The Price of Failure (19 page)

There had to be something more; some further fact that would identify the individual house. He would not believe that he had learned this much, but could learn nothing more; he took aboard a superstition of his own – because he had betrayed unwillingly, he was being offered through his betrayal the chance to save Angelique Lumley.

Mrs Gladwin, who lived in flat 2, 36 Egremont Road, had seen two men going up the stairs on that Monday. She'd been unable to describe them beyond the fact that the elder man had been well built, dressed in an expensive-looking fawn camel's-hair overcoat, and had had black, curly hair. At the time, her description had reminded him of the man whom he had seen leaving the house on a previous occasion. Neither then nor now, though, could there be the certainty that they were the same man. But accept that they were – and the blackmailer must have been one of Genevieve's frequent customers – and one could postulate that he lived in the snow-filled areas of the countryside and ran a silver Porsche. To trace the owner of such a car was not an impossible task …

He cursed. In his growing excitement, he had overlooked one fact. There could be no search unless he admitted all the facts.

26

No matter how his mind twisted and turned, the equation did not alter. Confession must result in conviction and imprisonment. If it turned out that all his deductions were fiction, he would have sacrificed everything for nothing. Yet silence meant that Angelique's imprisonment would not only continue, but might end in the appalling nightmare Victoria Arkwright had suffered …

It was no contest. Not now Gloria and Timothy were no longer at risk. As he left the CID general room, he grimly compared himself to a man on the way to the scaffold – calling on someone, something to postpone the hanging, yet knowing that nothing would and so wishing it were over.

He was halfway to the DI's room when he came to an abrupt halt. He had been betrayed by his own weakness. Wasn't it just possible that another man could be betrayed by his? Possibilities raced through his mind; hope began to grow …

He continued along the corridor, knocked, entered. Hoskin, reading some papers, looked up. ‘Well?'

‘I'd like a word, sir.' He shut the door with his foot, advanced to the desk. ‘I may know enough to provide a lead on the kidnappers.'

‘Christ!' Initial excitement gave way to doubt and suspicion.

‘The only thing is, I'm wondering whether to make my report to you or to the detective chief superintendent.'

‘Have you gone bloody mad?'

‘It's just that you might be more ready to come to an agreement.'

‘Over what?'

‘Over arranging things to everyone's satisfaction.'

‘Sergeant Wyatt was right.' Hoskin slammed his fist down on the desk. ‘He was bloody right! You, a copper, have been working with those bastards.'

‘Sometimes a man has to choose between two courses of action, whatever the consequences.'

‘Not in my bloody book.'

‘That's a pity. Because if you did decide that that was possible, you would go on to accept that just occasionally the end does justify the means.'

‘Talk straight.'

‘I can give my information to Mr Jameson or I can give it to you. If I give it to him, he'll have me arrested on the spot and then check out my information; if that proves to be good and he finds Angelique Lumley, he'll make the headlines while you'll be the DI who loses all chance of promotion because you've had a bent DC in your command and not realized the fact. Tough, but that's the way things work. Or I can give the information to you now on the condition that if it turns out to be good and you become the headline news and have promotion chasing you, instead of the other way around, you support me while if it turns out to be bad, you dump me and for my part, I keep my mouth shut. You stand to gain; you can't lose.'

‘Agree to that and I climb down to your level.'

‘The choice never comes easily. Perhaps, though, you don't see that there can be a choice because you're a man of honour. For you, there can be no contract with the dishonourable, no matter what the cost to yourself. For you, the loss of all chance of promotion cannot be set in the scales against the satisfaction to be gained from knowing that your honour remains unsullied … I admire the strength of such principles, even while failing to understand them.'

Hoskin, his face expressing contradictory emotions, stood, crossed to the window, looked out. ‘If I made such an agreement, I'd not only be betraying my duty, I'd be placing myself at risk.'

‘I've said, if my information proves to be dud, I'll forget there's ever been an agreement between us.'

‘You expect me to accept the word of a traitor?'

‘What would I gain by breaking it? And if there's no written proof, all you would need to do is claim I was lying, trying to get my own back because you'd exposed me. In the circumstances, how much weight do you think my word would carry against yours?'

Hoskin returned to his seat. He fiddled with the end of his nose. ‘Get out.' His tone was bitter, not angry.

*   *   *

The internal phone on Lock's desk rang. Pettit, one desk away, answered it. He called out: ‘Mike, the guv'nor wants you.'

Carr left and went down the corridor to the DI's office. Hoskin, sitting at his desk, said, his voice harsh: ‘Shut the door.' There was a long pause. ‘Facts are facts. There's nothing I can do to alter them.'

‘But you can twist them.'

‘How?'

‘By testifying that the moment the mob contacted me, I informed you of the fact; that you then instructed me to appear to give in to their blackmailing while in fact passing on no useful information, in the hopes of learning something that would give us a lead on them.'

‘What put you in a position to be blackmailed?'

‘They photographed me in compromising circumstances and threatened to send photos to Gloria. They knew as well as I what effect that would have had on her.'

‘You're saying you were screwing around when she was in hospital?'

‘I'm not proud of the fact.'

‘I'm surprised,' said Hoskin, with fresh contempt.

‘It's easy to be high-minded when you're on the outside looking in. I was on the inside. And Genevieve made all the running.'

‘But you were careful not to run quite as fast as her.'

There was a silence, which Carr broke. ‘Do you agree?'

‘What's the evidence?'

He took that to be acceptance of the deal. He briefly gave the facts.

‘That's all?' said Hoskin.

‘I've known cases cracked on far less.'

‘And I've known cases where there's been far more end up in the dead file.'

‘But if there's one chance in a hundred that we can trace them…'

Hoskin interrupted angrily. ‘I don't bloody need you to show the way. You didn't notice anything more about the Porsche other than that it was a silver nine-eleven coupé; no special feature to help identify it more exactly?'

‘I only gave it a cursory glance.'

‘New?'

‘Probably new or newish, but some owners cosset their cars so much that you can't really judge age when the model hardly changes.'

‘Delineate the area that's been snowbound, then get on to Swansea and tell 'em we want a list of owners who live in it. They'll have a moan because they're geared to give information from names or registration numbers, but tell 'em lives depend on our knowing, fast.'

Carr left. Hoskin's expression was more bitter than ever.

*   *   *

Miranda watched her husband refill his glass – his fourth drink of the evening when normally he had only one. Her sense of worry, which had arisen as soon as he'd arrived home and she'd sensed his inner turmoil, grew. She stood, crossed to his chair, sat on the arm of that, and snuggled against him. ‘Has it been a bad day?'

‘Bloody awful.'

‘I wish you'd learn to take things more easily.'

He said nothing.

‘Are you going to tell me why it's been so grim?'

He emptied the glass with three quick swallows. ‘If you really must know, I stared into a looking glass and hated what I saw.'

She stroked the side of his neck. ‘If you'd looked properly, you'd have seen someone to be proud of because he cares a damn sight more about the world than most. You can't do everything. You can't take on board every other person's pain.'

‘This time, it's all mine.'

‘Why?'

He went to drink, found the glass empty. He started to rise, but she put her hand on his shoulder and pressed him down. ‘Please tell me.'

‘Forget it.'

‘No, I won't.'

‘I'm not Cromwell.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I'd rather the warts were left off my portrait.'

‘Remember when we were first married, we promised we'd tell each other everything however much we wanted to hide it because that was the only way it could be an honest marriage?'

‘Newlyweds are notoriously naive.'

‘Are you…?' Without realizing the fact, she gripped his shoulder. ‘Are you trying to tell me you're having an affair?'

‘For God's sake! How the hell can you think that?'

‘Only with terrible pain. But if it's not that, why can't you tell me what the trouble is?'

He spoke slowly and reluctantly. ‘I've always played things dead straight, because that's the only way if there's to be true law and justice. Take a short cut and there's no knowing where one will end up. I've kicked out good men who took short cuts because they thought the ends were more important than the means.'

‘You've taken a short cut?'

‘It's not as if he was going to keep his mouth shut if I didn't agree … But if he'd gone straight to the DCS, I'd have been left with a bent copper to black my sheet and that would have been curtains for promotion. I couldn't face that. So what does that make me?'

‘Who wasn't going to keep his mouth shut? Who would have destroyed your chance of promotion?'

He told her.

‘Poor man,' she said.

It was not the reaction he had expected. ‘You can call him that when he worked with those bastards?'

‘They blackmailed him into doing so.'

‘Because he'd been screwing a tart when his wife was sick.'

‘But he claims the woman set out to seduce him. Presumably, she's an expert?'

‘I'd never have expected to hear you defend a man who's spat in his wife's bed.'

‘I'm not defending, just trying to understand.'

‘There's no understanding a traitor.'

‘If I were in terrible trouble, wouldn't you forget all your principles if to do so would help me?'

He was silent for a long while, then he said: ‘I wish I could say no; I can't.'

‘Well then?'

‘That doesn't alter anything. If I'd refused to work with him, he said he'd go to the DCS.'

‘Can you be certain he would have done when he knew that there could be no way of persuading Mr Jameson to cooperate, so he was bound to be arrested and charged?'

‘Of course I can't.'

‘Suppose he was being completely honest. If Mr Jameson were handling the inquiries rather than you, would there be a better chance of finding the girl?'

‘At this stage, no. It might even lessen them because more people would know what was happening and word might somehow leak out.'

‘And saving her must be infinitely more important than saving your conscience?'

‘That isn't why I agreed to work with Carr.'

‘Does it really matter?'

He was no longer certain.

27

The list of silver Porsche 911s owned by people who lived in the given area was larger than either man had expected.

‘All we can hope is that the bastards holding her aren't reckoning to move just yet,' Carr said.

Hoskin nodded. He did not find it easy to continue to work with Carr.

Carr made his way down to one of the interview rooms. There, he used the internal phone to ask WPC Gatling to collect all the local directories from the reference room and to join him.

When she arrived, she said, as she dropped the several directories on the table: ‘Next time, you can collect the bloody things yourself.' The police force was still a man's world and, as did many women, she adopted a loudmouthed, butch attitude in order to establish her equality.

He passed across a page of names and addresses. ‘We need the telephone numbers of everyone on the list. If they're ex-directory, make a note and when we've finished, I'll take the names up to the DI and he'll get on to BT to ask for the numbers.'

She sat. ‘What's all this in aid of?'

‘We're trying to identify the owner of a silver Porsche.'

‘Why?'

‘To have a chat with him.'

‘What about?'

‘The kind of oil he uses in his car.'

‘You lot in CID can't even tell the time without turning it into a mystery. Makes you feel important, does it?'

They finished the task at five-thirty. ‘I'll take these upstairs,' he said, as he picked up the sheet of paper on which were the names and addresses of the nine owners whose telephone numbers were not listed.

‘So I'll be on my way. You can return all the bloody books.' She stood.

‘Hang on, we're not finished.'

‘Maybe you aren't, but I am.'

‘You want to argue it out with the super?'

She swore, fluently and not with imagination.

He was gone less than five minutes. When he returned, he had two phones and he plugged these into wall sockets. ‘Start with the first number and ask to speak to the man of the house.'

‘And say what? You want nice jog-jig, bargain offer, two quid and a packet of fags?'