‘Do you know what happened to Ben?’ she asked.
‘No idea, ma’am. I was just told there was a vacancy for the job here, and applied. That’s all.’
The phraseology struck Lilian as being not quite right. I was just told there was a vacancy for the job...
‘Who told you?’ she enquired sharply.
Warren was no longer smiling his big warm smile. ‘Uh, I don’t really know, ma’am.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I... it was just the Job Centre, ma’am. I mean I don’t know who exactly, you don’t, do you...’
Warren’s voice tailed away. His body language screamed out his unease. He probably wasn’t such a bad bloke. Just another piece of flotsam struggling to keep afloat in murky, wreckage-strewn waters.
‘I see,’ she said as they stepped from the lift onto the fifth floor. ‘So, as head porter can you please tell me what you were doing this morning allowing strangers to wander around the place accosting residents?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, ma’am. I didn’t see any strangers come in. No visitors at all. Not today. Not yet.’
‘What about two extremely large men who look exactly like the thugs they undoubtedly are?’
Warren shook his head. His expression was one of exquisite puzzlement. But she reckoned he was definitely squirming.
She swiftly took in the empty corridor ahead. Not a goon in sight. Of course there wouldn’t be, would there? Not while she was in the company of the erstwhile porter. She heard a dull clunk, the sound of a door closing. But she had no idea which apartment the sound had come from. Indeed everything seemed as normal on the fifth floor. She had nothing more to say to Warren. She watched in stony silence as he dropped her carrier bags in the hall of number fifty-six and beat a swift retreat. This time she didn’t even consider tipping him.
She slumped into the nearest chair. Any remaining hope that she might have been clinging to had been emptied from her.
Five
The setting up of the incident room at Bideford nick was already well under way by the time Vogel and Saslow arrived there just before nine thirty p.m. But then, the head of Devon and Cornwall Police’s Major Crimes Team, Superintendent Nobby Clarke, had issued her instructions. And she was a woman who expected her every directive to be carried out both with alacrity and total efficiency.
The place and a number of the people were familiar to Vogel. He and Saslow had been seconded to North Devon a couple of years previously to investigate a suspicious death which had carried with it considerable local significance.
Now, and somewhat unexpectedly considering some of the events which had accompanied that investigation, he was permanently attached to the region’s MCT and was in the process of looking for a home in North Devon for himself and his family. Hopefully on the coast, with which, also rather unexpectedly, he had fallen a little in love. Although he hadn’t quite admitted it yet, not even to himself.
Vogel was London born and bred, and had spent the bulk of his career as a Met detective, based in the heart of the city. He remained unsure of exactly how he had come to be relocating for good, or certainly the foreseeable future, to a largely rural and curiously remote part of the world, only linked to the rest of the UK by a thoroughly ghastly road and an equally ghastly and inadequate rail service. But that’s what he was doing. And he suspected the fresh sea air must be addling his brain, because he was more than a little looking forward to being settled there with his wife, his daughter and a beach-mad dog.
Vogel remembered Bideford nick well, a forbidding red-brick building, built on high ground opposite and above the River Torridge. He also remembered its access road, a disconcertingly steep ramp leading up from the riverside road, and its limited parking facilities. Vogel didn’t much like motor cars or anything about them. Indeed, his ideal method of transportation would be to be beamed from one place to another, as in the American space fiction series Star Trek, his childhood favourite TV show.
The police station had been closed to the public for years, but local CID and Uniform still operated on a day-to-day basis behind its closed doors.
In many ways the old nick was ill-suited to house an operation the scale of which was now being launched within its towering walls. Major Crimes Team officers were busy slotting themselves in amongst the resident force members, and extra officers from other stations in the region were currently being assigned, in order to form a suitably sized team for a murder investigation.
Vogel’s personal opinion might be that this particular investigation would not last long, but no force would launch an inquiry into a violent death based on that assumption. And he understood well enough Nobby Clarke’s reasons for choosing Bideford police station as the inquiry’s HQ. The only real alternative in the area would have been the Devon and Cornwall’s major regional station in Barnstaple. And Nobby, like so many senior detectives, Vogel included, preferred, in the case of murder investigations in particular, to set up a separate Major Incident Room away from base and close to the location of the crime. The Bideford station was very nearly on the spot. Just ten minutes or so from St Anne’s Avenue.
Vogel spotted DI Janet Peters, whom he knew Clarke had appointed deputy SIO and office manager, hurrying by, clipboard in one hand, phone in the other. Janet had played the same role in his previous North Devon murder investigation.
She looked slightly less dishevelled than he remembered. Her previously rather wild, dark-blonde hair was shorter than before, and shaped into a neat bob.
He had at first been a tad disappointed with her during their previous encounter, comparing her unfavourably, and probably unfairly, with the woman DI who had been his deputy on major inquiries throughout his time at MIT Bristol. But Janet Peters had grown on him. She had proven to be considerably better organized than she sometimes appeared, and both diligent and loyal, qualities Vogel always admired.
She did not notice him until he called out to her.
‘Oh hi, boss, Saslow,’ she said. ‘Sorry. My mind’s in a million places...’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Vogel replied. ‘Everything seems to be coming together pretty well though?’
‘Hopefully, boss. The boys and girls being sent up from Plymouth haven’t arrived yet, mind. And I’m not entirely sure where I’m going to put them.’
DI Peters’ easy smile somewhat belied her words, which might otherwise have indicated a degree of stress and anxiety. Vogel thought she had a pretty fair idea exactly what she was going to do with the Plymouth contingent. She seemed more relaxed under pressure than he remembered. Which was a good sign.
‘You’re in the same place as before,’ she told Vogel. ‘Not very big, but at least you get some privacy. I’ll take you along there, then give you an update, if that suits.’
Vogel nodded his thanks.
With Saslow following closely, he and Peters had just reached his temporary office when a young man approached who Vogel also recognized from his previous Bideford-based investigation. The DC’s appearance was quite memorable. He had very black hair and a long, thin, overly pale face well-suited to his more or less permanent worried expression. Vogel couldn’t remember his name though. But he was saved from any potential embarrassment.
‘Ricky Perkins, sir,’ said the young man smartly. ‘Good to be working with you again.’
Vogel nodded curtly. He was not, by nature, discourteous, but he had little time for niceties when embarking upon a murder investigation. Perkins did not seem to expect any further response.