Out of Bounds (17 page)

‘On the batter with my flatmates. It was Matt’s birthday.’ He managed a weak smile. ‘I wasn’t feeling brilliant to start with but this lot’s made me feel shan as hell.’

‘Tell me about it. I’ve just had what passes for the evils from the Macaroon. Kinda like being savaged by a seven-year-old that thinks it’s big to say “bum”. The downside is that he’s bringing in Jilted John to run a leak inquiry.’

Jason looked baffled. ‘Who’s Jilted John when he’s at home?’

‘You know. Jilted John, had a hit with that novelty record during the punk thing.’ Karen cleared her throat and sang tunelessly, ‘Gordon is a moron, Gordon is a moron.’

Jason seemed none the wiser. ‘I don’t even know if my mum was born when punk was happening, never mind me. So who’s Jilted John?’

‘Detective
Superintendent Gordon Robson,’ she sighed. ‘He hates me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because back in the mists of time I arrested my boss and he ended up going down for life. And he was Jilted John’s best mate.’

‘Ah,’ Jason said, enlightened at last. ‘You made a lot of enemies back then. I remember Phil telling me …’ His voice trailed off.

‘Aye, and I’ve got better at it with practice,’ Karen said, going for cheerful and almost hitting it. ‘So it might be good if we can figure out where the leak sprung from before Jilted John tries to pin the tail on one of us donkeys.’

Jason’s eyes widened. ‘Would he do that?’

‘In a heartbeat. He’s going to be looking at our phone records and our email trails. Hope you’ve not been trying to buy yourself a Russian mail-order bride.’

He gave a weak smile. ‘Not recently, boss.’

‘Have a look through your contacts and see if you can come up with anybody who works for one of these rags that owes you one. And in the meantime, I think we should—’

The phone rang, cutting across Karen’s words. She tutted and picked it up. ‘DCI Pirie, Historic Cases Unit.’

‘Colin Semple here, DCI Pirie. Bad news, I’m afraid.’

It felt like a punch to the gut. ‘The sheriff said no?’

‘Not yet. This is more personal bad news. Sheriff Abercrombie is demanding you appear before her without delay. She takes very seriously the “in camera” aspect of her court and she is more than a little unhappy at today’s media coverage. She’s considering a contempt of court finding against you.’

‘But I never—’

‘I said, “considering”.’

Outrage and grievance swelled in Karen’s heart. ‘Whoever
spilled to the media, it wasn’t me. So there can’t be any evidence to charge me with contempt.’

‘This is more about demonstrating the power of the court rather than sending you to jail to cool your heels for a day or two. Or so I believe. Sheriff Abercrombie just wants to flex her judicial muscle and show who’s boss. Don’t worry, DCI Pirie. You’re going to get your knuckles rapped, that’s all. The worst-case scenario is that she’ll demand you apologise to the court.’

‘That makes me feel so much better. So, what? I have to drop everything and come scurrying up to Chambers Street?’

‘As soon as you like,’ he said. ‘The longer it takes you to get there, the more affronted she’ll let herself feel. Chances are, she’ll keep you waiting, but you need to be here or she’ll make that an excuse to accuse you of contempt in itself.’

‘Are you in court today?’ Karen asked.

‘I’m calling from the Advocates’ Room. I’ve got an ex parte hearing on the list, but that shouldn’t take too long. I can always ask for a short adjournment if the sheriff calls you before the bench while I’m still doing that. I’ve got my devil with me, I’ll text you her number. Let her know when you get up here and she’ll fetch me. Now get on your bike, Chief Inspector.’

Karen glared at the phone as she replaced it. ‘Like I’ve got nothing better to do,’ she grumbled, hoicking her jacket off the chair.

‘What’s up, boss?’

‘Bollocking number two. Only I suspect the sheriff’ll be a more scary prospect than the Macaroon. See if I get sent to the jail? You’re in charge of the cake with the file.’

Semple had been right about one thing. The sheriff seemed intent on having Karen kick her heels for much of the day. She got herself signed into the Solicitors’ Room café by
Semple’s trainee, a demure twenty-something with the soft accent of the Western Isles who couldn’t have looked less like a devil if she’d tried. But a cup of coffee and a slab of shortbread did nothing to improve Karen’s temper. This was the kind of day that pushed her right back into the bite of her sweet tooth. She’d almost broken that habit in the wake of Phil’s death. Not deliberately, but because everything tasted of ash and cardboard in her mouth. She hated to admit it, because defiance was her default position, but she felt healthier for it and now she was beginning to find food palatable again, she didn’t want to fall back into bad ways. She’d have swapped being more healthy for having Phil back in a heartbeat, but since that was nothing more than a stupid fantasy, she might as well make the most of it. Karen stared longingly at a pyramid of Tunnock’s Teacakes, exhaled heavily and took out her laptop. She dealt with an hour’s worth of email and still there was no sign of the sheriff’s summons. Nothing else for it but the case that was causing them so much grief.

Jason had painstakingly scanned in the key statements in the Tina McDonald case. She could have reread them, but she felt as if she knew them by heart now. They’d farmed out some of the reinterviews to local officers who seemed to have done a decent job. But still the only oddity remained the underground ticket among the possessions of a woman who suffered from claustrophobia.

And so Karen found herself drawn again to the puzzling deaths of Gabriel Abbott and his mother. It was none of her business, but she couldn’t seem to shake it clear from her head. All the cases she worked involved people lacerated by grief. And sometimes they couldn’t take the pain and killed themselves. But not twenty-two years later. There was something about Gabriel Abbott’s life and death that had its hooks in her. As if focusing on him could put her own grief on the back burner, even for a short time. ‘If it was my case, where
would I start?’ she muttered. Take nothing for granted. That was the first rule of cold case work. Examine everything in the case for its factual basis. Is this conclusion evidence-based, or merely an assumption?

Gabriel first.

But here she was stymied. She didn’t have access to the case files or the interviews. All she knew was that the needle had swung from suicide to homicide then back again. Cops were only human – when a straightforward explanation presented itself and nothing contradicted it, that was generally the path they’d follow – and they were mostly right. She’d once worked with a fast-track graduate who loved to make the rest of the team feel like numpties. He was always on about Occam’s razor, which as far as she was concerned was a fancy way of saying what all cops knew to be true. Maybe William of Occam had been a polis, but Karen somehow doubted it.

The thing was that sometimes the simple explanation wasn’t the right one. It was a fix. A scam, a set-up, an illusion created by smoke and mirrors. She didn’t know enough about Gabriel Abbott’s death to decide where the truth lay. So she’d have to put that to one side for now. Maybe Giorsal would be able to join up some of the dots and colour in some of the background when they met for dinner later.

So, Caroline Abbott. And, of course, Ellie MacKinnon, Mary Spencer and her husband Richard. But it was Caroline who interested Karen, because murder didn’t run in families. Except when it did. And in those cases, there were often unexpected connecting threads.

There. She’d said it. Only in her head, but she’d said it. And already she was googling Caroline Abbott, getting to know her more closely than she’d bothered with before. She’d already absorbed the bare facts – the drama degree, learning the business of commercial theatre, then her own
production company surfing the wave of public taste with an impressive degree of success. But what about Caroline Abbott the woman?

Karen had read somewhere that 92 per cent of searchers never took the search past the first page. After that, she’d made a point of working her way down past the obvious to the more tangential results. And there, on the third page was buried an interview with Caroline Abbott, archived and made available by one of the classier women’s magazines.

23

STAGE BY STAGE

Meet
the woman who’s beating the West End boys at their own game

By Fenella Drake

The chances are you won’t know Caroline Abbott’s name, even if you’re a keen theatregoer. But you’ve probably thrilled to one of her shows. She’s the producer behind half a dozen West End hits that have gone on from rave reviews to tour around the British Isles.

Among the shows she’s brought to delighted audiences are
Call Me!, Thick and Thin, Amazing Strangers
and last year’s smash hit
Starstricken.
And if that wasn’t enough, she’s the single mum of two boisterous boys, Will and Gabriel.

We met in her office in a narrow Georgian building in Soho. It’s a welcoming room with squashy sofas as well as an imposing walnut desk and a fine view of Soho Square. Caroline, dressed in a silk Nicole Farhi ecru sweater and black jodhpurs, revealed that she loved the theatre from an early age. But she never wanted to be an actress. ‘My parents loved going out to the theatre and they always
took me to pantos and musicals. Right from the beginning, I was completely smitten. But I didn’t want to be up there, singing and dancing. I’ve never craved the limelight. What fascinated me as much as the performances was how they made it happen. As soon as I was old enough, I joined the local amateur dramatic society. By the time I was twelve, I was the Assistant Stage Manager in charge of props and by fourteen I was the Stage Manager proper. I knew I’d found my vocation.’

But Caroline’s parents understood how precarious a career in the theatre can be so they insisted she go to university. ‘The idea was that I’d have something to fall back on. I told them I was going to study English but at the last minute I changed to English and Drama.’ She laughed. ‘As you can imagine, that caused a few rows. But I knew exactly what I wanted and I was determined to make it happen.’

How did she get her first break in her chosen career? ‘Luck, serendipity, right place at the right time, call it what you will. I was waitressing in a greasy spoon a couple of streets away from here, right in the heart of theatreland. One of my regular customers was the front of house manager in one of the big Shaftesbury Avenue theatres and one day he came in looking really glum. I asked him what was the problem and he said his assistant had walked out on him without giving notice. I thought, “It’s now or never,” so I took a deep breath and said I was the person he needed. And bless him, he took a chance on me.’

But it’s still a long way from a lowly assistant to a top impresario’s chair. Caroline was determined to master her business and when her boss left for a job in Australia three years later, she persuaded the management to give her his job. ‘I was ready, and they could see that.’ Two years later and she’d persuaded another organisation to take a chance on her.

The Goddard Theatre in Epping was a struggling enterprise when Caroline took it over. But her vision for generating shows that people would love soon earned her a big local following, and glowing reviews
brought audiences from much further afield.

‘It was an exciting time,’ she admitted. ‘Not least because that’s when I met my husband Tom. It was a bit of a whirlwind romance. He was a marine engineer, so he was often away for long trips, but when he came back it was like falling in love all over again.’

But the downside of those absences was that when their first son Will was born, Caroline had the life of a single parent more often than not. ‘I learned rapidly that I needed a reliable support system in place, so I’ve always had a nanny. I used an agency that offers emergency backup for those unpredictable contingencies. And my best friend lives in the flat upstairs from me, so I’ve got a backup for the backup! It also meant that when Tom came home, we had time for each other as well as for being parents.’

Once she had established the reputation of the Goddard, Caroline decided to strike out on her own and set up a production company, Caroline Abbott Stupendous Theatre, or CAST as it’s known. CAST’s first show,
Call Me!
, took the West End by storm and won a clutch of awards.

‘It took me by surprise,’ she admitted with a wry laugh. ‘I knew it was a great piece of entertainment, but I wasn’t confident the rest of the world would agree.’
Call Me!
turned out to be a great calling card for CAST, and Caroline has never looked back.

Soon after that early success, Caroline’s second son Gabriel was born. ‘It was a pretty hectic time,’ she said. ‘There never seemed to be enough hours in the day.’ She had barely got her life back on an even keel when tragedy struck. Husband Tom went down with a virulent infection while on shore leave in Thailand. By the time the news reached Caroline, he was already dead.

‘It seemed unreal. Because he was away so much, nothing changed on the surface. Except that this time he was never coming home. It was a slow dawning, and it was hard to explain to the boys. Because there wasn’t any sudden severance, because things went along day-to-day as usual, it was hard for us all to grasp that Tom was gone for good.’

Of course,
Karen thought. The days before Skype or email or FaceTime. Caroline would have had to rely on letters and postcards, the occasional phone call when Tom had been in port. Not like the contact she’d been able to maintain with Phil on the rare occasions when they were apart for a while. Tom’s death would have felt like a strange, distant thing. How long must it have been before it sank in with Caroline that she was really on her own?

‘And then one day, about six months after his death, I woke up with this absolutely sickening sense of loss.’ Caroline looked like a lost little girl as she spoke, her professional mask slipping for a moment. ‘It was as if my heart had caught up with my head. But I knew I had to keep my chin up because of the boys. And we’ve made a life for ourselves without Tom. He’s the absence at the heart of every family event, but we’ve learned to celebrate what he gave us rather than mourn his loss.’