A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy) (23 page)

“Conversely, how would you feel if I chose you?”

“Delighted,” he said immediately, and then followed it after a moment’s consideration with, “But I’d need some help with office management from other Supervisors. Lanky ran the office without letting anyone else help, so I’d need guidance.”

“How do you think Chris would react?”

He’d blow a gasket, thought Roger. “Ah, the big question,” he said. “I don’t think he’d be too impressed. He thinks it’s his already— sorry, that’s just the impression I get. But I would hope he’d come around to the idea. I’m not an ogre, after all.”

“Are you listening carefully, Roger?”

“Yes, Mr Bell.”

“Roger,” he said. “Call me Denis.”

Roger closed the back door and let the wind and the rain and the outside world dissolve. He had a grin across his face that made his cheeks ache, and he savoured the moment. He placed his old jacket in the utility room and customarily waved two fingers at Weston’s photograph.

Yvonne stared at him with a mixture of surprise and curiosity in her eyes.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I see you beat Lenny at squash again.”

He didn’t correct her, merely widened his grin. “Is your knee okay now?”

“Roger, what’s happened?”

Roger kicked his damp shoes off and swaggered through into the lounge where Yvonne sat before her needlework, lengths of cotton draped across her lap.

“We’re going out for dinner tonight,” he said.

She put down her needle, turned in the chair and paid him more attention. “Are you going to tell me—”

“Did you remember to take your tablets?”

“For God’s sake!”

Roger sat in the chair opposite her and rubbed his nails on his waistcoat, a look of exaggerated pride smeared across his face.

Yvonne’s mouth fell open. “You got it, didn’t you?”

He nodded and began to laugh.

Yvonne screamed with delight, and then put her hands over her mouth while she briefly pondered the news. News duly pondered, she shrieked again and waved her arms in the air. “Come here,” she called, “come here, you… you… Oh, just come here!”

Never had a meal tasted so good, but never had Roger wanted so much to be home. And when they came home, they shared a glass or two of champagne. “Are you proud of me now, Yvonne?”

She put her glass down and hugged him tightly. “Did you ever doubt it? But I hope you didn’t do this for me, Roger; hope you did it for yourself.”

He nodded. “I did it for both of us.”

“What about Chris?” Yvonne asked.

“Nope, I didn’t do it for Chris.”

She prodded his chest, “You know what I mean. He’s going to be distraught.”

“Denis is going to sort it. I think he’s having a meeting with him sometime tomorrow evening after Chris has finished with this murder he’s working on.”

“Oh, the Bridgestock girl? How’s it going, anyone in the traps yet?”

Roger shrugged. “Not a clue; no one’s spoken a word of it, which means
they
haven’t a clue either.”

“Hey,” she said, “we’ll have to get you a new waistcoat now you’re a manager.”

“I like my old one just fine. Don’t want to change a thing. Though the idea of a pocket watch sounds good.”

“You old man.” She snuggled into the space between his neck and his shoulder. “Bet you can’t wait to tell your family, can you?”

He thought about it, and then said, “They don’t need to know.”

“I love you,” she whispered, playing with his mop of hair.

Despite his tiptoeing down the stairs and the obvious care he took in closing the noisy back door, she still heard him go when the car pulled off the drive. Yvonne pulled back the bedclothes.

Her head ached from last night’s celebrating. She smiled as she remembered his proud swagger. Yes, last night was good, and she thought of it as the first step she had to take in trusting him again. It would be a long time, she supposed, before things ever got back to how they used to be, before she could feel him crawl into the bed beside her after a late shift and not wonder if he’d crawled into someone else’s bed earlier.

Once downstairs, Yvonne put the radio on and then put her makeup on. And after her daily exercises, she busied herself with the laundry, listening to the news. That’s when she found the key in Roger’s old jacket. He’d left it hanging over the director’s chair in the utility room ready for the wash. A routine pocket search located a couple of crumpled Mars bars and a hole in the lining. And when she poked her fingers through, they came back out holding a single key.

The key meant nothing to her, but the fob was amusing. It was a little rubber man with a proud grin on his face and a massive erection held in his right hand. She threw the jacket into the machine and giggled at the little man in his erotic pose. Why would Roger have someone else’s key in his pocket; someone else’s
house
key? Then she stopped giggling and her face straightened; she remembered the news and the appeal they had made yesterday. The appeal for an unusual house key.

Chris sat in Shelby’s hot office, fingers drumming on his knee, his mind at work praying that Captain Gemini won the 2.30 at Doncaster. This really was his last chance of staying pain free. Outside in the general CID office and across the hall in the Incident Room there was excited activity.

He knew the investigation was beginning to wind down and that’s when things got like this: more people inside fretting about paperwork than outside making further enquiries and pulling the drawstrings of the investigation neatly together.

This morning, he had come straight to the Incident Room to update Shelby with yesterday’s findings at the mortuary. Within minutes, the news had spread and the investigators’ fervour boiled.

The door closed and Chris jumped. The noise from outside snapped away and Shelby stood in its place with an armful of folders. His complexion was a lot paler than recently, healthier, though his demeanour was sombre. He walked past Chris and dropped the folders on his considerably neater desk. “I’m processing Section 18 warrant paperwork, making sure it’s all in order. We don’t want to piss the magistrate off, eh?”

Deflated, Chris looked away. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they asked him to leave the remainder of the investigation to them, and tell him not to discuss what he knew with anyone.

“Have you anything else to add, then?” Shelby asked.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, anything—”

“‘That may assist with your enquiries’?”

“Something like that.”

“You know the phone number might not even be his?”

“You done the maths?”

“What maths?”

“The probability that a man named Rog has the same four digits in his phone number that Nicky Bridgestock had written on her hand?”

“And you have?”

“No. But you’re the statistician, you work it out.”

Chris answered, blank-faced. “I can’t believe it.”

“
You
can’t believe it? Think how I feel, I’ve never been so wrong about a person before. The whole station is on the back foot because of this. Fuck, I hate this job sometimes.”

“The whole station doesn’t know about it yet.”

“Stop being pedantic, Chris, you know what I mean.” Shelby slumped in his seat, rocked back in it and rubbed his eyes. “Wait till the fucking press get a hold of it. You’ve not seen shock till they get hold of it. You won’t be able to walk into your local store without hearing someone slating the police. And Chamberlain is spitting blood—”

“Are you going to need a personal statement from me, you know, about his recent behaviour, his recent… misdemeanours?”

Shelby raised his eyebrows. “It’s for CPS to decide, but I expect so, yeah. Anyway,” he said, “what misdemeanours?”

“You can read it in the statement. It’s not something I want to gossip about.” He shook his head, looked past Shelby, and out of the window that framed a turbulent sky. “I just never suspected a thing.”

“Look, I know it’s not easy for you; you’ve worked with him for years, and so have I, come to think of it.” Shelby pushed aside the files and the papers spilling from them, and leaned forward again, elbows resting on his desk. “It reminds me of the eighties when bad coppers were being pulled out by the scruff of their necks. Discipline & Complaints had never been so fucking busy with obs and court appearances, and they’d never been so hated by their own colleagues, because some of them were taking backhanders or turning a blind eye. Most of ‘em had done nothing wrong. Nothing.”

“Come on, Graham. You’re saying your friends were innocent of taking backhanders, mine’s guilty of murder! No comparison.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Bad analogy. But I also had friends I’d worked with for years exposed as rotten – and I never suspected a thing! Somehow, it turns your perception of the world upside down. It sends the black-and-white way that we see good versus bad into something grey and hazy where no one’s really sure anymore. It’s shitty when the good guys – aren’t.”

“Shit,” was all Chris said as he stood up, ready to leave.

“Well, you know what I’m going to ask now, don’t you?”

“I think I probably do, yes.”

Shelby rose and stretched out a hand, his big round chin shaping his mouth into a pleasant smile. “Well, thanks for everything you’ve done, Chris. I can see why they call you the Professor; you’ve been a fantastic source of knowledge.”

Chris tried to distance himself from the dregs of the enquiry. He found himself perched on a plastic chair in the canteen. It was getting busy. Growing cold in front of him was a shepherd’s pie and chips. He ignored it and sipped from a cup with the West Yorkshire police crest on its side.

Behind the counter, Kay, one of the kitchen staff, prepared food for the prisoners in the bridewell on the ground floor. She stacked the plates up in a pile of four using metal plate dividers, before backing out of the kitchens and heading for the lift.

Around him sat uniformed officers, CID and support staff, chewing the cud and chewing the fat with each other. Their mellow banter and occasional raucous laughter went unheard by him.

Over in the corner, the TV showed a sombre news reporter. His lips moved silently before the picture cut to an equally sombre Chamberlain, mouthing some silent plea before the camera panned down to a key ring, phallus and all, the same plea they ran on yesterday’s news. A few of the officers in the canteen jeered at Chamberlain and laughed at the fob. As the Incident Room hotline flashed onto the screen, Chris wondered how the West Yorkshire police attained its straight-laced image with arseholes like this working for it.

“Still not found the key then?” Micky pulled up a seat and encroached upon Chris’s space and thoughts.

“Don’t know. And even if I did, which I don’t, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve been sworn to secrecy by Shelby.” He watched the news, hoping Micky would get the hint and leave, or at least eat his meal in silence.

“Oh yeah?” Micky scooped up a shovelful of potato, “Must have someone in mind then?” He asked the question bluntly, not even hinting. It was Micky’s way.

“Watch this space.”

“So you
do
know what’s going down then?”

He tutted. “I know nothing.”

“Well,” Micky looked around to make sure all those in earshot were engaged in their own conversations, “I’ve heard that it’s someone close to home. Very close to home.”

“Who?”

“Dunno. I was kind of hoping you could fill me in with that one.”

“Can’t. Sorry.” He sipped more coffee, saw the queue forming at the counter. At its head was a tuft of hair he recognised. Stick around, Micky, you’re about to be filled in. Chris watched Roger pay for his meal, gather a knife and fork and then walk into the centre of the melee looking for a friendly face with whom to sit. He approached Chris.

Chris’s stomach heaved. He thumbed the crest faster.

Roger seemed unaware of the net closing in all around him, the ‘drawstrings’, Chris thought.

He pulled up a seat and sat opposite. “Look, Chris, about the Quasar job, I—”

Chris waved a hand. “Forget it. It was a stupid request in the first bloody place.”

“You sure?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“So how’s the investigation coming along then? Any news?”

“He’s keeping stumm,” chirped Micky. “I think he knows, but he’s not saying.”

“I’m not
allowed
to say.”

“Must be someone close or important then.” Roger began to eat, but his eyes never left Chris.

Chris’s head dropped.

“Micky, have you, er, have you spoken to Helen recently?” Roger asked.

Micky ignored him.

“Thought not. I think you should; she feels abandoned—”

“I didn’t abandon her, she abandoned me!” Micky paused, and then his angry eyes softened. “It’s not my fault she’s a fucking psycho.” He put down his fork, and sighed. “Maybe I’ll talk to her, see if we can get back on track.”

Roger nodded, smiled reassuringly. “She’d like that,” he said. “She misses you.”

“She said that?”

“Oh yes. She’s so depressed these days. She mopes around in the office so much that we’ve rechristened her the Olympic torch.”

“Why?” Micky asked.

“Because she never goes out,” Roger laughed.

Micky stared at Roger with a blank face.

Chris didn’t find it amusing; in fact he thought Roger, despite being close to Micky, was being intrusive. He couldn’t wait to get away from both of them.

Only a few minutes passed before Roger’s plate was empty and he slurped orange juice from a polystyrene cup. “Are you okay, Chris?”

“Tired.”

“Not hungry?” Micky asked.

A group of three strangers entered the canteen, looking around their unfamiliar surroundings. They were CID officers from another division who Chris recognised from the briefing. They spoke to diners at the first table they came to. The diners searched and then pointed in his direction. This is it, thought Chris.