Читать книгу A Better Tomorrow - D. C. Dalby - Страница 6

The Mermaid Café was one of the very few places on Riverside that was open during daylight hours. Once past the rather tacky plastic mermaid outside the door, the one with the embarrassing plastic green sea shell bra. Hazel Vernon found herself in the pleasant stylish atmosphere of a first class restaurant.

“Table for one?” She was met by a smart young woman, dressed in dark trousers, waistcoat, and a white shirt with a navy bow tie.

“I have a reservation.” Hazel said, “In the name of Vernon….table for two.”

The woman glanced down at her clipboard. “Oh, yes, the other party just arrived. Follow me, please.”

The Mermaid was always busy, they served some of the best food in the city and at quite reasonable prices. The place was clean, efficient and friendly.

As they reached the table the blonde woman sitting there rose. She was several centimetres shorter than Hazel and wore a mid-blue oriental style tunic with black trousers and shoes. “Hazel?” She said, putting out her hand, “It’s good to meet you.”

Hazel shook the woman by the hand. She had a firm grip. “You’ll be Louise.” She said, as the young woman left them. They both sat down. “You look just like your mother.”

“Everyone says that.” Louise Bowman said. “I expect they say the same about you.”

Hazel nodded, “Yes….”

Louise copied the gesture, “I know, it’s embarrassing, isn’t it?”

“Looking like our mothers? Or….” Hazel vaguely waved her hands. “This?”

“Do you find this embarrassing?” Louise said.

“I find it odd.” Hazel said, “Who wouldn’t?”

“Well yes.” Louise said, “I’m thirty two years old and I suddenly find I have an elder sister.”

“Half-sister.” Hazel said. Thank you, Martin Ross.

“Yes, my father….got around.” Louise said, “You don’t really like to think that of your parent, do you?”

“I never had a father to think that of.” Hazel said. Though she did have her grandfather. Lt. Col Henri Vernon. He more than made up for not having a father. “And my mother was always discreet.”

“Also there’s nothing of my father in either of us.” Louise said, “Not physically.”

Martin Ross, for all his womanizing hadn’t left his genetic mark.

Hazel studied the menu a bit more intently than she otherwise would have done. “You’re in the army?” She said.

“Military police.” Louise said. “And you’re a police detective.”

“I dare say someone could make something of that.”

“It’s called coincidence.” Louise said.

Hazel nodded, the fish was always a good bet here, but then so was the lamb.

“Can I also ask….” Louise said, “Are there any more of us?”

Hazel stifled a laugh. “If there are, then I don’t know about them. So far as I know my mother wanted a child and your father…my father…” She waved a hand vaguely.

“You’re an only child then?”

“Actually I have an elder sister.” Hazel said, “Her name is Linda and she’s married to an accountant. She lives in London and they have two children, a boy and a girl.” Hazel didn’t really see much of her sister, or her sister’s family, but a Christmas card and the odd email were always welcome.

“She’s not….”

Hazel shook her head. She could go for the duck in plum sauce, now that was delicious. “No, I’ve met Linda’s father.” She said, “And his husband.”

“Ah.” Louise said. “So she’s no relation to me.”

“None, and I don’t see that much of her either.”

Louise nodded, “We’ve thought of children, Don and me, but maybe a little later.”

Hazel nodded vaguely.

“No children for you?”

“I’m not the motherly type.” Hazel said.

“You don’t have anyone special in your life?”

Hazel shook her head. Val Maddingly was in the USA now and showed no signs of ever returning. “I’m married to the job.” She said, though that did sound rather weak.

“Do I get to ask if you’re investigating anything interesting?” Louise said. “More to the point, do you get to tell me if I ask?”

The waitress came over. Hazel went for the duck in plum sauce, with a side order of rice. Louise picked out lamb chops with winter vegetables. Sometimes Hazel thought it was always winter in this town.

“Shooting in a hotel.” Hazel said.

“That was on the news.” Louise said, “Man shot dead in a hotel room. There wasn’t much else though.”

“There’s very little else we know.” Hazel said. Which was true. In any case, the press had most of the details, plus one or two they had either found or made up after talking to the staff and guests at the hotel. “I can tell you we’re going to appeal for help in finding a woman who was seen nearby at the time.” By now Superintendent Church would be giving the press conference and displaying the computer generated image of the woman Hazel had seen.

“A woman? Crime of passion?”

“Well he was a ladies man.” Hazel said. “I don’t know, she’s just someone we want to speak to. She’s not a suspect.” Church would be pushing that line. Though it was doubtful if anyone remotely connected with the incident believed it.

“Are guns easy to come by here?” Louise said, “I didn’t think we had a big incidence of gun crime.”

“We don’t.” Hazel said, “It’s certainly a lot better than it used to be.” However, guns were leaking into town from somewhere. The Crime Squad had been trying to find out from where for several years.

“So this woman would have to know where to get a gun.” Louise said.

“If a woman killed him.” Hazel said.

“If she did then that poses some questions about her, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” Hazel said. “I carry a gun, you have access to guns.”

“How many people have you shot?”

“None.” Hazel said.

“I’ve not shot anyone either.” Louise said. “But if we assume a woman shot this man then she’d have a reason to shoot him and would know how to lay her hands on a gun.”

“Do we assume she shot him?”

Louse smiled, “I know, you have to be discreet about this because you’re the investigating officer. But I’m just an interested observer. If I assume someone other than this woman shot him then I don’t have anything.” She paused, “You do know the press will assume she did it?”

The tabloid press certainly would. Hazel nodded.

“Why would someone use a gun?” Louise said.

“It’s effective.” Hazel said.

“Not if you don’t know anything about them.” Louise said. “I’ve seen raw recruits miss a target that’s right in front of them. Shooting a gun accurately isn’t as easy as it looks on TV…..we’re talking about a handgun of some sort, aren’t we?”

Hazel nodded, “Yes.” For now the ballistic details were kept secret.

“So you have a woman who knows where to get a gun and how to shoot it correctly. Is that a fair assessment?”

Hazel had been thinking along similar lines. “It makes sense.” She conceded. “Where does it take you?”

“Police officer, soldier….member of the gun club?” Louise said, “If you could take a weapon out of the armory, use it to kill a man, clean it, unload it, and put it back, would it be easy to trace?”

“A police pistol would be.” Hazel said, “We have ballistic information on file just in case of a shooting incident.” She paused, “In any case it wasn’t a police pistol that was used.”

“Yes, but you don’t just have your official weapon, do you?”

“What makes you say that?” Hazel said.

“Two reasons, first, I’ve asked around about you. I asked around after you first made contact. I happen to know you’re a member of the Skeggs Field gun club and have been for twenty years. Second…well…..secondly….I also have my own firearms. I assumed you would too.”

Hazel nodded, smiling, she liked the way her newly found half-sister thought.

“So...a woman with access to a firearm, either bought illegally or personally owned….or readily available at her job. How many police officers are female?”

“About thirty per cent…maybe slightly more.” Hazel said. “How about in the army?”

“Roughly the same.” Louise said. “Though it’s unlikely the woman is either of those.”

“Why?” Hazel said, “Beyond the fact that neither of us would like the idea.”

“There is that.” Louise said, “If she was a police officer she’d be found out, fairly quickly. I’m guessing that eliminating your own is something you’d be hot on with this kind of thing.”

“And the army?”

“I wouldn’t like to think someone in my regiment would do something like this. All that training just to knock off a man she thought did her wrong or something. I’d hope we train our people better.”

“We all hope that.” Hazel said.

“In any case I’ll have a look around tomorrow.” Louise said. “Just to eliminate the possibility.” She paused, “Also, it’s useful to assume this woman was neither a police officer nor a soldier. Which opens the field up a bit more.”

“She wasn’t tall enough to be a police officer.” Hazel said. “I’ve no idea who she was or where she came from. Speculation only gets you so far. Then you have to start looking for evidence.”

“DNA…Fingerprints?”

Hazel nodded, “All the things we don’t have.” The forensic report wasn’t in yet but from what Hazel knew of hotel rooms they would be a mass of finger prints and it didn’t look as if the woman had hung around long enough to leave DNA conveniently on a surface. Annoyingly there had been no CCTV images either.

“Someone might recognize the woman.” Hazel said. “But the way forward is to look at the victim. He was a ladies man so that might give us something.”

“I don’t envy you.” Louise said.

“No,” Hazel said, “To be truthful, I don’t envy me either.”

 * *

“She’s not much to look at is she?” Police Constable Jonathan Stanger said offhand. He sat in the police car with another police officer from Elm Street. His colleagues name was Thomas Ward. He had been on the force about the same length of time as Stanger. Ward had been with Elm Street longer than Stanger and looked like he was likely to stay there for the rest of his career. Though that exact length of time might be dependent on what, if any, investigation into the department discovered.

Ward aimed a digital camera at the teenage girl and snapped a few pictures. “Depends what you like.” He shrugged. “She’s a tralk. We probably all picked her up at some time or another.” He frowned slightly. “After a while they all start to look alike.” He studied the image on the camera screen and gave another indifferent shrug. “What makes her so special?”

The girl was in a doorway. She was short and slightly built, Her hair was blonde, but a badly dyed blonde and her makeup, even from this distance, looked inexpertly applied. She wore a short denim skirt and knee length black boots. It was hard to see her top because she wore an anorak which was zipped up against the weather.

“Never does anything but rain here.” Stanger said. “She’s the one that got…herself…into problems when that photographer was murdered.”

“Oh right.” Ward said. He sounded indifferent. You spend enough time in this job with the wrong people and you get like Ward, Stanger thought. Maybe he was going that way himself. Cynical. Indifferent. Rather stupid. He doubted that either of them were like that when they first joined the force. Back then, if he remembered, he thought he was about to do something useful. “What about her?”

“Just keeping an eye on her.” Stanger said. “Routine surveillance.” It was enough of the truth for him to say it with a straight face. They were keeping an eye on Hannah McShane. Just not for the Elm Street police.

Ward didn’t much care. He snapped a couple more pictures. “She’s being pretty quiet today.”

Stanger watched the rain come down. “I’m not too surprised. The CID was interested in her at the time of the killing.”

“Yeah. I remember. She killed that woman and got away with it.”

“Well she didn’t kill anyone. The photographer was killed by some security guard who had a personal grudge against her.”

“Same thing.” Ward said, perversely and indifferently.

Stanger immediately gave up trying to explain the difference between being guilty and being innocent. The game was certainly not worth the candle. “You ever wonder why they were interested in her?” He tried to say that as casually as he could.

Ward shrugged, “Who knows with the CID. Maybe they fancied her.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Stanger said. “I heard she wasn’t interested though.”

“Same thing.” Ward said. A comment that made no sense in any context. Stanger wished he had Ward’s ability to just switch off and ignore any conversation that was going on around him. Maybe that was just another sign of the man’s general indifference.

“Makes you wonder why a tralk like that wasn’t interested. They usually go along with whatever the CID come up with.”

Ward shrugged. He was scrolling through the images on the camera. None of them would have won any prizes in a photographic show. “She probably just needed a bit of persuading.”

“Yes.” Stanger said, thinking of how quickly Hannah had been arrested for murder. “You’re probably right there. That would explain it.”