Smoke Alarm (28 page)

They scuttled out like crabs on the beach. Ungainly: feet, legs everywhere. Alex sat back in the chair, steepled his fingers and had a long ponder. He was going to need evidence or a confession, preferably both, to put in front of the CPS like a fresh and juicy bone. He smiled again. The image of a bone pleased him, something bloody to gnaw on.

WPC Delia Shaw arrived opportunely. ‘We have something for you, sir,' she said.

A
s the door had closed behind Detective Inspector Alex Randall Martha had drawn in a deep breath. She was unsettled. She needed to talk. She needed lunch with a friend and there was only one friend who fitted the bill. Miranda Mountford. She sent her a text, reflecting that these wonderful ways of communication had transformed friendship. Instantly accessible. A minute later her phone was responding. She read the message, smiled and felt better already.

Miranda had had a disastrous marriage to a guy named Steven who had practically turned psycho, threatening her, stalking her, playing tricks on her, appearing and disappearing until her friend had wondered about her sanity. At one time Martha had fretted for her friend's safety. Steven had been so very unpredictable. But all that was behind her now. A restriction order had been placed on him and it appeared to have worked. So far.

While Paul Talith followed up his own lead Delia Shaw was checking through the numbers on the Deverill sons' mobile phones. It was tedious work. There were eighteen which coincided with both of them, a cluster of calls, both to each other and to these numbers around the time that their mother had last been seen. There was four days' silence and then the number cropped up again. Comparing the two lists it looked as though Gordon and James had rung round the same people at the time when the police had been looking into their mother's house fire. Probably a frantic hunt round relatives and friends when they had realized that their mother was missing and not dead inside her house. She cross-checked them with the numbers the brothers had given the police of possible locations for their mother. Some were landlines, others mobiles. The numbers danced in front of her eyes, seeming to mock her. Who would have thought there could be so many different combinations of ten Arabic numerals? She yawned and stretched, deciding that concentrative computer work was more tiring than an hour or so at the gym. She peered again at the list of numbers. It was perfectly logical that the brothers would have been ringing the same numbers. And comparing the printouts there were a lot of duplicated calls. Looking more closely at the timing they must have been dialling the numbers practically simultaneously. Shaw gave a smirk. Typical male behaviour. Women would have sat down and divided the list, not gone scurrying around like rats in a cage, stepping on one another's toes. They had phoned each other frequently too, probably to check whether the other had found the missing mother.

Shaw had begun by concentrating on the beginning of March, the time when Monica had last been seen, rather than the time around the fire at Sundorne. Previous to that they had rung their mother, either on her landline, or on the mobile registered to her, about twice a week and the pattern of calls the brothers had made had been different. Gordon and James wouldn't have been ringing round relatives and friends then – there had been nothing to alert them to the situation until March the eleventh, the night of her fire. They had been in contact with each other before then but infrequently. Shaw sat and stared at her computer screen. Well? They were brothers. Nothing abnormal about that. Then she went back into late February. There was one number which particularly interested her. It had appeared first on Friday the twenty-fifth of February, the evening after the fire at Melverley Grange, and it cropped up fairly regularly after that, both incoming and outgoing and the calls had lasted for up to thirty minutes to both brothers. Shaw's pulse quickened. She had an instinct about this 077 number. She checked both statements back into early February and then January. This number initially appeared just once in the early evening on the night of February twenty-fifth on James's phone and cross-checking the statements he had immediately called his brother. For four days the number did not appear again on either James or Gordon's phone but from the Monday, the day they were assuming Monica Deverill had disappeared, there was activity on that number. It began to appear quite regularly on both Monica's sons' phones. Delia Shaw cupped her chin in her hands and thought.

Monica Deverill had claimed that she knew something significant about the fire at Melverley. She had been convinced enough to ring the police and had been due into the station the very next day. The fire at her house was patently no coincidence but cause and effect. The fire-raiser must have realized she knew something important that she was about to relay to the police. Monica had left her home. She had been running from the arsonist who had torched her fire, maybe knowing, maybe not knowing, whether she was inside. WPC Shaw thought further. Her car had probably been missing at the time the fire was started so the arsonist might have realized the bird had already flown.

Shaw tried to work it out by asking herself questions. What if the fire at Melverley had created panic in the ex-nurse? She had bought the phone and then – poof – Delia Shaw's hands went up involuntarily. Like a magician's assistant she had disappeared. She glanced across at Talith, who was also peering into his computer screen with the absorption of an online gambler. She returned her attention to her own screen. She was going to need a bit more than this to impress her sergeant, giving a little smirk to herself. Talith's shirt was getting tight around his middle. He'd popped a button and a bulge of hairy stomach protruded. She peered closer at her own screen, searching for some clue, some indication that all this was worth the little frisson of excitement she was experiencing. Then she sat back. The
timing
of the calls from the mystery number was interesting too, always either a little before nine a.m. on weekdays, when the brothers would have been out of the house, away from wives and families who might have been curious as to the call. Or around six p.m., again at a time when they would probably have been on their way home from work, out of the house, away from eavesdropping ears. And they had often phoned each other shortly afterwards.

She had three alternatives. One: she could ring the number and see if anyone answered. That was obviously the simplest. Two: she could speak to the mobile companies to see who this phone was registered to, although she suspected this would prove to be a pay-as-you-go phone on a false address. Three: she could ask the brothers who was on the end of this line.

She sat back; allowed herself a little dream. What if
she
was the one who broke through this case? For some silly reason she visualized herself standing on a podium, being cheered on by her colleagues, a laurel wreath on her head. A laurel wreath? She made a face. How classical. Classical and silly. It was a great thought but about as likely as winning the Euro Lottery. Still – she may as well try. She picked up the phone and dialled the phone company. Then pulled her hand back. Number one was the most instant and dramatic action. She reached out and dialled and wasn't surprised to be put straight through to an automated answer phone which repeated the number in a monotonic, robotic voice and invited her to leave a message.

WPC Shaw did just that, asking whoever was at the other end of the phone to contact her at the Monkmoor Police Station in Shrewsbury. She left her name and number twice and replaced the receiver thoughtfully, her mind analysing the time frame before she confided her suspicion to Paul Talith, who was still absorbed in his computer screen, frowning and muttering to himself as he cross-referenced data.

Delia Shaw concentrated on her job in hand. Randall was always emphasizing the point that you couldn't look too closely at dates and times. She smiled to herself. Truth was she had a bit of thing about DI Randall. He was one of the best detectives she had ever worked with, with his methodical way of analysing data. He might be considered by some a cold fish, a loner, someone who did not join in the frolics of the Force but he was a damned good officer, loyal to his team, good at bringing out their talents and correcting their shortcomings. He also had a talent for homing in on the weaknesses in their prosecutions way before they faced the humiliation of the CPS doing what they did best, their vulture act: picking flesh from bones and ultimately their cases apart. There were senior officers who enjoyed belittling their juniors, focusing on their shortcomings and mocking their inexperience. Randall was not one of these.

She glanced back at Talith. Should she confide in him her instinct? She thought for a minute then decided it would be much better to present him with a
fait accompli
. She dialled the number again. And received the same response. She looked harder into the phone detail and sat back, mentally sending a
Thank you, God,
prayer heavenwards. That clinched it. From the fifth of March neither James nor Gordon had rung their mother's mobile or her landline. In other words, Shaw tidied it up in her mind before confiding in her sergeant, six days before the fire James and Gordon had known their mother wouldn't be around to pick up the phone. And the call to James would have been made from her new mobile.

The Armoury was quiet that lunchtime. Miranda was already sitting down at a small table in the corner when Martha arrived. She smiled. She didn't know why or how it was but Miranda was one of those women who had never really changed her style since the sixties. And yet she always managed to look fashionable. Her hair was the same dark, shining bob that she had always worn. And she was dressed in classic black trousers with a white silk shirt. The only change Martha could spot was that today Miranda was wearing forties-style siren-red lipstick. Miranda gave her a sparkly grin. ‘Well,' she said as Martha reached the table and kissed her cheek. ‘You sounded desperate. Whatever is it?'

Martha sat down. ‘I don't feel so bad now,' she said. ‘Having a pal to chat to makes quite a difference.'

Miranda grinned even wider. ‘Was the problem that easy to solve?'

‘Yes, I was just being silly. Tell me about you first. How's Steven?'

‘Well – that's why I'm feeling so good,' Miranda said. ‘He's finally buggered off to South Africa. For the first time in years I feel safe.'

How different from her own story, Martha thought. Steve had been a violent, difficult, bullying, unpredictable man and Miranda had been initially intimidated and finally terrified by him. How different from Martin's gentle ways. Martin, whom she mourned for no longer.

‘And what about you?'

Martha's tale began to unravel, her desire to meet someone else, her difficulties over confused emotions, her failure to feel anything but friendship for the one man who should have felt eligible and finally her absorption in a work colleague she
knew
to be married. Her friend listened without interruption. Then she reached out and touched Martha's hand. ‘Poor you,' she said. ‘Poor you.'

Martha felt a combination of better and worse. ‘Hey,' she objected, ‘I don't want your pity.'

‘You're not getting it,' Miranda said stoutly. ‘You're getting empathy not sympathy. Don't confuse the two. You're not stupid. You know as well as I do these things just happen, encounters turn into relationships, relationships into love.'

Martha laughed, now feeling much, much better. ‘At our age?'

The pair of them giggled like teenagers and then Martha leaned in towards her friend. ‘The question is,' she said, ‘what about Internet dating?'

‘Ah, well,' Miranda said. ‘That's where I can advise you.'

I
n the end, in spite of Delia Shaw having made her own discoveries it was Talith who burst into
her
thoughts. ‘She's alive,' he said suddenly, and with conviction, tapping the computer screen with his index finger.

She turned in her seat. ‘How do you know?'

‘She withdrew five thousand pounds from her building society account on Saturday the twenty-sixth of February,' he said, not looking at her but staring intently into the computer screen. He continued, ‘After the Melverley fire she knew something would happen to her. Probably guessed that her house would be torched too.' Talith's face was thoughtful.

‘The five K could have been blackmail money.'

But Talith looked at her and grinned. ‘Oh, no. Cause and effect, Shaw. There's only one definite connection that we know of between the two households and that is the fire at Shelton.' He stood up. ‘I'm going to have a word with DI Randall.'

‘Before you do,' WPC Shaw put in quickly, ‘there's something
I'd
like to show
you
.' She ran her finger down the lists of mobile numbers, trying to make her thoughts as clear as possible to her colleague. When she'd finished speaking he nodded. ‘It fits in with my ideas,' he said. ‘Let's go.'

Randall listened carefully to his two officers, his thick eyebrows tangling in the middle of his forehead as he frowned in concentration, thought for a while, then spoke. ‘Good work,' he said to them both. ‘Good ideas but even better conjecture.' His eyes rested on them each in turn. ‘And that's what it is, the pair of you.' His words were robbed of any sting by his grin. ‘Make no mistake, this is just an idea without, so far, any corroborative evidence.' Then his face changed again, his eyes warming. ‘But it's the best idea anyone's come up with so far. And if it helps I think you're on the right track. So now we've come to that conclusion let's build on it. Sit down, the pair of you. Let's review what we know for sure. The unmistakable facts. She hasn't gone through passport control and her car hasn't been found.' His hazel eyes lightened. ‘Yet. So unless the combined forces of the country are being singularly obtuse and unobservant she's hidden the car somewhere. Right?'