Power Games (21 page)

She didn't deny it. Why hadn't he?

‘Someone else you should talk to,' he continued, as if relieved to have everything out in the open, ‘is whoever it was in the Planning Department that messed up our application to have it listed.'

She pounced. ‘Any idea who?'

‘Rosemary went to see her. Yes, some woman. She wrote a report – and that was in my files, see?'

‘Any guess at a name?'

He shook his head. ‘I've got this blind spot about names. Hereditary according to this article I read in
New Scientist
. So everything's written down in there. If that's gone—' He flapped his hands in resignation.

‘Ever talked to a hypnotist?' she asked.

The five-minute walk up the High Street gave Kate enough time to worry about reporting her next move. She wanted to go to the Planning Department. Stephen might have difficulty with names, but he'd had no problems describing the woman who'd delayed their attempts to list the Lodge.

So she ought to tell someone what she was up to. Nigel – to whom she was officially reporting? Or Rod? With whom she was unofficially sleeping? Both? Both would be best. Separately? So in which order? Nigel first, as was usual? But what if he vetoed it? She could scarcely go over his head to Rod without it becoming an issue.

And what about Rod and herself? A cleanish break now? A couple of nights of fun, no hard feelings? That would be best. He seemed to want a relationship, but certainly saw problems. She – well, she hadn't realised how much she enjoyed having a warm body in the bed beside her. Or how much she'd missed sex.

Jesus, she wanted him now. Now.

Or did she want Robin?

No. Mustn't even think about Robin.

Think some sense. It would be better to put the whole thing on hold for a bit. Wouldn't it? Until this case was over, at least. And don't admit that that would be an excellent incentive to solve it as quickly as possible.

Ahead of her, an old woman stumbled in the road. No wonder: there was a pot-hole some four or five inches deep. No need for her to do anything, by the looks of it. A couple of other people were steadying her, and Kate could hear words like ‘reporting' and ‘council' being bandied about. She hoped the roads were better wherever the Sargents were now living. She couldn't, come to think of it, imagine them being less than perfect if that barrister daughter and her round tuits had any influence. So what would be happening to their claim? And had Guljar managed to pin anything on the driver or his employers? She'd have a word with him the moment she could make a chance.

Why not make that moment now? It would put off making a decision on the other stuff. She headed not for the Incident Room and the MIT's quarters but for Guljar's office. Which was occupied by him seated at his desk and Rod, standing, clutching a file.

‘God, you CID people work tough hours,' Guljar said, looking ostentatiously at his watch. ‘Fancy having to get here for ten. Such a strain.'

‘I know. And I shall be leaving in half an hour, absolutely exhausted. That's if it's OK with you and DI Crowther, Gaffer? Something cropped up with Stephen Abbott. Did Mark tell you I was talking to Stephen this morning?'

‘He mentioned something.' Full marks for his acting. ‘Anything interesting?'

‘Only the contents of his drawer – the one he was keeping schtum over. And a possible lead.'

‘Well – what are you waiting for? Tell—' Rod shoved a chair at her, but then seemed to think better of it. ‘Ah, hang on. I've got a meeting with Crowther in a few minutes – my room. Room! Gold-fish bowl, more like. You can brief us both at the same time. OK? See you in five minutes, Kate.' He nodded and was off.

Nice and brisk and impersonal. Good. But what was he doing closeted with Guljar? An unlikely combination. And why in Guljar's room, not his own? Because Guljar's had solid walls and a wooden door?

She grinned at Guljar, and took the seat Rod had pushed forward. ‘No need to look so apprehensive. I'm not after any more gossip. Just wanted to know what was happening to the lorry driver that flattened the cottage down the back of Moseley.'

Guljar stared. ‘Ah, the budgie people! Well, we're doing him for careless driving.'

‘Not dangerous?'

‘No injuries resulting.'

‘Oh, come off it – they could have been killed. And he went into that place like – what was it you called it? An aries?'

He nodded in acknowledgement. ‘We're doing his boss for overloading, as well. The thing is, the forensic people in Traffic went over it with the proverbial fine-toothed comb and couldn't find much wrong with the vehicle itself.'

‘So they'll get off lightly?'

Another nod. ‘I must admit that that barrister-woman – you know, the daughter – she's not happy. And she's now alleging that someone was harassing the old dears. Nothing serious. Just enough to have made them think about moving down south. Tim Brown in our CID's on to it, if you're interested.'

‘I rather think I might be,' Kate said. ‘Thanks.'

 

Tim Brown was a comfortably padded man in his mid forties, with fading blond hair, a snub nose and big, baby-blue eyes. Big shoulders and short legs – once a rugby prop, perhaps.

‘Someone wanted the Sargents out of that place,' he said flatly. ‘The person who watered their front garden with weed-killer, who put dog-shit through the front door, and who –
allegedly
' – he stressed the adverb ironically – ‘allegedly rammed the front of the cottage with a bloody great lorry. Well, the lorry and the cottage certainly came into intimate contact. And the latter is no more.'

‘Who are you after?'

‘You tell me.'

DI's could play that game, couldn't they? All of them.

‘The people who own the site next to their cottage,' she said briskly. ‘Who probably own the site being developed at the top of the hill – from whence cometh our lorry,' she added, a fragment of Sunday School surprising her.

‘Hole in one. And I'm sure you could come up with some names?'

‘Behn for one. And possibly Hodge for another?'

He looked totally blank. ‘Why them?'

‘Because they want to develop a prime site out at the reservoir.'

‘Do they, by Christ?' He jotted.

‘But it isn't them?'

‘Not unless there's been a recent change and the Land Registry hasn't caught up with it.'

‘So would the Land Registry have on record the Anna Seward Foundation?' she asked.

The baby-blue eyes opened wide. ‘I think we need to talk,' he said.

‘Not just us, but the MIT on the warehouse arson cases. And maybe, just maybe, the MIT I'm in.'

‘Quite a lot of conversation, one way and another,' Tim observed, smiling broadly, and rubbing fat paws.

 

Rod Neville was still deep in conversation with Nigel Crowther when she arrived outside his office. She caught his eye, nodding as he held up a splayed hand – five more minutes.

Enough time for her to make a phone call then. One she'd rather not make in the office. Or even in the building. She ran downstairs; only to find, out in the street, that her mobile was being temperamental. Thank goodness for the payphone by the library.

Graham picked up his phone first ring.

‘Gaffer: do you have any hard news about why Nigel Crowther got moved into the MIT?'

‘Morning, Kate. Yes, it's a nice day, isn't it?'

‘And I haven't all that much change,' she retorted. Trust this to be one of Graham's affable days.

‘Phone box call?' His voice was suddenly serious. ‘OK, fire away.'

‘The rumour this end is that his mother pulled rank. She's on the Police Committee and married to someone with even more clout.'

‘Name?'

‘Remarried last year. Guljar remembers that Crowther went to the wedding. Don't know what her new name is. Gaffer – this could be important.' Why did she add that? Didn't she trust him to take it seriously.

‘I know. I'll deal with this myself, Kate. You – you just keep out of this.' He said this as a plea, not an order. Then, more briskly, ‘Anything I should be looking out for?'

‘Whether she's associated with developers called Behn or Hodge. Oh, and Gaffer, much more important – see where she went to school.'

Her money ran out.

 

If Rod Neville noticed the rain splashes on her jacket, her damp and ruffled hair, he gave no sign of it. He nodded her to a chair next to the one occupied by Crowther, who, as far as she could tell, didn't look at her at all.

‘First of all, Power, I have to ask you if you in any way interfered with DI Crowther's computer when you used it yesterday,' Rod said, grim, intimidating.

‘Sir?' She sat up straight.

‘You heard. When you were getting your e-mail or whatever.'

She spread her hands in disbelief. ‘All I did was get my e-mail, sir. You'll find it in the computer's trash bin. And I printed it off. As DI Crowther saw.'

‘You didn't infect it with a virus, anything like that?'

She allowed herself a short laugh. ‘I'd have thought we'd got the best anti-virus system going, sir. Of course, PC's are notoriously unstable. I can never open my e-mail until I've had a moment tapping away in Word. Don't ask me why.'

‘I have your word on that, Sergeant?'

She nodded. No problem: she did always have to go into Word first.

‘OK, Crowther, it seems the best thing we can do is get a technician to have a look at it for you. And – well, until we can get you a replacement, there are all those in the incident room for you to choose from.' He spoke with an air of finality – this wasn't a suggestion that he expected Crowther to argue with. ‘Right, now that's out of the way, to MIT business. How are your interviews with Doctor Parsons progressing, Power?'

Kate shook her head. ‘It depends how you look at it, sir. Neither Mark nor I can see anything in his demeanour to suggest he's anything but a bereaved husband. We see neither motive nor opportunity. The way we see it – with due respect, Inspector Crowther – is that person or persons unknown prepared a lethal brew, left Rosemary to die while they searched the house, and then made a follow-up visit to Stephen Abbott's place.'

‘The modi operandi are completely different,' Crowther said.

Now that was something Rod could adopt: a full-length Latin term with, presumably, the correct ending for the plural.

‘Nothing was taken from the Parsons home except files,' Crowther was saying. ‘And we've no idea how many files or what they may contain. Abbott's was a straightforward breaking and entering, according to SOCO. TV, video, hi-fi: a whole tranche of objects taken. Oh, and his computer, of course. All highly saleable.'

‘And the contents of his filing cabinet. Cabinets, I should say.'

‘A few porno magazines!' Crowther scoffed.

‘Is that what he says?' Neville asked.

‘He wouldn't answer. Consistently. I'd say he was scared shitless the scandal would lose him his job.'

‘He confided to me what had gone, sir,' Kate said, direct to Rod.

‘Well?'

‘Portraits of his former fiance´e. Letters to and from her. That's the one cabinet. The other contained his files for the Lodge Preservation Society. I thought they were just trying to stop it falling down. It seems I was wrong. There's someone trying to knock it down. And though it should have got listed at the last council Planning Committee meeting, somehow it got missed off the agenda. So it's terribly vulnerable.'

‘I wonder how that happened?' Rod mused.

Kate waited. Would Crowther take the bait?

‘Everyone knows how inefficient local government is,' he said. ‘Remember what Tony Blair was saying. Still got the marks on his back from when he tried to institute change.'

Yes! Yes, and yes, and yes! She looked to Rod for a gleam to answer her own, but his eyes were totally expressionless.

‘I think it would be helpful, Power, if you and Mark were to go and find out why, in this particular instance, the council staff were inefficient.'

‘Sir.' She got to her feet.

‘There is just one other thing, Crowther. The other Lodge Protection Committee members – you have taken appropriate measures to protect them?'

‘Sir.'

‘Perhaps – thanks, Power, you'll need to be on your way to the planning office, won't you? – perhaps you'd be kind enough to tell me what you've done so far.'

Dismissed. Fine. Well, if that was the way he was going to deal with it, that was up to him. Wasn't it?

But she rather thought, as she closed the door, that he was asking about Crowther's computer needs.

 

She hadn't mentioned Stephen's allegations that Rosemary was being harassed by the Inland Revenue, had she? Presumably they'd be in the letters she'd sent to her bank or her solicitor. She checked – no, no one had collected them yet, goodness knows why, though Parsons had obviously told someone which bank, which solicitor.

‘Penny for them, Gaffer,' Mark said, coming in and dropping a pile of papers on to an already toppling in-tray. Today he was resplendent in turquoise and grey. The man must spend a fortune on his gear.

‘Don't know which order to put jobs in,' she said.

‘Give me one, do one yourself. We'll haggle over the third. Come on, don't want you going sick again.'

She managed a smile. ‘True. Now, can you get on to Rosemary's bank and see if she sent them any papers? If she did, we collect them. You and me. No one else. I'll do the same for the solicitor. First one to finish can phone the Inland Revenue and find which officer handled Rosemary's tax returns. Then – it's a nice sunny morning – we'll go into the city. Right?'

As she finished her first call, Crowther left the gold-fish bowl. His face gave nothing away. Neither did Neville's as he closed the door from the inside, and returned to the far side of his desk.