Running Scared (18 page)

‘You should have thought about that before you joined the police,’ I pointed out. ‘If you wanted to be popular you should’ve formed a pop group. Why did you join the police, anyway? Couldn’t you have got a job in the City or something like that? I should’ve thought that’d be more your mark.’

‘Why?’ He sounded offended. Then he hunched his shoulders. ‘I could’ve gone for banking or something, I suppose. A lot of guys I know have done that. I just wanted something else, not just making money.’ He fidgeted in an embarrassed way. ‘I don’t want to sound a pseud or big-headed, but I wanted to feel I was helping people, making a difference. I wanted to be able to think that what I was doing really mattered in the community. That somehow the world around would be a smidgen better for my efforts. I didn’t just decide for all those high-minded reasons,’ he added defensively.

‘They sound all right to me,’ I said.

He relaxed. ‘The police force offers a good career structure for a graduate these days. It has to be more interesting than sitting at a desk. You meet a lot of unusual people . . .’ Here he grinned at me and saluted me with his glass.

‘What am I? A freak?’ I snapped.

‘Of course not. I think you’re, well, bright, very attractive and probably fun if you’d get that chip off your shoulder. We could be friends, if you’d be prepared to give it a try.’

‘Chip?’ I goggled at him. ‘Me? Chip?’

Fortunately the pasta arrived. We must have been equally hungry because conversation flagged while we concentrated on eating.

When we’d pushed our plates aside and Harford had refilled our wine glasses, he asked, ‘How’s Patel today, by the way?’

‘A bit groggy. Could be worse.’ I eyed him. ‘Do you think the guy who attacked him will come back?’

‘Not tonight. We’ve got a patrol car keeping an eye on the place, just in case. I’m more worried about you, Fran. He –the man who’s looking for the film – may think you have it or can get hold of it.’

‘Thanks, I worked that one out for myself. You’re still not going to let the public know you’ve got it?’

He shook his head. ‘Once he knows that, he’ll vanish. As long as he thinks he has a chance of recovering it, he’ll hang around and we’ll get him. Don’t worry.’

‘Look,’ I told him, ‘I’m not thick. I do realise what you coppers are up to here. Ganesh and I are decoys, right? You’re waiting for whoever-it-is behind this to get in touch with one of us – or failing that, Marco or Hitch. As I see it, the least you can do is offer us adequate protection.’

‘We’ve got it all under control,’ he assured me.

‘Have you, heck. Why’s Ganesh staggering round concussed if that’s the case?’

‘That was a slip-up. It won’t happen again. We’re keeping an eye on you, Fran.’

I supposed I had to take his word for it. I toyed with my glass. ‘Why did the person who tracked Coverdale to my place kill the poor bloke? That was stupid if the tracker wanted the film back. He’s not going to get it off a dead man, is he?’

‘My guess is, he panicked. Or he threatened Coverdale with the knife but Coverdale took him on. There was a struggle and the stabbing was accidental.’ He hesitated. ‘I looked over your flat when I called round the other day and it’s a pretty secure place. I don’t think anyone could get through that little window on to the ditch and the lawn – but don’t leave it open at night. I realise this time of the year you probably wouldn’t. If it’s got a weak point, it’s not having burglar bars on the basement window. I saw you had safety locks on the window and a chain on the door and that’s fine, but why don’t you talk to your landlady about getting burglar bars sometime?’

I’d previously thought my flat secure, but this kind of talk was making me nervous.

‘You sound pretty sure he’ll come back.’

‘His employer will insist. He’s a worried man.’

‘But I’m not to know who he is, this worried Mr Big?’

Harford looked serious and shook his head. ‘No kidding, Fran. All discussion of those photos is embargoed.’ Without warning, he made a jump of subject. ‘You and Patel go back some way, or so I understood Wayne Parry to say.’

Wayne? Parry’s name was Wayne? Had his mother liked cowboy films? And just how much gossiping was done about me down at the nick? ‘Ganesh is my friend,’ I said coldly.

‘Just that, a friend?’ His eyes met mine and there was no mistaking what he meant.

That made me angry. I leaned over the green-checked table. ‘Listen, saying someone’s a friend is saying a lot. I don’t chuck the word “friend” about. A friend is someone who’s there when you need him. You never have to explain yourself to a friend. You can have a stand-up row with a friend and when the dust settles, you agree to differ and you’re still mates. I don’t know what your background is, but I bet it’s pretty comfortable. You’ve probably got a lot of people you call friends. But friends are thin on the ground when you’re down and out. I wonder, if you ever find yourself really up against it, as I’ve been lots of times, whether your friends will still be there for you the way Ganesh has always been there when I’ve needed him.’

He was looking down at his clasped hands on the cloth as I spoke, avoiding my eye. As I fell silent, I realised that something had changed. The atmosphere had plummeted well down the scale and the chill factor had set in. He looked up and the good nature had gone from his face. He was back to the sneery cold look again. He signalled to the waiter.

‘You’ll want to get back home,’ he said.

Now what had I said that had really upset him? Something had. I’d touched a nerve. I remembered what he’d said about the public not supporting the police and wondered if he found himself got at from all sides. I couldn’t imagine he got on easily with the other CID people and as for the uniformed bluebottles, they probably wrote rude limericks about him on the bog wall. By my words, I’d made it clear I excluded him from my world, too. Well, if he was a misfit, it wasn’t my problem. But to have accused me of having a chip on the shoulder was a bit rich.

‘I pay my whack, like I said,’ I told him, dragging my purse out from the neck of my sweater. I keep it on a leather string under my top clothing. I’ve always kept my money tucked well away. It’s because of the sort of company I’d kept for too long and the crap places I’d lived – before I got the flat.

After the snug warmth of the restaurant, outside was really miserable. We stood on the pavement in the drizzling rain. I hunched down in my denim jacket, Harford stood with his hands in his pockets and a truculent expression on his face. ‘Do you want me to walk you back?’ he asked.

Put like that, how could a girl accept? ‘I don’t need an escort,’ I told him sourly. ‘Thanks for the wine.’

I don’t know whether he watched me walk away. I didn’t look back.
Brief Encounter
with a modern twist. You wouldn’t catch me going for a drink with a bloke I didn’t like again.

Chapter Ten

I didn’t sleep at all well. My brain was too busy. It was only partly because of Harford’s words about security at the flat. I’d checked everything and thought I was safe. Just to make sure of that little garden window, I’d blocked it by taking the medicine cabinet off the bathroom wall, and wedging it in the window space. It looked odd and was inconvenient, taking the light, but if anyone tried to get through the window, he’d dislodge it and it’d fall down with a heck of a noise.

As I lay there, drifting in and out of sleep, my mind ran on Coverdale, whom I’d hardly known, but who’d died just outside my door. Ganesh and I had rescued him from his pursuers once, but in the end it hadn’t helped the wretched man. It did, however, leave me with a feeling of responsibility towards him – quite unnecessarily as I told myself, but hard to shift.

I speculated irritably about the perverseness of Fate. I remembered the story in which a merchant’s told he’s going to meet Death the next day, so he travels to Damascus to avoid it only to find Death has travelled there too. Coverdale had cheated Death at the shop, only to meet the Grim Reaper in my basement. I supposed there was a sort of sense in that. Coverdale had presumably poked his nose in where he shouldn’t. He’d been an investigative reporter and that’d been his job. It had risks attached and they’d caught up with him. But me, why had I been dragged in?

In the end, I decided Ganesh was responsible. He’d allowed Coverdale to use the old washroom. He’d decided to get Hitch to rip out the fittings. So that settled that. It was Gan’s fault.

I turned my thoughts to the fair-haired man in the photo and wondered where he was and what he was doing. His heavies were incompetent. They’d picked up Coverdale and lost him again the day he’d stumbled into the shop. Then one of them had contrived to kill the poor bloke before they’d found out what had happened to the—

I sat up in bed. ‘Buck up your ideas, Fran!’ I said aloud. Just because Harford thought Coverdale’s death might have been unintended in a struggle, or because the killer had panicked, didn’t mean that was how it had been. I was forgetting – and Harford was, too – that
Coverdale
hadn’t known Gan and I had recovered the film any more than the villains did. Coverdale thought the film was still hidden in the washroom at the shop. He had come to the flat to ask me to retrieve it for him. When threatened by the knifeman, had he confessed this? If so, having told the knifeman what he wanted to know, Coverdale himself had then become expendable. In fact, he’d become too dangerous to leave alive. No accident, then. No panicking assailant. Coverdale had been murdered deliberately by a cold-blooded killer and any further knowledge he’d had about the fair-haired man in the pic had died with him.

It explained why the searcher had next tried the shop. It wasn’t because he was blundering around, hoping to strike lucky, but because he’d been told, by the man who’d hidden it, that the film was there.

He must have had a terrific shock when he saw the washroom with the partly installed new fittings. Coverdale hadn’t known about that, either. Coverdale would’ve described the old washroom and the exact spot he’d stashed the packet with the film in it. The searcher had realised that someone else must have come across the envelope when the old fittings were torn out. But what he didn’t know was what the finder had done with it. Had he or she simply chucked it in a waste-paper basket? Or kept it? The intruder had started up the back stair leading to the flat with the intention of searching there, but that’s when he’d met Ganesh on the staircase. I wondered how long Gan had lain unconscious. Long enough for the intruder to complete his search? Hari’s flat was a tip. Needles in haystacks would hardly have come into it. On the other hand, it was easier to search for something if you knew what it was, than if you didn’t, if you see what I mean.

Having reached these various conclusions, it was difficult to get back to sleep at all. I looked at the clock and saw it was gone five. In an hour’s time, Ganesh would be taking delivery of the morning papers – if he’d woken up. I got up, made some tea, showered, dressed, and set out for the shop.

It’s surprising how many people are out and about just before six in the morning. The streets were quite busy, traffic already building up. People were bound for work, forming queues at the bus stops and hurrying into the entrance to the tube station.

Ganesh was at work already, taking in the stacks of newspapers, apparently much recovered, and surprised to see me.

‘I told you I’d come early,’ I said.

‘You can give me a hand to put these out, then.’

I hate handling newsprint. You get filthy. I concentrated on the quality broadsheets, because that print is less likely to mess up your hands. As we worked, I told Ganesh about my encounter with Harford the previous evening, and also what I’d worked out about Coverdale’s death. I didn’t tell him how I’d concluded that our involvement was all his fault. I’d save that for later.

Ganesh agreed. ‘What’s more,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking over the business of that dummy alarm. That’s typical of Hari and very bad thinking. Penny wise and pound foolish, that’s the old fellow. I think I’ll get a proper system installed before he gets back. It’s for his own good and protection, not to say mine.’

It certainly made sense, but what with that and the new washroom, Hari’s profits were in danger of disappearing fast. I felt a bit sorry for the poor old boy, holidaying out there in India, blissfully unaware what his nephew was up to.

When we’d finished the newspapers, I washed my hands in the nice new washbasin, and went down the road to the French bakery to buy us
pains au chocolat
for breakfast. I felt we needed a little treat and chocolate is supposed to cheer the spirit.

We needed cheering because the master craftsmen were back.

‘Coppers not hanging around?’ asked Hitch, putting his head round the doorjamb. He spoke in what passed, for him, as a whisper. I thought he’d have been good at stage asides, clearly audible to the audience.