'

‘My God, yes! We need to warn them!'

Kate passed him paper and a pencil; he started to scribble.

‘One thing, Stephen – whom do we need to warn them against? Come on, stop playing games with me!' Sue leaned forward so the tip of her finger was almost touching his nose. ‘You're on the committee. You're the big cheese. You know whom you've annoyed.'

He licked his lips. ‘I don't know any names. Honestly.'

‘I don't believe you,' Kate said flatly. ‘You know you should have given us this information as soon as you'd identified Rosemary.'

Sue pulled back an inch or two. ‘I'd very much like to know why you didn't.'

‘I didn't because I wasn't asked. That's why. I mean, you don't tell policemen like Crowther how to do his job, do you? And at the time everyone assumed it was “natural causes”!' He mimicked an official-sounding voice. He assumed a bit of self-righteous anger. ‘What I'd like to know is why I wasn't questioned earlier. Kate—'

‘Was ill yesterday. I'll check out the rest of what you said later. Meanwhile, Stephen, the names, please. Come on, if you don't want to protect your own skin, you might think about others'. What about committee members with kids? Don't they need a bit of consideration?' she added, her voice rough, not with anger, Kate thought, but with anguish. Having kids changed things, didn't it?

‘The obvious conclusion,' Kate put in, ‘is that it's the people who own the land round the reservoir. Who's that?'

He laughed mirthlessly. ‘That? Oh, that's you and me. The city council. Apart from the bit the house stands on. That belongs to some big girls' school.'

No guesses for which. She'd bet her pension it was the Seward Foundation. But she wouldn't interrupt.

‘So why should anyone be trying to knock down the Lodge?' Sue demanded. ‘They should be trying to preserve it! And surely the council would want to preserve it.'

Stephen shrugged. ‘Don't be so bloody naïve! The city council can't preserve everything old. Not while there are kids who need schools.'

‘OK. So how would it benefit the council to pull it down?'

‘Not at all. The benefit lies in what goes up in its place. The poor old Lodge brings in nothing, because it's derelict. A spanking new development would bring in loads of jobs. Need I go on?'

‘You've made your point, Stephen. So who wants to develop the site – and what do they want to put on it, just as a matter of interest?'

‘There are two main contenders. Behn Developments, and something called Hodge Associates.'

Sue wrote them down. Kate sat on her hands: which MIT needed this information more? Rod's or the one investigating the arson? If she was right and the Lodge was indeed on Seward Foundation land, they'd need it equally. And ought to be working together.

 

‘That was what I call an interesting morning's work,' Sue said, as they watched Stephen out of sight. Abandoning his work on the button workshop, he'd gone back to his flat, which he'd find watched over by a uniformed officer. On Sue's firm instructions he was to come up with a list of what was missing. ‘What was he hiding, do you think?' she continued.

‘God knows. My instinct would be to say porn, maybe paedophile porn, but people don't keep that sort of thing in ordinary filing cabinets, do they?'

‘Not if they've got any sense,' Sue said, popping her notepad into her bag and standing up. ‘Right, time I wasn't here.'

‘Gaffer' – Kate could hear the pleading in her voice – ‘how long do you reckon it'll be before I can get back into harness?'

‘Look, Kate, you're still looking peaky. Eat well and sleep well today: that's my advice.'

‘But—'

‘Meanwhile, I shall toddle up to Kings Heath nick and talk to Rod Neville. Come to think of it, I might as well leave my car here and walk.'

‘That's what everyone says,' Kate said darkly. She pointed at the road. ‘And, as you can see, that's what everyone does.'

 

‘Thanks for the milk, Simon. And thanks for everything else, too.'

There were too many lunchtime shoppers pouring into and out of Sainsbury's for a long conversation, but Kate thought that was best. She was embarrassed, and there was no doubt that Simon was, his blush lasting even longer than Stephen's, half an hour ago.

‘I wondered—' He stopped to let a family push past, mother, father, three kids under five, all grossly overweight – not, she thought, with overeating, but with the bad diet of poverty. He grimaced, and continued, ‘I wondered whether to ring your bell. Then I thought you'd be better having your sleep out. So I tucked it behind that flowerpot and hoped you'd spot it before anyone else did.'

Another family, three kids, not babies, their faces stuffed with dummies …

‘It was very kind—'

‘No more than you've done for me. I mean – you know, the washing and that. By the way, are you still interested in that bag-lady? Only my bloke was positive it was Sally something.'

‘Not Sally Army?'

He grinned. ‘After that Sally Bowles business, I was on to that, wasn't I? Got a clip round my ears for my pains. Thanks, love.' He pocketed a pound coin, but the woman gestured away the
Big Issue
. ‘How about Blake? Only he was wittering away about “Pity, like a new-born babe” after his second snifter, and I just wondered … May be a red herring.' His grin lit up his face. ‘Or a Tiger, more like!'

‘Are you sure we haven't had enough of things “burning bright”? Now, what would you fancy for lunch – are you still trying to be a veggie?'

‘After that bacon the other day? But there's no need, Kate, honest. I'm making a bit—'

‘The sooner you can get a deposit for a bed-sit, the happier we'll all be. OK? What would Sir like for a sandwich filling? Cheese or tuna or—?'

 

A quiet look round the High Street shops might be one way of passing the time. But she turned down the idea. Firstly, she certainly didn't want to run into any of her colleagues, not if the pretence were to be maintained. Secondly, despite the proud Victorian architecture, it was all too depressing: slow moving families straggling over the ill-maintained pavements. If the kids weren't sucking on bottles full of garish liquid doing vile things to their teeth, they were stuffing crisps and dropping the packets. She looked at the graffiti, the broken pavement, the beggars. Not that it was different anywhere else in a big city. It was just that she didn't want to be part of it this afternoon. No garden to retreat to? There was only one place to go.

 

Aunt Cassie was in the television room, watching an old film. She acknowledged Kate with a flap of the hand, and a terse instruction to sit down and be quiet for five minutes. Kate responded with a gesture of her own – she was going to walk round the garden and would be back soon. Anything rather than sit with the other old people, most of whom were, she suspected, less alert, less well, than Cassie. And today – should she obey Cassie's perennial instructions to tell her? – there was a distinct smell of urine in the air. Urine and old bodies.

The garden was idyllic. Despite the sensibly placed chairs and gentle slopes, it was also unoccupied. Perhaps the old might think the wind chilly, but the sun was warm on her face. If she sat, she might go to sleep, so she walked gently round, recording the names of things in flower – all clearly labelled for the ignorant like her.

Her five minutes up, she turned back. Coming out of the door she had to go in was a trio of figures, two familiar. Graham Harvey, his wife, and – she presumed – Mrs Nelmes. She would try a vague and general smile and see where that got her, as she moved aside to let pass the old lady and her Zimmer.

Mrs Harvey – Flavia – stopped short. There was more grey in her hair than last time they'd met, but it was still beautifully – if severely – cut. ‘What are
you
doing here?'

‘Visiting my great-aunt.'

‘I don't see her.' Mrs Harvey's fine eyes scanned the garden ostentatiously.

Graham looked acutely uncomfortable. Mrs Nelmes might have rubbed her hands in glee had she not needed them to hold the Zimmer.

So why was Mrs Harvey going to the trouble of being so rude? She and Kate had only met once, when Kate had taken to the Harveys' house a get-well message from the squad for Graham. Ever since then Graham had gone to humiliating lengths to prevent her knowing if Kate had phoned, always, as it happened, on the most innocent of business.