Roxanne, p.29
Roxanne, page 29
He said, ‘For one thing, it’s already in the public domain. The local media have headlined it, and one or two nationals have taken some notice. That’s not going away – whoever heads the investigation will be dealing with it.’
Freeman said, ‘He was an hereditary peer, wasn’t he?’
Alexander nodded and she went on, ‘Not really surprising, then. What else, sir?’
‘There’s the previous investigation into his death, conducted by Bethel Street. The coroner’s report doesn’t criticise it directly, but… Whoever reinvestigates is not expected to come to any conclusions about how Bethel Street handled it. Nevertheless, some of their officers are now witnesses. They will need to be interviewed. It’s going to require tact but also a certain firmness. I’m sure you know what I mean, Cara.’
There was a small communications console on his desk. A red light began to flash, and they both watched it until someone somewhere took the call; Freeman thought it might be the chief constable or the police and crime commissioner asking for an update. She was under no illusions; forget Harry’s apparently casual, take-it-or-leave-it manner – this was a crisis for the Norfolk Constabulary. The last time she’d checked, it employed 1,897 officers, but she was the one who had been called at ten minutes past eight this morning and told to meet with the commander at 11.30 sharp.
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘Would you like me to get the files emailed to you? Peruse them at your leisure, for an hour or two?’
Once more he seemed unperturbed by her silence.
‘OK. When you read the files, you’ll see there are questions about Bethel Street’s procedures. Do you know anyone there?’
She said she had recently encountered some of their personnel during the search for one of her own officers, Detective Constable Serena Butler, but made no further comment.
Alexander said, ‘You’re not close with anyone there?’ and she shook her head.
‘Good. It came out at the inquest that important evidence had either been lost, or mislabelled or…’
‘Or worse, sir?’
He dodged it by saying, ‘I don’t begin to pretend I understand what has gone on with this case. It’s an unholy mess. I need someone who can sort it out and put it to bed without making a fuss. Whoever can do that will have the undying gratitude of every senior officer in the county. It wouldn’t be forgotten.’
There was a tentative knock on the door to his office. The commander said, ‘Yes?’ and it opened – a woman was there, and she said to him, ‘You asked to be reminded about your 12.30, sir.’
Probably pre-arranged, thought Freeman. When the door had been closed again, Alexander looked at her and said, ‘Well?’
‘As you said, sir, it’s complicated. I’m not up to speed on it myself but I’m aware that the agency who helped to drag the corpse, so to speak, into the open involves someone we know.’
He didn’t respond, which meant he didn’t need to because he already knew.
She continued, ‘And that is someone members of my team are “close with”, sir. It’s impossible to say whether that would be a help or a hindrance.’
Alexander was looking at her in a level and entirely unsurprised way; one doesn’t get to hold on to the rank of commander for several years in the police service without being devious when situations require it. That was the moment when she began to suspect he wanted her squad involved because of their relationship with one David C. Smith.
He said, ‘You mentioned DC Butler. How is she doing?’
‘Well, sir. She’s returning to light duties this week. I held out as long as I could.’
‘And you’ll soon have a new DI. Or should I say, another DI. Some might think the squad is a little top-heavy now…’
Freeman said, ‘Might they, sir? The way I see it, I still have only half the number of officers I was originally promised when I took the job – that being the case, the ones I do have need to be twice as good. People like that have to be rewarded, sir.’
Alexander smiled then and said, ‘By the time you’re back in Kings Lake, the files will be in your inbox.’
She stood up and thanked him for the opportunity, and he took the irony in good part. Why wouldn’t he? He had what he’d wanted from the outset, but she intended to make one thing clear, nevertheless.
‘I’ll read them, sir, and then I’ll talk it through with my DIs. I’m going to need their input before I make a final decision.’
He said, ‘Fair enough. But don’t let the tail wag the dog.’
This wasn’t the time to get into a debate about management styles – she nodded and made for the door. When her hand was about to open it, he said, ‘Oh, I meant to ask – how is your mother?’
She gave the usual non-committal reply – the one we give to questions asked only out of politeness, but he hadn’t quite done with her. He said, ‘And are you still living in that great big house out in the middle of nowhere?’
She said, ‘Yes, sir. We don’t just live there. It’s our home.’
Their eyes met for a moment, and then Alexander said, ‘I’m in the office until four today. If you need longer, you can reach me on my mobile after that.’
Freeman said, ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll be in touch this afternoon. Before four o’clock.’
Back in her car, she checked her phone. There was a message from Daria – We postpone shopping trip today, little unsettled this morning. But all OK.
Their live-in carer was a treasure but with that came the fear that she would leave one day – for now, her plans to go home to Ukraine had been abandoned, due in part, no doubt, to the generous sum of money she was being paid each month. Freeman studied the message again – Daria missed out definite and indefinite articles but look at how subtly she chose her words: ‘postponed’ instead of ‘cancelled’ and ‘unsettled’ instead of a dozen other words that would have meant confused and anxious. Elaine Freeman was losing her battle with Alzheimer’s on that particular morning.
Freeman pressed the starter on the car, and checked whether there was anything from Lake Central, but this was merely out of habit – Tom Greene was the safest and steadiest pair of hands she had ever met as far as the job was concerned. Even after her fortnight’s holiday last autumn, she’d returned to find nothing amiss, just a printed list on her desk of points he thought she might like to be made aware of, for the sake of completeness.
Another personal matter arose then, one which needed a moment’s consideration before she was ready to begin the drive back to Kings Lake. Her sister Isabel was due for another weekend stay – she would arrive at the house on Friday evening. These trial visits had gone so well that soon someone would ask the question: was Isabel ready to leave Meadowlands for good and begin a new life with her half-sister and her half-sister’s mother, one of whom had early onset dementia while the other was a career woman with one of the most demanding and high-profile jobs in the county’s police service? For some seconds Freeman’s professional mode took over this personal question – she mapped out scenarios, imagining Daria leaving, no suitable replacement being found, Isabel, not long out of full-time psychiatric care, left alone in the house with an ailing woman she hardly knew. Rather than ask what could possibly go wrong, one might ask instead what could possibly go right in circumstances like those…
She slowed her breathing and brought things under control, her hands in the ten-to-two driving position on the steering wheel. If Harry Alexander was watching from his high window, this might look a little odd with the car going nowhere, but never mind. After another thought she checked the work email on her phone but nothing had arrived yet. She put the car into gear and pulled away, her mind on the case now – more often than not these days, work had become the place she went to for some peace and quiet.
He drowned, didn’t he, that peer of the realm? There might have been cock-ups with the forensics – much more frequent than the general public ever realises – but even so, if he drowned that’s unlikely to be murder. It was true that Alexander would know the squad’s workload, would know they were between active investigations, but why hand this job to Lake Central’s most specialist team, especially if it probably wasn’t a murder in the first place?
Freeman was a quick, decisive sort of driver – when a white van man, surprised at a roundabout, beeped his horn, she put up a hand and waved as if she knew him. Don’t make the basic mistake, she told herself – don’t assume you’ve been told everything. Don’t assume anything at all. The chief constable and the police and crime commissioner are still considering the matter, the commander had said. She wondered whether they were more or less likely to call in an outside force if DCI Freeman agreed to take the job.
The outer ring road wasn’t busy, and she took the Mazda up to the speed limit. Glancing into the mirror, she noted the frown and tried to clear it – after a time they can become sort of permanent, almost a way to spot a copper. Harry could have ordered her to take on the investigation, of course, so why hadn’t he done so? Did he believe the job was so potentially toxic he wanted her to volunteer, just in case?
She left the ring road at its junction with the A47 and headed due west – she should be back in Lake Central within the hour but she called Greene anyway because she had that feeling now. She said, ‘Tom, something from Norwich should be coming through to my work email. You and Chris need to read it. Priti’s sorting out my office today, so find the three of us somewhere to sit down at…’ She looked at the clock, made quick calculations and continued, ‘Two-thirty’
Greene said, ‘Yes, will do, ma’am.’
And then, unusually, he asked a supplementary.
‘Do we have a case, ma’am?’
She had reached the dual carriageway and the active cruise control had already been set to seventy miles an hour. A traffic patrol Skoda Octavia was parked up at the observation point, and she saw the driver watching as she travelled quickly in the outside lane, but he didn’t pull down into the road to check her out.
She said to Greene, ‘Search me, Tom. It’s a funny one. Have a read and then maybe you can tell me whether we do.’
Peter Grainger, Roxanne
