Dead Unlucky (17 page)

Lockingham’s Parish Church of St Anselm witnessed a pretty good turnout for Sebastian Emmer’s funeral. Mrs Hargreaves had come along, of course, accompanied by several of the teachers from her school. Between them, Hart and Redpath recognised them all and were careful to have a short chat with every one of them. Most police officers stood at the edge of dismal proceedings like these, as though they were skulking, like they had no right to intrude upon the grief, or perhaps they had an ulterior, sneaky purpose for their presence. Public wisdom was that they had only turned up to gather information, to spy on the friends, relatives and gawkers, look into their eyes, watch their behaviour and hope to spot something amiss.

Nearer the truth was that the coppers were out on a particularly unpleasant chore, were bored, and they hovered on the periphery out of disinterest or embarrassment. Hart had stood next to the murderers of the deceased at funerals many times before and not once had they given themselves away with a delighted guffaw as the coffin of their victim was lowered into the earth. There was nothing to learn at a funeral; every person he had ever seen who later turned out to be a killer could have earned an Oscar for their acting in the churchyard. Hart was there as a mourner, just like everybody else, and he didn’t have to try to hide his presence or apologise for it.

‘I hope you’ll sort out this business before the beginning of the new term,’ admonished Mrs Hargreaves, getting a swipe in before any pleasantries could be exchanged. He was a particularly disagreeable little serf and it was a pity and an injustice that she could not have him whipped to get him to work harder.

Altogether more affable was the clever mathematics teacher, Mrs Morris. ‘This is such a terrible affair, gentlemen, and it can’t be an easy task to solve this mystery, and it somehow seems to me that you have so little information to go on. Please do take care and have a pleasant Christmas if you can.’

Timothy Grove, Sebastian’s self-proclaimed best friend, was there, queuing near the graveside next to his father, waiting to offer his condolences to the Emmers and drop a fistful of earth onto the coffin. Hart shook the hand of them both, noticing the blotchy face and red eyes of the youngster.

‘Thanks for your help, Timothy. We’re doing our best to find out who was responsible.’

The boy looked at his shoes, trying to hide his watering eyes, and it was his father who spoke. ‘Are there likely to be any consequences for my son’s alleged little indiscretions, Mr Hart?’

‘Not unless he keeps going, turns into a real junky, and snorts or shoots his life away. But that’s for you to knock on the head, not me. For my part, I’m not looking to make his life any more miserable. He’s had enough of that for a while.’

After their first meeting, Timothy had come to realise he wasn’t as hard as he had thought. Not hard enough to feel nothing for his dead mate, and certainly not hard enough to do time for messing with drugs. His father realised that Hart could steer his son’s life into taking a tricky turn, and that wouldn’t do his own career as a barrister much good either.

The queue finally shuffled along so that Hart and Redpath stood face to face with the Emmers at the graveside. Clive Emmer stood straight in his black suit and tie with its wide knot at the neck. Mrs Emmer and Rebecca looked small in their black frocks, the lacy collars on their blouses somehow inappropriately pretty. They accepted the stock words of sympathy from the policemen. ‘It was good of you to come,’ replied the woman. Clive Emmer looked straight past them. For him they didn’t exist.

Hart sent Redpath back to work; the walk to the police station would only take him a few minutes. Then he returned to the inside of the church and killed some time by perusing the stained glass that told the story of the life of Christ, and the brass plaques which extolled the spent virtues of the long-dead whom Sebastian had joined under the ground. He waited patiently for the mourners to trickle away from the churchyard and leave him on his own, most of them heading off to the Emmers’ to sip wine and nibble finger food.

As he stepped back into the brisk air it started to rain heavily and so Hart lifted the collar of his dark grey raincoat around his neck. The sky was grey, the air was grey, everything above the ground was grey. Even the naked limes looked dead, their abandoned orange leaves no longer appearing fiery bright, now just a dun mush heaped against the fences, walls and muddy places. The only sound bouncing through the breezy graveyard was the unceasing morbid cawing from the rookeries in the forks of the trees, mocking the idyllic legend of melodious English birdsong.

Hart stepped among the tombstones, pausing now and then to survey the inscriptions that were even more melancholy than the weather. At last, his eyes rested on the slab he was looking for, a glossy new rectangle of black granite with an arched top, cheered a little by chiselled gold lettering and a fresh vase of white lilies resting at its base.

Why he wanted to stand there for a minute, gazing down alone in the soaking rain at the neat mound of earth, he had no idea. But Hart reckoned he was one of only two people alive who really knew what had happened to the girl lying at his feet and, for the first time in his life as a copper, he wondered whether he felt tears form in his eyes, or if it was just the cold that made them water.

In Loving Memory of our Dearest Daughter

Nicola Clare Brown

Born 25
th
December 1994

Departed this Life 9
th
September 2012

Winged to Heaven by the Angels,

Who could not wait for Her to dwell amongst Them

‘Harry, it’s nearly Christmas, Christmas mark you, and you’re sitting here asking me if we can get permission to exhume the body of a seventeen-year-old girl!’ The Chief Superintendent’s moustache was already bobbing back and forth, and they had hardly even started yet. ‘You must be mad. Stark raving mad.’

‘It’s not quite like that, Sir –’

‘And against my firm orders, my clear and definite instructions. You have gone behind my back and pursued this case after I told you to lay off it, to keep well away. I’m going to have your skin for this, Harry. You can forget about Nicola Brown from now on, and about Sebastian Emmer too for that matter, because I don’t want you near a murder investigation ever again. And you won’t be either, not if you’re working in Lockingham. Now clear off.’

Hart inched his chair a little closer to the Chief’s desk. ‘Just hear me out for a minute or two, things aren’t quite what they seem.’

‘You’ve got two minutes and not a second longer. And never mind your ridiculous request for an exhumation, just tell me why you should still be a police officer come tomorrow morning.’

‘I’ve had very little else in mind but your instructions since we spoke last week, Sir. And very cogent instructions they were, too.’

‘Cut the flannel, because if I think you’re being sarcastic you won’t last the two minutes.’

‘I visited Mr and Mrs Brown a few days ago because their daughter had been in Sebastian’s year at school. There was nothing more to it than that, I’ve spoken to loads of parents over the past week. I just wondered if Nicola had said anything before she died that could help us out in the murder investigation.’

‘And you also just got around to mentioning that it might be a good idea to take another look at her body?’

‘Nothing could be further from the truth, Sir. To my immense surprise they made the request themselves, before I had even started talking about Sebastian. I was hardly over their doorstep before they began haranguing me about an exhumation.’ Hart shook his head and puffed out his cheeks to demonstrate just what an ordeal the encounter had been. Rodgers raised his bushy white eyebrows as he carried on. ‘They said they had wondered themselves whether there was a connection between the two deaths. They felt it was all a bit too much of a coincidence otherwise, and that they never really believed Nicola would have taken her own life.’

‘But you were resolute in your refutation of that nonsense and tried to steer them away from it.’ Now it was the Chief Superintendent’s turn to mock.

‘That’s absolutely right, Sir. And with your cogent orders at the forefront of my thoughts, I might add. But, unfortunately, they were adamant. They’re surprisingly strong characters, startlingly persuasive people, and they could see right through me. They weren’t having any of it.’

‘And?’

‘And that’s how the topic of Nicola’s exhumation came up, and that’s why I’m bringing it to your attention.’ Hart paused while his eyes caught his boss’s. ‘So I didn’t try and sneak around behind your back after all.’

The Chief didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t have the ammunition to call Hart a liar.

‘Sir, if we accept that there was a misunderstanding about me disobeying your orders, I think that brings us back to the matter of the exhumation.’

‘You’re pushing your luck, Harry.’

‘Nicola Brown was murdered.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’ The Chief shook his head dismissively. ‘How can you possibly be certain of what you are saying?’

Hart again looked straight into the eyes of his boss. ‘I’m a hundred percent sure on this one.’ That estimate was pretty close to the truth this time, although not spot on. But Harry was adopting the principle he used to employ in his younger days when tackling a prop forward on the rampage – if you went in half-heartedly, you’d come a cropper. Give it everything, and you had a chance.

‘Just because two kids from the same school die within a few months of each other, as though that’s never happened before? Is that it? Is that all you’ve got? Never mind the evidence, never mind the post-mortem, never mind the lack of a motive for killing that girl. The press can make that kind of speculation to sell their tawdry papers, but it’s not a luxury the police can afford.’

‘Loads of people are asking the question of whether these two deaths are connected, not just the press. But they don’t have to come up with an answer to it. I do. And I can’t do that without an exhumation.’

‘So what do we tell the coroner? What have you got for her that she hasn’t heard already?’

‘The love of your life is gardening, right Sir?’ And then, correcting a potentially disastrous diplomatic error, ‘Apart from Mrs Rodgers, of course.’

‘Harry, I want to get home early today.’

‘If you’d decided to hang yourself, you wouldn’t stand on a copy of
Raising Remarkable Rhubarb
or
Begetting Beguiling Begonias
, or whatever make up the classic tomes of the horticultural library. They would be too dear to your heart, you wouldn’t defile the things you loved in your miserable life. It would be like me tipping myself off a 1934 copy of
Wisden
. Gives me the shivers to think about it.’

‘Get on with it, man.’

‘So there’s no way Nicola Brown drops herself off her school books. Not a chance.’

‘You’re always trying to see inside people, pretending you’re some sort of clone of Sigmund Freud, instead of looking at the facts. Just look at the facts, Harry, the facts.’

‘That’s because it’s people who commit murder, Sir. It’s not facts, or even ropes or guns or knives. They are just used by people to create those facts. If the Met had looked at what made Nicola tick, they would have got the right answer, too. But they just considered the facts, and so they came up with the obvious conclusion instead of the correct one.’ And then, to be fair to the boys and girls down south, ‘Of course, they didn’t have the luxury of a subsequent murder to ring a few alarm bells like I did.’

‘And you believe you’ve got the right answer, when they couldn’t manage it?’

‘Yep.’

Rodgers ignored Hart’s laconic arrogance. ‘So that’s it? We stake our reputation for sanity, never mind decent police work, on your bizarre belief that suicidal people won’t desecrate their books?’

‘Then there’s the suicide note. It ends,
Love Nikki
. But in every other sample of writing to her parents, she signed herself as
Nicola
. Absolutely always.’

‘I’ll grant you that’s a bit better. But not much. Not much, because she wrote that note herself, there’s no question about that. It was found in her computer network folder at school and it was written there. The computer boys wouldn’t make a mistake like that.’

‘Nope, you’re right, they wouldn’t. See this?’ Hart reached inside his jacket to extract a plastic object which Rodgers at first thought was a small cheap cigarette lighter. ‘It’s a memory stick. I can load a computer programme into there and have it copied to your machine in a few seconds.’

‘So what?’

‘And I could come back in a day or two, insert the stick into your computer again, and yank out the password you use to access your work account, your credit card number if you’ve entered it, and any other handy bits and pieces I might fancy finding out.’

The Chief’s frown betrayed his disbelief that such miracles were possible.

‘A keystroke-logging programme records the strokes you’ve made on the computer keyboard. It’s a cinch to use. A schoolboy could do it. Perhaps a schoolboy did.’

‘So the note was written inside the girl’s network folder, but somebody else could have written it because they had copied her school password? Is that what you’re saying, Harry?’

‘No, I’m not saying somebody else could have written it. I’m saying somebody else did write it. That girl was a happy soul, she was bright and had everything to look forward to. If it’s necessary, the coroner will have her ear bent by a trail of people who knew her, queuing up to say just that.’

‘So why didn’t they say it before, when the Met were doing their investigations?’

‘They probably did. But those facts you were talking about spoke louder than the people.’

‘It’s not enough, Harry. Nowhere near enough. I am not going to the coroner asking her to grant an exhumation order based just on what you’ve told me. The press will be in a frenzy and they’ll tear us apart if it turns up nothing. And, anyway, I’ve already told them I shan’t question the Met’s findings.’ And then Rodgers pondered the derisive fury of Commander Sturgess of the Met, the wrath of his own Chief Constable, the wreckage of his reputation, and he sweated and breathed out noisily through his puffed cheeks. That wasn’t merely a nightmare. That was a lifetime of being relentlessly pursued by the most terrifying demons whenever his eyes were closed, or even during the waking hours that would fail to afford him a hiding place. ‘Not a chance. I’ve nothing more to say. I think you had better go, Harry.’

The Chief had given the answer that Hart had expected. But Harry hadn’t finished. He laid his forearms on the desk before him.

‘Sir, you’ve got no choice in what happens next, and neither have I. The Browns will go to the coroner to request an exhumation of their daughter if we don’t. That’s a done deal, they made that plain the moment I stepped through their front door. The coroner will ask for my opinion, and I’ll have to tell her what I’ve told you.’

‘Suppose she asked you straight, Harry? Suppose she asked you whether this girl should be exhumed? What would you say to her?’

‘I’ll answer
yes
. I’ll say that not to do so would constitute negligence by all who have a responsibility to the family and a duty to discover for certain what happened to Nicola Brown. And I’ll also say that such a blunder may have a negative bearing on the investigation into the murder of Sebastian Emmer, because the two deaths may be connected.’

Chief Superintendent Rodgers now looked wistful rather than angry; he wore the expression of a father reluctantly acknowledging his artless son’s wish to be an actor or social worker, instead of getting himself a proper job that would make him plenty of money.

‘You’ll throw away your career and your reputation if you’re wrong. It will finish you, and you’ll be crucified in full view of the whole country. This affair has turned into the nation’s big piece of Christmas news for heaven’s sake, Harry. Before asking the annual question last night about whether the Star of Bethlehem was a comet or a strange alignment of planets, they focused a camera on a reporter standing twenty yards outside your window.’ The Chief delivered what he thought was his final answer. ‘I won’t have anything to do with this. And neither will anybody else from this station.’

‘And when the Browns go to the coroner themselves? What if they get a result without our help and it turns out Nicola was murdered? We’ll look as compassionate as a crowd at a bullfight and as sharp as a punch-drunk boxer on the booze. That would be bad publicity all right, and the Lockingham force wouldn’t recover until after the inevitable clear-out when all of the senior officers had been transferred to administrative duties on the Moon.’

The Chief knew this was true, but all it did was make him frustrated because he didn’t have an answer, not one that didn’t put him in even worse peril anyway, and his frustration showed. ‘I don’t care about any of that. Let the Browns do what the hell they like.’

‘Perhaps there’s a middle way,’ suggested Hart. ‘I reckon this can be done without the force going out on a limb.’ He explained patiently. ‘Look, I’ll get the Browns to make the exhumation request themselves, so that it doesn’t actually come from us. But we can help them fill in the forms, get the fancy language right, present their case in the best possible manner. I can give them a hand with all that. This way, the force appears all caring and cuddly by helping them out, without necessarily supporting their application. They can sign all the bits of paper, and I’ll say what I feel needs to be said at the hearing, which will obviously be my personal opinion only.
You
don’t need to be involved at all.’

‘So if we do all that, why not run the whole show? That’s what people will ask. Why not do our job properly if we’re so sure? Why be so weak as to get our dirty work done for us by Mr and Mrs Brown? I don’t suppose you’ve thought of that, Harry.’ Rodgers was becoming agitated again. But Hart remained calm.

‘Other people don’t know the Browns like we do, Sir. They’re strong, determined folks and it’s their own daughter this affair is all about. They would insist this is done in their name because they owe it to her to make sure the truth comes out. And we’d be callous to disregard their wishes.’

As Rodgers considered the scheme it became more to his liking and he gradually sat up a little straighter, like a heavy sack was being lifted from his shoulders.

Hart finished painting the picture for him. ‘If it turns out that Nicola was murdered, everybody involved in making the request looks good: the Browns, the force, all of us.’

‘Except the Met, of course,’ noted the Chief, momentarily looking pleased with that realisation.

‘I’d not thought of that, Sir,’ Hart lied again. ‘But if it goes pear-shaped, then the Browns will be regarded as amateurs who acted as they did due to the understandable stress of anguished emotion. That’s no problem for them because they’ll get lashings of sympathy, not blame. And me? Well, you’ve already looked into the crystal ball and seen my future. But you and the rest of the force are in the clear whatever happens.’