‘Enough to do something about it?’
‘Her alibi checks out. I phoned the hospital where she was hosting a charity dinner. She was nowhere near London when Andrew Johnson did the hop, skip and a jump to Oblivion Central.’
‘She could have contracted it out.’
‘What’s the motive? Not money. We already know that, the money in the relationship all came from her.’
‘Maybe she was tired of bankrolling him.’
‘There’s something she’s not telling us.’
DI Halliday picked up the glass of mulled wine that the barmaid had poured for her. ‘What do I owe you?’ she asked.
‘I’ve started a tab,’ said Tony Hamilton.
Jack Delaney sat staring at his laptop in the CID room back at White City Police Station. He sipped at his mug of tea. It was stone cold, but he drank some of it anyway.
DC Sally Cartwright came over, holding some pieces of paper.
‘What have you got for me, Sally?’
‘Someone who liked pretty young girls. Schoolgirls. Fifteen years old. Susan Nixon and Caroline Lewis.’
‘We’ve got names?’
‘We have.’
‘And who was it taking such a keen interest in them?’
‘The Reverend Geoffrey Hunt.’
‘The plot thickens.’
‘The girls were part of a drama group attached to the church. They were in a play to be performed at Christmas in the Church Hall. Apparently the vicar didn’t just get his own knickers in a twist.’
‘He assaulted them?’
‘Apparently.’
‘And we know this, how?’
‘The person who succeeded him in the vicarage. We finally tracked him down.’
‘The other missionary?’
‘That’s him. Out in the People’s Democratic Republic of the Congo.’
‘So what did our missionary friend have to say?’
‘At the time he was asked to take over, he remembered there was a bit of a scandal. The parents of the two girls had contacted the parish bishop making formal complaints about Reverend Hunt.’
‘Were the complaints investigated? If the police were involved then we should have had records, and there weren’t any. We checked.’
‘I know we did. The complaints from the girls were dropped. No approaches to the police were made.’
‘So what happened? Why the volte face?’
‘It seems the complaints were dropped when Geoffrey Hunt agreed to retire. There could have been a lot more, of course. Girls, I mean. Some who didn’t come forward.’
‘And we still don’t have a missing person, apart from the reverend’s brother, and Forensics have confirmed that our John Doe in the shallow grave isn’t him.’
‘So where is he?’
‘That might just be the question, Sally.’ Jack Delaney stood up and put on his black leather jacket.
‘You going to be warm enough in that, sir?’ asked the young detective constable.
‘What, are you my mother now?’
‘Someone has to keep an eye on you.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says Kate Walker, sir.’
Delaney grunted and tossed her his car keys. ‘You can drive.’
58
DANNY VINE WAS off duty and heading down Edgware Road on his pushbike. The snow was driving into his face and he had to blink continually to see where he was going. There was still a solid gridlock of traffic running all the way from the Harrow Road onwards.
The recession might be continuing. But not on Oxford Street this Christmas. Danny was on his way to Selfridges. He wanted to buy something nice for Sally Cartwright. He didn’t expect to get anything in return. He figured that boat had pretty much sailed. And he wasn’t aboard. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to strike up a work-based relationship after what had happened to her. If he’d had his way, he would have done exactly what Jack Delaney did to the creep who attacked Sally and wipe him off the face of the earth. But Delaney beat him to it. And you could see the gratitude in her eyes whenever Sally looked at him.
Danny darted in and out of the stationary cars, wishing he had half of the Irishman’s luck. But the past was the past and, like his mother always said, sometimes you have to put the cork back in the bottle and forget about it. He had always assumed that the funny expressions she came up with were phrases lost in translation from her original Jamaican roots. Nowadays he was convinced that she just made them up. ‘When the polar bear he shiver, then the whole world be cold,’ was another one of hers. As Danny felt the snowflakes sticking to his cheeks, he reckoned she might be right. So he was going to Selfridges to buy a bottle of Sally’s favourite perfume. It was going to cost him an arm and a leg but he figured she deserved it. A smile was good enough for him. He was picturing her face opening the present, when a woman ran straight out into the road and he crashed into her.
The woman collapsed to the floor and Danny Vine went sprawling across the bonnet of a stationary Volvo estate and smashed onto the pavement. Luckily he wasn’t cycling anywhere near full pelt. He stood up painfully and the woman was already on her feet, and shouting in his face. She was tall, and was dressed in what looked like a real fur coat.
‘I’m sorry, are you hurt?’ he asked.
‘Never mind me — that man’s stolen my bag. Get him.’ She spoke with a slight Scandinavian accent and was clearly used to getting her own way. She pointed to a man who was trying to make his escape down the street, his progress impeded by the multitude of Christmas shoppers.
‘Okay, I am a policeman,’ Danny said.
‘Go and arrest him then!’ said the woman, encouraging Vine on his way with a small shove as he mounted his bicycle.
Danny gradually picked up speed as he rode down the middle of the road, the traffic crawling in both directions on either side of him.
‘Stop, police!’ he called out.
The man, in his twenties dressed in a grey hoodie, filthy denim jeans and distinctive yellow running shoes, looked back over his shoulder and crashed into a group of middle-aged women, knocking one of them to the pavement.
PC Vine stood up on his pedals and pumped his legs.
The man ahead of him threw another backward glance at his pursuer and darted through the traffic across the road, turning right into Kendal Street. Danny jumped off his bike and followed him, threading his way through the cars which were picking up a bit of speed now that the bottle-jam at the Marble Arch end of the road had cleared.
As he turned the corner, Danny jumped back on his bike as the man turned left into Portsea Place, then left into a cul-de-sac.
As Danny swept into the cul-de-sac himself, the man was some thirty yards ahead, looking at the wall at the end of the street and wondering if he could make the climb. Suddenly he turned, and came charging back at Danny. Danny pedalled straight at him but, at that moment, a cat ran out and he swerved to avoid it, clipping the man as he went and knocking himself off balance to land in a pile of black bin bags. Danny took a moment or two to disentangle himself and cursed as he saw the man dashing out of the street. But he grinned when he noticed that the thief had dropped the bag he had stolen from the Scandinavian woman.
His grin disappeared, however, when Danny attempted to stand up and spotted the pale white arm he had uncovered. He moved the rubbish bags aside to reveal the young woman’s body that the arm belonged to. Her skin was white with cold, the veins showing through its pearly translucence, the colour drained from her perfectly formed lips. Her eyes frosted, cold and immobile. The lashes brittle and her long blonde hair fanned out around the black bag beneath her, as though she were floating on some dark lake.