Still Waters (4 page)

‘So would I. Lead me to it.’ They exchanged a smile at first comradely and then far from it. ‘But not till tomorrow morning, perhaps.’

Despite Fran’s example during his youth, Simon Gates let his meeting meander on interminably. Fran had to sit on her hands to stop herself doodling like a bored student. At long last, it dwindled to a close, reaching a few vapid conclusions, to be fed, no doubt, to the ever-open maw of the Home Office.

Their duty done, the officers were mostly too well disciplined to dash out of the seminar room like kids released into the playground after a very late break bell. Little groups coalesced and spread apart. Embarrassed that her boredom – that everyone’s boredom – must have been patently obvious to him, Fran found herself in conversation with Simon himself.

‘So once we went through hoops; now we’re to go over them, or under them, or any damned way except through them,’ he said, as if by way of an excuse.

‘It goes with the territory,’ she said, non-committal but disappointed in him.

He set them in motion, gesturing her through the door before him. ‘How’s your new territory going? The Rectory?’

‘Don’t ask! As we said on Friday, we wanted one firm to
undertake everything if possible, so that they could adopt what I suppose you might call a holistic approach. Two – now three – have chuntered about how much they want the work, how much they need the work. And then they decide there’s too much work. We need a miracle.’

To her amazement, Gates flushed. What on earth had she said? He asked with a diffidence she did not associate with him, ‘How would you feel – I know this is a long shot, and they may not want such a big project either – how would you feel about a team of women doing it?’

‘All women? For all I care, they could be a chained work-party of life prisoners from the Deep South of America so long as they did the work. Maybe without the manacles and the uniforms.’

He didn’t laugh. ‘They try to be all female. But if necessary they do deign to take on the odd man. They’re very unusual, very much an acquired taste.’ In a rush, he added, ‘I could ask the boss to contact you if you like. They’ve done some really big projects. I’m sure she’d show you photographs and even give references.’

Why didn’t he simply give her the firm’s name? But never one to look a possible gift horse in the mouth, Fran nodded. ‘I’d be very grateful. Thanks.’

‘It’s I who should be grateful. It was a very pleasant evening last Friday. Thank you very much.’ And he scuttled off like a child given a fiver to spend in a sweet shop.

So all she had to do now was await a possible phone call from an anonymous woman who might or might not want to rescue the Rectory.

Meanwhile, however, there was work to be done on the appeal case coming up, even if she could only scratch the
surface before meeting Mark for lunch. She retired to her office and started reading the good old-fashioned paper file, ready to make notes as she went. Before she could do more than pick up her pencil, however, the phone rang.

She pounced, first ring.

‘Heavens, you’re keen, guv! Pete Webb here.’

‘You’ve got some news for me!’

‘But it’s not good news, I’m afraid, and it’s nothing to do with the Alec Minton case. It’s poor old Jim Champion…It seems he dislocated his knee over the weekend.’

‘Heavens! It must have been a wilder party than we could have guessed at!’

‘No. Some cricket match the following day. Anyway, he’s on crutches. According to one of his mates, who was having a snifter with my guv’nor, he’s feeling very sorry for himself.’

Thank God for old boy networks. ‘I’m not surprised.’ She scribbled a note to herself to send a card. ‘Any news on the Minton front?’

‘Nothing worth a phone call, if it hadn’t been for the news about Jim. We’ve found the service launderette that did his sheets and towels. They’ve got half a dozen shirts, too. They’re back in his flat now – there wouldn’t be any evidence for the lab boys after what they’ve been through.’

‘Did the launderette staff say anything about his demeanour?’

‘Hang on.’ She could hear him leafing through paper. ‘They said he was always polite. Even when he dropped the last lot of stuff in.’

‘Is that all?’ She thought she might have got rather more out of them. ‘Did he say when he wanted the laundry back?’

‘Than manageress said she just assumed he wanted his
usual deal, a twenty-four-hour service. He didn’t say anything different.’

‘Well,’ she observed, resorting to the black humour he had used in the flat, ‘he might have said, “Don’t hurry with these. I’m going to top myself; I shan’t be needing them again.”’

‘It would have made our job easier,’ he agreed.

‘Indeed. Now, Pete, you were going to ask someone to photocopy the salient paperwork in the case, and I forgot to collect it.’ It was hardly surprising. He’d more or less tipped her out of his car at Folkestone nick and hurtled off with a burn of rubber into some more exciting situation. ‘You couldn’t fax it over, could you?’

She could hear his sigh. ‘Tell me, guv, why is Top Brass taking such an interest in this? I meant to ask yesterday, but you were so obviously caught up in the thrill of the chase I didn’t want to interrupt you.’

‘Because of Jim Champion,’ she said simply. ‘If an old-timer like him smells a rat, believe me, a rat there will be!’

‘It still looks like suicide to me,’ Webb said, his voice sounding little-boy stubborn.

‘Oh, I’m certain it is. But why, that’s the question, why? And why in that hotel, not his flat?’

‘Because he didn’t want to be traced back to his flat, of course,’ Jim Champion said a couple of hours later, easing back into the sort of squashy, all-enveloping chair it would be hard to get out of with both legs operative, let alone only one.

If she had been asked to justify taking half the afternoon off to talk to an old-stager, Fran would have said he was germane to an inquiry. However, all she’d had to do was tell an interested Mark where she was heading, with a note to her
secretary not to expect her till the following morning.

‘I never told you,’ Jim was saying, ‘but apparently he gave a false address when he signed into the hotel. He paid cash upfront, including a breakfast. He said he’d lost his credit card or some such. He gave a false name, nothing like Alec Minton, and an address in Surrey, which convinced them – wouldn’t have taken me in for a second, though. It was only because one of the paramedics recognised him from the shop he used to buy his papers that they got a proper ID.’

‘I’m slipping, Jim,’ she said, sipping Maureen’s over-strong builder’s tea, the sort she’d loved until Mark had got her palate hooked on the weak green variety. Maureen had swiftly identified the visit as an opportunity for talking shop, and had made herself scarce. ‘I should have asked Pete Webb all this.’ She didn’t mention the still missing paperwork.

‘And he’s slipping, or he’d have told you.’

‘He’s got other things on his mind far more urgent than indulging my whims.’

‘Other things including young whatshername, the one with—’ He gestured large breasts. ‘And I’ll bet he’s told you it’s all above board, too, eh? The young. Think they’ve invented everything, don’t they?’

The young
. As if they were a different race. She’d never heard him speak like that before. Had it taken less than a week’s retirement to change his perspective so profoundly?

‘They certainly didn’t invent sports injuries. Pete says you were playing cricket.’ She just stopped herself adding,
at your age
. ‘How did you hurt yourself so badly? And how long will you be on crutches?’

‘It was at this church match…’ He embarked on an explanation that she, as a non-cricketer, would have been
happy to skip. And the answer to the second question involved equal quantities of medical jargon. But it seemed to equal a piece of string. It all depended on how fast he healed, if at all, but there might or might not be surgery, which might or might not be keyhole. It might have been one of Simon Gates’ meetings. The gist was that he would be immobile for some time, and as he wasn’t an officer who’d always craved time to work on a sedentary project he was not a happy man.

In the end Fran was grateful for the ring of her mobile. Excusing herself, and promising a return visit soon, she let herself out and took the call.

‘Is that Detective Chief Superintendent Fran Harman? Paula Farmer here,’ came a resonant voice, the sort that could be heard from one end of a football pitch to another.

‘I’m sorry?’ Fran prompted.

‘Simon Gates asked me to contact you,’ she added encouragingly. ‘Didn’t he tell you? Typical!’

Fran wasn’t quite sure whether such inefficiency was typical of men in general or Simon in particular.

‘You’re from the restoration people? How wonderful of you to call me! Thank you so much.’

Her gushing deserved Paula’s dry response. ‘I’d save your thanks until we’ve seen the job and priced it up – and decided if we can take it.’

‘At least you called me back, Ms Farmer. A lot of firms don’t bother.’

‘Oh, that’s because they’re afraid of the work and it’s not macho to say so. Or some price the job so high you can’t afford them. We don’t work like that.’

Fran didn’t think they would, somehow. ‘And “we” are?’

‘We started off as Paula’s Pots, a small co-operative. That’s
what some of our clients still call us. Pact Restorers we are now. So where’s the property and when can we do an internal inspection? This afternoon?’

Fran surprised herself by being taken aback. ‘You don’t hang about.’

‘Gates says it’s urgent. I should warn you, however, Detective Chief Superintendent, that good restoration work is neither speedy nor cheap.’

‘It’s urgent because I don’t know how much longer the roof will survive. The other firms promised to protect the whole lot with scaffolding and sheeting, but they never showed up to do it.’

There was a pause. ‘You love the place already, don’t you? Where is it? OS map coordinates would be useful if it’s remote.’

Fran gaped. ‘There’s an OS map in my car. Bear with me a minute… I can be there in forty-five minutes,’ she added as Farmer read the coordinates back.

‘Excellent. So can I.’

‘Pact Restorers?’ Mark echoed when she called him with the news. ‘It sounds as if they ought to be operating under the United Nations mandate to police international ceasefires.’

‘Paula Farmer certainly sounded at least as authoritative as any General Secretary, and more likely to smack recalcitrant leaders into order. She certainly doesn’t rate our shiny new DCC over much.’

‘Did you say Paula Farmer? The name sounds vaguely familiar…’

‘Be that as it may, I’m meeting her at the Rectory in forty-five minutes. I must go. I daren’t be late!’

Late she was, however, or Paula Farmer was early. Fran suspected the latter. In fact, she suspected that Farmer would deliberately arrive anywhere early simply to discompose the person meeting her.

At five-foot ten herself, Fran didn’t meet many women of her own height, but Paula Farmer must have been at least that. At forty-ish, she carried more weight than Fran, but Fran suspected it was pure muscle under a suit as well cut as her own.

‘It’s a beautiful building. You were right to worry about the roof, though. Is there much damp damage inside? Last Friday’s rain wouldn’t have done it any good.’ Clearly she had no time to bother with formalities. A Dictaphone clipped to her lapel, she carried both a powerful torch and a digital camera; she produced hard hats for both herself and Fran.

Fran stared. ‘Are these necessary? Mark and I have been in quite often and—’

‘It’s a building site the moment I agree to take on the job. Hard hats, protective boots, high-visibility vests, Detect—’

‘Fran, please.’

The other woman approved, nodding and rewarding her with a smile that lit up the whole of her otherwise inscrutable face. Fran thought vaguely of Dutch Interiors, as if the Girl with the Pearl Earring had filled out with age.

And she was on the move already.

Fran donned her hat and scuttled after her.

‘I just want to hug the place and make it better,’ Fran admitted, almost apologetically, as they looked out of an attic window at the surrounding countryside. ‘I’ve never felt like this about a simple building before.’

‘In that case it’s the place you’ve got to live.’ Paula spoke flatly, but with a tinge of the mystic, acknowledging a destiny not worth arguing with. She pointed at a van. ‘Ah, I see Caffy’s here. Caffy Tyler. She’s responsible for the interior work. Don’t expect magnolia gloss from her, by the way. She’ll use appropriate materials – the sort English Heritage and the National Trust use. Probably the only places she’ll encourage you to update are the bathroom and the kitchen.’

‘We shall need more than one bathroom,’ Fran objected. ‘Some en suite.’

‘She’ll know what you can and can’t do. Chapter and verse. Trust her, she’s the most highly qualified of all of us – done a list of courses as long as your arm. Drat, who’s that arriving now?’

Fran smiled. ‘That’ll be Mark. He loves the place as much as I do.’

‘Mr Harman?’

‘Assistant Chief Constable Mark Turner. Call him Mark.’

‘Police titles are such mouthfuls,’ Paula said, as if she had wide experience of them and condemned the lot.

They watched while a small woman passed Mark his headgear, and two yellow discs marched forward together.

‘Hello. I’m Caffy Tyler – Caffy with two f’s, not Cathy,’ a gamine young woman just getting out of the predictable white van introduced herself to Mark as he got out of his car.

‘Mark Turner.’ Her name sounded familiar too, but her face certainly wasn’t.

They shook hands, not so much an introduction, he suspected, but more as if they were sealing an unspoken bargain.

‘What a place!’ she said, beaming.

‘We just want to make a start,’ he said. He caught a pleading note in his voice and carried on, ‘We thought we could do something ourselves in the garden.’

Caffy wrinkled her nose. ‘You could make a start cutting back those hedges, I suppose, though the trees would need trained surgeons.’

He had his usual vision of people in masks and green gowns.