Through a Narrow Door (4 page)

Hillary nodded. ‘I don’t see a computer.’

George Davies barked a harsh laugh. ‘You won’t, either.’

‘But don’t you need a computer with a digital camera? You know, to print off photographs,’ she added, indicating the walls.

‘Oh, that best pal of his had a computer,’ George Davies said. ‘He’d go over to Middleton Stoney whenever he wanted something printed off. Thick as thieves those two.’
Davies spoke glumly, as if he didn’t approve of the
friendship
. As if he’d read her thoughts, he added, ‘Lester’s dad owns his own company. Used to show off his computer and all those video games and what not, just to make Billy jealous. I reckoned he looked down his nose at our Billy too, on the sly, but Billy wouldn’t have it. Kids, they think they know everything.’ He shrugged helplessly.

Hillary glanced once more at the photographs. ‘He had talent,’ she said softly.

‘Ah. He reckoned he could make a living at it too. I told him, there ain’t no money in arty-farty stuff. But Billy had it all worked out. He wanted to be one of those daft sods that hang around trying to get pictures of so-called celebrities.’

‘A paparazzi?’ Hillary said, somewhat surprised. George Davies shrugged again, then shook his head and turned away. Like his wife before him, he was probably wondering what it all mattered now. Pie-in-the-sky dreams or not, Billy Davies wasn’t going to be taking any more photographs now.

Hillary and Janine stepped outside, and let out slow, long breaths. The doctor had arrived and, with the WPC, had put Marilyn Davies to bed.

Outside the back door, Hillary noticed a shed and converted coal-house, and peered inside. Mostly garden tools and the usual paraphernalia: ladders, tins of half-used paint. The odd cardboard box filled with who-knew what. And there, standing against one wall, gleaming dark blue and new-looking in the gloom, the lines of a powerful racing bike. The dead boy’s bike. His pride and joy no doubt. Something else that was now obsolete. Hillary thought back to that allotment shed and that thickset boy with the cheeky blue eyes and thatch of dark hair, and could almost see him racing along the country lanes, legs pumping hard, working up all those fancy gears, revelling in the speed and oblivious, as all children were, to any danger.

But in this case, Billy Davies had been right to scorn the
thought of getting run over by a car. Billy’s bike had been safely tucked away in the shed when its owner had died.

‘I don’t understand this,’ Hillary said, as she slowly walked back down the lane towards the allotments. By now SOCO should be well ensconced. ‘Who would want to kill Billy Davies. And why?’

Janine frowned. ‘Early days yet, Boss,’ she reminded her. She never called Hillary ‘Guv’. But she longed for the day when someone would call her by that sobriquet.

At the allotment gates, Tommy saw them coming and quickly moved out to greet them. ‘They’re going to be here hours yet, but they reckon they can get the bulk of it done before dark. We’ll have to set up lights though,’ Tommy said. ‘That shed is a tip. All sorts in there and it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned out since before the war. The first one.’

Hillary grinned, knowing the words had come out of Tommy’s mouth, but hearing behind them a disgruntled techie. ‘Well, you’re in for a long night then aren’t you, DC Lynch,’ Hillary said with a grin, and Tommy groaned
good-naturedly
.

‘Still no sign of Frank?’ she asked, but barely listened for the negative response. ‘OK, Tommy, start interviewing the neighbours and see if anybody heard anything or saw anyone.’ She glanced at her watch and saw that it was just gone 4.30. ‘You’ll probably find most of them still out at work, so hang around and go back after five. Janine, you’d better hang around here. I’m surprised the press hasn’t got here already. When they do show, give them the usual line. I’ll go talk to SOCO, see what they’ve got.’

As the three peeled off to go their separate ways, a
blackbird
that was nesting in the hawthorn hedge by the gate shrilled angrily.

Hillary knew how it felt.

As Tommy expected, the entire hamlet of Aston Lea seemed to be elsewhere. Apart from the Davies bungalow, there was one two-storey cottage, that looked as if it had been
prettified 
for weekenders, and seven small, squat bungalows. As he knocked on the door of the second-to-last bungalow on the road, he was already anticipating an echoing silence. So when he heard a faint voice calling, ‘I’m coming, hold your horses,’ it had him reaching into his pocket for his ID.

The door opened to reveal a little old lady no more than four feet six. She had a near electric-blue rinse to a tightly permed mop, and was wearing a flowered apron and battered slippers. The old woman looked up at the big black constable and smiled. ‘Hello, what’s all the
excitement
then? Nobody ill over at George and Marilyn’s, I hope. I saw the doctor. No good holding that thing up there, I can’t see it. Hang on let me get me glasses on.’ As she reached for a pair of thick-glassed reading spectacles, which were hanging on her flat chest by a chain, she was still rabbiting on. ‘I was pretty sure I saw the doctor’s car. Nothing serious I hope. Oh, police is it? What’s going on? That Billy in trouble?’

Tommy, trying to keep from grinning, gave up a brief prayer of gratitude for garrulous, curious old ladies, and said softly, ‘I’m Detective Constable Lynch, ma’am. May I come in?’

Hillary coughed loudly a few yards from the shed door, and a white-hooded head popped out. She vaguely recognized the boffin inside. His speciality, if she remembered rightly, was clothing. Or was it blood-splatter patterning?

‘Any chance of an update?’ she asked.

‘Not a cat in hell’s,’ was the cheerful response, and the white-coated figure disappeared again. Hillary blew out her lips. Great.

‘Do you want digestives or rich tea?’ The old woman, who’d introduced herself as Millie Verne, poured the boiling water into the teapot and reached for the sugar basin. ‘Only tea bags, I’m afraid. Milk?’

Tommy, sitting at a tiny Formica table, nodded to both the
milk and digestives, and spread his notebook on the table. ‘Is that Miss or Mrs Verne?’

‘Mrs, love, though I’ve been a widow now for nigh on twenty years. Reckon I’ll be widowed longer than I was married afore long. Husband drove the buses. Good man he was, but liked his drink.’ Tommy gulped, and was glad he’d never been a passenger on one of Mr Verne’s charabancs. ‘So, what’s going on then? I hope everything’s all right. George and Marilyn are friends, like. Well, Marilyn
sometimes
gets me some shopping in.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t say just yet, ma’am,’ Tommy
temporized
. He hadn’t been given the official go-ahead from Hillary yet to release information to the public. ‘Have you been here all day?’ he asked gently, mentally crossing his fingers. The Verne bungalow was well situated to see any comings and going.

‘Nowhere else to go, have I, love?’ Millie Verne said without rancour, sitting herself down opposite her
unexpected
visitor and dunking a rich tea. ‘Course I was here all day. Waddya wanna know?’

‘Have you seen any strange cars hanging around lately? And specifically today?’

‘No. This place isn’t exactly on the beaten track is it? Most people wanting to get to Steeple Aston, the bigger village down the road a mile, use the other road, the one off the main road; second turning. It’s two-lane see, and closer. So only those of us who live here use
this
lane. Everybody goes off to work in the morning, around eight, you can hear the cars start up, then they all coming dribbling back around half five time. Bit like watching bees set off on the hunt for honey it is. Only me stays behind. And sometimes that Mrs Cooper. She only works part-time.’

Tommy realized how lonely the old duck must find it, and took a gulp of tea. ‘Right. So, what can you tell me about your neighbours?’ he asked, wondering if he was going to wear the nub of his pencil down by the time he’d finished. He had the feeling he was in for a long haul.

‘Well, now, where do you want me to start?’ Millie Verne asked, eyes twinkling. ‘Starting at the top end, there’s the Coopers …’

Janine watched the first car arrive, and recognized the man who stepped out of it. He was an all-rounder for the
Oxford Times
, but he liked to specialize in crime. She walked towards him, keeping him from the gate. His passenger was obviously a snapper, and she made sure to keep both men in sight. She knew all their tricks – how the reporter would keep you chatting while his mate tried to dodge off and get some snaps.

She heard a second car and started to curse silently,
realizing
that she could quickly be swamped, then recognized Frank Ross’s beat-up jalopy, and managed a wry grin instead. She never thought she’d be pleased to see Frank.

‘As I live and breathe,’ Frank said, getting out of the car and grinning across at the journo, who gave a not inaudible groan. Everybody, it seemed, knew Frank. And wished they didn’t.

‘Please, get back in the car, sir,’ Janine said firmly to the photographer, who reluctantly slid back inside, but not before taking a crafty shot of her.

As Janine dealt with a steadily growing group of media, she wondered what Mel was doing back at HQ. Or had he gone home already? Mel had a place in the ‘Moors’ area of Kidlington – the old part of the village, full of big gracious houses and gardens with ponds and weeping willow trees. Mel’s place was a particularly fine, Cotswold stone house that his wife had let him have in their divorce. It was typical of Mel to marry a wealthy woman. And Janine, until a few weeks ago, had lived in that house with him. Once, she’d wondered if she might be Mrs Mallow number three. Now she wondered no more. Now she was back in the small semi in Botley that she shared with a librarian and an air hostess.

Mel, newly promoted Mel, owed her. And as she dealt with the press and wondered just how sober Frank Ross
actually was, she decided that now was a good time to collect on her debt. She was just contemplating ways to twist Mel around her little finger, when there was a sudden stir of interest. A discreet van with blackened windows had just pulled in. They must be ready to move the body.

Leaving Frank and the two uniformed officers to keep the media away, Janine walked to the gate and looked along the pathway. Already the body had been put into a body bag and was being carried along on a stretcher. Her boss walked behind.

When the small cortège reached the gate she could hear the frantic click of cameras snapping behind her and grimaced.

Hillary too, shook her head, and muttered helplessly, ‘The poor little sod wanted to be a paparazzi. I bet he never guessed he would be the one to get his face in all the papers.’

Frank Ross pulled into the forecourt of the garage and headed for the air pump. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d checked the tyres, and he might as well get something useful out of the assignment. He doubted he’d get sod all of much use here otherwise. But it was typical of the bitch from Thrupp to give him all the crappy jobs that nobody else wanted, and if he wanted to keep his job, he just had to keep on taking it.

If only he knew where Ronnie Greene had stashed his money before he’d died, he could grab it and swan off to the Seychelles, but he simply hadn’t got a clue. So he was stuck at Thames Valley until the first moment he could retire and get a cushy little night-watchman’s job somewhere. Give the brass the old two-fingered salute once and for all, and never have to take another order in his life.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ The voice was female, and Frank straightened up, puffing, from his crouch beside the left front tyre. The speaker wasn’t a bad-looking woman – a bit hefty around the middle – but with genuine fair hair and a nice smile.

‘Mrs Wilberforce is it?’ he asked, reaching for his ID and showing it to her. ‘DS Frank Ross. Your husband owns the garage here, I understand?’

Mandy Wilberforce’s smile faltered, and she turned to look over her shoulder. The petrol station boasted a small shop selling all the usual items, and a large, open-ended
garage, where she was looking now. Inside, Frank could see an ageing Peugeot up on ramps and a man peering up at its underbelly.

‘Gil!’ Mandy yelled. ‘Better get out here.’

Her husband came quickly, perhaps suspecting somebody of trying to sneak off without paying for petrol, or maybe some randy git coming on to his wife. He was a large, but not particularly well-put together man, with thinning grey hair and filthy hands. ‘Yeah?’ he asked, then frowned as Frank held up the ID once more. ‘What’s up? Nothing wrong with my garage,’ he said. A shade too quickly, for Frank’s liking.

‘No sir, I’m sure there isn’t,’ Frank lied. In his experience there was usually something up with any garage; dealing in spare parts from ripped-off vehicles; turning back the mileage clocks, you name it. And even if they weren’t doing anything downright criminal, the charges good mechanics dished out nowadays was daylight robbery anyway. ‘But there’s been an incident with one of your workers, and I need to ask a few questions,’ Frank explained.

‘George?’ Gil Wilberforce said, obviously taken aback. He had large, boiled-gooseberry eyes and a florid face that now looked comically surprised. Obviously, George Davies was not the sort of man who immediately sprang to mind when trouble was mentioned. A boring plodder then. Not the kind to take a pair of shears to his son. Maybe.

‘What makes you think I’m talking about Mr Davies?’ Frank asked quickly, and Gil Wilberforce grinned widely.

‘Only worker I got,’ he said. ‘What’s up? I can’t believe old George has done anything wrong. A good bloke, is George. Always on time, and knows his way around cars. Not afraid of a bit of hard work, neither.’

‘His wife’s all right isn’t she?’ Mandy piped up.

‘I can’t discuss it at the moment,’ Frank said flatly. ‘It’s his day off today, is it?’

Gil Wilberforce agreed that it was, and confirmed George Davies’s account of how they worked the employee’s roster.

‘So, do you know if he’s been having any trouble lately. Maybe someone hassling him for money? Took out a loan with the wrong people?’

‘Not George,’ Wilberforce flushed with obvious anger. ‘He’s not the sort to get mixed up in that.’

‘Not a gambler then?’

The garage owner snorted.

‘Notice anything odd lately? He’s been having threatening phone calls? Or maybe grousing about the old wife and kids. The daily grind getting him down? Maybe you’ve noticed he’s been short-tempered or something?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ Wilberforce denied, and went on to list all of his friend’s good points, but by that point, Frank was barely listening. It was just as he’d thought. A dead end. Certainly nobody here was going to come up with any interesting titbits on the Davies family. Still, he might get a free oil job out of it if he played his cards right.

‘So the first thing she says, Guv,’ Tommy glanced up from his notebook, ‘is “What’s Billy got up to now,” or words to that effect.’

Hillary nodded thoughtfully. Tommy had come back to her straight away after his chat with Millie, knowing she’d want to be kept updated. ‘It’s interesting she immediately assumed it was the boy who was the cause of us being here,’ she mused. ‘Of course, it could just be little-old-lady-versus-teenager syndrome,’ she sighed. They tended to mix about as well as oil and water more often than not. It might not be a good idea to place too much credence to Millie Verne’s opinions just yet. ‘We’ll have to see what the other friends and neighbours have to say. See if they confirm that Billy was a bit of a lad.’

‘Thing is, she didn’t really say much about him after that,’ Tommy said, frowning slightly. ‘I got the feeling she’d twigged it was something bad and clammed up.’

‘Well, leave it a few days, let the news get around and begin to sink in, then do a follow up. I’m off to Steeple Aston
to interview a few of Billy’s local friends. I got a list from his dad.’ They were talking out on the road, leaning casually against her car. ‘Get back to the shed and see how SOCO’s doing. You’ll be needing to set up the lights soon.’

‘Guv.’

‘Janine, you can drive.’ She tossed the keys to Puff the Tragic Wagon to her junior, and slipped into the passenger seat, pretending not to hear Janine sigh. She knew that the pretty blonde preferred to be seen in her racy new Mini and hid a smile as the DS struggled with a recalcitrant seatbelt. ‘There’s a knack to it. Let it go all the way in, then give it a hard tug, then pull gently.’

Janine grunted.

Frank Ross didn’t get his free oil job, and he was in a right snit as he drove off. He was supposed to check back at the crime scene, but sod that, it was gone clocking-off time and he never put in unpaid overtime – he left that to the young and the stupid. And the ambitious, like that brown-nose Tommy Lynch. As he drove back towards Kidlington, and his small, smelly flat over a shop, Frank wondered about the new boss.

Paul Danvers.

On the one hand, he knew Hillary Greene must be spitting tin tacks over his appointment, which was enough to cheer him right up. On the other hand, he knew Danvers had it in for him as well. Had done, ever since he and that other git from York had come down to investigate the corruption charges levelled at the newly-deceased Ronnie Greene.

Danvers was nobody’s fool, and knew he’d helped his mate Ronnie out on the odd smuggling run. But Frank had spent his end of the money on the horses and trips to the
red-light
district in Amsterdam. He’d left no paper trail, and nothing had been able to stick. For a while, they’d
investigated
Hillary too, which had made him chortle into his beer for months afterwards. The thought of Ronnie’s uptight, straight-as-a-die missus being put under the microscope
must have had his dead friend rolling with laughter in his grave.

Of course, they’d never proved anything against her. They’d have nailed Ronnie, though, if he hadn’t died in that car crash first. But they hadn’t found his money. That was the one thought that still tormented him. Ronnie had been canny with his finances, and had always planned to retire to the Caribbean when he hit fifty. By Frank’s reckoning, he must have stashed away at least a quarter of a million. Maybe even more.

Occasionally, Frank kept an eye on Ronnie’s son by his first marriage – a still green-behind-the-ears PC working out of Witney, but he couldn’t see how the nipper had found his old man’s stash. Unless he was playing a very clever waiting game. No, much as it galled him, Frank suspected that only Hillary had the nous to find the money. And she probably hadn’t even looked, silly cow.

He wondered how she and Danvers were going to get on now. He grinned and lit a fag, hoping that the sparks would fly. He needed some entertainment in his life.

Detective Superintendent Philip Mallow closed the file on shoplifting statistics for the last quarter and rose stiffly from his chair. He was staring fifty in the face, as his aching back and growing tiredness told him. Once he could have put in twelve-hour shifts standing on his head. Now he walked to the window of his new office, that had a pristine view of the car park, and caught sight of a grey squirrel scampering up the trunk of a flowering horse chestnut.

Suddenly (and the thought took him completely by surprise), he wished that Janine was waiting for him, back at the empty house, like she used to be. It was strange, but he’d never expected to miss her this much. He’d entered into the affair thinking of it as a strictly short-term, no-strings bit of fun. But now that he had the promotion safely in the bag, he found his thoughts kept straying back to her. She’d been young and glorious, and had got him out of his rut. Now he
could feel himself slipping back into the same old routine, and it scared him. Useless to hope she’d have him back, of course. He’d dumped her to improve his chances of getting a leg up the ladder, and no woman was ever going to forgive something like that. Not even one as determined to climb that same ladder herself.

Mel was no fool – he knew that at some point he’d be expected to give her a helping hand up to an inspectorship. Maybe then she’d be willing to have a night out, a meal maybe, for old time’s sake.

Mel shook his head and turned away from the window. He was pathetic. Like a dirty old man plotting to get his leg over. How long would his libido rule his head? Even now, when he should be thinking of next month’s speech on the fight against illegal immigration, which he was due to deliver at a conference in Harrogate, he was thinking instead of Janine’s long silken blonde hair on the pillow next to him.

He must need his head examining.

The Rollinsons lived in a small neat semi in a cul-de-sac not far from Steeple Aston church. Fifteen-year-old Graham Rollinson, according to George Davies, had been his son’s best friend at the local primary school, but it was quickly becoming apparent that those days were long over.

As they all sat in the immaculate living room, the slightly built and fair-haired Graham looked both embarrassed and enthralled in equal measure at being questioned by the police. His parents looked merely horrified. To learn that a child had been murdered right on your doorstep, and that that child was also known to your son, was something that would take the wind out of most parents’ sails.

‘Thing is,’ Graham was saying, not for the first time, ‘we got put in a different form when we went to Bicester. And we sort of lost touch. I mean we’d chat, like, on the bus sometimes. And in the long summer hols, like, we might go crayfishing, see if we could find any of those American monsters the telly programmes were on about. But not even
that, last summer. I haven’t really spent much time with him in years. He was all into photographs and stuff. I really can’t tell you anything about him now.’

Graham was obviously eager to help, but not much use.

‘Do you know why he might have been in the allotment shed this afternoon?’

‘Nah.’

‘Did he ever say anything to you about somebody bothering him?’

‘Nah.’

‘Maybe he had something secret, something he swore you not to tell.’

‘Nah – and like I said, he wouldn’t tell me anyway. Not now. We were best pals when we were little, but I got my own gang now. Billy wasn’t our type.’

Hillary’s ears pricked up. ‘What type was that?’

Graham Rollinson flushed and shot a look at his parents, then shrugged. ‘Nothing. I just mean he had his circle of friends, and I had mine. His best mate was Lester Miller. You should speak to him, really.’

And that was pretty much the same story they got from all of the kids listed on George Davies’s list. They’d been close to Billy Davies in primary school, but things had changed once they’d moved schools. And nobody knew what kind of trouble he could possibly have got himself into that would result in such a drastic outcome. Or if they did, they weren’t saying.

‘A washout,’ Janine said in disgust as they got back in the car. ‘He seems to be close only to this Miller kid, and gave all his old cronies the elbow.’

Hillary nodded. It was understandable though, in a way. She herself could remember the culture-shock she’d felt as an eleven year old. She too had gone to a small village primary school of barely thirty pupils, where everybody knew everybody else and friendships were tight, only to be thrust into a three-thousand pupil or more comprehensive school, which had been like living on a different planet.

‘We’ll have to hit his school tomorrow,’ Hillary agreed, then added curiously, ‘Janine, did you pick up on a kind of reluctance in the kids? To talk about Billy, I mean?’

Janine frowned slightly then nodded. ‘Yeah, I thought I did. But it was nothing I could put my finger on. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I got the feeling they were a bit scared of him. No, maybe not that strong. Wary, somehow.’

Hillary nodded, glad that it wasn’t just her. ‘It’s like they all knew something, but didn’t want to tell. Not in front of the parents, anyway. I’m beginning to get the distinct impression that our victim had some kind of a reputation. Maybe he was a bully?’

Janine thought about it. ‘He was big-built. And his family’s not exactly loaded, so he might have self-esteem issues. Prime bully material. Or drugs,’ she added darkly. There was always drugs to be considered.

Hillary sighed heavily. ‘Anyway, they all agree this Lester Miller kid is his best buddy. We’ll probably know a lot more once we’ve spoken to him.’

Janine nodded, checking her notebook. ‘The kid from Middleton Stoney. Right. George Davies didn’t seem too keen on him.’

‘I got the feeling that most of those boy’s parents tonight weren’t too keen on Billy either. None of them were exactly unhappy that their kids weren’t tight with him anymore.’