Guilty as Sin Page 15

  ‘Having the time of his life.’ He nodded in the direction of one of the chairs in the window. Angus was occupying a lap, the owner of which was stroking him rhythmically and occasionally feeding him with doggy treats. ‘It does the patient good as well – it reduces their blood pressure. But it may well go up again – the sheriff and his posse are coming into town.’ He suddenly switched to John Wayne posture, reaching for his six-shooter. No one else saw. I had to turn away to stop laughing.

  The street echoed with sirens and pulsated with blue light. Soon the shop door beeped and the community support officer inched her petite way inside, asking thinly and vainly for order.

  Phil clapped his hands for silence – and got it. ‘Why don’t we all go to the rectory to talk?’

  There was a lot of rhubarbing. Eventually I caught Griff’s eye. He led the way with a wonderful sashay. Out we tripped in his wake, Angus refusing to be parted from his new best friend, though he danced back to me to check I’d remembered my now decidedly aromatic rucksack. One of the plastic containers must have leaked.

  ‘Venal little bugger,’ Phil observed, setting his alarm and locking up. ‘Tell you what, when the police have finished talking to us all, we could get some fresh supplies of curry and have them with a beer at mine. It strikes me we could both do with a bit of company our own age after a whole evening of wrinklies.’

  Our own age? Not that I’d given it much thought but I’d always imagined him being on the verge of middle age. The white coat, no doubt. In fact, he was probably in his thirties, and while not quite as tall and broad-shouldered as Afzal, quietly attractive in an understated way – blue eyes, fairish hair and skin prone, I would imagine, to sunburn. In fact, I was surprised that Griff, who considered himself a bit of a connoisseur, hadn’t remarked on his looks. During working hours, of course, he’d be corralled in his dispensary; customers were dealt with by a team of pleasant motherly women, the sort who’d win prizes for chutney at the WI show.

  As one, he and I headed not to the rectory but to the church, where, in true alpha male tradition, Phil headed for the tallest policeman he could find. On the other hand, I could see the familiar face of Freya Webb. Cutting short her conversation with another female officer, also in standard bright-wear, she headed my way.

  ‘You called this in, I gather. And mentioned me by name.’ She didn’t sound delighted. Why should she? The first look at a crime scene like this was surely taken by someone well below her rank. And she had a husband and child at home.

  ‘Yep. At the time I told the despatcher you’d want more than the poor solitary little community support officer we got. When you’ve got time, you might want to disembowel her – the despatcher, I mean. We were put at risk and you missed a collar.’ I treated her to a succinct account of what she called the incident and I’d have called a crime. ‘All the church committee are safe at the rectory,’ I concluded. ‘I’m on my way there now, but I wanted to put whoever was in charge in the picture. You, then.’ I grinned. ‘Speaking of which, I’ve got a load of pics on my mobile. Are you still on your old number? I’ll send them through.’

  ‘Thanks. Whatever did we do before clever little things like this?’ She peered over my shoulder at my screen as I forwarded them. ‘Now, despite all the workmen’s gear, that face looks familiar. And that … Hell’s bells, what the fuck’s going on here?’ She must be moved: since her marriage to Tim, a rector, she had cut back on her swearing. ‘Pensioner power or what? You should have stopped them, though,’ she added, looking at me under her brows.

  ‘Stopped the robbers or the silver army? Both impossible, I’d have thought,’ Phil said, over my shoulder, making me jump.

  I’d forgotten all about him. I’d better remember fast, and introduce them carefully. Freya’s expression was hard to read. She knew I was officially with Carwyn, and would disapprove violently if she smelt any suggestion of two-timing. At least, I thought so. She’d referred to Carwyn more than once as a darker horse than most, and never made any girlie jokes about us. But then, Freya didn’t do girlie any more than I did.

  Mercifully Phil showed no surprise when he learned she was the Detective Chief Inspector in charge, merely saying he’d been walking his dog and encountered the men in question, and that though we were barely acquainted I’d helped him out of a sticky situation. ‘Though it did get a great deal stickier when the PCC members turned up,’ he conceded.

  ‘OK, we’ll get a team up to the rectory to take statements – is Daniel still the priest in charge? Nice man. Almost as overworked as Robin, though it’s not as bad here as in Daniel’s last parish – he used to call it the Lions’ Den.’ She’d still not curbed her dangerous tendency to gossip; I was sure Daniel wouldn’t like that to get back to his bishop. ‘What about you two? Will you be joining the oldies?’

  ‘I’ve got to go up there to retrieve my dog,’ Phil said. Then he added, ‘But neither of us has eaten – poor Lina’s Indian’s been round the block a bit now.’ He jerked a thumb at my now quite pungent rucksack. ‘I thought we could get a replacement and eat at mine – Tithebarn Cottage. OK?’ Freya’s nod was apparently bored as she wrote it down. She checked her watch, despite the large and clear church clock only metres away. ‘Should be with you by ten latest, OK? See you then.’

  ‘You’ll keep an eye on Griff, won’t you, Freya? I don’t want him worrying more than he has to after all this stress.’

  ‘Stress!’ Freya crowed. ‘That old bugger will think it’s a bit of pleasurable excitement laid on especially for him.’

  NINETEEN

  Afzal’s response to seeing me a second time, and now in Phil’s company, was what you might call polite deadpan. His smile and demeanour were totally professional – not so much as a raised eyebrow or a discreet wink in my direction as he handed over our meal. Phil had left Angus outside, of course, hitched to a convenient railing and presumably too stuffed with treats to object to being abandoned. To my mind, the poor thing now walked with a decided roll. Certainly, when we arrived at Tithebarn Cottage, all he wanted was to collapse in his basket.

  Phil’s place was about the same age as ours, but stripped down and decorated with twenty-first century minimalism. The effect was starkly interesting, and set off quite beautifully a cleverly lit semi-abstract oil painting over the fireplace: a brave splash of reds and purples in the otherwise monochrome surroundings.

  Griff would have killed for the kitchen, all good lines and elegance, with cupboards concealing absolutely everything – no friendly clutter of teapot and caddy near the kettle for Phil. He produced modern Danish china and cutlery, which he laid on the sleek kitchen table.

  ‘You don’t think it’s all a bit much?’ he asked. ‘I came into a bit of money just before I bought the shop. I was so busy at work I let an interior decorator loose. It was very Fifties – needed bringing up to date, but perhaps not this much …’

  ‘I love it,’ I said simply, though I hoped the table top was stain-proof. ‘It reminds me a bit of my workroom – a place for everything and everything, presumably, in its place.’

  While we ate, we chatted about our jobs, and he talked about his education. He had the same sort of background as Spencer, but at least I recognized the university he named because other people I knew and got on with had been there. Politely I asked him why he’d chosen pharmacy – because he liked making people better without having to deal with blood, apparently.

  ‘And you’re good at making people better, of course,’ he said with a charming smile.

  I don’t normally like charm, but the observation intrigued me. ‘I usually mend pots,’ I parried, ‘not people.’

  ‘But you got Mr Tripp through that bypass op. And now you’re keeping an eye on Lady Boulton,’ he said.

  ‘Lady Boulton?’ But of course, if she was one of Pa’s intimates, as it were, not to mention being an ambassador’s wife, she might well have had a title. ‘Ah, Dodie. She’s a friend of my father’s,’ I said, rather foolishly, possib
ly as a result of the lager he’d pressed on me. I really did not want to trade on that connection. ‘Do you think,’ I asked, glad to have the chance to talk to a health professional about her, ‘that giving her a more stimulating life might make her better?’

  ‘It should slow down her inevitable decline,’ he said slowly. ‘She’s no spring chicken, but you and your balloons have given her something to live for, haven’t they? They made my day, I can tell you. I could hardly drive for laughing.’

  Had he been the Mercedes driver? I could hardly ask him, could I? Come on, Lina, you can’t imagine that he was the vicious man in shades who’d parked his Mercedes outside the shop. All the same …

  Never had a vigorously rung doorbell been more welcome.

  I would have put money on Freya joining us at the table and dipping bits of naan bread into any open container, even if it meant risking spicy drips on the table.

  ‘We’ve found the stolen Jazz,’ she said, savouring a piece of chicken Dilshan, named in honour of Afzal’s cricketing hero. ‘Hmm, interesting texture, that. And it’s being checked for DNA. The Barkers – Esme and Harry, right? – are all right, thanks to your ministrations, I suspect, Mr Russell? No, it’s Doctor Russell, isn’t it?’

  ‘No blood,’ he said, in a quick aside to me. ‘Actually, I’m not that sort of doctor, DCI Webb: it’s a post-grad qualification in the side-effects of analgesics. Any idea what the men were after?’

  ‘I’m sure we can ask them that when we catch them,’ she said, not quite pleasantly. ‘Lead, I suppose, though the PCC people I’ve spoken to assured me it’s been treated with smart water and should be hard to sell on.’

  ‘Nothing inside the church itself?’ he pressed.

  ‘Why erect scaffolding if all you want to do is break in?’ she countered.

  ‘To get through the roof straight into the nave,’ I said slowly. ‘Or the Lady Chapel? That’s the oldest part of the church.’ To my shame, I’d never really looked at it in detail, because it was always swarming with worshippers when I was there. ‘After all, people would notice if men took a sledgehammer to the door – I should imagine the porch would amplify the sound nicely. But if you look as though you might be doing something official, which is what their warning signs and protective gear suggest, you could spend as long as you wanted inside. You could remove a lot if you covered the scaffolding with tarpaulin and also had a tarpaulin-covered skip.’

  Halfway through a mouthful of Muralithan special fish curry, raising her eyebrows and blinking at the heat, Freya said, ‘You’re starting to think like a criminal, Lina – you must be spending too much time with your father’s friends.’ She reached for an unopened can of lager.

  ‘Or with the police,’ I said cheerfully moving it away from her: after all, hoovering up food was one thing but supping alcohol on duty was another. ‘Carwyn, for instance.’

  ‘Not to mention that toad Morris,’ she agreed, always ready to goad me about a policeman ex of mine. ‘OK, who interviewed you when you’d had that bang on the head in Dockinge? Young Knowles, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. And he talked to Mary when she … when she was threatened,’ I concluded tamely.

  Freya looked at me sharply, as if filling in the dots I’d left hanging in mid-air. ‘I’ll rope him in to the investigation if it gets that far – see if he’s got any ideas.’

  Phil spoke before I could. ‘Sorry to interrupt, DCI Webb – did you imply that you might not be continuing work on this case? People were hurt. They could have been badly injured. Cars were smashed. Surely that constitutes a crime worth investigating?’

  ‘We deal with each incident on its merits.’ She was decidedly irritated. ‘We take in a number of variables – the extent of the damage, the ultimate consequences, the possibility of a successful prosecution. And,’ she added, dropping the official tone, ‘we share the Major Incident Team with Essex these days. This might have to be a small-scale in-house investigation. Or it might move to Essex.’

  ‘You might share some of it with Devon and Cornwall Police,’ I pointed out. ‘Or, best of all, this new national agency Carwyn was telling me about that’s devoted to dealing with thefts from historic sites.’ There, I’d jumped on her corns with both feet. Tough.

  Phil looked from one of us to the other. ‘I don’t care who the hell investigates it. So long as someone takes it very seriously indeed. I don’t take kindly to being told to eff off when I’m walking in my own village. Or to having my dog threatened. Or to seeing my patients attacked.’

  ‘I thought you were a chemist, not a doctor.’

  That’s right, Freya, get him on your side. Or not.

  ‘I don’t like the thought of the church at the heart of our community being raided for whatever reason. The cheek and arrogance of those men appalls me. They may not have been working in broad daylight, but they might as well have been with those new floodlights. And had it not been for Lina’s contacts with church members, they’d have got away with it. It all looked so official. Pharmacists are scientists. We’re trained, like doctors, to spot patterns in symptoms. I’d say that such slickness implies practice. And practice might indicate a pattern of past activities.’

  Apart from the bit about his scientific background, I’d have said the same myself.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ Freya said doggedly, ‘is that though we’ll do our best, there’s no guarantee of success. Especially as not a single one of our witnesses could identify any of the previous offenders we have on our database – yes, we showed them a lot of mugshots, believe me. I don’t blame them – none of you could have seen much of their faces under those helmets.’ She reached her laptop from her bag and patted it. ‘As soon as you’ve finished your meal, perhaps you’ll find time to have a look, too.’ In her situation, her fingers red with our curry sauce, I might not have allowed myself that tinge of sarcasm.

  ‘But you yourself said some of the faces I snapped were familiar. Come on, Freya, you’re as bad as me: you only recognize bad guys. You’ll be able to get your techies to use some classy facial recognition system, surely?’ I pushed some of my poor reheated jhinga bhindi at her. And a clean fork. Did the woman never eat except when she was with me? Or did she have a tapeworm? She carried not a single pound of excess weight.

  ‘It’s not so much us as the powers that be. The new Crime Commissioner, this ex-traffic warden or whatever he was before he got elected in the lowest ever recorded public turn-out (six per cent, was it?), is obsessed by keeping the M20 open and very little else. I know, I know, commissioners aren’t supposed to influence the day-to-day running of the force, but they can skew budgets. Whoever thought they were a good idea? Waste of money – think of their salaries and their expenses!’ Some of her diatribe was less audible than the rest: she was grazing as she let off steam.

  Eventually Phil passed her a napkin and started to clear the detritus. Should I offer to help? I’d no idea where he’d want to store stuff or throw it away. So probably not.

  ‘Faces?’ I prompted her.

  Looking wistfully at half a naan bread disappearing into a recycling bucket, she produced her computer. Soon Phil, so close I could feel his breath on my ear, and I were looking at her gallery. Neither of us could positively point at anyone, and, worse, we picked out quite different faces.

  ‘What about your clever computer programs – won’t they help? Match your images with the images I sent you?’ I tapped my phone. ‘While we wait for your technical bods, maybe I should send these pics direct to Sergeant Pat Henchard and see if they prompt a response in her?’ It was gross interference and I thought for a moment she’d tell me so. But they were on my phone and I could, of course, do as I liked with them. So I did.

  She might have been working out how to bollock me without offending Phil. In fact, when she eventually spoke, she said ultra-casually, ‘I’ve actually got a couple more things to ask Griff. Can I give you a ride?’

  Thank you for putting me in a difficult situation. I made a s
how of looking at my watch. It was, by village standards, quite late. ‘Griff’s probably imagining those thugs lurking in every doorway to jump on me and beat me up.’ In other words, I’d better cut the evening short. I smiled at Phil. ‘That food was a brilliant idea. I feel much better now. Next time at our cottage; Griff actually cooks his own from scratch, though he’s best with Thai.’ In other words, not a date – a family meal.

  ‘I love Thai.’

  We exchanged a double cheek-to-cheek air kiss, and I followed Freya out into the dark street: the few streetlights we had went off at eleven prompt, by order of some puritan councillor, so I should have been more grateful than I was for her offer.

  She drove in silence, but didn’t head to the cottage.

  ‘The scene of crime team should have finished by now, so how about a quick look at what the scrotes might have been after?’

  ‘Wouldn’t one of the churchwardens be a better guide than me?’

  ‘They’ll tell me what’s written in their insurance policy. I want a quick shuftie myself. And you know about such things, after all. Yes, I’ve borrowed a key.’

  Which all sounded a bit premeditated on her part.

  ‘OK. I’ll just text Griff and let him know what I’m doing.’

  ‘I told him earlier.’

  I expected to have to don some of the gear worn by forensic scientists, but Freya didn’t bother; as she pointed out, flicking on all the lights so the church looked ready for midnight Communion, the would-be thieves hadn’t actually penetrated the place. Keeping our footsteps quiet, we made a mini-pilgrimage round the church, with me quietly pointing out the obvious highlights: the huge brass lectern; the bishop’s throne.

  ‘Is that all? Come on, what else could the thieves have laid their evil claws on if they’d got in?’ She grabbed a copy of the visitors’ information sheet and thrust one at me.