Roxanne, p.2
Roxanne, page 2
The walk to the car was going to be a brisk one. Waters made one stride to Freeman’s two, more or less, but it still required a little effort to keep up. Even with an hour’s fast driving north from Cambridge to Kings Lake, it would be late afternoon before they were back in the office. Plenty of senior officers would tacitly accept that the day – and it had been a very good, productive day – was over as far as work was concerned. Freeman, however, wasn’t one of them.
She said, ‘As soon as we’re moving, call the office and give them the good news. Tell them we’ll do drinks later in the week.’
They were still forty yards from her red Mazda CX-30 when she pressed the key and the car acknowledged her approach with a flash of lights. Waters had worked with her for long enough now, and so winning bets with himself was hardly worth the self-congratulation. He simply nodded when she added, ‘And see if there’s any news about the missing girl.’
Chapter Two
It was almost five thirty that same afternoon before Commander Harry Alexander returned Freeman’s phone call. Because he was her boss, she didn’t put it on the speaker but they all heard him raise his voice as he congratulated them on their first full conviction as a new squad. Denise Sterling and Maya Kumar were at the prison in Norwich, just a few hundred yards from the commander’s office, but the rest of the squad were in the room in Kings Lake Central. As Waters watched and joined in the nodding and smiling, he saw Detective Inspector Greene make a note in a file – quite possibly he had recorded the date and time at which Commander Alexander, head of the Regional Serious Crimes Unit, had been informed of the verdict in the Neville Murfitt case.
Cara Freeman lowered her voice then and half-swivelled her chair away from them, but Waters heard her ask about Michael Wortley. It was a long answer, and Freeman didn’t interrupt it – she just thanked the very senior detective at the other end of the line before ending the call. She did not re-engage with the rest of them straight away but stared a little at nothing in particular – something Waters thought he had rarely seen her do. Greene was filing papers and folders away in his desk, and that usually signalled the end of the day’s work as long as there was no active investigation underway, but no one else was making any move to leave the room.
Eventually Freeman said, ‘OK. You all heard what Harry had to say, no need to repeat any of that. He’s in a good mood. Shepherd’s trial doesn’t seem to have impacted on Regional’s own case. I don’t know any details but I’m guessing they have someone on the inside. The fact that Murfitt was killed in Lake and that Shepherd was stupid enough to get caught on CCTV seems to have convinced his employers that it hasn’t led back to them. And obviously, Regional have made sure that it didn’t. Some promises will have been made to Shepherd by people a lot higher up the food-chain than he is, as well as some threats, but we never asked any serious questions about his motives, for the same reason. Shepherd’s defence wanted to open that up but the judge cut it short. No doubt someone had had a word. Shepherd’s record of unprovoked violence shows he doesn’t need a motive. In short – we got some justice for Neville Murfitt without trashing Regional’s ongoing investigations. Quite a neat job, really.’
Waters said, ‘What about Michael Wortley? Have we heard anything, ma’am?’
The look the DCI gave him said, you know we have, you heard me asking, but she didn’t look annoyed. Why would she? Either you want people good at finding things out or you don’t. Without the name Wortley had written on a piece of paper in her office seven months ago, Ryan Shepherd would still be walking the streets of Norwich, and without Detective Sergeant Christopher Waters, Michael Wortley would not have been in her office to write down that name; she still wasn’t clear what had occurred between the two men but something had, something she hadn’t been told about. It was a sleeping dog, and one that Freeman was prepared to let lie for now.
She said, ‘I did ask the commander about him. All I got was that he’s somewhere safe. I don’t think he’s gone into full witness protection, and from what I learned about Michael Wortley, I doubt if he’d have accepted that anyway. But Regional have helped him to disappear, I think. Until they need him. At some point, he might be asked to testify about what he was involved in, and what he saw in the house in Norwich. If he does so, he’ll need to disappear again.’
In releasing the immigrant women from the house where they had been kept as sex-workers, Wortley had annoyed the people running that operation, but if he went on to give evidence against them in a trial, he would earn their undying hatred. He might never be able to sleep easily again, however far he travelled and however many years passed by. Wortley had never been a criminal as such, but the code would be applied to him, nonetheless. As “a grass”, he would always and forever be a target for their revenge. Smith had an old saying for every occasion, and Waters thought this one might be covered by “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.” The matter had come up briefly during the long conversation he’d had with Wortley in the flat that Thursday evening. Wortley had shrugged and accepted it as a fact – Waters suspected that having to look over his shoulder was a penance Wortley was prepared to pay for having allowed himself to become involved with such unpleasant people.
Freeman said, ‘Now the trial’s over, there’s some paperwork to be done. An appeal isn’t likely but just in case… So, Tom will be taking care of that from tomorrow morning, with as much uncomplaining assistance as he needs. Denise should have tidied up the re-interviewing after the manslaughter charge this afternoon. What else have I missed today?’
Much of the past few weeks had been spent trying to breathe life back into two cold cases, both murders on the east coast of the county; one was five and the other seven years old. Detective Sergeant Denise Sterling had been working in Great Yarmouth at the time of both, though not directly on those cases, and so she had taken an unofficial lead on this but neither showed any signs of imminent resuscitation. Tom Greene would know the figures if you asked him – more than a quarter of murders result in no charges five years after the event. But Waters knew perfectly well that DCI Freeman had not just asked to be told anything like that about those cold cases.
And it was Freeman who brought the silence to an end.
‘Serena, when I called in earlier, you mentioned a missing girl.’
‘Ma’am. After your call, I did follow it up. I spoke to DI Terek, but…’
Serena was very good at this sort of thing. Waters caught Murray’s eye but the big man had already spotted where it was going.
Freeman said, ‘But what?’
‘Well, he wasn’t very forthcoming, ma’am. He said CID had been made aware of it by uniform, and they were keeping a watching brief – I think that’s how he put it. He said it’s basically just a missing persons case. Not something important enough for us to bother with, ma’am.’
Freeman’s eyes met all the others in the room before she said, ‘And by “us”, he meant?’
‘The squad, ma’am. At least I think that’s what he meant.’
‘You mentioned that it was me who had asked for more info? You mentioned my name?’
Serena said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
Freeman looked at Murray and said, ‘John, you’ve been here all day. In my absence, did DCI Reeve bring her extended leave of absence to an end? Has she returned to Central and taken back control of all detectives not in this room?’
Murray said, ‘Not to my knowledge, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, John – I just needed to check that I am still in charge. I’m going downstairs now. I’ll be a few minutes. You can all go home.’
When she had left the room, only Detective Inspector Greene seemed to be taking her at her word. He stood up and pulled on his suit jacket in no particular hurry as he said to them, ‘If in the next few minutes there is an incident that requires writing up, take notes and let me have them in the morning. Presumably, if one member of the Kings Lake detective force murders another, it would be an external investigation. We’ll all be material witnesses, so get your stories straight.’
It would be difficult to imagine a police officer less interested in or impressed by office politics and internal power struggles than DI Thomas Greene, and you didn’t need to know him long before you realised that. As a result, no one attempted to involve him in those matters at all, leaving him free to work with anyone in the building without fear or favour. Some viewed him as oddly quiet and others as quietly odd, but his reputation for efficiently getting the job done was now well established at Lake Central.
When he’d left the room, further looks were exchanged but nobody else showed any signs of leaving. Clive Betts said, ‘Wouldn’t mind being a fly on Terek’s wall just about now.’
Serena shrugged – ‘Someone’ll be listening in. Fordy or Mike will tell us the grisly details.’
Waters said to her, ‘I’m assuming your conversation with DI Terek went just as you said.’
That was not a question but she understood his implication, and pretended to resent it.
‘Word for word! He was basically telling me to keep my nose out of it. Telling us to keep our noses out of it. To mind our own business.’
One of the skills a manager needs is to be able to plot the middle course between the clashing rocks of powerful personalities, and it was one Chris Waters was acquiring. He said to her then, ‘Maybe Terek has a point. Missing persons is uniform’s job unless there are particular factors of concern. You know what those are as well as the rest of us.’
Serena didn’t answer him immediately. These days she was less inclined to argue when others were present, and he hoped that was the result of some professional respect and courtesy; when the two of them were alone together, it was a different matter.
Murray said, ‘It’s a pity Alison Reeve didn’t come back straight away. Leaving the boss – our boss – in charge of everyone was always going to cause problems. She’ll always be accused of favouring us over them.’
Detective Chief Inspector Reeve’s treatment for lymphoma had ended some months ago but she had asked for and been given an extended leave of absence to complete her recovery. The temporary solution, putting DCI Freeman in charge of Lake Central’s detective force, had taken on a more permanent feel recently, and no one was particularly happy about that. Waters knew for a fact that Freeman herself didn’t want it. She’d been instrumental in creating the murder squad because she wanted to head up a smaller, more specialist unit. Her plan had been to escape the day-to-day routine of running a large department but since last September she had been expected to carry out both sets of duties, with the usual result in such situations. People with their own agendas could argue that neither department was running as effectively as it might. It wasn’t fair on Freeman, but if as a senior manager you start complaining that life isn’t fair, you’re done for anyway.
The room had fallen silent. Waters thought he might as well leave – there was nothing that wouldn’t keep until the morning – and then Serena said, ‘I do know what the aggravating factors are in a missing persons report. I also know that people who’ve been reported missing have a higher than average chance of turning up dead. Especially young women on the game.’
Clive Betts said, ‘How definite is that, her being on the game? And even if she was, we’re the murder squad, not the might-have-been-murdered-we just-don’t-know squad. We need a body. Usually.’
‘Well, let’s hope we don’t get one.’
All eyes went to John Murray, and he was right, of course. As a detective, you can find yourself living in an odd sort of world where the point of your own existence is dependent upon the end of someone else’s – you can end up feeling guilty about that, if you’re not careful.
DCI Freeman returned to the office some ten minutes later and expressed unconvincing surprise that members of the squad were still present. She had a single sheet of paper with some handwritten notes on it. She sat in an empty seat at the end of the table and placed it in front of her.
‘Roxanne Prescott. Age twenty-two. Reported as missing yesterday morning by two women she shares a house with in South Wood. Where’s that?’
Murray said, ‘North-east of the town, beyond Fairhills, ma’am.’
‘Fairhills? Again? At least we’ll all know our way around if we end up back there. And Chris has good contacts in the alternative services business. Are you still in touch with April Kennedy?’
Smiles and knowing looks. Waters joined in with it – he’d had much worse in his six years at Kings Lake Central.
It was Murray who spoke again, though.
‘South Wood isn’t Fairhills, ma’am. Generally well-to-do. One of Lake’s pricier suburbs.’
Freeman said, ‘OK. We have the names of the two women, girls, whatever they are. Roxanne was at the house on Saturday, went out and hasn’t come back. Hasn’t been in touch, which, according to the PC who wrote it all down, isn’t usual. These aren’t the original notes, just the bits I copied down. But there was nothing about her being an escort. So, where’s that come from?’
Freeman ran a finger through the rest of the notes just to be sure and then looked up at Serena Butler.
Serena said, ‘I got the story originally from Richard Ford, ma’am. I don’t know where he picked it up, but that’s what he said to me.’
Freeman looked at the notes again, as if the answer must be there. Waters watched and waited; it was an insignificant detail, except that for a professional detective there is no such thing. Then Freeman said to Serena, ‘Can you find out?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Now?’
‘Unless you have somewhere else to be.’
Said without a note of sarcasm, but this was the deal if you were in Freeman’s squad. Along with the rest of the people in the room, Serena had been told earlier they were finished for the day. She could have left but she had not done so, and therefore, if there was work to be done…
Serena was already dialling on her mobile, and the others watched and waited. Ford answered the questions Serena put to him quickly enough, and when she’d ended the call, she said, ‘Richard got it from PC Nineham, who was on the duty desk and took the report. The girls didn’t actually say anything about what Roxanne did, but-’
‘He jumped to that conclusion anyway. Like you can always tell, yes? Who is this Nineham character?’
Waters knew the young constable by sight and was thinking of ways to save him from a fate little better than death, when Serena said, ‘I can speak to him myself, ma’am. I can go down and see if he’s still on duty…’
Now Freeman waved it away as if she had only been capricious in the first place.
‘The morning will do for that. Have a word. See if they said anything he didn’t write down or whether he was making a brilliant deduction from subtle clues. If it’s the latter, we can put him on the waiting list to join the squad.’
She was looking at the notes again, still not quite done with it. Then she folded the paper in two, though not quite as neatly as Detective Inspector Greene would have, and said, ‘Probably nothing.’
Chapter Three
When Waters finally left the office, it was later than he had planned. He stood for a moment by his car and looked up at the light slowly draining out of the April evening sky, casting the sides of the buildings into curious shades of pink. On the one hand, a momentary thing of beauty, never to be repeated – on the other, a philosophical question – what is the true colour of anything? And if we cannot agree even on something as simple as colour, what chance do we have with truth itself?
What DC had told him about Alison Reeve had been shared in confidence, and he would not break that. But the truth of it was she might not be returning to Kings Lake Central, nor to any other police station. She had told Smith she was fit enough physically for work but the months away from it as she recovered from the treatment, had had unexpected consequences. She was taking the additional time to make a decision. Smith had begun the story in his usual elliptical fashion.
‘She went to The Samaritans, you see.’
Waters had been stunned.
‘Really? Why on earth didn’t she-’
‘To work as a volunteer, answering the calls, just one evening a week,’ Smith had carried on, as if the tripping up of his erstwhile colleague had been entirely unintentional. ‘I imagine she got bored – I can quite identify with that. Anyway, she got into it, and started doing a couple of overnight shifts as well. She says it’s a good feeling, to be talking to people before awful things happen instead of always afterwards. Knowing that sometimes you’ve averted a catastrophe that someone else would have had to investigate.’
Somewhere in his flat, in a box of papers, Waters had a file of handouts from his first training sessions after joining the police. They had spent ten minutes learning about ancillary support services, and there was a leaflet from The Samaritans. He didn’t think he’d ever read it.
Smith said, ‘Anyway, I can see the appeal, but that’s not quite the whole story.’
They’d been standing in the garden at Drift’s End on a March afternoon. A gale was blowing in from the north-west, and they were in the lee of the cottage, admiring the nodding daffodils Smith had planted in the autumn. The admiring went on for some time before Waters said, ‘So, what is the whole story, DC?’
‘Right. Where was I? Yes. She’s met someone.’
‘A man?’
‘Apparently. I mean, these days…’
The four and a half years of this before Smith retired had taught Waters a special kind of patience. They exchanged looks and Smith relented.
‘Yes, a bloke. He’s a manager, volunteer manager for the eastern counties, something like that. He’s at Peterborough, which is where she was doing – is doing – the volunteering. I think she’s been spending a lot of time in Peterborough recently.’
The gale was on the point of becoming a storm. Smith had on a heavy outdoor coat and pulled it close around himself – Waters had been wearing a lightweight North Face zipper that was challenged by anything beyond a fresh breeze.
