Through a Narrow Door (15 page)

Not that he minded when it included such delicacies as sandwiches as thick as doorstops, and wedges of home-made fruitcake.

He’d just champed down on a deliciously tangy Double Cheddar, when someone slapped his back so hard it almost made him choke.

‘Hey up, my old cocker, you want to be careful of that,’ Frank Ross said, watching with malicious pleasure as Tommy’s eyes began to water as he struggled to catch his breath.

‘Wanker,’ Tommy muttered under his breath. He should have known it would be Ross.

‘Sergeant Wanker to you, laddy,’ Ross said gleefully, ‘and don’t forget it. Just because you’re off up to the boonies doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet.’

Tommy sighed over the awfulness of the mixed metaphor, and took a second, more cautious bite of his sandwich.

‘Come on, no time to stuff your face. We’re off to
interview
one of our mysterious contestants. This pair, to be precise,’ Ross said, picking up one of the photographs of the couples Billy Davies had photographed arriving at a house with a green-painted gingerbread trim.

Tommy was so surprised, he nearly choked all over again. ‘What? You
found
one of them?’

‘Course I did! What do you think I’ve been doing all morning?’ Ross demanded. ‘Come on, let’s get going before the girls get back from their morning jaunt.’

Tommy blinked. ‘How did you get on to them? I went down to the post office, and none of the postmen recognized that street.’

‘They wouldn’t, would they?’ Ross said, still with that annoying cheerfulness. ‘Well, not this street at least. This,’ he said tapping it with a dirty fingernail, ‘is a house in Yarnton.’

Tommy swallowed his bite of sandwich and looked at Ross closely. Was the poisonous little Winnie-the-Pooh-clone drunk? If he’d spent the morning in the pub, as he suspected, he might well be. Not that Frank had ever come in to the office drunk before. Well, not obviously, undeniably drunk.

Frank gazed back at him with a wide grin. He knew just what the younger man was thinking. And he was not about to admit that he’d found out the whereabouts of one of their mystery couples totally by accident. He had, in fact, been in a pub all morning, in Bladon to be exact. Near enough to be close to the office in case he got his chain yanked by Hillary Greene, but far enough away from the station not to be frequented by tattle-tales. In fact, the pub was a well-known watering place for beat-up coppers trying to keep their heads down, and off the radar, for a couple of hours.

Which was how he’d run into an old mate of his from
traffic, who’d been well into his fourth pint of Coors. Frank, who’d taken an envelope full of the photographs with him, had slapped them down at his table before getting a round in. One or two of them spilled out, and when he came back to the table, he found his old oppo looking through them idly.

And he recognized the distinctive woodwork on one of the houses, because his father-in-law lived in a house in that very street.

Which just goes to show, Frank thought now, that it pays to be in the right place, at the right time. Good old fashioned dumb luck. You couldn’t beat it.

‘I think we should wait for the guv,’ Tommy said flatly now, and Ross snorted.

‘I think we should wait for the guv,’ Ross mimicked snidely. ‘Grow some balls, why don’t you?’

But Tommy noticed that he made no move to go off on his own, but sat down at his desk, and reached for a file. Within a few minutes, Tommy guessed, he’d be snoring. Well, sod him. One thing he wasn’t going to miss when he transferred to Headington, was Sergeant Frank bloody Ross.

Janine drove into the parking lot at HQ at 2.15 that
afternoon,
feeling a little uneasy. They’d found a pub in Brackley, and both had ordered the grilled chicken salad. After she’d told Hillary about her inconclusive interview with June Warrender, Janine had tensed herself, ready for an angry lecture, but none had been forthcoming.

Hillary had, instead, simply asked her if she was sure she knew what she was doing in accepting Mel’s proposal, and then sat silently as Janine had, rather aggressively it had to be said, stated her long list of reasons for accepting. Hillary had listened with no expression at all on her face, then simply nodded, and ordered herself a large gin and tonic. Janine, who was driving, had to make do with orange juice. Although a G&T would have gone down well at that point.

Now, as she followed her boss through the big, open-plan
office, she found herself, very annoyingly, beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing. Luckily, her phone rang just then, and she dumped her bag on the table, answered it, and listened intently.

Frank Ross wasted no time telling Hillary that he’d possibly tracked down one of the streets in the photograph to a nearby village called Yarnton. Hillary could hear Janine talking on the phone, and could tell by the tone of her voice that she was excited by something.

‘Well done Frank,’ Hillary said, amazed to find herself actually saying those words. ‘You and Tommy go and make sure. If you confirm a visual match, start going around the neighbours, discreetly mind, and find out who lives there.’ She tapped the house pictured in the photograph. ‘And then run a full background check on them. But don’t approach them yet.’

‘Right guv,’ Tommy said, already getting up. Frank, looking more disgusted, rose reluctantly to his feet.

‘That was the landlord of the pub in Cropredy, guv,’ Janine said, hanging up and watching Tommy and Frank disappear. ‘You know, that pub where Martin Warrender and his girlfriend have been hanging out. He wasn’t there when I called by, and he’d been the one serving that night, so I asked the barmaid to get him to call me back. He was a bit cagey on the phone, but I think he knew who and what I was talking about.’

Hillary nodded. ‘OK. Let’s go.’

Janine looked at her surprised. Although Hillary often accompanied her on interviews (much to the disapproval of a lot of people who thought DIs should be chained to their desks, where they couldn’t cause too much trouble), she wouldn’t have thought this particular interview would have been of any interest to the SIO.

Still, hers was not to reason why.…

In the parking lot, Frank Ross yanked open the door of his rusting Fiat, swearing under his breath as he did so. Tommy
took one look at him, and said he’d take his own car. The mood Frank was in, he was just as likely to wrap his car around a lamp-post as not.

So what if Hillary wanted to know something about the people before interviewing them? So what if she’d asked them to do the legwork. That was their job, wasn’t it? Tommy just didn’t know how Hillary put up with Frank Ross. Or why the brass had lumbered her with him in the first place.

The landlord of the Goat and Honeypot was watching
football
on the bar telly. The interior was cool and dark, and apart from one man supping beer and reading a paper, the place was totally deserted.

‘Queer name for a pub, innit?’ Janine commented as they approached the bar.

‘Best not to ask how they came by it,’ Hillary advised. ‘Someone might just tell you.’

Janine was still grinning over that when the landlord drew his gaze reluctantly from the screen.

Janine identified herself, and the landlord nodded. He wasn’t a heavy-set man, and had thin shoulders and a narrow waist, but he had one of the most gigantic beer bellies Hillary had ever seen. He turned watery blue eyes on them, and slowly reached out to take the photograph of Marty Warrender that Janine offered to him. His slow
movements
, the near-baldness of his dome, and the sagging wattle of skin at his neck, all reminded Hillary of a tortoise.

‘Marty,’ the landlord said simply.

‘You recognize him? Have you seen him in here in the company of a woman, recently?’

‘Yes. He often comes in to have a drink with his sister-
in-law
.’

‘Oh,’ Janine said blankly. Damn, a dead end. But the old gossip at the dry cleaners had been sure.…

‘Very close to his sister-in-law, is he?’ she heard Hillary ask dryly, and the landlord chuckled.

‘Very. His wife would have his guts for garters, I reckon, if she found out. A bit of a tartar, she is.’

‘But no one’s going to tell her?’ Hillary said, still in that same, amused, dry tone.

‘No one round here, any rate,’ the landlord said, and went back to his screen.

Janine bit her lip. That was twice in one day that Hillary had got the drop on her.

‘Find out the sister-in-law’s name, then go interview her. Make sure Billy didn’t approach her for dosh. If Marty Warrender turned him down, as he said he did, he might have thought he’d have better luck with the lady,’ Hillary instructed as they headed for the door. ‘Find out where she was when Billy died, and if she has an alibi. Check it out thoroughly.’

Janine nodded, but as she drove back to HQ, she felt oddly depressed.

Hillary went back to her desk and phoned Francis Soames. Heather had got back safe and sound and had confessed all. He sounded shaken up, and appalled by his daughter’s recent traumas, but also, oddly, a lot calmer. She hoped the Soames were going to be OK.

When she lowered the receiver and looked up, Paul Danvers was just coming out of his office. He saw her at her desk, and smiled, but didn’t divert over.

Hillary watched him leave, wondering if he was gone for the day, in which case she wouldn’t have to worry about him and whatever private agenda he seemed to be working on. Instead, she reached for one of the files in her in-tray. No matter how fast she cleared it, some malicious elf seemed to sneak in under the cover of darkness and fill it up again. It was nearly 3.30.

She had no idea her case was about to blow wide open.

Janine came back first and reported. ‘Boss. The sister-in-law is one Felicia Cummings. She lives in Cropredy, and works in Banbury, just down the road from her brother-in-law. Very convenient,’ she grinned. ‘Flick – that’s what she prefers to be called – admitted to the affair with Martin Warrender, but only after she realized there was no point denying it. Apparently it’s been going on sixteen years! Sixteen years! Can you imagine?’

Hillary, who’d heard of far weirder things in her time, shrugged. ‘Did her sister know?’

‘According to Flick, no. But I’m not so sure. I mean, how’s a woman going to miss the fact that her sister and husband are at it, and have been for sixteen years? She’d have to be living in cloud cuckoo land not to have twigged.’

Hillary shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. I had a case once, of bigamy. This man had been keeping three different families over a period of twenty-five years, and not one of the wives or children knew about the others. A travelling salesman. He divided his time equally. Very fair-minded chap was Mr Tarkington.’

Janine shook her head. ‘Well, I dunno,’ she said
dubiously
. ‘Anyway, Flick was certain her sister was in the dark about it. But she’s got a rock-solid alibi for the time Billy died. She was at work – a place that sells expensive glass and crystal figurines and whatnot. You know, the sort of place you go to come Mother’s Day or Christmas if you’ve
got a yearning to buy a miniature tree made out of amethysts or whatever.’

Hillary nodded. ‘I think I know the place. How many staff are there?’

‘Three, and all three were at work the day Billy died. I talked to all of them separately – and the other two are adamant Felicia never left the shop.’

‘Lunch hour?’

‘No good boss, they staggered it, so there were always two in the shop. Flick did go to the café over the road for her lunch break, but the café owner confirmed it. She’s a bit of a regular there. He says she left about 2.15, and the girls in the shop confirmed she was back by 2.20.’

Hillary sighed. It seemed airtight. ‘Did Billy approach her for money?’

Janine frowned and tapped her pencil against her lips. ‘Not sure, boss. She
says
not, but she seemed a bit touchy to me. If I had to guess, I’d say that he
had
, but that she’d told him to sod off, and then told her boyfriend all about it. I could try and get a warrant to check her bank accounts, I suppose?’

Hillary shook her head. ‘Not just yet. If all else fails, we can always go back to her.’ She glanced at her watch, willing the phone to ring, but it was nearly forty minutes before Tommy checked back in.

‘Guv, it’s definitely them,’ were his first words. ‘A Mr and Mrs Clive and Dawn Waring. He owns his own company, selling and setting up garages and conservatories. She sort of “does” friends’ houses. You know, fancy wallpaper, paints mixed to order for a unique colour scheme, that sort of thing. Gets paid for it, but it’s probably more of a hobby than a serious business. House is mortgaged but nearly paid for, the car’s a new Mondeo. Seem to be doing all right. Married for nearly fifteen years, no kids. No previous. They’re both in – I’m sitting outside their place now. You coming over, guv?’

‘Be there in ten minutes, Tommy,’ Hillary said.

The house was instantly recognizable from the photograph, the green-painted gingerbread trim being echoed in some of the other houses in the cul-de-sac. Janine watched through the windscreen as Tommy got out of his own car and walked over and slipped into the back seat of theirs.

‘Frank’s still questioning the neighbours, guv,’ Tommy lied. He had in fact, skived off. ‘Do we three all go in, or what guv?’ Tommy asked curiously, leaning forward into the gap between the front two seats. ‘Might seem a bit
heavy-handed
.’

Hillary thought it over, then smiled. ‘It seems to me that’s just what we need,’ she mused. ‘Shake ’em up a bit. Let’s face it, we’ve got nothing on them. Some innocuous pictures a murdered lad took, could mean anything or nothing. If they instantly start shouting for solicitors it won’t make any difference how many of us are in there. And if they decide to keep quiet, the same applies. But my guess is that Mr and Mrs Waring consider themselves average, law-abiding
citizens
, and a visit from three police officers, looking and sounding serious, might just be enough to get them talking to us. Unless they don’t know what those pictures are all about and what they mean either. In which case, we’re buggered anyway.’

Janine nodded happily. That’s how she would have played it too. Perhaps she wasn’t losing her touch after all.

‘OK, Tommy, play the big silent menace. Look at
everything
and say nothing. Janine, likewise, but make a show of taking down every little cough and sneeze in your notebook. I want them to be very much aware that this a formal
interview
. I’ll do all the talking, unless I indicate otherwise. I want you both to watch their body language and see what you can pick up from their behaviour. We’ll compare notes later. Don’t interrupt me unless you’ve spotted something I’ve missed, or thought of something I haven’t, in which case just lean over and whisper in my ear. Got the picture?’

Janine grinned. She loved this sort of thing. Tommy merely said quietly, ‘Yes guv.’

Hillary nodded and got out of the car.

Yarnton was a village split in half by a busy
dual-carriageway
, but this side of the road, in a quiet and unassuming cul-de-sac, Saturday afternoon life went on as it did everywhere. Someone, in one of the back gardens, was mowing a lawn. A sprinkler system turned itself on to water a front lawn, startling a blackbird that had been looking for worms. In one garden, a child’s pink bicycle lay abandoned on its side.

She made her way to the door of number five, and pressed the bell. The woman who answered was definitely the woman in the photograph, although she did not have a face that a camera captured with any ease. She looked fatter, more blurred somehow in real life than she did on celluloid.

‘Mrs Waring? I’m Detective Inspector Hillary Greene. This is Sergeant Janine Tyler, and this is Detective Constable Thomas Lynch. May we come in please? We’d like to have a word with you and your husband.’

Dawn Waring went rather pale, which made the blusher stand out on her cheeks, giving her the unfortunate
appearance
of a clown. Her bright red lipstick didn’t help either. Her hand went up to tuck a brown lock behind her ear in an unconscious gesture of fear, and she smiled too brightly.

‘Oh, yes, of course. My, it sounds very ominous. Clive!’ she raised her voice, but not much. ‘Clive, darling, we have
visitors
.’ They were now all crowded into a small hall, where a grandfather clock ticked ponderously. ‘Please, come through to the lounge. My husband’s out the back, feeding the fish. He’s nutty about koi. I ask you, the things men like.’ She ushered them through to a room where the three-piece suite was king.

A monstrous black leather sofa and two over-stuffed armchairs dominated a plain, simple, square room, that contained little else but a television and, for some reason, a poster on the wall proclaiming the delights of the Caribbean island of Mustique.

Hillary nodded at Tommy and looked pointedly towards the far wall. Instantly, Tommy went over and leaned against it, folding his arms across his chest. Wearing an inexpensive dark blue suit, he suddenly looked like a bouncer hired to sort out trouble at a notoriously violent nightclub.

Janine, without being asked, took a seat at one end of the sofa. Hillary, also without being asked, took a seat at the other. This left the two chairs free for the Warings.

Clive Waring was as portly as his wife, going bald, and looked startled to see them. His wife, hovering in the open doorway, looked from them, to her husband, then to the poster, then out the window. She was still very pale.

‘Please, won’t you sit down,’ Hillary said, her tone of voice making it an order rather than a pleasantry. She noticed that Clive Waring obeyed immediately, rather like a well-trained dog. Dawn Waring took her own seat rather more slowly and reluctantly, but it was not defiance so much as fear that held her back.

Hillary smiled briefly, opened her briefcase, and took out a set of photographs. She went through them, leaving the picture of the Warings on the top. ‘These photographs have come into our possession,’ she said flatly. ‘Would you please look at them, and tell me what you know?’ She handed them to Clive Waring first.

Puzzled, he took them, and stared down at the top one, his jaw falling open. He had, she noticed, false teeth. ‘But that’s us! Look, Dee.’ He handed it over and his wife reached out and took it; then his gaze fell on to the next photograph in the series, and he paled conspicuously.

Wordlessly, he turned to the next, then the next. When he’d finished, his hand was visibly trembling as he handed them over to his wife.

‘As you can see,’ Hillary continued pleasantly, ‘the
photographs
are all similar. All are of couples, taken outside private residences. You obviously know them,’ she added flatly, giving him no chance to deny it. ‘Can I have their names and their addresses please?’

Clive Waring, who’d been staring at his wife, cleared his throat. ‘What makes you think we know these people?’ he said to Hillary, his attempt at bluffing them rather ruined by the way his voice wavered alarmingly.

Hillary smiled grimly. ‘Mr Waring, I’m heading up the William Davies murder inquiry. I don’t appreciate being lied to. You can be charged with wasting police time if you refuse to co-operate. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

‘Murder!’ It was Dawn who spoke. Or rather squeaked. She stared at Hillary, then at her husband, then back to Hillary again. ‘We don’t know anything about a murder. There’s nothing wrong with us!’

The last came out as a wail, but it was a curious
sentiment
. On first hearing, Hillary thought that she was simply saying that they weren’t murderers. Then she had immediate second thoughts.
There’s nothing wrong with us
. Just repeating it in her head made Hillary think that the Warings believed that there was indeed something very ‘wrong’ with them.

But what? What were they trying to hide?

‘I never said there was, Mrs Waring,’ Hillary said calmly. ‘But I need to speak to these other people, and I have reason to believe you know who they are. So, their names and addresses please. My sergeant will take down their
particulars
.’

Janine straightened up and turned smartly to a fresh page of her notebook, and fixed her blue gaze on Clive Waring.

Waring flushed, looked helplessly at his wife, then shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm.’ He held out his hand to his wife, who reluctantly handed back the
photographs
. Her eyes tried to hold on to his, but he kept his own gaze firmly averted. ‘This one,’ he held up the first of the photographs, ‘is of Vince and Betty Harris. They live in Tackley. I’m not sure of the number or the road. It’s just off the square though. This one …’

Ten minutes later, and they had the names and approximate addresses of all the couples. When he’d finished, Clive
Waring leaned back against the armchair, sweating openly. He looked, also, a little puzzled.

Hillary noticed it and felt a familiar tug at her stomach. She was going to have to explore that, later, when she’d got them talking more freely.

‘Can you think of any reason why anyone would have taken these photographs?’ Hillary asked. ‘I mean, of you people, specifically?’

‘No!’ Dawn Waring almost shouted. At the same time her husband snorted an unconvincing laugh and said
emphatically
, ‘Of course not!’ Their denials were so fierce and unanimous that it was clear, even to themselves, how
ridiculous
they sounded. Over by the wall, Tommy sighed heavily, and re-adjusted his weight. When both the Warings looked at him they caught the tail-end of amused disbelief on his features.

‘How do you know all these people?’ Hillary asked flatly.

The Warings exchanged looks. Eventually, Clive said, ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

Hillary shook her head, exasperated. ‘Mr and Mrs Waring, would you like me to send for a patrol car? Then we can carry on this conversation back at Thames Valley Police Headquarters. Obviously, you’re not taking this interview seriously. Perhaps …’

‘No, don’t do that!’ Dawn said at once, clearly appalled. ‘The neighbours … this is a nice street. Quiet. We’ve never had any trouble here. We like it here. Please, we don’t want to move again.’

Hillary found that very interesting. Not about the
neighbours
– she’d threatened the Warings with the very visible patrol car precisely because she knew that the last thing either of them would want would be to be seen driving off in the back of a police car.

No, what interested her was that comment about them having to move again. It indicated that the Warings had had to move a lot in the past. Why? Normally, she’d have wondered if one or the other of them had ever been
suspected of sexually abusing children. But she’d caught no such whiffs of anything like that in this case.

‘Then I suggest you answer my question,’ Hillary said smoothly, with no trace of her thoughts showing on her face. ‘How come you know these people? It’s a simple enough question.’

‘We all get together sometimes, that’s all,’ Dawn said
helplessly
, in a small voice. ‘We meet up, once a fortnight or so, in each other’s houses. You know, take it in turns to host a party. Nothing wrong in that is there? We don’t play loud music or take drugs or anything! Not like most parties nowadays. We’re always very discreet. Nobody’s neighbours ever complain.’

Hillary nodded, then caught movement out of the corner of her eye as Janine suddenly jerked in her seat. Suddenly, she began to scribble furiously in her book. Both the Warings had also noticed and were staring at her, fascinated. Hillary decided to let it play out, and said nothing until Janine had finished. Then her sergeant simply handed her the sheet of paper.